]
[Footnote 101: In the fifth edition of the Satire (suppressed by him
in 1812) he again changed his mind respecting this gentleman, and
altered the line to
"I leave topography to _rapid_ Gell;"
explaining his reasons for the change in the following
note:--"'Rapid,' indeed;--he topographised and typographised King
Priam's dominions in three days. I called him 'classic' before I saw
the Troad, but since have learned better than to tack to his name what
don't belong to it."
He is not, however, the only satirist who has been thus capricious and
changeable in his judgments. The variations of this nature in Pope's
Dunciad are well known; and the Abbe Cotin, it is said, owed the
"painful pre-eminence" of his station in Boileau's Satires to the
unlucky convenience of his name as a rhyme. Of the generous change
from censure to praise, the poet Dante had already set an example;
having, in his "Convito," lauded some of those persons whom, in his
Commedia, he had most severely lashed.]
[Footnote 102: In another letter to Mr. Harness, dated February, 1809,
he says, "I do not know how you and Alma Mater agree. I was but an
untoward child myself, and I believe the good lady and her brat were
equally rejoiced when I was weaned; and if I obtained her benediction
at parting, it was, at best, equivocal."]
[Footnote 103: The poem, in the first edition, began at the line,
"Time was ere yet, in these degenerate days.
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