Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/192

 180 but he practically conformed to the Church of England. In politics he was Conservative. As a man, he was generally respected and beloved. One of his friends, who affirms his belief that "a more noble, generous, and high-minded creature never breathed," remarks that "probably his failing was an excitability and restlessness which indicated that Irish blood was in his veins." This excitability carried him in 1819 to Edinburgh, to retort gravely upon the banter of his Blackwood critic; and to the same spirit we may trace his caricature of Mr. Landor's Porson and Southey, in 1842. As the "son-in-law of the calumniated poet," he felt called on to resent, with no slight "appearance of contempt," the "odious misapplication" of the author of Gebir's powers in "his gross attack on Wordsworth." With such a temperament, it was happy for Mr. Quillinan that his poetical sympathies were with the Wordsworth school, rather than with Byron and other Kraftmänner. He never attained the sublime repose which consecrates the philosophy of his great exemplar, but unquestionably that philosophy must have had a profound and soothing influence of restraint upon his inner life, as well as upon his verses. How carefully he modelled his manner upon that of Wordsworth—unless, indeed, the imitation was an unconscious habit—may be seen in his lines, "Wild Flowers of Westmoreland," "The Birch of Silver How," some of the sonnets, &c. The following illustrates his more independent manner:

By way of relief to this minor key, we quote

Lady, are you dark or fair,

Owner of this pretty book?

What's the colour of your hair?

Are you blithe and debonnaire,

Or demure of look?