* * * * *
The remainder of the Poem is too heavy to be quoted, but the curious in such matters may easily refer to it in the British Museum Library.
——:o:——
In Isaac D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature there is a chapter entitled “Critical Sagacity and Happy Conjecture;” or, Bentley’s Milton. Dr. Bentley had, by his injudicious corrections and prosaic interpolations, much disfigured his edition of Paradise Lost, and D’Israeli, in his article exposes Dr. Bentley’s errors and want of taste.
“——Bentley, long to wrangling schools confined,
And but by books acquainted with mankind—
To Milton lending sense, to Horace wit,
He makes them write, what never poet writ.”
“Salmagundi: a miscellaneous combination of original Poetry; consisting of Illusions of Fancy, Amatory, Elegiac, Lyrical, Epigrammatical, and other Palateable Ingredients. Third Edition, London. E. Hodson, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, 1793.” This volume was written by the Rev. George Huddersford, M.A., Vicar of Loxley, Warwickshire, who died November 10, 1809. It contains the two following poems in imitation of L’Allegro, and Il Penseroso.