startles us with the depth of our secret thoughts—he never brings to our remembrance all that our own existence has had of poetry or passion—the earnestness of early hope, the bitterness of after-disappointment—like Byron. But he sits by the fireside or wanders through the fields, and calls from their daily affections and sympathies foundations whereon to erect a scheme of the widest benevolence. He looks forth on the beautiful scenery amid which he has dwelt, and links with it a thousand ties of the human loveliness of thought: I would say, his excellence is the moral sublime."
"The common people of England," observed Lord Mandeville, "seem to me to have less feeling, taste, or whatever we please to call it, for poetry, than almost any other country. Look at the common songs of the Scotch—verse "familiar as household words"—what touches of exquisite feeling—what natural yet delicate thoughts! Look at those of the Irish peasantry—what fine and original imagery is to be met with! But the run of English ballads are as vulgar in expression as they are coarse or common in idea. No nation takes a higher poetical rank than our own—how, therefore, do you account for this?"
