University of Virginia Library

Professor Milman is a capital specimen of a made poet, “poèta fit.” He cannot say like the author of Wat Tyler—that nature ushered in his birth with largest dower, with regard to the poetical part. Snarling and contemptuous to others, he is frigid, artificial, and labours at his rhyme-manufactory with astonishing assiduity. An intimate acquaintance with the ancient and modern bards, has provided him with an extensive vocabulary of fine-sounding words; but still he is unrighteously perverse in continuing to propagate verses which few, except the wranglers and freshmen of Oxford, feel any pleasure in reading. “But he is Professor of Poetry at Oxford!” I am sorry for it. Let any one examine the real merits of the Oxford prize poems of late years, and he will find in them nothing but the most common place imagery and worn out thoughts, made readable through the pomp of faultless melody. Of course, the prize adventurers must imitate their professing model. Probably, Mr. Milman is anxious to write much, nor trouble himself about its being read; to say with Marolles, I have published “one hundred and thirty-three thousand, one hundred, and twenty-four verses.”—“Heber puffed me, and Murray catered.”