P. 189, No. clv.--The immense superiority of this poem over every other in the little volume of Hamilton of Bangour’s poems, which was published at Edinburgh in 1760, some six years after his death, is not easy to account for. This poem has its faults; that it is a modern seeking to write in an ancient manner is sometimes too evident; but it is a tragic story tragically told, the situation boldly conceived, and the treatment marked by strength and passion throughout. Nothing else in the volume contains a trace of passion or of power, or is of the slightest value whatever. The fact that the poet has here come within the circle of the inspirations of Yarrow cannot of itself be accepted as sufficient to explain a fact which is certainly a curious one. It is plain from more than one citation or allusion that Wordsworth, in his _Yarrow Unvisited_ and _Yarrow Visited_, had this poem quite as much in his eye as the earlier ballads whose scene is laid on the banks of the same stream. P. 199, No. clx.--I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of quoting Mr. Palgrave’s beautiful criticism of this sonnet, in its own kind of a beauty so peerless:--‘The Editor knows no sonnet more remarkable than this which records Cowper’s gratitude to the Lady whose affectionate care for many years gave what sweetness he could enjoy to a life radically wretched. Petrarch’s sonnets have a more ethereal grace and a more perfect finish, Shakespeare’s more passion, Milton’s stand supreme in stateliness, Wordsworth’s in depth and delicacy. But Cowper’s unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the ancients would have called irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature.’ P. 201, No. clxii.--Gray, who esteemed Tickell ‘a poor short-winded imitator of Addison,’ qualifies his contempt so far that he adds, ‘His ballad, however, of Colin and Lucy I always thought the prettiest in the world.’ After some hesitation I have not thought it pretty enough for a place in this volume. It is otherwise with the poem for which I have found room. Johnson’s censure of poems, whether praise or blame, carries no great weight with it; and when he says of this one, ‘nor is a more sublime or more elegant funeral poem to be found in the whole compass of English literature,’ the praise is extravagant. Still it has real merits, and sounds like the genuine utterance of a true regret for one who had been the poet’s effectual patron and friend. P. 204, No. clxiii.--There have been many guesses who the ‘Unfortunate Lady’ commemorated in these pathetic, but thoroughly pagan, lines may have been; but the mystery which wraps her story has never been dispersed. With the ten first lines before us nothing can be idler than to deny that she was one who had laid violent hands on her own life.