[434]. 6 vols., London, 1850.
[435]. 4 vols., London, 1856. The Letters to Caroline Bowles (London, 1881) are even fuller proportionately: and Omniana, the Wesley, the Cowper, Espriella, the Colloquies, with almost everything, contribute.
[436]. But see a very curious glimpse of resipiscence in Letters, ii. 171 sq.
[437]. The projected Rhadamanthus, a periodical on something like the lines of the later Retrospective Review, was a real loss.
[438]. Letters, i. 69, and elsewhere, also, I think—e.g., Life and Corr., iv. 106. Wynn was evidently a precisian of Bysshism. For other noteworthy critical things in this collection, see i. 173 (Suggestion of Hist. Novels); ii. 91[91] (Crabbe); 214 (Engl. Hexameters); iii. (the various letters about English Hexameters); iv. 47, Sayers’ Poems. I give but few here, because the Letters have an index. I wish these and my other references may prompt and help some one to examine, at greater length than would be possible or proper here, the literary opinions of the best-read man in England for some fifty years—1790-1840.
[439]. It is unlucky that Guest’s English Rhythms came too late in the evening of his day for him to carry out his expressed purpose of reviewing it. He evidently recognised its extraordinary value as a Thesaurus: and his summary of the earlier part as “worthless” is of course not deliberate or final, though it is a very natural expression in reference to Guest’s astonishing heresies on Shakespearian and Miltonic prosody. I know no one—not even Gray—who seems to have had, before the whole range of English verse was known, juster notions on the whole of English prosody. Even his wanderings after hexameters are not fatal.
[440]. The Doctor (1 vol., London, 1848), p. 18.
[441]. P. 34.
[442]. P. 42.
[443]. P. 65.