Notes from Books followed within a few months, but met with a less cordial reception.  Of the four essays comprised in this volume, three are reprinted contributions to the Quarterly Review, being criticisms on the poetry of Wordsworth and Aubrey de Vere; and worthily do they illustrate—­those on Wordsworth at least—­Mr Taylor’s composite faculty of depth and delicacy in poetical exposition.  Of Wordsworth’s many and gifted commentators—­among them Wilson, Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Lamb, Moir, Sterling—­few have shewn a happier insight into the idiosyncrasy, or done more justice to the beauties of the patriarch of the Lakes.  With Wordsworth for a subject, and the Quarterly Review for a ‘door of utterance,’ Mr Taylor is quite in his element.  The fourth essay, on the Ways of the Rich and Great, is enriched with wise saws and modern instances.  Its materiel is composed of ripe observation and reflective good sense; but the manner is objected to as marred by conceits of style—­a sin not very safely to be committed by so stern a censor of it in others.  His authoritative air in laying down the law is also occasionally unpleasing to some readers; and great as his tact in essay-writing is, he wants that easy grace and pervading bonhomie which imparts such a charm to the works of one with whom he has been erroneously identified—­the anonymous author of Friends in Council.  But, after all, he is one of those writers to whom our current literature is really indebted, and whose sage, sententious, and well-hammered thoughts may be profitably, as well as safely, commended to every thinking soul among us.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] Notes from Life.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Literary Remains.

[5] Lectures on the History of France.

[6] Namely, Jacques van Artevelde, ’the noblest and the wisest man that ever ruled in Ghent,’ and whom the factious citizens slew at his own door.

[7] Duke of Burgundy, in the last scene of Part II.

[8] Beginning:—­

    ’Rocks that beheld my boyhood!  Perilous shelf
    That nursed my infant courage!  Once again
    I, stand before you—­not as in other days
    In your gray faces smiling; but like you
    The worse for weather.’...

How sweet the lines:—­

    The sun shall soon
    Dip westerly; but oh! how little like
    Are life’s two twilights!  Would the last were first,
    And the first last! that so we might he soothed
    Upon the thoroughfares of busy life
    Beneath the noon-day sun, with hope of joy
    Fresh as the morn,’ &c.
                                        —­Act II. scene ii.

[9] Preface to Notes from Life.

[10] Levana, of which an able translation was published by Messrs Longman in 1848.