Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/335

Rh than justly, some years before the publication of these Poems:—

Now, most of my readers have probably seen and heard, in common with myself, a bad deal about "Inspirational Discourses," and many may have heard one or more of such effusions (I have heard but one, from a woman who seemed a cleverish actress); and many also have probably seen scraps and screeds of rhyme and the blankest of blank verse, claiming to be improvisations dictated by eminent spirits, Byron, Poe, Cowper, Shelley, and so forth. One has glanced at such things now and then as they happened to come in his way, but never as expecting