but he practically conformed to the Church of England. In politics he was Conservative. As a man, he was generally respected and beloved. One of his friends, who affirms his belief that "a more noble, generous, and high-minded creature never breathed," remarks that "probably his failing was an excitability and restlessness which indicated that Irish blood was in his veins." This excitability carried him in 1819 to Edinburgh, to retort gravely upon the banter of his Blackwood critic; and to the same spirit we may trace his caricature of Mr. Landor's Porson and Southey, in 1842.[1] As the "son-in-law of the calumniated poet," he felt called on to resent, with no slight "appearance of contempt," the "odious misapplication" of the author of Gebir's powers in "his gross attack on Wordsworth." With such a temperament, it was happy for Mr. Quillinan that his poetical sympathies were with the Wordsworth school, rather than with Byron and other Kraftmänner. He never attained the sublime repose which consecrates the philosophy of his great exemplar, but unquestionably that philosophy must have had a profound and soothing influence of restraint upon his inner life, as well as upon his verses. How carefully he modelled his manner upon that of Wordsworth—unless, indeed, the imitation was an unconscious habit—may be seen in his lines, "Wild Flowers of Westmoreland," "The Birch of Silver How," some of the sonnets, &c. The following illustrates his more independent manner:
To Miss .Thou wert to me a mystery of not unpleasing dread;
Thou art to me a history that I have quickly read!
There is a spell upon thee which I would not read aloud
To any but thy secret ear within an arbour's shroud.
For though it might be quickly said, thy cheek would change its hue
If 'twere exprest by more than one, or heard by more than two.
It is not guilt, it is not shame; though leading oft to both
In breasts where sensibility is prodigal of growth.
Thou art not happy, though thy smile would fain the truth deny;
I know too much of sorrow's guile to trust a laughing eye:
Thine is a genuine woman's heart; all woman to the core;
Beware; be warn'd before we part! for we shall meet no more,
(Though not perchance without a sigh shall memory oft retrace
That fine pale air of intellect and melancholy grace.)
Farewell, forget me if thou wilt, while pleasures round thee bloom,
Remember me when thou art left in solitude and gloom.
By way of relief to this minor key, we quote
From an Album.Lady, are you dark or fair,
Owner of this pretty book?
What's the colour of your hair?
Are you blithe and debonnaire,
Or demure of look?
- ↑ Mr. Lander's only reply seems to have been a pun on his adversary's Quill-inanities,—not an original one, however, for Quill-inane was a bit of spelling and sarcasm of thirty years' standing, with the genesis of which, the lieutenant of dragoons had himself made Mr. Landor acquainted at the time. See "Memoir," p. xxxiii.
