LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 187 



Seutimentalist in Ordinary at the Court of King Robert 

 of Naples. Unhappily, Percival took it all quite seri- 

 ously. There was no praise too ample for the easy 

 elasticity of his swallow. He believed himself as gigan- 

 tic as the shadow he cast on these rolling mists of insub- 

 stantial adulation, and life-long he could never make out 

 why his fine words refused to butter his parsnips for 

 him, nay, to furnish both parsnips and sauce. While the 

 critics were debating precisely how many of the prime 

 qualities of the great poets of his own and preceding 

 generations he combined in his single genius, and in 

 what particular respects he surpassed them all, — a 

 point about which he himself seems never to have had 

 any doubts, — the public, which could read Scott and 

 Byron with avidity, and which was beginning even to 

 taste Wordsworth, found his verses inexpressibly weari- 

 some. They would not throng and subscribe for a col- 

 lected edition of those works which singly had been too 

 much for them. With whatever dulness of sense they 

 may be charged, they have a remarkably keen scent for 

 tediousness, and will have none of it unless in a tract or 

 sermon, where, of course, it is to be expected. Percival 

 never forgave the public; but it was the critics that he 

 never should have forgiven, for of all the maggots that 

 can make their way into the brains through the ears, 

 there is none so disastrous as the persuasion that you 

 are a great poet. There is surely something in the con- 

 struction of the ears of small authors which lays them 

 specially open to the inroads of this pest. It tickles 

 pleasantly while it eats away the fibre of will, and inca- 

 pacitates a man for all honest commerce with realities. 

 Unhappily its insidious titillation seems to have been 

 Percival's one great pleasure during life. 



We began by saying that the book before us was 

 interesting and instructive ; but we meant that it was so 



