textfiles/etext/AUTHORS/POE/poe-criticism-432.txt

                                      1850

                                   CRITICISM

                               by Edgar Allan Poe

  IT HAS been said that a good critique on a poem may be written by
one who is no poet himself. This, according to your idea and mine of
poetry, I feel to be false- the less poetical the critic, the less
just the critique, and the converse. On this account, and because
the world's good opinion as proud of your own. Another than yourself
might here observe, "Shakespeare is in possession of the world's
good opinion, and yet Shakespeare is the greatest of poets. It appears
then that as the world judges correctly, why should you be ashamed
of their favourable judgment?" The difficulty lies in the
interpretation of the word "judgment" or "opinion." The opinion is the
world's, truly, but it may be called theirs as a man would call a book
his, having bought it; he did not write the book, but it is his;
they did not originate the opinion, but it is theirs. A fool, for
example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet- yet the fool has never
read Shakespeare. But the fool's neighbor, who is a step higher on the
Andes of the mind, whose head (that is to say, his more exalted
thought) is too far above the fool to be seen or understood, but whose
feet (by which I mean his every-day actions) are sufficiently near
to be discerned, and by means of which that superiority is
ascertained, which but for them would never have been discovered- this
neighbor asserts that Shakespeare is a great poet- the fool believes
him, and it is henceforward his opinion. This neighbor's own opinion
has, in like manner, been adopted from one above him, and so,
ascendingly, to a few gifted individuals who kneel around the
summit, beholding, face to face, the master spirit who stands upon the
pinnacle....

  You are aware of the great barrier in the path of an American
writer. He is read, if at all, in preference to the combined and
established wit of the world. I say established; for it is with
literature as with law or empire- an established name is an estate
in tenure, or a throne in possession. Besides, one might suppose
that books, like their authors, improve by travel- their having
crossed the sea is, with us, so great a distinction. Our antiquaries
abandon time for distance; our very fops glance from the binding to
the bottom of the title-page, where the mystic characters which
spell London, Paris, or Genoa, are precisely so many letters of
recommendation.

  I mentioned just now a vulgar error as regards criticism. I think
the notion that no poet can form a correct estimate of his own
writings is another. I remarked before that in proportion to the
poetical talent would be the justice of a critique upon poetry.
Therefore a bad poet would, I grant, make a false critique, and his
self-love would infallibly bias his little judgment in his favour; but
a poet, who is indeed a poet, could not, I think, fail of making a
just critique; whatever should be deducted on the score of self-love
might be replaced on account of his intimate acquaintance with the
subject; in short, we have more instances of false criticism than of
just where one's own writings are the test, simply because we have
more bad poets than good. There are, of course, many objections to
what I say: Milton is a great example of the contrary, but his opinion
with respect to the Paradise Regained is by no means fairly
ascertained. By what trivial circumstances men are often led to assert
what they do not really believe! Perhaps an inadvertent world has
descended to posterity. But, in fact, the Paradise Regained is little,
if at all inferior to the Paradise Lost and is only supposed so to
be because men do not like epics, whatever they may say to the
contrary, and reading those of Milton in their natural order, are
too much wearied with the first to derive any pleasure from the
second.

  I dare say Milton preferred Comos to either- if so- justly....

  As I am speaking of poetry, it will not be amiss to touch slightly
upon the most singular heresy in its modern history- the heresy of
what is called, very foolishly, the Lake School. Some years ago I
might have been induced, by an occasion like the present, to attempt a
formal refutation of their doctrine; at present it would be a work
of supererogation. The wise must bow to the wisdom of such men as
Coleridge and Southey, but being wise, have laughed at poetical
theories so prosaically exemplified.

  Aristotle, with singular assurance, has declared poetry the most
philosophical of all writings- but it required a Wordsworth to
pronounce it the most metaphysical. He seems to think that the end
of poetry is, or should be, instruction; yet it is a truism that the
end of our existence is happiness; if so, the end of every separate
part of our existence, everything connected with our existence, should
be happiness. Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness;
and happiness is another name for pleasure,- therefore the end of
instruction should be pleasure; yet we see the above-mentioned opinion
implies precisely the reverse.

  To proceed: ceteris paribus, he who pleases is of more importance to
his fellow-men than he who instructs, since utility is happiness,
and pleasure is the end already obtained while instruction is merely
the means of obtaining.

  I see no reason, then, why our metaphysical poets should plume
themselves so much on the utility of their works, unless indeed they
refer to instruction with eternity in view; in which case, sincere
respect for their piety would not allow me to express my contempt
for their judgement; contempt which it would be difficult to
conceal, since their writings are professedly to be understood by
the few, and it is the many who stand in need of salvation. In such
case I should no doubt be tempted to think of the devil in
"Melmoth," who labours indefatigably, through three octavo volumes, to
accomplish the destruction of one or two souls, while any common devil
would have demolished one or two thousand.

  Against the subtleties which would make poetry a study- not a
passion- it becomes the metaphysician to reason- but the poet to
protest. Yet Wordsworth and Coleridge are men in years; the one imbued
in contemplating from his childhood, the other a giant in intellect
and learning. The diffidence, then, with which I venture to dispute
their authority would be overwhelming did I not feel, from the
bottom of my heart, that learning has little to do with the
imagination- intellect with the passions- or age with poetry.

        Trifles, like straws, upon the surface flow;

        He who would search for pearls must dive below,

are lines which have done much mischief. As regards the greater
truths, men oftener err by seeking them at the bottom than at the top;
Truth lies in the huge abysses where wisdom is sought- not in the
palpable palaces where she is found. The ancients were not always
right in hiding the goddess in a well; witness the light which Bacon
has thrown upon philosophy; witness the principles of our divine
faith- that moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may
overbalance the wisdom of a man.

  We see an instance of Coleridge's liability to err, in his
Biographia Literaria- professedly his literary life and opinions, but,
in fact, a treatise de omni scibili et quibusdam aliis. He goes
wrong by reason of his very profundity, and of his error we have a
natural type in the contemplation of a star. He who regards it
directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the
star without a ray- while he who surveys it less inquisitively is
conscious of all for which the star is useful to us below- its
brilliancy and its beauty.

  As to Wordsworth, I have no faith in him. That he had in youth the
feelings of a poet I believe- for there are glimpses of extreme
delicacy in his writings- (and delicacy is the poet's own kingdom- his
El Dorado)- but they have the appearance of a better day
recollected; and glimpses, at best, are little evidence of present
poetic fire- we know that a few straggling flowers spring up daily
in the crevices of the glacier.

  He was to blame in wearing away his youth in contemplation with
the end of poetizing in his manhood. With the increase of his judgment
the light which should make it apparent has faded away. His judgment
consequently is too correct. This may not be understood,- but the
old Goths of Germany would have understood it, who used to debate
matters of importance to their State twice, once when drunk, and
once when sober- sober that they might not be deficient in
formality- drunk lest they should be destitute of vigour.

  The long wordy discussions by which he tries to reason us into
admiration of his poetry, speak very little in his favour: they are
full of such assertions as this (I have opened one of his volumes at
random)- "Of genius the only proof is the act of doing well what is
worthy to be done, and what was never done before";-  indeed? then
it follows that in doing what is unworthy to be done, or what has been
done before, no genius can be evinced; yet the picking of pockets is
an unworthy act, pockets have been picked time immemorial and
Barrington, the pickpocket, in point of genius, would have thought
hard of a comparison with William Wordsworth, the poet.

  Again- in estimating the merit of certain poems, whether they be
Ossian's or M'Pherson's, can surely be of little consequence, yet,
in order to prove their worthlessness, Mr. W. has expended many
pages in the controversy. Tantaene animis? Can great minds descend
to such absurdity? But worse still: that he may bear down every
argument in favour of these poems, he triumphantly drags forward a
passage in his abomination with which he expects the reader to
sympathise. It is the beginning of the epic poem "Temora." "The blue
waves of Ullin roll in light; the green hills are covered with day,
trees shake their dusty heads in the breeze." And this- this gorgeous,
yet simple imagery, where all is alive and panting with immortality-
this, William Wordsworth, the author of "Peter Bell," has selected for
his contempt. We shall see what better he, in his own person, has to
offer. Imprimis:

        And now she's at the pony's tail,

        And now she's at the pony's head,

        On that side now, and now on this;

        And, almost stified with her bliss,

        A few sad tears does Betty shed....

        She pats the pony, where or when

        She knows not... happy Betty Foy!

        Oh, Johnny, never mind the doctor!

Secondly:

        The dew was falling fast, the- stars began to blink;

        I heard a voice: it said- "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"

        And, looking o'er the hedge, be- fore me I espied

        A snow-white mountain lamb, with a- maiden at its side.

        No other sheep was near,- the lamb was all alone,

        And by a slender cord was- tether'd to a stone.

  Now, we have no doubt this is all true; we will believe it, indeed
we will, Mr. W. Is it sympathy for the sheep you wish to excite? I
love a sheep from the bottom of my heart.

Wordsworth is reasonable. Even Stamboul, it is said, shall have an
end, and the most unlucky blunders must come to a conclusion. Here
is an extract from his preface:-

  "Those who have been accustomed to the phraseology of modern
writers, if they persist in reading this book to a conclusion
(impossible!) will, no doubt, have to struggle with feelings of
awkwardness; (ha! ha! ha!) they will look round for poetry (ha! ha!
ha! ha!), and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy
these attempts have been permitted to assume that title." Ha! ha!
ha! ha! ha!

  Yet, let not Mr. W. despair; he has given immortality to a wagon,
and the bee Sophocles has transmitted to eternity a sore toe, and
dignified a tragedy with a chorus of turkeys.

  Of Coleridge, I cannot speak but with reverence. His towering
intellect! his gigantic power! He is one more evidence of the fact
"que la plupart des sectes ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce
qu'elles avancent, mais non pas en ce qu'elles nient." He has
imprisoned his own conceptions by the barrier he has erected against
those of others. It is lamentable to think that such a mind should
be buried in metaphysics, and, like the Nyctanthes, waste its
perfume upon the night alone. In reading that man's poetry, I
tremble like one who stands upon a volcano, conscious from the very
darkness bursting from the crater, of the fire and the light that
are weltering below.

  What is Poetry?- Poetry! that Proteus- like idea, with as many
appellations as the nine- titled Corcyra! Give me, I demanded of a
scholar some time ago, give me a definition of poetry.
"Tres-volontiers"; and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr.
Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal
Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye
upon the profanity of the scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear
of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous
and unwieldy, think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then- and then
think of the Tempest- the Midsummer Night's Dream- Prospero- Oberon-
and Titania!

  A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having,
for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having
for its object, an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being
a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting
perceptible images with definite poetry with indefinite sensations, to
which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet
sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a
pleasurable idea, is poetry- music, without the idea, is simply music;
the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

  What was meant by the invective against him who had no music in
his soul?

doubt, perceive, for the metaphysical poets as poets, the most
sovereign contempt. That they have followers proves nothing-

        No Indian prince has to his palace

        More followers than a thief to the gallows.

              THE CULPRIT FAY, AND OTHER POEMS

                     Joseph Rodman Drake

              ALNWICK CASTLE, AND OTHER POEMS

                     Fitz-Greene Halleck

  BEFORE entering upon the detailed notice which we propose of the
volumes before us, we wish to speak a few words in regard to the
present state of American criticism.

  It must be visible to all who meddle with literary matters, that
of late years a thorough revolution has been effected in the
censorship of our press. That this revolution is infinitely for the
worse we believe. There was a time, it is true, when we cringed to
foreign opinion- let us even say when we paid most servile deference
to British critical dicta. That an American book could, by any
possibility, be worthy perusal, was an idea by no means extensively
prevalent in the land; and if we were induced to read at all the
productions of our native writers, it was only after repeated
assurances from England that such productions were not altogether
contemptible. But there was, at all events, a shadow of excuse, and
a slight basis of reason for a subserviency so grotesque. Even now,
perhaps, it would not be far wrong to assert that such basis of reason
may still exist. Let us grant that in many of the abstract sciences-
that even in Theology, in Medicine, in Law, in Oratory, in the
Mechanical Arts, we have no competitors whatever, still nothing but
the most egregious national vanity would assign us a place, in the
matter of Polite Literature, upon a level with the elder and riper
climes of Europe, the earliest steps of whose children are among the
groves of magnificently endowed Academies, and whose innumerable men
of leisure, and of consequent learning, drink daily from those
august fountains of inspiration which burst around them everywhere
from out the tombs of their immortal dead, and from out their hoary
and trophied monuments of chivalry and song. In paying then, as a
nation, a respectful and not undue deference to a supremacy rarely
questioned but by prejudice or ignorance, we should, of course, be
doing nothing more than acting in a rational manner. The excess of our
subserviency was blamable- but, as we have before said, this very
excess might have found a shadow of excuse in the strict justice, if
properly regulated, of the principle from which it issued. Not so,
however, with our present follies. We are becoming boisterous and
arrogant in the pride of a too speedily assumed literary freedom. We
throw off, with the most presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, all
deference whatever to foreign opinion- we forget, in the puerile
inflation of vanity, that the world is the true theatre of the
biblical histrio- we get up a hue and cry about the necessity of
encouraging native writers of merit- we blindly fancy that we can
accomplish this by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and
indifferent, without taking the trouble to consider that what we
choose to denominate encouragement is thus, by its general
application, rendered precisely the reverse. In a word, so far from
being ashamed of the many disgraceful literary failures to which our
own inordinate vanities and misapplied patriotism have lately given
birth, and so far from deeply lamenting that these daily puerilities
are of home manufacture, we adhere pertinaciously to our original
blindly conceived idea, and thus often find ourselves involved in
the gross paradox of liking a stupid book the better, because, sure
enough, its stupidity is American.*

  * This charge of indiscriminant puffing will, of course, only
apply to the general character of our criticism- there are some
noble exceptions. We wish also especially to discriminate between
those notices of new works which are intended merely to call public
attention to them, and deliberate criticism on the works themselves.

  Deeply lamenting this unjustifiable state of public feeling, it
has been our constant endeavor, since assuming the Editorial duties of
this Journal, to stem, with what little abilities we possess, a
current so disastrously undermining the health and prosperity of our
literature.

  We have seen our efforts applauded by men whose applauses we
value. From all quarters we have received abundant private as well
as public testimonials in favor of our Critical Notices, and, until
very lately, have heard from no respectable source one word
impugning their integrity or candor. In looking over, however, a
number of the New York Commercial Advertiser, we meet with the
following paragraph.

  "'The last number of the Southern Literary Messenger is very
readable and respectable. The contributions to the Messenger are
much better than the original matter. The critical department of
this work- much as it would seem to boast itself of impartiality and
discernment,- is in our opinion decidedly quacky. There is in it a
great assumption of acumen, which is completely unsustained. Many a
work has been slashingly condemned therein, of which the critic
himself could not write a page, were he to die for it. This
affectation of eccentric sternness in criticism, without the power
to back one's suit withal, so far from deserving praise, as some
suppose, merits the strongest reprehension. Philadelphia Gazette.'

  "We are entirely of opinion with the Philadelphia Gazette in
relation to the Southern Literary Messenger, and take this occasion to
express our total dissent from the numerous and lavish encomiums we
have seen bestowed upon its critical notices. Some few of them have
been judicious, fair and candid; bestowing praise and censure with
judgement and impartiality; but by far the greater number of those
we have read, have been flippant, unjust, untenable and uncritical.
The duty of the critic is to act as judge, not as enemy, of the writer
whom he reviews; a distinction of which the Zoilus of the Messenger
seems not to be aware. It is possible to review a book sincerely,
without bestowing opprobrious epithets upon the writer, to condemn
with courtesy, if not with kindness. The critic of the Messenger has
been eulogized for his scorching and scarifying abilities, and he
thinks it incumbent upon him to keep up his reputation in that line,
by sneers, sarcasm and downright abuse; by straining his vision with
microscopic intensity in search of faults, and shutting his eyes, with
all his might to beauties. Moreover, we have detected him, more than
once, in blunders quite as gross as those on which it was his pleasure
to descant."*

  * In addition to these things we observe, in the New York Mirror,
what follows: "Those who have read the Notices of American books in
a certain Southern Monthly, which is striving to gain notoriety by the
loudness of its abuse, may find amusement in the sketch on another
page, entitled "The Successful Novel." The Southern Literary Messenger
knows by experience what it is to write a successless novel." We have,
in this case, only to deny, flatly, the assertion of the Mirror. The
Editor of the Messenger never in his life wrote or published, or
attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless.

  In the paragraph from the Philadelphia Gazette, (which is edited
by Mr. Willis Gaylord Clark, one of the editors of the
Knickerbocker) we find nothing at which we have any desire to take
exception. Mr. C. has a right to think us quacky if he pleases, and we
do not remember having assumed for a moment that we could write a
single line of the works we have reviewed. But there is something
equivocal, to say the least, in the remarks of Col. Stone. He
acknowledges that "some of our notices have been judicious, fair,
and candid bestowing praise and censure with judgment and
impartiality." This being the case, how can he reconcile his total
dissent from the public verdict in our favor, with the dictates of
justice? We are accused too of bestowing "opprobrious epithets" upon
writers whom we review and in the paragraphs so accusing us are called
nothing less than "flippant, unjust and uncritical."

  But there is another point of which we disapprove. While in our
reviews we have at all times been particularly careful not to deal
in generalities, and have never, if we remember aright, advanced in
any single instance an unsupported assertion, our accuser has
forgotten to give us any better evidence of our flippancy,
injustice, personality, and gross blundering, than the solitary dictum
of Col. Stone. We call upon the Colonel for assistance in this
dilemma. We wish to be shown our blunders that we may correct them- to
be made aware of our flippancy that we may avoid it hereafter- and
above all to have our personalities pointed out that we may proceed
forthwith with a repentant spirit, to make the amende honorable. In
default of this aid from the Editor of the Commercial we shall take it
for granted that we are neither blunderers, flippant, personal, nor
unjust.

  Who will deny that in regard to individual poems no definitive
opinions can exist, so long as to Poetry in the abstract we attach
no definitive idea? Yet it is a common thing to hear our critics,
day after day, pronounce, with a positive air, laudatory or
condemnatory sentences, en masse, upon material works of whose
merits or demerits they have, in the first place, virtually
confessed an utter ignorance, in confessing it ignorance of all
determinate principles by which to regulate a decision. Poetry has
never been defined to the satisfaction of all parties. Perhaps, in the
present condition of language it never will be. Words cannot hem it
in. Its intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be bound
down within the widest horizon of mere sounds. But it is not,
therefore, misunderstood- at least, not by all men is it
misunderstood. Very far from it, if indeed, there be any one circle of
thought distinctly and palpably marked out from amid the jarring and
tumultuous chaos of human intelligence, it is that evergreen and
radiant Paradise which the true poet knows, and knows alone, as the
limited realm of his authority- as the circumscribed Eden of his
dreams. But a definition is a thing of words- a conception of ideas.
And thus while we readily believe that Poesy, the term, it will be
troublesome, if not impossible to define- still, with its image
vividly existing in the world, we apprehend no difficulty in so
describing Poesy, the Sentiment, as to imbue even the most obtuse
intellect with a comprehension of it sufficiently distinct for all the
purposes of practical analysis.

  To look upwards from any existence, material or immaterial to its
design, is, perhaps, the most direct, and the most unerring method
of attaining a just notion of the nature of the existence itself.
Nor is the principle at fault when we turn our eyes from Nature even
to Natures God. We find certain faculties, implanted within us, and
arrive at a more plausible conception of the character and
attributes of those faculties, by considering, with what finite
judgment we possess, the intention of the Deity in so implanting
them within us, than by any actual investigation of their powers, or
any speculative deductions from their visible and material effects.
Thus, for example, we discover in all men a disposition to look with
reverence upon superiority, whether real or supposititious. In some,
this disposition is to be recognized with difficulty, and, in very
peculiar cases, we are occasionally even led to doubt its existence
altogether, until circumstances beyond the common routine bring it
accidentally into development. In others again it forms a prominent
and distinctive feature of character, and is rendered palpably evident
in its excesses. But in all human beings it is, in a greater or less
degree, finally perceptible. It has been, therefore, justly considered
a primitive sentiment. Phrenologists call it Veneration. It is,
indeed, the instinct given to man by God as security for his own
worship. And although, preserving its nature, it becomes perverted
from its principal purpose, and although swerving from that purpose,
it serves to modify the relations of human society- the relations of
father and child, of master and slave, of the ruler and the ruled- its
primitive essence is nevertheless the same, and by a reference to
primal causes, may at any moment be determined.

  Very nearly akin to this feeling, and liable to the same analysis,
is the Faculty of Ideality- which is the sentiment of Poesy. This
sentiment is the sense of the beautiful, of the sublime, and of the
mystical.* Thence spring immediately admiration of the fair flowers,
the fairer forests, the bright valleys and rivers and mountains of the
Earth- and love of the gleaming stars and other burning glories of
Heaven- and, mingled up inextricably with this love and this
admiration of Heaven and of Earth, the unconquerable desire- to
know. Poesy is the sentiment of Intellectual Happiness here, and the
Hope of a higher Intellectual Happiness hereafter.*(2)

  * We separate the sublime and the mystical- for, despite of high
authorities, we are firmly convinced that the latter may exist, in the
most vivid degree, without giving rise to the sense of the former.

  *(2) The consciousness of this truth was by no mortal more fully
than by Shelley, although he has only once especially alluded to it.
In his Hymn to intellectual Beauty we find these lines.

        While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

            Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,

            And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

        Hopes of high talk with the departed dead:

        I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed:

            I was not heard: I saw them not.

            When musing deeply on the lot

        Of life at that sweet time when birds are wooing

            All vital things that wake to bring

            News of buds and blossoming,

            Sudden thy shadow fell on me-

        I shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

        I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers

            To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?

        With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

        I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

        Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers

            Of studious zeal or love's delight

            Outwatch'd with me the envious night:

        They know that never joy illum'd my brow,

            Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free,

            This world from its dark slavery,

            That thou, O awful Loveliness,

        Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

  Imagination is its soul.* With the passions of mankind- although
it may modify them greatly- although it may exalt, or inflame, or
purify, or control them- it would require little ingenuity to prove
that it has no inevitable, and indeed no necessary co-existence. We
have hitherto spoken of poetry in the abstract: we come now to speak
of it in its everyday acceptation- that is to say, of the practical
result arising from the sentiment we have considered.

  * Imagination is, possibly in man, a lesser degree of the creative
power in God. What the Deity imagines, is, but was not before. What
man imagines, is, but was also. The mind of man cannot imagine what is
not. This latter point may be demonstrated.- See Les Premiers Traits
de L'Erudition Universelle, par M. Le Baron de Biefield, 1767.

  And now it appears evident, that since Poetry, in this new sense, is
the practical result, expressed in language, of this Poetic
Sentiment in certain individuals, the only proper method of testing
the merits of a poem is by measuring its capabilities of exciting
the Poetic Sentiments in others. And to this end we have many aids- in
observation, in experience, in ethical analysis, and in the dictates
of common sense. Hence the Poeta nascitur, which is indisputably
true if we consider the Poetic Sentiment, becomes the merest of
absurdities when we regard it in reference to the practical result. We
do not hesitate to say that a man highly endowed with the powers of
Causality- that is to say, a man of metaphysical acumen- will, even
with a very deficient share of Ideality, compose a finer poem (if we
test it, as we should, by its measure of exciting the Poetic
Sentiment) than one who, without such metaphysical acumen, shall be
gifted, in the most extraordinary degree, with the faculty of
Ideality. For a poem is not the Poetic faculty, but the means of
exciting it in mankind. Now these means the metaphysician may discover
by analysis of their effects in other cases than his own, without even
conceiving the nature of these effects- thus arriving at a result
which the unaided Ideality of his competitor would be utterly
unable, except by accident, to attain. It is more than possible that
the man who, of all writers, living or dead, has been most
successful in writing the purest of all poems- that is to say, poems
which excite more purely, most exclusively, and most powerfully the
imaginative faculties in men- owed his extraordinary and almost
magical preeminence rather to metaphysical than poetical powers. We
allude to the author of Christabel, of the Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, and of Love- to Coleridge- whose head, if we mistake not
its character, gave no great phrenological tokens of Ideality, while
the organs of Causality and Comparison were most singularly developed.

  Perhaps at this particular moment there are no American poems held
in so high estimation by our countrymen, as the poems of Drake, and of
Halleck. The exertions of Mr. George Dearborn have no doubt a far
greater share in creating this feeling than the lovers of literature
for its own sake and spiritual uses would be willing to admit. We have
indeed seldom seen more beautiful volumes than the volumes now
before us. But an adventitious interest of a loftier nature- the
interest of the living in the memory of the beloved dead- attaches
itself to the few literary remains of Drake. The poems which are now
given to us with his name are nineteen in number; and whether all,
or whether even the best of his writings, it is our present purpose to
speak of these alone, since upon this edition his poetical
reputation to all time will most probably depend.

  It is only lately that we have read The Culprit Fay. This is a
poem of six hundred and forty irregular lines, generally iambic, and
divided into thirty-six stanzas, of unequal length. The scene of the
narrative, as we ascertain from the single line,

        The moon looks down on old Cronest,

is principally in the vicinity of West Point on the Hudson. The plot
is as follows. An Ouphe, one of the race of Fairies, has "broken his
vestal vow,"

        He has loved an earthly maid

        And left for her his woodland shade;

        He has lain upon her lip of dew,

        And sunned him in her eye of blue,

        Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air,

        Play'd with the ringlets of her hair,

        And, nestling on her snowy breast,

        Forgot the lily-kings behest-

in short, he has broken Fairy-law in becoming enamored of a mortal.
The result of this misdemeanor we could not express so well as the
poet, and will therefore make use of the language put into the mouth
of the Fairy-King who reprimands the criminal.

        Fairy! Fairy! list and mark,

            Thou hast broke thine elfin chain,

        Thy flame-wood lamp is quench'd and dark

            And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain.

  The Ouphe being in this predicament, it has become necessary that
his case and crime should be investigated by a jury of his fellows,
and to this end the "shadowy tribes of air" are summoned by the
"sentry elve" who has been awakened by the "wood-tick"- are summoned
we say to the "elfin-court" at midnight to hear the doom of the
Culprit Fay.

  "Had a stain been found on the earthly fair," whose blandishments so
bewildered the little Ouphe, his punishment would have been severe
indeed. In such case he would have been (as we learn from the Fairy
judge's exposition of the criminal code,)

        Tied to the hornet's shardy wings;

        Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings;

        Or seven long ages doomed to dwell

        With the lazy worm in the walnut shell;

        Or every night to writhe and bleed

        Beneath the tread of the centipede,

        Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim

        His jailer a spider huge and grim,

        Amid the carrion bodies to lie

        Of the worm and the bug and the murdered fly-

  Fortunately, however, for the Culprit, his mistress is proved to
be of "sinless mind" and under such redeeming circumstances the
sentence is, mildly, as follows-

        Thou shalt seek the beach of sand

        Where the water bounds the elfin land,

        Thou shalt watch the oozy brine

        Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine,

        Then dart the glistening arch below,

        And catch a drop from his silver bow.

        If the spray-bead be won

          The stain of thy wing is washed away,

        But another errand must be done

          Ere thy crime be lost for aye;

        Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,

          Thou must re-illume its spark.

        Mount thy steed and spur him high

        To the heaven's blue canopy,

        And when thou seest a shooting star

        Follow it fast and follow it far

        The last faint spark of its burning train

        Shall light the elfin lamp again.

  Upon this sin, and upon this sentence, depends the web of the
narrative, which is now occupied with the elfin difficulties
overcome by the Ouphe in washing away the stain of his wing, and
re-illuming his flame-wood lamp. His soiled pinion having lost its
power, he is under the necessity of wending his way on foot from the
Elfin court upon Cronest to the river beach at its base. His path is
encumbered at every step with "bog and briar," with "brook and
mire," with "beds of tangled fern," with "groves of night-shade,"
and with the minor evils of ant and snake. Happily, however, a spotted
toad coming in sight, our adventurer jumps upon her back, and
"bridling her mouth with a silk-weed twist" bounds merrily along

        Till the mountain's magic verge is past

        And the beach of sand is reached at last.

  Alighting now from his "courser-toad" the Ouphe folds his wings
around his bosom, springs on a rock, breathes a prayer, throws his
arms above his head,

        Then tosses a tiny curve in air

        And plunges in the waters blue.

  Here, however, a host of difficulties await him by far too
multitudinous to enumerate. We will content ourselves with simply
stating the names of his most respectable assailants. These are the
"spirits of the wave" dressed in "snail-plate armor" and aided by
the "mailed shrimp," the "prickly prong," the "blood-red leech," the
"stony star-fish," the "jellied quarl," the "soldier-crab," and the
"lancing squab." But the hopes of our hero are high, and his limbs are
strong, so

        He spreads his arms like the swallow's wing,

        And throws his feet with a frog-like fling.

  All however, is to no purpose.

        On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold,

        The quarl's long arms are round him roll'd,

        The prickly prong has pierced his skin,

        And the squab has thrown his javelin,

        The gritty star has rubb'd him raw,

        And the crab has struck with his giant claw;

        He bawls with rage, and he shrieks with pain

        He strikes around but his blows are vain-

  So then,

        He turns him round and flies amain

        With hurry and dash to the beach again.

  Arrived safely on land our Fairy friend now gathers the dew from the
"sorrel-leaf and henbane-bud" and bathing therewith his wounds,
finally ties them up with cobweb. Thus recruited, he

        -treads the fatal shore

        As fresh and vigorous as before.

  At length espying a "purple-muscle shell" upon the beach, he
determines to use it as a boat and thus evade the animosity of the
water spirits whose powers extend not above the wave. Making a
"sculler's notch" in the stern, and providing himself with an oar of
the bootle-blade, the Ouphe a second time ventures upon the deep.
His perils are now diminished, but still great. The imps of the
river heave the billows up before the prow of the boat, dash the
surges against her side, and strike against her keel. The quarl
uprears "his island-back" in her path, and the scallop, floating in
the rear of the vessel, spatters it all over with water. Our
adventurer, however, bails it out with the colen bell (which he has
luckily provided for the purpose of catching the drop from the
silver bow of the sturgeon,) and keeping his little bark warily
trimmed, holds on his course undiscomfited.

  The object of his first adventure is at length discovered in a
"brownbacked sturgeon," who

        Like the heaven-shot javelin

        Springs above the waters blue,

        And, instant as the star-fall light

        Plunges him in the deep again,

        But leaves an arch of silver bright,

        The rainbow of the moony main.

  From this rainbow our Ouphe succeeds in catching, by means of his
colen bell cup, a "droplet of the sparkling dew." One half of his task
is accordingly done-

        His wings are pure, for the gem is won.

  On his return to land, the ripples divide before him, while the
water-spirits, so rancorous before, are obsequiously attentive to
his comfort. Having tarried a moment on the beach to breathe a prayer,
he "spreads his wings of gilded blue" and takes his way to the elfin
court- there resting until the cricket, at two in the morning,
rouses him up for the second portion of his penance.

  His equipments are now an "acorn-helmet," a "thistle-down plume,"
a corslet of the "wild-bee's" skin, a cloak of the "wings of
butterflies," a shield of the "shell of the lady-bug," for lance
"the sting of a wasp," for sword a "blade of grass," for horse "a
fire-fly," and for spurs a couple of "cockle seed." Thus accoutred,

        Away like a glance of thought he flies

        To skim the heavens and follow far

        The fiery trail of the rocket-star.

  In the Heavens he has new dangers to encounter. The "shapes of
air" have begun their work- a "drizzly mist" is cast around him-
"storm, darkness, sleet and shade" assail him- "shadowy hands"
twitch at his bridle-rein- "flame-shot tongues" play around him-
"fiendish eyes" glare upon him- and

        Yells of rage and shrieks of fear

        Come screaming on his startled ear.

  Still our adventurer is nothing daunted.

          He thrusts before, and he strikes behind,

        Till he pierces the cloudy bodies through

          And gashes the shadowy limbs of mind.

and the Elfin makes no stop, until he reaches the "bank of the milky
way." He there checks his courser, and watches "for the glimpse of the
planet shoot." While thus engaged, however, an unexpected adventure
befalls him. He is approached by a company of the "sylphs of Heaven
attired in sunset's crimson pall." They dance around him, and "skip
before him on the plain." One receiving his "wasp-sting lance," and
another taking his bridle-rein,

        With warblings wild they lead him on,

          To where, through clouds of amber seen,

        Studded with stars resplendent shone

          The palace of the sylphid queen.

  A glowing description of the queen's beauty follows: and as the form
of an earthly Fay had never been seen before in the bowers of light,
she is represented as falling desperately in love at first sight
with our adventurous Ouphe. He returns the compliment in some measure,
of course; but, although "his heart bent fitfully," the "earthly
form imprinted there" was a security against a too vivid impression.
He declines, consequently, the invitation of the queen to remain
with her and amuse himself by "lying within the fleecy drift,"
"hanging upon the rainbow's rim," having his "brow adorned with all
the jewels of the sky," "sitting within the Pleiad ring," "resting
upon Orion's belt" "riding upon the lightning's gleam," "dancing
upon the orbed moon," and "swimming within the milky way."

        Lady, he cries, I have sworn to-night

        On the word of a fairy knight

        To do my sentence task aright

  The queen, therefore, contents herself with bidding the Fay an
affectionate farewell- having first directed him carefully to that
particular portion of the sky where a star is about to fall. He
reaches this point in safety, and in despite of the "fiends of the
cloud," who "bellow very loud," succeeds finally in catching a
"glimmering spark" with which he returns triumphantly to Fairy-land.
The poem closes with an Io Paean chaunted by the elves in honor of
these glorious adventures.

  It is more than probable that from ten readers of the Culprit Fay,
nine would immediately pronounce it a poem betokening the most
extraordinary powers of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five
or six, poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth of what
we have already assumed, that Ideality is indeed the soul of the
Poetic Sentiment, would feel embarrassed between a
half-consciousness that they ought to admire the production, and a
wonder that they do not. This embarrassment would then arise from an
indistinct conception of the results in which Ideality is rendered
manifest. Of these results some few are seen in the Culprit Fay, but
the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of
imagination whatever. The general character of the poem will, we
think, be sufficiently understood by any one who may have taken the
trouble to read our foregoing compendium of the narrative. It will
be there seen that what is so frequently termed the imaginative
power of this story, lies especially- we should have rather said is
thought to lie- in the passages we have quoted, or in others of a
precisely similar nature. These passages embody, principally, mere
specifications of qualities, of habiliments, of punishments, of
occupations, of circumstances, &c., which the poet has believed in
unison with the size, firstly, and secondly with the nature of his
Fairies. To all which may be added specifications of other animal
existences (such as the toad, the beetle, the lance-fly, the
fire-fly and the like) supposed also to be in accordance. An example
will best illustrate our meaning upon this point-

        He put his acorn helmet on;

        It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down:

        The corslet plate that guarded his breast

        Was once the wild bee's golden vest;

        His cloak of a thousand mingled dyes,

        Was formed of the wings of butterflies;

        His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen,

        Studs of gold on a ground of green;*

        And the quivering lance which he brandished bright

        Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight.

  * Chestnut color, or more slack,

    Gold upon a ground of black.

                                 Ben Jonson.

  We shall now be understood. Were any of the admirers of the
Culprit Fay asked their opinion of these lines, they would most
probably speak in high terms of the imagination they display. Yet
let the most stolid and the most confessedly unpoetical of these
admirers only try the experiment, and he will find, possibly to his
extreme surprise, that he himself will have no difficulty whatever
in substituting for the equipments of the Fairy, as assigned by the
poet, other equipments equally comfortable, no doubt, and equally in
unison with the preconceived size, character, and other qualities of
the equipped. Why we could accoutre him as well ourselves- let us see.

        His blue-bell helmet, we have heard

        Was plumed with the down of the hummingbird,

        The corslet on his bosom bold

        Was once the locust's coat of gold,

        His cloak, of a thousand mingled hues,

        Was the velvet violet, wet with dews,

        His target was, the crescent shell

        Of the small sea Sidrophel,

        And a glittering beam from a maiden's eye

        Was the lance which he proudly wav'd on high.

  The truth is, that the only requisite for writing verses of this
nature, ad libitum is a tolerable acquaintance with the qualities of
the objects to be detailed, and a very moderate endowment of the
faculty of Comparison- which is the chief constituent of Fancy or
the powers of combination. A thousand such lines may be composed
without exercising in the least degree the Poetic Sentiment, which
is Ideality, Imagination, or the creative ability. And, as we have
before said, the greater portion of the Culprit Fay is occupied with
these, or similiar things, and upon such, depends very nearly, if
not altogether, its reputation. We select another example-

        But oh! how fair the shape that lay

          Beneath a rainbow bending bright,

        She seem'd to the entranced Fay

          The loveliest of the forms of light,

        Her mantle was the purple rolled

          At twilight in the west afar;

        T'was tied with threads of dawning gold,

          And button'd with a sparkling star.

        Her face was like the lily roon

          That veils the vestal planet's hue,

        Her eyes, two beamlets from the moon

          Set floating in the welkin blue.

        Her hair is like the sunny beam,

        And the diamond gems which round it gleam

        Are the pure drops of dewy even,

        That neer have left their native heaven.

  Here again the faculty of Comparison is alone exercised, and no mind
possessing the faculty in any ordinary degree would find a
difficulty in substituting for the materials employed by the poet
other materials equally as good. But viewed as mere efforts of the
Fancy and without reference to Ideality, the lines just quoted are
much worse than those which were taken earlier. A congruity was
observable in the accoutrements of the Ouphe, and we had no trouble in
forming a distinct conception of his appearance when so accoutred. But
the most vivid powers of Comparison can attach no definitive idea to
even "the loveliest form of light," when habited in a mantle of
"rolled purple tied with threads of dawn and buttoned with a star,"
and sitting at the same time under a rainbow with "beamlet" eyes and a
visage of "lily roon."

  But if these things evince no Ideality in their author, do they
not excite it in others?- if so, we must conclude, that without
being himself imbued with the Poetic Sentiment, he has still succeeded
in writing a fine poem- a supposition as we have before endeavored
to show, not altogether paradoxical. Most assuredly we think not. In
the case of a great majority of readers the only sentiment aroused
by compositions of this order is a species of vague wonder at the
writer's ingenuity, and it is this indeterminate sense of wonder which
passes but too frequently current for the proper influence of the
Poetic power. For our own part we plead guilty to a predominant
sense of the ludicrous while occupied in the perusal of the poem
before us- a sense whose promptings we sincerely and honestly
endeavored to quell, perhaps not altogether successfully, while
penning our compend of the narrative. That a feeling of this nature is
utterly at war with the Poetic Sentiment will not be disputed by those
who comprehend the character of the sentiment itself. This character
is finely shadowed out in that popular although vague idea so
prevalent throughout all time, that a species of melancholy is
inseparably connected with the higher manifestations of the beautiful.
But with the numerous and seriously- adduced incongruities of the
Culprit Fay, we find it generally impossible to connect other ideas
than those of the ridiculous. We are bidden, in the first place, and
in a tone of sentiment and language adapted to the loftiest breathings
of the Muse, to imagine a race of Fairies in the vicinity of West
Point. We are told, with a grave air, of their camp, of their king,
and especially of their sentry, who is a wood-tick. We are informed
that an Ouphe of about an inch in height has committed a deadly sin in
falling in love with a mortal maiden, who may, very possibly, be six
feet in her stockings. The consequence to the Ouphe is- what? Why,
that he has "dyed his wings," "broken his elfin chain," and
"quenched his flame-wood lamp." And he is therefore sentenced to what?
To catch a spark from the tail of a falling star, and a drop of
water from the belly of a sturgeon. What are his equipments for the
first adventure? An acorn-helmet, a thistle-down plume, a butterfly
cloak, a lady-bug shield, cockle-seed spurs, and a fire-fly horse. How
does he ride to the second? On the back of a bullfrog. What are his
opponents in the one? "Drizzle-mists," "sulphur and smoke," "shadowy
hands and flame-shot tongues." What in the other? "Mailed shrimps,"
"prickly prongs," "blood-red leeches," "jellied quarls," "stony star
fishes," "lancing squabs" and "soldier crabs." Is that all? No-
Although only an inch high he is in imminent danger of seduction
from a "sylphid queen," dressed in a mantle of "rolled purple,"
"tied with threads of dawning gold," "buttoned with a sparkling star,"
and sitting under a rainbow with "beamlet eyes" and a countenance of
"lily roon." In our account of all this matter we have had reference
to the book- and to the book alone. It will be difficult to prove us
guilty in any degree of distortion or exaggeration. Yet such are the
puerilities we daily find ourselves called upon to admire, as among
the loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to assign a rank
with the proud trophies of the matured and vigorous genius of England,
is to prove ourselves at once a fool; a maligner, and no patriot.*

  * A review of Drake's poems, emanating from one of our proudest
Universities, does not scruple to make use of the following language
in relation to the Culprit Fay. "It is, to say the least, an elegant
production, the purest specimen of Ideality we have ever met with,
sustaining in each incident a most bewitching interest. Its very title
is enough," &c. &c. We quote these expressions as a fair specimen of
the general unphilosophical and adulatory tenor of our criticism.

  As an instance of what may be termed the sublimely ridiculous we
quote the following lines-

        With sweeping tail and quivering fin,

          Through the wave the sturgeon flew,

        And like the heaven-shot javelin,

          He sprung above the waters blue.

        Instant as the star-fall light,

          He plunged into the deep again,

        But left an arch of silver bright

          The rainbow of the moony main.

        It was a strange and lovely sight

          To see the puny goblin there,

        He seemed an angel form of light

          With azure wing and sunny hair,

          Throned on a cloud of purple fair

        Circled with blue and edged with white

          And sitting at the fall of even

          Beneath the bow of summer heaven.

  The [lines of the last verse], if considered without their
context, have a certain air of dignity, elegance, and chastity of
thought. If however we apply the context, we are immediately
overwhelmed with the grotesque. It is impossible to read without
laughing, such expressions as "It was a strange and lovely sight"- "He
seemed an angel form of light"- "And sitting at the fall of even,
beneath the bow of summer heaven" to a Fairy- a goblin- an Ouphe- half
an inch high, dressed in an acorn helmet and butterfly-cloak, and
sitting on the water in a muscleshell, with a "brown-backed
sturgeon" turning somersets over his head.

  In a world where evil is a mere consequence of good, and good a mere
consequence of evil- in short where all of which we have any
conception is good or bad only by comparison- we have never yet been
fully able to appreciate the validity of that decision which would
debar the critic from enforcing upon his readers the merits or
demerits of a work with another. It seems to us that an adage has
had more to do with this popular feeling than any just reason
founded upon common sense. Thinking thus, we shall have no scruple
in illustrating our opinion in regard to what is not Ideality or the
Poetic Power, by an example of what is.*

  * As examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we would
cite the Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus, the Inferno of Dante,
Cervantes' Destruction of Numantia, the Comus of Milton, Pope's Rape
of the Lock, Burns' Tam O'Shanter, the Auncient Mariner, the
Christabel, and the Kubla Khan of Coleridge, and most especially the
Sensitive Plant of Shelley, and the Nightingale of Keats. We have seen
American poems evincing the faculty in the highest degree.

