mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so practised
by converse with the literary world, that its prophetic feeling can
anticipate the public opinion. When a young writer's first essay is shown,
some, through mere inability of censure, see nothing but beauties; others,
from mere imbecility, can see none; and others, out of pure malice, see
nothing but faults. "I was soon disgusted," says Gibbon, "with the modest
practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some
will praise for politeness, and some will criticise for vanity." Had
several of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their
friends' opinions, we might have lost some precious compositions.
The friends of Thompson discovered nothing but faults in his early
productions, one of which happened to be his noblest, the "Winter;" they
just could discern that these abounded with luxuriances, without being
aware that, they were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new
school in art--and appealed from his circle to the public. From a
manuscript letter of our poet's, written when employed on his "Summer," I
transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland--he
is writing to Mallet: "Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to
the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell,
Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. Wherever I have evidence,
or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as
all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably
the perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to share
alike a poetic Hell--probably a sort of _Dunciad_, or lampoons. One of
these "blasts" broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, whom he
describes with a "blasted eye;" but this critic literally having one, the
poet, to avoid a personal reflection, could only consent to make the
blemish more active--

Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell! why