“In an ode, with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the following magnificent stanzas:—­

There, in apartments small and damp,
   The candidate for college prizes
Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
   Goes late to bed, yet early rises: 

Who reads false quantities in Seale,
   Or puzzles o’er the deep triangle,
Depriv’d of many a wholesome meal,
   In barbarous Latin doomed to wrangle.

Renouncing every pleasing page
   From authors of historic use;
Preferring to the letter’d sage
   The square of the hypotenuse. 
Still harmless are these occupations,
   That hurt none but the hapless student,
Compared with other recreations
   Which bring together the imprudent.

“We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college-psalmody, as is contained in the following attic stanzas

Our choir could scarcely be excused,
   Even as a band of raw beginners;
All mercy now must be refused
   To such a set of croaking sinners.

If David, when his toils were ended,
   Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us his psalms had ne’er descended—­
   In furious mood he would have tore ’em.

“But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content for they are the last we shall ever have from him.  He is at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thoroughbred poets, and though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland, he has not of late enjoyed this advantage.  Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it succeeds or not, it is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits, that he should again condescend to become an author.  Therefore, let us take what we get and be thankful.  What right have we poor devils to be nice?  We are well off to have got so much from a man of this lord’s station, who does not live in a garret, but has got the sway of Newstead Abbey.  Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift-horse in the mouth.”

The criticism is ascribed to Mr Francis Jeffrey, an eloquent member of the Scottish bar, and who was at that time supposed to be the editor of the Edinburgh Review.  That it was neither just nor fair is sufficiently evident, by the degree of care and artificial point with which it has been drawn up.  Had the poetry been as insignificant as the critic affected to consider it, it would have argued little for the judgment of Mr Jeffrey, to take so much pains on a work which he considered worthless.  But the world has no cause to repine at the severity of his strictures, for they unquestionably had the effect of kindling the indignation of Byron, and of instigating him to that retaliation which he so spiritedly inflicted in his satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.