Phantom-Wooer: The Thomas Lovell Beddoes Web Site | Critical Response

GEORGE DARLEY, 1822

“However, here is Minor Beddoes, born in the very zenith of this mock sun of poetry, while it is culminating in the mid-heaven of our literary hemisphere, shining in watery splendor, the gaze and gape of our foolish-faced, fat-headed nation; here is Minor Beddoes, I say, born amid the very rage and triumph of the Byronian heresy--nay, in a preface more remarkable for good nature than good sense, eulogizing some of the prose-poets--yet what does Minor Beddoes? Why, writing a tragedy himself, with a judgment far different from that exhibited in his own panegyrical preface, he totally rejects, and therewith tactly condemns and abjures, the use of prose-poetry. But it was not the boy’s judgment that led him to this; it was his undepraved ear, and his native energy of mind, teaching him to respue this effeminate style of versification. ‘The Bride’s [sic] Tragedy’ transcends, in the quality of its rhythm and metrical harmony, ‘The Doge of Venice,’ and ‘Mirandola,’ just as much as it does ‘Fazio,’ and the other dramas which conform to the rules of genuine English heroic verse in the energy of its language, the power of its sentiments, and the boldness of its imagery--that is incalculably.”

(“Letters to the Dramatists of the Day,” London Magazine)

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