Text: Anonymous, “American Poetry,” Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country (London, UK), vol. XLII, whole no. 247, July 1850, pp. 9-25

[page 9:]

AFTER the Americans had established their political nationality beyond cavil, and taken a positive rank among the powers of the civilized world, they still remained subject to the reproach, that in the worlds of Art, Science, and Literature, they had no national existence. Admitting, or, at any rate, feeling, the truth of this taunt, they bestirred themselves resolutely to produce a practical refutation of it. Their first and fullest success was, as might be expected from their notoriously utilitarian character, in practical inventions. In oratory, notwithstanding a tendency to more than Milesian floridness and hyperbole, they have taken no mean stand among the free nations of Christendom. In history, despite the disadvantages arising from the scarcity of large libraries, old records, and other appliances of the historiographer, they have produced some books which are acknowledged to be well worthy a place among our standard works, and which have acquired, not merely an English, but a Continental reputation. In the fine arts, notwithstanding obviously still [column 2:] greater impediments — the want at home, not only of great galleries and collections, but of the thousand little symbols and associations that help to educate the artist — the consequent necessity of going abroad to seek all that the student requires — they have still made laudable progress. The paintings of Washington Allston are the most noteworthy lions in Boston; the statues of Powers command admiration even in London. In prose fiction, the sweet sketches of Irving have accrued a renown second only to that of the agreeable essayists whom he took for his models, while the Indian and naval romances of Cooper are purchased at liberal prices by the chary bibliopoles of England, and introduced to the Parisian public by the same hand which translated Walter Scott. In poetry alone they are still palpably inferior: no world-renowned minstrel has yet arisen in the New Atlantis, and the number of those versifiers who have attained a decided name and place among the lighter English literature of their day, or whose claims to the title of poet are acknowledged in all [page 10:] sections of their own country, is but small.

If we come to inquire into the causes of this deficiency, we are apt at first to light upon several reasons why it should not exist. In the first place, there is nothing unpoetical about the country itself, but everything highly the reverse. All its antecedents and traditions, its discovery, its early inhabitants, its first settlement by civilized men, are eminently romantic. It is not wanting in battle-grounds, or in spots hallowed by recollections and associations of patriots and sages. The magnificence of its scenery is well known. The rivers of America are at the same time the most beautiful and the most majestic in the world: the sky of America, though dissimilar in hue, may vie in loveliness with the sky of Italy. No one who has floated down the glorious Hudson (even amid all the un-ideal associations of a gigantic American steamer), who has watched the snowy sails — so different from the tarry, smoky canvass of European craft — that speck that clear water; who has noticed the faultless azure and snow of the heaven above, suggesting the highest idea of purity, the frowning cliffs that palisade the shore, and the rich masses of foliage that overhang them, tinged a thousand dyes by the early autumn frost — no one who has observed all this, can doubt the poetic capabilities of the land.

A seeming solution, indeed, presents itself in the business, utilitarian character of the people; and this solution would probably be immediately accepted by very many of our readers. Brother Jonathan thinks and talks of cotton, and flour, and dollars, and the ups and downs of stocks. Poetry doesn’t pay: he cannot appreciate, and does not care for it. Let me get something for myself,’ he says, like the churl in Theocritus. Let the gods whom he invokes reward the poet. What do we want with more verse? We have Milton and Shakespeare (whether we read them or not). He is the poet for me who asks me for nothing; and so the poor Muses wither (or as Jonathan himself might say, wilt) away, and perish from inanition and lack of sympathy. Very [column 2:] plausible; but now for the paradox. So far from disliking, or underrating, or being indifferent to poetry, the American public is the most eager devourer of it, in any quantity, and of any quality; nor is there any country in which a limited capital of inspiration will go farther. Let us suppose two persons, both equally unknown, putting forth a volume of poems on each side of the Atlantic; decidedly the chances are, that the American candidate for poetic fame will find more readers, and more encouragement in his country, than the British in his. Very copious editions of the standard English poets are sold every year, generally in a form adapted to the purses of the million; to further which end they are frequently bound two or three in a volume (Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, for instance, is a favourite combination). Even bardlings like Pollok enjoy a large number of readers and editions. Nor is there — notwithstanding the much-complained-of absence of an international copyright law — any deficiency of home supply for the market. Writing English verses, indeed, is as much a part of an American's education, as writing Latin verses is of an Englishman's, — recited poems always holding a prominent place among their public collegiate exercises; about every third man, and every other woman of the liberally-educated classes, writes occasional rhymes, either for the edification of their private circle, or the poets'-corner of some of the innumerable newspapers that encumber the land; and the number of gentlemen and ladies one meets who have published a volume of Something and Other Poems, is perfectly astounding.

