rds--

"Blessings be with him, and eternal praise,
The _poet_, who on earth has made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays."

Although, as already remarked, not the poet of the age--it has, in our
view, been, on the whole, fortunate for poetry and society, that for seven
years William Wordsworth has been poet-laureate. We live in a transition
state in respect to both. The march and the music are both changing--nor
are they yet fully attuned to each other--and, meanwhile, it was desirable
that a poet should preside, whose strains formed a fine "musical
confusion," like that of old in the "wood of Crete"--of the old and the
new--of the Conservative and the Democratic--of the golden age, supposed by
many to have existed in the past, and of the millennium, expected by more
in the future--a compromise of the two poetical styles besides--the one,
which clung to the hoary tradition of the elders, and the other, which
accepted innovation because it was new, and boldness because it was
daring, and mysticism because it was dark--not truth, _though_ new; beauty,
_though_ bold; and insight, _though_ shadowy and shy. Nay, we heartily
wish, had it been for nothing else than this, that his reign had lasted
for many years longer, till, perchance, the discordant elements in our
creeds and literature, had been somewhat harmonized. As it is, there must
now be great difficulty in choosing his successor to the laureateship; nor
is there, we think, a single name in our poetry whose elevation to the
office would give universal, or even general, satisfaction.

Milman is a fine poet, but not a great one. Croly is, or ought to have
been, a great poet; but is not sufficiently known, nor _en rapport_ with
the spirit of the time. Bowles is dead--Moore dying. Lockhart and Macaulay
have written clever ballads; but no shapely, continuous, and masterly
poem. John Wilson, _alias_ Christopher North, has more poetry in his eye,
brow, head, hair, figure, voice, talk, and the prose of his "Noetes," than
any man living; but his verse, on the whole, is mawkish--and his being a
Scotchman will be a stumbling-block to many, though not to us; for, had
Campbell been alive, we should have said at once, let him be laureate--if
manly grace, classic power, and genuine popularity, form qualifications
for the office. Tennyson, considering all he has done, has received his
full meed already. Let him and Leigh Hunt repose under the shadow o