Horace Walpole

“ To sit, and never drink, with endless thirst;
Those loaden boughs that with their burden bend
To court his taste and yet escape his hand,
All this is love; that to dissembled joys
Invites vain men, with real grief destroys. ”

“ The general characteristics of his poetry are studied elegance and quaint sprightliness; for he is seldom tender, and very rarely sublime. Of his lighter productions the chief source is gallantry, and the radical defect, as in Waller and Cowley, is a superabundance of mythological allusion or of affected passion. Dr. Johnson says, somewhat austerely, "they are trifles written by idleness, and published by vanity:” but the same stern critic admits that his lordship's
"Prologues and Epilogues" have a just claim to praise; that his
"Progress of Beauty is not deficient in splendour and gaiety ”

“ Witness his lordship’s Preface: “As these poems seem to begin where Mr. Waller left off, though far unequal and short of so inimitable an original; they may, however, be permitted to remain to posterity as a faithful register of the reigning beauties in the succeeding age.” ↑ “Heroic Love,” scene i. ”