SOURCE: Review of The Warrior's Return and Other Poems by Amelia Opie, in Monthly Review, Vol. LVII, 1808, pp. 436-38.

In the following review, the critic censures Opie 's The Warrior's Return and Other Poems for its lack of rigorous poetics such as good rhyming and for its waste of sentiment on topics remote from the present day.

It is said by Ben Jonson, in his lines on Shakspeare, that

A good poet's made as well as born;

and the remark is just, since due cultivation must be superadded to poetic talent before its due expansion can be obtained. Parnassus ceases to be fertile when labour is spared. Our modern writers of verse seem, however, to entertain a different opinion. Confiding in their genius and facility of composition, they fondly suppose that whatever they produce must be good poetry; and by being too easily pleased with themselves, they often...