Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/170

162 of a poem called "O'Connor's Child?" What will posterity, thinks he, think of it? At the risk of being reckoned purblind and stone-deaf by posterity, we predict that posterity will love and admire and worship the genius enshrined there—till posterity ceases to have posterity—and

We must now part with Mr Campbell and his critic. Maga, at least, will survive for ever—and should it so happen that all editions of the works of the Bard of Hope—one after the other—at intervals of a century or so—drop into oblivion—remotest posterity may see here as beautiful stanzas of his as any that even then may have been written—and be grateful to.

Have you Joanna Bailie's Dramatic Works in your library? No! Then get them—and begin with "." "The piece," says the gracious lady, "is very short, and can neither be called tragedy nor comedy. It may indeed appear, for a passion so allied to all our cheerful and exhilerating thoughts, to approach too nearly to the former; but, when its object is of great importance, must so often contend with despondency, that it rides like a vessel on the stormy ocean, rising on the billow's ridge but for a moment. Cheerfulness, the character of common Hope, is, in strong Hope, like glimpses of sunshine in a stormy sky." If such poetry be in the preface, what treasures untold may you not trust to find