“With this view we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet; nay, although (which does not always happen) these feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted upon the fingers, is not the whole art of poetry.  We would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought, even in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed.  We put it to his candour, whether there is anything so deserving the name of poetry, in verses like the following, written in 1806, and whether, if a youth of eighteen could say anything so uninteresting to his ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it: 

Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing
   From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu;
Abroad or at home, your remembrance imparting
   New courage, he’ll think upon glory and you.

Though a tear dim his eye at this sad separation,
   ’Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret;
Far distant he goes with the same emulation,
   The fame of his fathers he ne’er can forget.

That fame and that memory still will he cherish,
   He vows that he ne’er will disgrace your renown;
Like you will he live, or like you will he perish,
   When decay’d, may he mingle his dust with your own.

“Now, we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor’s volume.

“Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to see at his writing-master’s) are odious.  Gray’s Ode to Eton College should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas on a distant view of the village and school at Harrow.

Where fancy yet joys to trace the resemblance
   Of comrades in friendship or mischief allied,
How welcome to me your ne’er-fading remembrance,
   Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied.

“In like manner, the exquisite lines of Mr Rogers, On a Tear, might have warned the noble author of these premises, and spared us a whole dozen such stanzas as the following: 

   Mild charity’s glow,
   To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
   Compassion will melt
   Where the virtue is felt. 
And its dew is diffused in a tear.

   The man doom’d to sail
   With the blast of the gale,
Through billows Atlantic to steer,
   As he bends o’er the wave,
   Which may soon be his grave,
The green sparkles bright with a tear.

“And so of instances in which former poets had failed.  Thus, we do not think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his nonage, Adrian’s Address to his Soul, when Pope succeeded indifferently in the attempt.  If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look at it.