Note 70 — CANTO II. CONJURATIONS!

But Gifford comes, with why and wherefore.

The admirers of your polite poetry can never sufficiently anathematize the author of the Baviad and Mæviad for extirpating, root and branch, a species of sentimental ditty, which might be scribbled, without the trouble of “sense to prose;” an object certainly of no small consequence with your bon ton readers and writers of rhyme. How could a sentimental Ensign or love-lorn Lieutenant be better employed than in sobbing over “Laura’s tinkling trash,” or weeping in concert with the “mad jangle of Matilda’s lyre?” Besides, there ought to be whipped syllabub adapted to the palates of those who cannot relish “Burns’ pure healthful nurture.” Mr Gifford should be sensible, that reducing poetry to the standard of common sense is clipping the wings of genius. For example; there is no describing what sublime and Della Cruscan-like capers I should myself have been cutting in this “Wilderness of suns;” for I was about to prepare a nosegay of comets, and string the spheres like beads for a lady’s necklace; but was not a little apprehensive lest Mr G. or some other malignant critic should persuade the public, that my effusions of fancy were little better than the rant of a bedlamite.