NOVEMBER. 369 



truly a "harp of sorrow." It breathes per- 

 petually of melancholy tenderness. It is the 

 voice of age lamenting over departed glory ; 

 over beauty and strength cut down in their 

 prime; and it comes to us from the dimness 

 of antiquity, and from a land of hills and 

 woods, of mists and meteors, from the heath 

 of mossy and grey stones, the roaring of moun- 

 tain-streams, the blasted tree, the withered 

 leaves, and the thistle's beard, that flies on the 

 wind of autumn. Am I told that it is merely 

 a pleasant, modern fiction ? What then ? If 

 so, it is one of the pleasantest fictions that ever 

 were wrought ; and the man who made it one 

 of the happiest geniuses. For years did he 

 toil to acquire the art and the name of a poet ; 

 but in vain. His conceptions were meagre; 

 his style monotonous and common-place; and 

 through the multitude of verses which he has 

 left, we look in vain for aught which might 

 justify the manufacture of them; but, in a 

 happy hour, he burst at once into a most ori- 

 ginal style of poetry into a language which 

 shows not symptoms of feeling, but melts and 

 glows with it into poetic imagery ; which is not 

 scattered sparingly and painfully, but with a 

 2 B 



