er!

The actual poetic value of his verses is not first-rate by any means.
He is far inferior to Burns in range of subject, as he is in humour
and pathos. Indeed, there is very little of these latter qualities
in him anywhere--rather playfulness, flashes of childlike fun, as in
"The Provost," and "Bonnie Bessie Lee." But he has attained a
mastery over English, a simplicity and quiet which Burns never did;
and also, we need not say, a moral purity. His "Poems illustrative
of the Scotch peasantry" are charming throughout--alive and bright
with touches of real humanity, and sympathy with characters
apparently antipodal to his own.

His more earnest poems are somewhat tainted with that cardinal fault
of his school, of which he steered so clear in prose--fine words; yet
he never, like the Corn-Law Rhymer, falls a cursing. He is evidently
not a good hater even of "priests and kings, and aristocrats, and
superstition;" or perhaps he worked all that froth safely over and
off in debating-club speeches and leading articles, and left us, in
these poems, the genuine metheglin of his inner heart, sweet, clear,
and strong; for there is no form of lovable or right thing which this
man has come across, which he does not seem to have appreciated.
Besides pure love and the beauties of nature--those on which every
man of poetic power, and a great many of none, as a matter of course,
have a word to say--he can feel for and with the drunken beggar, and
the warriors of the ruined manor-house, and the monks of the abbey,
and the old mailed Normans with their "priest with cross and counted
beads in the little Saxon chapel"--things which a Radical editor
might have been excused for passing by with a sneer.

His verses to his wife are a delicious little glimpse of Eden; and
his "People's Anthem" rises into somewhat of true grandeur by virtue
of simplicity:

Lord, from Thy blessed throne,
Sorrow look down upon!
God save the Poor!
Teach them true liberty--
Make them from tyrants free--
Let their homes happy be!
God save the Poor!

The arms of wicked men
Do Thou with might restrain--
God save the Poor!
Raise Thou their lowliness--
Succour Thou their distress--
Thou whom the meanest bless!
God save the Poor!

Give them stanch honesty--
Let their pride manly be--
God save the Poor!
Help them to hold the right;
Give them both truth and might,
Lord of all LIFE and LIGHT!
God save the Poor!