and in due time Mr. Blackbrook's " Life-Drops
from the Heart" were offered to the public
for the price of ten shillings—little more than
one shilling per drop.

An eminent critic wrote the following
opinion of our friend and his poetry:—

"We notice Mr. Blackbrook as the
representative of a school—the Doleful School. He
draws terrible pictures; but what are his
materials? He does not write from the heart,
inasmuch as, if he really felt that incessant
agony, which is his everlasting theme, we
should find in his performances some original
imagery—something with an individual stamp.
We rather hold Mr. Blackbrook to be a very
deliberate, vain, and calculating being, who
takes advantage of a domestic calamity to
display his knack of verse-making; who
composedly turns a couplet upon the coffin of his
mistress; whose sympathy and sensibility are
only the ingenious masks of inordinate self-
esteem. His view of the poetic is only vorthy
of an undertaker. He sees nature through a
black-crape veil. He describes graves with
the minuteness of a body-snatcher; and when
he would be impressive is disgusting. You
see the actor, not the poet. He admits you
(for he cannot help it) behind the scenes. His
rhymes are not the music of a poetic faculty;
but rather the jingle of a parrot. He is one
of a popular school, however; and while the
public buy his wares, he will continue to
fashion them. Materialist to the back-bone,
he simpers about the littleness of human
dealings and human sympathies. He who
pretends to be melted with pity over the fate
of a fly, would use his mother's tombstone as
a writing-desk. He deals in human sorrow,
as his baker deals in loaves. Nervous
dowagers, who love tears and ' dreadful
descriptions;' who enjoy 'a good cry;' and
who have the peculiar faculty of seeing the
dark side of everything, enjoy his dish of
verses amazingly. To sensitive young ladies
there is a terrible fascination in his inventories
of the tomb and its appendages; and
children are afraid to walk about in the dark,
after listening to one of his effusions. The
followers of his school include one or two
formidable young ladies, who enter into
descriptions of death—that is to say, the
material part of death— with a minuteness
that must excite the envy even of the most
ingenious auctioneer. When bent upon a
fresh composition, these terrible young
poetesses, having killed a child, proceed to
trace its journey to the tomb— its return to
earth. How they gloat over the dire changes!
—how systematically the painful portrait is
proceeded with! In this they rival Chinese
artists. And people of ill-regulated
sympathy, who, containing within them all the
elements of spiritual culture, are yet affected
only by sensual appeals, regard these doleful
effusions as the outpourings of true human
suffering.

"Mr. Blackbrook and his disciples are
hapless materialists, verse-makers without a sense
of the beautiful. They are patronised by those
to whom they write down; and the effect of
their lucubrations is to enchain the imagination
to debase the moral capacity, to weaken
that spiritual faith which disdains the horrors
of the churchyard. Mr. Blackbrook's adventures
in search of despair were undertaken, to
our mind, in a cold-blooded spirit. A resolute
determination to discover the gloomiest phase
of every earthly matter, a longing for the
applause of a foolish clique, and a confused
idea that Chatterton was a poet because he
perished miserably, while Byron owed his
inspiration to his domestic unhappiness— make
up that picture of a verse-writer which we
have endeavoured to delineate. When
extraordinary vanity is allied to very ordinary
ability, the combination is an unwholesome,
ascetic, weak and deformed mind:—such a
mind has Mr. Blackbrook. He endeavours to
drag us into a vault, when we would regard
the heavenly aspect of death. Ask him to
solve the great mystery, and he points to the
fading corpse. His tears suggest the use of
onions; and his threats of self-destruction,
remind us of the rouge and Indian ink of an
indifferent melo-dramatic actor. We have no
respect for his misfortunes, since we find that
he esteems them only as opportunities for
display: we know that despair is welcome to
him. He turns his back to the sun, and rejoices
to see the length of shade he can throw
upon the earth. Nature to him is only a vast
charnel-house—so constructed that he may
sing a life-long requiem. He would have us
journey through life with our eyes fixed upon
the ground, scenting the gases of decay. But
wiser men—poets of the soul— bid us look up
to heaven, nor disdain, as we raise our heads,
to mark the beauty of the lily— to gather,
and with hearty thanks, the fragrance of the
rose."

A WINTER SERMON.

THOU dwellest in a warm and cheerful home,
Thy roof in vain the winter tempest lashes;
While houseless wretches round thy mansion roam,
On whose unshelter'd heads the torrent plashes.

Thy board is loaded with the richest meats,
O'er which thine eyes in sated languor wander;
Many might live on what thy mastiff eats,
Or feast on fragments which thy servants squander.

Thy limbs are muffled from the piercing blast,
When from thy fireside comer thou dost sally;
Many have scarce a rag about them cast,
With which the frosty breezes toy and dally.

Thou hast soft smiles to greet thy kiss of love,
When thy light step resounds within the portal;
Some have no friend save Him who dwells above,
No sweet communion with a fellow-mortal.

Thou sleepest soundly on thy costly bed,
Lull'd by the power of luxuries unnumber'd ,
Some pillow on a stone an aching head,
Never again to wake when they have slumber'd.