The very tone adopted, that of deprecation of criticism, would be in their view a proof of weakness, and as such they accepted it.

Nor had the poem any better chance with the general reader.

Its rhetoric and versification were only one more of the interminable echoes of the manner of Pope.

It had no organic unity.

The wearisome note of plea for indulgence had to be relieved at intervals by such irrelevant episodes as compliments to the absent "Mira," and to Wolfe, who "conquered as he fell"-- twenty years or so before.