"Though at first view, eight feet may seem in vain
Form'd, save in odes, to bear a serious strain,
Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late
This measure shrinks not from a theme of weight,
And, varied skilfully, surpasses far
Heroic rhyme, but most in love or war,
Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime,
Are curb'd too much by long recurring rhyme.

"In sooth, I do not know, or greatly care
To learn who our first English strollers were,
Or if--till roofs received the vagrant art--
Our Muse--like that of Thespis--kept a cart.
But this is certain, since our Shakspeare's days,
There's pomp enough, if little else, in plays;
Nor will Melpomene ascend her throne
Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.

"Where is that living language which could claim
Poetic more, as philosophic fame,
If all our bards, more patient of delay,
Would stop like Pope to polish by the way?"

In tracing the fortunes of men, it is not a little curious to observe,
how often the course of a whole life has depended on one single step.
Had Lord Byron now persisted in his original purpose of giving this poem
to the press, instead of Childe Harold, it is more than probable that he
would have been lost, as a great poet, to the world.[13] Inferior as the
Paraphrase is, in every respect, to his former Satire, and, in some
places, even descending below the level of under-graduate versifiers,