present time, if the reception given to Mr. Smith's poems is to be
taken as a fair expression of "the public taste."

Now, let it be fairly understood, Mr. Alexander Smith is not the
object of our reproaches: but Mr. Alexander Smith's models and
flatterers. Against him we have nothing whatsoever to say; for him,
very much indeed.

Very young, as is said, self-educated, drudging for his daily bread
in some dreary Glasgow prison-house of brick and mortar, he has seen
the sky, the sun and moon--and, moreover, the sea, report says, for
one day in his whole life; and this is nearly the whole of his
experience in natural objects. And he has felt, too painfully for
his peace of mind, the contrast between his environment and that of
others--his means of culture and that of others--and, still more
painfully, the contrast between his environment and culture, and that
sense of beauty and power of melody which he does not deny that he
has found in himself, and which no one can deny who reads his poems
fairly; who reads even merely the opening page and key-note of the
whole:


For as a torrid sunset burns with gold
Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul
A passion burns from basement unto cope.
Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee
As passionately my rich laden years,
My bubble pleasures, and my awful joys,
_As Hero gave her trembling sighs to find
Delicious death on wet Leander's lip_.