Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/22

 grey," who speaks to the hearts of his countrymen, the gentle and stirring spirit of whose poetry has spread into every home and over every country where the English tongue is known. We have a pleasure in the charming compositions of Cowper, "the pensive bard of Olney," who has been termed "the sensitive plant in the garden of literature," while others delight in lauding the illustrious but unhappy Byron, who poured upon the world a flood of poetry, "the strangest mixture of shining gold and black mire." There are some who admire Crabbe, "who was," Byron said, "Nature's sternest painter, yet the best." And, when we come to the end of the eighteenth, and beginning of the nineteenth century, what a constellation of poets surround us, and attract our attention by their brilliancy. We have Samuel Rogers, Hogg, Montgomery, Tannahill, Campbell, Mrs. Hernans, Kirke White, Bishop Heber, Shelley, Keats, Hannah Moore, and Joanna Baillie. We have also, and it were unfair not to mention, Bowles, of sonnet fame; Pollock, whose sacred epic, "The Course of Time," will live as long as time doth run its course; Ferguson, Bloomfield, and Allan Cunningham. We delight in the "magnificent dreams" of "gentle" Coleridge, the "unmanageable themes" mastered by Southey. We have a reverence for "simple" Wordsworth, the great master of the Lake school, and admire the delightful drolleries of the humorous Hood. We have also to be grateful for the pleasure we derive from the Knowleses, the Henry Taylors, and the Talfourds of the nineteenth century, who remind us that we are the countrymen of Shakspeare, Jonson, and Massinger. Coming down nearer our own day we have to bear in remembrance the names of the "Delta" of Blackwood, the "L. E. L." of the Literary Gazette, the Brownings, Professor Aytoun, Thom, Motherwell, Alexander Smith, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Eliza Cook, Charles Swain, Charles Mackay, and Martin F. Tupper. While we have thus made mention of the more prominent of our British Bards, we are in courtesy and duty bound not to overlook those who have flourished and are flourishing on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Sigourney, Willis, Whittier, Bryant, and their Laureate, Longfellow, who is perhaps as well known in Britain's Isles as is our own Laureate, Tennyson. And who among us denies the position our present Laureate holds as head of the poets in the passing generation, or dare say "the pure and steady radiance of his sweet varied music" is unworthy of the Royal honour? While we have passed in review before us names familiar to us, and cherished in our memories, we have omitted many sweet singers worthy of notice.

From an article on "The Poetry of the Day," we may aptly quote the following "Hardly a magazine is now published," observed Moore to Scott, when talking of the poetry of the day, "but would once have made a reputation." "Ecod!" said Sir Walter, "we were very lucky to have come before these fellows!" If one were not disarmed by the good-humour of the remark, it might be hinted that both the interlocutors have now subsided into the rank of the minor