This from the World, did admiration draw; And from his friends, both love and awe: Remembering what in fight he did before. And his foes loved him too, As they were bound to do, Because he was resolved to fight no more. So blessed of all, he died. But far more blessed were we, If we were sure to live till we could see A Man as great in War, in Peace as just, as he.
ADVICE
TO A
YOUNG REVIEWER,
WITH A
SPECIMEN OF THE ART.
OXFORD:
SOLD BY J. PARKER AND J. COOKE;
AND BY
F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL's
CHURCHYARD, LONDON.
1807.
[This splendid piece of irony was occasioned by the omniscient arrogance of the first Writers of the Edinburgh Review, then in its fifth year of publication, with, as Sir Walter Scott tells us, a sale of 9,000 copies each quarter, and a paramount influence in British society.
One usually looks to the reign of Queen Anne, to a Defoe, a Swift, or an Arbuthnot, for depth and subtilty of invention in prose; but here it is in abundance: not so much, perhaps, in what is so wittily said, as in the management and studied unfairness of the pettifogging malignant sham Review; where everything is said that ought to have been left out, and everything is left out that ought to have been said.
The Writer, of course, would only take a noble Poem for such maltreatment; and we must note the extreme liberality of his mind that, being a strong Churchman, and also at that time Tutor of Oriel College, Oxford, he selected a poem of the then scouted Milton for his example.
Among the brilliant strokes of this Satire, two seem pre-eminent:
(1) The designation of the Archangel of English Song as—Mr. M.
(2) Speaking thus of one whose life and thought were Purity itself—
But we have already had occasion to remark on the laxity
of Mr M.'s amatory notions.]