Southey, forgetting the ungentler theme of "battle field" amidst the sublimity of rock and lake. Campbell, pouring from his plaintive shell a tender eulogy to his northern home—a glowing tissue of
Dreams Of the Highland mountains, and echoing streams,
And broken glades, breathing their balm.
—Scott, terrifically depicting a Sassenagh tournament, or inditing a stirring appeal to the "blue bonnets," to settle some Border broil. James Hogg, "the Scottish Virgil," on whom has surely fallen the mantle of inspiration from the Mantuan bard, coming forth in all the richness of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," from the misty hill where he dominates "the king of shepherds." Delta, elegantly pensive, sighing beneath the blighted trees which flourished over his boyhood; and listening to the rhetoric of the changing seasons. Alaric Watts, "the fireside bard," giving us a touching apostrophe to his "youngling of the flock," in melting verse, warm from that kindred fancy
"Whose blessed words
Can bid the sweetest dreams arise;
Awaken feeling's tenderest chords,
And drown in tears of joy the eyes."
T.K. Hervey, following in the same bright path, or enthusiastically rapt amidst the beauty and bloom of Australia.—Bernard Barton, bringing us snatches of vernal philosophy, gathered in the silence of murky woods, and the solitude of perfumed meadows.—John Clare, swearing everlasting fealty to his beauteous Mary, by the elm-shadowed cottage of her bowery home; thanking heaven for the benison of love and rurality.—Richardson, the poet of India, sonnetizing amidst the superb cupolas and temples which gem the banks of the deified Ganges, longing to exchange his fevered abode for salubrious England.—Pringle transforming the repulsive features of a South African desert into matter for piteous song; and illumining, by the brightness of his genius, the terrible picture of Caffre barbarity and degradation.—Roscoe, revelling in the sweets of Italian lore, his own lips "touched with a live coal" from the altar of poesy.—Washington Irving, grasping at the intellect, and speculating on the wit and fancy, of all climes; so speedily transplanting himself (bodily as well as mentally) from the back woods of America to the land of Columbus—from the vineyards of France to the valleys of Yorkshire—as almost to induce a belief in his power of ubiquity.—Allan Cunningham, sympathizing with the sorrows of one "who never told her love," and weaving a tearful elegy over her flower-strewn grave, or painting the fiercer incidents of piratical warfare, on the ocean's solitudes.—Felicia Hemans, her lyre musically blending the song of sounding streams with the spontaneous melody of the "feathered choir" composing an epicedium to the memory of departed days, and proving her glorious claims to the poetic character, "creation's heir."—Mary Russell Mitford, great in her histrionic portraitures of liberty, whether patrician or plebeian; yet not forgetting in her dramatic wanderings, her happy village; but drawing us, "by the cords of love," to the rustic scene; amplifying that fine axiom of the Stratford bard—
"Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade