Long as I have detained my Reader, I hope he will permit me to
caution him against a mode of false criticism which has been applied
to Poetry in which the language closely resembles that of life and
nature. Such verses have been triumphed over in parodies of which
Dr. Johnson's Stanza is a fair specimen.
"I put my hat upon my head,
And walk'd into the Strand,
And there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand."
Immediately under these lines I will place one of the most justly
admired stanzas of the "_Babes_ in the Wood."
"These pretty Babes with hand in hand
Went wandering up and down;
But never more they saw the Man
Approaching from the Town."
In both of these stanzas the words, and the order of the words, in
no respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversation. There
are words in both, for example, "the Strand," and "the Town,"
connected with none but the most familiar ideas; yet the one stanza
we admit as admirable, and the other as a fair example of the
superlatively contemptible. Whence arises this difference? Not from
the metre, not from the language, not from the order of the words;
but the _matter_ expressed in Dr.
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