Scott, the author of 'Waverley,' than Lord Byron, a hundred times over." And in a critique on Sir Walter Scott, he says, "he would rather have written a single passage in Lord Byron's 'Heaven and Earth,' than all Sir Walter's epics ; meaning, the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Rokeby," "Marmion," and the "Lady of the Lake." So far, although there may be much singularity of opinion, there is no contradiction. The critic prefers "Waverley" to all Byron's poetry a hundred times over; and he prefers one passage in one of Byron's poems to all the poetry of Scott. We only infer from this, that he entertains the most contemptible opinion of Scott's poetry. Now let us hear what he says of that poetry in another place. "Sir Walter is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and deservedly so." Can anything be more glaring than the contradiction involved in these propositions? Of course, we do not require to be told by Hazlitt or any one else that the most worthless poetry may become the most popular. We have an existing proof of that fact in the popularity of Mr. Robert Montgomery's poetry. But we had yet to learn, and Hazlitt, of all modern critics, was bold enough to tell us, that the most contemptible poetry deserves to be the most popular. A few lines farther on the same critic says again of Scott's poetry: "It has neither depth, height, nor breadth in it; neither uncommon strength nor uncommon refinement of thought, sentiment, or language: it has no originality." Now, it must be obvious to every one that the thing to which this description applies, lacks all the essentials of poetry; is in fact no poetry at all. You may say anything else you please of it ; when you have said this much, you have said enough to exclude it from the domain of poetry. This is exactly the sort of stuff that is sure to become popular at the present day, when the popularity of a thing increases in proportion to its nothingness. A parallel this for the "lucus a non lucendo." The more a man's poetry deserves to be unpopular, the more popular it is; and to predicate of anything that it has neither depth, nor height, nor breadth, nor strength, nor refinement, nor originality, is to enhance its claims to public approbation. Had Hazlitt applied this description to Crabbe's poetry, he would not have been very wide of the mark; but to reduce Scott's splendid creations to this level of blankness and nonentity, and say at the same time that they deserve to be popular, is paradoxical in the highest degree. |