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De Libris: Prose and Verse by Austin Dobson
page 107 of 141 (75%)

[57] _Alexander Pope: his Safe Return from Troy. A Congratulatory Poem
on his Completing his Translation of Homer's Iliad._ (In _ottava rima_.)
By Mr. Gay, 1720(?). Frere's burlesque, _Monks and Giants_--it will be
remembered--set the tune to Byron's _Beppo_.

[58] _The Paradise of Birds_, 1870.

[59] _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, two series of Lectures
delivered in Oxford, 1895-1900. 1901.

[60] _A History of English Poetry_. 1895 (in progress).




THACKERY'S "ESMOND"


At this date, Thackeray's _Esmond_ has passed from the domain of
criticism into that securer region where the classics, if they do not
actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from
profane intrusion. This "noble story"[61]--as it was called by one of its
earliest admirers--is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review."
The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and
compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered
professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the
results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now
established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, even by those who
assume the superfluous office of anatomising the accepted. In the first
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