350 HENRY KIRKE WHITE's REMAINS. 



If the question, however, turn only on the propriety of 

 giving to a poem a name which must be aclinowledged to 

 be entirely inappropriate, and to which it can have no 

 sort of claim, I must confess that it is manifestly inde- 

 fensible ; and we must then either pitch upon another ap- 

 pellation for our quatorzain, or banish it from our lan- 

 guage ; a measure which every lover of true poetry must 

 sincerely lament. 



MELANCHOLY HOURS.— No. VI. 



*.* Full many a floTPer is born to blush unseen, 

 And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 



Gray. 



Poetry is a blossom of very delicate growth ; it requires 

 the maturing influence of vernal suns, and every en- 

 couragement of culture and attention, to bring it to its 

 natural perfection. The pursuits of the mathematician 

 or the mechanical genius, are such as require rather 

 strength and insensibility of mind than that exquisite 

 and finely wrought susceptibility, which invariably marks 

 the temperament of the true poet ; and it is for this 

 reason, that while men of science have, not unfrequently, 

 arisen from the abodes of poverty and labour, very few 

 legitimate children of the Muse have ever emerged from 

 the shades of hereditary obscurity. 



It is painful to reflect how many a bard now lies, 

 nameless and forgotten, in the narrow house, who, had 

 he been born to competence and. leisure, might have 

 usurped the laurels from the most distinguished person- 

 ages in the temple of Fame. The very consciousness of 

 merit itself often acts in direct opposition to a stimulus 

 to exertion, by exciting that mournful indignation at 

 supposititious neglect which urges a sullen concealment 

 of talents, and drives its possessors to that misanthropic 