The true secret seems to be, that the Americans, as a people, have not received that education which enables a people to produce poets. For, however true the poeta nascitur adage may be negatively of individuals, it is not true positively of nations. The formation of a national poetic temperament is the work of a long education, and the developement of various influences. A peculiar classicality of taste, involving a high critical standard, seems necessary, among the moderns, to high poetic [page 11:] production; and such a taste has not yet been formed in America. True, there are kinds of poetry — the Ballad and the Epic, which, so far as we can trace them, are born, Pallaslike, full-grown; which sound their fullest tone in a nation's infancy, and are but faintly echoed in its maturity. But there are numbers in which lisps the infancy, not of a nation merely, but of a race. And the Americans were an old race though a young nation. They began with too much civilization for the heroic school of poetry: they have not yet attained enough cultivation for the philosophic.

If this be not the right theory of American poetical deficiency, it remains only for us to take the line which many American critics really do* — to deny the fact itself — to maintain that the American poetry of the present day is at least as good as the English; that Marco Bozzuris is on a par with the Battle of the Baltic, or any other pet lyric of Campbell's; that Thanatopsis goes a-head of anything in the Excursion; that the Raven is considerably better than Locksley Hall, and Evangeline beats the Eve of St. Agnes ‘all to smash.’ And may it not be so after all? Really the answer is not so easy to put into words, however, obvious it may be to the minds of all of us. It is a very delicate matter to be judges in our own case. And an appeal to a third party, the French critics, for instance, would still be open to exceptions. It might be said that a writer in verse is slowly read and understood by those who speak a foreign language; that the necessity of waiting for a translation is a sore impediment to the growth of his fame abroad; that some of our poets would come off but badly if judged by this standard. How should we be prepared, it might be asked, to accept Tennyson's French reputation as a test of his place on Parnassus?

Making all allowances for the difficulty, we think there is one proof which the most ferociously patriotic ‘States-Man’ must admit. American [column 2:] productions in the other branches of literature have been received with no petty jealousy or niggard praise. The sober histories of Prescott and Bancroft; the romantic fictions of Irving and Cooper; the vivid sea-sketches of Dana and Melville, have all been deservedly approved and read by a British public, nay, some of them have acquired an English reputation at least simultaneous with, if not absolutely prior to, their native renown. Why should American poets alone be treated with injustice? Or is the public of England competent to decide in all other branches of literature, and incompetent only in this? But, in truth, the infancy of American poetry is clear to any candid and well-informed man from one single quality, setting all others out of the question — its character of imitation. Very few of the Transatlantic bards show distinctive features of originality, either in thought or expression. Take out some half-dozen from the ninety and more tenants of Mr. Griswold's poetical menagerie, and the verses of the rest might be shaken up promiscuously and re-distributed among them without its making much difference. The authors might possibly discriminate between their respective productions, but we doubt very much if the readers could. And even among the few selected poets, we should find at least as many reminiscences excited as new suggestions supplied. Thus Halleck reminds us sometimes of Byron, and more frequently of his favourite Campbell; Bryant brings up associations of Wordsworth, with an occasional dash, or rather dilution, of Collins, Whittier has evidently studied Macaulay's ballads, and so on. Poe and Longfellow perhaps exhibit the most originality of thought, and marked expression in language, of any whom the volume contains; yet the former often shows the direct influence of Tennyson, Miss Barrett, and the Keats’ school generally, while the latter's quaint and pretty verses are occasionally redolent of the earlier English sacred poets. [page 12:]

