Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/202

 196 Whitford Sentimentalism persisted, nevertheless, so that as late as 1801 a satirist could enumerate as follows the " myriad votaries of the lyric tribe": Knights, sans-culottes, conveyancers, and Peers, Merry's or Southey's album Sonnetteers, Whose anapaestic anthologian verse Rattles like lumber smuggled in a hearse. 110 Indeed sentimentalism always persists. After Gifford's ruthless campaign, the Delia Cruscans were effectively crushed. But sentimentalism in one of its more respectable phases was still in good repute. The Bluestockings were scarcely more impor- tant when they were patronized by Dr. Johnson than when Gifford wrote: 'Tis done. Her house the generous Piozzi lends, And thither summons her blue-stocking friends; The summons her blue-stocking friends obey, Lur'd by the love of Poetry and Tea. 111 The Bluestockings were practically never satirized as a group for defects of their literary theory or practice. So indis- tinct were they in the mind of Anthony Pasquin that, in his general fulmination against poor poetry he confused them with the Delia Cruscans, conceiving, perhaps, that it would be all one a hundred years thence: We have Greatheads, and Yearsleys, and Sewards, and Mores, Who rave with Cimmerian influence by scores; A beotian husk, for such faculties fit, Enfolds their ideas and cases their wit; Who count their minc'd periods, as misers count pence, And first think of harmony, then think of sense; Who have glean'd fertile Byche of all good he can yield, As the poor of the hamlet strip Ceres' rich field; Who coldly correct, have accomplish'd their ends, By the dull visitation of classical friends; Tho' no grain of rich ore gives true worth to the mine, Tho' no feature of Genius illumines a line, Who fine-draw the delicate theme from the head, 110 Satirical Epistle to the Poet Laureate, 37-38. 111 Bamad and Maeiiad, 17-18.