The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XII. The Romantic Revival.
§ 33. Bernard Barton
Some verse-writers of earlier date, and, at one time or another, of wider appeal, may now be mentioned, though they need not occupy us long. The quaker poet Bernard Barton has so many pleasant and certainly lasting literary associations—the friendship of Lamb and of Southey and of FitzGerald, the presentation of Byron in his most sensible, good-natured and un-Satanic aspect, and, in fact, numerous other evidences of his having possessed the rare and precious qualities which “please many a man and never vex one”—that it would be a pity if anyone (except at the call of duty) ran the risk of vexation by reading his verse. He wrote, it is said, ten volumes of it, and there is no apparent reason, in what the present writer has read of them, why he or any man should not have written a hundred such, if he had had the time. Some of his hymns are among his least insignificant work.