204 Whitford Sweet child of sickly FANCY! her of yore From her loved France ROUSSEAU to exile bore; And, while 'midst lakes and mountains wild he ran, Full of himself, and shunn'd the haunts of man, Taught her o'er each lone vale and Alpine steep To lisp the story of his wrongs, and weep; Taught her to cherish still in either eye, Of tender tears a plentiful supply, And pour them in the brooks that babbled by; Taught by nice scale to mete her feelings strong, False by degrees and exquisitely wrong; For the crush'd beetle, first , the widow'd dove, And all the warbled sorrows of the grove; Next for poor suff'ring Guilt; and last of all, For parents, friends, a king and country's fall. 126 On? the whole, English verse-satire demonstrated in the considerable body of critical estimate represented by the pas- sages which have been quoted in the preceding pages an attitude of consistent condemnation for sentimentalism. Although some satirists, like many a reviewer, allowed religious and politi- cal considerations to warp their critical judgements, most were thoroughly logical in their regular conservatism. They rebuked alike affected contempt for conventional morality and affected sermonizing. ROBERT C. WHITFORD. University of Illinois. m Poetry* oj the Anti-Jacobin, 275. For its advocates, Sensibility had a quite different significance. Miss More apostrophizes that quality of refined taste thus in her Poems (p. 186) : "O Sensibility! . . . This is th' ethereal flame which lights and warms, In song enchants us, and in action charms. 'Tis this that makes the pensive strains of Gray
Win to the open heart their easy way. "
