The keen sense of outward beauty,
the ready shaping fancy, had not been suffered to degrade the poet
into that basest of beings, an intellectual voluptuary, and a pensive
but serene wisdom hallows all his song.
His opinions on subjects, that now divide the world, are stated
in two or three of these pieces, with that temperance and candor of
thought, now more rare even than usual, and with a simplicity
bordering on homeliness of diction, which is peculiarly pleasing,
from the sense of plastic power and refined good sense it imparts.
A gentle and gradual style of narration, without prolixity or
tameness, is seldom to be found in the degree in which such pieces as
`Dora' and `Godiva' display it. The grace of the light ballad pieces
is as remarkable in its way, as was his grasp and force in `Oriana,'
`The Lord of Burleigh,' `Edward Gray,' and `Lady Clare,' are
distinguished for different shades of this light grace, tender, and
speaking more to the soul than the sense, like the different hues in
the landscape, when the sun is hid in clouds, so gently shaded that
they seem but the echoes of themselves.
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