1-14 



Mr. Sansom read extracts from a letter, received by him from Mr. 

 RicHAED Speuce, dated San Carlos, del Eio Negro Venezuela, 27th 

 August, 1853, detailing his progress in the investigation of the Botany 

 of the Amazon, particularly as regards the Musci and Hepaticte. 



Mr. F. W. BLOXAii read a Paper 



OX THE MINOR POETS OF THE DAY. 



After contending for an increasing taste for and love of Poetry at 

 the present time, and its beneficial influence in civilizing and refining 

 society, he took a rapid survey of what he deemed the distinctive 

 phases of the minor Poetry of the earlier and later Stuart and Hano- 

 verian reigns. Passing to the verses of our own times, he claimed for 

 them a marked and special purpose in the illustration of social kind- 

 liness ; in the correction of public and political errors and abuses ; and 

 in the aspiration for a purer, a juster, and a more satisfying era. 



Adverting to the peculiar beauties and defects of the best American 

 poets, Longfellow, Whittier, and Poe, he devoted the remainder of his 

 Paper to a minute criticism of the works of those whom he considered 

 the leading exemplars, or otherwise, of the modern English school, 

 viz. : Tennyson, and his chief disciple, Elizabeth Bari'et Browning, 

 Alexander Smith, Matthew Arnold, and others. 



Alluding to Tennyson's gi'eat Poem, " In Memoriam," he animad- 

 verted upon the unfairness and want of discrimination with which it 

 had been reviewed in certain high quarters, and contended that a due 

 attention to the context would generally unlock his alleged obscurity of 

 meaning and mysticism ; the poetry of mysticism, however so much 

 excepted against, he regarded as but a state of transition to a clearer 

 atmosphere, agreeing with a modern eloquent writer, " That when the 

 long passionate wail of Byronism had died away, there came an age 

 whose motto was 'Work,'" but now, by degi-ees, we are beginning to 

 feel that even work is not all our being needs, and therefore has been 

 born what has been called the Poetry of Mysticism. For just as 

 the reaction from the age of Formalism was the Poetry of Passion, 

 so the I'eaction from the age of Science is the Poetry of Mysticism. 