  We have already given the description of the Sylphid Queen in the
Culprit Fay. In the Queen Mab of Shelley a Fairy is thus introduced-

        Those who had looked upon the sight

          Passing all human glory,

        Saw not the yellow moon,

        Saw not the mortal scene,

        Heard not the night wind's rush,

        Heard not an earthly sound,

        Saw but the fairy pageant,

        Heard but the heavenly strains

        That filled the lonely dwelling-

and thus described-

        The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud

        That catches but the faintest tinge of even,

        And which the straining eye can hardly seize

        When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,

        Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star

        That gems the glittering coronet of morn,

        Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,

        As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,

        Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,

        Yet with an undulating motion,

        Swayed to her outline gracefully.

  In these exquisite lines the Faculty of mere Comparison is but
little exercised- that of Ideality in a wonderful degree. It is
probable that in a similar case the poet we are now reviewing would
have formed the face of the Fairy of the "fibrous cloud," her arms
of the "pale tinge of even," her eyes of the "fair stars," and her
body of the "twilight shadow." Having so done, his admirers would have
congratulated him upon his imagination, not, taking the trouble to
think that they themselves could at any moment imagine a Fairy of
materials equally as good, and conveying an equally distinct idea.
Their mistake would be precisely analogous to that of many a schoolboy
who admires the imagination displayed in Jack the Giant-Killer, and is
finally rejoiced at; discovering his own imagination to surpass that
of the author, since the monsters destroyed by Jack are only about
forty feet in height, and he himself has no trouble in imagining
some of one hundred and forty. It will, be seen that the Fairy of
Shelley is not a mere compound of incongruous natural objects,
inartificially put together, and unaccompanied by any moral sentiment-
but a being, in the illustration of whose nature some physical
elements are used collaterally as adjuncts, while the main
conception springs immediately or thus apparently springs, from the
brain of the poet, enveloped in the moral sentiments of grace, of
color, of motion- of the beautiful, of the mystical, of the august- in
short of the ideal.*

  * Among things, which not only in our opinion, but in the opinion of
far wiser and better men, are to be ranked with the mere
prettinesses of the Muse, are the positive similes so abundant in
the writing of antiquity, and so much insisted upon by the critics
of the reign of Queen Anne.

  It is by no means our intention to deny that in the Culprit Fay
are passages of a different order from those to which we have
objected- passages evincing a degree of imagination not to be
discovered in the plot, conception, or general execution of the
poem. The opening stanza will afford us a tolerable example.

        Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-

        The earth is dark but the heavens are bright

        Naught is seen in the vault on high

        But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,

        And the flood which rolls its milky hue

        A river of light on the welkin blue.

        The moon looks down on old Cronest,

        She mellows the shades of his shaggy breast,

        And seems his huge gray form to throw

        In a silver cone on the wave below,

        His sides are broken by spots of shade,

        By the walnut bow and the cedar made,

        And through their clustering branches dark

        Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-

        Like starry twinkles that momently break

        Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.

  There is Ideality in these lines- but except in the case of the
[second and the fourteenth lines]- it is Ideality not of a high order.
We have, it is true, a collection of natural objects, each
individually of great beauty, and, if actually seen as in nature,
capable of exciting in any mind, through the means of the Poetic
Sentiment more or less inherent in all, a certain sense of the
beautiful. But to view such natural objects as they exist, and to
behold them through the medium of words, are different things. Let
us pursue the idea that such a collection as we have here will
produce, of necessity, the Poetic Sentiment, and we may as well make
up our minds to believe that a catalogue of such expressions as
moon, sky, trees, rivers, mountains, &c., shall be capable of exciting
it,- it is merely an extension of the principle. But in the line
"the earth is dark, but the heavens are bright" besides the simple
mention of the "dark earth" "and the bright heaven," we have,
directly, the moral sentiment of the brightness of the sky
compensating for the darkness of the earth- and thus, indirectly, of
the happiness of a future state compensating for the miseries of the
present. All this is effected by the simple introduction of the word
but between the "dark earth" and the "bright heaven"- this
introduction, however, was prompted by the Poetic Sentiment, and by
the Poetic Sentiment alone. The case is analogous in the expression
"glimmers and dies," where the imagination is exalted by the moral
sentiment of beauty heightened in dissolution.

  In one or two shorter passages of the Culprit Fay the poet will
recognize the purely ideal, and be able at a glance to distinguish
it from that baser alloy upon which we have descanted. We give them
without farther comment.

        The winds are whist, and the owl is still,

          The bat in the shelvy rock is hid

        And naught is heard on the lonely hill

        But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill

          Of the gauze-winged katydid;

        And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill

         Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings

        Ever a note of wail and wo-

        Up to the vaulted firmament

        His path the fire-fly courser bent,

        And at every gallop on the wind

        He flung a glittering spark behind.

        He blessed the force of the charmed line

          And he banned the water-goblins' spite,

        For he saw around in the sweet moonshine,

        Their little wee faces above the brine,

        Grinning and laughing with all their might

        At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight.

   The poem "To a Friend" consists of fourteen Spenserian stanzas.
They are fine spirited verses, and probably were not supposed by their
author to be more. Stanza the fourth, although beginning nobly,
concludes with that very common exemplification of the bathos, the
illustrating natural objects of beauty or grandeur by references to
the tinsel of artificiality.

        Oh! for a seat on Appalachia's brow,

        That I might scan the glorious prospects round,

        Wild waving woods, and rolling floods below,

        Smooth level glades and fields with grain embrowned,

        High heaving hills, with tufted forests crowned,

        Rearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue dome,

        And emerald isles, like banners green un-wound,

        Floating along the take, while round them roam

        Bright helms of billowy blue, and plumes of dancing foam.

  In the Extracts from Leon are passages not often surpassed in
vigor of passionate thought and expression- and which induce us to
believe not only that their author would have succeeded better in
prose romance than in poetry, but that his attention would have
naturally fallen into the former direction, had the Destroyer only
spared him a little longer.

  This poem contains also lines of far greater poetic power than any
to be found in the Culprit Fay. For example-

        The stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold,

        The viewless dew falls lightly on the world;

        The gentle air that softly sweeps the leaves

        A strain of faint unearthly music weaves:

        As when the harp of heaven remotely plays,

        Or sygnets wail- or song of sorrowing fays

        That float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale,

        On wings of woven air in some enchanted vale.*

  * The expression "woven air," much insisted upon by the friends of
Drake, seems to be accredited to him as original. It is to be found in
many English writers- and can be traced back to Apuleius, who calls
fine drapery ventum textilem.

  Niagara is objectionable in many respects, and in none more so
than in its frequent inversions of language, and the artificial
character of its versification. The invocation,

        Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river,

        Pour thy white foam on the valley below!

        Frown ye dark mountains, &c.

is ludicrous- and nothing more. In general, all such invocations
have an air of the burlesque. In the present instance we may fancy the
majestic Niagara replying, "Most assuredly I will roar, whether, worm!
thou tellest me or not."

  The American Flag commences with a collection of those bald
conceits, which we have already shown to have no dependence whatever
upon the Poetic Power- springing altogether from Comparison.

        When Freedom from her mountain height

          Unfurled her standard to the air,

        She tore the azure robe of night

          And set the stars of glory there.

        She mingled with its gorgeous dyes

        The milky baldric of the skies,

        And striped its pure celestrial white

        With streakings of the morning light;

        Then from his mansion in the sun

        She called her eagle bearer down

        And gave into his mighty hand

          The symbol of her chosen land.

  Let us reduce all this to plain English, and we have- what? Why, a
flag, consisting of the "azure robe of night," "set with stars of
glory," interspersed with "streaks of morning light," relieved with
a few pieces of "milky way," and the whole carried by an "eagle
bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who bears aloft this "symbol
of our chosen land" in his "mighty hand," by which we are to
understand his claw. In the second stanza, "the thunder-drum of
Heaven" is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degree- a commingling
of the most sublime music of Heaven with the most utterly contemptible
and common-place of Earth. The two concluding verses are in a better
spirit, and might almost be supposed to be from a different hand.
The images contained in the lines

        When Death careering on the gale

        Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,

        And frighted waves rush wildly back,

        Before the broadsides reeling rack,

are of the highest order of Ideality. The deficiencies of the whole
poem may be best estimated by reading it in connection with "Scots wha
hae," with the "Mariners of England," or with "Hohenlinden." It is
indebted for its high and most undeserved reputation to our
patriotism- not to our judgment.

  The remaining poems in Mr. Dearborn's edition of Drake, are three
Songs; Lines in an Album; Lines to a Lady; Lines on leaving New
Rochelle; Hope; A Fragment; To-; To Eva; To a Lady; To Sarah; and
Bronx. These are all poems of little compass, and with the exception
of Bronx and a portion of the Fragment, they have no character
distinctive from the mass of our current poetical literature. Bronx,
however, is in our opinion, not only the best of the writings of
Drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem, upon which his
admirers would do better to found a hope of the writer's ultimate
reputation than upon the niaiseries of the Culprit Fay. In the
Fragment is to be found the finest individual passage in the volume
before us, and we quote it as a proper finale to our review.

        Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever,

          How sweet't would be when all the air

        In moonlight swims, along thy river

          To couch upon the grass, and hear

        Niagra's everlasting voice

          Far in the deep blue west away,

        That dreamy and poetic noise

          We mark not in the glare of day,

        Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry,

        When o'er the brink the tide is driven,

        As if the vast and sheeted sky

          In thunder fell from Heaven.

  Halleck's poetical powers appear to us essentially inferior, upon
the whole, to those of his friend Drake. He has written nothing at all
comparable to Bronx. By the hackneyed phrase, sportive elegance, we
might possibly designate at once the general character of his writings
and the very loftiest praise to which he is justly entitled.

  Alnwick Castle is an irregular poem of one hundred and
twenty-eight lines- was written, as we are informed, in October
1822- and is descriptive of a seat of the Duke of Northumberland, in
Northumberlandshire, England. The effect of the first stanza is
materially impaired by a defect in its grammatical arrangement. The
fine lines,

        Home of the Percy's high-born race,

          Home of their beautiful and brave,

        Alike their birth and burial place,

          Their cradle and their grave!

are of the nature of an invocation, and thus require a continuation of
the address to the "Home, &c." We are consequently disappointed when
the stanza proceeds with-

        Still sternly o'er the castle gate

        Their house's Lion stands in state

          As in his proud departed hours;

        And warriors frown in stone on high,

        And feudal banners "flout the sky"

          Above his princely towers.

  The objects of allusion here vary, in an awkward manner, from the
castle to the lion, and from the Lion to the towers. By writing the
verses thus the difficulty would be remedied.

        Still sternly o'er the castle gate

        Thy house's Lion stands in state,

        As in his proud departed hours;

        And warriors frown in stone on high,

        And feudal banners "flout the sky"

          Above thy princely towers.

  The second stanza, without evincing in any measure the loftier
powers of a poet, has that quiet air of grace, both in thought and
expression, which seems to be the prevailing feature of the Muse of
Halleck.

        A gentle hill its side inclines,

          Lovely in England's fadeless green,

        To meet the quiet stream which winds

          Through this romantic scene

        As silently and sweetly still,

        As when, at evening, on that hill,

          While summer's wind blew soft and low,

        Seated by gallant Hotspur's side

        His Katherine was a happy bride

          A thousand years ago.

  There are one or two brief passages in the poem evincing a degree of
rich imagination not elsewhere perceptible throughout the book. For
example-

        Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile:

          Does not the succoring Ivy keeping,

        Her watch around it seem to smile

          As o'er a lov'd one sleeping?

and,

        One solitary turret gray

          Still tells in melancholy glory

        The legend of the Cheviot day.

  The commencement of the fourth stanza is of the highest order of
Poetry, and partakes, in a happy manner, of that quaintness of
expression so effective an adjunct to Ideality, when employed by the
Shelleys, the Coleridges and the Tennysons, but so frequently debased,
and rendered ridiculous, by the herd of brainless imitators.

        Wild roses by the abbey towers

          Are gay in their young bud and bloom:

        They were born of a race of funeral flowers,

        That garlanded in long-gone hours,

          A Templar's knightly tomb.

  The tone employed in the concluding portions of Alnwick Castle,
is, we sincerely think, reprehensible, and unworthy of Halleck. No
true poet can unite in any manner the low burlesque with the ideal,
and not be conscious of incongruity and of a profanation. Such
verses as

        Men in the coal and cattle line

          From Tevoit's bard and hero land,

          From royal Berwick's beach of sand,

          From Wooler, Morpeth, Hexham, and

                    Newcastle upon Tyne.

may lay claim to oddity- but no more. These things are the defects and
not the beauties of Don Juan. They are totally out of keeping with the
graceful and delicate manner of the initial portions of Alnwick
Castle, and serve no better purpose than to deprive the entire poem of
all unity of effect. If a poet must be farcical, let him be just that,
and nothing else. To be drolly sentimental is bad enough, as we have
just seen in certain passages of the Culprit Fay, but to be
sentimentally droll is a thing intolerable to men, and Gods, and
columns.

  Marco Bozzaris appears to have much lyrical without any high order
of ideal beauty. Force is its prevailing character- a force,
however, consisting more in a well ordered and sonorous arrangement of
this metre, and a judicious disposal of what may be called the
circumstances of the poem, than in the true material of lyric vigor.
We are introduced, first, to the Turk who dreams, at midnight, in
his guarded tent,

          of the hour

        When Greece her knee in suppliance bent,

        Should tremble at his power-

  He is represented as revelling in the visions of ambition.

        In dreams through camp and court he bore

        The trophies of a conqueror;

        In dreams his song of triumph heard;

        Then wore his monarch's signet ring;

        Then pressed that monarch's throne- a king;

        As wild his thoughts and gay of wing

          As Eden's garden bird.

  In direct contrast to this we have Bozzaris watchful in the
forest, and ranging his band of Suliotes on the ground, and amid the
memories of Plataea. An hour elapses, and the Turk awakes from his
visions of false glory- to die. But Bozzaris dies- to awake. He dies
in the flush of victory to awake, in death, to an ultimate certainty
of Freedom. Then follows an invocation to death. His terrors under
ordinary circumstances are contrasted with the glories of the
dissolution of Bozzaris, in which the approach of the Destroyer is

            welcome as the cry

        That told the Indian isles were nigh

        To the world-seeking Genoese,

        When the land-wind from woods of palm,

        And orange groves and fields of balm,

          Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

  The poem closes with the poetical apotheosis of Marco Bozzaris as

        One of the few, the immortal names

          That are not born to die.

  It will be seen that these arrangements of the subject are
skillfully contrived- perhaps they are a little too evident, and we
are enabled too readily by the perusal of one passage, to anticipate
the succeeding. The rhythm is highly artificial. The stanzas are
well adapted for vigorous expression- the fifth will afford a just
specimen of the versification of the whole poem.

        Come to the bridal Chamber, Death!

        Come to the mother's when she feels

        For the first time her first born's breath;

          Come when the blessed seals

        That close the pestilence are broke,

        And crowded cities wail its stroke,

        Come in consumption's ghastly form,

        The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;

        Come when the heart beats high and warm,

          With banquet song and dance, and wine;

        And thou art terrible- the tear,

        The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,

        And all we know, or dream, or fear

          Of agony, are thine.

  Granting, however, to Marco Bozzaris, the minor excellences we
have pointed out we should be doing our conscience great wrong in
calling it, upon the whole, any more than a very ordinary matter. It
is surpassed, even as a lyric, by a multitude of foreign and by many
American compositions of a similar character. To Ideality it has few
pretensions, and the finest portion of the poem is probably to be
found in the verses we have quoted elsewhere-

        Thy grasp is welcome as the hand

        Of brother in a foreign land,

        Thy summons welcome as the cry

        That told the Indian isles were nigh

          To the world-seeking Genoese,

        When the land-wind from woods of palm

        And orange groves, and fields of balm

        Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

  The verses entitled Burns consist of thirty-eight quatrains- the
three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of
three. This poem has many of the traits of Alnwick Castle, and bears
also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of Wordsworth. Its
chief merits, and indeed the chief merit, so we think, of all the
poems of Halleck is the merit of expression. In the brief extracts
from Burns which follow, our readers will recognize the peculiar
character of which we speak.

        Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks:

          Thou mind'st me of that autumn noon

        When first we met upon "the banks

          And braes o'bonny Doon"-

        Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,

          My sunny hour was glad and brief-

        We've crossed the winter sea, and thou

          Art withered-flower and leaf,

        There have been loftier themes than his,

          And longer scrolls and louder lyres

        And lays lit up with Poesy's

          Purer and holier fires.

        And when he breathes his master-lay

          Of Alloways witch-haunted wall

        All passions in our frames of clay

          Come thronging at his call.

        Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,

          Shrines to no code or creed confined-

        The Delphian vales, the Palastines,

          The Meccas of the mind.

        They linger by the Doon's low trees,

          And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,

        And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries!

          The Poet's tomb is there.

Wyoming is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual
excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines
which follow are of great beauty.

        I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,

        In life- a vision of the brain no more,

        I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,

        That beetles high thy love! valley o'er;

        And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore,

        Within a bower of sycamores am laid;

        And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore

        The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade

        Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.

  The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some
portions of Alnwick Castle- with such things as

            he would look particularly droll

        In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume;

and

            A girl of sweet sixteen

        Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn

        Without a shoe or stocking- hoeing corn,

mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.

  The Field of the Grounded Arms contains twenty-four quatrains,
without rhyme, and, we think, of a disagreeable versification. In this
poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of Halleck. For
example-

        Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed

      Intently, as we gaze on vacancy,

        When the mind's wings o'erspread

        The spirit world of dreams.

and again-

        O'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers.

  Red-jacket has much power of expression with little evidence of
poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in
any great degree, with the general tone of the poem.

  A Sketch should have been omitted from the edition as altogether
unworthy of its author.

  The remaining pieces in the volume are Twilight, Psalm cxxxvii;
To...; Love; Domestic Happiness; Magdalen, From the Italian; Woman;
Connecticut; Music; On the Death of Lieut. William Howard Allen; A
Poet's Daughter; and On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. Of the
majority of these we deem it unnecessary to say more than that they
partake, in a more or less degree, of the general character observable
in the poems of Halleck. The Poet's Daughter appears to us a
particularly happy specimen of that general character, and we doubt
whether it be not the favorite of its author. We are glad to see the
vulgarity of

        I'm busy in the cotton trade

          And sugar line,

omitted in the present edition. The eleventh stanza is certainly not
English as it stands- and besides it is altogether unintelligible.
What is the meaning of this?

        But her who asks, though first among

        The good, the beautiful, the young

        The birthright of a spell more strong

          Than these have brought her.

  The Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake, we prefer to any of
the writings of Halleck. It has that rare merit in composition of this
kind- the union of tender sentiment and simplicity. This poem consists
merely of six quatrains, and we quote them in full.

        Green be the turf above thee,

          Friend of my better days!

        None knew thee but to love thee,

          Nor named thee but to praise.

        Tears fell when thou wert dying

          From eyes unused to weep,

        And long, where thou art lying,

          Will tears the cold turf steep.

        When hearts whose truth was proven,

          Like thine are laid in earth,

        There should a wreath be woven

          To tell the world their worth.

        And I, who woke each morrow

          To clasp thy hand in mine,

        Who shared thy joy and sorrow,

          Whose weal and woe were thine-

        It should be mine to braid it

          Around thy faded brow,

        But I've in vain essayed it,

          And feel I cannot now.

        While memory bids me weep thee,

          Nor thoughts nor words are free,

        The grief is fixed too deeply,

          That mourns a man like thee.

  If we are to judge from the subject of these verses, they are a work
of some care and reflection. Yet they abound in faults. In the line,

        Tears fell when thou wert dying;

wert is not English.

        Will tears the cold turf steep,

is an exceedingly rough verse. The metonymy involved in

        There should a wreath be woven

          To tell the world their worth,

is unjust. The quatrain beginning,

        And I who woke each morrow,

is ungrammatical in its construction when viewed in connection with
the quatrain which immediately follows. "Weep thee" and "deeply" are
inaccurate rhymes- and the whole of the first quatrain,

        Green be the turf, &c.

although beautiful, bears too close a resemblance to the still more
beautiful lines of William Wordsworth,

        She dwelt among the untrodden ways

          Beside the springs of Dove,

        A maid whom there were none to praise

          And very few to love.

  As a versifier Halleck is by no means equal to his friend, all of
whose poems evince an ear finely attuned to the delicacies of
melody. We seldom meet with more inharmonious lines than those,
generally, of the author of Alnwick Castle. At every step such
verses occur as,

        And the monk's hymn and minstrel's song-

        True as the steel of their tried blades-

        For him the joy of her young years-

        Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath-

        And withered my life's leaf like thine-

in which the proper course of the rhythm would demand an accent upon
syllables too unimportant to sustain it. Not infrequently, too, we
meet with lines such as this,

        Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,

in which the multiplicity of consonants renders the pronunciation of
the words at all, a matter of no inconsiderable difficulty.

  But we must bring our notice to a close. It will be seen that
while we are willing to admire in many respects the poems before us,
we feel obliged to dissent materially from that public opinion
(perhaps not fairly ascertained) which would assign them a very
brilliant rank in the empire of Poesy. That we have among us poets
of the loftiest order we believe- but we do not believe that these
poets are Drake and Halleck.

                       BRYANT'S POEMS

  MR. BRYANT'S poetical reputation, both at home and abroad, is
greater, we presume, than that of any other American. British
critics have frequently awarded him high praise, and here, the
public press have been unanimous in approbation. We can call to mind
no dissenting voice. Yet the nature, and, most especially the
manner, of the expressed opinions in this case, should be considered
as somewhat equivocal, and but too frequently must have borne to the
mind of the poet doubts and dissatisfaction. The edition now before us
may be supposed to embrace all such of his poems as he deems not
unworthy his name. These (amounting to about one hundred) have been
"carefully revised." With the exception of some few, about which
nothing could well be said, we will speak briefly of them one by
one, but in such order as we may find convenient.

  The Ages, a didactic piece of thirty-five Spenserian stanzas, is the
first and longest in the volume. It was originally printed in 1821,
With about half a dozen others now included in this collection. The
design of the author in this poem is "from a survey of the past ages
of the world, and of the successive advances of mankind in knowledge
and virtue, to justify and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for
the future destinies of the human race." It is, indeed, an essay on
the perfectability of man, wherein, among other better arguments
some in the very teeth of analogy, are deduced from the eternal
cycle of physical nature, to sustain a hope of progression in
happiness. But it is only as a poem that we wish to examine The
Ages. Its commencement is impressive. The four initial lines arrest
the attention at once by a quiet dignity of manner, an air of placid
contemplation, and a versification combining the extremes of melody
and force-

        When to the common rest that crowns our days,

        Called in the noon of life, the good man goes,

        Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays

        His silver temples in their last repose-

The five concluding lines of the stanza, however, are not equally
effective-

        When, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows,

        And brights the fairest; when our bitterest tears

        Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,

        We think on what they were, with many fears

        Lest goodness die with them, and leave the coming years.

The defects, here, are all of a metrical and of course minor nature,
but are still defects. The line

        When o'er the buds of youth the death-wind blows,

is impeded in its flow by the final th in youth, and especially in
death where w follows. The word tears cannot readily be pronounced
after the final st in bitterest; and its own final consonants, rs,
in like manner render an effort necessary in the utterance of stream
which commences the next line. In the verse

        We think on what they were, with many fears

the word many is, from its nature, too rapidly pronounced for the
fulfilment of the time necessary to give weight to the foot of two
syllables. All words of two syllables do not necessarily constitute
a foot (we speak now of the Pentameter here employed) even although
the syllables be entirely distinct, as in many, very, often, and the
like. Such as, without effort, cannot employ in their pronunciation
the time demanded by each of the preceding and succeeding feet of
the verse, and occasionally of a preceding verse, will never fail to
offend. It is the perception of this fact which so frequently forces
the versifier of delicate ear to employ feet exceeding what are
unjustly called legitimate dimensions. For example. We have the
following lines-

        Lo! to the smiling Arno's classic side,

        The emulous nations of the West repair!

  These verses are exceedingly forcible, yet, upon scanning the latter
we find a syllable too many. We shall be told possibly that there
should be an elision of the e in the at the commencement. But no- this
was not intended. Both the and emulous demand a perfect
accentuation. The verse commencing Lo!

        Lo! to the smiling Arno's classic side,

has, it will be observed, a Trochee in its first foot. As is usually
the case, the whole line partakes, in consequence, of a stately and
emphatic enunciation, and to equalize the time in the verse
succeeding, something more is necessary than the succession of
Iambuses which constitute the ordinary English Pentameter. The
equalization is therefore judiciously effected by the introduction
of an additional syllable. But in the lines

        Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,

        We think on what they were with many fears,

lines to which the preceding observations will equally apply, this
additional syllable is wanting. Did the rhyme admit of the alteration,
everything necessary could be accomplished by writing

        We think on what they were with many a fear,

        Lest goodness die with them and leave the coming year.

These remarks may be considered hypercritical- yet it is undeniable
that upon a rigid attention to minutiae such as we have pointed out,
any great degree of metrical success must altogether depend. We are
more disposed, too, to dwell upon the particular point mentioned
above, since, with regard to it, the American Monthly, in a late
critique upon the poems of Mr. Willis, has evidently done that
gentleman injustice. The reviewer has fallen into what we conceive the
error of citing, by themselves, (that is to say insulated from the
context) such verses as

        The night-wind with a desolate moan swept by.

        With difficult energy and when the rod.

        Fell through, and with the tremulous hand of age.

        With supernatural whiteness loosely fell.

for the purpose of animadversion. "The license" he says "of turning
such words as 'passionate' and 'desolate' into two syllables could
only have been taken by a pupil of the Fantastic School." We are quite
sure that Mr. Willis had no purpose of turning them into words of
two syllables- nor even, as may be supposed upon a careless
examination, of pronouncing them in the same time which would be
required for two ordinary, syllables. The excesses of measure are here
employed (perhaps without any definite design on the part of the
writer, who may have been guided solely by ear) with reference to
the proper equalization, of balancing, if we may so term it, of
time, throughout an entire sentence. This, we confess, is a novel
idea, but, we think, perfectly tenable. Any musician will understand
us. Efforts for the relief of monotone will necessarily produce
fluctuations in the time of any metre, which fluctuations, if not
subsequently counterbalanced, affect the ear like unresolved
discords in music. The deviations then of which we have been speaking,
from the strict rules of prosodial art, are but improvements upon
the rigor of those rules, and are a merit, not a fault. It is the
nicety of this species of equalization more than any other metrical
merit which elevates Pope as a versifier above the mere
couplet-maker of his day, and, on the other hand, it is the
extension of the principle to sentences of greater length which
elevates Milton above Pope. Knowing this, it was, of course, with some
surprise that we found the American Monthly (for whose opinions we
still have the highest respect,) citing Pope in opposition to Mr.
Willis upon the very point to which we allude. A few examples will
be sufficient to show that Pope not only made free use of the
license referred to, but that he used it for the reasons, and under
the circumstances which we have suggested.

        Oh thou! whatever title please thine ear,

        Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!

        Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,

        Or laugh and shake in Rabelais easy chair.

Any person will here readily perceive that the third line

        Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,

differs in time from the usual course of the rhythm, and requires some
counterbalance in the line which succeeds. It is indeed precisely such
a verse as that of Mr. Bryant's upon which we have commented,

        Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,

and commences in the same manner with a Trochee. But again, from
Pope we have-

        Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines

        Hence Journals, Medleys, Mercuries, Magazines.

        Else all my prose and verse were much the same,

        This prose on stilts, that poetry fallen lame.

        And thrice he lifted high the birth-day brand

        And thrice he dropped it from his quivering hand.

        Here stood her opium, here she nursed her owls,

        And here she planned the imperial seat of fools.

        Here to her chosen all her works she shows;

        Prose swell'd to verse, verse loitering into prose.

        Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit

        Throned on seven hills, the Antichrist of wit.

        And his this drum whose hoarse heroic bass

        Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass.

        But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise

        Twelve starveling bards of these degenerate days.

  These are all taken at random from the first book of the Dunciad. In
the last example it will be seen that the two additional syllables are
employed with a view of equalizing the time with that of the verse,

        But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise,

a verse which will be perceived to labor in its progress- and which
Pope, in accordance with his favorite theory of making sound accord
with sense, evidently intended so to labor. It is useless to say
that the words should be written with elision-starv'ling and
degen'rate. Their pronunciation is not thereby materially affected-
and, besides, granting it to be so, it may be as well to make the
elision also in the case of Mr. Willis. But Pope had no such
intention, nor, we presume, had Mr. W. It is somewhat singular, we may
remark, en passant, that the American Monthly, in a subsequent portion
of the critique alluded to, quotes from Pope as a line of "sonorous
grandeur" and one beyond the ability of our American poet, the well
known

        Luke's iron crown and Damien's bed of steel.

Now this is indeed a line of "sonorous grandeur"- but it is rendered
so principally if not altogether by that very excess of metre (in
the word Damien) which the reviewer has condemned in Mr. Willis. The
lines which we quote below from Mr. Bryant's poem of The Ages will
suffice to show that the author we are now reviewing fully appreciates
the force of such occasional excess, and that he has only neglected it
through oversight in the verse which suggested these observations.

        Peace to the just man's memory- let it grow

        Greener with years, and blossom through the flight

        Of ages- let the mimic canvass show

        His calm benevolent features.

        Does prodigal Autumn to our age deny

        The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye?

        Look on this beautiful world and read the truth

        In her fair page.

        Will then the merciful One who stamped our race

        With his own image, and who gave them sway

        O'er Earth and the glad dwellers on her face,

        Now that our flourishing nations far away

        Are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks the day,

        Forget the ancient care that taught and nursed

        His latest offspring?

        He who has tamed the elements shall not live

        The slave of his own passions.

            When liberty awoke

        New-born, amid those beautiful vales.

        Oh Greece, thy flourishing cities were a spoil

        Unto each other.

        And thou didst drive from thy unnatural breast

        Thy just and brave.

        Yet her degenerate children sold the crown.

        Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands-

        Among thy gallant sons that guard thee well

        Thou laugh'st at enemies. Who shall then declare-

        Far like the comet's way thro' infinite space.

            The full region leads

        New colonies forth.

        Full many a horrible worship that, of old,

        Held o'er the shuddering realms unquestioned sway.

  All these instances, and some others, occur in a poem of but
thirty-five stanzas- yet in only a very few cases is the license
improperly used. Before quitting this subject it may be as well to
cite a striking example from Wordsworth-

        There was a youth whom I had loved so long,

          That when I loved him not I cannot say.

        Mid the green mountains many and many a song

          We two had sung like gladsome birds in May.

  Another specimen, and one still more to the purpose may be given
from Milton whose accurate ear (although he cannot justly be called
the best of versifiers) included and balanced without difficulty the
rhythm of the longest passages.

        But say, if our Deliverer up to heaven

        Must re-ascend, what will betide the few

        His faithful, left among the unfaithful herd,

        The enemies of truth? who then shall guide

        His people, who defend? Will they not deal

        More with his fo than with him they dealt?

            Be sure they will, said the Angel.

  The other metrical faults in The Ages are few. Mr. Bryant is not
always successful in his Alexandrines. Too great care cannot be taken,
we think, in so regulating this species of verse as to admit of the
necessary pause at the end of the third foot- or at least as not to
render a pause necessary elsewhere. We object, therefore, to such
lines as

        A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame.

        The truth of heaven, and kneel to Gods that heard them not.

That which concludes Stanza X, although correctly cadenced in the
above respect, requires an accent on the monosyllable the, which is
too unimportant to sustain it. The defect is rendered the more
perceptible by the introduction of a Trochee in the first foot.

            The sick untended then

        Languished in the damp shade, and died afar from men.

  We are not sure that such lines as

        A boundless sea of blood and the wild air.

        The smile of heaven, till a new age expands.

are in any case justifiable, and they can be easily avoided. As in the
Alexandrine mentioned above, the course of the rhythm demands an
accent on monosyllables too unimportant to sustain it. For this
prevalent heresy in metre we are mainly indebted to Byron, who
introduced it freely, with the view of imparting an abrupt energy to
his verse. There are, however, many better ways of relieving a
monotone.

  Stanza VI is, throughout, an exquisite specimen of versification,
besides embracing many beauties both of thought and expression.

        Look on this beautiful world and read the truth

        In her fair page; see every season brings

        New change, to her, of everlasting youth;

        Still the green soil with joyous living things

        Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings;

        And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep

        Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings

        The restless surge. Eternal love doth keep

        In his complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep.

The cadences, here, at the words page, swarms, and surge respectively,
cannot be surpassed. We shall find, upon examination, comparatively
few consonants in the stanza, and by their arrangement no impediment
is offered to the flow of the verse. Liquids and the most melodious
vowels abound. World, eternal, season, wide, change, full, air,
everlasting, wings, flings, complacent, surge, gulfs, myriads,
azure, ocean, sail, and joyous, are among the softest and most
sonorous sounds in the language, and the partial line after the
pause at surge, together with the stately march of the Alexandrine
which succeeds, is one of the finest imaginable of finales-

            Eternal love doth keep

        In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.

The higher beauties of the poem are not, we think, of the highest.
It has unity, completeness,- a beginning, middle and end. The tone,
too, of calm, hopeful, and elevated reflection, is well sustained
throughout. There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in

        Nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud

        Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud-

or of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in

            The shock that burled

        To dust in many fragments dashed and strewn

        The throne whose roots were in another world

        And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.

  But we look in vain for something more worthy commendation. At the
same time the piece is especially free from errors. Once only we
meet with an unjust metonymy, where a sheet of water is said to

            Cradle, in his soft embrace, a gay

        Young group of grassy islands.

We find little originality of thought, and less imagination. But in
a poem essentially didactic, of course we cannot hope for the loftiest
breathings of the Muse.

  To the Past is a poem of fourteen quatrains- three feet and four
alternately. In the second quatrain, the lines

            And glorious ages gone

        Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

are, to us, disagreeable. Such things are common, but at best,
repulsive. In the present case there is not even the merit of
illustration. The womb, in any just imagery, should be spoken of
with a view to things future; here it is employed, in the sense of the
tomb, and with a view to things past. In Stanza XI the idea is even
worse. The allegorical meaning throughout the poem, although generally
well sustained, is not always so. In the quatrain

          Thine for a space are they

        Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;

          Thy gates shall yet give way

        Thy bolts shall fall inexorable Past!

it seems that The Past, as an allegorical personification, is
confounded with Death.

  The Old Man's Funeral is of seven stanzas, each of six lines- four
Pentameters and Alexandrine rhyming. At the funeral of an old man
who has lived out his full quota of years, another, as aged,
reproves the company for weeping. The poem is nearly perfect in its
way- the thoughts striking and natural- the versification singularly
sweet. The third stanza embodies a fine idea, beautifully expressed.

        Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled,

          His glorious course rejoicing earth and sky,

        In the soft evening when the winds are stilled,

          Sings where his islands of refreshment lie,

        And leaves the smile of his departure spread

        O'er the warm-colored heaven, and ruddy mountain head.

The technical word chronic should have been avoided in the fifth
line of Stanza VI-

        No chronic tortures racked his aged limb.

  The Rivulet has about ninety octo-syllabic verses. They contrast the
changing and perishable nature of our human frame, with the greater
durability of the Rivulet. The chief merit is simplicity. We should
imagine the poem to be one of the earliest pieces of Mr. Bryant, and
to have undergone much correction. In the first paragraph are,
however, some awkward constructions. In the verses, for example

        This little rill that from the springs

        Of yonder grove its current brings,

        Plays on the slope awhile, and then

        Goes prattling into groves again.

the reader is apt to suppose that rill is the nominative to plays,
whereas it is the nominative only to drew in the subsequent lines,

        Oft to its warbling waters drew

        My little feet when life was new.

The proper verb is, of course, immediately seen upon reading these
latter lines- but the ambiguity has occurred.

  The Praries. This is a poem, in blank Pentameter, of about one
hundred and twenty-five lines, and possesses features which do not
appear in any of the pieces above mentioned. Its descriptive beauty is
of a high order. The peculiar points of interest in the Prairie are
vividly shown forth, and as a local painting, the work is, altogether,
excellent. Here are moreover, evidences of fine imagination. For
example-

                The great heavens

        Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love-

        A nearer vault and of a tenderer blue

        Than that which bends above the eastern hills.

        Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed

        In a forgotten language, and old tunes

        From instruments of unremembered form

        Gave the soft winds a voice.

                The bee

        Within the hollow oak. I listen long

        To his domestic hum and think I hear

        The sound of the advancing multitude

        Which soon shall fill these deserts.

                Breezes of the south!

        Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,

        And pass the prairie-hawk that poised on high,

        Flaps his broad wing yet moves not!

  There is an objectionable ellipsis in the expression "I behold
them from the first," meaning "first time;" and either a grammatical
or typographical error of moment in the fine sentence commencing

               Fitting floor

        For this magnificent temple of the sky-

        With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

        Rival the constellations!

  Earth, a poem of similar length and construction to The Prairies,
embodies a noble conception. The poet represents himself as lying on
the earth in a "midnight black with clouds," and giving ideal voices
to the varied sounds of the coming tempest. The following passages
remind us of some of the more beautiful portions of Young.

                On the breast of Earth

        I lie and listen to her mighty voice;

        A voice of many tones-sent up from streams

        That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen

        Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,

        From rocky chasm where darkness dwells all day,

        And hollows of the great invisible hills,

        And sands that edge the ocean stretching far

        Into the night- a melancholy sound!

        Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive

        And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth

        Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong

        And Heaven is listening. The forgotten graves

        Of the heart broken utter forth their plaint.

        The dust of her who loved and was betrayed,

        And him who died neglected in his age,

        The sepulchres of those who for mankind

        Labored, and earned the recompense of scorn,

        Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones

        Of those who in the strife for liberty

        Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs,

        Their names to infamy, all find a voice!

  In this poem and elsewhere occasionally throughout the volume, we
meet with a species of grammatical construction, which, although it is
to be found in writing of high merit, is a mere affectation, and, of
course, objectionable. We mean the abrupt employment of a direct
pronoun in place of the customary relative. For example-

        Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die-

        For living things that trod awhile thy face,

        The love of thee and heaven, and how they sleep,

        Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds

        Trample and graze?

The note of interrogation here, renders the affectation more
perceptible.

  The poem To the Apenines resembles, in meter, that entitled The
Old Man's Funeral, except that the former has a Pentameter in place of
the Alexandrine. This piece is chiefly remarkable for the force,
metrical and moral, of its concluding stanza.

        In you the heart that sighs for Freedom seeks

        Her image; there the winds no barrier know,

        Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;

          While even the immaterial Mind, below,

        And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,

        Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

  The Knight's Epitaph consists of about fifty lines of blank
Pentameter. This poem is well conceived and executed. Entering the
Church of St. Catherine at Pisa, the poet is arrested by the image
of an armed knight graven upon the lid of a sepulchre. The epitaph
consists of an imaginative portraiture of the knight, in which he is
made the impersonation of the ancient Italian chivalry.

  Seventy-six has seven stanzas of a common, but musical
versification, of which these lines will afford an excellent specimen.

        That death-stain on the vernal sword,

          Hallowed to freedom all the shore-

        In fragments fell the yoke abhorred-

        The footsteps of a foreign lord

          Profaned the soil no more.

  The Living Lost has four stanzas of somewhat peculiar
construction, but admirably adapted to the tone of contemplative
melancholy which pervades the poem. We can call to mind few things
more singularly impressive than the eight concluding verses. They
combine ease with severity, and have antithetical force without effort
or flippancy. The final thought has also a high ideal beauty.

        But ye who for the living lost

          That agony in secret bear

        Who shall with soothing words accost

          The strength of your despair?

        Grief for your sake is scorn for them

        Whom ye lament, and all condemn,

        And o'er the world of spirit lies

        A gloom from which ye turn your eyes.

The first stanza commences with one of those affectations which we
noticed in the poem "Earth."

        Matron, the children of whose love,

          Each to his grave in youth have passed,

        And now the mould is heaped above

          The dearest and the last.

  The Strange Lady is of the fourteen syllable metre, answering to two
lines, one of eight syllables, the other six. This rhythm is
unmanageable, and requires great care in the rejection of harsh
consonants. Little, however, has been taken, apparently, in the
construction of the verses

        As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool

            clear sky.

        And thou shoudst chase the nobler game, and I bring

            down the bird.

Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe, which
are not to be pronounced without labor. The story is old- of a young
gentleman who going out to hunt, is inveigled into the woods and
destroyed by a fiend in the guise of a fair lady. The ballad character
is nevertheless well preserved, and this, we presume, is nearly
every thing intended.

  The Hunter's Vision is skilfully and sweetly told. It is a tale of a
young hunter who, overcome with toil, dozes on the brink of a
precipice. In this state between waking and sleeping, he fancies a
spirit-land in the fogs of the valley beneath him, and sees
approaching him the deceased lady of his love. Arising to meet her, he
falls, with the effort, from the crag, and perishes. The state of
reverie is admirably pictured in the following stanzas. The poem
consists of nine such.

        All dim in haze the mountains lay

          With dimmer vales between;

        And rivers glimmered on their way

          By forests faintly seen;

        While ever rose a murmuring sound

        From brooks below and bees around.

        He listened till he seemed to hear

          A strain so soft and low

        That whether in the mind or ear

          The listener scarce might know.

        With such a tone, so sweet and mild

        The watching mother lulls her child.

  Catterskill Falls is a narrative somewhat similar. Here the hero
is also a hunter- but of delicate frame. He is overcome with the
cold at the foot of the falls, sleeps, and is near perishing- but
being found by some woodmen, is taken care of, and recovers. As in the
Hunters Vision, the dream of the youth is the main subject of the
poem. He fancies a goblin palace in the icy network of the cascade,
and peoples it in his vision with ghosts. His entry into this palace
is, with rich imagination on the part of the poet, made to
correspond with the time of the transition from the state of reverie
to that of nearly total insensibility.

        They eye him not as they pass along,

          But his hair stands up with dread,

        When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng

          Till those icy turrets are over his head,

        And the torrent's roar as they enter seems

        Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.

        The glittering threshold is scarcely passed

          When there gathers and wraps him round

        A thick white twilight sullen and vast

          In which there is neither form nor sound;

        The phantoms, the glory, vanish all

        Within the dying voice of the waterfall.

  There are nineteen similar stanzas. The metre is formed of
Iambuses and Anapests.

  The Hunter of the Prairies (fifty-six octosyllabic verses with
alternate rhymes) is a vivid picture of the life of a hunter in the
desert. The poet, however, is here greatly indebted to his subject.

  The Damsel of Peru is in the fourteen syllable metre, and has a most
spirited, imaginative and musical commencement

        Where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew,

        There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru.

