SOURCE: Review of Poems by Amelia Opie, in Edinburgh Review, Vol. I, October, 1802, pp. 113-21.

In the following review, the critic commends the shorter works of Opie's Poems for their elegance in sentiment and pathos but finds fault with the longer works for their lack of technical correctness, their lack of originality, and their overuse of reflection, inversion, and personification.

There are, probably, many of our readers, who at some fortunate, or unfortunate moment of their lives, have been tempted to dip their pen in the fatal ink of publication, and who still remember the anxiety with which they looked forward to the reception of their first work. We fear that we must not appeal to the whole number of these, to confirm a declamation on the evils of success; but we are convinced, as much as persons without the happy experience can be convinced, that there is...