Had several of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their friends’ opinions, we might have lost some precious compositions.  The friends of Thompson discovered nothing but faults in his early productions, one of which happened to be his noblest, the “Winter;” they just could discern that these abounded with luxuriances, without being aware that, they were the luxuriances of a poet.  He had created a new school in art—­and appealed from his circle to the public.  From a manuscript letter of our poet’s, written when employed on his “Summer,” I transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland—­he is writing to Mallet:  “Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell, Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c.  Wherever I have evidence, or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I’ll be as obstinate as all the mules in Persia.”  This poet of warm affections felt so irritably the perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to share alike a poetic Hell—­probably a sort of Dunciad, or lampoons.  One of these “blasts” broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, whom he describes with a “blasted eye;” but this critic literally having one, the poet, to avoid a personal reflection, could only consent to make the blemish more active—­

  Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell! why
  Appears one beauty to thy blasting eye?

He again calls him “the planet-blasted Mitchell.”  Of another of these critical friends he speaks with more sedateness, but with a strong conviction that the critic, a very sensible man, had no sympathy with the poet.  “Aikman’s reflections on my writings are very good, but he does not in them regard the turn of my genius enough; should I alter my way, I would write poorly.  I must choose what appears to me the most significant epithet, or I cannot with any heart proceed.”  The “Mirror,"[A] when periodically published in Edinburgh, was “fastidiously” received, as all “home-productions” are:  but London avenged the cause of the author.  When SWIFT introduced PARNELL to Lord Bolingbroke, and to the world, he observes, in his Journal, “it is pleasant to see one who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, make his way here with a little friendly forwarding.”  MONTAIGNE has honestly told us that in his own province they considered that for him to attempt to become an author was perfectly ludicrous:  at home, says he, “I am compelled to purchase printers; while at a distance, printers purchase me.”  There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the friends of a young man of genius than the invention of a new manner:  without a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the ordinary critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but usually pronounces against novelty.  When REYNOLDS returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence of his art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it, and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that he did not paint so well as when he left England; while another, who conceived no higher excellence than Kneller, treated with signal contempt the future Raphael of England.