This is also a ballad, and a very fine one-full of action, chivalry,
energy and rhythm. Some passages have even a loftier merit-that of a
glowing ideality. For example-

        For the noon is coming on, and the sunbeams fiercely beat,

        And the silent hills and forest-tops seem reeling in the heat.

  The Song of Pitcairn's Island is a sweet, quiet and simple poem,
of a versification differing from that of any preceding piece. We
subjoin a specimen. The Tahetian maiden addresses her lover.

        Come talk of Europe's maids with me

          Whose necks and cheeks they tell

        Outshine the beauty of the sea,

          White foam and crimson shell.

        I'll shape like theirs my simple dress

        And bind like them each jetty tress,

          A sight to please thee well

        And for my dusky brow will braid

        A bonnet like an English maid.

  There are seven similar stanzas.

  Rispah is a scriptural theme from 2 Samuel, and we like it less than
any poem yet mentioned. The subject, we think, derives no additional
interest from its poetical dress. The metre resembling, except in
the matter of rhyme, that of "Catterskill Falls," and consisting of
mingled Iambuses and Anapaests, is the most positively disagreeable of
any which our language admits, and, having a frisky or fidgetty
rhythm, is singularly ill-adapted to the lamentations of the
bereaved mother. We cannot conceive how the fine ear of Mr. Bryant
could admit such verses as,

        And Rispah once the loveliest of all

        That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, &c.

  The Indian Girl's Lament and The Arctic Lover have nearly all the
peculiarities of the "Song of Pitcairn's Island."

  The Massacre at Scio is only remarkable for inaccuracy of expression
in the two concluding lines-

        Till the last link of slavery's chain

        Is shivered to be worn no more.

What shall be worn no more? The chain- but the link is implied.

  Monument Mountain is a poem of about a hundred and forty blank
Pentameters and relates the tale of an Indian maiden who loved her
cousin. Such a love being deemed incestuous by the morality of her
tribe, she threw herself from a precipice and perished. There is
little peculiar in the story or its narration. We quote a rough verse-

        The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.

The use of the epithet old preceded by some other adjective, is
found so frequently in this poem and elsewhere in the writings of
Mr. Bryant, as to excite a smile upon each recurrence of the
expression.

        In all that proud old world beyond the deep-

        There is a tale about these gray old rocks-

        The wide old woods resounded with her song-

        And the gray old men that passed-

        And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven.

  We dislike too the antique use of the word affect in such
sentences as

                They deemed

        Like worshippers of the elder time that

        God Doth walk in the high places and affect

        The earth- o'erlooking mountains.

Milton, it is true, uses it- we remember it especially in Comus-

                'T is most true

        That musing meditation most affects

        The pensive secrecy of desert cell-

but then Milton would not use it were he writing Comus today.

  In the Summer Wind, our author has several successful attempts at
making "the sound an echo to the sense." For example-

                For me, I lie

        Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf

        Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun

        Retains some freshness.

                All is silent, save the faint

        And interrupted murmur of the bee

        Settling on the sick flowers, and then again

        Instantly on the wing.

                All the green herbs

        Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers

        By the road side, and the borders of the brook

        Nod, gaily to each other.

  Autumn Woods. This is a poem of much sweetness and simplicity of
expression, and including one or two fine thoughts, viz:

                the sweet South-west at play

        Flies, rustling where the painted leaves are strown

                Along the winding way.

                But 'neath yon crimson tree

        Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,

                Nor mark within its roseate canopy

                Her flush of maiden shame.

                The mountains that unfold

        In their wide sweep the colored landscape round,

        Seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold

                That guard the enchanted ground.

All this is beautiful- Happily to endow inanimate nature with
sentience and a capability of moral action is one of the severest
tests of the poet. Even the most unmusical ear will not fail to
appreciate the rare beauty and strength of the extra syllable in the
line

        Seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold.

  The Distinterred Warrior has a passage we do not clearly understand.
Speaking of the Indian our author says-

        For he was fresher from the hand

          That formed of earth the human face,

        And to the elements did stand

          In nearer kindred than our race.

  There are ten similar quatrains in the poem.

  The Greek Boy consists of four spirited stanzas, nearly
resembling, in metre, The Living Lost. The two concluding lines are
highly ideal.

        A shoot of that old vine that made

        The nations silent in its shade.

  When the Firmament Quivers with Daylight's Young Beam, belongs to
a species of poetry which we cannot be brought to admire. Some natural
phenomenon is observed, and the poet taxes his ingenuity to find a
parallel in the moral world. In general, we may assume, that the
more successful he is in sustaining a parallel, the farther he departs
from the true province of the Muse. The title, here, is a specimen
of the metre. This is a kind which we have before designated as
exceedingly difficult to manage.

  To a Musquito, is droll, and has at least the merit of making, at
the same time, no efforts at being sentimental. We are not inclined,
however, to rank as poems, either this production or the article on
New England Coal.

  The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus has ninety Pentameters. One
of them

        Kind influence. Lo! their orbs burn more bright,

can only be read, metrically, by drawing out influence into three
marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable, Lo! and
lengthening the short one, their.

  June is sweet and soft in its rhythm, and inexpressibly pathetic.
There is an illy subdued sorrow and intense awe coming up, per force
as it were to the surface of the poet's gay sayings about his grave,
which we find thrilling us to the soul.

        And what if cheerful shouts, at noon,

          Come, from the village sent,

        Or songs of maids, beneath the moon

          With fairy laughter blent?

        And what if, in the evening light,

        Betrothed lovers walk in sight

          Of my low monument?

        I would the lovely scene around

        Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

        I know, I know I should not see

          The season's glorious show,

        Nor would its brightness shine for me

          Nor its wild music flow,

        But if, around my place of sleep,

        The friends I love should come to weep,

          They might not haste to go

        Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom

        Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

  Innocent Child and Snow-White Flower, is remarkable only for the
deficiency of a foot in one of its verses.

        White as those leaves just blown apart

        Are the folds of thy own young heart.

and for the graceful repetition in its concluding quatrain

        Throw it aside in thy weary hour,

        Throw to the ground the fair white flower,

        Yet as thy tender years depart

        Keep that white and innocent heart.

  Of the seven original sonnets in the volume before us, it is
somewhat difficult to speak. The sonnet demands, in a great degree,
point, strength, unity, compression, and a species of completeness.
Generally, Mr. Bryant has evinced more of the first and the last, than
of the three mediate qualities. William Tell is feeble. No forcible
line ever ended with liberty, and the best of the rhymes- thee, he,
free, and the like, are destitute of the necessary vigor. But for this
rhythmical defect the thought in the concluding couplet-

        The bitter cup they mingled strengthened thee

        For the great work to set thy country free

would have well ended the sonnet. Midsummer is objectionable for the
variety of its objects of allusion. Its final lines embrace a fine
thought-

        As if the day of fire had dawned and sent

        Its deadly breath into the firmament-

but the vigor of the whole is impaired by the necessity of placing
an unwonted accent on the last syllable of firmament. October has
little to recommend it, but the slight epigrammatism of its
conclusion-

        And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,

        Pass silently from men- as thou dost pass.

  The Sonnet To Cole, is feeble in its final lines, and is worthy of
praise only in the verses-

        Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen

        To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air.

  Mutation, a didactic sonnet, has few either of faults or beauties.
November is far better. The lines

        And the blue Gentian flower that, in the breeze,

        Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last,

are very happy. A single thought pervades and gives unity to the
piece. We are glad, too, to see an Alexandrine in the close. In the
whole metrical construction of his sonnets, however, Mr. Bryant has
very wisely declined confining himself to the laws of the Italian
poem, or even to the dicta of Capel Lofft. The Alexandrine is beyond
comparison the most effective finale, and we are astonished that the
common Pentameter should ever be employed. The best sonnet of the
seven is, we think, that To-. With the exception of a harshness in the
last line but one it is perfect. The finale is inimitable.

        Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine

          Too brightly to shine long; another Spring

        Shall deck her for men's eyes, but not for thine

          Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.

        The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,

          And the vexed ore no mineral of power;

        And they who love thee wait in anxious grief

          Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.

        Glide softly to thy rest, then; Death should come

          Gently to one of gentle mould like thee,

        As light winds wandering through groves of bloom

          Detach the delicate blossom from the tree.

        Close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain,

        And we will trust in God to see thee yet again.

  To a Cloud, has another instance of the affectation to which we
alluded in our notice of Earth, and The Living Lost.

        Whose sons at length have heard the call that comes

          From the old battle fields and tombs,

        And risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe

          Have dealt the swift and desperate blow,

        And the Othman power is cloven, and the stroke

          Has touched its chains, and they are broke.

  Of the Translations in the volume it is not our intention to speak
in detail. Mary Magdelen, from the Spanish of Bartoleme Leonardo De
Argensola, is the finest specimen of versification in the book.
Alexis, from the Spanish of Iglesias, is delightful in its exceeding
delicacy, and general beauty. We cannot refrain from quoting it
entire.

        Alexis calls me cruel-

          The rifted crags that hold

        The gathered ice of winter,

          He says, are not more cold.

        When even the very blossoms

          Around the fountain's brim,

        And forest walks, can witness

          The love I bear to him.

        I would that I could utter

          My feelings without shame

        And tell him how I love him

          Nor wrong my virgin fame.

        Alas! to seize the moment

          When heart inclines to heart,

        And press a suit with passion

          Is not a woman's part.

        If man come not to gather

          The roses where they stand,

        They fade among their foliage,

          They cannot seek his hand.

  The Waterfowl is very beautiful, but still not entitled to the
admiration which it has occasionally elicited. There is a fidelity and
force in the picture of the fowl as brought before the eve of the
mind, and a fine sense of effect in throwing its figure on the
background of the "crimson sky," amid "falling dew," "while glow the
heavens with the last steps of day." But the merits which possibly
have had most weight in the public estimation of the poem, are the
melody and strength of its versification, (which is indeed
excellent) and more particularly its completeness. Its rounded and
didactic termination has done wonders:

                   on my heart,

        Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given

          And shall not soon depart.

          He, who, from zone to zone,

        Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight

        In the long way that I must tread alone

          Will lead my steps aright.

  There are, however, points of more sterling merit. We fully
recognize the poet in

          Thou art gone- the abyss of heaven

        Hath swallowed up thy form.

          There is a power whose care

        Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-

        The desert, and illimitable air-

          Lone, wandering, but not lost.

  The Forest Hymn consists of about a hundred and twenty blank
Pentameters of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible
to speak too highly. With the exception of the line

        The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds,

no fault, in this respect, can be found, while excellencies are
frequent of a rare order, and evincing the greatest delicacy of ear.
We might, perhaps, suggest, that the two concluding verses,
beautiful as they stand, would be slightly improved by transferring to
the last the metrical excess of the one immediately preceding. For the
appreciation of this, it is necessary to quote six or seven lines in
succession

        Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face

        Spare me and mine, nor let us need the warmth

        Of the mad unchained elements, to teach

        Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate

        In these calm shades thy milder majesty,

        And to the beautiful order of thy works

        Learn to conform the order of our lives.

  There is an excess of one syllable in the [sixth line]. If we
discard this syllable here, and adopt it in the final line, the
close will acquire strength, we think, in acquiring a fuller volume.

                Be it ours to meditate

        In these calm shades thy milder majesty,

        And to the perfect order of thy works

        Conform, if we can, the order of our lives.

  Directness, boldness, and simplicity of expression, are main
features in the poem.

                Oh God! when thou

        Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire

        The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill

        With all the waters of the firmament

        The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods,

        And drowns the villages.

  Here an ordinary writer would have preferred the word fright to
scare, and omitted the definite article before woods and villages.

  To the Evening Wind has been justly admired. It is the best specimen
of that completeness which we have before spoken of as a
characteristic feature in the poems of Mr. Bryant. It has a beginning,
middle, and end, each depending upon the other, and each beautiful.
Here are three lines breathing all the spirit of Shelley.

        Pleasant shall be thy way, where meekly bows

        The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,

        And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass.

  The conclusion is admirable-

        Go- but the circle of eternal change,

        Which is the life of Nature, shall restore,

        With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,

        Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;

        Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange,

        Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore,

        And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem

        He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

  Thanatopsis is somewhat more than half the length of The Forest
Hymn, and of a character precisely similar. It is, however, the
finer poem. Like The Waterfowl, it owes much to the point, force,
and general beauty of its didactic conclusion. In the commencement,
the lines

        To him who, in the love of nature, holds

        Communion with her visible forms, &c.

belong to a class of vague phrases, which, since the days of Byron,
have obtained too universal a currency. The verse

        Go forth under the open sky and list-

is sadly out of place amid the forcible and even Miltonic rhythm of
such lines as-

                Take the wings

       Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,

       Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

       Where rolls the Oregon

  But these are trivial faults indeed and the poem embodies a great
degree of the most elevated beauty. Two of its passages, passages of
the purest ideality, would alone render it worthy of the general
commendation it has received.

        So live, that when thy summons comes to join

        The innumerable caravan that moves

        To that mysterious realm where each shall take

        His chamber in the silent halls of death,

        Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,

        Scourged to his dungeon; but sustained and soothed

        By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

        Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

        About him, and lies down to pleasant dream.

                                     The hills

        Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun- the vales

        Stretching in pensive quietude between-

        The venerable woods- rivers that move

        In majesty, and the complaining brooks

        That make the meadows green- and, pured round all,

        Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste-

        Are but the solemn decorations all

        Of the great tomb of man.

  Oh, fairest of the Rural Maids! is a gem, of which we cannot
sufficiently express our admiration. We quote in full.

        Oh, fairest of the rural maids!

        Thy birth was in the forest shades;

        Green boughs and glimpses of the sky

        Were all that met thine infant eye.

        Thy sports, thy wanderings when a child

        Were ever in the sylvan wild;

        And all the beauty of the place

        Is in thy heart and on thy face.

        The twilight of the trees and rocks

        Is in the light shade of thy locks,

        Thy step is as the wind that weaves

        Its playful way among the leaves.

        Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene

        And silent waters Heaven is seen;

        Their lashes are the herbs that look

        On their young figures in the brook.

        The forest depths by foot impressed

        Are not more sinless than thy breast;

        The holy peace that fills the air

        Of those calm solitudes, is there.

A rich simplicity is a main feature in this poem- simplicity of design
and execution. This is strikingly perceptible in the opening and
concluding lines, and in expression throughout. But there is a far
higher and more strictly ideal beauty, which it is less easy to
analyze. The original conception is of the very loftiest order of true
Poesy. A maiden is born in the forest-

        Green boughs and glimpses of the sky

        Are all which meet her infant eye-

She is not merely modelled in character by the associations of her
childhood- this were the thought of an ordinary poet- an idea that
we meet with every day in rhyme- but she imbibes, in her physical as
well as moral being, the traits, the very features of the delicious
scenery around her- its loveliness becomes a portion of her own-

        The twilight of the trees and rocks

        Is in the light shade of her locks,

        And all the beauty of the place

        Is in her heart and on her face.

It would have been a highly poetical idea to imagine the tints in
the locks of the maiden deducing a resemblance to the "twilight of the
trees and rocks," from the constancy of her associations- but the
spirit of Ideality is immeasurably more apparent when the "twilight"
is represented as becoming identified with the shadows of her hair.

        The twilight of the trees and rocks

        Is in the light shade of her locks,

        And all the beauty of the place

        Is in her heart and on her face.

Feeling thus, we did not, in copying the poem, [comment on] the lines,
although beautiful,

        Thy step is as the wind that weaves

        Its playful way among the leaves,

nor those which immediately follow. The two concluding verses however,
are again of the most elevated species of poetical merit.

        The forest depths by foot impressed

        Are not more sinless than thy breast-

        The holy peace that fills the air

        Of those calm solitudes, is there.

  The image contained in the lines

        Thine eyes are springs in whose serene

        And silent waters Heaven is seen-

is one which, we think, for appropriateness, completeness, and every
perfect beauty of which imagery is susceptible, has never been
surpassed- but imagery is susceptible of no beauty like that we have
designated in the sentences above. The latter idea, moreover, is not
original with our poet.

  In all the rhapsodies of Mr. Bryant, which have reference to the
beauty or the majesty of nature, is a most audible and thrilling
tone of love and exultation. As far as he appreciates her loveliness
or her augustness, no appreciation can be more ardent, more full of
heart, more replete with the glowing soul of adoration. Nor, either in
the moral or physical universe coming within the periphery of his
vision, does he at any time fail to perceive and designate, at once,
the legitimate items of the beautiful. Therefore, could we consider
(as some have considered) the mere enjoyment of the beautiful when
perceived, or even this enjoyment when combined with the readiest
and truest perception and discrimination in regard to beauty
presented, as a sufficient test of the poetical sentiment we could
have no hesitation in according to Mr. Bryant the very highest
poetical rank. But something more, we have elsewhere presumed to
say, is demanded. Just above, we spoke of "objects in the moral or
physical universe coming within the periphery of his vision." We now
mean to say, that the relative extent of these peripheries of poetical
vision must ever be a primary consideration in our classification of
poets. Judging Mr. B. in this manner, and by a general estimate of the
volume before us, we should, of course, pause long before assigning
him a place with the spiritual Shelleys, or Coleridges, or
Wordsworths, or with Keats, or even Tennyson, or Wilson, or with
some other burning lights of our own day, to be valued in a day to
come. Yet if his poems, as a whole, will not warrant us in assigning
him this grade, one such poem as the last upon which we have
commented, is enough to assure us that he may attain it.

  The writings of our author, as we find them here, are
characterized by an air of calm and elevated contemplation more than
by any other individual feature. In their mere didactics, however,
they err essentially and primitively, inasmuch as such things are
the province rather of Minerva than of the Camenae. Of imagination, we
discover much- but more of its rich and certain evidences, than of its
ripened fruit. In all the minor merits Mr. Bryant is pre-eminent.
His ars celare artem is most efficient. Of his "completeness,"
unity, and finish of style we have already spoken. As a versifier,
we know of no writer, living or dead, who can be said greatly to
surpass him. A Frenchman would assuredly call him "un poete des plus
correctes."

  Between Cowper and Young, perhaps, (with both of whom he has many
points of analogy,) would be the post assigned him by an examination
at once general and superficial. Even in this view, however, he has
a juster appreciation of the beautiful than the one, of the sublime
than the other- a finer taste than Cowper- an equally vigorous, and
far more delicate imagination than Young. In regard to his proper rank
among American poets there should be no question whatever. Few- at
least few who are fairly before the public, have more than very
shallow claims to a rivalry with the author of Thanatopsis.

            THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, AND OTHER TALES

   By Charles Dickens, With Numerous Illustrations by Cattermole

           and Browne. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard.

                  MASTER HUMPHEREY'S CLOCK

    By Charles Dickens. (Boz.) With Ninty-one Illustrations by

  George Cattermole and Hablot Browne. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard.

  WHAT WE here give [the above titles] is the duplicate title, on
two separate title-pages, of an octavo volume of three hundred and
sixty-two pages. Why this method of nomenclature should have been
adopted is more than we can understand- although it arises, perhaps,
from a certain confusion and hesitation observable in the whole
structure of the book itself. Publishers have an idea, however, (and
no doubt they are the best judges in such matters) that a complete
work obtains a readier sale than one "to be continued;" and we see
plainly that it is with the design of intimating the entireness of the
volume now before us, that "The Old Curiosity Shop and other Tales,"
has been made not only the primary and main title, but the name of the
whole publication as indicated by the back. This may be quite fair
in trade, but is morally wrong not the less. The volume is only one of
a series- only part of a whole; and the title has no right to
insinuate otherwise. So obvious is this intention to misguide, that it
has led to the absurdity of putting the inclusive, or general, title
of the series, as a secondary instead of a primary one. Anybody may
see that if the wish had been fairly to represent the plan and
extent of the volume, something like this would have been given on a
single page-

                  MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK

    By Charles Dickens. Part I. Containing The Old Curiosity Shop,

      and other tales, with numerous illustrations, &c. &c.

  This would have been better for all parties, a good deal more
honest, and a vast deal more easily understood. In fact, there is
sufficient uncertainty of purpose in the book itself, without resort
to mystification in the matter of title. We do not think it altogether
impossible that the rumors in respect to the sanity of Mr. Dickens
which were so prevalent during the publication of the first numbers of
the work, had some slight- some very slight foundation in truth. By
this, we mean merely to say that the mind of the author, at the
time, might possibly have been struggling with some of those
manifold and multiform aberrations by which the nobler order of genius
is so frequently beset- but which are still so very far removed from
disease.

  There are some facts in the physical world which have a really
wonderful analogy with others in the world of thought, and seem thus
to give some color of truth to the (false) rhetorical dogma, that
metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as
to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for
example, with the amount of momentum proportionate with it and
consequent upon it, seems to be identical in physics and
metaphysics. It is not more true, in the former, that a large body
is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its
subsequent impetus is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is,
in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more
forcible, more constant, and more extensive in their movements than
those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and are
more embarrassed and more full of hesitation in the first few steps of
their progress. While, therefore, it is not impossible, as we have
just said, that some slight mental aberration might have given rise to
the hesitancy and indefinitiveness of purpose which are so very
perceptible in the first pages of the volume before us, we are still
the more willing to believe these defects the result of the moral fact
just stated, since we find the work itself of an unusual order of
excellence, even when regarded as the production of the author of
"Nicholas Nickleby." That the evils we complain of are not, and were
not, fully perceived by Mr. Dickens himself, cannot be supposed for
a moment. Had his book been published in the old way, we should have
seen no traces of them whatever.

  The design of the general work, "Humphrey's Clock," is simply the
common-place one of putting various tales into the mouths of a
social party. The meetings are held at the house of Master Humphrey-
an antique building in London, where an old-fashioned clock case is
the place of deposit for the M.S.S. Why such designs have become
common is obvious. One half the pleasure experienced at a theatre
arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience,
and, especially, from his belief in their sympathy with him. The
eccentric gentleman who not long ago, at the Park, found himself the
solitary occupant of box, pit, and gallery, would have derived but
little enjoyment from his visit, had he been suffered to remain. It
was an act of mercy to turn him out. The present absurd rage for
lecturing is founded in the feeling in question. Essays which we would
not be hired to read- so trite is their subject- so feeble is their
execution- so much easier is it to get better information on similar
themes out of any Encyclopaedia in Christendom- we are brought to
tolerate, and alas, even to applaud in their tenth and twentieth
repetition, through the sole force of our sympathy with the throng. In
the same way we listen to a story with greater zest when there are
others present at its narration besides ourselves. Aware of this,
authors without due reflection have repeatedly attempted, by supposing
a circle of listeners, to imbue their narratives with the interest
of sympathy. At a cursory glance the idea seems plausible enough. But,
in the one case, there is an actual, personal, and palpable
sympathy, conveyed in looks, gestures and brief comments- a sympathy
of real individuals, all with the matters discussed to be sure, but
then especially, each with each. In the other instance, we, alone in
our closet, are required to sympathise with the sympathy of fictitious
listeners, who, so far from being present in body, are often
studiously kept out of sight and out of mind for two or three
hundred pages at a time. This is sympathy double-diluted- the shadow
of a shade. It is unnecesary to say that the design invariably fails
of its effect.

  In his preface to the present volume, Mr. Dickens seems to feel
the necessity for an apology in regard to certain portions of his
commencement, without seeing clearly what apology he should make, or
for what precise thing he should apologize. He makes an effort to
get over the difficulty, by saying something about its never being
"his intention to have the members of 'Master Humphrey's Clock' active
agents in the stories they relate," and about his "picturing to
himself the various sensations of his hearers-thinking how Jack
Redburn might incline to poor Kit- how the deaf gentleman would have
his favorite and Mr. Miles his," &c. &c.- but we are quite sure that
all this is as pure a fiction as "The Curiosity Shop?" itself. Our
author is deceived. Occupied with little Nell and her grandfather,
he had forgotten the very existence of his interlocutors until he
found himself, at the end of his book, under the disagreeable
necessity of saying a word or two concerning them, by way of winding
them up. The simple truth is that, either for one of the two reasons
at which we have already hinted, or else because the work was begun in
a hurry, Mr. Dickens did not precisely know his own plans when he
penned the five or six first chapters of the "Clock."

  The wish to preserve a certain degree of unity between various
narratives naturally unconnected, is a more obvious and a better
reason for employing interlocutors. But such unity as may be thus
had is scarcely worth having. It may, in some feeble measure,
satisfy the judgment by a sense of completeness; but it seldom
produces a pleasant effect; and if the speakers are made to take
part in their own stories (as has been the Case here) they become
injurious by creating confusion. Thus, in "The Curiosity Shop," we
feel displeased to find Master Humphrey commencing the tale in the
first person, dropping this for the third, and concluding by
introducing himself as the "single gentleman" who figures in the
story. In spite of all the subsequent explanation we are forced to
look upon him as two. All is confusion, and what makes it worse, is
that Master Humphrey is painted as a lean and sober personage, while
his second self is a fat, bluff and boisterous old bachelor.

  Yet the species of connexion in question, besides preserving the
unity desired, may be made, if well managed, a source of consistent
and agreeable interest. It has been so made by Thomas Moore- the
most skilful literary artist of his day- perhaps of any day- a man who
stands in the singular and really wonderful predicament of being
undervalued on account of the profusion with which he has scattered
about him his good things. The brilliancies on any one page of Lalla
Roohk would have sufficed to establish that very reputation which
has been in a great measure self-dimmed by the galazied lustre of
the entire book. It seems that the horrid laws of political economy
cannot be evaded even by the inspired, and that a perfect
versification, a vigorous style, and a never-tiring fancy, may, like
the water we drink and die without, yet despise, be so plentifully set
forth as to be absolutely of no value at all.

  By far the greater portion of the volume now published, is
occupied with the tale of "The Old Curiosity Shop," narrated by Master
Humphrey himself. The other stories are brief. The "Giant
Chronicles" is the title of what appears to be meant for a series
within a series, and we think this design doubly objectionable. The
narrative of "The Bowyer," as well as of "John Podgers," is not
altogether worthy of Mr. Dickens. They were probably sent to press
to supply a demand for copy, while he was occupied with the "Curiosity
Shop." But the "Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles
the Second" is a paper of remarkable power, truly original in
conception, and worked out with great ability.

  The story of "The Curiosity Shop" is very simple. Two brothers of
England, warmly attached to each other, love the same lady, without
each other's knowledge. The younger at length discovers the elder's
secret, and, sacrificing himself to fraternal affection, quits the
country and resides for many years in a foreign land, where he amasses
great wealth. Meantime his brother marries the lady, who soon dies,
leaving an infant daughter- her perfect resemblance. In the
widower's heart the mother lives again through the child. This
latter grows up, marries unhappily, has a son and a daughter, loses
her husband, and dies herself shortly afterward. The grandfather takes
the orphans to his home. The boy spurns his protection, falls into bad
courses, and becomes an outcast. The girl- in whom a third time
lives the object of the old man's early choice- dwells with him alone,
and is loved by him with a most doting affection. He has now become
poor, and at length is reduced to keeping a shop for antiquities and
curiosities. Finally, through his dread of involving the child in
want, his mind becomes weakened. He thinks to redeem his fortune by
gambling, borrows money for this purpose of a dwarf, who, at length,
discovering the true state of the old man's affairs, seizes his
furniture and turns him out of doors. The girl and himself set out,
without farther object than to relieve themselves of the sight of
the hated city, upon a weary pilgrimage, whose events form the basis
or body of the tale. In fine, just as a peaceful retirement is secured
for them, the child, wasted with fatigue and anxiety, dies. The
grandfather, through grief, immediately follows her to the tomb. The
younger brother, meantime, has received information of the old man's
poverty, hastens to England, and arrives only in time to be at the
closing scene of the tragedy.

  This plot is the best which could have been constructed for the main
object of the narrative. This object is the depicting of a fervent and
dreamy love for the child on the part of the grandfather- such a
love as would induce devotion to himself on the part of the orphan. We
have thus the conception of a childhood, educated in utter ignorance
of the world, filled with an affection which has been, through its
brief existence, the sole source of its pleasures, and which has no
part in the passion of a more mature youth for an object of its own
age- we have the idea of this childhood, full of ardent hopes, leading
by the hand, forth from the heated and wearying city, into the green
fields, to seek for bread, the decrepid imbecility of a doting and
confiding old age, whose stern knowledge of man, and of the world it
leaves behind, is now merged in the sole consciousness of receiving
love and protection from that weakness it has loved and protected.

  This conception is indeed most beautiful. It is simply and
severely grand. The more fully we survey it the more thoroughly we are
convinced of the lofty character of that genius which gave it birth.
That in its present simplicity of form, however, it was first
entertained by Mr. Dickens, may well be doubted. That it was not, we
are assured by the title which the tale bears. When in its
commencement he called it "The Old Curiosity Shop," his design was far
different from what we see it in its completion. It is evident that
had he now to name the story he would not so term it; for the shop
itself is a thing of an altogether collateral interest, and is
spoken of merely in the beginning. This is only one among a hundred
instances of the disadvantage under which the periodical novelist
labors. When his work is done, he never fails to observe a thousand
defects which he might have remedied, and a thousand alterations, in
regard to the book as a whole, which might be made to its manifest
improvement.

  But of the conception of this story deserves praise, its execution
is beyond all- and here the subject naturally leads us from the
generalization which is the proper province of the critic, into
details among which it is scarcely fitting that he should venture.

  The Art of Mr. Dickens, although elaborate and great, seems only a
happy modification of Nature. In this respect he differs remarkably
from the author of "Night and Morning." The latter, by excessive
care and by patient reflection, aided by much rhetorical knowledge,
and general information, has arrived at the capability of producing
books which be mistaken by ninety-nine readers out of a hundred for
the genuine inspirations of genius. The former, by the promptings of
the truest genius itself, has been brought to compose, and evidently
without effort, works which have effected a long-sought
consummation- which have rendered him the idol of the people, while
defying and enchanting the critics. Mr. Bulwer, through art, has
almost created a genius. Mr. Dickens, through genius, has perfected
a standard from which Art itself will derive its essence, in rules.

  When we speak in this manner of the "Old Curiosity Shop," we speak
with entire deliberation, and know quite well what it is we assert. We
do not mean to say that it is perfect, as a whole- this could not well
have been the case under the circumstances of its composition. But
we know that, in all the higher elements which go to make up
literary greatness, it is supremely excellent. We think, for instance,
that the introduction of Nelly's brother (and here we address those
who have read the work) is supererogatory- that the character of Quilp
would have been more in keeping had he been confined to petty and
grotesque acts of malice- that his death should have been made the
immediate consequence of his attempt at revenge upon Kit; and that
after matters had been put fairly in train for this poetical
justice, he should not have perished by an accident inconsequential
upon his villany. We think, too, that there is an air of
ultra-accident in the finally discovered relationship between Kit's
master and the bachelor of the old church- that the sneering
politeness put into the mouth of Quilp, with his manner of
commencing a question which he wishes answered in the affirmative,
with an affirmative interrogatory, instead of the ordinary negative
one- are fashions borrowed from the authors own Fagin- that he has
repeated himself in many other instances- that the practical tricks
and love of mischief of the dwarf's boy are too nearly consonant
with the traits of the master- that so much of the propensities of
Swiveller as relate to his inapposite appropriation of odds and ends
of verse, is stolen from the generic loafer of our fellow-townsman,
Neal- and that the writer has suffered the overflowing kindness of his
own bosom to mislead him in a very important point of art, when he
endows so many of his dramatis personae with a warmth of feeling so
very rare in reality. Above all, we acknowledge that the death of
Nelly is excessively painful- that it leaves a most distressing
oppression of spirit upon the reader- and should, therefore, have been
avoided.

  But when we come to speak of the excellences of the tale these
defects appear really insignificant. It embodies more originality in
every point, but in character especially, than any single work
within our knowledge. There is the grandfather- a truly profound
conception; the gentle and lovely Nelly- we have discoursed of her
before; Quilp, with mouth like that of the panting dog- (a bold idea
which the engraver has neglected to embody) with his hilarious antics,
his cowardice, and his very petty and spoilt-child- like
malevolence, Dick Swiveller, that prince of goodhearted,
good-for-nothing, lazy, luxurious, poetical, brave, romantically
generous, gallant, affectionate, and not over-and-above honest,
"glorious Apollos;" the marchioness, his bride; Tom Codlin and his
partner; Miss Sally Brass, that "fine fellow;" the pony that had an
opinion of its own; the boy that stood upon his head; the sexton;
the man at the forge; not forgetting the dancing dogs and baby
Nubbles. There are other admirably drawn characters- but we note these
for their remarkable originality, as well as for their wonderful
keeping, and the glowing colors in which they are painted. We have
heard some of them called caricatures- but the charge is grossly
ill-founded. No critical principle is more firmly based in reason than
that a certain amount of exaggeration is essential to the proper
depicting of truth itself. We do not paint an object to be true, but
to appear true to the beholder. Were we to copy nature with accuracy
the object copied would seem unnatural. The columns of the Greek
temples, which convey the idea of absolute proportion, are very
considerably thicker just beneath the capital than at the base. We
regret that we have not left ourselves space in which to examine
this whole question as it deserves. We must content ourselves with
saying that caricature seldom exists (unless in so gross a form as
to disgust at once) where the component parts are in keeping; and that
the laugh excited by it, in any case, is radically distinct from
that induced by a properly artistical incongruity- the source of all
mirth. Were these creations of Mr. Dickens' really caricatures they
would not live in public estimation beyond the hour of their first
survey. We regard them as creations- (that is to say as original
combinations of character) only not all of the highest order,
because the elements employed are not always of the highest. In the
instances of Nelly, the grandfather, the Sexton, and the man of the
furnace, the force of the creative intellect could scarcely have
been engaged with nobler material, and the result is that these
personages belong to the most august regions of the Ideal.

  In truth, the great feature of the "Curiosity Shop" is its chaste,
vigorous, and glorious imagination. This is the one charm, all potent,
which alone would suffice to compensate for a world more of error than
Mr. Dickens ever committed. It is not only seen in the conception, and
general handling of the story, or in the invention of character; but
it pervades every sentence of the book. We recognise its prodigious
influence in every inspired word. It is this which induces the
reader who is at all ideal, to pause frequently, to reread the
occasionally quaint phrases, to muse in uncontrollable delight over
thoughts which, while he wonders he has never hit upon them before, he
yet admits that he never has encountered. In fact it is the wand of
the enchanter.

  Had we room to particularize, we would mention as points evincing
most distinctly the ideality of the "Curiosity Shop"- the picture of
the shop itself- the newly-born desire of the worldly old man for
the peace of green fields- his whole character and conduct, in
short- the schoolmaster, with his desolate fortunes, seeking affection
in little children- the haunts of Quilp among the wharf-rats- the
tinkering of the Punchmen among the tombs- the glorious scene where
the man of the forge sits poring, at deep midnight, into that dread
fire- again the whole conception of this character, and, last and
greatest, the stealthy approach of Nell to her death- her gradual
sinking away on the journey to the village, so skilfully indicated
rather than described- her pensive and prescient meditation- the fit
of strange musing which came over her when the house in which she
was to die first broke upon her sight- the description of this
house, of the old church, and of the churchyard- everything in rigid
consonance with the one impression to be conveyed- that deep
meaningless well- the comments of the Sexton upon death, and upon
his own secure life- this whole world of mournful yet peaceful idea
merging, at length, into the decease of the child Nelly, and the
uncomprehending despair of the grandfather. These concluding scenes
are so drawn that human language, urged by human thought, could go
no farther in the excitement of human feelings. And the pathos is of
that best order which is relieved, in great measure, by ideality. Here
the book has never been equalled,- never approached except in one
instance, and that is in the case of the "Undine" by De La Motte
Fouque. The imagination is perhaps as great in this latter work, but
the pathos, although truly beautiful and deep, fails of much of its
effect through the material from which it is wrought. The chief
character, being endowed with purely fanciful attributes, cannot
command our full sympathies, as can a simple denizen of earth. In
saying above, that the death of the child left too painful an
impression, and should therefore have been avoided, we must, of
course, be understood as referring to the work as a whole, and in
respect to its general appreciation and popularity. The death, as
recorded, is, we repeat, of the highest order of literary
excellence- yet while none can deny this fact, there are few who
will be willing to read the concluding passages a second time.

  Upon the whole we think the "Curiosity Shop" very much the best of
the works of Mr. Dickens. It is scarcely possible to speak of it too
well. It is in all respects a tale which will secure for its author
the enthusiastic admiration of every man of genius.

  The edition before us is handsomely printed, on excellent paper. The
designs by Cattermole and Browne are many of them excellent- some of
them outrageously bad. Of course, it is difficult for us to say how
far the American engraver is in fault. In conclusion, we must enter
our solemn protest against the final page full of little angels in
smock frocks, or dimity chemises.

                   THE QUACKS OF HELICON

                 A Satire. By L. A. Wilmer

  A SATIRE, professedly such, at the present day, and especially by an
American writer, is a welcome novelty indeed. We have really done very
little in the line upon this side of the Atlantic- nothing certainly
of importance- Trumbull's clumsy poem and Halleck's "Croakers" to
the contrary notwithstanding. Some things we have produced, to be
sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without
intending a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes,
ballads, songs, sonnets, epics, and epigrams, possessed of this
unintentional excellence, we could have no difficulty in designating
by the dozen; but in the matter of directly meant and genuine
satire, it cannot be denied that we are sadly deficient. Although,
as a literary people, however, we are not exactly Archilochuses-
although we have no pretensions to the echeenpes iamboi- although in
short, we are no satirists ourselves, there can be no question that we
answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire.

  We repeat that we are glad to see this book of Mr. Wilmer's;
first, because it is something new under the sun; secondly, because,
in many respects, it is well executed; and thirdly, because, in the
universal corruption and rigmarole, amid which we gasp for breath,
it is really a pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff of
the unadulterated air of truth.

  "The Quacks of Helicon," as a poem and otherwise, has many
defects, and these we shall have no scruple in pointing out-
although Mr. Wilmer is a personal friend of our own, and we are
happy and proud to say so- but it has also many remarkable merits-
merits which it will be quite useless for those aggrieved by the
satire- quite useless for any clique, or set of cliques, to attempt to
frown down, or to affect not to see, or to feel, or to understand.

  Its prevalent blemishes are referable chiefly to the leading sin
of imitation. Had the work been composed professedly in paraphrase
of the whole manner of the sarcastic epistles of the times of Dryden
and Pope, we should have pronounced it the most ingenious and truthful
thing of the kind upon record. So close is the copy that it extends to
the most trivial points- for example, to the old forms of punctuation.
The turns of phraseology, the tricks of rhythm, the arrangement of the
paragraphs, the general conduct of the satire- everything- all- are
Dryden's. We cannot deny, it is true, that the satiric model of the
days in question is insusceptible of improvement, and that the
modern author who deviates therefrom must necessarily sacrifice
something of merit at the shrine of originality. Neither can we shut
our eyes to the fact that the imitation in the present case has
conveyed, in full spirit, the high qualities, as well as in rigid
letter, the minor elegancies and general peculiarities of the author
of "Absalom and Achitophel." We have here the bold, vigorous, and
sonorous verse, the biting sarcasm, the pungent epigrammatism, the
unscrupulous directness, as of old. Yet it will not do to forget
that Mr. Wilmer has been shown how to accomplish these things. He is
thus only entitled to the praise of a close observer, and of a
thoughtful and skilful copyist. The images are, to be sure, his own.
They are neither Popes, nor Dryden's, nor Rochester's, nor
Churchill's- but they are moulded in the identical mould used by these
satirists.

  This servility of imitation has seduced our author into errors,
which his better sense should have avoided. He sometimes mistakes
intentions; at other times, he copies faults, confounding them with
beauties. In the opening of the poem, for example, we find the lines-

        Against usurpers, Olney, I declare

        A righteous, just and patriotic war.

  The rhymes war and declare are here adopted from Pope, who employs
them frequently; but it should have been remembered that the modern
relative pronunciation of the two words differs materially from the
relative pronunciation of the era of the "Dunciad."

  We are also sure that the gross obscenity, the filth- we can use
no gentler name- which disgraces "The Quacks of Helicon," cannot be
the result of innate impurity in the mind of the writer. It is but a
part of the slavish and indiscriminating imitation of the Swift and
Rochester school. It has done the book an irreparable injury, both
in a moral and pecuniary view, without affecting anything whatever
on the score of sarcasm, vigour or wit. "Let what is to be said, he
said plainly." True, but let nothing vulgar be ever said or conceived.

  In asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism, has imbued
itself with the full spirit of the polish and of the pungency of
Dryden, we have already awarded it high praise. But there remains to
be mentioned the far loftier merit of speaking fearlessly the truth,
at an epoch when truth is out of fashion, and under circumstances of
social position which would have deterred almost any man in our
community from a similar Quixotism. For the publication of "The Quacks
of Helicon"- a poem which brings under review, by name, most of our
prominent literati and treats them, generally, as they deserve (what
treatment could be more bitter?)- for the publication of this
attack, Mr. Wilmer, whose subsistence lies in his pen, has little to
look for- apart from the silent respect of those at once honest and
timid- but the most malignant open or covert persecution. For this
reason, and because it is the truth which he has spoken, do we say
to him, from the bottom of our hearts, "God speed!"

  We repeat it: it is the truth which he has spoken; and who shall
contradict us? He has said unscrupulously what every reasonable man
among us has long known to be "as true as the Pentateuch"- that, as
a literary people, we are one vast perambulating humbug. He has
asserted that we are clique-ridden; and who does not smile at the
obvious truism of that assertion? He maintains that chicanery is, with
us, a far surer road than talent to distinction in letters. Who
gainsays this? The corrupt nature of our ordinary criticism has become
notorious. Its powers have been prostrated by its own arm. The
intercourse between critic and publisher, as it now almost universally
stands, is comprised either in the paying and pocketing of
blackmail, as the price of a simple forebearance, or in a direct
system of petty and contemptible bribery, properly so-called- a system
even more injurious than the former to the true interests of the
public, and more degrading to the buyers and sellers of good
opinion, on account of the more positive character of the service here
rendered for the consideration received. We laugh at the idea of any
denial of our assertions upon this topic; they are infamously true. In
the charge of general corruption, there are undoubtedly many noble
exceptions to be made. There are, indeed, some very few editors,
who, maintaining an entire independence, will receive no books from
publishers at all, or who receive them with a perfect understanding,
on the part of these latter, that an unbiassed critique will be given.
But these cases are insufficient to have much effect on the popular
mistrust; a mistrust heightened by late exposure of the machinations
of coteries in New York-coteries which, at the bidding of leading
booksellers, manufacture, as required from time to time, a
pseudo-public opinion by wholesale, for the benefit of any little
hanger-on of the party, or pettifogging protector of the firm.

