Ere Western Art her first faint efforts tried!
Ye Brachmans old, whom purer æras bore,
Ere Western Science lisped her infant lore!
How will your wonders flush the Athenian sage?
How ray with glory my historic page?”
In a letter to Hannah More, Horace Walpole says: “The poetry is most admirable; the similes beautiful, fine, and sometimes sublime; the author is a great poet, and could raise the passions, and possesses all the requisites of the art.” In another lively epistle to the Misses Berry (28th April, 1789), he says: “I send you the most delicious poem upon earth. I can read this Second Part over and over again for ever; for though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember anything so disjointed, except you consider it as a collection of short enchanting Poems. ‘The Triumph of Flora,’ beginning at the fifty-ninth line, is most beautifully and enchantingly imagined, and the twelve verses that by miracle describe and comprehend the creation of the universe out of chaos, are, in my opinion, the most sublime passage in any author, or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted.”—Ed.]
[Darwin was acquainted with Rousseau. He was a man of great bodily and intellectual vigour, irascible and imperious, a strong advocate of temperance, and for many years an almost total abstainer. His professional fame was such that George III. said he would take him as his physician if he would come to London. He formed a botanical garden at Lichfield, about which Miss Seward wrote some verses which suggested his Botanic Garden. The Loves of the Plants had a singular success, and was praised in a joint poem by Cowper and Hayley. It was translated into French, Portuguese, and Italian. Darwin himself is said by Edgeworth to have admired the parody (Monthly Magazine, June and Sept., 1802, p. 115). Coleridge (Biographia Literaria, 1817, p. 19) speaks of the impression which it made even upon good judges.
In the Anti-Jacobin Review, vol. i. (1799), pp. 718–721, appear some Latin verses [by Ben. Frere] which are thus introduced: “Among the copies of verses which are annually produced as a public exercise called Tripos, at Cambridge, we have selected the following as a beautiful composition. The subject is Dr. Beddoes’s Factitious Air applied to the Case of Consumptions.”—Ed.]
[299]. [This piece has not hitherto formed a portion of the editions of The Poetry.—Ed.]
[300]. [This spirited song refers to Lord Moira’s motion in the Irish House of Commons, 19th of February, 1798, for an address to the Lord Lieutenant, complaining of the excesses committed by the government authorities, civil and military, and recommending that conciliatory measures should be devised. He took occasion to praise the loyalty of his own tenants at Ballynahinch; but, unfortunately for him, shortly after, an insurrection broke out at this very place, and a large number of pikes were found secreted by the peasantry in his own woods. On June 12, General Nugent attacked the rebels, 5000 strong, commanded by Munro, near Ballynahinch, and routed them with great slaughter. This victory quelled the rebellion in the north.—Ed.]