aims of his art. It will be well, however, to remember that the essay on Shelley was written when the author was still in his early manhood, and it may therefore require some slight allowance to be made on that account.[1] But the essays, taken together, are not more remarkable for their eloquent expression than for their entire sanity of judgment and sureness of appreciation of the distinctive qualities of the three poets, so like in some respects, and yet so entirely different in others. The article on Garth Wilkinson will be found to be of peculiar interest, since it is, so far as I know, the only article dealing with that remarkable writer which is in any degree adequate or satisfactory.
As to the other contents of this volume, it will be well for the reader to bear in mind that the articles on Rabelais, Saint-Amant, Ben Jonson, John Wilson, and James Hogg, are reprinted from Cope's Tobacco Plant. This will account for the rather frequent references in those articles to the subjects which would naturally interest the readers of that periodical. Almost one-half of the article on Ben Jonson, indeed, is devoted to the references in that author's writings to the practices of smoking and snuff-taking. Possibly this portion of the essay might have been omitted
- ↑ Thomson would not in later life have spoken of Carlyle's "French Revolution" as "the unapproached model of history," nor would he have spoken in quite such enthusiastic terms of Ruskin and Emerson as he employs in this early essay.
