ore than he would of any other affections of
his private heart. There is not a reader in England but that little
creature will be a bond of union between the author and him; and he will
say of Charles Dickens, as the woman just now, "GOD BLESS HIM!" What a
feeling is this for a writer to be able to inspire, and what a reward to
reap.

M. A. T.

CHARLES KINGSLEY ON ALEXANDER
SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE

[From _Fraser's Magazine_, October, 1853]

_Poems_, by ALEXANDER SMITH. London, Bogue. 1853

On reading this little book, and considering all the exaggerated praise
and exaggerated blame which have been lavished on it, we could not help
falling into many thoughts about the history of English poetry for the
last forty years, and about its future destiny. Great poets, even true
poets, are becoming more and more rare among us. There are those even
who say that we have none; an assertion which, as long as Mr. Tennyson
lives, we shall take the liberty of denying. But, were he, which Heaven
forbid, taken from us, whom have we to succeed him? And he, too, is
rather a poet of the sunset than of the dawn--of the autumn than of the
spring. His gorgeousness is that of the solemn and fading year; not of
its youth, full of hope, freshness, gay and unconscious life. Like some
stately hollyhock or dahlia of this month's gardens, he endures while
all other flowers are dying; but all around is winter--a mild one,
perhaps, wherein a few annuals or pretty field weeds still linger on;
but, like all mild winters, especially prolific in fungi, which, too,
are not without their gaudiness, even their beauty, although bred only
from the decay of higher organisms, the plagiarists of the vegetable
world....

"What matter, after all?" one says to oneself in despair, re-echoing Mr.
Carlyle. "Man was not sent into this world to write poetry. What we want
is truth--what we want is activity. Of the latter we have enough in all
conscience just now. Let the former need be provided for by honest and
righteous history, and as for poets, let the dead bury their dead." ...
And yet, after all, man will write poetry, in spite of Mr. Carlyle: nay,
beings who are not men, but mere forked radishes, will write it. Man is
a poetry-writing animal. Perhaps he was meant to be one. At all events,
he can no more be kept from it than from eating. It is better, with Mr.
Carlyle's leave, to believe that the existence of poetry indicates some
universal human hunge