knife-grinder, have we also contemplated with feverish melancholy—still for the endurance of all these, have we been able satisfactorily to account; drilled by habit, ruled by habit, habit is to them a second nature. But for the perpetration of a long, tedious poem for the manufacture of verse after verse, the last drier and duller than the preceding, there is no possible manner of accounting. It is an infliction, which can be borne by neither gods, men nor columns. Your _médiocre_ man may be forgiven for talking one into a paralysis, or writing prose, till every word acts like a mesmerist and puts you to sleep; but for his writing verses, there can be, there ought to be no forgiveness; he should be consigned to the cave of perpetual oblivion, and over its entrance should be inscribed, “Hope never enters here.” Were we to follow in the track of reviewers in the Quarterlies, who always seem to think it necessary to make a considerable preliminary flourish to the solemn common-places they are about to utter, we should observe that the foregoing remarks had been elicited by a work on our table, entitled “Imagination, a poem in two parts, with other poems, by Louisa Frances Poulter.” But as the work did not call forth the remarks, we shall observe nothing of the kind. The moment we wrote the title of the poem, and saw that it consisted of nearly eleven hundred lines, we began to reflect that very few long poems had been written lately, and our pen scampered over the paper at a rail-road rate, till we reached the _dépôt_ at the end of this paragraph. Pausing here, we first look back over what we have said; it pleases us—let it stand, therefore, and let us now employ ourselves with reading Miss Poulter’s poem in two cantos. We have not the slightest dread of it—no! it seems a pleasant land, of which we have had delightful glimpses in a transient survey. With these glimpses we mean to entertain the reader, besides giving him an idea of the face of the country. _In limine_, we ought to confess ourselves amiable critics, when we are called upon to pronounce on the works of a female writer, and more particularly of one who is a new claimant for distinction. It is our desire to encourage the intellectual efforts of the gentle sex, if for no better purpose, at least for that of inciting women to assert their claims to the honors and the rewards of authorship. These pages are scrutinized by many a brilliant pair of eyes, ready to flash indignation upon the slightest disparagement of female genius. Far be it from us to evoke from those mortal stars any other beams than those of softness and serenity. Lovely readers! smile therefore upon this article as kindly as upon the prettiest story in the Magazine, and think well of him who seeks to win no better guerdon than your approbation.