“See snivelling Jerningham at fifty weep
O’er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep.”
Yet perhaps this was somewhat too harsh. Jerningham did write some things which were marked with good sense, good feeling, and polished versification. Unhappily he was considered as forming one of the fraternity, whose labours in this way tended to the corruption of the public taste, and the scythe of the all-potent satirical mower, cut him down with the rest, never to rise again.
Nevertheless, in opposition to the censures, which it cannot be denied, were injurious to his reputation, the poet had to produce the strong and powerful commendation of Burke; no mean testimony surely. Neither can it be supposed that living familiarly as he did, and continued to do till the end of his life, in familiar intimacy with the noble and the great, his tranquillity was materially discomposed by an assault, to which every literary adventurer is alike exposed.
Οινος τοι χαριεντι μεγας πελει ιππος αοιδῳ
Υδωρ δε πινων χρηστον αν ουδε τεκης.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The individual next in succession was, and perhaps is, (for he may yet survive) a man of unquestionable genius; capable of high undertakings, both in prose and verse; but it is only with his qualifications and claims as a poet, that we have anything here to do.