NOTE ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF DANIEL.
The justice of these remarks cannot be disputed, though some of them
are rather too figurative for sober criticism.
Most genuine! A figurative remark! If this strange writer had any meaning, it must be:—Headly's criticism is just throughout, but conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own remarks are wholly mistaken;—too silly for any criticism, drunk or sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in thought, passion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be declared to be imperishable English.
1820.
BISHOP CORBET.
I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with the public uncommonly well. September, 1823.
NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. {1}
There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.