England may still lay claim, in the highest walks of learning, as well as of art; a distinction which need not shrink from a comparison with that of the most famed academicians of France, or the still more recondite and laborious efforts of the Germans.
It is scarcely necessary further to observe, on the part of the present editor, that he has not indulged the ambition of aspiring to any share of those honours, which have been so amply reaped by names like the preceding; though he may perhaps be held excused for attempting to glean a few scattered flowers growing in the same fields, stretching so widely around the northern side of the “Temple of Fame.”
“Of Gothic structure was the northern side,
O’erwrought with ornaments of barbarous pride.
There huge colosses rose with trophies crown’d,
And ruin’d characters were graved around:
There sat Zamolxis with erected eyes,
And Odin here in mimic trances dies:
There on rude iron columns smear’d with blood,
The horrid forms of Scythian heroes stood:
Druids and bards!—their once loud harps unstrung,
And youths that died to be by poets sung.”
