304 UENllY KIRKE WUITE S KEMAINS. 



pursuits, interested me. Cultivate, with all assiduity, 

 the taste for letters which you possess. It will be a 

 source of exquisite gratification to you ; and if directed 

 as it ought to be, and I hope as it will be directed, it 

 will be more than gratification (if we understand pleasure 

 alone by that word), since it will combine with it utility 

 of the highest kind. If polite letters were merely in- 

 strumental in cheering the hours of elegant leisure, in 

 affording refined and polished pleasures, uncontaminated 

 with gross and sensual gratifications, they would still be 

 valuable ; but in a degree infinitely less than when they 

 are considered as the handmaids of the virtues, the cor- 

 rectors as well as the adorners of societ3\ But literature 

 has of late years been prostituted to all the purposes of 

 the bagnio. Poetry, in particular, arrayed in her most 

 bewitching colours, has been taught to exercise the arts 

 of the Leno, and to charm only that she may destroy. 

 The muse, who once dipped her hardy wing in the chastest, 

 dews of Castalia, and spoke nothing but what had a ten- 

 dency to confirm and invigorate the manly ardour of a 

 virtuous mind, now breathes only the voluptuous languish- 

 ings of the harlot, and, like the brood of Circe, touches 

 her charmed chords with a grace that, while it ravishes 

 the ear, deludes and beguiles the sense. I call to wit- 

 ness Mr Moore, and the tribe of imitators which his suc- 

 cess has called forth, that my statement is true. Lord 

 Strangford has trodden faithfully in the steps of his 

 pattern, 



* * * * 



I hope, for the credit :if poetry, that the good sense of 

 the age will scout this insidious school ; and what may 

 we not expect, if Moore and Lord Strangford apply 

 themselves to a chaster muse ? They are both men of 

 uncommon powers. You may remember the reign of 

 Darwinian poetry, and the fopperies of Delia Crusca. 

 To these succeeded the school of simpliciti/, in which 

 Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, are so deservedly 

 eminent. I think that the new tribe of poets endeavour 

 to combine these two opposits sects, and to unite rich- 

 ness of language, and warmth of colouring, with sim- 



