"Address to the Deil," engaged me by turns; and then the strange,
uproarious, unequalled "Death and Dr. Hornbook." This, I said, is
something new in the literature of the world. Shakspeare possessed above
all men the power of instant and yet natural transition, from the
lightly gay to the deeply pathetic--from the wild to the humorous; but
the opposite states of feeling which he induces, however close the
neighbourhood, are ever distinct and separate; the oil and the water,
though contained in the same vessel, remain apart. Here, however, for
the first time, they mix and incorporate, and yet each retains its whole
nature and full effect. I need hardly remind the reader that the feat
has been repeated, and even with more completeness, in the wonderful,
"Tam o' Shanter." I read on. "The Cotter's Saturday Night" filled my
whole soul--my heart throbbed and my eyes moistened; and never before
did I feel half so proud of my country, or know half so well on what
score it was I did best in feeling proud. I had perused the entire
volume from beginning to end, ere I remembered I had not taken supper,
and that it was more than time to go to bed.

But it is no part of my plan to furnish a critique on the poems of my
friend. I merely strive to recall the thoughts and feelings which my
first perusal of them awakened, and thus only as a piece of mental
history. Several months elapsed from this evening ere I could hold them
out from me sufficiently at arms' length, as it were, to judge of their
more striking characteristics. At times the amazing amount of thought,
feeling, and imagery which they contained--their wonderful continuity of
idea, without gap or interstice--seemed to me most to distinguish them.
At times they reminded me, compared with the writings of smoother poets,
of a collection of medals which, unlike the thin polished coin of the
kingdom, retained all the significant and pictorial roughness of the
original die. But when, after the lapse of weeks, months, years, I found
them rising up in my heart on every occasion, as naturally as if they
had been the original language of all my feelings and emotions--when I
felt that, instead of remaining outside my mind, as it were, like the
writings of other poets, they had so amalgamated themselves with my
passions, my sentiments, my ideas, that they seemed to have become
portions of my very self--I was led to a final conclusion regarding
them. Their grand distinguishing characteris