No More Learning

Poem 163.

_fancied green_: cherished garden.


Poem 164.

Nothing except his surname appears recoverable with regard to the author
of this truly noble poem: It should be noted as exhibiting a rare
excellence,--the climax of simple sublimity.

It is a lesson of high instructiveness to examine the essential
qualities which give first-rate poetical rank to lyrics such as
"To-morrow" or "Sally in our Alley," when compared with poems written
(if the phrase may be allowed) in keys so different as the subtle
sweetness of Shelley, the grandeur of Gray and Milton, or the delightful
Pastoralism of the Elizabethan verse. Intelligent readers will gain
hence a clear understanding of the vast imaginative, range of
Poetry;--through what wide oscillations the mind and the taste of a
nation may pass;--how many are the roads which Truth and Nature open to
Excellence.


Poem 166.

_stout Cortez_: History requires here Balboa: (A. T. ) It may be noticed,
that to find in Chapman's Homer the "pure serene" of the original, the
reader must bring with him the imagination of the youthful poet;--he
must be "a Greek himself," as Shelley finely said of Keats.


Poem 169.

The most tender and true of Byron's smaller poems.


Poem 170.

This poem, with 236, exemplifies the peculiar skill with which Scott
employs proper names: nor is there a surer sign of high poetical genius.


Poem 191.
The Editor in this and in other instances has risked the addition (or
the change) of a Title, that the aim of the verses following may be
grasped more clearly and immediately.


Poem 198.

_Nature's Eremite_: refers to the fable of the Wandering Jew. --This
beautiful sonnet was the last word of a poet deserving the title
"marvellous boy" in a much higher sense than Chatterton. If the
fulfilment may ever safely be prophesied from the promise, England
appears to have lost in Keats one whose gifts in Poetry have rarely been
surpassed. Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, had their lives been
closed at twenty-five, would (so far as we know) have left poems of less
excellence and hope than the youth who, from the petty school and the
London surgery, passed at once to a place with them of "high collateral
glory. "


Poem 201.

It is impossible not to regret that Moore has written so little in this
sweet and genuinely national style.


Poem 202.

A masterly example of Byron's command of strong thought and close
reasoning in verse:--as the next is equally characteristic of Shelley's
wayward intensity, and 204 of the dramatic power, the vital
identification of the poet with other times and characters, in which
Scott is second only to Shakespeare.


Poem 209.

Bonnivard, a Genevese, was imprisoned by the Duke of Savoy in Chillon on
the lake of Geneva for his courageous defence of his country against the
tyranny with which Piedmont threatened it during the first half of the
seventeenth century. This noble Sonnet is worthy to stand near Milton's
on the Vaudois massacre.


Poem 210.

Switzerland was usurped by the French under Napoleon in 1800: Venice in
1797 (211).


Poem 215.