Of the other poets who have been named, William Motherwell was the least considerable both in achievement and in gifts. He had a taste for research in old popular poetry, but he took such liberties that his versions are not to be trusted. He also allowed the pseudo-antique to mar some of his own work, especially the fine _Cavalier Song_. He is happiest in the vein of pathetic Scotch verse, of which the best specimen he left is his _Jeanie Morison_. He had the feeling and sensibility of a minor Burns, but not the force. Contemporary with Motherwell and, on the Scotch side of his work, not dissimilar, was William Thom (1798-1848), 'the weaver poet,' best known for _The Blind Boy's Pranks_. Dialect alone unites with these two George Outram (1805-1856) a man little known out of Scotland, but, in his best pieces, one of the most irresistibly humorous of comic poets. Nothing but unfamiliarity with the legal processes and phrases on which the wit frequently turns, prevents him from being widely popular. For rich fun _The Annuity_, his masterpiece, has seldom been surpassed. [Sidenote: Henry Taylor (1800-1886).] Henry Taylor lifts us once more into a higher sphere of art. He lived an even and unruffled life, the spirit of which seems to have passed into his works. The son of a country gentleman, he procured an appointment in the Colonial office, gradually rose in it, was knighted, and after nearly half a century of service, retired in 1872. The comfortable and easy life of office permitted Taylor to develop his powers to the uttermost. For a greater man its very smoothness might have been damaging. Great poetry requires passion: either the passion of the emotional nature, or that passion of thought which, as Mr. William Watson has lately reminded the world, is no less valuable for the purposes of art. Official life fosters neither; but it would seem that Sir Henry Taylor's nature contained the germ of neither. Hence perhaps, in part, his disapproval of the school of Byron. His practice would have been as excellent as his theory had he been one of those who know 'A deeper transport and a mightier thrill Than comes of commerce with mortality.' But he was wanting in the second kind of passion, as well as in the first. His work is like his life, smooth, calm, unchargeable with faults; but it is not the kind that animates mankind. Sir Henry Taylor wrote prose as well as verse, in particular a very readable autobiography. It is however chiefly as a dramatist that he is memorable. His plays are the closet studies of a cultured man of letters, who knew little and cared little about the conditions of the stage. _Isaac Comnenus_ (1827) was followed by his masterpiece, _Philip Van Artevelde_ (1834). _Edwin the Fair_ appeared in 1842, and his last play, _St. Clement's Eve_, in 1862. He also wrote one other piece, _A Sicilian Summer_, a kind of comedy, not very successful.