[Footnote A:  This Essay was written just before Lord Byron’s death.]

[Footnote B: 

  “Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
  My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain,”
  Don Juan, Canto.  XI.]

[Footnote C:  This censure applies to the first Cantos of DON JUAN much more than to the last.  It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme:  it is rather a poem written about itself.]

* * * * *

MR. CAMPBELL AND MR. CRABBE.

“Mr. Campbell may be said to hold a place (among modern poets) between Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers.  With much of the glossy splendour, the pointed vigour, and romantic interest of the one, he possesses the fastidious refinement, the classic elegance of the other.  Mr. Rogers, as a writer, is too effeminate, Lord Byron too extravagant:  Mr. Campbell is neither.  The author of the Pleasures of Memory polishes his lines till they sparkle with the most exquisite finish; he attenuates them into the utmost degree of trembling softness:  but we may complain, in spite of the delicacy and brilliancy of the execution, of a want of strength and solidity.  The author of the Pleasures of Hope, with a richer and deeper vein of thought and imagination, works it out into figures of equal grace and dazzling beauty, avoiding on the one hand the tinsel of flimsy affectation, and on the other the vices of a rude and barbarous negligence.  His Pegasus is not a rough, skittish colt, running wild among the mountains, covered with bur-docks and thistles, nor a tame, sleek pad, unable to get out of the same ambling pace, but a beautiful manege-horse, full of life and spirit in itself, and subject to the complete controul of the rider.  Mr. Campbell gives scope to his feelings and his fancy, and embodies them in a noble and naturally interesting subject; and he at the same time conceives himself called upon (in these days of critical nicety) to pay the exactest attention to the expression of each thought, and to modulate each line into the most faultless harmony.  The character of his mind is a lofty and self-scrutinising ambition, that strives to reconcile the integrity of general design with the perfect elaboration of each component part, that aims at striking effect, but is jealous of the means by which this is to be produced.  Our poet is not averse to popularity (nay, he is tremblingly alive to it)—­but self-respect is the primary law, the indispensable condition on which it must be obtained.  We should dread to point out (even if we could) a false concord, a mixed metaphor, an imperfect rhyme in any of Mr. Campbell’s productions; for we think that all his fame would hardly compensate to him for the discovery.  He seeks for perfection, and nothing evidently short of it can satisfy his mind.  He is a high finisher in poetry, whose every work must bear inspection, whose slightest touch is precious—­not a coarse