Campbell, Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise of Coquettes; to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham, Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full fame, because ’the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,’ and because there is a fortune in fame as in all other things.  Now of all the new schools—­I say all, for, ’like Legion, they are many’—­has there appeared a single scholar who has not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be * *, who has imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models.  Scott found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex:  there was Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but with the greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the appearance of ‘The Bridal of Triermain,’ and ’Harold the Dauntless,’ which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the Master’s own compositions.  Have Southey, or Coleridge, or Wordsworth, made a follower of renown?  Wilson never did well till he set up for himself in the ‘City of the Plague.’  Has Moore, or any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or rather disciple?  Now it is remarkable that almost all the followers of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard works, and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the ease of not imitating him sufficiently.  This, and the same reason which induced the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides, ‘because he was tired of always hearing him called the Just,’ have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of Literature.  But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the sooner the better; not for him, but for those who banished him, and for the coming generation, who

        “Will blush to find their fathers were his foes.”

[Footnote 3:  As far as regards the poets of ancient times, this assertion is, perhaps, right; though, if there be any truth in what AElian and Seneca have left on record, of the obscurity, during their lifetime, of such men as Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove that, among the ancients, contemporary fame was a far more rare reward of literary or philosophical eminence than among us moderns.  When the “Clouds” of Aristophanes was exhibited before the assembled deputies of the towns of Attica, these personages, as AElian tells us, were unanimously of opinion, that the character of an unknown person, called Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage; and Seneca has given the substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in which that philosopher declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst of all his happiness, as to think that Greece,—­“illa nobilis Graecia,”—­so far from knowing him, had scarcely even heard of his existence.—­Epist. 79.]