Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/169

 Satire's View of Sentimentalism 163 ascribed to James Beattie, author of The Minstrel. The personal attack is somewhat unpleasant, but the mocking rebuke is not without its humor. The opening stanza, in which the poet boasts of his victory in controversy with Hume, is as follows: I, who erewhile in clam'rous fight o'erthrew Da-iid, of infidelity the Dagon, Pommell'd his sceptic carcase black and blue, And trampled him as St. George did the dragon; Now, when the Laureat's mouth has got Death's gag on, Awake my gothic harp's harmonious frame, Ditties of duteous loyalty to fag on, And in the Laureat's list enrol my name; This, with the sack and gold, is all I dare to claim. 17 Satirical objection to this particular manifestation of roman- ticism, the use of archaic language in poetry, persisted to the days of Byron. In 1807, Eaton Stannard Barrett, author of All the Talents, attacked Scott for being "ostentatious in sim- plicity." In a long note upon The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the satirist explains the fault which he finds in Scott's style. He admits that the poem has force in description and consis- tency in its characters. "But" says he, "here ends its merit. The plot is absurd, and the antique costume of the language is disgusting because it is unnatural. " He condemns the language as a "Gothic and Corinthian mixture," but feels that even if it were a true antique "and not a modern coin artificially rusted over," it would still be absurd: For, by the same rule, Gray's Bard should have spoken in the idiom of King Edward's time, and Norval should now tragedy it away in broad Scotch. If Mr. S. will condescend to write in the present purity of our language, tho' he may no longer decoy readers by what is novel, yet he may win them by what is natural. Philips' Pastorals and Chatterton's Rowley are reposing in the charnels of obscurity. Yet there was a time when they were just as much read and just as much admired as Mr. Scott's minstrel. 18 After 1790, satire's criticism of romanticism in its more radical aspects, as distinguished from sentimentalism, was chiefly moral and political rather than literary. A few examples 17 The Miscellaneous Works of A. M } 'Donald. . . (London, 1791), 95. 19 All the Talents: a satirical poem in three dialogues ... by Polypus (London, 1807), 92.