sleeping Jacob, has a 'lifted, mighty
plume,' and his eloquence is always as classic as it is
sounding; but it is, probably, as much the public's fault as
his, that he has never equalled his first poem, 'Paris in
1815,' which now appears a basis without a building. Maturin
has left a powerful passage or two, which may be compared to a
feat performed by the victim of some strong disease, to imitate
which no healthy or sane person would, could, or durst attempt.
James Montgomery will live by his smaller poems--his larger are
long lyrics--and when was a long lyric any other than tedious?
Hunt has sung many a joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty,
but produced no high or lasting poem. Pollok has aimed at a
higher object than almost any poet of his day; he has sought,
like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic form, and to
attract to it poetic admirers: he did so in good faith, and he
expended great talents and a young life, in the execution; but,
unfortunately, he confounded Christianity with one of its
narrowest shapes, and hence the book, though eloquent in
passages, and dear to a large party, is rather a long and
powerful, though unequal and gloomy sermon, than a poem; he has
shed the sunshine of his genius upon his own peculiar notions,
far more strongly than on general truths; and the spirit of the
whole performance may be expressed in the words of Burns,
slightly altered,--'Thunder-tidings of damnation.' _His_ and
_our_ friend, Thomas Aird, has a much subtler, more original
and genial mind than Pollok's, and had he enjoyed a tithe of
the same recognition, he might have produced a Christian epic
on a far grander scale; as it is, his poems are fragmentary and
episodical, although Dante's 'Inferno' contains no pictures
more tremendously distinct, yet ideal, than his 'Devil's Dream
upon Mount Acksbeck. Tennyson is a greater Calvinist in one
sense than either of the Scotch poets we have named--he owes
more to the general faith of others in his genius than to any
special or strong works of his own; but let us be dumb, he is
now Laureate--the crowned grasshopper of a summer day! Bailey
of 'Festus' has a vast deal more power than Tennyson, who is
only his delicate, consumptive brother; but 'Festus' seems
either different from, or greater tha