SOURCE: A review of North Coast and Other Poems, in The Nation, New York, Vol. 5, No. 130, December 26, 1867, pp. 524-25.

In the following review, a reviewer identifies strong points and shortcomings in North Coast and Other Poems.

Mr. Buchanan's strength as a writer seems to lie almost wholly in the fulness and tenderness of his sympathy with the poor, the unfortunate and the criminal, the lowly and the low. He says in the prelude to his miscellaneous poems:

“My full heart hungers out unto the stainèd.” 

So it does. We may add that this hunger is not often expressed with much more of force or beauty than in the verse above quoted. We should not send any one to his poetry for anything more than the pathos of the facts of daily life in “the cottages where poor men lie”; the huts and cells where men and women...