We own that, though
we were trained in a stricter school of literary faith, and were in
all our youth inclined to the enforcement of the straitest
restrictions on the admission of candidates to the Parnassian
fraternity, and denied the name of poetry to every composition in
which the workmanship and the material were not equally excellent, in
our middle age we have grown lax, and have learned to find pleasure
in verses of a ruder strain, -- to enjoy _verses of society_, or
those effusions which in persons of a happy nature are the easy and
unpremeditated translation of their thoughts and feelings into rhyme.
This new taste for a certain private and household poetry, for
somewhat less pretending than the festal and solemn verses which are
written for the nations, really indicates, we suppose, that a new
style of poetry exists. The number of writers has increased. Every
child has been taught the tongues. The universal communication of
the arts of reading and writing has brought the works of the great
poets into every house, and made all ears familiar with the poetic
forms.
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