  We speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn. It is
unnecessary to cite instances, where one is found in almost every
issue of a book. It is needless to call to mind the desperate case
of Fay- a case where the pertinacity of the effort to gull- where
the obviousness of the attempt at forestalling a judgment- where the
wofully overdone bemirrorment of that man-of-straw, together with
the pitiable platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too
potent for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob. We say it is
supererogatory to dwell upon "Norman Leslie," or other by-gone
follies, when we have before our eyes hourly instances of the
machinations in question. To so great an extent of methodical
assurance has the system of puffery arrived, that publishers, of late,
have made no scruple of keeping on hand an assortment of
commendatory notices, prepared by their men of all work, and of
sending these notices around to the multitudinous papers within
their influence, done up within the fly leaves of the book. The
grossness of these base attempts, however, has not escaped indignant
rebuke from the more honourable portion of the press; and we hail
these symptoms of restiveness under the yoke of unprincipled ignorance
and quackery (strong only in combination) as the harbinger of a better
era for the interests of real merit, and of the national literature as
a whole.

  It has become, indeed, the plain duty of each individual connected
with our periodicals heartily to give whatever influence he
possesses to the good cause of integrity and the truth. The results
thus attainable will be found worthy his closest attention and best
efforts. We shall thus frown down all conspiracies to foist inanity
upon the public consideration at the obvious expense of every man of
talent who is not a member of a clique in power. We may even arrive in
time at that desirable point from which a distinct view of our men
of letters may be obtained, and their respective pretensions
adjusted by the standard of a rigorous and self-sustaining criticism
alone. That their several positions are as yet properly settled;
that the posts which a vast number of them now hold are maintained
by any better tenure than that of the chicanery upon which we have
commented, will be asserted by none but the ignorant, or the parties
who have best right to feel an interest in the "good old condition
of things." No two matters can be more radically different than the
reputation of some of our prominent litterateurs as gathered from
the mouths of the people (who glean it from the paragraphs of the
papers), and the same reputation as deduced from the private
estimate of intelligent and educated men. We do not advance this
fact as a new discovery. Its truth, on the contrary, is the subject,
and has long been so, of every-day witticism and mirth.

  Why not? Surely there can be few things more ridiculous than the
general character and assumptions of the ordinary critical notices
of new books! An editor, sometimes without the shadow of the commonest
attainment- often without brains, always without time- does not
scruple to give the world to understand that he is in the daily
habit of critically reading and deciding upon a flood of publications,
one-tenth of whose title pages he may possibly have turned over,
three-fourths of whose contents would be Hebrew to his most
desperate efforts at comprehension, and whose entire mass and
amount, as might be mathematically demonstrated, would be sufficient
to occupy, in the most cursory perusal, the attention of some ten or
twenty readers for a month! What he wants in plausibility, however, he
makes up in obsequiousness; what he lacks in time he supplies in
temper. He is the most easily pleased man in the world. He admires
everything, from the big Dictionary of Noah Webster to the last
diamond edition of Tom Thumb. Indeed, his sole difficulty is in
finding tongue to express his delight. Every pamphlet is a miracle-
every book in boards is an epoch in letters. His phrases, therefore,
get bigger and bigger every day, and, if it were not for talking
Cockney, we might call him a "regular swell."

  Yet, in the attempt at getting definite information in regard to any
one portion of our literature, the merely general reader, or the
foreigner, will turn in vain from the lighter to the heavier journals.
But it is not our intention here to dwell upon the radical, antique,
and systematized rigmarole of our Quarterlies. The articles here are
anonymous. Who writes?- who causes to be written? Who but an ass
will put faith in tirades which may be the result of personal
hostility, or in panegyrics which nine times out of ten may be laid,
directly or indirectly, to the charge of the author himself? It is
in the favour of these saturnine pamphlets that they contain, now
and then, a good essay de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, which
may be looked into, without decided somnolent consequences, at any
period, not immediately subsequent to dinner. But it is useless to
expect criticism from periodicals called "Reviews" from never
reviewing. Besides, all men know, or should know, that these books are
sadly given to verbiage. It is a part of their nature, a condition
of their being, a point of their faith. A veteran reviewer loves the
safety of generalities and is therefore rarely particular. "Words,
words, words," are the secret of his strength. He has one or two ideas
of his own and is both wary and fussy in giving them out. His wit
lies, with his truth, in a well, and there is always a world of
trouble in getting it up. He is a sworn enemy to all things simple and
direct. He gives no ear to the advice of the giant
Moulineau-"Belier, mon ami commencez au commencement." He either jumps
at once into the middle of his subject, or breaks in at a back door,
or sidles up to it with the gait of a crab. No other mode of
approach has an air of sufficient profundity. When fairly into it,
however, he becomes dazzled with the scintillations of his own wisdom,
and is seldom able to see his way out. Tired of laughing at his
antics, or frightened at seeing him flounder, the reader, at length,
shuts him up, with the book. "What song the Syrens sang," says Sir
Thomas Browne, "or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself
among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all
conjecture";- but it would puzzle Sir Thomas, backed by Achilles and
all the Syrens in Heathendom, to say, in nine cases out of ten, what
is the object of a thoroughgoing Quarterly Reviewer.

  Should the opinions promulgated by our press at large be taken, in
their wonderful aggregate, as an evidence of what American
literature absolutely is (and it may be said that, in general, they
are really so taken), we shall find ourselves the most enviable set of
people upon the face of the earth. Our fine writers are legion. Our
very atmosphere is redolent of genius; and we, the nation, are a huge,
well-contented chameleon, grown pursy by inhaling it. We are teretes
et rotundi- enwrapped in excellence. All our poets are Milton
neither mute nor inglorious; all our poetesses are "American
Hemanses"; nor will it do to deny that all our novelists are Great
Knowns or Great Unknowns, and that everybody who writes, in every
possible and impossible department, is the Admirable Crichton, or,
at least, the Admirable Crichton's ghost. We are thus in a glorious
condition, and will remain so until forced to disgorge our ethereal
honours. In truth there is some danger that the jealousy of the Old
World will interfere. It cannot long submit to that outrageous
monopoly of "all the decency and all the talent," of which the
gentlemen of the press give such undoubted assurance of our being
the possessors.

  But we feel angry with ourselves for the jesting tone of our
observations upon this topic. The prevalence of the spirit of
puffery is a subject far less for merriment than for disgust. Its
truckling, yet dogmatical character- its bold, unsustained, yet
self-sufficient and wholesale laudation- is becoming, more and more,
an insult to the common sense of the community. Trivial as it
essentially is, it has yet been made the instrument of the grossest
abuse in the elevation of imbecility, to the manifest injury, to the
utter ruin, of true merit. Is there any man of good feeling and of
ordinary understanding- is there one single individual among all our
readers- who does not feel a thrill of bitter indignation, apart
from any sentiment of mirth, as he calls to mind instance after
instance of the purest, of the most unadulterated quackery in letters,
which has risen to a high post in the apparent popular estimation, and
which still maintains it, by the sole means of a blustering arrogance,
or of a busy wriggling conceit, or of the most barefaced plagiarism,
or even through the simple immensity of its assumptions- assumptions
not only unopposed by the press at large, but absolutely supported
in proportion to the vociferous clamour with which they are made- in
exact accordance with their utter baselessness and untenability? We
should have no trouble in pointing out to-day some twenty or thirty
so-called literary personages, who, if not idiots, as we half think
them, or if not hardened to all sense of shame by a long course of
disingenuousness, will now blush in the perusal of these words,
through consciousness of the shadowy nature of that purchased pedestal
upon which they stand-will now tremble in thinking of the feebleness
of the breath which will be adequate to the blowing it from beneath
their feet. With the help of a hearty good will, even we may yet
tumble them down.

  So firm, through a long endurance, has been the hold taken upon
the popular mind (at least so far as we may consider the popular
mind reflected in ephemeral letters) by the laudatory system which
we have deprecated, that what is, in its own essence, a vice, has
become endowed with the appearance, and met with the reception of a
virtue. Antiquity, as usual, has lent a certain degree of speciousness
even to the absurd. So continuously have we puffed, that we have, at
length, come to think puffing the duty, and plain speaking the
dereliction. What we began in gross error, we persist in through
habit. Having adopted, in the earlier days of our literature, the
untenable idea that this literature, as a whole, could be advanced
by an indiscriminate approbation bestowed on its every effort-
having adopted this idea, we say, without attention to the obvious
fact that praise of all was bitter although negative censure to the
few alone deserving, and that the only result of the system, in the
fostering way, would be the fostering of folly- we now continue our
vile practice through the supineness of custom, even while, in our
national self-conceit, we repudiate that necessity for patronage and
protection in which originated our conduct. In a word, the press
throughout the country has not been ashamed to make head against the
very few bold attempts at independence which have from time to time
been made in the face of the reigning order of things. And if in
one, or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of severe truth,
sustained by an unconquerable will, was not to be so put down, then,
forthwith, were private chicaneries set in motion; then was had
resort, on the part of those who considered themselves injured by
the severity of criticism (and who were so, if the just contempt of
every ingenuous man is injury), resort to arts of the most virulent
indignity, to untraceable slanders, to ruthless assassination in the
dark. We say these things were done while the press in general
looked on, and, with a full understanding of the wrong perpetrated,
spoke not against the wrong. The idea had absolutely gone abroad-
had grown up little by little into toleration- that attacks, however
just, upon a literary reputation, however obtained, however untenable,
were well retaliated by the basest and most unfounded traduction of
personal fame. But is this an age- is this a day- in which it can be
necessary even to advert to such considerations as that the book of
the author is the property of the public, and that the issue of the
book is the throwing down of the gauntlet to the reviewer- to the
reviewer whose duty is the plainest; the duty not even of approbation,
or of censure, or of silence, at his own, will but at the sway of
those sentiments and of those opinions which are derived from the
author himself, through the medium of his written and published words?
True criticism is the reflection of the thing criticized upon the
spirit of the critic.

  But a nos moutons- to "The Quacks of Helicon." This satire has
many faults besides those upon which we have commented. The title, for
example, is not sufficiently distinctive, although otherwise good.
It does not confine the subject to American quacks, while the work
does. The two concluding lines enfeeble instead of strengthening the
finale, which would have been exceedingly pungent without them. The
individual portions of the thesis are strung together too much at
random- a natural sequence is not always preserved- so that,
although the lights of the picture are often forcible, the whole has
what, in artistical parlance, is termed an accidental and spotty
appearance. In truth, the parts of the poem have evidently been
composed each by each, as separate themes, and afterwards fitted
into the general satire in the best manner possible.

  But a more reprehensible sin than an or than all of these is yet
to be mentioned- the sin of indiscriminate censure. Even here Mr.
Wilmer has erred through imitation. He has held in view the sweeping
denunciations of the Dunciad, and of the later (abortive) satire of
Byron. No one in his senses can deny the justice of the general
charges of corruption in regard to which we have just spoken from
the text of our author. But are there no exceptions? We should,
indeed, blush if there were not. And is there no hope? Time will show.
We cannot do everything in a day- Non se gano Zonora en un ora. Again,
it cannot be gainsaid that the greater number of those who hold high
places in our poetical literature are absolute nincompoops- fellows
alike innocent of reason and of rhyme. But neither are we all
brainless, nor is the devil himself so black as he is painted. Mr.
Wilmer must read the chapter in Rabelais's "Gargantua," "de ce
qu'est signifie par les couleurs blanc et bleu,"- for there is some
difference after all. It will not do in a civilized land to run a-muck
like a Malay. Mr. Morris has written good songs. Mr. Bryant is not all
a fool. Mr. Willis is not quite an ass. Mr. Longfellow will steal,
but, perhaps, he cannot help it (for we have heard of such things),
and then it must not be denied that nil tetigit quod non ornavit.

  The fact is that our author, in the rank exuberance of his zeal,
seems to think as little of discrimination as the Bishop of Autun* did
of the Bible. Poetical "things in general" are the windmills at
which he spurs his Rozinante. He as often tilts at what is true as
at what is false; and thus his lines are like the mirrors of the
temples of Smyrna, which represent the fairest images as deformed. But
the talent, the fearlessness, and especially the design of this
book, will suffice to preserve it from that dreadful damnation of
"silent contempt," to which editors throughout the country, if we
are not much mistaken, will endeavour, one and all to consign it.

  * Talleyrand.
EXORDIUM

                        EXORDIUM

            [Graham's Magazine, January, 1842]

  IN Commencing, with the New Year, a New Volume, we shall be
permitted to say a very few words by way of exordium to our usual
chapter of Reviews, or, as we should prefer calling them, of
Critical Notices. Yet we speak not for the sake of the exordium, but
because we have really something to say, and know not when or where
better to say it.

  That the public attention, in America, has, of late days, been
more than usually directed to the matter of literary criticism, is
plainly apparent. Our periodicals are beginning to acknowledge the
importance of the science (shall we so term it?) and to disdain the
flippant opinion which so long has been made its substitute.

  Time was when we imported our critical decisions from the mother
country. For many years we enacted a perfect farce of subserviency
to the dicta of Great Britain. At last a revulsion of feeling, with
self-disgust, necessarily ensued. Urged by these, we plunged into
the opposite extreme. In throwing totally off that "authority,"
whose voice had so long been so sacred, we even surpassed, and by
much, our original folly. But the watchword now was, "a national
literature!"- as, if any true literature could be "national"- as if
the world at large were not the only proper stage for the literary
histrio. We became, suddenly, the merest and maddest partizans in
letters. Our papers spoke of "tariffs" and "protection." Our Magazines
had habitual passages about that "truly native novelist, Mr.
Cooper," or that "staunch American genius, Mr. Paulding." Unmindful of
the spirit of the axioms that "a prophet has no honor in his own land"
and that "a hero is never a hero to his valet-de-chambre"- axioms
founded in reason and in truth- our reviews urged the propriety- our
booksellers the necessity, of strictly "American" themes. A foreign
subject, at this epoch, was a weight more than enough to drag down
into the very depths of critical damnation the finest writer owning
nativity in the States; while, on the reverse, we found ourselves
daily in the paradoxical dilemma of liking, or pretending to like, a
stupid book the better because (sure enough) its stupidity was of
our own growth, and discussed our own affairs.

  It is, in fact, but very lately that this anomalous state of feeling
has shown any signs of subsidence. Still it is subsiding. Our views of
literature in general having expanded, we begin to demand the use-
to inquire into the offices and provinces of criticism- to regard it
more as an art based immovably in nature, less as a mere system of
fluctuating and conventional dogmas. And, with the prevalence of these
ideas, has arrived a distaste even to the home-dictation of the
bookseller-coteries. If our editors are not as yet all independent
of the will of a publisher, a majority of them scruple, at least, to
confess a subservience, and enter into no positive combinations
against the minority who despise and discard it. And this is a very
great improvement of exceedingly late date.

  Escaping these quicksands, our criticism is nevertheless in some
danger- some very little danger- of falling into the pit of a most
detestable species of cant- the cant of generality. This tendency
has been given it, in the first instance, by the onward and tumultuous
spirit of the age. With the increase of the thinking-material comes
the desire, if not the necessity, of abandoning particulars for
masses. Yet in our individual case, as a nation, we seem merely to
have adopted this bias from the British Quarterly Reviews, upon
which our own Quarterlies have been slavishly and pertinaciously
modelled. In the foreign journal, the review or criticism properly
so termed, has gradually yet steadily degenerated into what we see
it at present- that is to say, into anything but criticism. Originally
a "review" was not so called as lucus a non lucendo. Its name conveyed
a just idea of its design. It reviewed, or surveyed the book whose
title formed its text, and, giving an analysis of its contents, passed
judgment upon its merits or defects. But, through the system of
anonymous contribution, this natural process lost ground from day to
day. The name of a writer being known only to a few, it became to
him an object not so much to write well, as to write fluently, at so
many guineas per sheet. The analysis of a book is a matter of time and
of mental exertion. For many classes of composition there is
required a deliberate perusal, with notes, and subsequent
generalization. An easy substitute for this labor was found in a
digest or compendium of the work noticed, with copious extracts- or
a still easier, in random comments upon such passages as
accidentally met the eye of the critic, with the passages themselves
copied at full length. The mode of reviewing most in favor, however,
because carrying with it the greatest semblance of care, was that of
diffuse essay upon the subject matter of the publication, the
reviewer(?) using the facts alone which the publication supplied,
and using them as material for some theory, the sole concern, bearing,
and intention of which, was mere difference of opinion with the
author. These came at length to be understood and habitually practised
as the customary or conventional fashions of review; and although
the nobler order of intellects did not fall into the full heresy of
these fashions- we may still assert that even Macaulay's nearest
approach to criticism in its legitimate sense, is to be found in his
article upon Ranke's "History of the Popes"- an article in which the
whole strength of the reviewer is put forth to account for a single
fact- the progress of Romanism- which the book under discussion has
established.

  Now, while we do not mean to deny that a good essay is a good thing,
we yet assert that these papers on general topics have nothing
whatever to do with that criticism which their evil example has
nevertheless infected in se. Because these dogmatizing pamphlets,
which were once "Reviews," have lapsed from their original faith, it
does not follow that the faith itself is extinct- that "there shall be
no more cakes and ale"- that criticism, in its old acceptation, does
not exist. But we complain of a growing inclination on the part of our
lighter journals to believe, on such grounds, that such is the fact-
that because the British Quarterlies, through supineness, and our own,
through a degrading imitation, have come to merge all varieties of
vague generalization in the one title of "Review," it therefore
results that criticism, being everything in the universe, is,
consequently, nothing whatever in fact. For to this end, and to none
other conceivable, is the tendency of such propositions, for
example, as we find in a late number of that very clever monthly
magazine, Arcturus.

  "But now" (the emphasis on the now is our own)- "but now," says
Mr. Mathews, in the preface to the first volume of his journal,
"criticism has a wider scope and a universal interest. It dismisses
errors of grammer, and hands over an imperfect rhyme or a false
quantity to the proofreader; it looks now to the heart of the
subject and the author's design. It is a test of opinion. Its
acuteness is not pedantic, but philosophical; it unravels the web of
the author's mystery to interpret his meaning to others; it detects
his sophistry, because sophistry is injurious to the heart and life;
it promulgates his beauties with liberal, generous praise, because
this is his true duty as the servant of truth. Good criticism may be
well asked for, since it is the type of the literature of the day.
It gives method to the universal inquisitiveness on every topic
relating to life or action. A criticism, now, includes every form of
literature, except perhaps the imaginative and the strictly
dramatic. It is an essay, a sermon, an oration, a chapter in
history, a philosophical speculation, a prose-poem, an art-novel, a
dialogue, it admits of humor, pathos, the personal feelings of
autobiography, the broadest views of statesmanship. As the ballad
and the epic were the productions of the days of Homer, the review
is the native characteristic growth of the nineteenth century."

  We respect the talents of Mr. Mathews, but must dissent from
nearly all that he here says. The species of "review" which he
designates as the "characteristic growth of the nineteenth century" is
only the growth of the last twenty or thirty years in Great Britain.
The French Reviews, for example, which are not anonymous, are very
different things, and preserve the unique spirit of true criticism.
And what need we say of the Germans?- what of Winckelmann, of Novalis,
of Schelling, of Goethe, of Augustus William, and of Frederick
Schlegel?- that their magnificent critiques raisonnees differ from
those of Kames, of Johnson, and of Blair, in principle not at all,
(for the principles of these artists will not fail until Nature
herself expires,) but solely in their more careful elaboration,
their greater thoroughness, their more profound analysis and
application of the principles themselves. That a criticism "now"
should be different in spirit, as Mr. Mathews supposes, from a
criticism at any previous period, is to insinuate a charge of
variability in laws that cannot vary- the laws of man's heart and
intellect- for these are the sole basis, upon which the true
critical art is established. And this art "now" no more than in the
days of the "Dunciad," can, without neglect of its duty, "dismiss
errors of grammar," or "hand over an imperfect rhyme or a false
quantity to the proof-reader." What is meant by a "test of opinion" in
the connection here given the words by Mr. M., we do not comprehend as
clearly as we could desire. By this phrase we are as completely
enveloped in doubt as was Mirabeau in the castle of If. To our
imperfect appreciation it seems to form a portion of that general
vagueness which is the tone of the whole philosophy at this point:-
but all that which our journalist describes a criticism to be, is
all that which we sturdily maintain it is not. Criticism is not, we
think, an essay, nor a sermon, nor an oration, nor a chapter in
history, nor a philosophical speculation, nor a prose-poem, nor an
art-novel, nor a dialogue. In fact, it can be nothing in the world
but- a criticism. But if it were all that Arcturus imagines, it is not
very clear why it might not be equally "imaginative, or "dramatic"-
a romance or a melodrama, or both. That it would be a farce cannot
be doubted.

  It is against this frantic spirit of generalization that we protest.
We have a word, "criticism," whose import is sufficiently distinct,
through long usage, at least, and we have an art of high importance
and clearly ascertained limit, which this word is quite well enough
understood to represent. Of that conglomerate science to which Mr.
Mathews so eloquently alludes, and of which we are instructed that
it is anything and everything at once- of this science we know
nothing, and really wish to know less; but we object to our
contemporary's appropriation in its behalf, of a term to which we,
in common with a large majority of mankind, have been accustomed to
attach a certain and very definitive idea. Is there no word but
"criticism" which may be made to serve the purposes of "Arcturus"? Has
it any objection to Orphicism, or Dialism, or Emersonism, or any other
pregnant compound indicative of confusion worse confounded?

  Still, we must not pretend a total misapprehension of the idea of
Mr. Mathews, and we should be sorry that he misunderstood us. It may
be granted that we differ only in terms- although the difference
will yet be found not unimportant in effect. Following the highest
authority, we would wish, in a word, to limit literary criticism to
comment upon Art. A book is written- and it is only as the book that
we subject it to review. With the opinions of the work, considered
otherwise than in their relation to the work itself, the critic has
really nothing to do. It is his part simply to decide upon the mode in
which these opinions are brought to bear. Criticism is thus no "test
of opinion." For this test, the work, divested of its pretensions as
an art-product, is turned over for discussion to the world at large-
and first, to that class which it especially addresses- if a
history, to the historian- if a metaphysical treatise, to the
moralist. In this, the only true and intelligible sense, it will be
seen that criticism, the test or analysis of Art, (not of opinion,) is
only properly employed upon productions which have their basis in
art itself, and although the journalist (whose duties and objects
are multiform) may turn aside, at pleasure, from the mode or vehicle
of opinion to discussion of the opinion conveyed- it is still clear
that he is "critical" only in so much as he deviates from his true
province not at all.

  And of the critic himself what shall we say?- for as yet we have
spoken only the proem to the true epopea. What can we better say of
him than, with Bulwer, that "he must have courage to blame boldly,
magnanimity to eschew envy, genius to appreciate, learning to compare,
an eye for beauty, an ear for music, and a heart for feeling." Let
us add, a talent for analysis and a solemn indifference to abuse.

                       BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS

  By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of "Voices of the Night,"

        "Hyperion," &c. Second edition. John Owen, Cambridge.

  "IL Y A A PARIER," says Chamfort, "que toute idee publique, toute
convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand
notore."- One would be safe in wagering that any given public idea
is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the
majority,- and this strictly philosophical, although somewhat French
assertion has especial bearing upon the whole race of what are
termed maxims and popular proverbs; nine-tenths of which are the
quintessence of folly. One of the most deplorably false of them is the
antique adage, De gustibus non est disputandum- there should be no
disputing about taste. Here the idea designed to be conveyed is that
any one person has as just right to consider his own taste the true,
as has any one other- that taste itself, in short, is an arbitrary
something, amenable to no law, and measurable by no definite rules. It
must be confessed, however, that the exceedingly vague and impotent
treatises which are alone extant, have much to answer for as regards
confirming the general error. Not the least important service which,
hereafter, mankind will owe to Phrenology, may, perhaps, be recognized
in an analysis of the real principles, and a digest of the resulting
laws of taste. These principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable,
and these laws as really susceptible of system as are any whatever.

  In the meantime, the inane adage above mentioned is in no respect
more generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously quoted than
by the admirers of what is termed the "good old Pope," or the "good
old Goldsmith school" of poetry, in reference to the bolder, more
natural and more ideal compositions of such authors as Coetlogon and
Lamartine* in France; Herder, Korner, and Uhland, in Germany; Brun and
Baggesen in Denmark; Bellman, Tegner, Nyberg*(2) in Sweden; Keats,
Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson in England; Lowell and Longfellow
in America. "De gustibus non," say these "good-old school" fellows;
and we have no doubt that their mental translation of the phrase is-
"We pity your taste- we pity every body's taste but our own."

  * We allude here chiefly to the "David" of Coetlogon and only to the
"Chute d'un Ange" of Lamartine.

  *(2) Julia Nyberg, author of the "Dikter von Euphrosyne."

  It is our purpose hereafter, when occasion shall be afforded us,
to controvert in an article of some length, the popular idea that
the poets, just mentioned owe to novelty, to trickeries of expression,
and to other meretricious effects, their appreciation by certain
readers:- to demonstrate (for the matter is susceptible of
demonstration) that such poetry and such alone has fulfilled the
legitimate office of the muse; has thoroughly satisfied an earnest and
unquenchable desire existing in the heart of man. In the present
number of our Magazine we have left ourselves barely room to say a few
random words of welcome to these "Ballads," by Longfellow, and to
tender him, and all such as he, the homage of our most earnest love
and admiration.

  The volume before us (in whose outward appearance the keen "taste"
of genius is evinced with nearly as much precision as in its
internal soul) includes, with several brief original pieces, a
translation from the Swedish of Tegner. In attempting (what never
should be attempted) a literal version of both the words and the metre
of this poem, Professor Longfellow has failed to do justice either
to his author or himself. He has striven to do what no man ever did
well and what, from the nature of the language itself, never can be
well done. Unless, for example, we shall come to have an influx of
spondees in our English tongue, it will always be impossible to
construct an English hexameter. Our spondees, or, we should say, our
spondiac words, are rare. In the Swedish they are nearly as abundant
as in the Latin and Greek. We have only "compound," "context,"
"footfall," and a few other similar ones. This is the difficulty;
and that it is so will become evident upon reading "The Children of
the Lord's Supper," where the sole readable verses are those in
which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. We mean to say
readable as Hexameters; for many of them will read very well as mere
English Dactylics, with certain irregularities.

  But within the narrow compass now left us we must not indulge in
anything like critical comment. Our readers will be better satisfied
perhaps with a few brief extracts from the original poems of the
volume- which we give for their rare excellence, without pausing now
to say in what particulars this excellence exists.

        And, like the water's flow

        Under December's snow

        Came a dull voice of woe,

          From the heart's chamber.

        So the loud laugh of scorn,

        Out of those lips unshorn

        From the deep drinking-horn

          Blew the foam lightly.

        As with his wings aslant

        Sails the fierce cormorant

        Seeking some rocky haunt,

          With his prey laden,

        So toward the open main,

        Beating to sea again,

        Through the wild hurricane,

          Bore I the maiden.

        Down came the storm and smote amain

          The vessel in its strength;

        She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed

          Then leaped her cable's length.

        She drifted a dreary wreck,

        And a whooping billow swept the crew

          Like icicles from her deck.

        He hears the parson pray and preach

          He hears his daughter's voice,

        Singing in the village choir,

          And it makes his heart rejoice;

        It sounds to him like her mother's voice

          Singing in Paradise!

        He needs must think of her once more

          How in the grave she lies;

        And with his hard rough hand he wipes

          A tear out of his eyes.

        Thus the flaming forge of life

          Our fortunes must be wrought;

        Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

          Each burning deed and thought.

        The rising moon has hid the stars

        Her level rays like golden bars

          Lie on the landscape green

          With shadows brown between.

        Love lifts the boughs whose shadows deep

        Are life's oblivion, the soul's sleep,

          And kisses the closed eyes

          Of him who slumbering lies.

        Friends my soul with joy remembers!

          How like quivering flames they start,

        When I fan the living embers

          On the hearth-stone of my heart.

        Hearest thou voices on the shore,

        That our ears perceive no more

        Deafened by the cataract's roar?

        And from the sky, serene and far

        A voice fell like a falling star.

  Some of these passages cannot be fully appreciated apart from the
context- but we address those who have read the book. Of the
translations we have not spoken. It is but right to say, however, that
"The Luck of Edenhall" is a far finer poem, in every respect than
any of the original pieces. Nor would we have our previous
observations misunderstood. Much as we admire the genius of Mr.
Longfellow, we are fully sensible of his many errors of affectation
and imitation. His artistical skill is great and his ideality high.
But his conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong, and this we
shall prove at some future day- to our own satisfaction, at least. His
didactics are all out of place. He has written brilliant poems- by
accident; that is to say when permitting his genius to get the
better of his conventional habit of thinking- a habit deduced from
German study. We do not mean to say that a didactic moral may not be
well made the under-current of a poetical thesis; but that it can
never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the majority of his
compositions. There is a young American who, with ideality not
richer than that of Longfellow, and with less artistical knowledge,
has yet composed far truer poems, merely through the greater propriety
of his themes. We allude to James Russell Lowell; and in the number of
this Magazine for last month, will be found a ballad entitled
"Rosaline," affording an excellent exemplification of our meaning.
This composition has unquestionably its defects, and the very
defects which are not perceptible in Mr. Longfellow- but we
sincerely think that no American poem equals it in the higher elements
of song.

  In our last number we had some hasty observations on these
"Ballads"- observations which we propose, in some measure, to
amplify and explain.

  It may be remembered that, among other points, we demurred to Mr.
Longfellow's themes, or rather to their general character. We found
fault with the too obtrusive nature of their didacticism. Some years
ago, we urged a similar objection to one or two of the longer pieces
of Bryant, and neither time nor reflection has sufficed to modify,
in the slightest particular, our conviction upon this topic.

  We have said that Mr. Longfellow's conception of the aims of poesy
is erroneous; and that thus, labouring at a disadvantage, he does
violent wrong to his own high powers; and now the question is, What
are his ideas of the aims of the Muse, as we gather these ideas from
the general tendency of his poems? It will be at once evident that,
imbued with the peculiar spirit of German song (a pure
conventionality), he regards the inculcation of a moral as
essential. Here we find it necessary to repeat that we have
reference only to the general tendency of his compositions; for
there are some magnificent exceptions, where, as if by accident, he
has permitted his genius to get the better of his conventional
prejudice. But didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song. His
invention, his imagery, his all, is made subservient to the
elucidation of some one or more points (but rarely of more than one)
which he looks upon as truth. And that this mode of procedure will
find stern defenders should never excite surprise, so long as the
world is full to overflowing with cant and conventicles. There are men
who will scramble on all fours through the muddiest sloughs of vice to
pick up a single apple of virtue. There are things called men who,
so long as the sun rolls, will greet with snuffling huzzas every
figure that takes upon itself the semblance of truth, even although
the figure, in itself only a "stuffed Paddy," be as much out of
place as a toga on the statue of Washington, or out of season as
rabbits in the days of the dog-star.

  Now, with as deep a reverence for "the true" as ever inspired the
bosom of mortal man, we would limit, in many respects, its modes of
inculcation. We would limit, to enforce them. We would not render them
impotent by dissipation. The demands of truth are severe. She has no
sympathy with the myrtles. All that is indispensable in song is all
with which she has nothing to do. To deck her in gay robes is to
render her a harlot. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to
wreathe her in gems and flowers. Even in stating this our present
proposition, we verify our own words- we feel the necessity, in
enforcing this truth, of descending from metaphor. Let us then be
simple and distinct. To convey "the true" we are required to dismiss
from the attention all inessentials. We must be perspicuous,
precise, terse. We need concentration rather than expansion of mind.
We must be calm, unimpassioned, unexcited- in a word, we must be in
that peculiar mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse
of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who cannot perceive the
radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical
modes of inculcation. He must be grossly wedded to conventionalisms
who, in spite of this difference, shall still attempt to reconcile the
obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

  Dividing the world of mind into its most obvious and immediately
recognisable distinctions, we have the pure intellect, taste and the
moral sense. We place taste between the intellect and the moral sense,
because it is just this intermediate space which, in the mind, it
occupies. It is the connecting link in the triple chain.

  It serves to sustain a mutual intelligence between the extremes.
It appertains, in strict appreciation, to the former, but is
distinguished from the latter by so faint a difference that
Aristotle has not hesitated to class some of its operations among
the Virtues themselves. But the offices of the trio are broadly
marked. Just as conscience, or the moral sense, recognises duty;
just as the intellect deals with truth; so is it the part of taste
alone to inform us BEAUTY. And Poesy is the handmaiden but of Taste.
Yet we would not be misunderstood. This handmaiden is not forbidden to
moralise- in her own fashion. She is not forbidden to depict- but to
reason and preach of virtue. As of this latter. conscience
recognises the obligation, so intellect teaches the expediency,
while taste contents herself with displaying the beauty; waging war
with vice merely on the ground of its inconsistency with fitness,
harmony, proportion- in a word with- 'to kalon.'

  An important condition of man's immortal nature is thus, plainly,
the sense of the Beautiful. This it is which ministers to his
delight in the manifold forms and colours and sounds and sentiments
amid which he exists. And, just as the eyes of Amaryllis are
repeated in the mirror, or the living lily in the lake, so is the mere
record of these forms and colours and sounds and sentiments- so is
their mere oral or written repetition a duplicate source of delight.
But this repetition is not Poesy. He who shall merely sing with
whatever rapture, in however harmonious strains, or with however vivid
a truth of imitation, of the sights and sounds which greet him in
common with all mankind- he, we say, has yet failed to prove his
divine title. There is still a longing unsatisfied, which he has
been impotent to fulfil. There is still a thirst unquenchable, which
to allay he has shown us no crystal springs. This burning thirst
belongs to the immortal essence of man's nature. It is equally a
consequence and an indication of his perennial life. It is the
desire of the moth for the star. It is not the mere appreciation of
the beauty before us. It is a wild effort to reach the beauty above.
It is a forethought of the loveliness to come. It is a passion to be
satiated by no sublunary sights, or sounds, or sentiments, and the
soul thus athirst strives to allay its fever in futile efforts at
creation. Inspired with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the
grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combination among the
things and thoughts of Time, to anticipate some portion of that
loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain solely to Eternity,
and the result of such effort, on the part of souls fittingly
constituted, is alone what mankind have agreed to denominate Poetry.

  We say this with little fear of contradiction. Yet the spirit of our
assertion must be more heeded than the letter. Mankind have seemed
to define Poesy in a thousand, and in a thousand conflicting,
definitions. But the war is one only of words. Induction is as well
applicable to this subject as to the most palpable and utilitarian;
and by its sober processes we find that, in respect to compositions
which have been really received as poems, the imaginative, or, more
popularly, the creative portions alone have ensured them to be so
received. Yet these works, on account of these portions, having once
been so received and so named, it has happened naturally and
inevitably, that other portions totally unpoetic have not only come to
be regarded by the popular voice as poetic, but have been made to
serve as false standards of perfection in the adjustment of other
poetical claims. Whatever has been found in whatever has been received
as a poem, has been blindly regarded as ex statu poetic. And this is a
species of gross error which scarcely could have made its way into any
less intangible topic. In fact that license which appertains to the
Muse herself, it has been thought decorous, if not sagacious, to
indulge in all examination of her character.

  Poesy is thus seen to be a response- unsatisfactory it is true-
but still in some measure a response, to a natural and irrepressible
demand. Man being what he is, the time could never have been in
which poesy was not. Its first element is the thirst for supernal
BEAUTY- a beauty which is not afforded the soul by any existing
collocation of earth's forms- a beauty which, perhaps, no possible
combination of these forms would fully produce. Its second element
is the attempt to satisfy this thirst by novel combinations among
those forms of beauty which already exist- or by novel combinations of
those combinations which our predecessors, toiling in chase of the
same phantom have already set in order. We thus clearly deduce the
novelty, the originality, the invention, the imagination, or lastly
the creation of BEAUTY (for the terms as here employed are
synonymous), as the essence of all Poesy. Nor is this idea so much
at variance with ordinary opinion as, at first sight, it may appear. A
multitude of antique dogmas on this topic will be found when
divested of extrinsic speculation, to be easily resoluble into the
definition now proposed. We do nothing more than present tangibly
the vague clouds of the world's idea. We recognize the idea itself
floating, unsettled, indefinite, in every attempt which has yet been
made to circumscribe the conception of "Poesy" in words. A striking
instance of this is observable in the fact that no definition exists
in which either the "beautiful," or some one of those qualities
which we have mentioned above designated synonymously with "creation,"
has not been pointed out as the chief attribute of the Muse.
"Invention," however, or "imagination," is by far more commonly
insisted upon. The word poiesis itself (creation) speaks volumes
upon this point. Neither will it be amiss here to mention Count
Bielfeld's definition of poetry as "L'art d'exprimer les pensees par
la fiction." With this definition (of which the philosophy is profound
to a certain extent) the German terms Dichtkunst, the art of
fiction, and Dichten, to feign, which are used for "poetry" and "to
make verses," are in full and remarkable accordance. It is,
nevertheless, in the combination of the two omniprevalent ideas that
the novelty and, we believe, the force of our own proposition is to be
found.

  So far we have spoken of Poesy as of an abstraction alone. As
such, it is obvious that it may be applicable in various moods. The
sentiment may develop itself in Sculpture, in Painting, in Music, or
otherwise. But our present business is with its development in
words- that development to which, in practical acceptation, the
world has agreed to limit the term. And at this point there is one
consideration which induces us to pause. We cannot make up our minds
to admit (as some have admitted) the inessentiality of rhythm. On
the contrary, the universality of its use in the earliest poetical
efforts of all mankind would be sufficient to assure us, not merely of
its congeniality with the Muse, or of its adaptation to her
purposes, but of its elementary and indispensable importance. But here
we must, perforce, content ourselves with mere suggestion; for this
topic is of a character which would lead us too far. We have already
spoken of Music as one of the moods of poetical development. It is
in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains that end upon
which we have commented- the creation of supernal beauty. It may be,
indeed, that this august aim is here even partially or imperfectly
attained, in fact. The elements of that beauty which is felt in sound,
may be the mutual or common heritage of Earth and Heaven. In the
soul's struggles at combination it is thus not impossible that a
harp may strike notes not unfamiliar to the angels. And in this view
the wonder may well be less that all attempts at defining the
character or sentiment of the deeper musical impressions have been
found absolutely futile. Contenting ourselves, therefore, with the
firm conviction that music (in its modifications of rhythm and
rhyme) is of so vast a moment in Poesy as never to be neglected by him
who is truly poetical- is of so mighty a force in furthering the great
aim intended that he is mad who rejects its assistance- content with
this idea we shall not pause to maintain its absolute essentiality,
for the mere sake of rounding a definition. We will but add, at this
point, that the highest possible development of the Poetical Sentiment
is to be found in the union of song with music, in its popular
sense. The old Bards and Minnesingers possessed, in the fullest
perfection, the finest and truest elements of Poesy; and Thomas Moore,
singing his own ballads, is but putting the final touch to their
completion as poems.

  To recapitulate, then, we would define in brief the Poetry of
words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Beyond the limits of
Beauty its province does not extend. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With
the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations.
It has no dependence, unless incidentally, upon either Duty or
Truth. That our definition will necessarily exclude much of what,
through a supine toleration, has been hitherto ranked as poetical,
is a matter which affords us not even momentary concern. We address
but the thoughtful, and heed only their approval- with our own. If our
suggestions are truthful, then "after many days" shall they be
understood as truth, even though found in contradiction of all that
has been hitherto so understood. If false, shall we not be the first
to bid them die?

  We would reject, of course, all such matters as "Armstrong on
Health," a revolting production; Pope's "Essay on Man," which may well
be content with the title of an "Essay in Rhyme"; "Hudibras," and
other merely humorous pieces. We do not gainsay the peculiar merits of
either of these latter compositions- but deny them the position they
have held. In a notice of Brainard's Poems, we took occasion to show
that the common use of a certain instrument (rhythm) had tended,
more than aught else, to confound humorous verse with poetry. The
observation is now recalled to corroborate what we have just said in
respect to the vast effect or force of melody in itself- an effect
which could elevate into even momentary confusion with the highest
efforts of mind, compositions such as are the greater number of
satires or burlesques.

  Of the poets who have appeared most fully instinct with the
principles now developed, we may mention Keats as the most remarkable.
He is the sole British poet who has never erred in his themes.
Beauty is always his aim.

  We have thus shown our ground of objection to the general themes
of Professor Longfellow. In common with all who claim the sacred title
of poet, he should limit his endeavours to the creation of novel moods
of beauty, in form, in colour, in sound, in sentiment; for over all
this wide range has the poetry of words dominion. To what the world
terms prose may be safely and properly left all else. The artist who
doubts of his thesis, may always resolve his doubt by the single
question- "might not this matter be as well or better handled in
prose?" If it may, then is it no subject for the Muse. In the
general acceptation of the term Beauty we are content to rest, being
careful only to suggest that, in our peculiar views, it must be
understood as inclusive of the sublime.

  Of the pieces which constitute the present volume there are not more
than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the idea above proposed;
although the volume as a whole is by no means so chargeable with
didacticism as Mr. Longfellow's previous book. We would mention as
poems nearly true, "The Village Blacksmith," "The Wreck of the
Hesperus," and especially "The Skeleton in Armor." In the first-
mentioned we have the beauty of simple-mindedness as a genuine thesis;
and this thesis is inimitably handled until the concluding stanza,
where the spirit of legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed
antithetical deduction of a moral from what has gone before. In "The
Wreck of the Hesperus" we have the beauty of child- like confidence
and innocence, with that of the father's courage and affection. But,
with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed
are not poetic subjects. Their thrilling horror belongs to prose, in
which it could be far more effectively discussed, as Professor
Longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. There are
points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest poetical
themes- points in which pure beauty is found, or, better still, beauty
heightened into the sublime, by terror. But when we read, among
other similar things, that

        The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

        The salt tears in her eyes.

we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the
inappropriate. In "The Skeleton in Armor" we find a pure and perfect
thesis artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold courage and
self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless adventure,
and finally the life-contemning grief. Combined with all this, we have
numerous points of beauty apparently insulated, but all aiding the
main effect or impression. The heart is stirred, and the mind does not
lament its malinstruction. The metre is simple, sonorous,
well-balanced, and fully adapted to the subject. Upon the whole, there
are few truer poems than this. It has not one defect- an important
one. The prose remarks prefacing the narrative are really necessary.
But every work of art should contain within itself all that is
requisite for its own comprehension. And this remark is especially
true of the ballad. In poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is
not, at all times, enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey,
the proportions and proper adjustment of the whole. He is pleased,
if at all with particular passages; and the sum of his pleasure is
compounded of the sums of the pleasurable sentiments inspired by these
individual passages in the progress of perusal. But, in pieces of less
extent, the pleasure is unique, in the proper acceptation of this
term- the understanding is employed, without difficulty, in the
contemplation of the picture as a whole; and thus its effect will
depend, in great measure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon
the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially, upon
what is rightly termed by Schlegel the unity or totality of
interest. But the practice of prefixing explanatory passages is
utterly at variance with such unity. By the prefix, we are either
put in possession of the subject of the poem, or some hint, historic
fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not included in the body
of the piece, which, without the hint, is incomprehensible. In the
latter case, while perusing the poem, the reader must revert, in
mind at, least, to the prefix, for the necessary explanation. In the
former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of the prefix, the interest
is divided between the prefix and the paraphrase. In either instance
the totality of effect is destroyed.

