Volume 2 / Part 1 — BISHOP CORBET.
Reading edition
I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with the public uncommonly well. September, 1823.
NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. {1}
There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.
OPINION. Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman best, but it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman in the world. ... Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason why all the world should think as I think. Affection is a thing wherein I look after the pleasing of myself.
Good! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and the agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that {Greek: plaethos atheon} have so beneficially confounded, 'meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni'.
O what an insight the whole of this article gives into a wise man's heart, who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of the many! It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism, &c.
PARLIAMENT.
Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom!
POETRY. The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was, sung to music; otherwise it had been a senseless thing to have fettered up themselves.
No one man can know all things: even Selden here talks ignorantly. Verse is in itself a music, and the natural symbol of that union of passion with thought and pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all poetry, as contradistinguished from science, and distinguished from history civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man,—in short, to whatever is mere metrical good sense and wit, the remark applies.
Ib.
Verse proves nothing but the quantity of syllables; they are not meant for logic.
True; they, that is, verses, are not logic; but they are, or ought to be, the envoys and representatives of that vital passion, which is the practical cement of logic; and without which logic must remain inert.
{Footnote 1: These remarks on Selden, Wheeler, and Birch, were communicated by Mr. Gary. Ed.}