means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.

"I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the
opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have
asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it; as I told
Moore not very long ago, 'we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe,
and Campbell.'[4] Without being old in years, I am in days, and do
not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which
should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself
with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
country, such as it once was and may still be.

"In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.

"There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
these two poets only, _all_ for which you must ransack innumerable
metres, and God only knows how many _writers_ of the day, without
finding a tittle of the same qualities,--with the addition, too, of
wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
but that is not wit--it is humour. I will say nothing of the