'Did [Benjamin Bell] write these verses? If so, he seems young at the art like us, but not without powers of doing better; dactyls are always difficult to manage, and his accordingly are but a kind of flash in the pan - no damage is done; but the other piece has a sort of pococurante [little-caring] air about it which looks more like genius and truth, and answers greatly better. Except the last stanza, they are good. If he is only about twenty years of age or so, he may cultivate poetry with considerable hope: if nearer thirty I advise him never to write another line.'