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84. The journals gave it at least as much praise as it deserved, and it failed in spite of them, as the Epigoniad had done before it. The subject was not ill chosen, (for that we have the authority of Dryden;) but it was ill handled, so ill handled, indeed, that all the advantages which it really possesses, were made of no avail. There is no name with which a chivalrous or a poetical mind associates more delightful recollections than with the name of Arthur; but it is with the Arthur of The Round Table, and of Spenser; for there are enough indications in the Faery Queen, that if that wonderful poem had been completed, the hero would have been sufficiently identified with the Arthur of Romance. Mr. Hole's hero bears no more resemblance to him than to Arthur O'Bradley; and the reader, when he discovers this, feels as if he had met an old friend with a new face.

The world has, perhaps, been "disgusted with the very name of epic." Mr.