Text: N. P. Willis (?), New Trial of Culprit Poets, Weekly Mirror (New York), November 30, 1844, vol. 1, no. 8, p. 120, cols. 2-3

[page 120, column 2, continued:]

New Trial of Culprit Poets.

Mrs. Gilman has invented a new kind of book, (“Oracles from the Poets,” of which we gave a notice a few days ago,) and the opening Preface, very charmingly written, tries the Poets by new standards altogether. She had occasion to ransack all the popular authors for answers to the fate-questions of her Fortune-Teller, and of course she discovered where lay the most thought and feeling of a particular character. She begins by finding out that poets are benevolent. She had great difficulty in finding sixty answers to the question “To what have you a distaste or aversion?” while “What gratifies your taste or affections?” was stuff as common as clover. She says that in Shakspeare there is a singular lack of mention of places of residence, and there seems not to be even a fair proportion of passages descriptive of musical sounds, hours, seasons, and (except in The Winter's Tale) of flowers. In WORDSWORTH, scarcely a flower or musical sound is described. They are alluded to but not painted out. The poetry of CRABBE, though abounding in numerous characters, could furnish almost nothing for her purpose, on account of their being woven into the general strain of his narrations. SHELLEY, LANDON, and HOWITT are eminently, the poets of flowers, while DARWIN, with a whole “Botanic Garden” before him, and MASON, in his “English Garden,” gave none fairly entitled to selection. Few passages of any sort, except those hackneyed into adages, could be gained from MILTON, on account of [column 3:] the abstract, lofty, and continuous flow of his diction. COLERIDGE has corresponding peculiarities. KEATS and SHELLEY are the poets of the heavens. Byron, with faint exceptions, does not describe a flower, or musical sound, or place of residence. The AMERICAN POETS, in contradistinction to their elder and superior brethen [[brethren]] of the fatherland, display a more marked devotion to nature, with which a continued glow of religious sentiment aptly harmonizes.

Apropos — as the living American Poets are in process of ‘broidery, would it not be well to know where their worsteds are deficient, that they may shop up their lacking threads in the Broadway of Contemplation? Will not some of our several sleeping female geniuses — (intellectual dolce-far-nientes of whom we know at least a capable dozen) — take tip the American Poets and go through them with a discriminating bodkin, shewing what colors lack replenishing? It would serve the poetry of Bryant-dom — the present passing age in which this faultless poet is the flower in most palpable relief. Come, ladies! tell us what Lowell (whose fame is being worked just now) had better thread his inspired needle with! Tell us what Longfellow is out of. Tell us whether Halleck has done enough to cover the pattern, and whether some others had'nt better unravel and work it all over again! At any rate, turn up their frames of immortality and shew us the wrong side! Let them mend, if they like,