Seem from hence ascending fires."
As Wordsworth said, "Dyer's beauties are innumerable and of a high order." It is very surprising that nothing should have been said about Shenstone and the Wartons, about Scott of Amwell, Jago, Crowe and Bowles, all of whom are, in various ways, remarkable as descriptive poets. And certainly Mr. Palgrave does scant justice to Cowper; his touch may be prosaic, but he always had his eye on the object, and his landscape lives. Surely, by the way, Mr. Palgrave is mistaken in supposing that Shelley apparently understood Alastor to mean a "wanderer"; he understood it, as the preface shows, to mean, what it means so often in Greek, "one under the spell of an avenging deity."
Here we must break off. Mr. Palgrave's is an important work, and it is the duty, therefore, of a critic to review it seriously, in the hope that, should it reach a second edition, which may be confidently anticipated, Mr. Palgrave may be disposed to do a little more justice to his most interesting subject.
Since this article was written Mr. Palgrave's lamented death has unhappily rendered all hope of what was anticipated in the last paragraph, vain. But the review has been reprinted, and with some additions, in the hope that it may not be unacceptable as a contribution, however slight and imperfect, to a subject of great interest to lovers of poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] See Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Carm. Pop. xxix.
[33] Nauck, Trag. Græc. Frag., p. 473.