The Traveller_--

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow"--

without feeling that the words could only have sprung from very
genius. We have here that uniqueness that signalises and divides.
Throughout there is that sincerity of sentiment which separates and
guides those deeper natures who amid all joys know the vein of sorrow
prevailing in the human heart. From yearning aspiration comes that
exaltation which connotes the higher character. It is this element
that we are apt to forget in our humorists. Lamb, Hood, Thackeray, and
Goldsmith, had strains of reflection which went more into the very
heart of being and not being, fulfilling and failing, living and
dying, than we can ever discover in those who decorate their days with
a clamant seriousness. That semblance of earnestness accepted by the
populace often lacks poetic force and sublime sanction. _The
Traveller_ attains the heights and depths of the Divine communion that
unites poetry with prayer. The speeding pen, the quivering lips, the
moving mind, and beating heart, are slight contrasted with this
prayerful yearning of the unseen and spiritual. Poetry is the
unutterable, yet sweetly and strangely uttered voicing of the soul
ineffable.

_She Stoops to Conquer_ inspired Sheridan with his inimitable dramatic
conceptions. _The Traveller_ roused Byron to the heights he attained
in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." _The Traveller_ heralds an era and
proclaims the true imperial note, clear and triumphant. If poetry be
the prophetic vein, calling an age to realise its aspirations,
foreseeing, forewarning, and foremaking coming time, then here the
poet, the maker, and the creator, speaks. Nor kings nor warriors
rule, but thinkers, and amongst these rulers in the high realm of
thought and spiritual power, highest of all in every age and
clime--the poet! Hidden in the soul's depths we discover an
earnestness which in the outward light-hearted man we fail to
recognise. That one we thought we knew so well, we find, too late, we
knew, if not altogether ill, at least too slightingly. The poem is
doubtless too didactic at times to always move consummate delight.
There is a ring more Latin than English in the line,

"Wealth, commerce, honour, liberty, content."

Yet even in this we see how words can weigh with meaning, and not one
prove wasted, but each contributes to the fulfilling of the complete
intention. This line has that poetic power which in one single flash
can sho