[Footnote 31: We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degraded title of Epic." See his Preface. ["It assumes not the degraded title of Epic."--Preface to 'Madoc' (1805), Southey's 'Poetical Works' (1838), vol. v. p. xxi.] Why is Epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late Romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogilvy, Hole,[A] and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the Epic Muse; but, as Mr. SOUTHEY'S poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask--has he substituted anything better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir RICHARD BLACKMORE in the quantity as well as quality of his verse? [Sub-Footnote A: For "Hole," the 'MS'. and 'British Bards' read "Sir J. B. Burgess; Cumberland."] ] [Footnote 32: See 'The Old Woman of Berkeley', a ballad by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a "high trotting horse."] [Footnote 33: The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the 'Anti-Jacobin' to Mr. Southey, on his Dactylics:-- "God help thee, silly one!" 'Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin', p. 23.] [Footnote 34: In the annotated copy of the Fourth Edition Byron has drawn a line down the margin of the passage on Wordsworth, lines 236-248, and adds the word "Unjust." The first four lines on Coleridge (lines 255-258) are also marked "Unjust." The recantation is, no doubt, intended to apply to both passages from beginning to end. "'Unjust'."--B., 1816. (See also Byron's letter to S. T. Coleridge, March 31, 1815.)] [Footnote 35: 'Lyrical Ballads', p. 4.--"The Tables Turned," Stanza 1. "Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks, Why all this toil and trouble? Up, up, my friend, and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double."] [Footnote 36: Mr. W. in his preface labours hard to prove, that prose and verse are much the same; and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable:-- "And thus to Betty's questions he Made answer, like a traveller bold. 'The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whoo, And the sun did shine so cold.'" 'Lyrical Ballads', p. 179. [Compare 'The Simpliciad', II. 295-305, and 'note'.]] [Footnote 37: "He has not published for some years."--'British Bards'. (A marginal note in pencil.) [Coleridge's 'Poems' (3rd edit.) appeared in 1803; the first number of 'The Friend' on June 1, 1809.]] [Footnote 38: COLERIDGE'S 'Poems', p. 11, "Songs of the Pixies," 'i. e.' Devonshire Fairies; p. 42, we have "Lines to a Young Lady;" and, p. 52, "Lines to a Young Ass." [Compare 'The Simpliciad', ll. 211, 213-- "Then in despite of scornful Folly's pother, Ask him to live with you and hail him brother."]]