“Cools the crimp’d cod, to pond-perch pangs imparts,
Thrills the shelled shrimps, and opens oysters’ hearts.”—Canning.
It is evident from this that Canning had thought of parodying the poem immediately after its publication, and that Walpole had seen a specimen in manuscript, nearly two years before its publication in the Anti-Jacobin, in which the two lines (28, 29) are thus altered:—
“Cools the crimpt cod, fierce pangs to perch imparts,
Shrinks shrivell’d shrimps, but opens oysters’ hearts”.
By an oversight, Peter Cunningham, in his edition of Walpole’s Letters, attributes the latter’s attack to a previous production of Knight’s, published in 1794, entitled The Landscape: a didactic Poem in three Books, a work which had excited Walpole’s high indignation by expressing opinions opposed to his own.—Ed.]
No. XVI.
Feb. 26, 1798.
The specimen of the poem on the “Progress of Man,” with which we favoured our Readers in our last Number, has occasioned a variety of letters, which we confess have not a little surprised us, from the unfounded, and even contradictory charges they contain. In one, we are accused of Malevolence, in bringing back to notice a work that had been quietly consigned to oblivion;—in another, of Plagiarism, in copying its most beautiful passages;—in a third, of Vanity, in striving to imitate what was in itself inimitable, &c., &c. But why this alarm? has the author of the “Progress of Civil Society” an exclusive patent for fabricating Didactic poems? or can we not write against Order and Government without incurring the guilt of Imitation? We trust we were not so ignorant of the nature of a didactic poem (so called from didaskein, to teach, and poema, a poem; because it teaches nothing, and is not poetical) even before the “Progress of Civil Society” appeared, but that we were capable of such an undertaking.
We shall only say further, that we do not intend to proceed regularly with our Poem; but having the remaining thirty-nine Cantos by us, shall content ourselves with giving, from time to time, such extracts as may happen to suit our purpose.