loudly of the flippancy of Mr. Pye. In commenting on the line in the "Merchant of Venice,"
"The man that hath no music in himself,"
he makes a confession of his own want of taste for instrumental music: "But I confess I, who would almost as soon stand up to my neck in water in winter as sit out a concert, should have no great opinion of that man who was dead to the effect of a pathetic song set to a simple melody."
Pye does not, from occasional remarks which occur in his writings, seem to have set great store on his poetical productions. In a dedicatory letter to Mr. Addington, prefixed to his "Epic of Alfred," he quotes from the preface to Prior's "Solomon" the following remark, and applies it to himself. "I am glad to have it observed, that there appears throughout my verses a zeal for the honour of my country; and I had rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or the greatest scholar that ever wrote." And so he was, a good Englishman, a gentleman in the highest sense of the word, a man of ancient family, of patriotic principles, of genial courtesy, and pleasant convivial habits,[1] an industrious student, a well-informed, cultivated, graceful writer; but a poet, he assuredly was not. Weighed in the balance of contemporaneous criticism, he was found wanting, and Time has sanctioned the severe decree.
- ↑ Notwithstanding his conviviality, it was during his Laureateship that the tierce of Canary was discontinued, and the £27 substituted.
