Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/30

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THE REVIEWER. No. XV.


Rejected Addresses, or the Nezo Theatrum Poetarum* Millar, Albemarle-street. Pp. 127. 4s. 6d.

We took up tins literary trifle with very little expectation of being amused by its contents, and were pleasingly disappointed, so well winnowed from anything like wit or satire are the heaps of chaff with which the modern press has long since teemed, and still continues to do, that we hazard much by exploring them, both as to the laborious loss of time, and mental surfeit ;, but in this instance, and almost a solitary one it is, we have found something which, if it claims not to rank by the side of the greater efforts of Dry den and Pope, deserves to be rescued from oblivion. The author's intention is to imitate the style of our modern rhapsodists, to expose their extravagancies, and absolute want of talent — men, mere versifiers, and with only one or two exceptions, affecting an exuberant style the better to conceal a total inanity of imagination. Heconveys his satire under the supposition of their being addresses for the opening of Drury-lane, and adverting to them in his preface, says " It is not necessary for the editor to mention the maimer in which he became possessed of this ' fair sample of the poetry of Great Britain/ It was his first intention to publish the whole, but a little reflection convinced him that by so doing he might depress the good without elevating the bad. He has therefore culled what had the appearance of flowers, from what had the reality of weeds, and is extremely sorry that in so doing he has diminished his collection to twenty-one." In other words, the editor has selected one and twenty from the inundating number of modern poets to direct bis satire against — but — we are in error — seventeen is the number who, by possessing some talents are worthy of the lash: but we cannot follow him to such an extent. Six at