  Of the other original poems in the volume before us there is none in
which the aim of instruction, or truth, has not been too obviously
substituted for the legitimate aim, beauty. We have heretofore taken
occasion to say that a didactic moral might be happily made the
under-current of a poetical theme, and we have treated this point at
length in a review of Moore's "Alciphron"; but the moral thus conveyed
is invariably an ill effect when obtruding beyond the upper-current of
the thesis itself. Perhaps the worst specimen of this obtrusion is
given us by our poet in "Blind Bartimeus" and the "Goblet of Life,"
where it will be observed that the sole interest of the
upper-current of meaning depends upon its relation or reference to the
under. What we read upon the surface would be vox et praeterea nihil
in default of the moral beneath. The Greek finales of "Blind
Bartimeus" are an affectation altogether inexcusable. What the
small, second-hand, Gibbonish pedantry of Byron introduced, is
unworthy the imitation of Longfellow.

  Of the translations we scarcely think it necessary to speak at
all. We regret that our poet will persist in busying himself about
such matters. His time might be better employed in original
conception. Most of these versions are marked with the error upon
which we have commented. This error is, in fact, essentially Germanic.
"The Luck of Edenhall," however, is a truly beautiful poem; and we say
this with all that deference which the opinion of the "Democratic
Review" demands. This composition appears to us one of the very
finest. It has all the free, hearty, obvious movement of the true
ballad-legend. The greatest force of language is combined in it with
the richest imagination, acting in its most legitimate province.
Upon the whole, we prefer it even to the "Sword-Song" of Korner. The
pointed moral with which it terminates is so exceedingly natural- so
perfectly fluent from the incidents- that we have hardly heart to
pronounce it in ill-taste. We may observe of this ballad, in
conclusion, that its subject is more physical than is usual in
Germany. Its images are rich rather in physical than in moral
beauty. And this tendency in Song is the true one. It is chiefly, if
we are not mistaken- it is chiefly amid forms of physical loveliness
(we use the word forms in its widest sense as embracing
modifications of sound and colour) that the soul seeks the realisation
of its dreams of BEAUTY. It is to her demand in this sense especially,
that the poet, who is wise, will most frequently and most earnestly
respond.

  "The Children of the Lord's Supper" is, beyond doubt, a true and
most beautiful poem in great part, while, in some particulars, it is
too metaphysical to have any pretension to the name. We have already
objected, briefly, to its metre- the ordinary Latin or Greek
Hexameter-dactyls and spondees at random, with a spondee in
conclusion. We maintain that the hexameter can never be introduced
into our language, from the nature of that language itself. This
rhythm demands, for English ears, a preponderance of natural spondees.
Our tongue has few. Not only does the Latin and Greek, with the
Swedish, and some others, abound in them; but the Greek and Roman
ear had become reconciled (why or how is unknown) to the reception
of artificial spondees- that is to say, spondaic words formed partly
of one word and partly of another, or from an excised part of one
word. In short, the ancients were content to read as they scanned,
or nearly so. It may be safely prophesied that we shall never do this;
and thus we shall never admit English hexameters. The attempt to
introduce them, after the repeated failures of Sir Philip Sidney and
others, is perhaps somewhat discreditable to the scholarship of
Professor Longfellow. The "Democratic Review," in saying that he has
triumphed over difficulties in this rhythm, has been deceived, it is
evident, by the facility with which some of these verses may be
read. In glancing over the poem, we do not observe a single verse
which can be read, to English ears, as a Greek hexameter. There are
many, however, which can be well read as mere English dactylic verses;
such, for example, as the well-known lines of Byron, commencing

        Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle.

  These lines (although full of irregularities) are, in their
perfection, formed of three dactyls and a caesura- just as if we
should cut short the initial verse of the Bucolics thus-

        Tityre / tu patu / lae recu / bans-

The "myrtal," at the close of Byron's line, is a double rhyme, and
must be understood as one syllable.

  Now a great number, of Professor Longfellow's hexameters are
merely these dactylic lines, continued for two feet. For example-

    Whispered the / race of the / flowers and / merry on / balancing /
branches.

  In this example, also, "branches," which is a double ending, must be
regarded as the caesura, or one syllable, of which alone it has the
force.

  As we have already alluded, in one or two regards, to a notice of
these poems which appeared in the "Democratic Review," we may as
well here proceed with some few further comments upon the article in
question- with whose general tenor we are happy to agree.

  The Review speaks of "Maidenhood" as a poem, "not to be understood
but at the expense of more time and trouble than a song can justly
claim." We are scarcely less surprised at this opinion from Mr.
Langtree than we were at the condemnation of "The Luck of Edenhall."

  "Maidenhood" is faulty, it appears to us, only on the score of its
theme, which is somewhat didactic. Its meaning seems simplicity
itself. A maiden on the verge of womanhood hesitating to enjoy life
(for which she has a strong appetite) through a false idea of duty, is
bidden to fear nothing, having purity of heart as her lion of Una.

  What Mr. Langtree styles "an unfortunate peculiarity" in Mr.
Longfellow, resulting from "adherence to a false system," has really
been always regarded by us as one of his idiosyncratic merits. "In
each poem," says the critic, "he has but one idea, which, in the
progress of his song, is gradually unfolded, and at last reaches its
full development in the concluding lines: this singleness of thought
might lead a harsh critic to suspect intellectual barrenness." It
leads us, individually, only to a full sense of the artistical power
and knowledge of the poet. We confess that now, for the first time, we
hear unity of conception objected to as a defect. But Mr. Langtree
seems to have fallen into the singular error of supposing the poet
to have absolutely but one idea in each of his ballads. Yet how "one
idea" can be "gradually unfolded" without other ideas is, to us, a
mystery of mysteries. Mr. Longfellow, very properly, has but one
leading idea which forms the basis of his poem; but to the aid and
development of this one there are innumerable others, of which the
rare excellence is that all are in keeping, that none could be well
omitted, that each tends to the one general effect. It is
unnecessary to say another word upon this topic.

  In speaking of "Excelsior," Mr. Langtree (are we wrong in
attributing the notice to his very forcible pen?) seems to labour
under some similar misconception. "It carries along with it," says he,
"a false moral which greatly diminishes its merit in our eyes. The
great merit of a picture, whether made with the pencil or pen, is
its truth; and this merit does not belong to Mr. Longfellow's
sketch. Men of genius may, and probably do, meet with greater
difficulties in their struggles with the world than their fellow men
who are less highly gifted; but their power of overcoming obstacles is
proportionately greater, and the result of their laborious suffering
is not death but immortality."

  That the chief merit of a picture is its truth, is an assertion
deplorably erroneous. Even in Painting, which is, more essentially
than Poetry, a mimetic art, the proposition cannot be sustained. Truth
is not even the aim. Indeed it is curious to observe how very slight a
degree of truth is sufficient to satisfy the mind, which acquiesces in
the absence of numerous essentials in the thing depicted. An outline
frequently stirs the spirit more pleasantly than the most elaborate
picture. We need only refer to the compositions of Flaxman and of
Retzsch. Here all details are omitted- nothing can be farther from
truth. Without even colour the most thrilling effects are produced. In
statues we are rather pleased than disgusted with the want of the
eyeball. The hair of the Venus de Medicis was gilded. Truth indeed!
The grapes of Zeuxis as well as the curtain of Parrhasius were
received as indisputable evidence of the truthful ability of these
artists- but they were not even classed among their pictures. If truth
is the highest aim of either Painting or Poesy, then Jan Steen was a
greater artist than Angelo, and Crabbe is a nobler poet than Milton.

  But we have not quoted the observation of Mr. Langtree to deny its
philosophy; our design was simply to show that he has misunderstood
the poet. "Excelsior" has not even a remote tendency to the
interpretation assigned it by the critic. It depicts the earnest
upward impulse of the soul- an impulse not to be subdued even in
Death. Despising danger, resisting pleasure, the youth, bearing the
banner inscribed "Excelsior!" (higher stilll) struggles through all
difficulties to an Alpine summit. Warned to be content with the
elevation attained, his cry is still "Excelsior!" and even in
falling dead on the highest pinnacle, his cry is still "Excelsior!"
There is yet an immortal height to be surmounted- an ascent in
Eternity. The poet holds in view the idea of never-ending progress.
That he is misunderstood is rather the misfortune of Mr. Langtree tree
the fault of Mr. Longfellow. There is an old adage about the
difficulty of one's furnishing an auditor both with matter to be
comprehended and brains for its comprehension.

                HAWTHORNE'S TWICE-TOLD TALES

      By Nathaniel Hawthorne. James Munroe & Co.: Boston

  WE HAVE always regarded the Tale (using this word in its popular
acceptation) as affording the best prose opportunity for display of
the highest talent. It has peculiar advantages which the novel does
not admit. It is, of course, a far finer field than the essay. It
has even points of superiority over the poem. An accident has deprived
us, this month, of our customary space for review, and thus nipped
in the bud a design long cherished of treating this subject in detail;
taking Mr. Hawthorne's volumes as a text. In May we shall endeavor
to carry out our intention. At present we are forced to be brief.

  With rare exception- in the case of Mr. Irving's "Tales of a
Traveller" and a few other works of a like cast- we have had no
American tales of high merit. We have had no skilful compositions-
nothing which could bear examination as works of art. Of twaddle
called tale- writing we have had, perhaps more than enough. We have
had a superabundance of the Rosa-Matilda effusions- gilt-edged paper
all couleur de rose: a full allowance of cut-and-thrust blue-blazing
melodramaticisms; a nauseating surfeit of low miniature copying of low
life, much in the manner, and with about half the merit, of the
Dutch herrings and decayed cheeses of Van Tuyssel- of all this, eheu
jam satis!

  Mr. Hawthorne's volumes appear misnamed to us in two respects. In
the first place they should not have been called "Twice-Told Tales"-
for this is a title which will not bear repetition. If in the first
collected edition they were twice-told, of course now they are
thrice-told.- May we live to hear them told a hundred times. In the
second place, these compositions are by no means all "Tales." The most
of them are essays properly so called. It would have been wise in
their author to have modified his title, so as to have had reference
to all included. This point could have been easily arranged.

  But under whatever titular blunders we receive this book, it is most
cordially welcome. We have seen no prose composition by any American
which can compare with some of these articles in the higher merits, or
indeed in the lower; while there is not single piece which would do
dishonor to the best of the British essayists.

  "The Rill from the Town Pump" which, through the ad captandum nature
of its title, has attracted more of the public notice than any other
of Mr. Hawthorne's compositions, is perhaps, the least meritorious.
Among his best we may briefly mention "The Hollow of the Three
Hills" "The Minister's Black Veil"; "Wakefield"; "Mr. Higginbotham's
Catastrophe"; "Fancy's Show-Box"; "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"; "David
Swan"; "The Wedding Knell"; and "The White Old Maid." It is remarkable
that all of these, with one exception, are from the first volume.

  The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is
singularly effective- wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full
accordance with his themes. We have only to object that there is
insufficient diversity in these themes themselves, or rather in
their character. His originality both of incident and reflection is
very remarkable; and this trait alone would insure him at least our
warmest regard and commendation. We speak here chiefly of the tales;
the essays are not so markedly novel. Upon the whole we look upon
him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country
has as yet given birth. As such, it will be our delight to do him
honor; and lest, in these undigested and cursory remarks, without
proof and without explanation, we should appear to do him more honor
than is his due, we postpone all farther comment until a more
favorable opportunity.

  We said a few hurried words about Mr. Hawthorne in our last
number, with the design of speaking more fully in the present. We
are still, however, pressed for room, and must necessarily discuss his
volumes more briefly and more at random than their high merits
deserve.

  The book professes to be a collection of tales, yet is, in two
respects, misnamed. These pieces are now in their third republication,
and, of course, are thrice-told. Moreover, they are by no means all
tales, either in the ordinary or in the legitimate understanding of
the term. Many of them are pure essays; for example, "Sights from a
Steeple," "Sunday at Home," "Little Annies Ramble," "A Rill from the
Town Pump," "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," "The Haunted Mind," "The Sister
Sister Years," "Snow-Flakes," "Night Sketches," and "Foot-Prints on
the Sea-Shore." We mention these matters chiefly on account of their
discrepancy with that marked precision and finish by which the body of
the work is distinguished.

  Of the Essays just named, we must be content to speak in brief. They
are each and all beautiful, without being characterized by the
polish and adaptation so visible in the tales proper. A painter
would at once note their leading or predominant feature, and style
it repose. There is no attempt at effect. All is quiet, thoughtful,
subdued. Yet this respose may exist simultaneously with high
originality of thought; and Mr. Hawthorne has demonstrated the fact.
At every turn we meet with novel combinations; yet these
combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. We are soothed
as we read; and withal is a calm astonishment that ideas so apparently
obvious have never occurred or been presented to us before. Herein our
author differs materially from Lamb or Hunt or Hazlitt- who, with
vivid originality of manner and expression, have less of the true
novelty of thought than is generally supposed, and whose
originality, at best, has an uneasy and meretricious quaintness,
replete with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducing
trains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result. The
Essays of Hawthorne have much of the character of Irving, with more of
originality, and less of finish; while, compared with the Spectator,
they have a vast superiority at all points. The Spectator, Mr. Irving,
and Mr. Hawthorne have in common that tranquil and subdued manner
which we have chosen to denominate repose; but in the case of the
two former, this repose is attained rather by the absence of novel
combination, or of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly
in the calm, quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts,
in an unambitious unadulterated Saxon. In them, by strong effort, we
are made to conceive the absence of all. In the essays before us the
absence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong
under-current of suggestion runs continuously beneath the upper stream
of the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are
the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in
some measure repressed, by fastidiousness of taste, by
constitutional melancholy and by indolence.

  But it is of his tales that we desire principally to speak. The tale
proper, in our opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for
the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide
domains of mere prose. Were we bidden to say how the highest genius
could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its
own powers, we should answer, without hesitation- in the composition
of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in
an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest order of true
poetry exist. We need only here say, upon this topic, that, in
almost all classes of composition, the unity of effect or impression
is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that
this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal
cannot be completed at one sitting. We may continue the reading of a
prose composition, from the very nature of prose itself, much longer
than we can persevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a
poem. This latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic
sentiment, induces an exaltation of the soul which cannot be long
sustained. All high excitements are necessarily transient. Thus a long
poem is a paradox And, without unity of impression, the deepest
effects cannot be brought about. Epics were the offspring of an
imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. A poem too brief
may produce a vivid, but never an intense or enduring impression.
Without a certain continuity of effort- without a certain duration
or repetition of purpose- the soul is never deeply moved. There must
be the dropping of the water upon the rock. De Beranger has wrought
brilliant things- pungent and spirit-stirring- but, like all immassive
bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy the Poetic
Sentiment. They sparkle and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail
deeply to impress. Extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism;
but the sin of extreme length is even more unpardonable. In medio
tutissimus ibis.

  Were we called upon, however, to designate that class of composition
which, next to such a poem as we have suggested, should best fulfil
the demands of high genius- should offer it the most advantageous
field of exertion- we should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale,
as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. We allude to the short prose
narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its
perusal. The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for
reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read at one
sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable
from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of
perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree,
the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading, would,
of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief tale,
however, the author is enabled to carry out the fulness of his
intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the soul of
the reader is at the writer's control. There are no external or
extrinsic influences- resulting from weariness or interruption.

  A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has
not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having
conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect
to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents- he then combines
such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived
effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the out-bringing of
this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole
composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency,
direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by
such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted
which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred
art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has
been presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and this is an end
unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here
as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.

  We have said that the tale has a point of superiority even over
the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an essential aid
in the development of the poem's highest idea- the idea of the
Beautiful- the artificialities of this rhythm are an inseparable bar
to the development of all points of thought or expression which have
their basis in Truth. But Truth is often, and in very great degree,
the aim of the tale. Some of the finest tales are tales of
ratiocination. Thus the field of this species of composition, if not
in so elevated a region on the mountain of Mind, is a table- land of
far vaster extent than the domain of the mere poem. Its products are
never so rich, but infinitely more numerous, and more appreciable by
the mass of mankind. The writer of the prose tale, in short, may bring
to his theme a vast variety of modes or inflections of thought and
expression- (the ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the
humorous) which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem,
but absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar and indispensable
adjuncts; we allude, of course, to rhythm. It may be added, here,
par parenthese, that the author who aims at the purely beautiful in
a prose tale is laboring at great disadvantage. For Beauty can be
better treated in the poem. Not so with terror, or passion, or horror,
or a multitude of such other points. And here it will be seen how full
of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales of
effect, many fine examples of which were found in the earlier
numbers of Blackwood. The impressions produced were wrought in a
legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legitimate although
sometimes an exaggerated interest. They were relished by every man
of genius: although there were found many men of genius who
condemned them without just ground. The true critic will but demand
that that the design intended be accomplished, to the fullest
extent, by the means most advantageously applicable.

  We have very few American tales of real merit- we may say, indeed,
none, with the exception of "The Tales of a Traveller" of Washington
Irving, and these "Twice-Told Tales" of Mr. Hawthorne. Some of the
pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in vigor and originality; but in
general his compositions of this class are excessively diffuse,
extravagant, and indicative of an imperfect sentiment of Art. Articles
at random are, now and then, met with in our periodicals which might
be advantageously compared with the best effusions of the British
Magazines; but, upon the whole, we are far behind our progenitors in
this department of literature.

  Of Mr. Hawthorne's Tales we would say, emphatically, that they
belong to the highest region of Art- and Art subservient to genius
of a very lofty order. We had supposed, with good reason for so
supposing, that he had been thrust into his present position by one of
the impudent cliques which beset our literature, and whose pretensions
it is our full purpose to expose at the earliest opportunity, but we
have been most agreeably mistaken. We know of few compositions which
the critic can more honestly commend than these "Twice-Told Tales." As
Americans, we feel proud of the book.

  Mr. Hawthornes distinctive trait is invention, creation,
imagination, originality- a trait which, in the literature of fiction,
is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of originality, so
far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly
understood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays
itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is
original at all points.

  It would be a matter of some difficulty to designate the best of
these tales; we repeat that, without exception, they are beautiful.
"Wakefield" is remarkable for the skill with which an old idea- a
well-known incident- is worked up or discussed. A man of whims
conceives the purpose of quitting his wife and residing incognito, for
twenty years, in her immediate neighborhood. Something of this kind
actually happened in London. The force of Mr. Hawthornes tale lies
in the analysis of the motives which must or might have impelled the
husband to such folly, in the first instance, with the possible causes
of his perseverance. Upon this thesis a sketch of singular power has
been constructed.

  "The Wedding Knell" is full of the boldest imagination- an
imagination fully controlled by taste. The most captious critic
could find no flaw in this production.

  "The Minister's Black Veil" is a masterly composition of which the
sole defect is that to the rabble its exquisite skill will be caviare.
The obvious meaning of this article will be found to smother its
insinuated one. The moral put into the mouth of the dying minister
will be supposed to convey the true import of the narrative, and
that a crime of dark dye, (having reference to the "young lady") has
been committed, is a point which only minds congenial with that of the
author will perceive.

  "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is vividly original and managed
most dexterously.

  "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is exceedingly well imagined, and
executed, with surpassing ability. The artist breathes in every line
of it.

  "The White Old Maid" is objectionable, even more than the
"Minister's Black Veil," on the score of its mysticism. Even with
the thoughtful and analytic, there will be much trouble in penetrating
its entire import.

  "The Hollow of the Three Hills" we would quote in full, had we
space;- not as evincing higher talent than any of the other pieces,
but as affording an excellent example of the author's peculiar
ability. The subject is commonplace. A witch, subjects the Distant and
the Past to the view of a mourner. It has been the fashion to
describe, in such cases, a mirror in which the images of the absent
appear, or a cloud of smoke is made to arise, and thence the figures
are gradually unfolded. Mr. Hawthorne has wonderfully heightened his
effect by making the ear, in place of the eye, the medium by which the
fantasy is conveyed. The head of the mourner is enveloped in the cloak
of the witch, and within its magic, folds there arise sounds which
have an all-sufficient intelligence. Throughout this article also, the
artist is conspicuous- not more in positive than in negative merits.
Not only is all done that should be done, but (what perhaps is an
end with more difficulty attained) there is nothing done which
should not be. Every word tells, and there is not a word which does
not tell.

  In "Howes Masquerade" we observe something which resembles a
plagiarism- but which may be a very flattering coincidence of thought.
We quote the passage in question.

  "With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the general
draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak before
the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor.

  "'Villain, unmuffle yourself,' cried he, 'you pass no further!"

  "The figure without blanching a hair's breadth from the sword
which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause, and lowered
the cape of the cloak from his face, yet not sufficiently for the
spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had
evidently seen enough. The sternness of his countenance gave place
to a look of wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled
several steps from the figure, and let fall his sword upon the floor."

  The idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is the phantom or
reduplication of Sir William Howe, but in an article called "William
Wilson," one of the "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," we have
not only the same idea, but the same idea similarly presented in
several respects. We quote two paragraphs, which our readers may
compare with what has been already given.

  "The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient
to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangement at the
upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror, it appeared to me,
now stood where none had been perceptible before: and as I stepped
up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all
pale and dabbled in blood, advanced with a feeble and tottering gait
to meet me.

  "Thus it appeared I say, but was not. It was Wilson, who then
stood before me in the agonies of dissolution. Not a line in all the
marked and singular lineaments of that face which was not even
identically mine own. His mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them,
upon the floor."

  Here it will be observed, not only are the two general conceptions
identical but there are various points of similarity. In each case the
figure seen is the wraith or duplication of the beholder. In each case
the scene is a masquerade. In each case the figure is cloaked. In
each, there is a quarrel- that is to say, angry words pass between the
parties. In each the beholder is enraged. In each the cloak and
sword fall upon the floor. The "villain, unmuffle yourself," of Mr. H.
is precisely paralleled by a passage of "William Wilson."

  In the way of objection we have scarcely a word to say of these
tales. There is, perhaps, a somewhat too general or prevalent tone-
a tone of melancholy and mysticism. The subjects are insufficiently
varied. There is not so much of versatility evinced as we might well
be warranted in expecting from the high powers of Mr. Hawthorne. But
beyond these trivial exceptions we have really none to make. The style
is purity itself. Force abounds. High imagination gleams from every
page. Mr. Hawthorne is a man of the truest genius. We only regret that
the limits of our Magazine will not permit us to pay him that full
tribute of commendation, which, under other circumstances, we should
be so eager to pay.

                       THE AMERICAN DRAMA

  A BIOGRAPHIST of Berryer calls him "l'homme qui, dans ses
description, demande le plus grande quantite possible d'
antithese,"- but that ever-recurring topic, the decline of the
drama, seems to have consumed of late more of the material in question
than would have sufficed for a dozen prime ministers- even admitting
them to be French. Every trick of thought and every harlequinade of
phrase have been put in operation for the purpose "de nier ce qui est,
et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas."

  Ce qui n'est pas:- for the drama has not declined. The facts and the
philosophy of the case seem to be these. The great opponent to
Progress is Conservatism. In other words- the great adversary of
Invention is Imitation: the propositions are in spirit identical. Just
as an art is imitative, is it stationary. The most imitative arts
are the most prone to repose and the converse. Upon the utilitarian-
upon the business arts, where Necessity impels, Invention, Necessity's
well-understood offspring, is ever in attendance. And the less we
see of the mother the less we behold of the child. No one complains of
the decline of the art of Engineering. Here the Reason, which never
retrogrades or reposes, is called into play. But let us glance at
Sculpture. We are not worse here, than the ancients, let pedantry
say what it may (the Venus of Canova is worth, at any time, two of
that of Cleomenes), but it is equally certain that we have made, in
general, no advances; and Sculpture, properly considered, is perhaps
the most imitative of all arts which have a right to the title of
Art at all. Looking next at Painting, we find that we have to boast of
progress only in the ratio of the inferior imitativeness of
Painting, when compared with Sculpture. As far indeed as we have any
means of judging, our improvement has been exceedingly little, and did
we know anything of ancient Art in this department, we might be
astonished at discovering that we had advanced even far less than we
suppose. As regards Architecture, whatever progress we have made has
been precisely in those particulars which have no reference to
imitation:- that is to say, we have improved the utilitarian and not
the ornamental provinces of the art. Where Reason predominated, we
advanced; where mere Feeling or Taste was the guide, we remained as we
were.

  Coming to the Drama, we shall see that in its mechanisms we have
made progress, while in its spirituality we have done little or
nothing for centuries certainly- and, perhaps, little or nothing for
thousands of years. And this is because what we term the
spirituality of the drama is precisely its imitative portion- is
exactly that portion which distinguishes it as one of the principal of
the imitative arts.

  Sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the very nature of
their material- their spiritual material-imitators-conservatists-prone
to repose in old Feeling and in antique Taste. For this reason- and
for this reason only- the arts of Sculpture, Painting, and the Drama
have not advanced- or have advanced feebly, and inversely in the ratio
of their imitativeness.

  But it by no means follows that either has declined. All seem to
have declined, because they have remained stationary while the
multitudinous other arts (of reason) have flitted so rapidly by
them. In the same manner the traveller by railroad can imagine that
the trees by the wayside are retrograding. The trees in this case
are absolutely stationary but the Drama has not been altogether so,
although its progress has been so slight as not to interfere with
the general effect- that of seeming retrogradation or decline.

  This seeming retrogradation, however, is to all practical intents an
absolute one. Whether the Drama has declined, or whether it has merely
remained stationary, is a point of no importance, so far as concerns
the public encouragement of the Drama. It is unsupported, in either
case, because it does not deserve support.

  But if this stagnation, or deterioration, grows out of the very
idiosyncracy of the drama itself, as one of the principal of the
imitative arts, how is it possible that a remedy shall be applied-
since it is clearly impossible to alter the nature of the art, and yet
leave it the art which it now is?

  We have already spoken of the improvements effected in Architecture,
in all its utilitarian departments, and in the Drama, at all the
points of its mechanism. "Wherever Reason predominates, we advance;
where mere Feeling or Taste is the guide, we remain as we are." We
wish now to suggest that, by the engrafting of Reason upon Feeling and
Taste, we shall be able, and thus alone shall be able, to force the
modern drama into the production of any profitable fruit.

  At present, what is it we do? We are content if, with Feeling and
Taste, a dramatist does as other dramatists have done. The most
successful of the more immediately modern playwrights has been
Sheridan Knowles, and to play Sheridan Knowles seems to be the highest
ambition of our writers for the stage. Now the author of "The
Hunchback" possesses what we are weak enough to term the true
"dramatic feeling," and this true dramatic feeling he has manifested
in the most preposterous series of imitations of the Elizabethan drama
by which ever mankind were insulted and begulled. Not only did he
adhere to the old plots, the old characters, the old stage
conventionalities throughout; but he went even so far as to persist in
the obsolete phraseologies of the Elizabethan period- and, just in
proportion to his obstinacy and absurdity at all points, did we
pretend to like him the better, and pretend to consider him a great
dramatist.

  Pretend- for every particle of it was pretence. Never was enthusiasm
more utterly false than that which so many "respectable audiences"
endeavoured to get up for these plays- endeavoured to get up, first,
because there was a general desire to see the drama revive, and
secondly, because we had been all along entertaining the fancy that
"the decline of the drama" meant little, if anything, else than its
deviation from the Elizabethan routine- and that, consequently, the
return to the Elizabethan routine was, and of necessity must be, the
revival of the drama.

  But if the principles we have been at some trouble in explaining are
true- and most profoundly do we feel them to be so- if the spirit of
imitation is, in fact, the real source, of the drama's stagnation- and
if it is so because of the tendency in in all imitation to render
Reason subservient to Feeling and to Taste it is clear that only by
deliberate counteracting of the spirit, and of the tendency of the
spirit, we can hope to succeed in the drama's revival.

  The first thing necessary is to burn or bury the "old models," and
to forget, as quickly as possible, that ever a play has been penned.
The second thing is to consider de novo what are the capabilities of
the drama- not merely what hitherto have been its conventional
purposes. The third and last point has reference to the composition of
a play (showing to the fullest extent these capabilities) conceived
and constructed with Feeling and with Taste, but with Feeling and
Taste guided and controlled in every particular by the details of
Reason- of Common Sense- in a word, of a Natural Art.

  It is obvious, in the meantime, that towards the good end in view
much may be effected by discriminative criticism on what has already
been done. The field, thus stated, is, of course, practically
illimitable- and to Americans the American drama is the special
point of interest. We propose, therefore, in a series of papers, to
take a somewhat deliberate survey of some few of the most noticeable
American plays. We shall do this without reference either to the
date of the composition or its adaptation for the closet or the stage.
We shall speak with absolute frankness both of merits and defects- our
principal object being understood not as that of mere commentary on
the individual play- but on the drama in general, and on the
American drama in especial, of which each individual play is a
constituent part. We will commence at once with

                     TORTESA, THE USURER

  This is the third dramatic attempt of Mr. Willis, and may be
regarded as particularly successful, since it has received, both on
the stage and in the closet, no stinted measure of commendation.
This success, as well as the high reputation of the author, will
justify us in a more extended notice of the play than might, under
other circumstances, be desirable.

  The story runs thus:- Tortesa, a usurer of Florence, and whose
character is a mingled web of good and evil feelings, gets into his
possession the palace and lands of a certain Count Falcone. The usurer
would wed the daughter (Isabella) of Valcone, not through love, but in
his own words,

        "To please a devil that inhabits him-"

in fact, to mortify the pride of the nobility, and avenge himself of
their scorn. He therefore bargains with Falcone [a narrow-souled
villain] for the hand of Isabella. The deed of the Falcone property is
restored to the Count upon an agreement that the lady shall marry
the usurer- this contract being invalid should Falcone change his mind
in regard to the marriage, or should the maiden demur- but valid
should the wedding be prevented through any fault of Tortesa, or
through any accident not springing from the will of the father or
child. The first Scene makes us aware of this bargain, and
introduces us to Zippa, a glover's daughter, who resolves, with a view
of befriending Isabella, to feign a love for Tortesa [which, in fact
she partially feels], hoping thus to break off the match.

  The second Scene makes us acquainted with a young painter
(Angelo), poor, but of high talents and ambition, and with his servant
(Tomaso), an old bottle-loving rascal, entertaining no very exalted
opinion of his master's abilities. Tomaso does some injury to a
picture, and Angelo is about to run him through the body when he is
interrupted by a sudden visit from the Duke of Florence, attended by
Falcone. The Duke is enraged at the murderous attempt, but admires the
paintings in the studio. Finding that the rage of the great man will
prevent his patronage if he knows the aggressor as the artist,
Angelo passes off Tomaso as himself (Angelo), making an exchange of
names. This is a point of some importance, as it introduces the true
Angelo to a job which he has long coveted- the painting of the
portrait of Isabella, of whose beauty he had become enamoured
through report. The Duke wishes the portrait painted. Falcone,
however, on account of a promise to Tortesa, would have objected to
admit to his daughter's presence the handsome Angelo, but in regard to
Tomaso has no scruple. Supposing Tomaso to be Angelo and the artist,
the Count writes a note to Isabella, requiring her "to admit the
painter Angelo." The real Angelo is thus admitted. He and the lady
love at first sight (much in the manner of Romeo and Juliet), each
ignorant of the other's attachment.

  The third Scene of the second Act is occupied with a conversation
between Falcone and Tortesa, during which a letter arrives from the
Duke, who, having heard of the intended sacrifice of Isabella,
offers to redeem the Count's lands and palace, and desires him to
preserve his daughter for a certain Count Julian. But Isabella,-
who, before seeing Angelo, had been willing to sacrifice herself for
her father's sake, and who, since seeing him, had entertained hopes of
escaping the hateful match through means of a plot entered into by
herself and Zippa-Isabella, we say, is now in despair. To gain time,
she at once feigns a love for the usurer, and indignantly rejects
the proposal of the Duke. The hour for the wedding draws near. The
lady has prepared a sleeping potion, whose effects resemble those of
death. (Romeo and Juliet.) She swallows it- knowing that her
supposed corpse would lie at night, pursuant to an old custom, in
the sanctuary of the cathedral; and believing that Angelo- whose
love for herself she has elicited, by a stratagem, from his own
lips- will watch by the body, in the strength of his devotion. Her
ultimate design (we may suppose, for it is not told) is to confess all
to her lover on her revival, and throw herself upon his protection-
their marriage being concealed, and herself regarded as dead by the
world. Zippa, who really loves Angelo- (her love for Tortesa, it
must be understood, is a very equivocal feeling, for the fact cannot
be denied that Mr. Willis makes her love both at the same time)-
Zippa, who really loves Angelo- who has discovered his passion for
Isabella- and who, as well as that lady, believes that the painter
will watch the corpse in the cathedral,- determines, through jealousy,
to prevent his so doing, and with this view informs Tortesa that she
has learned it to be Angelo's design to steal the body for
purposes,- in short, as a model to be used in his studio. The
usurer, in consequence, sets a guard at the doors of the cathedral.
This guard does, in fact, prevent the lover from watching the
corpse, but, it appears, does not prevent the lady, on her revival and
disappointment in not seeing the one she sought, from passing
unperceived from the church. Weakened by her long sleep, she wanders
aimlessly through the streets, and at length finds herself, when
just sinking with exhaustion, at the door of her father. She has no
resource but to knock. The Count, who here, we must say, acts very
much as Thimble of old- the knight, we mean, of the "scolding wife"-
maintains that she is dead, and shuts the door in her face. In other
words, he supposes it to be the ghost of his daughter who speaks;
and so the lady is left to perish on the steps. Meantime Angelo is
absent from home, attempting to get access to the cathedral; and his
servant Tomaso takes the opportunity of absenting himself also, and of
indulging his bibulous propensities while perambulating the town. He
finds Isabella as we left her, and through motives which we will leave
Mr. Willis to explain, conducts her unresistingly to Angelo's
residence, and- deposits her in Angelo's bed. The artist now
returns- Tomaso is kicked out of doors- and we are not told, but
left to presume, that a fun explanation and perfect understanding
are brought about between the lady and her lover.

  We find them, next morning, in the studio, where stands, leaning
against an easel the portrait (a full length) of Isabella, with
curtains adjusted before it. The stage-directions, moreover, inform us
that "the black wall of the room is such as to form a natural ground
for the picture." While Angelo is occupied in retouching it, he is
interrupted by the arrival of Tortesa with a guard, and is accused
of having stolen the corpse from the sanctuary- the lady, meanwhile,
having stepped behind the curtain. The usurer insists upon seeing
the painting, with a view of ascertaining whether any new touches
had been put upon it, which would argue an examination, post mortem,
of those charms of neck and bosom which the living Isabella would
not have unveiled. Resistance in vain- the curtain is torn down;
but, to the surprise of Angelo, the lady herself is discovered,
"with her hands crossed on her breast, and her eyes fixed on the
ground, standing motionless in the frame which had contained the
picture." The tableau we are to believe, deceives Tortesa, who steps
back to contemplate what he supposes to be the portrait of his
betrothed. In the meantime, the guards, having searched the house,
find the veil which had been thrown over the imagined corpse in the
sanctuary, and upon this evidence the artist is carried before the
Duke. Here he is accused, not only of sacrilege, but of the murder
of Isabella, and is about to be condemned to death, when his
mistress comes forward in person; thus resigning herself to the usurer
to save the life of her lover. But the noble nature of Tortesa now
breaks forth; and, smitten with admiration of the lady's conduct, as
well as convinced that her love for himself was feigned, he resigns
her to Angelo- although now feeling and acknowledging for the first
time that a fervent love has, in his own bosom, assumed the place of
the misanthropic ambition which, hitherto, had alone actuated him in
seeking her hand. Moreover, he endows Isabella with the lands of her
father Falcone. The lovers are thus made happy. The usurer weds Zippa;
and the curtain drops upon the promise of the Duke to honour the
double nuptials with his presence.

  This story, as we have given it, hangs better together (Mr. Willis
will pardon our modesty), and is altogether more easily
comprehended, than in the words of the play itself. We have really put
the best face upon the matter, and presented the whole in the simplest
and clearest light in our power. We mean to say that "Tortesa"
(partaking largely, in this respect, of the drama of Cervantes and
Calderon) is over-clouded- rendered misty- by a world of unnecessary
and impertinent intrigue. This folly was adopted by the Spanish
comedy, and is imitated by us, with the idea of imparting "action,"
"business," "vivacity." But vivacity, however desirable, can be
attained in many other ways, and is dearly purchased, indeed, when the
price is intelligibility.

  The truth is that cant has never attained a more owl- like dignity
than in the discussion of dramatic principle. A modern stage critic is
nothing, if not a lofty contemner of all things simple and direct.
He delights in mystery- revels in mystification- has transcendental
notions concerning P. S. and O. P, and talks about "stage business and
stage effect" as if he were discussing the differential calculus.
For much of all this we are indebted to the somewhat overprofound
criticisms of Augustus William Schlegel.

  But the dicta of common sense are of universal application, and,
touching this matter of intrigue, if, from its superabundance, we
are compelled, even in the quiet and critical perusal of a play, to
pause frequently and reflect long- to re-read passages over and over
again, for the purpose of gathering their bearing upon the whole- of
maintaining in our mind a general connection- what but fatigue can
result from the exertion? How, then, when we come to the
representation?- when these passages- trifling, perhaps, in
themselves, but important when considered in relation to the plot- are
hurried and blurred over in the stuttering enunciation of some
miserable rantipole, or omitted altogether through the
constitutional lapse of memory so peculiar to those lights of the
age and stage, bedight (from being of no conceivable use)
supernumeraries? For it must be borne in mind that these bits of
intrigue (we use the term in the sense of the German critics)
appertain generally, indeed altogether, to the after thoughts of the
drama- to the underplots- are met with consequently, in the mouth of
the lackeys and chambermaids- and are thus consigned to the tender
mercies of the stellae minores. Of course we get but an imperfect idea
of what is going on before our eyes. Action after action ensues
whose mystery we can not unlock without the little key which these
barbarians have thrown away and lost. Our weariness increases in
proportion to the number of these embarrassments, and if the play
escape damnation at all it escapes in spite of that intrigue to which,
in nine cases out of ten, the author attributes his success, and which
he will persist in valuing exactly in proportion to the misapplied
labour it has cost him.

  But dramas of this kind are said, in our customary parlance, to
"abound in plot." We have never yet met any one, however, who could
tell us what precise ideas he connected with the phrase. A mere
succession of incidents, even the most spirited, will no more
constitute a plot than a multiplication of zeros, even the most
infinite, will result in the production of a unit. This all will
admit- but few trouble themselves to think further. The common
notion seems be in favour of mere complexity; but a plot, properly
understood, is perfect only inasmuch as we shall find ourselves unable
to detach from it or disarrange any single incident involved,
without destruction to the mass.

  This we say is the point of perfection- a point never yet
attained, but not on that account unattainable. Practically, we may
consider a plot as of high excellence, when no one of its component
parts shall be susceptible of removal without detriment to the
whole. Here, indeed, is a vast lowering of the demand- and with less
than this no writer of refined taste should content himself.

  As this subject is not only in itself of great importance, but
will have at all points a bearing upon what we shall say hereafter, in
the examination of various plays, we shall be pardoned for quoting
from the "Democratic Review" some passages (of our own which enter
more particularly into the rationale of the subject:-

  "All the Bridgewater treatises have failed in noticing the great
idiosyncrasy in the Divine system of adaptation:- that idiosyncrasy
which stamps the adaptation as divine, in distinction from that
which is the work of merely human constructiveness. I speak of the
complete mutuality of adaptation. For example:- in human
constructions, a particular cause has a particular effect- a
particular purpose brings about a particular object; but we see no
reciprocity. The effect does not react upon the cause- the object does
not change relations with the purpose. In Divine constructions, the
object is either object or purpose as we choose to regard it, while
the purpose is either purpose or object; so that we can never
(abstractly- without concretion- without reference to facts of the
moment) decide which is which.

  "For secondary example:- In polar climates, the human frame, to
maintain its animal heat, requires, for combustion in the capillary
system, an abundant supply of highly azotized food, such as train oil.
Again:- in polar climates nearly the sole food afforded man is the oil
of abundant seals and whales. Now whether is oil at hand because
imperatively demanded? or whether is it the only thing demanded
because the only thing fo be obtained? It is impossible to say:- there
is an absolute reciprocity of adaptation for which we seek in vain
among the works of man.

  "The Bridgewater tractists may have avoided this point, on account
of its apparent tendency to overthrow the idea of cause in general-
consequently of a First Cause-of God. But it is more probable that
they have failed to perceive what no one preceding them has, to my
knowledge, perceived.

  "The pleasure which we derive from any exertion of human
ingenuity, is in the direct ratio of the approach to this species of
reciprocity between cause and effect. In the construction of plot, for
example, in fictitious literature, we should aim at so arranging the
points, or incidents, that we cannot distinctly see, in respect to any
one of them, whether that one depends from any one other or upholds
it. In this sense, of course, perfection of plot is unattainable in
fact- because Man is the constructor. The plots of God are perfect.
The Universe is a plot of God."

  The pleasure derived from the contemplation of the unity resulting
from plot is far more intense than is ordinarily supposed, and, as
in Nature we meet with no such combination of incident, appertains
to a very lofty region of the ideal. In speaking thus we have not said
that plot is more than an adjunct to the drama- more than a
perfectly distinct and separable source of pleasure. It is not an
essential. In its intense artificiality it may even be conceived
injurious in a certain degree (unless constructed with consummate
skill) to that real lifelikeness which is the soul of the drama of
character. Good dramas have been written with very little plot-
capital dramas might be written with none at all. Some plays of high
merit, having plot, abound in irrelevant incident- in incident, we
mean, which could be displaced or removed altogether without effect
upon the plot itself, and yet are by no means objectionable as dramas;
and for this reason- that the incidents are evidently irrelevant-
obviously episodical. Of their disgressive nature the spectator is
so immediately aware that he views them, as they arise, in the
simple light of interlude, and does not fatigue his attention by
attempting to establish for them a connection, or more than an
illustrative connection, with the great interests of the subject. Such
are the plays of Shakespeare. But all this is very different from that
irrelevancy of intrigue which disfigures and very usually damns the
work of the unskilful artist. With him the great error lies in
inconsequence. Underplot is piled upon underplot (the very word is a
paradox), and all to no purpose- to no end. The interposed incidents
have no ultimate effect upon the main ones. They may hang upon the
mass- they may even coalesce with it, or, as in some intricate
cases, they may be so intimately blended as to be lost amid the
chaos which they have been instrumental in bringing about- but still
they have no portion in the plot, which exists, if at all,
independently of their influence. Yet the attempt is made by the
author to establish and demonstrate a dependence- an identity, and
it is the obviousness of this attempt which is the cause of
weariness in the spectator, who, of course, cannot at once see that
his attention is challenged to no purpose- that intrigues so
obtrusively forced upon it are to be found, in the end, without effect
upon the leading interests of the day.

