As children cowslips—the more pains they take,
The work more withers …
… Alas! near all the birds
Will sing at dawn, and yet we do not take
The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.”
While the popular magazines and the newspapers are daily lowering the standard of taste, and degrading and corrupting the sources of literary enjoyment as well as of personal honor and actual virtue, the regret is irresistible that a pleasing versifier like Jean Ingelow should not contribute more to a total of general reading into which what is known as “popular poetry” so largely enters.
[131] Jean Ingelow’s Poems. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
[132] Essays in Criticism, p. 334.
[133] Fly-Leaves. By C. S. C.