more tunably in the echo of Mr. Arnold's song, that beautiful song in
"Empedocles on Etna," which has the perfection of sculpture and the charm
of the purest colour. It is full of the silver light of dawn among the
hills, of the music of the loch's dark, slow waves among the reeds, of
the scent of the heather, and the wet tresses of the birch.

Surely, then, we have had great poets living among us, but the fountains
of their song are silent, or flow but rarely over a clogged and stony
channel. And who is there to succeed the two who are gone, or who shall
be our poet, if the Master be silent? That is a melancholy question,
which I shall try to answer (with doubt and dread enough) in my next
letter. {1}




OF MODERN ENGLISH POETRY


My dear Wincott,--I hear that a book has lately been published by an
American lady, in which all the modern poets are represented. The
singers have been induced to make their own selections, and put forward,
as Mr. Browning says, their best foot, anapaest or trochee, or whatever
it may be. My information goes further, and declares that there are but
eighteen poets of England to sixty inspired Americans.

This Western collection of modern minstrelsy shows how very dangerous it
is to write even on the English poetry of the day. Eighteen is long odds
against a single critic, and Major Bellenden, in "Old Mortality," tells
us that three to one are odds as long as ever any warrior met