This volume is _vastly_ correct and miraculously chaste.
Apropos, talking of love,...
"If you can find leisure to answer this farrago of unconnected
nonsense, you need not doubt what gratification will accrue from your
reply to yours ever," &c.
To his young friend, Mr. William Bankes, who had met casually with a
copy of the work, and wrote him a letter conveying his opinion of it,
he returned the following answer:--
LETTER 10.
TO MR. WILLIAM BANKES.
"Southwell, March 6. 1807.
"Dear Bankes,
"Your critique is valuable for many reasons: in the first place, it is
the only one in which flattery has borne so slight a part; in the
_next_, I am _cloyed_ with insipid compliments. I have a better
opinion of your judgment and ability than your _feelings_. Accept my
most sincere thanks for your kind decision, not less welcome, because
totally unexpected. With regard to a more exact estimate, I need not
remind you how few of the _best poems_, in our language, will stand
the test of _minute_ or _verbal_ criticism: it can, therefore, hardly
be expected the effusions of a boy (and most of these pieces have been
produced at an early period) can derive much merit either from the
subject or composition. Many of them were written under great
depression of spirits, and during severe indisposition:--hence the
gloomy turn of the ideas. We coincide in opinion that the '_poesies
erotiques_' are the most exceptionable; they were, however, grateful
to the _deities_, on whose altars they were offered--more I seek not.
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