I showed my "Witch" and "Dying Lover" to Dyer [1] last night; but George could not comprehend how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had taught it to do; so George read me some lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine by correcting a proof-sheet of his own Lyrics, George writes odes where the rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls that "observing the laws of verse," George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great attention, or you 'll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty exact, George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, "Dark are the poet's eyes," I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark, and many a living bard's besides, and recommended "Clos'd are the poet's eyes."
But that would not do, I found there was an antithesis between the darkness of his eyes and the splendor of his genius, and I acquiesced.
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