but they were not poetry, for they broke every rule of the art, and poetry after all was an art.  And so we find Addison at the beginning of last century writing on the greatest English poets and leaving the name of Shakespeare out; and we find Charles James Fox, a true lover of letters, telling Reynolds at the close of the century that Shakespeare’s reputation would have stood higher if he had never written Hamlet.  Smith thought Shakespeare had more than ten times the dramatic genius of Dryden, but Dryden had more of the poetic art.

He praised Dryden for rhyming his plays, and said—­as Pope and Voltaire used also to say—­that it was nothing but laziness that prevented our tragic poets from writing in rhyme like those of France.  “Dryden,” said he, “had he possessed but a tenth part of Shakespeare’s dramatic genius, would have brought rhyming tragedies into fashion here as they were in France, and then the mob would have admired them just as much as they then pretended to despise them.”  Beattie’s Minstrel he would not allow to be called a poem at all, because it had no plan, no beginning, middle, or end.  It was only a series of verses, some of them, however, he admitted, very happy.  As for Pope’s translation of the Iliad, he said, “They do well to call it Pope’s Iliad, for it is not Homer’s Iliad.  It has no resemblance to the majesty and simplicity of the Greek.”

He read over to Amicus Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, and explained the respective beauties of each; but he added that all the rest of Milton’s short poems were trash.  He could not imagine what made Johnson praise the poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew, and compare it with Alexander’s Feast.  Johnson’s praise of it had induced him to read the poem over and with attention twice, but he could not discover even a spark of merit in it.  On the other hand, Smith considered Gray’s Odes, which Johnson had damned, to be the standard of lyric excellence.

The Gentle Shepherd he did not admire much.  He preferred the Pastor Fido, of which, says Amicus, he “spoke with rapture,” and the Eclogues of Virgil.  Amicus put in a word in favour of the poet of his own country, but Smith would not yield a point.  “It is the duty of a poet,” he said, “to write like a gentleman.  I dislike that homely style which some think fit to call the language of nature and simplicity and so forth.  In Percy’s Reliques too a few tolerable pieces are buried under a heap of rubbish.  You have read perhaps Adam Bell, Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudesley.”  “Yes,” said Amicus.  “Well then,” continued Smith, “do you think that was worth printing?”