  "Tortesa" will afford us plentiful examples of this irrelevancy of
intrigue- of this misconception of the nature and of the capacities of
plot. We have said that our digest of the story is more easy of
comprehension than the detail of Mr. Willis. If so, it is because we
have forborne to give such portions as had no influence upon the
whole. These served but to embarrass the narrative and fatigue the
attention. How much was irrelevant is shown by the brevity of the
space in which we have recorded, somewhat at length, all the
influential incidents of a drama of five acts. There is scarcely a
scene in which is not to be found the germ of an underplot- a germ,
however, which seldom proceeds beyond the condition of a bud, or, if
so fortunate as to swell into a flower, arrives, in no single
instance, at the dignity of fruit. Zippa, a lady altogether without
character (dramatic), is the most pertinacious of all conceivable
concoctors of plans never to be matured- of vast designs that
terminate in nothing- of cul-de-sac machinations. She plots in one
page and counter-plots in the next. She schemes her way from P. S.
to O. P., and intrigues perseveringly from the footlights to the
slips. A very singular instance of the inconsequence of her manoeuvres
is found towards the conclusion of the play. The whole of the second
scene (occupying five pages), in the fifth act, is obviously
introduced for the purpose of giving her information, through Tomaso's
means, of Angelo's arrest for the murder of Isabella. Upon learning
his danger she rushes from the stage, to be present at the trial,
exclaiming that her evidence can save his life. We, the audience, of
course applaud, and now look with interest to her movements in the
scene of the judgment-hall. She, Zippa, we think, is somebody after
all; she will be the means of Angelo's salvation; she will thus be the
chief unraveller of the plot. All eyes are bent, therefore, upon
Zippa- but alas! upon the point at issue, Zippa does not so much as
open her mouth. It is scarcely too much to say that not a single
action of this impertinent little busybody has any real influence upon
the play;- yet she appears upon every occasion- appearing only to
perplex.

  Similar things abound; we should not have space even to allude to
them all. The whole conclusion of the play is supererogatory. The
immensity of pure fuss with which it is overloaded forces us to the
reflection that all of it might have been avoided by one word of
explanation to the Duke an amiable man who admires the talents of
Angelo, and who, to prevent Isabella's marrying against her will,
had previously offered to free Falcone of his bonds to the usurer.
That he would free him now, and thus set all matters straight, the
spectator cannot doubt for an instant, and he can conceive no better
reason why explanations are not made than that Mr. Willis does not
think proper they should be. In fact, the whole drama is exceedingly
ill motivirt.

  We have already mentioned an inadvertence, in the fourth Act,
where Isabella is made to escape from the sanctuary through the
midst of guards who prevented the ingress of Angelo. Another occurs
where Falcone's conscience is made to reprove him, upon the appearance
of his daughter's supposed ghost, for having occasioned her death by
forcing her to marry against her will. The author had forgotten that
Falcone submitted to the wedding, after the Dukes interposition,
only upon Isabella's assurance that she really loved the usurer. In
the third Scene, too, of the first Act, the imagination of the
spectator is no doubt a little taxed when he finds Angelo, in the
first moment of his introduction to the palace of Isabella, commencing
her portrait by laying on colour after colour, before he has made
any attempt at an outline. In the last Act, moreover, Tortesa gives to
Isabella a deed

        "Of the Falcone palaces and lands,

         And all the money forfeit by Falcone."

This is a terrible blunder, and the more important as upon this act of
the usurer depends the development of his newborn sentiments of honour
and virtue- depends, in fact, the most salient point of the play.
Tortesa, we say, gives to Isabella the lands forfeited by Falcone; but
Tortesa was surely not very generous in giving what, clearly, was
not his own to give. Falcone had not forfeited the deed, which had
been restored to him by the usurer, and which was then in his
(Falcone's) possession. Here Tortesa:-

                He put it in the bond,

        That if, by any humour of my own,

        Or accident that came not from himself,

        Or from his daughter's will, the match were marred,

        His tenure stood intact."

Now Falcone is still resolute for the match; but this new generous
"humour" of Tortesa induces him (Tortesa) to decline it. Falcone's
tenure is then intact; he retains the deed, the usurer is giving
away property not his own.

  As a drama of character, "Tortesa" is by no means open to so many
objections as when we view it in the light of its plot; but it is
still faulty. The merits are so exceedingly negative, that it is
difficult to say anything about them. The Duke is nobody, Falcone,
nothing; Zippa, less than nothing. Angelo may be regarded simply as
the medium through which Mr. Willis conveys to the reader his own
glowing feelings- his own refined and delicate fancy- (delicate, yet
bold)- his own rich voluptuousness of sentiment- a voluptuousness
which would offend in almost any other language than that in which
it is so skilfully apparelled. Isabella is- the heroine of the
Hunchback. The revolution in the character of Tortesa- or rather the
final triumph of his innate virtue- is a dramatic point far older than
the hills. It may be observed, too, that although the representation
of no human character should be quarrelled with for its inconsistency,
we yet require that the inconsistencies be not absolute antagonisms to
the extent of neutralization: they may be permitted to be oils and
waters, but they must not be alkalis and acids. When, in the course of
the denouement, the usurer bursts forth into an eloquence virtue-
inspired, we cannot sympathize very heartily in his fine speeches,
since they proceed from the mouth of the self-same egotist who,
urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many sotticisms (about his
fine legs, etc.) in the earlier passages of the play. Tomaso is,
upon the whole, the best personage. We recognize some originality in
his conception, and conception was seldom more admirably carried out.

  One or two observations at random. In the third Scene of the fifth
Act, Tomaso, the buffoon, is made to assume paternal authority over
Isabella (as usual, without sufficient purpose), by virtue of a law
which Tortesa thus expounds:-

        "My gracious liege, there is a law in Florence

        That if a father, for no guilt or shame,

        Disown and shut his door upon his daughter,

        She is the child of him who succours her,

        Who by the shelter of a single night,

        Becomes endowed with the authority

        Lost by the other."

  No one, of course, can be made to believe that any such stupid law
as this ever existed either in Florence or Timbuctoo; but, on the
ground que le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable, we say that
even its real existence would be no justification of Mr. Willis. It
has an air of the far-fetched- of the desperate- which a fine taste
will avoid as a pestilence. Very much of the same nature is the
attempt of Tortesa to extort a second bond from Falcone. The
evidence which convicts Angelo of murder is ridiculously frail. The
idea of Isabella's assuming the place of the portrait, and so
deceiving the usurer, is not only glaringly improbable, but seems
adopted from the "Winter's Tale." But in this latter-play, the
deception is at least possible, for the human figure but imitates a
statue. What, however, are we to make of Mr. W.'s stage direction
about the back wall's being "so arranged as to form a natural ground
for the picture"? Of course, the very slightest movement of Tortesa
(and he makes many) would have annihilated the illusion by
disarranging the perspective, and in no manner could this latter
have been arranged at all for more than one particular point of
view- in other words, for more than one particular person in the whole
audience. The "asides," moreover, are unjustifiably frequent. The
prevalence of this folly (of speaking aside) detracts as much from the
acting merit of our drama generally as any other inartisticality. It
utterly destroys verisimilitude. People are not in the habit of
soliloquising aloud- at least, not to any positive extent; and why
should an author have to be told, what the slightest reflection
would teach him, that an audience, by dint of no imagination, can or
will conceive that what is sonorous in their own ears at the
distance of fifty feet cannot be heard by an actor at the distance
of one or two?

  Having spoken thus of "Tortesa" in terms of nearly unmitigated
censure- our readers may be surprised to hear us say that we think
highly of the drama as a whole- and have little hesitation in
ranking it before most of the dramas of Sheridan Knowles. Its
leading faults are those of the modern drama generally- they are not
peculiar to itself- while its great merits are. If in support of our
opinion we do not cite points of commendation, it is because those
form the mass of the work. And were we to speak of fine passages, we
should speak of the entire play. Nor by "fine passages" do we mean
passages of merely fine language, embodying fine sentiment, but such
as are replete with truthfulness, and teem with the loftiest qualities
of the dramatic art. Points- capital points abound; and these have far
more to do with the general excellence of a play than a too
speculative criticism has been willing to admit. Upon the whole, we
are proud of "Tortesa"- and her again, for the fiftieth time at least,
record our warm admiration of the abilities of Mr. Willis.

  We proceed now to Mr. Longfellow's

                    SPANISH STUDENT

  The reputation of its author as a poet, and as a graceful writer
of prose, is, of course, long and deservedly established- but as a
dramatist he was unknown before the publication of this play. Upon its
original appearance, in Graham's Magazine, the general opinion was
greatly in favour- if not exactly of "The Spanish Student"- at all
events of the writer of "Outre-Mer." But this general opinion is the
most equivocal thing in the world. It is never self-formed. It has
very seldom indeed an original development. In regard to the work of
an already famous or infamous author it decides, to be sure, with a
laudable promptitude; making up all the mind that it has, by reference
to the reception of the author's immediately previous publication-
making up thus the ghost of a mind pro tem.- a species of critical
shadow that fully answers, nevertheless, all the purposes of a
substance itself until the substance itself shall be forthcoming.
But beyond this point the general opinion can only be considered
that of the public, as a man may call a book his, having bought it.
When a new writer arises, the shop of the true, thoughtful or critical
opinion is not simultaneously thrown away- is not immediately set
up. Some weeks elapse; and, during this interval, the public, at a
loss where to procure an opinion of the debutante, have necessarily no
opinion of him at all for the nonce.

  The popular voice, then, which ran so much in favour of "The Spanish
Student," upon its original issue, should be looked upon as merely the
ghost pro tem.- as based upon critical decisions respecting the
previous works of the author- as having reference in no manner to "The
Spanish Student" itself- and thus as utterly meaningless and valueless
per se.

  The few, by which we mean those who think, in contradistinction from
the many who think they think- the few who think at first hand, and
thus twice before speaking at all- these received the play with a
commendation somewhat less pronounced- somewhat more guardedly
qualified- than Professor Longfellow might have desired, or may have
been taught to expect. Still the composition was approved upon the
whole. The few words of censure were very far indeed from amounting to
condemnation. The chief defect insisted upon was the feebleness of the
denouement, and, generally, of the concluding scenes, as compared with
the opening passages. We are not sure, however, that anything like
detailed criticism has been attempted in the case- nor do we propose
now to attempt it. Nevertheless, the work has interest, not only
within itself, but as the first dramatic effort of an author who has
remarkably succeeded in almost every other department of light
literature than that of the drama. It may be as well, therefore, to
speak of it, if not analytically, at least somewhat in detail; and
we cannot, perhaps, more suitably commence than by a quotation,
without comment of some of the finer passages:

        "And, though she is a virgin outwardly,

        Within she is a sinner, like those panels

        Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks

        Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary

        On the outside, and on the inside Venus."

                                    "I believe

        That woman, in her deepest degradation,

        Holds something sacred, something undefiled,

        Some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature,

        And, like the diamond in the dark, retains

        Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light."

        "And we shall sit together unmolested,

        And words of true love pass from tongue to tongue

        As singing birds from one bough to another."

                "Our feelings and our thoughts

        Tend ever on and rest not in the Present,

        As drops of rain fall into some dark well,

        And from below comes a scarce audible sound,

        So fall our thoughts into the dark

        Hereafter, And their mysterious echo reaches us."

        "Her tender limbs are still, and, on her breast,

        The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep,

        Rises or falls with the soft tide of dreams,

        Like a light barge safe moored."

        "Hark! how the large and ponderous mace of Time

        Knocks at the golden portals of the day!"

        "The lady Violante bathed in tears

        Of love and anger, like the maid of Colchis,

        Whom thou, another faithless Argonaut,

        Having won that golden fleece, a woman's love,

        Desertest for this Glauce."

        "I read, or sit in reverie and watch

        The changing colour of the waves that break

        Upon the idle sea-shore of the mind."

        "I will forget her. All dear recollections

        Pressed in my heart, like flowers within a book,

        Shall be tom out and scattered to the winds."

                              "Oh yes! I see it now-

        Yet rather with my heart than with mine eyes,

        So faint it is. And all my thoughts sail thither,

        Freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward urged,

        Against all stress of accident, as, in

        The Eastern Tale, against the wind and tide

        Great ships were drawn to the Magnetic Mountains."

        "But there are brighter dreams than those of Fame,

        Which are the dreams of Love! Out of the heart

        Rises the bright ideal of these dreams,

        As from some woodland fount a spirit rises

        And sinks again into its silent deeps,

        Ere the enamoured knight can touch her robe!

        'Tis this ideal that the soul of Man,

        Like the enamoured knight beside the fountain,

        Waits for upon the margin of Life's stream;

        Waits to behold her rise from the dark waters,

        Clad in a mortal shape! Alas, how many

        Must wait in vain! The stream flows evermore,

        But from its silent deeps no spirit rises!

        Yet I, born under a propitious star,

        Have found the bright ideal of my dreams."

                       "Yes; by the Darro's side

        My childhood passed. I can remember still

        The river, and the mountains capped with snow;

        The villages where, yet a little child,

        I told the traveller's fortune in the street;

        The smugglers horse; the brigand and the shepherd;

        The march across the moor; the halt at noon;

        The red fire of the evening camp, that lighted

        The forest where we slept; and, farther back,

        As in a dream, or in some former life,

        Gardens and palace walls."

                     "This path will lead us to it,

        Over the wheatfields, where the shadows sail

        Across the running sea, now green, now blue,

        And, like an idle mariner on the ocean,

        Whistles the quail."

  These extracts will be universally admired. They are graceful,
well expressed, imaginative, and altogether replete with the true
poetic feeling. We quote them now, at the beginning of our review,
by way of justice to the poet, and because, in what follows, we are
not sure that we have more than a very few words of what may be termed
commendation to bestow.

  "The Spanish Student" has an unfortunate beginning, in a most
unpardonable, and yet to render the matter worse, in a most
indispensable "Preface:-

  "The subject of the following play," says Mr. L., "is taken in
part from the beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this
source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of
a Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine,
Preciosa. I have not followed the story in any of its details. In
Spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically, first by
Juan Perez de Montalvan in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio
de Solis y Rivadeneira in La Gitanilla de Madrid. The same subject has
also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English dramatist of the
seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish Gipsy. The main
plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a
tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Dona Clara, which is
taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre. The
reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the plays
of Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton, will perceive that my treatment of
the subject differs entirely from theirs."

  Now the autorial originality, properly considered, is threefold.
There is, first, the originality of the general thesis, secondly, that
of the several incidents or thoughts by which the thesis is developed,
and thirdly, that of manner or tone, by which means alone an old
subject, even when developed through hackneyed incidents or
thoughts, may be made to produce a fully original effect- which, after
all, is the end truly in view.

  But originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the
rarest of merits. In America it is especially and very remarkably
rare:- this through causes sufficiently well understood. We are
content perforce, therefore, as a general thing, with either of the
lower branches of originality mentioned above, and would regard with
high favour indeed any author who should supply the great
desideratum in combining the three. Still the three should be
combined; and from whom, if not from such men as Professor Longfellow-
if not from those who occupy the chief niches in our Literary
Temple- shall we expect the combination? But in the present
instance, what has Professor Longfellow accomplished? Is he original
at any one point? Is he original in respect to the first and most
important of our three divisions? "The [subject] of the following
play," he says himself, "is taken [in part] from the beautiful play of
Cervantes, 'La Gitanilla.' To this source, however, I am indebted
for [the main incident only,] the love of the Spanish student for a
Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa."

  The [brackets] are our own, and the [bracketed words] involve an
obvious contradiction. We cannot understand how "the love of the
Spanish student for the Gipsy girl" can be called an "incident," or
even a "main incident," at all. In fact, this love- this discordant
and therefore eventful or incidental love is the true thesis of the
drama of Cervantes. It is this anomalous "love," which originates
the incidents by means of which itself, this "love," the thesis, is
developed. Having based his play, then, upon this "love," we cannot
admit his claim to originality upon our first count; nor has he any
right to say that he has adopted his "subject" "in part." It is
clear that he has adopted it altogether. Nor would he have been
entitled to claim originality of subject, even had he based his
story upon any variety of love arising between parties naturally
separated by prejudices of caste- such, for example, as those which
divide the Brahmin from the Pariah, the Ammonite from the African,
or even the Christian from the Jew. For here in its ultimate analysis,
is the real thesis of the Spaniard. But when the drama is founded, not
merely upon this general thesis, but upon this general thesis in the
identical application given it by Cervantes- that is to say, upon
the prejudice of caste exemplified in the case of a Catholic, and this
Catholic a Spaniard, and this Spaniard a student, and this student
loving a Gipsy, and this Gipsy a dancing-girl, and this dancing-girl
bearing the name Preciosa- we are not altogether prepared to be
informed by Professor Longfellow that he is indebted for an
"incident only" to the "beautiful 'Gitanilla' of Cervantes."

  Whether our author is original upon our second and third points-
in the true incidents of his story, or in the manner and tone of their
handling- will be more distinctly seen as we proceed.

  It is to be regretted that "The Spanish Student" was not subentitled
"A Dramatic Poem," rather than "A Play." The former title would have
more fully conveyed the intention of the poet; for, of course, we
shall not do Mr. Longfellow the injustice to suppose that his design
has been, in any respect, a play, in the ordinary acceptation of the
term. Whatever may be its merits in a merely poetical view, "The
Spanish Student" could not be endured upon the stage.

  Its plot runs thus:- Preciosa, the daughter of a Spanish
gentleman, is stolen, while an infant, by Gipsies, brought up as his
own daughter, and as a dancing-girl, by a Gipsy leader, Cruzado; and
by him betrothed to a young Gipsy, Bartolome. At Madrid, Preciosa
loves and is beloved by Victorian, a student of Alcala, who resolves
to marry her, notwithstanding her caste, rumours involving her purity,
the dissuasions of his friends, and his betrothal to an heiress of
Madrid. Preciosa is also sought by the Count of Lara, a roue. She
rejects him. He forces his way into her chamber, and is there seen
by Victorian, who, misinterpreting some words overheard, doubts the
fidelity of his mistress, and leaves her in anger, after challenging
the Count of Lara. In the duel, the Count receives his life at the
hands of Victorian: declares his ignorance of the understanding
between Victorian and Preciosa; boasts of favours received from the
latter, and, to make good his words, produces a ring which she gave
him, he asserts, as a pledge of her love. This ring is a duplicate
of one previously given the girl by Victorian, and known to have
been so given by the Count. Victorian mistakes it for his own,
believes all that has been said, and abandons the field to his
rival, who, immediately afterwards, while attempting to procure access
to the Gipsy, is assassinated by Bartolome. Meantime, Victorian,
wandering through the country, reaches Guadarrama. Here he receives
a letter from Madrid, disclosing the treachery practiced by Lara,
and telling that Preciosa, rejecting his addresses, had been through
his instrumentality hissed from the stage, and now again roamed with
the Gipsies. He goes in search of her, finds her in a wood near
Guadarrama; approaches her, disguising his voice; she recognizes
him, pretending she does not, and unaware that he knows her innocence;
a conversation of equivoque ensues; he sees his ring upon her
finger; offers to purchase it; she refuses to part with it, a full
eclairissement takes place; at this juncture a servant of
Victorian's arrives with "news from court," giving the first
intimation of the true parentage of Preciosa. The lovers set out,
forthwith, for Madrid, to see the newly discovered father. On the
route, Bartolome dogs their steps; fires at Preciosa; misses her;
the shot is returned; he falls; and "The Spanish Student" is
concluded.

  This plot, however, like that of "Tortesa," looks better in our
naked digest than amidst the details which develop only to disfigure
it. The reader of the play itself will be astonished, when he
remembers the name of the author, at the inconsequence of the
incidents- at the utter want of skill- of art-manifested in their
conception and introduction. In dramatic writing, no principle is more
clear than that nothing should be said or done which has not a
tendency to develop the catastrophe, or the characters. But Mr.
Longfellow's play abounds in events and conversations that have no
ostensible purpose, and certainly answer no end. In what light, for
example, since we cannot suppose this drama intended for the stage,
are we to regard the second scene of the second act, where a long
dialogue between an Archbishop and a Cardinal is wound up by a dance
from Preciosa? The Pope thinks of abolishing public dances in Spain,
and the priests in question have been delegated to examine,
personally, the proprieties or improprieties of such exhibitions. With
this view, Preciosa is summoned and required to give a specimen of her
skill. Now this, in a mere spectacle, would do very well; for here all
that is demanded is an occasion or an excuse for a dance; but what
business has it in a pure drama? or in what regard does it further the
end of a dramatic poem, intended only to be read? In the same
manner, the whole of Scene the eighth, in the same act, is occupied
with six lines of stage directions, as follows:-

  The Theatre: the orchestra plays the Cachuca. Sound of castinets
behind the scenes. The curtain rises and discovers Preciosa in the
attitude of commencing the dance. The Cachuca. Tumult. Hisses. Cries
of Brava! and Aguera! She falters and pauses. The music stops. General
confusion. Preciosa faints.

  But the inconsequence of which we complain will be best
exemplified by an entire scene. We take Scene the Fourth, Act the
First:-

  "An inn on the road to Alcala. BALTASAR asleep on a bench. Enter
CHISPA."

  CHISPA. And here we are, half way to Alcala, between cocks and
midnight. Body o' me! what an inn this is! The light out and the
landlord asleep! Hola! ancient Baltasar!

  BALTASAR. [waking]. Here I am.

  CHISPA. Yes, there you are, like a one-eyed alcalde in a town
without inhabitants. Bring a light, and let me have supper.

  BALTASAR. Where is your master?

  CHISPA. Do not trouble yourself about him. We have stopped a
moment to breathe our horses; and if he chooses to walk up and down in
the open air, looking into the sky as one who hears it rain, that does
not satisfy my hunger, you know. But be quick, for I am in a hurry,
and every one stretches his legs according to the length of his
coverlet. What have we here?

  BALTASAR. [setting a light on the table]. Stewed rabbit.

  CHISPA. [eating]. Conscience of Portalegre! stewed kitten you mean!

  BALTASAR. And a pitcher of Pedro Ximenes, with a roasted pear in it.

  CHISPA [drinking]. Ancient Baltasar, amigo! You know how to cry wine
and sell vinegar. I tell you this is nothing but Vino Tinto of La
Mancha, with a tang of the swine-skin.

  BALTASAR. I swear to you by Saint Simon and Judas, it is all as I
say.

  CHISPA. And I swear to you by Saint Peter and Saint Paul that it
is no such thing. Moreover, your supper is like the hidalgo's
dinner- very little meat and a great deal of tablecloth.

  BALTASAR. Ha! ha! ha!

  CHISPA. And more noise than nuts.

  BALTASAR. Ha! ha! ha! You must have your joke, Master Chispa. But

  shall I not ask Don Victorian in to take a draught of the Pedro
Ximenes?

  CHISPA. No; you might as well say, "Don't you want some?" to a
dead man.

  BALTASAR. Why does he go so often to Madrid?

  CHISPA. For the same reason that he eats no supper. He is in love.
Were you ever in love, Baltasar?

  BALTASAR. I was never out of it, good Chispa. It has been the
torment of my life.

  CHISPA. What! are you on fire, too, old hay-stack? Why, we shall
never be able to put you out.

  VICTORIAN [without] Chispa!

  CHISPA. Go to bed, Pero Grullo, for the cocks are crowing.

  VICTORIAN. Ea! Chispa! Chispa!

  CHISPA. Ea! Senor. Come with me, ancient Baltasar, and bring water
for the horses. I will pay for the supper tomorrow. [Exeunt.]

  Now here the question occurs- what is accomplished? How has the
subject been forwarded? We did not need to learn that Victorian was in
love- that was known before; and all that we glean is that a stupid
imitation of Sancho Panza drinks in the course of two minutes (the
time occupied in the perusal of the scene) a bottle of vino tinto,
by way of Pedro Ximenes, and devours a stewed kitten in place of a
rabbit.

  In the beginning of the play this Chispa is the valet of
Victorian; subsequently we find him the servant of another; and near
the denouement he returns to his original master. No cause is
assigned, and not even the shadow of an object is attained; the
whole tergiversation being but another instance of the gross
inconsequence which abounds in the play.

  The authors deficiency of skill is especially evinced in the scene
of the eclaircissement between Victorian and Preciosa. The former
having been enlightened respecting the true character of the latter by
means of a letter received at Guadarrama, from a friend at Madrid (how
wofully inartistical is this!), resolves to go in search of her
forthwith, and forthwith, also, discovers her in a wood close at hand.
Whereupon he approaches, disguising his voice:- yes, we are required
to believe that a lover may so disguise his voice from his mistress as
even to render his person in full view irrecognizable! He
approaches, and each knowing the other, a conversation ensues under
the hypothesis that each to the other is unknown- a very unoriginal,
and, of course, a very silly source of equivoque, fit only for the
gum- elastic imagination of an infant. But what we especially complain
of here is that our poet should have taken so many and so obvious
pains to bring about this position of equivoque, when it was
impossible that it could have served any other purpose than that of
injuring his intended effect! Read, for example, this passage:-

  VICTORIAN. I never loved a maid;

    For she I loved was then a maid no more.

  PRECIOSA. How know you that?

  VICTORIA. A little bird in the air

    Whispered the secret.

  PRECIOSA. There, take back your gold!

    Your hand is cold like a deceiver's hand!

    There is no blessing in its charity!

    Make her your wife, for you have been abused;

    And you shall mend your fortunes mending hers.

  VICTORIAN. How like an angel's speaks the tongue of woman,

    When pleading in another's cause her own!

  Now here it is clear that if we understood Preciosa to be really
ignorant of Victorian's identity, the "pleading in another's cause her
own" would create a favourable impression upon the reader or
spectator. But the advice- "Make her your wife, etc.," takes an
interested and selfish turn when we remember that she knows to whom
she speaks.

  Again, when Victorian says:

        That is a pretty ring upon your finger,

        Pray give it me!

and when she replies:

                        No, never from my hand

        Shall that be taken,

we are inclined to think her only an artful coquette, knowing, as we
do, the extent of her knowledge, on the hand we should have
applauded her constancy (as the author intended) had she been
represented ignorant of Victorian's presence. The effect upon the
audience, in a word, would be pleasant in place of disagreeable were
the case altered as we suggest, while the effect upon Victorian
would remain altogether untouched.

  A still more remarkable instance of deficiency in the dramatic
tact is to be found in the mode of bringing about the discovery of
Preciosa's parentage. In the very moment of the eclaircissement
between the lovers, Chispa arrives almost as a matter of course, and
settles the point in a sentence:-

        Good news from the Court; Good news! Beltran Cruzado,

        The Count of the Cales, is not your father,

        But your true father has returned to Spain

        Laden with wealth. You are no more a Gipsy.

Now here are three points:- first, the extreme baldness, platitude,
and independence of the incident narrated by Chispa. The opportune
return of the father (we are tempted to say the excessively opportune)
stands by itself- has no relation to any other event in the play- does
not appear to arise, in the way of result, from any incident or
incidents that have arisen before. It has the air of a happy chance,
of a God-send, of an ultra-accident, invented by the play-wright by
way of compromise for his lack of invention. Nec Deus intersit,
etc.- but here the God has interposed, and the knot is laughably
unworthy of the God.

  The second point concerns the return of the father "laden with
wealth." The lover has abandoned his mistress in her poverty, and,
while yet the words of his proffered reconciliation hang upon his
lips, comes his own servant with the news that the mistress' father
has returned "laden with wealth." Now, so far as regards the audience,
who are behind the scenes and know the fidelity of the lover- so far
as regards the audience, all is right; but the poet had no business to
place his heroine in the sad predicament of being forced, provided she
is not a fool, to suspect both the ignorance and the disinterestedness
of the hero.

  The third point has reference to the words- "You are now no more a
Gipsy." The thesis of this drama, as we have already said, is love
disregarding the prejudices of caste, and in the development of this
thesis, the powers of the dramatist have been engaged, or should
have been engaged, during the whole of the three acts of the play. The
interest excited lies in our admiration of the sacrifice, and of the
love that could make it; but this interest immediately and
disagreeably subsides when we find that the sacrifice has been made to
no purpose. "You are no more a Gipsy" dissolves the charm, and
obliterates the whole impression which the author has been at so
much labour to convey. Our romantic sense of the hero's chivalry
declines into a complacent satisfaction with his fate. We drop our
enthusiasm, with the enthusiast, and jovially shake by the hand the
mere man of good luck. But is not the latter feeling the more
comfortable of the two? Perhaps so; but "comfortable" is not exactly
the word Mr. Longfellow might wish applied to the end of his drama,
and then why be at the trouble of building up an effect through a
hundred and eighty pages, merely to knock it down at the end of the
hundred and eighty-first?

  We have already given, at some length, our conceptions of the nature
of plot- and of that of "The Spanish Student", it seems almost
superfluous to speak at all. It has nothing of construction about
it. Indeed there is scarcely a single incident which has any necessary
dependence upon any one other. Not only might we take away
two-thirds of the whole without ruin- but without detriment- indeed
with a positive benefit to the mass. And, even as regards the mere
order of arrangement, we might with a very decided chance of
improvement, put the scenes in a bag, give them a shake or two by
way of shuffle, and tumble them out. The whole mode of collocation-
not to speak of the feebleness of the incidents in themselves-
evinces, on the part of the author, an utter and radical want of the
adapting or constructive power which the drama so imperatively
demands.

  Of the unoriginality of the thesis we have already spoken; and
now, to the unoriginality of the events by which the thesis is
developed, we need do little more than alude. What, indeed, could we
say of such incidents as the child stolen by Gipsies- as her education
as a danseuse- as her betrothal to a Gipsy- as her preference for a
gentleman- as the rumours against her purity- as her persecution by
a roue- as the irruption of the roue into her chamber- as the
consequent misunderstanding between her and her lover- as the duel- as
the defeat of the roue- as the receipt of his life from the hero- as
his boasts of success with the girl- as the ruse of the duplicate
ring- as the field, in consequence, abandoned by the lover- as the
assassination of Lara while scaling the girl's bed-chamber- as the
disconsolate peregrination of Victorian- as the equivoque scene with
Preciosa- as the offering to purchase the ring and the refusal to part
with it- as the "news from court," telling of the Gipsy's true
parentage- what could we say of all these ridiculous things, except
that we have met them, each and all, some two or three hundred times
before, and that they have formed, in a great or less degree, the
staple material of every Hop-O'My-Thumb tragedy since the flood? There
is not an incident, from the first page of "The Spanish Student" to
the last and most satisfactory, which we would not undertake to find
bodily, at ten minutes' notice, in some one of the thousand and one
comedies of intrigue attributed to Calderon and Lope de Vega.

  But if our poet is grossly unoriginal in his subject, and in the
events which evolve it, may he not be original in his handling or
tone? We really grieve to say that he is not, unless, indeed, we grant
him the need of originality for the peculiar manner in which he has
jumbled together the quaint and stilted tone of the old English
dramatists with the degagee air of Cervantes. But this is a point upon
which, through want of space, we must necessarily permit the reader to
judge altogether for himself. We quote, however, a passage from the
second scene of the first act, by way of showing how very easy a
matter it is to make a man discourse Sancho Panza:-

  Chispa. Abernuncio Satanas! and a plague upon all lovers who
ramble about at night, drinking the elements, instead of sleeping
quietly in their beds. Every dead man to his cemetery, say I; and
every friar to his monastery. Now, here's my master Victorian,
yesterday a cow-keeper and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student and
to-day a lover; and I must be up later than the nightingale, for as
the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. God grant he may soon
be married, for then shall all this serenading cease. Ay, marry,
marry, marry! Mother, what does marry mean? It means to spin, to
bear children, and to weep, my daughter! and, of a truth, there is
something more in matrimony than the wedding-ring. And now, gentlemen,
Pax vobiscum! as the ass said to the cabbages!

  And we might add, as an ass only should say.

  In fact, throughout "The Spanish Student," as well as throughout
other compositions of its author, there runs a very obvious vein of
imitation. We are perpetually reminded of something we have seen
before- some old acquaintance in manner or matter, and even where
the similarity cannot be said to amount to plagiarism, it is still
injurious to the poet in the good opinion of him who reads.

  Among the minor defects of the play, we may mention the frequent
allusion to book incidents not generally known, and requiring each a
Note by way of explanation. The drama demands that everything be so
instantaneously evident that he who runs may read; and the only
impression effected by these Notes to a play is, that the author is
desirous of showing his reading.

  We may mention, also, occasional tautologies, such as:-

        Never did I behold thee so attired

        And garmented in beauty as to-night!

Or-

                                     What we need

        Is the celestial fire to change the fruit

        Into transparent crystal, bright and clear!

  We may speak, too, of more than occasional errors of grammar. For
example:-

        "Did no one see thee? None, my love, but thou."

  Here "but" is not a conjunction, but a preposition, and governs thee
in the objective. "None but thee" would be right; meaning none
except thee, saving thee. Earlier, "mayest" is somewhat incorrectly
written "may'st." And we have:-

        I have no other saint than thou to pray to.

  Here authority and analogy are both against Mr. Longfellow. "Than"
also is here a preposition governing the objective, and meaning save
or except. "I have none other God than thee, etc" See Horne Tooke. The
Latin "quam te" is exactly equivalent. [Later] we read:-

        Like thee I am a captive, and, like thee,

        I have a gentle gaoler.

  Here "like thee" (although grammatical of course) does not convey
the idea. Mr. L. does not mean that the speaker is like the bird
itself, but that his condition resembles it. The true reading would
thus be:-

        As thou I am a captive, and, as thou,

        I have a gentle poler.

That is to say, as thou art and as thou hast.

  Upon the whole, we regret that Professor Longfellow has written this
work, and feel especially vexed that he has committed himself by its
republication. Only when regarded as a mere poem can it be said to
have merit of any kind. For in fact it is only when we separate the
poem from the drama that the passages we have commended as beautiful
can be understood to have beauty. We are not too sure, indeed, that
a "dramatic poem" is not a flat contradiction in terms. At all
events a man of true genius (and such Mr. L. unquestionably is) has no
business with these hybrid and paradoxical compositions. Let a poem be
a poem only, let a play be a play and nothing more. As for "The
Spanish Student," its thesis is unoriginal; its incidents are antique;
its plot is no plot; its characters have no character, in short, it is
a little better than a play upon words to style it "A Play" at all.

            PREFACE TO THE RAVEN AND OTHER POEMS

  THESE TRIFLES are collected and republished chiefly with a view to
their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been
subjected while "going the rounds of the press." I am naturally
anxious that if what I have written is to circulate at all, it
should circulate as I wrote it. In defence of my own taste,
nevertheless, it is incumbent on me to say that I think nothing in
this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself.
Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any
time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances would
have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has not been a
purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in
reverence; they must not- they cannot at will be excited, with an
eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations,
of mankind

                                                         E. A. P.

                 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION

  CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an
examination I once made of the mechanism of "Barnaby Rudge," says- "By
the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb Williams'
backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties,
forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for
some mode of accounting for what had been done."

  I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of
Godwin- and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether
in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea- but the author of "Caleb
Williams" was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage
derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more
clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to
its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only
with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its
indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the
incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the
development of the intention.

  There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing
a story. Either history affords a thesis- or one is suggested by an
incident of the day- or, at best, the author sets himself to work in
the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his
narrative-designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue,
or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from
page to page, render themselves apparent.

  I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping
originality always in view- for he is false to himself who ventures to
dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of
interest- I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable
effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more
generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present
occasion, select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a
vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or
tone- whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the
converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone- afterward
looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or
tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.

  I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be
written by any author who would- that is to say, who could- detail,
step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions
attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has
never been given to the world, I am much at a loss to say- but,
perhaps, the autorial vanity has had more to do with the omission than
any one other cause. Most writers- poets in especial- prefer having it
understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy- an
ecstatic intuition- and would positively shudder at letting the public
take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating
crudities of thought- at the true purposes seized only at the last
moment- at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the
maturity of full view- at the fully-matured fancies discarded in
despair as unmanageable- at the cautious selections and rejections- at
the painful erasures and interpolations- in a word, at the wheels
and pinions- the tackle for scene-shifting- the step-ladders, and
demon-traps- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches,
which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the
properties of the literary histrio.

  I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means
common, in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps
by which his conclusions have been attained. In general,
suggestions, having arisen pell-mell are pursued and forgotten in a
similar manner.

  For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded
to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the
progressive steps of any of my compositions, and, since the interest
of an analysis or reconstruction, such as I have considered a
desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in
the thing analysed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum
on my part to show the modus operandi by which some one of my own
works was put together. I select 'The Raven' as most generally
known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in
its composition is referable either to accident or intuition- that the
work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and
rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.

  Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, the circumstance-
or say the necessity- which, in the first place, gave rise to the
intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and
the critical taste.

  We commence, then, with this intention.

  The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work
is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to
dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of
impression- for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world
interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed. But
since, ceteris paribus, no poet can afford to dispense with anything
that may advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there
is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity which
attends it. Here I say no, at once. What we term a long poem is, in
fact, merely a succession of brief ones- that is to say, of brief
poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such
only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul; and
all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For
this reason, at least, one-half of the "Paradise Lost" is
essentially prose- a succession of poetical excitements
interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressions- the whole
being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly
important artistic element, totality, or unity of effect.

  It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards
length, to all works of literary art- the limit of a single sitting-
and that, although in certain classes of prose composition, such as
"Robinson Crusoe" (demanding no unity), this limit may be
advantageously overpassed, it can never properly be overpassed in a
poem. Within this limit, the extent of a poem may be made to bear
mathematical relation to its merit- in other words, to the
excitement or elevation-again, in other words, to the degree of the
true poetical effect which it is capable of inducing; for it is
clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the
intended effect- this, with one proviso- that a certain degree of
duration is absolutely requisite for the production of any effect at
all.

  Holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree of
excitement which I deemed not above the popular, while not below the
critical taste, I reached at once what I conceived the proper length
for my intended poem- a length of about one hundred lines. It is, in
fact, a hundred and eight.

  My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to
be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that throughout the
construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work
universally appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my
immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have
repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the
slightest need of demonstration- the point, I mean, that Beauty is the
sole legitimate province of the poem. A few words, however, in
elucidation of my real meaning, which some of my friends have
evinced a disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which is at
once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure is, I
believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed,
men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is
supposed, but an effect- they refer, in short, just to that intense
and pure elevation of soul- not of intellect, or of heart- upon
which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of
contemplating the "beautiful." Now I designate Beauty as the
province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of Art that
effects should be made to spring from direct causes- that objects
should be attained through means best adapted for their attainment- no
one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation
alluded to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the object Truth,
or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the
excitement of the heart, are, although attainable to a certain
extent in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in
fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly
passionate will comprehend me), which are absolutely antagonistic to
that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement or pleasurable
elevation of the soul. It by no means follows, from anything here
said, that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even
profitably introduced, into a poem for they may serve in
elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in music, by
contrast- but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone
them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, secondly,
to enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which is the
atmosphere and the essence of the poem.

  Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to
the tone of its highest manifestation- and all experience has shown
that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind in its
supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

  The length, the province, and the tone, being thus determined, I
betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some
artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the
construction of the poem- some pivot upon which the whole structure
might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects-
or more properly points, in the theatrical sense- I did not fail to
perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as
that of the refrain. The universality of its employment sufficed to
assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of
submitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard to
its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a
primitive condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not
only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon
the force of monotone- both in sound and thought. The pleasure is
deduced solely from the sense of identity- of repetition. I resolved
to diversify, and so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to
the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought:
that is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by
the variation of the application of the refrain- the refrain itself
remaining for the most part, unvaried.

  These points being settled, I next bethought me of the nature of
my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied it was
clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have been
an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application
in any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the
sentence would, of course, be the facility of the variation. This
led me at once to a single word as the best refrain.

  The question now arose as to the character of the word. Having
made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas
was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each
stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and
susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these
considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous
vowel in connection with r as the most producible consonant.

  The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became
necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same
time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I
had pre-determined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it
would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word
"Nevermore." In fact it was the very first which presented itself.

  The next desideratum was a pretext for the continuous use of the one
word "nevermore." In observing the difficulty which I had at once
found in inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its
continuous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty
arose solely from the preassumption that the word was to be so
continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being- I did not fail
to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation
of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the
creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of
a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and very naturally, a
parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded
forthwith by a Raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more
in keeping with the intended tone.

  I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of
ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "Nevermore" at the
conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in
length about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object-
supremeness or perfection at all points, I asked myself- "Of all
melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of
mankind, is the most melancholy?" Death, was the obvious reply. "And
when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From
what I have already explained at some length the answer here also is
obvious- "When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then
of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in
the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited
for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."

  I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased
mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word "Nevermore." I
had to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every
turn the application of the word repeated, but the only intelligible
mode of such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing
the word in answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I
saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had
been depending, that is to say, the effect of the variation of
application. I saw that I could make the first query propounded by the
lover- the first query to which the Raven should reply "Nevermore"-
that I could make this first query a commonplace one, the second
less so, the third still less, and so on, until at length the lover,
startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy character
of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and by a consideration
of the ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it, is at length
excited to superstition, and wildly propounds queries of a far
different character- queries whose solution he has passionately at
heart- propounds them half in superstition and half in that species of
despair which delights in self-torture- propounds them not
altogether because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac
character of the bird (which reason assures him is merely repeating
a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a frenzied
pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the expected
"Nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable of
sorrows. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, more
strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction, I
first established in my mind the climax or concluding query- that
query to which "Nevermore" should be in the last place an answer- that
query in reply to which this word "Nevermore" should involve the
utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.

  Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning- at the end
where all works of art should begin- for it was here at this point
of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the
composition of the stanza:

    "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil!

    By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore,

    Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,

    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-

    Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

                    Quoth the Raven- "Nevermore."

  I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing
the climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards
seriousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and
secondly, that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and
the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as
graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that none of them might
surpass this in rhythmical effect. Had I been able in the subsequent
composition to construct more vigorous stanzas I should without
scruple have purposely enfeebled them so as not to interfere with
the climacteric effect.

  And here I may as well say a few words of the versification. My
first object (as usual) was originality. The extent to which this
has been neglected in versification is one of the most unaccountable
things in the world. Admitting that there is little possibility of
variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear that the possible
varieties of metre and stanza are absolutely infinite, and yet, for
centuries, no man, in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of
doing, an original thing. The fact is that originality (unless in
minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose,
of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be
elaborately sought, and although a positive merit of the highest
class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation.

  Of course I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or
metre of the "Raven." The former is trochaic- the latter is
octametre acatalectic, alternating with heptametre catalectic repeated
in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrametre
catalectic. Less pedantically the feet employed throughout
(trochees) consist of a long syllable followed by a short, the first
line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of
seven and a half (in effect two-thirds), the third of eight, the
fourth of seven and a half, the fifth the same, the sixth three and
a half. Now, each of these lines taken individually has been
employed before, and what originality the "Raven" has, is in their
combination into stanza; nothing even remotely approaching this has
ever been attempted. The effect of this originality of combination
is aided by other unusual and some altogether novel effects, arising
from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and
alliteration.

