Some nineteen hundred years ago Horace observed that there was one thing which neither gods, nor men, nor bookstalls would tolerate in a poet--and that was mediocrity. The verdict of gods, men, and the bookstalls is probably still what it was then; but to such tribunals the rhymesters of our time can afford to be quite indifferent. Paper and printing are cheap; small poets and small critics are now so numerous that they form a world, and a populous world, in themselves; and, well understanding the truth of the old proverb, “Concordiâ, parvæ res crescunt,” they mutually manufacture the wreaths with which they crown each other’s modest vanity. There are hundreds of “poets” and “critics” of whom the great world knows nothing, who are thus enabled, in their little day, to taste all the sweets of fame, and “walk with inward glory crown’d.” To wage serious war against such a tribe as this would be as absurd as to break butterflies upon a wheel; but we really think it high time that some protest should be made against the indefinite multiplication of the rubbish for which these people and their patrons are responsible, and still more against its importation into what purports to be a contribution to serious literature. As long as these geniuses confine themselves to their proper sphere, the poets’ corners of provincial newspapers, we have nothing to say. But it becomes quite another matter when the skill of an ingenious projector enables--we are really sorry to have to speak so harshly--a rabble of poetasters to figure side by side with poets of classical fame, and to appear in all the dignity of contributors to a national anthology. Yet such is the design of this volume, which was, it seems, published by subscription, the subscribers being for the most part the various candidates for poetical fame, who have obligingly sent their portraits and their biographies for insertion in Mr. Kearley Wright’s “monumental work.” As Mr. Kearley Wright’s collection begins with the fifteenth century, and includes the really eminent poets who happen to have been born in the West of England, many of his worthies are naturally _apud plures_, but the majority, in whose honour the anthology appears to have been compiled, adorn the living. And very gratifying it must be for these gentlemen, and for Mr. Kearley Wright himself--for he also has a niche--to find themselves side by side with Sir Walter Raleigh, Herrick, Gay, and Coleridge. Mr. Kearley Wright’s “company of makers” is certainly a motley one. First comes among his living bards an inspired porter at the Teignmouth railway station, who asks in rapture,-- “Along the glitt’ring streets of gold, Amid the brilliant glare, Shall we God’s banner there unfold, His righteous helmet wear?”