EXTRACTS FROM CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS.
Blackwood’s Magazine.—“In our reviews of poetical productions, the better efforts of genius hold out to us a task at once more useful and delightful than those of inferior merit. In the former the beautiful predominate, and expose while they excuse the blemishes. But the public taste would receive no benefit from a detail of mediocrity, relieved only by the censure of faults uncompensated by excellencies. We have great pleasure in calling the attention of our readers to the beautiful poem before us, which we believe to be the work of the same lady who last year put her name to the second edition of another poem on a kindred subject, ‘The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy’—namely, Mrs Hemans of North Wales. That the author’s fame has not altogether kept pace with her merit, we are inclined to think is a reproach to the public. Poetry is at present experiencing the fickleness of fashion, and may be said to have had its day. Very recently, the reading public, as the phrase is, was immersed in poetry, but seems to have had enough; and, excepting always that portion of it who are found to relish genuine poetry on its own intrinsic account, and will never tire of the exquisite enjoyment which it affords, the said public seldom read poetry at all.
“But so little is that excitement which the bulk of readers covet necessarily connected with poetry, that these readers have tired even of romances in a metrical form, and are regarding all their late rhythmical favourites alike, with that sort of ingratitude with which repletion would lead them to regard a banquet when the dishes are removing from the table. But this is no proof that these great poets have forfeited their title to be admired. They are fixed orbs, which stand just where they did, and shine just as they were wont, although they seem to decline to the world, which revolves the opposite way. But if the world will turn from the poet, whatever be his merit, there is an end of his popularity, inasmuch as the most approved conductor of the latter is the multitude, as essentially as is the air of the sound of his voice. Profit will also fail from the lack of purchasers; and poetry, high as it may intrinsically seem, must fall, commercially speaking, to its ancient proverbially unprofitable level. Yet poetry will still be poetry, however it may cease to pay; and although the acclaim of multitudes is one thing, and the still small voice of genuine taste and feeling another, the nobler incense of the latter will ever be its reward.
“Our readers will now cease to wonder that an author like the present, who has had no higher aim than to regale the imagination with imagery, warm the heart with sentiment and feeling, and delight the ear with music, without the foreign aid of tale or fable, has hitherto written to a select few, and passed almost unnoticed by the multitude.
“With the exception of Lord Byron, who has made the theme peculiarly his own, no one has more feelingly contrasted ancient with modern Greece.
“The poem on the Restoration of the Louvre Collection, has, of course, more allusions to ancient Rome; and nothing can be more spirited than the passages in which the author invokes for modern Rome the return of her ancient glories. In a cursory but graphic manner, some of the most celebrated of the ancient statues are described. Referring our readers, with great confidence, to the works themselves, our extracts may be limited.”
Edinburgh Monthly Review.—“The grand act of retribution—the restoration of the treasures of the Louvre—occasioned Mrs Hemans’ first publication. ‘Modern Greece’ next appeared, and soared still higher into the regions of beauty and pathos. It is a highly promising symptom, that each new effort of her genius excels its predecessor. The present volume strikingly confirms this observation, and leads us to think that we have yet seen no more than the trials of her strength.”