Another true poet whose work belongs largely to this early period was William Barnes, author of _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_. This collection, published in 1879, and embracing the work of more than forty years, may be said to sum up his literary life; for, though he wrote prose as well as poetry, it is only by his verses in dialect that he has any chance to be remembered. Barnes began writing his Dorset poems in 1833, and continued to do so at intervals all through his life. The great charm of his poetry is its perfect freshness. The Dorset poems are eclogues, wholly free from the artificiality which commonly mars compositions of that class; they are clear, simple, rapid and natural. There is no affectation of profound thought, and no straining after passion, but a wholly unaffected love for the country and all that lives and grows there. The vital importance of language to poetry is nowhere more clearly seen than in Barnes, for all the spirit of the Dorset poems evaporates, and all the colour fades from the specimens the poet was induced to publish in literary English. There were numerous inferior writers, a few of whom claim a passing notice. James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) is one of those Irishmen with regard to whose work a wide difference of opinion exists between his countrymen and English critics. He had certainly an ear for verse and a gift for making it, and if his equipment of ideas had been proportionate he would have been a great poet. His weakness is that, while he can say things pleasantly, he has but little to say. Charles Whitehead (1804-1862) was one of those who attempted dramatic composition, but his best work was _The Solitary_ (1831), a reflective poem in the Spenserian stanza, thoughtful but slow in movement, and as a whole somewhat tiring. Thomas Wade (1805-1875) was likewise a mediocre dramatist, whose name is now associated only with _Mundi et Cordis Carmina_, a book which bears many traces of the influence of Shelley. Ebenezer Jones (1820-1860) also, though much younger than these men, falls, by reason of his principal work, _Studies of Sensation and Event_ (1843), within the same period. Jones was crushed by circumstances and the want of appreciation, otherwise his sensitive nature might have produced good, though hardly great poetry. CHAPTER IV. THE EARLIER FICTION.