  The next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together
the lover and the Raven- and the first branch of this consideration
was the locale. For this the most natural suggestion might seem to
be a forest, or the fields- but it has always appeared to me that a
close circumscription of space is absolutely necessary to the effect
of insulated incident- it has the force of a frame to a picture. It
has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention,
and, of course, must not be confounded with mere unity of place.

  I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber- in a
chamber rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented
it. The room is represented as richly furnished- this in mere
pursuance of the ideas I have already explained on the subject of
Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis.

  The locale being thus determined, I had now to introduce the bird-
and the thought of introducing him through the window was
inevitable. The idea of making the lover suppose, in the first
instance, that the flapping of the wings of the bird against the
shutter, is a "tapping" at the door, originated in a wish to increase,
by prolonging, the reader's curiosity, and in a desire to admit the
incidental effect arising from the lover's throwing open the door,
finding all dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy that it was the
spirit of his mistress that knocked.

  I made the night tempestuous, first to account for the Raven's
seeking admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with the
(physical) serenity within the chamber.

  I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of
contrast between the marble and the plumage- it being understood
that the bust was absolutely suggested by the bird- the bust of Pallas
being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the
lover, and secondly, for the sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself.

  About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself of the
force of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impression.
For example, an air of the fantastic- approaching as nearly to the
ludicrous as was admissible- is given to the Raven's entrance. He
comes in "with many a flirt and flutter."

  Not the least obeisance made he- not a moment stopped or stayed he,

  But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door.

  In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously
carried out:-

  Then this ebony bird, beguiling my sad fancy into smiling

  By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

  "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no

    craven,

  Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore-

  Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore?"

                Quoth the Raven- "Nevermore."

  Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

  Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;

  For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

  Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-

  Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

                  With such name as "Nevermore."

  The effect of the denouement being thus provided for, I
immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the most profound
seriousness- this tone commencing in the stanza directly following the
one last quoted, with the line,

  But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, etc.

  From this epoch the lover no longer jests- no longer sees anything
even of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanour. He speaks of him as
a "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," and
feels the "fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's core." This
revolution of thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to
induce a similar one on the part of the reader- to bring the mind into
a proper frame for the denouement- which is now brought about as
rapidly and as directly as possible.

  With the denouement proper- with the Raven's reply, "Nevermore,"
to the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another
world- the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may
be said to have its completion. So far, everything is within the
limits of the accountable- of the real. A raven, having learned by
rote the single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the
custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a
storm, to seek admission at a window from which a light still
gleams- the chamber-window of a student, occupied half in poring
over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The
casement being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings,
the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the
immediate reach of the student, who amused by the incident and the
oddity of the visitor's demeanour, demands of it, in jest and
without looking for a reply, its name. The raven addressed, answers
with its customary word, "Nevermore"- a word which finds immediate
echo in the melancholy heart of the student, who, giving utterance
aloud to certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled
by the fowl's repetition of "Nevermore." The student now guesses the
state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before explained, by the
human thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to
propound such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, the
most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer,
"Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the extreme, of this
self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its first or
obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has been no
overstepping of the limits of the real.

  But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with however
vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or
nakedness which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably
required- first, some amount of complexity, or more properly,
adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness- some
under-current, however indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in
especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness
(to borrow from colloquy a forcible term), which we are too fond of
confounding with the ideal. It is the excess of the suggested meaning-
it is the rendering this the upper instead of the under-current of the
theme- which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind),
the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists.

  Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the
poem- their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the
narrative which has preceded them. The under-current of meaning is
rendered first apparent in the line-

  "Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my

                                                      door!"

           Quoth the Raven "Nevermore!"

  It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the
first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer,
"Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been
previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as
emblematical- but it is not until the very last line of the very
last stanza that the intention of making him emblematical of
Mournful and never ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly to be
seen:

  And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,

  On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

  And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,

  And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

  And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

                   Shall be lifted- nevermore.

                    THE RATIONALE OF VERSE

  THE WORD "Verse" is here used not in its strict or primitive
sense, but as the term most convenient for expressing generally and
without pedantry all that is involved in the consideration of
rhythm, rhyme, metre, and versification.

  There is, perhaps, no topic in polite literature which has been more
pertinaciously discussed, and there is certainly not one about which
so much inaccuracy, confusion, misconception, misrepresentation,
mystification, and downright ignorance on all sides, can be fairly
said to exist. Were the topic really difficult, or did it lie, even,
in the cloudland of metaphysics, where the doubt- vapors may be made
to assume any and every shape at the will or at the fancy of the
gazer, we should have less reason to wonder at all this
contradiction and perplexity; but in fact the subject is exceedingly
simple; one-tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethical; nine-tenths,
however, appertain to mathematics; and the whole is included within
the limits of the commonest common sense.

  "But, if this is the case, how," it will be asked, "can so much
misunderstanding have arisen? Is it conceivable that a thousand
profound scholars, investigating so very simple a matter for
centuries, have not been able to place it in the fullest light, at
least, of which it is susceptible?" These queries, I confess, are
not easily answered: at all events, a satisfactory reply to them might
cost more trouble than would, if properly considered, the whole vexata
quaestio to which they have reference. Nevertheless, there is little
difficulty or danger in suggesting that the "thousand profound
scholars" may have failed first, because they were scholars; secondly,
because they were profound; and thirdly, because they were a
thousand-the impotency of the scholarship and profundity having been
thus multiplied a thousand fold. I am serious in these suggestions;
for, first again, there is something in "scholarship" which seduces us
into blind worship of Bacon's Idol of the Theatre- into irrational
deference to antiquity, secondly, the proper "profundity" is rarely
profound- it is the nature of Truth in general, as of some ores in
particular, to be richest when most superficial; thirdly, the clearest
subject may be over-clouded by mere superabundance of talk. In
chemistry, the best way of separating two bodies is to add a third; in
speculation, fact often agrees with fact and argument with argument
until an additional well-meaning fact or argument sets everything by
the ears. In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively
discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is
obscure because excessively discussed. When a topic is thus
circumstanced, the readiest mode of investigating it is to forget that
any previous investigation has been attempted.

  But, in fact, while much has been written on the Greek and Latin
rhythms, and even on the Hebrew, little effort has been made at
examining that of any of the modern tongues. As regards the English,
comparatively nothing has been done. It may be said, indeed, that we
are without a treatise on our own verse. In our ordinary grammars
and in our works on rhetoric or prosody in general, may be found
occasional chapters, it is true, which have the heading,
"Versification," but these are, in all instances, exceedingly
meagre. They pretend to no analysis; they propose nothing like system;
they make no attempts at even rule; everything depends upon
"authority." They are confined, in fact, to mere exemplification of
the supposed varieties of English feet and English lines- although
in no work with which I am acquainted are these feet correctly given
or these lines detailed in anything like their full extent. Yet what
has been mentioned is all- if we except the occasional introduction of
some pedagogue-ism, such as this borrowed from the Greek Prosodies:
"When a syllable is wanting the verse is said to be catalectic; when
the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a
redundant syllable, it forms hypermeter." Now, whether a line be
termed catalectic or acatalectic is, perhaps, a point of no vital
importance- it is even possible that the student may be able to
decide, promptly, when the a should be employed and when omitted,
yet be incognizant, at the same time, of all that is worth knowing
in regard to the structure of verse.

  A leading defect in each of our treatises (if treatises they can
be called) is the confining the subject to mere Versification, while
Verse in general, with the understanding given to the term in the
heading of this paper, is the real question at issue. Nor am I aware
of even one of our Grammars which so much as properly defines the word
versification itself. "Versification," says a work now before me, of
which the accuracy is far more than usual- the "English Grammar" of
Goold Brown- "Versification is the art of arranging words into lines
of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular
alternation of syllables differing in quantity." The commencement of
this definition might apply, indeed, to the art of versification,
but not to versification itself. Versification is not the art of
arranging, etc, but the actual arranging- a distinction too obvious to
need comment. The error here is identical with one which has been
too long permitted to disgrace the initial page of every one of our
school grammars. I allude to the definitions of English Grammar
itself. "English Grammar," it is said, "is the art of speaking and
writing the English language correctly." This phraseology, or
something essentially similar, is employed, I believe, by Bacon,
Miller, Fisk, Greenleaf, Ingersoll, Kirkland, Cooper, Flint, Pue,
Comly, and many others. These gentlemen, it is presumed, adopted it
without examination from Murray, who derived it from Lily (whose
work was "quam solam Regia Majestas in omnibus scholis docendam
praecipit"), and who appropriated it without acknowledgment, but
with some unimportant modification, from the Latin Grammar of
Leonicenus. It may be shown, however, that this definition, so
complacently received, is not, and cannot be, a proper definition of
English Grammar. A definition is that which so describes its object as
to distinguish it from all others- it is no definition of any one
thing if its terms are applicable to any one other. But if it be
asked- "What is the design- the end- the aim of English Grammar?"
our obvious answer is, "The art of speaking and writing the English
language correctly"- that is to say, we must use the precise words
employed as the definition of English Grammar itself. But the object
to be obtained by any means is, assuredly, not the means. English
Grammar and the end contemplated by English Grammar are two matters
sufficiently distinct; nor can the one be more reasonably regarded
as the other than a fishing- hook as a fish. The definition,
therefore, which is applicable in the latter instance, cannot, in
the former, be true. Grammar in general is the analysis of language;
English Grammar of the English.

  But to return to Versification as defined in our extract above.
"It is the art," says the extract "of arranging words into lines of
correspondent length." Not so:- a correspondence in the length of
lines is by no means essential. Pindaric odes are, surely, instances
of versification, yet these compositions are noted for extreme
diversity in the length of their lines.

  The arrangement is moreover said to be for the purpose of
producing "harmony by the regular alternation," etc. But harmony is
not the sole aim- not even the principal one. In the construction of
verse, melody should never be left out of view; yet this is a point
which all our Prosodies have most unaccountably forborne to touch.
Reasoned rules on this topic should form a portion of all systems of
rhythm.

  "So as to produce harmony," says the definition, "by the regular
alternation," etc. A regular alternation, as described, forms no
part of any principle of versification. The arrangement of spondees
and dactyls, for example, in the Greek hexameter, is an arrangement
which may be termed at random. At least it is arbitrary. Without
interference with the line as a whole, a dactyl may be substituted for
a spondee, or the converse, at any point other than the ultimate and
penultimate feet, of which the former is always a spondee, the
latter nearly always a dactyl. Here, it is clear, we have no
"regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity."

  "So as to produce harmony," proceeds the definition "by the
regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity,"- in other
words by the alternation of long and short syllables; for in rhythm
all syllables are necessarily either short or long. But not only do
I deny the necessity of any regularity in the succession of feet
and, by consequence, of syllables, but dispute the essentiality of any
alternation regular or irregular, of syllables long and short. Our
author, observe, is now engaged in a definition of versification in
general, not of English versification in particular. But the Greek and
Latin metres abound in the spondee and pyrrhic- the former
consisting of two long syllables, the latter of two short; and there
are innumerable instances of the immediate succession of many spondees
and many pyrrhics.

  Here is a passage from Silius Italicus:

        Fallit te mensas inter quod credis inermem

        Tot bellis quaesita viro, tot caedibus armat

        Majestas aeterna ducem: si admoveris ora

        Cannas et Trebium ante oculos Trasymenaque busta

        Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram.

  Making the elisions demanded by the classic Prosodies, we should
scan these Hexameters thus:

        Fallit / te men / sas in / ter quod / credis in / ermem /

        Tot bel / lis quae / sita tot / caedibus / armat /

        Majes / tas ae / terna du / cem s'ad / moveris / ora /

        Cannas / et Trebi / ant ocu / los Trasy / menaque / busta /

        Et Pau / li sta / r' ingen / tem mi / raberis / umbram /

  It will be seen that, in the first and last of these lines, we
have only two short syllables in thirteen, with an uninterrupted
succession of no less than nine long syllables. But how are we to
reconcile all this with a definition of versification which
describes it as "the art of arranging words into lines of
correspondent length so as to produce harmony by the regular
alternation of syllables differing in quantity"?

  It may be urged, however, that our prosodist's intention was to
speak of the English metres alone, and that, by omitting all mention
of the spondee and pyrrhic, he has virtually avowed their exclusion
from our rhythms. A grammarian is never excusable on the ground of
good intentions. We demand from him, if from any one, rigorous
precision of style. But grant the design. Let us admit that our
author, following the example of all authors on English Prosody,
has, in defining versification at large, intended a definition
merely of the English. All these prosodists, we will say, reject the
spondee and pyrrhic. Still all admit the iambus, which consists of a
short syllable followed by a long; the trochee, which is the
converse of the iambus; the dactyl, formed of one long syllable
followed by two short; and the anapaest- two short succeeded by a
long. The spondee is improperly rejected, as I shall presently show.
The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient
or modern rhythm is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so
perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords,
perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience
to authority which characterise our Prosody. In the meantime the
acknowledged dactyl and anapaest are enough to sustain my
proposition about the "alternation," etc, without reference to feet
which are assumed to exist in the Greek and Latin metres alone- for an
anapaest and a dactyl may meet in the same line, when, of course, we
shall have an uninterrupted succession of four short syllables. The
meeting of these two feet, to be sure, is an accident not contemplated
in the definition now discussed; for this definition, in demanding a
"regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity," insists on a
regular succession of similar feet. But here is an example:

        Sing to me / Isabelle.

  This is the opening line of a little ballad now before me which
proceeds in the same rhythm- a peculiarly beautiful one. More than all
this:- English lines are often well composed, entirely, of a regular
succession of syllables all of the same quantity:- the first line, for
instance, of the following quatrain by Arthur C. Coxe:

        March! march! march!

          Making sounds as they tread,

        Ho! ho! how they step,

          Going down to the dead!

  The [first line] is formed of three caesuras. The caesura, of
which I have much to say hereafter, is rejected by the English
Prosodies, and grossly misrepresented in the classic. It is a
perfect foot- the most important in all verse- and consists of a
single long syllable; but the length of this syllable varies.

  It has thus been made evident that there is not one point of the
definition in question which does not involve an error, and for
anything more satisfactory or more intelligible we shall look in
vain to any published treatise on the topic.

  So general and so total a failure can be referred only to radical
misconception. In fact the English Prosodists have blindly followed
the pedants. These latter, like les moutons de Panurge, have been
occupied in incessant tumbling into ditches, for the excellent
reason that their leaders have so tumbled before. The Iliad, being
taken as a starting point, was made to stand instead of Nature and
common sense. Upon this poem, in place of facts and deduction from
fact, or from natural law, were built systems of feet, metres,
rhythms, rules,- rules that contradict each other every five
minutes, and for nearly all of which there may be found twice as
many exceptions as examples. If any one has a fancy to be thoroughly
confounded- to see how far the infatuation of what is termed
"classical scholarship," can lead a bookworm in the manufacture of
darkness out of sunshine, let him turn over for a few moments any of
the German Greek Prosodies. The only thing clearly made out in them is
a very magnificent contempt for Leibnitzs principle of "a sufficient
reason."

  To divert attention from the real matter in hand by any further
reference to these works is unnecessary, and would be weak. I cannot
call to mind at this moment one essential particular of information
that is to be gleaned from them, and I will drop them here with merely
this one observation,- that employing from among the numerous
"ancient" feet the spondee, the trochee, the iambus, the anapaest, the
dactyl, and the caesura alone, I will engage to scan correctly any
of the Horatian rhythms, or any true rhythm that human ingenuity can
conceive. And this excess of chimerical feet is perhaps the very least
of the scholastic supererogations. Ex uno disce omnia. The fact is
that quantity is a point in whose investigation the lumber of mere
learning may be dispensed with, if ever in any. Its appreciation is
universal. It appertains to no region, nor race, nor era in special.
To melody and to harmony the Greeks hearkened with ears precisely
similar to those which we employ for similar purposes at present,
and I should not be condemned for heresy in asserting that a
pendulum at Athens would have vibrated much after the same fashion
as does a pendulum in the city of Penn.

  Verse originates in the human enjoyment of equality, fitness. To
this enjoyment, also, all the moods of verse, rhythm, metre, stanza,
rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and other analagous effects, are
to be referred. As there are some readers who habitually confound
rhythm and metre, it may be as well here to say that the former
concerns the character of feet (that is arrangements of syllables)
while the latter has to do with the number of these feet. Thus by "a
dactylic rhythm" we express a sequence of dactyls. By "a dactylic
hexameter" we imply a line or measure consisting of six of these
dactyls.

  To return to equality. Its idea embraces those of similarity,
proportion, identity, repetition, and adaptation or fitness. It
might not be very difficult to go even behind the idea of equality,
and show both how and why it is that the human nature takes pleasure
in it, but such an investigation would, for any purpose now in view,
be supererogatory. It is sufficient that the fact is undeniable- the
fact that man derives enjoyment from his perception of equality. Let
us examine a crystal. We are at once interested by the equality
between the sides and between the angles of one of its faces; the
equality of the sides pleases us, that of the angles doubles the
pleasure. On bringing to view a second face in all respects similar to
the first, this pleasure seems to be squared; on bringing to view a
third it appears to be cubed, and so on. I have no doubt, indeed, that
the delight experienced, if measurable, would be found to have exact
mathematical relation such as I suggest, that is to say, as far as a
certain point, beyond which there would be a decrease in similar
relations.

  The perception of pleasure in the equality of sounds is the
principle of Music. Unpractised ears can appreciate only simple
equalities, such as are found in ballad airs. While comparing one
simple sound with another they are too much occupied to be capable
of comparing the equality subsisting between these two simple sounds
taken conjointly, and two other similar simple sounds taken
conjointly. Practised ears, on the other hand, appreciate both
equalities at the same instant, although it is absurd to suppose
that both are heard at the same instant. One is heard and
appreciated from itself, the other is heard by the memory, and the
instant glides into and is confounded with the secondary appreciation.
Highly cultivated musical taste in this manner enjoys not only these
double equalities, all appreciated at once, but takes pleasurable
cognizance, through memory, of equalities the members of which occur
at intervals so great that the uncultivated taste loses them
altogether. That this latter can properly estimate or decide on the
merits of what is called scientific music is of course impossible. But
scientific music has no claim to intrinsic excellence; it is fit for
scientific ears alone. In its excess it is the triumph of the physique
over the morale of music. The sentiment is overwhelmed by the sense.
On the whole, the advocates of the simpler melody and harmony have
infinitely the best of the argument, although there has been very
little of real argument on the subject.

  In verse, which cannot be better designated than as an inferior or
less capable Music, there is, happily, little chance for complexity.
Its rigidly simple character not even Science- not even Pedantry can
greatly pervert.

  The rudiment of verse may possibly be found in the spondee. The very
germ of a thought seeking satisfaction in equality of sound would
result in the construction of words of two syllables, equally
accented. In corroboration of this idea we find that spondees most
abound in the most ancient tongues. The second step we can easily
suppose to be the comparison, that is to say, the collocation of two
spondees- or two words composed each of a spondee. The third step
would be the juxtaposition of three of these words. By this time the
perception of monotone would induce further consideration; and thus
arises what Leigh Hunt so flounders in discussing under the title of
"The Principle of Variety in Uniformity." Of course there is no
principle in the case- nor in maintaining it. The "Uniformity" is
the principle- the "Variety" is but the principle's natural
safeguard from self-destruction by excess of self. "Uniformity,"
besides, is the very worst word that could have been chosen for the
expression of the general idea at which it aims.

  The perception of monotone having given rise to an attempt at its
relief, the first thought in this new direction would be that of
collating two or more words formed each of two syllables differently
accented (that is to say, short and long) but having the same order in
each word- in other terms, of collating two or more iambuses, or two
or more trochees. And here let me pause to assert that more pitiable
nonsense has been written on the topic of long and short syllables
than on any other subject under the sun. In general, a syllable is
long or short, just as it is difficult or easy of enunciation. The
natural long syllables are those encumbered- the natural short
syllables are those unencumbered with consonants; all the rest is mere
artificiality and jargon. The Latin Prosodies have a rule that a
"vowel before two consonants is long." This rule is deduced from
"authority"- that is, from the observation that vowels so
circumstanced, in the ancient poems, are always in syllables long by
the laws of scansion. The philosophy of the rule is untouched, and
lies simply in the physical difficulty of giving voice to such
syllables- of performing the lingual evolutions necessary for their
utterance. Of course, it is not the vowel that is long (although the
rule says so), but the syllable of which the vowel is a part. It
will be seen that the length of a syllable, depending on the
facility or difficulty of its enunciation, must have great variation
in various syllables; but for the purposes of verse we suppose a
long syllable equal to two short ones, and the natural deviation
from this relativeness we correct in perusal. The more closely our
long syllables approach this relation with our short ones, the better,
ceteris paribus, will be our verse: but if the relation does not exist
of itself we force it by emphasis, which can, of course, make any
syllable as long as desired;- or, by an effort we can pronounce with
unnatural brevity a syllable that is naturally too long. Accented
syllables are, of course, always long, but where unencumbered with
consonants, must be classed among the unnaturally long. Mere custom
has declared that we shall accent them- that is to say, dwell upon
them; but no inevitable lingual difficulty forces us to do so. In
fine, every long syllable must of its own accord occupy in its
utterance, or must be made to occupy, precisely the time demanded
for two short ones. The only exception to this rule is found in the
caesura- of which more anon.

  The success of the experiment with the trochees or iambuses (the one
would have suggested the other) must have led to a trial of dactyls or
anapaests- natural dactyls or anapaests- dactylic or anapaestic words.
And now some degree of complexity has been attained. There is an
appreciation, first, of the equality between the several dactyls or
anapaests, and secondly, of that between the long syllable and the two
short conjointly. But here it may be said, that step after step
would have been taken, in continuation of this routine, until all
the feet of the Greek Prosodies became exhausted. Not so; these
remaining feet have no existence except in the brains of the
scholiasts. It is needless to imagine men inventing these things,
and folly to explain how and why they invented them, until it shall be
first shown that they are actually invented. All other "feet" than
those which I have specified are, if not impossible at first view,
merely combinations of the specified; and, although this assertion
is rigidly true, I will, to avoid misunderstanding, put it in a
somewhat different shape. I will say, then, that at present I am aware
of no rhythm- nor do I believe that any one can be constructed- which,
in its last analysis, will not be found to consist altogether of the
feet I have mentioned, either existing in their individual and obvious
condition, or interwoven with each other in accordance with simple
natural laws which I will endeavour to point out hereafter.

  We have now gone so far as to suppose men constructing indefinite
sequences of spondaic, iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or anapaestic
words. In extending these sequences, they would be again arrested by
the sense of monotone. A succession of spondees would immediately have
displeased; one of iambuses or of trochees, on account of the
variety included within the foot itself, would have taken longer to
displease, one of dactyls or anapaests, still longer; but even the
last, if extended very far, must have become wearisome. The idea first
of curtailing, and secondly of defining, the length of a sequence
would thus at once have arisen. Here then is the line of verse
proper.* The principle of equality being constantly at the bottom of
the whole process, lines would naturally be made, in the first
instance, equal in the number of their feet; in the second instance,
there would be variation in the mere number; one line would be twice
as long as another, then one would be some less obvious multiple of
another; then still less obvious proportions would be adopted-
nevertheless there would be proportion, that is to say, a phase of
equality, still.

  * Verse, from the Latin vertere, to turn, is so called on account of
the turning or re-commencement of the series of feet. Thus a verse
strictly speaking is a line. In this sense, however, I have
preferred using the latter word alone; employing the former in the
general acceptation given it in the heading of this paper.

  Lines being once introduced, the necessity of distinctly defining
these lines to the ear (as yet written verse does not exist), would
lead to a scrutiny of their capabilities at their terminations- and
now would spring up the idea of equality in sound between the final
syllables- in other words, of rhyme. First, it would be used only in
the iambic, anapaestic, and spondaic rhythms (granting that the latter
had not been thrown aside long since, on account of its tameness),
because in these rhythms the concluding syllable being long, could
best sustain the necessary protraction of the voice. No great while
could elapse, however, before the effect, found pleasant as well as
useful, would be applied to the two remaining rhythms. But as the
chief force of rhyme must lie in the accented syllable, the attempt to
create rhyme at all in these two remaining rhythms, the trochaic and
dactylic, would necessarily result in double and triple rhymes, such
as beauty with duty (trochaic), and beautiful with dutiful (dactylic).

  It must be observed that in suggesting these processes I assign them
no date; nor do I even insist upon their order. Rhyme is supposed to
be of modern origin, and were this proved my positions remain
untouched. I may say, however, in passing, that several instances of
rhyme occur in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, and that the Roman
poets occasionally employed it. There is an effective species of
ancient rhyming which has never descended to the moderns: that in
which the ultimate and penultimate syllables rhyme with each other.
For example:

        Parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus.

And again:

        Litoreis ingens inventa sub ilicibus sus.

  The terminations of Hebrew verse (as far as understood) show no
signs of rhyme; but what thinking person can doubt that it did
actually exist? That men have so obstinately and blindly insisted,
in general, even up to the present day, in confining rhyme to the ends
of lines, when its effect is even better applicable elsewhere,
intimates in my opinion the sense of some necessity in the
connection of the ends with the rhyme- hints that the origin of
rhyme lay in a necessity which connected it with the end- shows that
neither mere accident nor mere fancy gave rise to the
connection-points, in a word, at the very necessity which I have
suggested (that of some mode of defining lines to the ear), as the
true origin of rhyme. Admit this and we throw the origin far back in
the night of Time- beyond the origin of written verse.

  But to resume. The amount of complexity I have now supposed to be
attained is very considerable. Various systems of equalization are
appreciated at once (or nearly so) in their respective values and in
the value of each system with reference to all the others. As our
present ultimatum of complexity, we have arrived at triple-rhymed,
natural-dactylic lines, existing proportionally as well as equally
with regard to other triple-rhymed, natural-dactylic lines. For
example:

        Virginal Lilian, rigidly, humblily dutiful;

                 Saintlily, lowlily,

                 Thrillingly, holily

        Beautiful!

  Here we appreciate, first, the absolute equality between the long
syllable of each dactyl and the two short conjointly; secondly, the
absolute equality between each dactyl and any other dactyl, in other
words, among all the dactyls; thirdly, the absolute equality between
the two middle lines; fourthly, the absolute equality between the
first line and the three others taken conjointly, fifthly, the
absolute equality between the last two syllables of the respective
words "dutiful" and "beautiful"; sixthly, the absolute equality
between the two last syllables of the respective words "lowlily" and
"holily"; seventhly, the proximate equality between the first syllable
of "dutiful" and the first syllable of "beautiful"; eighthly, the
proximate equality between the first syllable of "lowlily" and that of
"holily"; ninthly, the proportional equality (that of five to one)
between the first line and each of its members, the dactyls;
tenthly, the proportional equality (that of two to one) between each
of the middle lines and its members, the dactyls, eleventhly, the
proportional equality between the first line and each of the two
middle, that of five to two; twelfthly, the proportional equality
between the first line and the last, that of five to one;
thirteenthly, the proportional equality between each of the middle
lines and the last, that of two to one, lastly, the proportional
equality, as concerns number, between all the lines taken
collectively, and any individual line, that of four to one.

  The consideration of this last equality would give birth immediately
to the idea of stanza,* that is to say, the insulation of lines into
equal or obviously proportional masses. In its primitive (which was
also its best) form the stanza would most probably have had absolute
unity. In other words, the removal of any one of its lines would
have rendered it imperfect, as in the case above, where if the last
line, for example, be taken away there is left no rhyme to the
"dutiful" of the first. Modern stanza is excessively loose, and
where so, ineffective as a matter of course.

  * A stanza is often vulgarly, and with gross impropriety, called a
verse.

  Now, although in the deliberate written statement which I have
here given of these various systems of equalities, there seems to be
an infinity of complexity so much that it is hard to conceive the mind
taking cognisance of them all in the brief period occupied by the
perusal or recital of the stanza, yet the difficulty is in fact
apparent only when we will it to become so. Any one fond of mental
experiment may satisfy himself, by trial, that in listening to the
lines he does actually (although with a seeming unconsciousness, on
account of the rapid evolutions of sensation) recognise and
instantaneously appreciate (more or less intensely as his is
cultivated) each and all of the equalizations detailed. The pleasure
received or receivable has very much such progressive increase, and in
very nearly such mathematical relations as those which I have
suggested in the case of the crystal.

  It will be observed that I speak of merely a proximate equality
between the first syllable of "dutiful" and that of "beautiful," and
it may be asked why we cannot imagine the earliest rhymes to have
had absolute instead of proximate equality of sound. But absolute
equality would have involved the use of identical words, and it is the
duplicate sameness or monotony, that of sense as well as that of
sound, which would have caused these rhymes to be rejected in the very
first instance.

  The narrowness of the limits within which verse composed of
natural feet alone must necessarily have been confined would have led,
after a very brief interval, to the trial and immediate adoption of
artificial feet, that is to say, of feet not constituted each of a
single word but two, or even three words, or of parts of words.
These feet would be intermingled with natural ones. For example:

        A breath / can make / them as / a breath / his made.

This is an iambic line in which each iambus is formed of two words.
Again:

        The un / ima / gina / ble might / of Jove.

This is an iambic line in which the first foot is formed of a word and
a part of a word; the second and third of parts taken from the body or
interior of a word; the fourth of a part and a whole; the fifth of two
complete words. There are no natural feet in either line. Again:

        Can it be / fancied that / Deity / ever vin / dictively

        Made in his / image a / mannikin / merely to / madden it?

  These are two dactylic lines in which we find natural feet ("Deity,"
"mannikin"); feet composed of two words ("fancied that," "image a,"
"merely to," "madden it"); feet composed of three words, ("can it be,"
"made in his"); a foot composed of a part of a word ("dictively"); and
a foot composed of a word and a part of a word ("ever vin").

  And now, in our suppositional progress, we have gone so far as to
exhaust all the essentialities of verse. What follows may, strictly
speaking, be regarded as embellishment merely, but even in this
embellishment the rudimental sense of equality would have been the
never-ceasing impulse. It would, for example, be simply in seeking
further administration to this sense that men would come in time to
think of the refrain or burden, where, at the closes of the several
stanzas of a poem, one word or phrase is repeated; and of
alliteration, in whose simplest form a consonant is repeated in the
commencements of various words. This effect would be extended so as to
embrace repetitions both of vowels and of consonants in the bodies
as well as in the beginnings of words, and at a later period would
be made to infringe on the province of rhyme by the introduction of
general similarity of sound between whole feet occurring in the body
of a line- all of which modifications I have exemplified in the line
above.

        Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it.

  Further cultivation would improve also the refrain by relieving
its monotone in slightly varying the phrase at each repetition, or (as
I have attempted to do in "The Raven") in retaining the phrase and
varying its application, although this latter point is not strictly
a rhythmical effect alone. Finally, poets when fairly wearied with
following precedent, following it the more closely the less they
perceived it in company with Reason, would adventure so far as to
indulge in positive rhyme at other points than the ends of lines.
First, they would put it in the middle of the line, then at some point
where the multiple would be less obvious, then, alarmed at their own
audacity, they would undo all their work by cutting these lines in
two. And here is the fruitful source of the infinity of "short
metre" by which modern poetry, if not distinguished, is at least
disgraced. It would require a high degree, indeed, both of cultivation
and of courage on the part of any versifier to enable him to place his
rhymes, and let them remain at unquestionably their best position,
that of unusual and unanticipated intervals.

  On account of the stupidity of some people, or (if talent be a
more respectable word), on account of their talent for
misconception- I think it necessary to add here, first, that I believe
the "processes" above detailed to be nearly, if not accurately,
those which did occur in the gradual creation of what we now can
verse; secondly, that, although I so believe, I yet urge neither the
assumed fact nor my belief in it as a part of the true propositions of
this paper, thirdly, that in regard to the aim of this paper, it is of
no consequence whether these processes did occur either in the order I
have assigned them, or at all; my design being simply, in presenting a
general type of what such processes might have been and must have
resembled, to help them, the "some people," to an easy understanding
of what I have further to say on the topic of Verse.

  There is one point, which, in my summary of the processes, I have
purposely forborne to touch; because this point, being the most
important of all on account of the immensity of error usually involved
in its consideration, would have led me into a series of detail
inconsistent with the object of a summary.

  Every reader of verse must have observed how seldom it happens
that even any one line proceeds uniformly with a succession, such as I
have supposed, of absolutely equal feet; that is to say, with a
succession of iambuses only, or of trochees only, or of dactyls
only, or of anapaests only, or of spondees only. Even in the most
musical lines we find the succession interrupted. The iambic
pentameters of Pope, for example, will be found on examination,
frequently varied by trochees in the beginning, or by (what seem to
be) anapaests in the body of the line.

        oh thou / whate / ver ti / tle please / thine ear /

        Dean Dra / pier Bick / erstaff / or Gull / iver /

        Whether / thou choose / Cervan / tes' / se / rious air /

        or laugh / and shake / in Rab / elais' ea / sy chair /

Were any one weak enough to refer to the Prosodies for the solution of
the difficulty here, he would find it solved as usual by a rule,
stating the fact (or what it, the rule, supposes to be the fact),
but without the slightest attempt at the rationale. "By a synaeresis
of the two short syllables," say the books, "an anapaest may sometimes
be employed for an iambus, or dactyl for a trochee.... In the
beginning of a line a trochee is often used for an iambus."

  Blending is the plain English for synaeresis- but there should be no
blending; neither is an anapaest ever employed for an iambus, or a
dactyl for a trochee. These feet differ in time, and no feet so
differing can ever be legitimately used in the same line. An
anapaest is equal to four short syllables- an iambus only to three.
Dactyls and trochees hold the same relation. The principle of
equality, in verse, admits, it is true, of variation at certain
points, for the relief of monotone, as I have already shown, but the
point of time is that point which, being the rudimental one, must
never be tampered with at all.

  To explain:- In further efforts for the relief of monotone than
those to which I have alluded in the summary, men soon came to see
that there was no absolute necessity for adhering to the precise
number of syllables, provided the time required for the whole foot was
preserved inviolate. They saw, for instance, that in such a line as

        or laugh / and shake / in Rab / elais ea / sy chair /

the equalisation of the three syllables elais ea with the two
syllables composing any of the other feet could be readily effected by
pronouncing the two syllables elais in double quick time. By
pronouncing each of the syllables e and lais twice as rapidly as the
syllable sy, or the syllable in, or any other short syllable, they
could bring the two of them, taken together, to the length, that is to
say to the time, of any one short syllable. This consideration enabled
them to effect the agreeable variation of three syllables in place
of the uniform two. And variation was the object-variation to the ear.
What sense is there, then, in supposing this object rendered null by
the blending of the two syllables so as to render them, in absolute
effect, one? Of course, there must be no blending. Each syllable
must be pronounced as distinctly as possible (or the variation is
lost), but with twice the rapidity in which the ordinary short
syllable is enunciated. That the syllables elais ea do not compose
an anapaest is evident, and the signs of their accentuation are
erroneous. The foot might be written with inverted crescents
expressing double quick time; and might be called a bastard iambus.

  Here is a trochaic line:

  See the / delicate-footed / rain-deer.

  The prosodies- that is to say the most considerate of them- would
here decide that "delicate" is a dactyl used in place of a trochee,
and would refer to what they call their "rule, for justification.
Others, varying the stupidity, would insist upon a Procrustean
adjustment thus (del'cate) an adjustment recommended to all such words
as silvery, murmuring. etc., which, it is said, should be not only
pronounced but written silv'ry, murm'ring, and so on, whenever they
find themselves in trochaic predicament. I have only to say that
"delicate," when circumstanced as above, is neither a dactyl nor a
dactyl's equivalent; that I think it as well to call it a bastard
trochee; and that all words, at all events, should be written and
pronounced in full, and as nearly as possible as nature intended them.

  About eleven years ago, there appeared in "The American Monthly
Magazine" (then edited, I believe, by Messrs Hoffman and Benjamin,)
a review of Mr. Willis's Poems; the critic putting forth his strength,
or his weakness, in an endeavor to show that the poet was either
absurdly affected, or grossly ignorant of the laws of verse; the
accusation being based altogether on the fact that Mr. W. made
occasional use of this very word "delicate," and other similar
words, in "the Heroic measure, which every one knew consisted of
feet of two syllables." Mr. W. has often, for example, such lines as

        That binds him to a woman's delicate love-

        In the gay sunshine, reverent in the storm

        With its invisible fingers my loose hair.

Here of course, the feet licate love, verent in and sible fin, are
bastard iambuses; are not anapaests and are not improperly used. Their
employment, on the contrary, by Mr. Willis, is but one of the
innumerable instances he has given of keen sensibility in all those
matters of taste which may be classed under the general head of
fanciful embellishment.

  It is also about eleven years ago, if I am not mistaken, since Mr.
Horne (of England,) the author of "Orion," one of the noblest epics in
any language, thought it necessary to preface his "Chaucer Modernized"
by a very long and evidently a very elaborate essay, of which the
greater portion was occupied in a discussion of the seemingly
anomalous foot of which we have been speaking. Mr. Horne upholds
Chaucer in its frequent use; maintains his superiority, on account
of his so frequently using it, over all English versifiers; and
indignantly repelling the common idea of those who make verse on their
fingers- that the superfluous syllable is a roughness and an error-
very chivalrously makes battle for it as a "grace." That a grace it
is, there can be no doubt; and what I complain of is, that the
author of the most happily versified long poem in existence, should
have been under the necessity of discussing this grace merely as a
grace, through forty or fifty vague pages, solely because of his
inability to show how and why it is a grace- by which showing the
question would have been settled in an instant.

  About the trochee used for an iambus, as we see in the beginning
of the line,

        Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,

there is little that need be said. It brings me to the general
proposition that, in all rhythms, the prevalent or distinctive feet
may be varied at will and nearly at random, by the occasional
introduction of feet- that is to say, feet the sum of whose syllabic
times is equal to the sum of the syllabic times of the distinctive
feet. Thus, the trochee, whether is equal, in the sum of the times
of its syllables, to the iambus, thou choose, in the sum of the
times of its syllables; each foot being in time equal to three short
syllables. Good versifiers who happen to be also good poets,
contrive to relieve the monotony of a series of feet by the use of
equivalent feet only at rare intervals, and at such points of their
subject as seem in accordance with the startling character of the
variation. Nothing of this care is seen in the line quoted above-
although Pope has some fine instances of the duplicate effect. Where
vehemence is to be strongly expressed, I am not sure that we should be
wrong in venturing on two consecutive equivalent feet- although I
cannot say that I have ever known the adventure made, except in the
following passage, which occurs in "Al Aaraaf," a boyish poem
written by myself when a boy. I am referring to the sudden and rapid
advent of a star:

        Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes

        Alone could see the phantom in the skies,

        When first the phantoms course was found to be

        Headlong hithirward o'er the starry sea.

  In the "general proposition" above, I speak of the occasional
introduction of equivalent feet. It sometimes happens that unskilful
versifiers, without knowing what they do, or why they do it, introduce
so many "variations" as to exceed in number the "distinctive" feet,
when the ear becomes at once balked by the bouleversement of the
rhythm. Too many trochees, for example, inserted in an iambic rhythm
would convert the latter to a trochaic. I may note here that in all
cases the rhythm designed should be commenced and continued, without
variation, until the ear has had full time to comprehend what is the
rhythm. In violation of a rule so obviously founded in common sense,
many even of our best poets do not scruple to begin an iambic rhythm
with a trochee, or the converse; or a dactylic with an anapaest or the
converse; and so on.

  A somewhat less objectionable error, although still a decided one,
is that of commencing a rhythm not with a different equivalent foot
but with a "bastard" foot of the rhythm intended. For example:

        Many a / thought will / come to / memory. /

Here 'many a' is what I have explained to be a bastard trochee, and to
be understood should be accented with inverted crescents. It is
objectionable solely on account of its position as the opening foot of
a trochaic rhythm. Memory, similarly accented is also a bastard
trochee, but unobjectionable, although by no means demanded.

  The further illustration of this point will enable me to take an
important step.

  One of our finest poets, Mr. Christopher Pearse Cranch, begins a
very beautiful poem thus:

        Many are the thoughts that come to me

            In my lonely musing;

          And they drift so strange and swift

            There's no time for choosing

          Which to follow; for to leave

            Any, seems a losing.

"A losing" to Mr. Cranch, of course- but this en passant. It will be
seen here that the intention is trochaic;- although we do not see this
intention by the opening foot as we should do, or even by the
opening line. Reading the whole stanza, however, we perceive the
trochaic rhythm as the general design, and so after some reflection,
we divide the first line thus:

        Many are the / thoughts that / come to / me.

Thus scanned, the line will seem musical. It is highly so. And it is
because there is no end to instances of just such lines of
apparently incomprehensible music, that Coleridge thought proper to
invent his nonsensical system of what he calls "scanning by
accents"- as if "scanning by accents" were anything more than a
phrase. Whenever "Christabel" is really not rough, it can be as
readily scanned by the true I laws (not the supposititious rules) of
verse, as can the simplest pentameter of Pope; and where it is rough
(passim) these same laws will enable any one of common sense to show
why it is rough and to point out instantaneously the remedy for the
roughness.

  A reads and re-reads a certain line, and pronounces it false in
rhythm-unmusical. B, however, reads it to A, and A is at once struck
with the perfection of the rhythm, and wonders at his dulness in not
"catching" it before. Henceforward he admits the line to be musical.
B, triumphant, asserts that, to be sure the line is musical- for it
is the work of Coleridge- and that it is A who is not; the fault being
in A's false reading. Now here A is right and B wrong. That rhythm
is erroneous (at some point or other more or less obvious), which
any ordinary reader can, without design, read improperly. It is the
business of the poet so to construct his line that the intention
must be caught at once. Even when these men have precisely the same
understanding of a sentence, they differ, and often widely, in their
modes of enunciating it. Any one who has taken the trouble to
examine the topic of emphasis (by which I here mean not accent of
particular syllables, but the dwelling on entire words), must have
seen that men emphasize in the most singularly arbitrary manner. There
are certain large classes of people, for example, who persist in
emphasizing their monosyllables. Little uniformity of emphasis
prevails; because the thing itself- the idea, emphasis- is referabie
to no natural- at least to no well comprehended and therefore
uniform-law. Beyond a very narrow and vague limit, the whole matter is
conventionality. And if we differ in emphasis even when we agree in
comprehension, how much more so in the former when in the latter
too! Apart, however, from the consideration of natural disagreement,
is it not clear that, by tripping here and mouthing there, any
sequence of words may be twisted into any species of rhythm? But are
we thence to deduce that all sequences of words are rhythmical in a
rational understanding of the term?- for this is the deduction
precisely to which the reductio ad absurdum will, in the end, bring
all the propositions of Coleridge. Out of a hundred readers of
"Christabel," fifty will be able to make nothing of its rhythm,
while forty-nine of the remaining fifty with some ado, fancy they
comprehend it, after the fourth or fifth perusal. The one out of the
whole hundred who shall both comprehend and admire it at first
sight- must be an unaccountably clever person- and I am by far too
modest to assume, for a moment, that that very clever person is
myself.

