Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

ALEXANDRIA:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1818

Mr. Editor.

There are three species of paragraph writers.
The first writes for emolument: the second for fame: the third to get quit of a few ideas, which is occasionally a relief from the avocations of this great humbug, called the world.

It is principally in the poetical and belles lettres publications of the day that is to be found much interest or enjoyment.

Religion, or what passes under that sacred name, has latterly taken such colossal strides, and assumed such an austere aspect, that for my own part I affect not to follow her: for the day when Blair's* Sermons, as well as his Lectures, were much read and deservedly admired, has passed by—and I regret it. (The best negative description of a preacher that I ever met with is in that moral writer Cowper's Task.)

Essays, such as those of Dugald Stewart, (professor in Edinburgh) although admirable in style, and profound in abstract and metaphysical disquisition, do not properly appertain to the columns of a newspaper.

The labored critique on the Loo-Chooans, which sometime ago appeared in your columns, must have palled the readers of voyages.—Apropos, an amiable, pure, virtuous, simple people of nature, inhabiting a second Arabia Felix, who treat their wives, or women, far worse than Mussulmen do, is most interesting sentimental verbiage.

For my own part, the history of the Chuans of "la Vendee," by their heroine commander La Roche Jacqueline, is infinitely more attractive, I think.

We come then to poetry.
It is gratifying to live at a period when such poets as Byron, Scott, Moore, Campbell, and Southey, write.† Of the minor poets I speak not—the lake poets, as they are jeeringly called in England, from their affecting to sequester themselves on the lakes of Westmoreland to compose. However, Crabbe ranks above them most certainly.

The Aristarchus or Bentley of the day, under whose critical acumen these authors, rather their productions, come, is Jeffrey, who holds that department in the Edinburgh Review.

In his criticisms of Byron, Jeffrey evidently approaches him with fear; for the dreadful scourging, exceeding even the caustic of Pope's Dunciad, which he received from that author in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," seems ever before him.

On the contrary, with Scott he is personally intimate, comes in contact with him every day.—Independent of this, however, as a matter of indulgence, the public taste, or feeling, or fashion, for Scott's productions, far outstripped all coldness or severity of criticism; for the poetry was new, the style easy and natural, and the subjects fascinating. The general reader tript among roses, and did not labor through the towering beauties of Byron's Alexandrine.

Campbell's works must be admired, and we find that the Edinburgh reviewer so feels.

Moore is equally fine, and equally displays that "vivida vis animi" of Horace, in his several styles of poetry; but he possesses more versatility of powers.

On political principles, the Edinburgh Review opposes the Quarterly; therefore, Southey, who it is known contributes to the latter, and in a style of considerable asperity, cannot expect much indulgence from Jeffrey.

Yet in criticising his "Don Roderick the last of the Goths," he shows much liberality. Indeed—it could not well be otherwise for it is certainly a first rate poem, abounding with many beauties, and is by far the finest of Southey's productions.

While the three kingdoms thus pretty nearly divide poetical renown, Scotland's novelist stands unrivalled. Miss Edgeworth has certainly great merit in her writings.

But the publications which are preceded by Rob Roy, all by the same pen, are of a cast so far above, and so far unlike the general trash of novels, that they have already taken their place as standards, certainly in the eye and in the feeling of every native of Scotland. For if they be admired by those of England and of the United States, with what superior gusto must they be enjoyed by Scotchmen, or by those who fully comprehend that vernacular, in which is conveyed that characteristic humor, pith and naivete which inspirit these novels.—

For instance, no glossary can give a foreigner to Scotland a full idea of the character of Bailie Nicol Jarvie of Glasgow; the admirably drawn character of a Scotch Lowlander, contrasted with that of his cousin the Highlander, in the person of Mac Gregor, the hero of the tale.

H.

* The Massillon of Scotland.
They may be considered as parallels to Pope, Addison, Swift, Parnell, and Gay, who wrote in what was called the Augustan age of England.
Wordsworth, Coleridge, &c.