Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/77

 metaphysics, and particularly for the writers of the Scotch school, of whom he sometimes spoke in terms of greater confidence than his acquaintance with their works entitled him to do; but he professed a deep reverence for Coleridge, whose he considered a master-piece of philosophy. I do not recollect of ever having heard him even allude to Burke, and for Sir James Mackintosh he had conceived an unreasonable dislike. These carelessnesses and prejudices are to be regretted, since they tended to abridge his knowledge and to impair his usefulness, but they are probably to be referred to the circumstances in which he was placed rather than to any defect in his mental constitution. A more liberal intercourse with mankind would have disabused him of many of those prepossessions which he had hastily adopted and had little temptation to abandon, and his better nature would have done the rest.

In his personal tastes and feelings he was essentially and ardently Scottish. The language and literature of his native country he had studied with care and success, and to her legendary poetry and metrical traditions he attached a high value. The land was also beautiful in his eyes, and no wandering minstrel of ancient times could have been impressed with a loftier sense of the valour of the men or the virtue of the women who dwelt within its limits. That he was a devout admirer of external nature his poems amply testify. The vast solitude of the universe and the sublime depths of space filled his soul with a holy awe; and whether he looked upon the heavens above with