scholars we have no doubt many of them, and, it may be, very classical composers in prose and in verse—­but utterly ignorant of the true genius of English poetry, and incapable of estimating its appropriate and most exquisite beauties.  With that spirit we have no hesitation in saying that Mr. K. is deeply imbued—­and of those beauties he has presented us with many striking examples.  We are very much inclined indeed to add, that we do not know any book which we would sooner employ as a test to ascertain whether any one had in him a native relish for poetry, and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm.  The greater and more distinguished poets of our country have so much else in them to gratify other tastes and propensities, that they are pretty sure to captivate and amuse those to whom their poetry is but an hindrance and obstruction, as well as those to whom it constitutes their chief attraction.  The interest of the stories they tell—­the vivacity of the characters they delineate—­the weight and force of the maxims and sentiments in which they abound—­the very pathos and wit and humour they display, which may all and each of them exist apart from their poetry and independent of it, are quite sufficient to account for their popularity, without referring much to that still higher gift, by which they subdue to their enchantments those whose souls are attuned to the finer impulses of poetry.  It is only where those other recommendations are wanting, or exist in a weaker degree, that the true force of the attraction, exercised by the pure poetry with which they are so often combined, can be fairly appreciated—­where, without much incident or many characters, and with little wit, wisdom, or arrangement, a number of bright pictures are presented to the imagination, and a fine feeling expressed of those mysterious relations by which visible external things are assimilated with inward thoughts and emotions, and become the images and exponents of all passions and affections.  To an unpoetical reader such passages always appear mere raving and absurdity—­and to this censure a very great part of the volume before us will certainly be exposed, with this class of readers.  Even in the judgment of a fitter audience, however, it must, we fear, be admitted, that, besides the riot and extravagance of his fancy, the scope and substance of Mr. K.’s poetry is rather too dreary and abstracted to excite the strongest interest, or to sustain the attention through a work of any great compass or extent.  He deals too much with shadowy and incomprehensible beings, and is too constantly rapt into an extramundane Elysium, to command a lasting interest with ordinary mortals—­and must employ the agency of more varied and coarser emotions, if he wishes to take rank with the seducing poets of this or of former generations.  There is something very curious too, we think, in the way in which he, and Mr. Barry Cornwall also, have dealt with the Pagan mythology, of which they have made so much use in