Among the proximate influences which impede the poetic progress of the Americans, one of the most evident, as well as one of the most active, is the great deficiency of wise and independent criticism. The tendencies of American reviewers are to undeviating eulogy — in the words of one of their number, they consider that ‘books, like men, should be judged by their goodness rather than their badness’ — doubtless a very charitable and engaging rule, but one likely to be productive of unfortunate consequences to the innocent who invariably adopts it in judging of either books or men. One cause of this erroneous theory and practice of criticism we have already hinted at; another is to be found in the adroit system of puffery adopted by the large American publishing-houses; and a mis-directed national vanity has, probably, its share in producing the effect. It is customary for these writers to boast, with much self-complacency, of the superiority of their ‘soft sawder’ over the condemnatory tone familiar to English reviewers. Certainly one of the most captivating of democratic fallacies is the idea that excellence can be best obtained by lowering the standard of it; but men of critical pretension might at least recollect, that if nil admirari is a deadening and chilling mistake, omne admirari is as dangerous an error the other way; that if the former is the mark of a blasé and a misanthrope, the latter is equally the attribute of the rustic who, on his first visit to town, takes all the tinsel he sees in the streets for gold, all the stucco for stone, and all the ‘ladies fair and free’ for great women of fashion.

To estimate the respective merits of the numerous American candidates for poetic fame, is a task not easily accomplished to the satisfaction of the reviewer, and still harder to achieve without giving grave offence to the parties most immediately interested. We have already adverted to the multiplicity of versifiers. When Halleck said of New York, —

he rather understated than exaggerated the fact. Mr. Griswold, besides the ninety regular poets in his [column 2:] collection, gives an appendix of about seventy fugitive pieces by as many authors; and bitter complaints have been made against him in various quarters for not including some seventy, or a hundred and seventy more, ‘who,’ it is said, and probably with truth, ‘have as good a right to be there as many of those admitted.’ Still it is possible to pick out a few of general reputation, whom literati from all parts of the Union would agree in sustaining as specimens of distinguished American poets, though they would differ in assigning their relative position. Thus, if the Republic had to choose a laureate, Boston would probably deposit a nearly unanimous vote for Longfellow; the suffrages of New York might be divided between Bryant and Halleck; and the southern cities would doubtless give a large majority for Poe. But these gentlemen, and some three or four more, would be acknowledged by all as occupying the first rank. Perhaps, on the whole, the preponderance of native authority justifies us in heading the list with Bryant, who, at any rate, has the additional title of seniority in authorship, if not in actual years.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT is, as we learn from Mr. Griswold, about fifty-five years old, and was born in Massachusets [[Massachusetts]], though his literary career is chiefly associated with New York, of which State he is a resident. With a precocity extraordinary, even in a country where precocity is the rule instead of the exception, he began to write and publish at the age of thirteen, and has, therefore, been full forty years before the American public, and that not in the capacity of poet alone, — having for more than half that period edited the Evening Post, one of the ablest and most respectable papers in the United States, and the oldest organ, we believe, of the Democratic party in New York. He has been called, and with justice, a poet of nature. The prairie solitude, the summer evening landscape, the night wind of autumn, the waterbird flitting homeward through the twilight — such are the favourite subjects of inspiration. Thanatopsis, one of his most admired pieces, was written at the age of eighteen, and exhibits [page 13:] a finish of style, no less than a maturity of thought, very remarkable for so youthful a production.

Mr. Bryant's poems have been for some years pretty well known on this side the water, — better known, at any rate, than any other Transatlantic verses; on which account, being somewhat limited for space, we forbear to make any extracts from them.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK is also a New-Englander by birth and a New-Yorker by adoption. He is Bryant's contemporary and friend, but the spirit and style of his versification are very different; and so, it is said, are his political affinities. While Bryant is a bulwark of the Democracy, Halleck is reported to be not only an admirer of the obsolete Federalists, but an avowed Monarchist. To be sure, this is only his private reputation: no trace of such a feeling is observable in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism, social and political. In truth, the party classification of American literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in his writings anything countenancing their claim. upon him. His sketches of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; and the fourth book of his Knickerbocker is throughout a palpable satire on the administration of Thomas Jefferson, the great apostle of Democracy. Perhaps, however, he may since have changed his views. Willis, too, the ‘Free Penciller,’ who has been half his life prating about lords and ladies, and great people, and has become a sort of Jenkins to the fashionable life of New York; he also is one of the Democratic party. Peradventure he may vote the ‘Locofoco ticket’ in the hope of propitiating the boys (as the canaille of American cities are popularly called), and saving his printing-office from the fate of the Italian Opera-house in Astor Place. But what shall we say of Cooper, who, by his anti-democratic opinions, has made himself one of the most unpopular men in his country, and whose recent political novels rival the writings of Judge [column 2:] Haliburton in the virulence as well as the cleverness of their satire upon Republican institutions? He, too, is a Democrat. To us, who are not behind the curtain, these things are a mystery incapable of explanation. To return to our present subject. Halleck made his début in the poetical world by some satirical pieces called The Croakers, which created as much sensation at their appearance as the anonymous Salmagundi which commenced Irving's literary career. These were succeeded by Fanny, a poem in the Don Juan metre. Fanny has no particular plot or story, but is a satirical review of all the celebrities, literary, fashionable, and political, of New York at that day (1821). And the satire was probably very good at the time and in the place; but, unfortunately for the extent and permanence of its reputation, most of these celebrities are utterly unknown, not merely beyond the limits of the Union, but beyond those of New York. Among all the personages enumerated we can find but two names that an European reader would be likely to know anything about, — Clinton and Van Buren. Nay, more, in the rapid growth and change of things American, the present generation of New Yorkers are likely to lose sight of the lions of their immediate progenitors; and unless some Manhattanese scholiast should write a commentary on the poem in time, its allusions, and with them most of its wit, will be in danger of perishing entirely. What we can judge of in Fanny are one or two graceful lyrics interspersed in it, though even these are marred by untimely comicality and local allusions. The nominal hero, while wandering about at night after the wreck of his fortunes, hears a band playing outside a public place of entertainment. It must have been a better band than that which now, from the Museum opposite the Astor House, drives to frenzy the hapless stranger; for it incites the ruined stock-jobber, not the most poetical of characters, to commit verse with this result: —

