We need not dwell at greater length on the literary characteristics of the age; incidentally we may remind our readers that to Watts, in the later years of his life, we owe the introduction to the world of a poem which has not long ceased to be a very popular one, “The Grave,” by Robert Blair, the minister of the parish of Athelstanford, in Scotland. Blair sent his poem to Watts, and Watts thought so well of it that he sent it to Doddridge, and both advised its author to publish it, and appear to have been able to render him some valuable assistance in making it known. Almost forgotten now, it immediately took the popular taste. It is not wonderful that it did so, for it has all the gloomy magnificence of a body lying in state; but it is gloomy without vulgarity, and has the gorgeousness of the silver shieldings and splendid heraldry on the black velvet. It is short; it perhaps seems to us now almost a sentimental piece of commonplace; but it instantly took possession of the public mind, and is still included in most respectable collections of English poets. It belonged to a class of pieces which appear to have been great favourites with people in those days, and which have furnished abundant materials for sermons ever since—Hervey’s “Meditations among the Tombs,” and Young’s “Night Thoughts,”—although the last is a very far superior piece of work, and may deserve to be spoken of as one of the finest of purely didactic poems. Blair, in his far-off home among the East Lothians, had everything which to such a nature as his would be likely to press home with a pensive force upon the mind; and the deep reality of James Hervey’s nature, every one at all acquainted with his biography well knows. Edward Young, it may without much indignity to charity be believed, was a man of a very different order, in whom unrealized sentiment considerably dominated the character. He was a man of unquestionable genius, and he so far laid his genius on the altar of religion that he produced not only the poem to which we are referring, but many others, which, if not of equal eminence, had a decided religious influence. But he was a constant haunter of the abodes of fashion, a hanger-on of Courts, and not at all indisposed to avail himself of every kind of help in seeking to further his purposes in life. He was not below the average of men, but the “other-worldliness” of his poem contrasts strangely enough with the worldliness of the author; if, when he wrote of the other world, he wrote like a saint, we cannot forget that, when he wrote of this, he wrote as a keen satirist. In fact, all this belongs to the character of the poetry of the period; it was not real, it was stiff and stilted; it was poetry in brocade; nothing about it looks very real. Of course there are beautiful lines and beautiful passages to be quoted, but its men and women are not real. The poetry of our own times, as compared with those, has gained immeasurably in this, in reality, and