Note 10 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

Some fifteen years ago, in a little book on Dryden, I called Kirke White a "miserable poetaster," and was rebuked for it by those who perhaps knew Byron's lines and nothing more. Quite recently Mr. Gosse was rebuked more loudly for a less severe denunciation. I determined that I would read Kirke White again; and the above judgment is the mildest I can possibly pronounce after the reading. A good young man with a pathetic career; but a poetaster merely.