A CENSOR OF POETS



A Censor of Poets

The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, or the Honour of
Tarnassus ; in a 'Brief Essay of the Works and Writings of above
Two Hundred of them, from the Time of f^. William the Conqueror, to
the %eign of His Tresent <iMa)esty King James II. Written by
William Wtnstanley. Licensed "June 1 6, 1 686. London, Printed
by H. Clark, for Samuel <&£anship at the Sign of the 'Black 'Bull in
Cornhil, 1687.
A. MAXIM which it would be well for ambitious
critics to chalk up on the walls of their work-
shops is this : never mind whom you praise, but
be very careful whom you blame. Most critical
reputations have struck on the reef of some poet
or novelist whom the great censor, in his proud
old age, has thought he might disdain with im-
punity. Who recollects the admirable treatises
of John Dennis, acute, learned, sympathetic ?
To us he is merely the sore old bear, who was
too stupid to perceive the genius of Pope. The



1 1 o Gossip in a Library

grace and discrimination, lavished by Francis
Jeffrey over a thousand pages, weigh like a
feather beside one sentence about Wordsworth's
Excursion, and one tasteless sneer at Charles
Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sainte Beuve
totters at the whisper of the name Balzac.
Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser to
have taken counsel with himself before he
laughed at Shelley. And the very unimportant
but sincere and interesting writer, whose book
occupies us to-day, is in some respects the
crowning instance of the rule. His literary
existence has been sacrificed by a single out-
burst of petulant criticism, which was not even
literary, but purely political.
