CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Here, for the present, I suspend my labors. The poetical commonwealth of England is so rich, that it is impossible to bring a tenth part of its affluence within the scope of any ordinary work. This work is not intended, by any means, for a biography, far less a biographical dictionary, to which, by attempting to include all, it would at once have been reduced. Detail would have been out of the question, and the main interest therefore destroyed. It is a work on the residences of eminent poets, including so much biographical and critical remark as seemed necessary to the full elucidation of the subject, or of the character of particular poets. Among both past and present poets, there are some whose residences are little known; others whose residences, when known, have little of picturesque about them, or which are unattended by circumstances out of the ordinary routine. To detail merely that such a man lived in such a street, and such a house, would have answered no purpose, and could only weary. I resolved, therefore, to dismiss the dramatic authors at once, as a large body requiring separate treatment, and to add such poets in general as my researches in the main might show had homes and haunts, and circumstances associated with them, of such a nature as should make them matters of public interest.
Among the past there are numbers of poets whose residences undoubtedly will furnish further topics—as Herrick, Waller, Parnell, Drummond of Hawthornden, Collins, Dyer, Young, Akenside, Allan Ramsay, Beattie, Pollock, and others. Among our illustrious cotemporaries, how many yet come crowding upon the mind, enow to create of themselves the fame of a generation. The moment we name them, it will be seen that the introduction into these volumes has been, in my mind, no evidence of my opinion of their relative merits. The question only has been, have these poets any thing connected with their residences which will stand forth in its interest beyond the ordinary grade, and can that information be procured in time? In these cases it has been thought better to sacrifice some degree of chronological order, rather than to delay these volumes longer. The subjects already included have occupied me several years, and have led me to almost every extremity of the United Kingdom. Unfortunately for the inquirer, poets do not happen to have been born or to have lived just where it was most convenient to reach them. They have not, by any means, lived all in one place, nor in straight lines and rows, so that we might take them in rapid and easy succession. On the contrary, they have compelled me to traverse the kingdom from London to the North of Scotland; from the Giant's Causeway to the West of Ireland: there is scarcely an English county into which I have not had to follow them, and often into places most obscure and difficult of access. So far, however, the labor is accomplished: and when I turn to the names of those of our day, I see that the harvest is yet far from reaped. Independent of the dramatic poets, as Milman, Knowles, Bulwer, Talfourd, Bell, Miss Mitford, Marston, Herraud, Taylor, the author of Philip van Artevelde, and others, we have yet to include in our catalogue many a brilliant name in the general walks of poetry—the venerable Bowles, Hood, Croly, Monckton Milnes, Bowring, Mackay, Philip Bailey, author of Festus, one of the most striking and original spirits of the age; Horne, the author of the fine poem of Orion, and of ballads full of vigor, originality, and a sound and healthy sentiment; Mrs. Norton; Browning, dark but sterling and strong, with his gifted wife, late Elizabeth Barrett, whose poems reflect in the clear depths of a profound and brooding intellect the onward spirit of the age. Lockhart, with his spirited Spanish Ballads; Macaulay, with his stirring Lays of Rome; Alaric Watts, with his Lyrics, full of fine fancy, feeling, and domestic affection; these, and Delta of Blackwood's Magazine, Tennant, Motherwell, and many others, come rushing up in our recollection. There are some to whom the world has not yet done justice, whom it will, one day, be a high gratification to introduce—such as William Scott, the author of that beautiful and very intellectual poem, The Year of the World; and Moile, the author of State Trials, a work of singular beauty, and which I rejoice to see advanced to a second edition. And are there not, too, others, some of those who have risen, like Burns, from the ranks of the laboring people, whose homes and haunts might be most interesting to trace? There is Thomas Cooper, the author of The Purgatory of Suicides, who could unfold, undoubtedly, some singular scenes in his track of life; there are Bloomfield, and Nicoll, and Clare, now the inmate of an asylum, and others, who could furnish us with a scene or a passing glimpse, perhaps, of more thrilling interest, like some of those in the histories of John Prince and William Thom, than any that occur in more elevated walks. Many of our younger and more brilliant cotemporaries, it must, at the same time, be recollected, have yet their homes and haunts to make. These will, in all probability, become the subjects of a later pen. Here, then, for the present, I dismiss these volumes, and await, in hope and confidence, the unfoldings of my future progress.
Scott's Tomb, in Dryburgh Abbey.
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