fondness of what, by their own confession, affords pleasure, and
abounds in harmony. The next paragraph in his Essay did not occur
to him when he talked of "that great turn" in the stanza just
quoted. "But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is
overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consistent with as perfect
sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly free
from that shackle." Another part of this Essay will convict the
following stanza of what every reader will discover in it
"involuntary burlesque:--

"The northern blast,
The shattered mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,
The breaking spout,
The STARS GONE OUT,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock."

But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on
each particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?

If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort
of poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first
proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.

Milbourne was styled by Pope "the fairest of critics," only because
he exhibited his own version of "Virgil" to be compared with
Dryden's, which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not
otherwise in his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most
unfair of poets for prefixing to a lyric composition an "Essay on