LAKE SCHOOL OF POETRY

IT may seem an ill-timed and unnecessary attempt of periodical criticism to recur to works that have reached beyond the proper sphere of its power--works that have had much influence on the poetical sentiment and taste of these countries--that have called forth well-deserved admiration and merited contempt--that have been hailed in different minds with religion and ridicule--by different classes of readers with enthusiasm and apathy, with pleasure and disgust--that have made us acquainted not only with new habits of composition, but also with new modes of thinking; but it is the office, nay the bounden duty of every one that regards the welfare of the public taste, and is anxious to preserve the purity of the national poetry, however he may admire the grander traits of those productions, to warn the unwary reader, and the dreaming enthusiast, of the faulty and corrupt system of the greater portion of this modern poetry.