The literati and the friends of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves that the season of the nation's youth was past, and may have ever and anon perhaps felt in the still depths of the heart a secret longing to stray once more in the delightful paths of youthful error.
End of Volume IV NOTES FOR VOLUME IV.