Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/272

 *tude," and shall we thank a bounteous heaven for one more such as these? No, no, nothing of the sort, says the Superannuated with indignation, for it is high time you put this sort of Shelley-Byron stuff behind you. Mr. Swinburne has distinctly said that "Byron was no poet." Learn wisdom, therefore, and turn from Byron to Podgers. He has written a little book, has Podgers, for which those who desire to possess it must pay a sum out of all proportion to its size. What shall we find in this so-little book? Anything to make our hearts beat in more healthful and harmonious tune? No. Nothing of this in Podgers. Nothing, in fact, of any kind in Podgers which we have not heard before. There are a few lines that we remember as derived from Wordsworth, and one stanza seems to us like a carefully transposed bit of Tennyson;—but for anything absolutely new in thought or in treatment we search in vain. Unless we make exception for a set of verses which are a tribute to the art of Log-Rolling, namely Podgers's "Ode" to Podgers's favouring critic. We confess this to be somewhat of a novelty, and we begin to pity Podgers. He must have fallen very low to write (and publish) an "Ode" to the Superannuated, his chief flatterer on the Press, and he must be very short-sighted if he imagines that action is a millstone without a hole in it. And so, despite the loud eulogies of the Superannuated (who is naturally proud to be made the subject of any "Ode" however feeble) we do not purchase Podgers's book, though it is urged upon us as being a "limited" edition. But the Superannuated is not herein baffled. If, he says, if you are so asinine, so crass,