pathized, even unto tears, in those heart-breathed melancholy effusions, poured out with such moving ingenuousness, during the "Sylvan Wanderer's" forest walks amid the dank heaps of matted leaves[1]—and he has mourned over the fast crumbling decay of an ancient and noble house. But private feeling, however painful may be the struggle, (and in this case it is most painful,) must give way to impartial criticism.
Sir Egerton was originally intended for a man of genius—but many melancholy circumstances, which every lover of the Muse bewails with drooping head and heart, have crooked the promising branch, and turned the nourishing sap to a corroding poison, eating the heart of the tree. This it is that has caused that craving for unwholesome food
- ↑ Sir E. B. has wisely (whatever the worldly and ignorant may say) unloaded his full heart on paper—
"The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break."
velty to another: and where these ranging appetites reign there is ever more passion than reason; no stay, and so no happiness."