Adelaide Anne Procter
(1825-1864).
Adelaide Anne Procter, daughter of Barry Cornwall, was a pleasing writer of the type of Mrs. Hemans, that is to say, feminine in the less flattering sense. There is a certain grace in her verse, but it is altogether destitute of weight and power of thought. Most of her poems were originally contributed to Dickens’s papers, Household Words and All the Year Round.
William Caldwell Roscoe
(1823-1859).
William Caldwell Roscoe was at once lyrist, dramatist and critic, but failed to achieve greatness in any of these lines. If Roscoe had lived longer he might possibly have justified the opinion of his friends; but his actual performance, though graceful, is not weighty.
William Bell Scott
(1811-1890).
William Bell Scott was a poet-painter, related to and in general sympathy with the Pre-Raphaelites, but never a member of the brotherhood. Scott’s verse is characterised by mysticism; but mysticism in verse demands very skilful expression, and Scott’s power over language was not sufficient. Perhaps his best poem is The Sphinx.
Menella Bute Smedley
(1820-1877).
Menella Bute Smedley wrote both prose and verse well, and occasionally with distinction. Though an invalid, she published several volumes of poetry, and contributed to her sister, Mrs. Hart’s Child-World and Poems written for a Child. Miss Smedley, like so many female writers, is in many of her poems markedly patriotic, and, though sometimes too rhetorical, she is, when stirred, successful in pieces of this type.
George Walter Thornbury
(1828-1876).
George Walter Thornbury, historian of the buccaneers, was also a poet who, in his Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads (1857) showed considerable skill in rapid and spirited narrative. The best of his later poems are gathered up in Legendary and Historic Ballads (1875).