are probably better qualified to hit the taste of their customers, than
Mr. Southey, or any of his brethren, can yet pretend to be. To fit them
for the higher task of original composition, it would not be amiss if
they were to undertake a translation of Pope or Milton into the vulgar
tongue, for the benefit of those children of nature.

There is another disagreeable effect of this affected simplicity, which,
though of less importance than those which have been already noticed, it
may yet be worth while to mention: This is, the extreme difficulty of
supporting the same low tone of expression throughout, and the
inequality that is consequently introduced into the texture of the
composition. To an author of reading and education, it is a style that
must always be assumed and unnatural, and one from which he will be
perpetually tempted to deviate. He will rise, therefore, every now and
then, above the level to which he has professedly degraded himself; and
make amends for that transgression, by a fresh effort of descension. His
composition, in short, will be like that of a person who is attempting
to speak in an obsolete or provincial dialect; he will betray himself by
expressions of occasional purity and elegance, and exert himself to
efface that impression, by passages of unnatural meanness or absurdity.

In making these strictures on the perverted taste for simplicity, that
seems to distinguish our modern school of poetry, we have no particular
allusion to Mr. Southey, or the production now before us: On the
contrary, he appears to us, to be less addicted to this fault than most
of his fraternity; and if we were in want of examples to illustrate the
preceding observations, we should certainly look for them in the
effusions of that poet who commemorates, with so much effect, the
chattering of Harry Gill's teeth, tells the tale of the one-eyed
huntsman "who had a cheek like a cherry," and beautifully warns his