of
Lamia. Ulysses he could understand; but what were these prodigious laudations
bestowed on it? And that reverence for Mr. Wordsworth, what did it mean? Had he
not written Peter Bell, and been turned into deserved ridicule by all the
reviews? Was that dreary Excursion to be compared to Goldsmith's Traveller or
Dr. Johnson's Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told
the truth, where had been the truth in his own young days, and in what ignorance
had our fore-fathers been brought up? Mr. Addison was only an elegant essayist,
and shallow trifler! All these opinions were openly uttered over the Colonel's
claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sate wondering at the speakers, who were knocking
the gods of their youth about their ears. To Binnie the shock was not so great;
the hard-headed Scotchman had read Hume in his college days, and sneered at some
of the gods even at that early time. But with Newcome, the admiration for the
literature of the last century was an article of belief, and the incredulity of
the young men seemed rank blasphemy. »You will be sneering at Shakespeare next,«
he said; and was silenced, though not better pleased, when his youthful guests
told him that Dr. Goldsmith sneered at him too, that Dr. Johnson did not
understand him, and that Congreve, in his own day and afterwards, was considered
to be, in some points, Shakespeare's superior. »What do you think a man's
criticism is worth, sir,« cries Mr. Warrington, »who says those lines of Mr.
Congreve about a church -
 
How reverend is the face of yon tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its vast and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made stedfast and immovable;
Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight - et cætera -
 
what do you think of a critic who says those lines are finer than anything
Shakespeare ever wrote?« A dim consciousness of danger for Clive, a terror that
his son had got into the society of heretics and unbelievers, came over the
Colonel, and then presently, as was the wont with his modest soul, a gentle
sense of humility. He was in the wrong, perhaps, and these younger men were
right. Who was he, to set up his judgment against men of letters, educated at
college? It was better that Clive should follow them than him, who had had but a
brief schooling, and