George brought a Dr. Anderson [1] to see me.  The Doctor is a very pleasant old man, a great genius for agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees with packthread, and boasts of having had disappointments from ministers.  The Doctor happened to mention an epic poem by one Wilkie, called the “Epigoniad,” in which he assured us there is not one tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the characters, incidents, etc., verbally copied from Homer.  George, who had been sitting quite inattentive to the Doctor’s criticism, no sooner heard the sound of Homer strike his pericraniks, than up he gets, and declares he must see that poem immediately:  where was it to be had?  An epic poem of eight thousand lines, and he not hear of it!  There must be some things good in it, and it was necessary he should see it, for he had touched pretty deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic.  George had touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I find; he has also prepared a dissertation on the Drama, and the comparison of the English and German theatres.  As I rather doubted his competency to do the latter, knowing that his peculiar turn lies in the lyric species of composition, I questioned George what English plays he had read.  I found that he had read Shakspeare (whom he calls an original, but irregular, genius), but it was a good while ago; and he has dipped into Rowe and Otway, I suppose having found their names in Johnson’s Lives at full length; and upon this slender ground he has undertaken the task.  He never seemed even to have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and the worthies of Dodsley’s Collection; but he is to read all these, to prepare him for bringing out his “Parallel” in the winter.  I find he is also determined to vindicate poetry from the shackles which Aristotle and some others have imposed upon it,—­which is very good-natured of him, and very necessary just now!  Now I am touching so deeply upon poetry, can I forget that I have just received from Cottle a magnificent copy of his Guinea Epic. [2] Four-and-twenty books to read in the dog days!  I got as far as the Mad Monk the first day, and fainted.  Mr, Cottle’s genius strongly points him to the Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him perpetually from his calling.  He imitates Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his “Good morrow to ye, good master Lieutenant,” Instead of a man, a woman, a daughter, he constantly writes “one a man,” “one a woman,” “one his daughter.”  Instead of the king, the hero, he constantly writes, “he the king,” “he the hero,”—­two flowers of rhetoric palpably from the “Joan.”  But Mr, Cottle soars a higher pitch; and when he is original, it is in a most original way indeed.  His terrific scenes are indefatigable.  Serpents, asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of nothing, with adders’ tongues for bannisters,—­Good Heaven, what a brain he must have!  He puts as many plums in his pudding as my grandmother used to do; and, then his emerging from Hell’s horrors into light, and treading on pure flats of this earth—­for twenty-three books together!