ABSTRACT
It is usually thought a recommendation of any poem to say, that it is popular. But are the most popular poems always those which essentially deserve the distinction? We are bold enough to doubt of this, and to suspect that a genuine poet who has high aspirings, and who looks to that mental elevation, that inward sense of moral dignity, and that enthusiasm of sentiment and taste, which accompanies his labours, as their great reward, – who looks to the soothing of his common-life anxieties and the visions of his pillow, as among the privileges of his sublime vocation, will be apt to distrust a popularity too rapidly and easily acquired.
