[147]. P. 313.
[148]. Hurd knew Gray (who, characteristically in both ways, described him as “the last man who wore stiff-topped gloves”) pretty well (see the references in Mr Gosse’s Index). He may have caught some heat from one who had plenty, though he concealed it.
[149]. “Skroddles” was William.
[150]. My copy contains all three bound together. It is interesting, though not surprising, to find that there was no demand for the two original and valuable constituents, and a brisk one for the commonplace third.
[151]. Power of Numbers, p. 9.
[152]. Ibid., p. 27.
[153]. Prosaic Numbers, passim.
[154]. Mason’s very errors are interesting, as where his delight in recovered rhythm—in full melody of variety—leads him to something like the old blasphemy of rhyme (“one of the lowest ornaments and greatest shackles of modern poesy” Power[Power] of Numbers, p. 14).
[155]. Even at this early date Mason was able to quote not a few writers—Pemberton, Manwaring, Malcolm, Gay, who, as well as Geddes, Foster, Galley, and others, had dealt with this subject. In fact, the list of such authors in the eighteenth century is quite long, though few of them are very important. For an excellent reasoned bibliography see Mr T. S. Omond’s English Metrists (Tunbridge Wells, 1903). Henry Pemberton, Gresham Professor of Physic, and a man of various ability, published on the to us surprising subject of Glover’s Leonidas, in 1738, Observations on Poetry, which I had hunted in the catalogues for a long time, when Mr Gregory Smith kindly gave me a copy. It shows, as the election of its text may indicate, and as its date would further suggest, no very enthusiastic or imaginative appreciation of the Muse, but is remarkably learned, not merely in the ancients and the modern Frenchmen, but in Italians like Minturno and Castelvetro. Pemberton deals with Epic and Dramatic poetry—their rise, dignity, fable, sentiment, character, language, and difference; with Versification, where his standpoint may be guessed, from his denouncing “the mixture of iambic and trochaic” as a blemish on L’Allegro and Il Penseroso; with the Sublime. He is not an inspiring or inspired writer, but holds some position, both as influential on the Germans, who not seldom quote him, and in the history of Prosody.
[156]. Not Cowper’s hero, but a son of “Picturesque” Gilpin. Mitford had been a pupil of Gilpin the elder.