And finds too late that men betray,
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not if I could be gay.
Again:
There's a beauty for ever unchangingly bright,
For coming events cast their shadows before;
Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,
Like ocean-weeds cast on the surf-beaten shore.
We have pronounced these two stanzas to be original; and they are: but with reference to the first of them we admit that a distinguished living critic, to whom it was shown, remarked that it did remind him a little of something in some other author—and he rather thought it was Goldsmith; a second critic, equally eminent, was forcibly reminded by it of something which he was convinced had been written by Rogers. So much for criticism! To such treatment is original genius ever subjected. Its traducers cannot even agree as to the derivation of the stolen property; they cannot name the author robbed. One cries, Spenser; another, Butler; a third, Collins. We repeat, it is the fate of Originality.
"Garth did not write his own Dispensary,"