To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove;
Where Richards[[428]] wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons glory in their sires."[[429]]
There is some account of the Rev. Geo. Richards, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of Bampton, (M.A. in 1791) in the Living Authors by Watkins[[430]] and Shoberl[[431]] (1816). In Rivers's Living Authors, of 1798, which is best fitted for citation, as being published before Lord Byron wrote, he is spoken of in high terms. The Aboriginal Britons was an Oxford (special) prize poem, of 1791. Charles Lamb mentions Richards as his school-fellow at Christ's Hospital, "author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems: a pale, studious Grecian."
As I never heard of Richards as a poet,[[432]] I conclude that his fame is defunct, except in what may prove to be a very ambiguous kind of immortality, conferred by Lord Byron. The awkwardness of a case which time has broken down
is increased by the eulogist himself adding so powerful a name to the list of Cambridge poets, that his college has placed his statue in the library, more conspicuously than that of Newton in the chapel; and this although the greatness of poetic fame had some serious drawbacks in the moral character of some of his writings. And it will be found on inquiry that Byron, to get his instance against Cambridge, had to go back eighteen years, passing over seven intermediate productions, of which he had either never heard, or which he would not cite as waking a genuine poet's fires.
The conclusion seems to be that the Aboriginal Britons is a remarkable youthful production, not equalled by subsequent efforts.
To enhance the position in which the satirist placed himself, two things should be remembered. First, the glowing and justifiable terms in which Byron had spoken,—a hundred and odd lines before he found it convenient to say no Cambridge poet could compare with Richards,—of a Cambridge poet who died only three years before Byron wrote, and produced greatly admired works while actually studying in the University. The fame of Kirke White[[433]] still lives; and future literary critics may perhaps compare his writings and those of Richards, simply by reason of the curious relation in which they are here placed alongside of each other. And it is much to Byron's credit that, in speaking of the deceased Cambridge poet, he forgot his own argument and its exigencies, and proved himself only a paradoxer pro re nata.
Secondly, Byron was very unfortunate in another passage of the same poem: