Here, for the present, I suspend my labors. The poetical commonwealth
of England is so rich, that it is impossible to bring a tenth part of
its affluence within the scope of any ordinary work. This work is not
intended, by any means, for a biography, far less a biographical
dictionary, to which, by attempting to include all, it would at once
have been reduced. Detail would have been out of the question, and the
main interest therefore destroyed. It is a work on the residences of
eminent poets, including so much biographical and critical remark as
seemed necessary to the full elucidation of the subject, or of the
character of particular poets. Among both past and present poets,
there are some whose residences are little known; others whose
residences, when known, have little of picturesque about them, or
which are unattended by circumstances out of the ordinary routine. To
detail merely that such a man lived in such a street, and such a
house, would have answered no purpose, and could only weary. I
resolved, therefore, to dismiss the dramatic authors at once, as a
large body requiring separate treatment, and to add such poets in
general as my researches in the main might show had homes and haunts,
and circumstances associated with them, of such a nature as should
make them matters of public interest.
Among the past there are numbers of poets whose residences undoubtedly
will furnish further topics--as Herrick, Waller, Parnell, Drummond of
Hawthornden, Collins, Dyer, Young, Akenside, Allan Ramsay, Beattie,
Pollock, and others. Among our illustrious cotemporaries, how many yet
come crowding upon the mind, enow to create of themselves the fame of
a generation. The moment we name them, it will be seen that the
introduction into these volumes has been, in my mind, no evidence of
my opinion of their relative merits. The question only has been, have
these poets any thing connected with their residences which will stand
forth in its interest beyond the ordinary grade, and can that
information be procured in time? In these cases it has been thought
better to sacrifice some degree of chronological order, rather than to
delay these volumes longer. The subjects already included have
occupied me several years, and have led me to almost every extremity
of the United Kingdom. Unfortunately for the inquirer, poets do not
happen to have been born or to have lived just where it was most
convenient to reach them. They have not, by any means, lived all in
one place, nor in straight lines and rows, so that we might take them
in rapid and easy succession. On the contrary, they have compelled me
to traverse the kingdom from London to the North of Scotland; from the
Giant's Causeway to the West of Ireland: there is scarcely an English
county into which I have not had to follow them, and often into places
most obscure and difficult of access. So far, however, the labor is
accomplished: and when I turn to the names of those of our day, I see
that the harvest is yet far from reaped. Independent of the dramatic
poets, as Milman, Knowles, Bulwer, Talfourd, Bell, Miss Mitford,
Marston, Herraud, Taylor, the author of Philip van Artevelde, and
others, we have yet to include in our catalogue many a brilliant name
in the general walks of poetry--the venerable Bowles, Hood, Croly,
Monckton Milnes, Bowring, Mackay, Philip Bailey, author of Festus, one
of the most striking and original spirits of the age; Horne, the
author of the fine poem of Orion, and of ballads full of vigor,
originality, and a sound and healthy sentiment; Mrs. Norton; Browning,
dark but sterling and strong, with his gifted wife, late Elizabeth
Barrett, whose poems reflect in the clear depths of a profound and
brooding intellect the onward spirit of the age. Lockhart, with his
spirited Spanish Ballads; Macaulay, with his stirring Lays of Rome;
Alaric Watts, with his Lyrics, full of fine fancy, feeling, and
domestic affection; these, and Delta of Blackwood's Magazine, Tennant,
Motherwell, and many others, come rushing up in our recollection.
There are some to whom the world has not yet done justice, whom it
will, one day, be a high gratification to introduce--such as William
Scott, the author of that beautiful and very intellectual poem, The
Year of the World; and Moile, the author of State Trials, a work of
singular beauty, and which I rejoice to see advanced to a second
edition. And are there not, too, others, some of those who have risen,
like Burns, from the ranks of the laboring people, whose homes and
haunts might be most interesting to trace? There is Thomas Cooper, the
author of The Purgatory of Suicides, who could unfold, undoubtedly,
some singular scenes in his track of life; there are Bloomfield, and
Nicoll, and Clare, now the inmate of an asylum, and others, who could
furnish us with a scene or a passing glimpse, perhaps, of more
thrilling interest, like some of those in the histories of John Prince
and William Thom, than any that occur in more elevated walks. Many of
our younger and more brilliant cotemporaries, it must, at the same
time, be recollected, have yet their homes and haunts to make. These
will, in all probability, become the subjects of a later pen. Here,
then, for the present, I dismiss these volumes, and await, in hope and
confidence, the unfoldings of my future progress.
[Illustration: Scott's Tomb, in Dryburgh Abbey.]
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