Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/79

, and while reading some of his happiest effusions, we feel—

'His style is simple, but in his tenderest movements, masculine; he strikes a few bold knocks at the door of the heart, which is instantly opened by the master or mistress of the house, or by son or daughter, and the welcome visitor at once becomes one of the family.'

This is generous praise, but not more generous than just, and it places the whole case before us by a few vivid strokes. It may be remarked, however, that the field which he chose for the exercise of the higher efforts of his genius was unappropriated by any name of marked celebrity, and that there was both originality and boldness in the thought that he could win his way to fame through apparently so unpromising a channel as the Scandinavian mythology, and by the adaptation to modern verse of the stern thoughts and sanguinary aspirations of the northern Scalds. It is obvious that in so daring an enterprise anything short of entire success would have been fatal to the reputation of its author, and that upon a theme, at once so novel and so vast, mediocrity would not have been tolerated; and it has always appeared to me, that to have triumphed so completely over the latent prejudices of society, and to have extorted the reluctant praise of the