Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/197

 Satire's View of Sentimentalism 191 poets first wrote verses to bi handed about among their special friends, but as their conceit grew they began to seek wider publicity through the columns of newspapers and magazines. Tickell describes their ambition as follows: Others, resolv'd more ample fame to boast, Plant their own laurels in the Morning Post; Soft Evening dews refresh the tender green: Pass but a month, it swells each Magazine; 'Till the luxuriant boughs so wildly shoot, The Annual Register transplants the root. 93 The folly of amateur bards is similarly portrayed by George Crabbe in The Newspaper (1785). He shows how a lax appren- tice becomes a rhymester by contributing verses for the Poets' Corners of newspapers and other periodicals: A sudden couplet rushes on your mind; Here you may nameless print your idle rhymes, And read your first-born work a thousand times; Th' infection spreads, your couplet grows apace, Stanaas to Delia's dog or Celia's face: You take a name; Philander's odes are seen, Printed, and praised in every magazine: Diarian sages greet their brother sage, And your dark pages please th' enlighten'd age. Alas! what years you thus consume in vain, Rul'd by this wretched bias of the brain. Go! to your desks and counters all return; Your sonnets scatter, your acrostics burn. . . Of all the good that mortal men pursue, The Muse has least to give, and gives to few. 94 The " Delia Cruscans" were a group of poetasters of more literary experience than Crabbe's apprentice, but no more poetic inspiration. Their verses were published in various places, but principally in newspapers. The fact that the merits of their work are fairly estimated by their satirical critics makes a critical judgment on the part of the present writer superfluous. The remarkable thing about these makers of foolish rhymes is that they (or some of them) took themselves so seriously that they were taken seriously by no small part of the reading public. 93 School for Satire, 156. 94 Works of Crabbe, 48-49.