  In illustration of what is here advanced I cannot do better than
quote a poem:

        Pease porridge hot pease porridge cold

        Pease porridge in the pot- nine days old.

Now those of my readers who have never heard this poem pronounced
according to the nursery conventionality, will find its rhythm as
obscure as an explanatory note; while those who have heard it will
divide it thus, declare it musical, and wonder how there can be any
doubt about it.

        Pease / porridge / hot / pease / porridge / cold /

        Pease / porridge / in the / pot / nine / days / old. /

The chief thing in the way of this species of rhythm, is the necessity
which it imposes upon the poet of travelling in constant company
with his compositions, so as to be ready at a moment's notice, to
avail himself of a well-understood poetical license- that of reading
aloud one's own doggerel.

  In Mr. Cranch's line,

        Many are the / thoughts that / come to / me,

the general error of which I speak is, of course, very partially
exemplified, and the purpose for which, chiefly, I cite it, lies yet
further on in our topic.

  The two divisions (thoughts that) and (come to) are ordinary
trochees. The first division (many are the) would be thus accented
by the Greek Prosodies (many are the), and would be called by them
astrologos. The Latin books would style the foot Paeon Primus, and
both Greek and Latin would swear that it was compoded of a trochee and
what they term a pyrrhic- that is to say, a foot of two short
syllables- a thing that cannot be, as I shall presently show large

  But now, there is an obvious difficulty. The astrologos, according
to the Prosodies' own showing, is equal to five short syllables, and
the trochee to three- yet, in the line quoted, these two feet are
equal. They occupy, precisely, the same time. In fact, the whole music
of the line depends upon their being made to occupy the same time. The
Prosodies then, have demonstrated what all mathematicians have
stupidly failed in demonstrating- that three and five are one and
the same thing. After what I have already said, however, about the
bastard trochee and the bastard iambus, no one can have any trouble in
understanding that many are the is of similar character. It is
merely a bolder variation than usual from the routine of trochees, and
introduces to the bastard trochee one additional syllable. But this
syllable is not short. That is, it is not short in the sense of
"short" as applied to the final syllable of the ordinary trochee,
where the word means merely the half of long.

  In this case (that of the additional syllable) "short," if used at
all, must be used in the sense of the sixth of long. And all the three
final syllables can be called short only with the same understanding
of the term. The three together are equal only to the one short
syllable (whose place they supply) of the ordinary trochee. It follows
that there is no sense in accenting these syllables with [a crescent
placed with the curve to the bottom]. We must devise for them some new
character which shall denote the sixth of long. Let it be the crescent
placed with the curve to the left. The whole foot (many are the) might
be called a quick trochee.

  We now come to the final division (me) of Mr. Cranch's line. It is
clear that this foot, short as it appears, is fully equal in time to
each of the preceding. It is, in fact, the caesura- the foot which, in
the beginning of this paper, I called the most important in all verse.
Its chief office is that of pause or termination; and here- at the end
of a line- its use is easy, because there is no danger of
misapprehending its value. We pause on it, by a seeming necessity,
just so long as it has taken us to pronounce the preceding feet,
whether iambuses, trochees, dactyls, or anapaests. It is thus a
variable foot, and, with some care, may be well introduced into the
body of a line, as in a little poem of great beauty by Mrs. Welby:

    I have / a lit / tle step / son / of on / ly three / years old. /

Here we dwell on the caesura, son just as long as it requires us to
pronounce either of the preceding or succeeding iambuses. Its value,
therefore, in this line, is that of three short syllables. In the
following dactylic line its value is that of four short syllables.

        Pale as a / lily was / Emily / [Gray]. /

I have accented the caesura with brackets by way of expressing this
variability of value.

  I observed just now that there could be no such foot as one of two
short syllables. What we start from in the very beginning of all
idea on the topic of verse, is quantity, length. Thus when we
enunciate an independent syllable it is long, as a matter of course.
If we enunciate two, dwelling on both we express equality in the
enunciation, or length, and have a right to call them two long
syllables. If we dwell on one more than the other, we have also a
right to call one short, because it is short in relation to the other.
But if we dwell on both equally, and with a tripping voice, saying
to ourselves here are two short syllables, the query might well be
asked of us- "in relation to what are they short?" Shortness is but
the negation of length. To say, then, that two syllables, placed
independently of any other syllable, are short, is merely to say
that they have no positive length, or enunciation- in other words,
that they are no syllables- that they do not exist at all. And if,
persisting, we add anything about their equality, we are merely
floundering in the idea of an identical equation, where, x being equal
to x, nothing is shown to be equal to zero. In a word, we can form
no conception of a pyrrhic as of an independent foot. It is a mere
chimera bred in the mad fancy of a pedant.

  From what I have said about the equalization of the several feet
of a line, it must not be deduced that any necessity for equality in
time exists between the rhythm of several lines. A poem, or even a
stanza, may begin with iambuses in the first line, and proceed with
anapaests in the second, or even with the less accordant dactyls, as
in the opening of quite a pretty specimen of verse by Miss Mary A.
S. Aldrich:

        The wa / ter li / ly sleeps / in pride /

        Down in the / depths of the / Azure / [lake.] /

  Here azure is a spondee, equivalent to a dactyl; lake a caesura.

  I shall now best proceed in quoting the initial lines of Byron's
"Bride of Abydos":

        Know ye the land where, the cypress and myrtle

          Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,

        Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle

          Now melt into softness, now madden to crime?

        Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

        Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,

        And the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume.

        Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in their bloom?

        Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit

        And the voice of the nightingale never is mute-

        Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,

        And all save the spirit of man is divine?

        'Tis the land of the East- 'tis the clime of the Sun-

        Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?

        Oh, wild as the accents of lovers' farewell

        Are the hearts that they bear and the tales that they tell.

Now the flow of these lines (as times go) is very sweet and musical.
They have been often admired, and justly- as times go- that is to say,
it is a rare thing to find better versification of its kind. And where
verse is pleasant to the ear, it is silly to find fault with it
because it refuses to be scanned. Yet I have heard men, professing
to be scholars, who made no scruple of abusing these lines of
Byron's on the ground that they were musical in spite of all law.
Other gentlemen, not scholars, abused "all law" for the same reason-
and it occurred neither to the one party nor to the other that the law
about which they were disputing might possibly be no law at all- an
ass of a law in the skin of a lion.

  The Grammars said nothing about dactylic lines, and it was easily
seen that these lines were at least meant for dactylic. The first
one was, therefore, thus divided:

        Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle. /

  The concluding foot was a mystery; but the Prosodies said
something about the dactylic "measure" calling now and then for a
double rhyme; and the court of inquiry were content to rest in the
double rhyme, without exactly perceiving what a double rhyme had to do
with the question of an irregular foot. Quitting the first line, the
second was thus scanned:

        are emblems / of deeds that / are done in / their clime. /

It was immediately seen, however, that this would not do- it was at
war with the whole emphasis of the reading. It could not be supposed
that Byron, or any one in his senses, intended to place stress upon
such monosyllables as "are," "of," and "their," nor could "their
clime," collated with "to crime," in the corresponding line below,
be fairly twisted into anything like a "double rhyme," so as to
bring everything within the category of the Grammars. But farther
these Grammars spoke not. The inquirers, therefore, in spite of
their sense of harmony in the lines, when considered without reference
to scansion, fell upon the idea that the "Are" was a blunder- an
excess for which the poet should be sent to Coventry- and, striking it
out, they scanned the remainder of the line as follows:

       -emblems of / deeds that are / done in their / clime.

This answered pretty well; but the Grammars admitted no such foot as a
foot of one syllable; and besides the rhythm was dactylic. In despair,
the books are well searched, however, and at last the investigators
are gratified by a full solution of the riddle in the profound
"Observation" quoted in the beginning of this article:- "When a
syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic, when the
measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant
syllable it forms hypermeter" This is enough. The anomalous line is
pronounced to be catalectic at the head and to form hypermeter at
the tail- and so on, and so on; it being soon discovered that nearly
all the remaining lines are in a similar predicament, and that what
flows so smoothly to the ear, although so roughly to the eye, is,
after all, a mere jumble of catalecticism, acatalecticism, and
hypermeter- not to say worse.

  Now, had this court of inquiry been in possession of even the shadow
of the philosophy of Verse, they would have had no trouble in
reconciling this oil and water of the eye and ear, by merely
scanning the passage without reference to lines, and, continuously,
thus:

  Know ye the / land where the / cypress and myrtle Are / emblems of
deeds that are / done in their / clime Where the  rage of the /
vulture the / love of the / turtle Now / melt into / softness now /
madden to / Know ye the / land of the / cedar and / vine Where the
flowers ever / blossom the / beams ever / shine And the / light
wings of / Zephyr op / pressed by per / fume Wax / faint o'er the /
gardens of / Gul in their / bloom where the / citron and / olive are /
fairest of / fruit And the / voice of the / nightingale / never is /
mute Where the / virgins are / soft as the / roses they / twine And
/ all save the / spirit of / man is di / vine. 'Tis the / land of
the / East 'tis the / clime of the / sum Can he / smile on such /
deeds as his / children have / done Oh / wild as the / accents of /
lovers' fare / well Are the / hearts that they / bear and the /
tales that they / tell.

Here "crime" and "tell" are caesuras, each having the value of a
dactyl, four short syllables, while "fume Wax," "twine And," and "done
Oh," are spondees which, of course, being composed of two long
syllables are also equal to four short, and are the dactyl's natural
equivalent. The nicety of Byron's ear has led him into a succession of
feet which, with two trivial exceptions as regards melody, are
absolutely accurate, a very rare occurrence this in dactylic or
anapaestic rhythms. The exceptions are found in the spondee "twine
And," and the dactyl "smile on such." Both feet are false in point
of melody. In "twine And" to make out the rhyme we must force "And"
into a length which it will not naturally bear. We are called on to
sacrifice either the proper length of the syllable as demanded by
its position as a member of a spondee, or the customary accentuation
of the word in conversation. There is no hesitation, and should be
none. We at once give up the sound for the sense, and the rhythm is
imperfect. In this instance it is very slightly so, not one person
in ten thousand could by ear detect the inaccuracy. But the perfection
of verse as regards melody, consists in its never demanding any such
sacrifice as is here demanded. The rhythmical must agree thoroughly
with the reading flow. This perfection has in no instance been
attained, but is unquestionably attainable. "Smile on such," a dactyl,
is incorrect, because "such," from the character of the two consonants
ch cannot easily be enunciated in the ordinary time of a short
syllable, which its position declares that it is. Almost every
reader will be able to appreciate the slight difficulty here, and
yet the error is by no means so important as that of the "And" in
the spondee. By dexterity we may pronounce "such" in the true time,
but the attempt to remedy the rhythmical deficiency of the And by
drawing it out, merely aggrevates the offence against natural
enunciation by directing attention to the offence.

  My main object, however, in quoting these lines is to show that in
spite of the Prosodies, the length of a line is entirely an
arbitrary matter. We might divide the commencement of Byron's poem
thus:-

        Know ye the / land where the /

or thus:

        Know ye the / land where the / cypress and /

or thus:

        Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are /

or thus:

  Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are / emblems of

In short, we may give it any division we please, and the lines will be
good, provided we have at least two feet in a line. As in
mathematics two units are required to form number, so rhythm (from the
Greek arithmos, number) demands for its formation at least two feet.
Beyond doubt, we often see such lines as

        Know ye the-

        Land where the-

lines of one foot, and our Prosodies admit such, but with impropriety,
for common sense would dictate that every so obvious division of a
poem as is made by a line, should include within itself all that is
necessary for its own comprehension, but in a line of one foot we
can have no appreciation of rhythm, which depends upon the equality
between two or more pulsations. The false lines, consisting
sometimes of a single caesura, which are seen in mock Pindaric odes,
are, of course, "rhythmical" only in connection with some other
line, and it is this want of independent rhythm, which adapts them
to the purposes of burlesque alone. Their effect is that of
incongruity (the principle of mirth), for they include the blankness
of prose amid the harmony of verse.

  My second object in quoting Byron's lines was that of showing how
absurd it often is to cite a single line from amid the body of a
poem for the purpose of instancing the perfection or imperfection of
the lines rhythm. Were we to see by itself

        Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle,

we might justly condemn it as defective in the final foot, which is
equal to only three, instead of being equal to four short syllables.

  In the foot "flowers ever" we shall find a further exemplification
of the principle of the bastard iambus, bastard trochee, and quick
trochee, as I have been at some pains in describing these feet
above. All the Prosodies on English verse would insist upon making
elision in "flowers," thus (flow'rs), but this is nonsense. In the
quick trochee (many Are the) occurring in Mr. Cranch's trochaic
line, we had to equalize the time of the three syllables (ny, are,
the) to that of the one short syllable whose position they usurp.
Accordingly each of these syllables is equal to the third of a short
syllable, that is to say, the sixth of a long. But in Byron's dactylic
rhythm, we have to equalize the time of the three syllables (ers,
ev, er) to that of the one long syllable whose position they usurp, or
(which is the same thing) of the two short. Therefore the value of
each of the syllables (ers, ev, and er) is the third of a long. We
enunciate them with only half the rapidity we employ in enunciating
the three final syllables of the quick trochee- which latter is a rare
foot. The "flowers ever," on the contrary, is as common in the
dactylic rhythm as is the bastard trochee in the trochaic, or the
bastard iambus in the iambic. We may as well accent it with the
curve of the crescent to the right and call it a bastard dactyl. A
bastard anapaest, whose nature I now need be at no trouble in
explaining, will of course occur now and then in an anapaestic rhythm.

  [A brief discussion of diacritical marks has been eliminated. Ed.]

  I began the "processes" by a suggestion of the spondee as the
first step towards verse. But the innate monotony of the spondee has
caused its disappearance as the basis of rhythm from all modern
poetry. We may say, indeed, that the French heroic- the most
wretchedly monotonous verse in existence- is to all intents and
purposes spondaic. But it is not designedly spondaic, and if the
French were ever to examine it at all, they would no doubt pronounce
it iambic. It must be observed that the French language is strangely
peculiar in this point- that it is without accentuation and
consequently without verse. The genius of the people, rather than
the structure of the tongue, declares that their words are for the
most part enunciated with a uniform dwelling on each syllable. For
example we say "syllabification." A Frenchman would say
syl-la-bi-fi-ca-ti-on, dwelling on no one of the syllables with any
noticeable particularity. Here again I put an extreme case in order to
be well understood, but the general fact is as I give it- that,
comparatively, the French have no accentuation; and there can be
nothing worth the name of verse without. Therefore, the French have no
verse worth the name- which is the fact put in sufficiently plain
terms. Their iambic rhythm so superabounds in absolute spondees as
to warrant me in calling its basis spondaic; but French is the only
modern tongue which has any rhythm with such basis, and even in the
French it is, as I have said, unintentional.

  Admitting, however, the validity of my suggestion, that the
spondee was the first approach to verse, we should expect to find,
first, natural spondees (words each forming just a spondee) most
abundant in the most ancient languages; and, secondly, we should
expect to find spondees forming the basis of the most ancient rhythms.
These expectations are in both cases confirmed.

  Of the Greek hexameter the intentional basis is spondaic. The
dactyls are the variation of the theme. It will be observed that there
is no absolute certainty about their points of interposition. The
penultimate foot, it is true, is usually a dactyl but not uniformly
so, while the ultimate, on which the ear lingers, is always a spondee.
Even that the penultimate is usually a dactyl may be clearly
referred to the necessity of winding up with the distinctive
spondee. In corroboration of this idea, again, we should look to
find the penultimate spondee most usual in the most ancient verse,
and, accordingly, we find it more frequent in the Greek than in the
Latin hexameter.

  But besides all this, spondees are not only more prevalent in the
heroic hexameter than dactyls, but occur to such an extent as is
even unpleasant to modern ears, on account of monotony. What the
modern chiefly appreciates and admires in the Greek hexameter is the
melody of the abundant vowel sounds. The Latin hexameters really
please very few moderns- although so many pretend to fall into
ecstasies about them. In the hexameters quoted several pages ago, from
Silius Italicus, the preponderance of the spondee is strikingly
manifest. Besides the natural spondees of the Greek and Latin,
numerous artificial ones arise in the verse of these tongues, on
account of the tendency which inflection has to throw full
accentuation on terminal syllables, and the preponderance of the
spondee is further ensured by the comparative infrequency of the small
prepositions which we have to serve us instead of case, and also the
absence of the diminutive auxiliary verbs with which we have to eke
out the expression of our primary ones. These are the monosyllables
whose abundance serves to stamp the poetic genius of a language as
tripping or dactylic.

  Now paying no attention to these facts, Sir Philip Sidney, Professor
Longfellow, and innumerable other persons, more or less modern, have
busied themselves in constructing what they supposed to be "English
hexameters on the model of the Greek." The only difficulty was that
(even leaving out of question the melodious masses of vowel) these
gentlemen never could get their English hexameters to sound Greek. Did
they look Greek?- that should have been the query, and the reply might
have led to a solution of the riddle. In placing a copy of ancient
hexameters side by side with a copy (in similar type) of such
hexameters as Professor Longfellow, or Professor Felton or the
Frogpondian Professors collectively, are in the shameful practice of
composing "on the model of the Greek," it will be seen that the latter
(hexameters, not professors) are about one-third longer to the eye, on
an average, than the former. The more abundant dactyls make the
difference. And it is the greater number of spondees in the Greek than
in the English, in the ancient than in the modern tongue, which has
caused it to fall out that while these eminent scholars were groping
about in the dark for a Greek hexameter, which is a spondaic rhythm
varied now and then by dactyls, they merely stumbled, to the lasting
scandal of scholarship, over something which, on account of its
long-leggedness, we may as well term a Feltonian hexameter, and
which is a dactylic rhythm interrupted rarely by artificial spondees
which are no spondees at all, and which are curiously thrown in by the
heels at all kinds of improper and impertinent points.

  Here is a specimen of the Longfellow hexameter:

  Also the / church with / in was a / dorned for / this was the /

    season /

  In which the / young their / parent's / hope and the / loved ones of

    / Heaven /

  Should at the / foot of the / altar re / new the / vows of their /

    baptism /

  Therefore each / nook and / corner was / swept and / cleaned and the

    / dust was /

  Blown from the / walls and / ceiling and / from the / oil-painted /

    benches. /

Mr. Longfellow is a man of imagination, but can he imagine that any
individual, with a proper understanding of the danger of lockjaw,
would make the attempt of twisting his mouth into the shape
necessary for the emission of such spondees as "parents," and "from
the," or such dactyls as "cleaned and the," and "loved ones of"?
"Baptism" is by no means a bad spondee- perhaps because it happens
to be a dactyl- of all the rest, however, I am dreadfully ashamed.

  But these feet, dactyls and spondees, all together, should thus be
put at once into their proper position:

  "Also the church within was adorned; for this was the season in
which the young, their parents' hope, and the loved ones of Heaven,
should, at the foot of the altar, renew the vows of their baptism.
Therefore, each nook and corner was swept and cleaned; and the dust
was blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted
benches?

  There!- That is respectable prose, and it will incur no danger of
ever getting its character ruined by anybody's mistaking it for verse.

  But even when we let these modern hexameters go as Greek, and merely
hold them fast in their proper character of Longfellowine, or
Feltonian, or Frogpondian, we must still condemn them as having been
committed in a radical misconception of the philosophy of verse. The
spondee, as I observed, is the theme of the Greek line. Most of the
ancient hexameters begin with spondees, for the reason that the
spondee is the theme, and the ear is filled with it as with a
burden. Now the Feltonian dactylics have, in the same way, dactyl
for the theme, and most of them begin with dactyls- which is all
very proper if not very Greek- but unhappily, the one point at which
they are very Greek is that point, precisely, at which they should
be nothing but Feltonian. They always close with what is meant for a
spondee. To be consistently silly they should die off in a dactyl.

  That a truly Greek hexameter cannot, however, be readily composed in
English, is a proposition which I am by no means inclined to admit.
I think I could manage the point myself. For example:

  Do tell! / when may we / hope to make / men of sense / out of the

    Pundits

  Born and brought / up with their / snouts deep / down in the / mud

    of the / Frog-pond?

  Why ask? / who ever / yet saw / money made / out of a / fat old

  Jew, or / downright / upright / nutmegs / out of a / pine-knot?

  The proper spondee predominance is here preserved. Some of the
dactyls are not so good as I could wish, but, upon the whole the
rhythm is very decent- to say nothing of its excellent sense.

                    THE POETIC PRINCIPLE

  IN SPEAKING of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either
thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the
essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to
cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American
poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy,
have left the most definite impression. By "minor poems" I mean, of
course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit
me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle,
which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its
influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a
long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem,"
is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

  I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch
as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in
the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are,
through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement
which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained
throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of
half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags- fails- a revulsion ensues-
and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such.

  There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling
the critical dictum that the "Paradise Lost" is to be devoutly admired
throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it,
during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum
would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical,
only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art,
Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve
its Unity- its totality of effect or impression- we read it (as
would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a
constant alteration of excitement and depression. After a passage of
what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage
of platitude which no critical prejudgment can force us to admire; but
if, upon completing the work, we read it again, omitting the first
book- that is to say, commencing with the second- we shall be
surprised at now finding that admirable which we before condemned-
that damnable which we had previously so much admired. It follows from
all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even
the best epic under the sun, is a nullity:- and this is precisely
the fact.

  In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least
very good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but,
granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based
in an imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is, of the
supposititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold
imitation. But the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any
time, any very long poem were popular in reality, which I doubt, it is
at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again.

  That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the
measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it a
proposition sufficiently absurd- yet we are indebted for it to the
Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size,
abstractly considered- there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as
a volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration
from these saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere
sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with
a sense of the sublime- but no man is impressed after this fashion
by the material grandeur of even "The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies
have not instructed us to be so impressed by it. As yet, they have not
insisted on our estimating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollock
by the pound- but what else are we to infer from their continual
prating about "sustained effort"? If, by "sustained effort," any
little gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend
him for the effort- if this indeed be a thing commendable- but let
us forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. It is to be
hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding
upon a work of Art rather by the impression it makes- by the effect it
produces- than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the
amount of "sustained effort" which had been found necessary in
effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one
thing and genius quite another- nor can all the Quarterlies in
Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many
which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In
the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not
be essentially damaged as truths.

  On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly
brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short
poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never
produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady
pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought
innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring, but in general they
have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public
attention, and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown
aloft only to be whistled down the wind.

  A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a
poem, in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the
following exquisite little Serenade-

        I arise from dreams of thee

          In the first sweet sleep of night,

        When the winds are breathing low,

          And the stars are shining bright.

        I arise from dreams of thee,

          And a spirit in my feet

        Has led me- who knows how?-

          To thy chamber-window, sweet!

        The wandering airs they faint

          On the dark the silent stream-

        The champak odors fail

          Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

        The nightingale's complaint,

          It dies upon her heart,

        As I must die on thine,

          O, beloved as thou art!

        O, lift me from the grass!

          I die, I faint, I fail!

        Let thy love in kisses rain

          On my lips and eyelids pale.

        My cheek is cold and white, alas!

          My heart beats loud and fast:

        O, press it close to thine again,

          Where it will break at last.

  Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines- yet no less a poet
than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal
imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as
by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to
bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

  One of the finest poems by Willis- the very best in my opinion which
he has ever written- has no doubt, through this same defect of undue
brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the
critical than in the popular view:-

        The shadows lay along Broadway,

          'Twas near the twilight-tide-

        And slowly there a lady fair

          Was walking in her pride.

        Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,

          Walk'd spirits at her side.

        Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,

          And Honour charm'd the air,

        And all astir looked kind on her,

          And called her good as fair-

        For all God ever gave to her

          She kept with chary care.

        She kept with care her beauties rare

          From lovers warm and true-

        For heart was cold to all but gold,

          And the rich came not to woo-

        But honour'd well her charms to sell

          If priests the selling do.

         Now walking there was one more fair-

           A slight girl lily-pale;

         And she had unseen company

           To make the spirit quail-

         'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn,

           And nothing could avail.

         No mercy now can clear her brow

           From this world's peace to pray,

         For as loves wild prayer dissolved in air,

           Her woman's heart gave way!-

         But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven,

           By man is cursed alway!

  In this composition we find it difficult to recognise the Willis who
has written so many mere "verses of society." The lines are not only
richly ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness,
an evident sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain
throughout all the other works of this author.

  While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry
prolixity is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually
dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we
find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated,
but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said
to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature
than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresies of The
Didactic. It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and
indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every
poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral, and by this moral is the
poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially
have patronized this happy idea, and we Bostonians very especially
have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to
write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to
have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically
wanting in the true poetic dignity and force:- but the simple fact
is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we
should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither
exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more
supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem
which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the
poem's sake.

  With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom
of man, I would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of
inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble
them by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no
sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in
Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to
do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems
and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than
efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We
must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that
mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the
poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical
and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes
of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in
spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to
reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

  Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral
Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position
which in the mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either
extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a
difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its
operations among the virtues themselves. Nevertheless we find the
offices of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as
the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the
Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter,
while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency,
Taste contents herself with displaying the charms:- waging war upon
Vice solely on the ground of her deformity- her disproportion- her
animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious- in
a word, to Beauty.

  An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a
sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in
the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he
exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of
Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition
of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a
duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry.
He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with
however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and
odors, and colors, and sentiments which greet him in common with all
mankind- he, I say, has yet faded to prove his divine title. There
is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to
attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not
shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality
of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial
existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere
appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the
Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond
the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among the things
and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very
elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry,
or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find
ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina
supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain
petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here
on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of
which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief
and indeterminate glimpses.

  The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness- this struggle, on
the part of souls fittingly constituted- has given to the world all
that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to
understand and to feel as poetic.

  The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various
modes- in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance-
very especially in Music- and very peculiarly, and with a wide
field, in the composition of the Landscape Garden. Our present
theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. And
here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself
with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre,
rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be
wisely rejected- is so vitally important an adjunct that he is
simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to
maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps that the
soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the
Poetic Sentiment it struggles- the creation of supernal Beauty. It may
be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in
fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from
an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar
to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the union of
Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field
for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers had
advantages which we do not possess- and Thomas Moore, singing his
own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as
poems.

  To recapitulate then:- I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words
as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste.
With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral
relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with
Duty or with Truth.

  A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once
the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I
maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the
contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that
pleasurable elevation, or excitement of the soul, which we recognise
as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from
Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which
is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore- using the
word as inclusive of the sublime- I make Beauty the province of the
poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects
should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:-
no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar
elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem.
It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or
the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be
introduced into a poem, and with advantage, for they may subserve
incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: but
the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper
subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence
of the poem.

  I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for
your consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to
Longfellow's "Waif":-

        The day is done, and the darkness

          Falls from the wings of Night,

        As a feather is wafted downward

          From an Eagle in his flight.

        I see the lights of the village

          Gleam through the rain and the mist,

        And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,

          That my soul cannot resist;

        A feeling of sadness and longing,

          That is not akin to pain,

        And resembles sorrow only

          As the mist resembles the rain.

        Come, read to me some poem,

          Some simple and heartfelt lay,

        That shall soothe this restless feeling,

          And banish the thoughts of day.

        Not from the grand old masters,

          Not from the bards sublime,

        Whose distant footsteps echo

          Through the corridors of Time.

        For, like strains of martial music,

          Their mighty thoughts suggest

        Life's endless toil and endeavour;

          And to-night I long for rest.

        Read from some humbler poet,

          Whose songs gushed from his heart,

        As showers from the clouds of summer,

          Or tears from the eyelids start;

        Who through long days of labor,

          And nights devoid of ease,

        Still heard in his soul the music

          Of wonderful melodies.

        Such songs have power to quiet

          The restless pulse of care,

        And come like the benediction

          That follows after prayer.

        Then read from the treasured volume

          The poem of thy choice,

        And lend to the rhyme of the poet

          The beauty of thy voice.

        And the night shall be filled with music,

          And the cares that infest the day

        Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,

          And as silently steal away.

  With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly
admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are
very effective. Nothing can be better than-

                 -the bards sublime,

          Whose distant footsteps echo

        Down the corridors of Time.

  The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on
the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful
insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character
of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general
manner. This "ease" or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long
been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone- as a point
of really difficult attainment. But not so:- a natural manner is
difficult only to him who should never meddle with it- to the
unnatural. It is but the result of writing with the understanding,
or with the instinct, that the tone, in composition, should always
be that which the mass of mankind would adopt- and must perpetually
vary, of course, with the occasion. The author who, after the
fashion of "The North American Review," should be upon all occasions
merely "quiet," must necessarily upon many occasions be simply
silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be considered "easy" or
"natural" than a Cockney exquisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in the
waxworks.

  Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as
the one which he entitles "June." I quote only a portion of it:-

        There, through the long, long summer hours,

          The golden light should lie,

        And thick young herbs and groups of flowers

          Stand in their beauty by.

        The oriole should build and tell

        His love-tale, close beside my cell;

          The idle butterfly

        Should rest him there, and there be heard

        The housewife-bee and humming bird.

        And what if cheerful shouts at noon,

          Come, from the village sent,

        Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,

          With fairy laughter blent?

        And what if, in the evening light,

        Betrothed lovers walk in sight

          Of my low monument?

        I would the lovely scene around

        Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

        I know, I know I should not see

          The season's glorious show,

        Nor would its brightness shine for me;

          Nor its wild music flow;

        But if, around my place of sleep,

        The friends I love should come to weep,

          They might not haste to go.

        Soft airs and song, and the light and bloom,

        Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

        These to their soften'd hearts should bear

          The thoughts of what has been,

        And speak of one who cannot share

          The gladness of the scene;

        Whose part in all the pomp that fills

        The circuit of the summer hills,

          Is- that his grave is green;

        And deeply would their hearts rejoice

        To hear again his living voice.

  The rhythmical flow here is even voluptuous- nothing could be more
melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The
intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of
all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling
us to the soul- while there is the truest poetic elevation in the
thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if,
in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be
more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that
(how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is
inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true
Beauty. It is, nevertheless,

        A feeling of sadness and longing

          That is not akin to pain,

        And resembles sorrow only

          As the mist resembles the rain.

  The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem
so full of brilliancy and spirit as "The Health" of Edward Coate
Pinckney:-

        I fill this cup to one made up

          Of loveliness alone,

        A woman, of her gentle sex

          The seeming paragon;

        To whom the better elements

          And kindly stars have given

        A form so fair that, like the air,

          'Tis less of earth than heaven.

        Her every tone is musies own,

          Like those of morning birds,

        And something more than melody

          Dwells ever in her words;

        The coinage of her heart are they,

          And from her lips each flows

        As one may see the burden'd be

          Forth issue from the rose.

        Affections are as thoughts to her,

          The measures of her hours;

        Her feelings have the fragrancy,

          The freshness of young flowers;

        And lovely passions, changing oft,

          So fill her, she appears

        The image of themselves by turns,

          The idol of past years!

        Of her bright face one glance will trace

          A picture on the brain,

        And of her voice in echoing hearts

          A sound must long remain;

        But memory, such as mine of her,

          So very much endears

        When death is nigh my latest sigh

          Will not be life's, but hers.

        I fill'd this cup to one made up

          Of loveliness alone,

        A woman, of her gentle sex

          The seeming paragon-

        Her health! and would on earth there stood,

          Some more of such a frame,

        That life might be all poetry,

          And weariness a name.

  It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinckney to have been born too far
south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would
have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that
magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of
American Letters, in conducting the thing called "The North American
Review." The poem just cited is especially beautiful; but the poetic
elevation which it induces we must refer chiefly to our sympathy in
the poet's enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the evident
earnestness with which they are uttered.

  It was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the
merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for
themselves. Boccalini, in his "Advertisements from Parnassus," tells
us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a
very admirable book:- whereupon the god asked him for the beauties
of the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the
errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed
wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff for his reward.

  Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics- but I am
by no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means
certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly
misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered
in the light of an axiom, which need only be properly put, to become
self-evident. It is not excellence if it require to be demonstrated as
such:- and thus to point out too particularly the merits of a work
of Art, is to admit that they are not merits altogether.

  Among the "Melodies" of Thomas Moore is one whose distinguished
character as a poem proper seems to have been singularly left out of
view. I allude to his lines beginning- "Come, rest in this bosom." The
intense energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in
Byron. There are two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed
that embodies the all in all of the divine passion of Love- a
sentiment which, perhaps, has found its echo in more, and in more
passionate, human hearts than any other single sentiment ever embodied
in words:-

        Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer

        Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;

        Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o'ercast,

        And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.

        Oh! what was love made for, if 'tis not the same

        Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?

        I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,

        I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.

        Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments of bliss,

        And thy Angel I'll be, 'mid the horrors of this,-

        Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,

        And shield thee, and save thee,- or perish there tool

It has been the fashion of late days to deny Moore Imagination,
while granting him Fancy- a distinction originating with Coleridge-
than whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore.
The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over
all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to
have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. But
never was there a greater mistake. Never was a grosser wrong done
the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the English language I
can call to mind no poem more profoundly- more weirdly imaginative, in
the best sense, than the lines commencing- "I would I were by that dim
lake"- which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am
unable to remember them.

  One of the noblest- and, speaking of Fancy- one of the most
singularly fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood. His "Fair
Ines" had always for me an inexpressible charm:-

        O saw ye not fair Ines?

          She's gone into the West,

        To dazzle when the sun is down,

          And rob the world of rest;

        She took our daylight with her,

          The smiles that we love best,

        With morning blushes on her cheek,

          And pearls upon her breast.

        O turn again, fair Ines,

          Before the fall of night,

        For fear the moon should shine alone,

          And stars unrivall'd bright;

        And blessed will the lover be

          That walks beneath their light,

        And breathes the love against thy cheek

          I dare not even write!

        Would I had been, fair Ines,

          That gallant cavalier,

        Who rode so gaily by thy side,

          And whisper'd thee so near!

        Were there no bonny dames at home

          Or no true lovers here,

        That he should cross the seas to win

          The dearest of the dear?

        I saw thee, lovely Ines,

          Descend along the shore,

        With bands of noble gentlemen,

          And banners waved before,

        And gentle youth and maidens gay,

          And snowy plumes they wore;

        It would have been a beauteous dream,

          If it had been no more!

        Alas, alas, fair Ines,

          She went away with song,

        With music waiting on her steps,

          And shoutings of the throng;

        But some were sad and felt no mirth,

          But only Music's wrong,

        In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell,

          To her you've loved so long.

        Farewell, farewell, fair Ines,

          That vessel never bore

        So fair a lady on its deck,

          Nor danced so light before,-

        Alas for pleasure on the sea,

          And sorrow on the shore!

        The smile that blest one lover's heart

          Has broken many more!

  "The Haunted House," by the same author, is one of the truest
poems ever written,- one of the truest, one of the most
unexceptionable, one of the most thoroughly artistic, both in its
theme and in its execution. It is, moreover, powerfully ideal-
imaginative. I regret that its length renders it unsuitable for the
purposes of this lecture. In place of it permit me to offer the
universally appreciated "Bridge of Sighs":-

        One more Unfortunate,

        Weary of breath,

        Gone to her death!

        Take her up tenderly,

        Lift her with care,-

        Fashion'd so slenderly,

        Young and so fair!

        Look at her garments

        Clinging like cerements;

        Whilst the wave constantly

        Drips from her clothing;

        Take her up instantly,

        Loving, not loathing.

        Touch her not scornfully,

        Think of her mournfully,

        Gently and humanly,

        Not of the stains of her,

        All that remains of her

        Now is pure womanly.

        Make no deep scrutiny

        Into her mutiny

        Rash and undutiful;

        Past all dishonor,

        Death has left on her

        Only the beautiful.

        Where the lamps quiver

        So far in the river,

        With many a light

        From window and casement

        From garret to basement,

        She stood, with amazement,

        Houseless by night

        The bleak wind of March

        Made her tremble and shiver,

        But not the dark arch,

        Or the black flowing river:

        Mad from life's history,

        Glad to death's mystery,

        Swift to be hurl'd-

        Anywhere, anywhere

        Out of the world!

        In she plunged boldly,

        No matter how coldly

        The rough river ran,-

        Over the brink of it,

        Picture it,- think of it,

        Dissolute Man!

        Lave in it, drink of it

        Then, if you can!

        Still, for all slips of her

        One of Eves family-

        Wipe those poor lips of hers

        Oozing so clammily,

        Loop up her tresses

        Escaped from the comb,

        Her fair auburn tresses;

        Whilst wonderment guesses

        Where was her home?

        Who was her father?

        Who was her mother?

        Had she a sister?

        Had she a brother?

        Or was there a dearer one

        Still, and a nearer one

        Yet, than all other?

        Alas! for the rarity

        Of Christian charity

        Under the sun!

        Oh! it was pitiful

        Near a whole city full,

        Home she had none.

        Sisterly, brotherly,

        Fatherly, motherly,

        Feelings had changed:

        Love, by harsh evidence,

        Thrown from its eminence,

        Seeming estranged.

        Take her up tenderly,

        Lift her with care;

        Fashion'd so slenderly,

        Young, and so fair!

        Ere her limbs frigidly

        Stiffen too rigidly,

        Decently,- kindly,-

        Smooth and compose them;

        And her eyes, close them,

        Staring so blindly!

        Dreadfully staring

        Through muddy impurity,

        As when with the daring

        Last look of despairing

        Fixed on futurity.

        Perishing gloomily,

        Spurred by contumely,

        Cold inhumanity,

        Burning insanity,

        Into her rest,-

        Cross her hands humbly,

        As if praying dumbly,

        Over her breast!

        Owning her weakness,

        Her evil behaviour,

        And leaving, with meekness,

        Her sins to her Saviour!

  The vigour of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. The
versification although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of
the fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild
insanity which is the thesis of the poem.

  Among the minor poems of Lord Byron is one which has never
received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves:-

        Though the day of my destiny's over,

          And the star of my fate hath declined

        Thy soft heart refused to discover

          The faults which so many could find;

        Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

          It shrunk not to share it with me,

        And the love which my spirit hath painted

          It never hath found but in thee.

         Then when nature around me is smiling,

           The last smile which answers to mine,

         I do not believe it beguiling,

           Because it reminds me of thine,

         And when winds are at war with the ocean,

           As the breasts I believed in with me,

         If their billows excite an emotion,

           It is that they bear me from thee.

         Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,

           And its fragments are sunk in the wave,

         Though I feel that my soul is delivered

           To pain- it shall not be its slave.

         There is many a pang to pursue me:

           They may crush, but they shall not contemn-

         They may torture, but shall not subdue me-

           'Tis of thee that I think- not of them.

         Though human, thou didst not deceive me,

           Though woman, thou didst not forsake,

         Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

           Though slandered, thou never couldst shake,-

         Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,

           Though parted, it was not to fly,

         Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,

           Nor mute, that the world might belie.

         Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

           Nor the war of the many with one-

         If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

           'Twas folly not sooner to shun:

         And if dearly that error hath cost me,

           And more than I once could foresee,

         I have found that whatever it lost me,

           It could not deprive me of thee.

         From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,

           Thus much I at least may recall,

         It hath taught me that which I most cherished

           Deserved to be dearest of all:

         In the desert a fountain is springing,

           In the wide waste there still is a tree,

         And a bird in the solitude singing,

           Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Although the rhythm here is one of the most difficult, the
versification could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever engaged
the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea that no man can
consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while in his adversity
he still retains the unwavering love of woman.

  From Alfred Tennyson, although in perfect sincerity I regard him
as the noblest poet that ever lived, I have left myself time to cite
only a very brief specimen. I call him, and think him the noblest of
poets, not because the impressions he produces are at all times the
most profound- not because the poetical excitement which be induces is
at all times the most intense- but because it is at all times the most
ethereal- in other words, the most elevating and most pure. No poet is
so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his
last long poem, "The Princess":-

          Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

        Tears from the depth of some divine despair

        Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

        In looking on the happy Autumn fields,

        And thinking of the days that are no more.

          Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

        That brings our friends up from the underworld,

        Sad as the last which reddens over one

        That sinks with all we love below the verge;

        So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

          Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

        The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

        To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

        The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

        So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

          Dear as remember'd kisses after death,

        And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

        On lips that are for others; deep as love,

        Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,

        O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

  Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have
endeavoured to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It
has been my purpose to suggest that, while this principle itself is
strictly and simply the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the
manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating
excitement of the soul, quite independent of that passion which is the
intoxication of the Heart, or of that truth which is the
satisfaction of the Reason. For in regard to passion, alas! its
tendency is to degrade rather than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the
contrary- Love- the true, the divine Eros- the Uranian as
distinguished from the Dionnan Venus- is unquestionably the purest and
truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth, if, to be sure,
through the attainment of a truth we are led to perceive a harmony
where none was apparent before, we experience at once the true
poetical effect; but this effect is referable to the harmony alone,
and not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render
the harmony manifest.

  We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of
what the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple
elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect. He
recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul in the bright orbs
that shine in Heaven- in the volutes of the flower- in the
clustering of low shrubberies- in the waving of the grain-fields- in
the slanting of tall eastern trees- in the blue distance of mountains-
in the grouping of clouds- in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks-
in the gleaming of silver rivers- in the repose of sequestered
lakes- in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it
in the songs of birds- in the harp of Aeolus- in the sighing of the
night-wind- in the repining voice of the forest- in the surf that
complains to the shore- in the fresh breath of the woods- in the scent
of the violet- in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth- in the
suggestive odour that comes to him at eventide from far-distant
undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored.
He owns it in all noble thoughts- in all unworldly motives- in all
holy impulses- in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing
deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman- in the grace of her step-
in the lustre of her eye- in the melody of her voice- in her soft
laughter, in her sigh- in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He
deeply feels it in her winning endearments- in her burning
enthusiasms- in her gentle charities- in her meek and devotional
endurances- but above all- ah, far above all he kneels to it- he
worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the
altogether divine majesty- of her love.

  Let me conclude by- the recitation of yet another brief poem- one
very different in character from any that I have before quoted. It
is by Motherwell, and is called "The Song of the Cavalier." With our
modern and altogether rational ideas of the absurdity and impiety of
warfare, we are not precisely in that frame of mind best adapted to
sympathize with the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real
excellence of the poem. To do this fully we must identify ourselves in
fancy with the soul of the old cavalier:-

        Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants all,

          And don your helmes amaine:

        Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honour call

          Us to the field againe.

        No shrewish teares shall fill your eye

          When the sword-hilt's in our hand,-

        Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe

          For the fayrest of the land;

        Let piping swaine, and craven wight,

          Thus weepe and puling crye,

        Our business is like men to fight,

          And hero-like to die!

                     THE END
.