their own authors, indeed, has very ingeniously set forth (in a kind of manifesto that preceded one of their most flagrant acts of hostility), that it was their capital object “to adapt to the uses of poetry, the ordinary language of conversation among the middling and lower orders of the people.”  What advantages are to be gained by the success of this project, we confess ourselves unable to conjecture.  The language of the higher and more cultivated orders may fairly be presumed to be better than that of their inferiors:  at any rate, it has all those associations in its favour, by means of which, a style can ever appear beautiful or exalted, and is adapted to the purposes of poetry, by having been long consecrated to its use.  The language of the vulgar, on the other hand, has all the opposite associations to contend with; and must seem unfit for poetry (if there were no other reason), merely because it has scarcely ever been employed in it.  A great genius may indeed overcome these disadvantages; but we can scarcely conceive that he should court them.  We may excuse a certain homeliness of language in the productions of a ploughman or a milkwoman; but we cannot bring ourselves to admire it in an author, who has had occasion to indite odes to his college bell, and inscribe hymns to the Penates.

But the mischief of this new system is not confined to the depravation of language only; it extends to the sentiments and emotions, and leads to the debasement of all those feelings which poetry is designed to communicate.  It is absurd to suppose, that an author should make use of the language of the vulgar, to express the sentiments of the refined.  His professed object, in employing that language, is to bring his compositions nearer to the true standard of nature; and his intention to copy the sentiments of the lower orders, is implied in his resolution to make use of their style.  Now, the different classes of society have each of them a distinct character, as well as a separate idiom; and the names of the various passions to which they are subject respectively, have a signification that varies essentially according to the condition of the persons to whom they are applied.  The love, or grief, or indignation of an enlightened and refined character, is not only expressed in a different language, but is in itself a different emotion from the love, or grief, or anger, of a clown, a tradesman, or a market-wench.  The things themselves are radically and obviously distinct; and the representation of them is calculated to convey a very different train of sympathies and sensations to the mind.  The question, therefore, comes simply to be—­which of them is the most proper object for poetical imitation?  It is needless for us to answer a question, which the practice of all the world has long ago decided irrevocably.  The poor and vulgar may interest us, in poetry, by their situation; but never, we apprehend, by any sentiments that are peculiar to their condition,