Phantoms, that upward point, before him pass,
As in the cave athwart the wizard's glass;
They, that on youth a grace, a luster shed,
Of every age, the living and the dead!"
Still this poem of Human Life is but the life of one section of our fellow-men—that of the gentry. It is curious, that it does not descend into the midst of the multitude, and give us any of those deep and somber shades which abound so much in Crabbe. The reason is obvious. Crabbe had seen it and felt it. He had been born among it, and had himself to struggle. Rogers has gone on that easy path of life that is paved with gold, and "the huts where poor men lie," therefore, probably never for a moment protruded themselves through the charmed circle of his poetic inspiration. Happily for him his are fully the Pleasures of Memory. Yet it is not the less true, or less honorable, that in actual life, there is no man who has remembered the struggling more sympathetically, nor has held out so generous a hand to the aid of unfriended merit.
From the Voyage of Columbus the following extract will afford an example of the beautiful description and rich imaginative power which abound in that poem:—
THE NEW WORLD.
"Long on the deep the mists of morning lay,
Then rose, revealing, as they rolled away,
Half-circling hills, whose everlasting woods