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In a polemical, unsigned 1821 review for The Critical Heritage, the reviewer creates a fictional dialogue between two sisters (Seraphina and Clementina) who are discussing with a "gentleman" various passages of Epipsychidion. The gentleman, who had come to woo Clementina, attempted to do so by reading passages from his poem, which Clementina did not appreciate. So he attempted "plan B," which was to read passages from Epipsychidion, which was published in Gossip. Here is a brief passage from Seraphina's recounting of the event:
Clementina put her fan to his lips, bid him hold his saucy tongue, and let her hear what the Gossip had to say, which she was sure would be more entertaining than his nambypamby poetry. He told her it contained extracts from a poem which he believed would excite emotions very different from those produced by the beautiful lines of Goldsmith.
I seized the number, for I am passionately fond of poetry. It contained a review of "Epipsychidion." I read the first extract--but did not understand it. "it is poetry intoxicated," said Clementina. "It is poetry in delirium," said I. "It is a new system of poetry," said the gentleman, "which would be as well to be provided with a pair of seven-league boots." "It is the poetical currency of the day," said the gentleman. (290)
Let us look at the following excerpt from Epipsychidion that Seraphina and Clementina are especially critical of:
And every gentle passion sick to death,
Feeding my course with expectation's breath,
Into the wintry forest of our life. (247-49)
Clementina recounts:
Here I could not help asking how a course, or track could be fed, and that too with expectation's breath. "But allowing the incongruous metaphor of feeding a course, how could it be fed into a forest?" "A man may be fed into a fever," said Clementina. "I am inclined to think," said the gentleman, "from the pointing of the passage, the meaning of it is, that while he was diverting his course into the wintry forest, he was feeding it with the breath of expectation." "Well," said Clementina, "you have helped a lame dog over a stile, but he walks as lamely as he did before. Your elucidation of the passage reminds me of La Bruyere's famous French wit, who made it a rule never to be posed upon any occasion! and being asked a little abruptly, what was the difference between dryads and hamadryads, answered very readily, "You have heard of your bishops and your archbishops." "Dryden," said I, (wishing to put a stop to my sister's pertness) "has been ridiculed for writing the following couplet: "Yet when that flood in its own depths was drowned, / It left behind its false and slippery ground."
Here, it has been observed, we have a drowned flood; and what is more extraordinary, a flood so excessively deep that it drowned itself. But in my opinion when a flood, which has overflowed lands, is receding into a greater depth, so as to contract its breadth, and surface, it is not a more extravagant figure of speech to say that it has drowned itself in its own depths, and left its false and slippery ground behind, than it is to talk of feeding a man's course with expectation's breath; the metaphors are equally heterogeneous and extravagant" Before we employ any figure," said the gentleman, "we should consider what sort of a picture it would make on canvas. How an artist could paint the feeding of a man's course with the breath of expectation, Ii cannot conceive!" I went on with my reading, and came to one "Whose voice was venomed melody." "Then the creature must have poured poison into the porches of his ears," said Clementina. (292-93)
This review clearly demonstrates that neo-classical views on poetry did not go away at the turn of the nineteenth-century. Clearly, neo-classicist thought was very much a part of regency England.
"Seraphina and Her Sister Clementina's Review of Epipsychidion." The Gossip 14 July 1821. 153-59. Rep. in Shelley: The Critical Heritage. Ed. James E. Barcus. London: Routledge, 1975. 289-95.