We will stop here, and refrain from quoting the unsentimental couplet which concludes the piece.

In Halleck's subsequent productions the influence of Campbell is more perceptible than that of Byron, and with manifest advantage. It may be said of his compositions, as it can be affirmed of few American verses, that they have a real innate harmony, something not dependent on the number of syllables in each line, or capable of being dissected out into feet, but growing in them, as it were, and created by the fine ear of the writer. Their sentiments, too, are exalted and ennobling; eminently genial and honest, they stamp the author for a good man and true, — [column 2:] Nature's aristocracy. In most of his poems these pleasing characteristics are conspicuous; in none more so than his eulogy on his deceased friend and fellow-poet, Drake: —

The last rhyme but one is imperfect; but such minor defects are readily overlooked in the genuine simplicity and manly pathos of the lines. Burns is still more to our taste, but too long to quote here. His most popular poem is Marco Bozzuris. Bozzaris was a Greek chieftain who fell in the war of independence. The subject is a good one and worthily treated, though marred by an unfortunate tautology at the close: —

Spirited and harmonious stanzas these: —

For some unexplained reason Halleck has not written, or at least not published, anything new for several years, though continually solicited to do so; for he is a great favourite with his countrymen, especially with the New-Yorkers. His time, however, has been by no means passed in idleness. Fashionable as writing is in America, it is not considered desirable or, indeed, altogether reputable, that the poet should be only a poet. Halleck has been in business most of his life; and was lately head-clerk of the wealthy merchant, John Jacob Astor, who left him a handsome annuity. This was increased by Mr. Astor's son and heir, a man of well-known liberality; so that between the two there is a chance of the poet's being enabled to ‘meditate the tuneful Muse’ for the remainder of his days free from all distractions of business.

LONGFELLOW, the pet poet of Boston, is a much younger man than either Bryant or Halleck, and has made his reputation only within the last twelve years, during which time he has been one of the most noted lions of American Athens. The city of Boston, as every one knows who has been there, or who has met with any book or man emanating from it, claims to be the literary metropolis of the United States, and assumes the slightly-pretending sobriquet just quoted. The American Athenians have their thinking and writing done for them by a coterie whose distinctive characteristics are Socinianism [column 2:] in theology, a præter-Puritan prudery in ethics, a German tendency in metaphysics, and throughout all a firm persuasion that Boston is the fountain-head of art, scholarship, and literature for the western world, and particularly that New York is a Nazareth in such things, out of which can come nothing good. For the Bostonians, who certainly cultivate literature with more general devotion, if not always with more individual success than the New Yorkers, can never forgive their commercial neighbours for possessing by birth the two most eminent prose-writers of the country — Irving and Cooper; and, by adoption, two of the leading poets — Bryant and Halleck. Nor are the good people of the ‘Empire State’ slow to resent these exhibitions of small jealousy; but, on the contrary, as the way of the world is, they are apt to retort by greater absurdities. So shy are they of appearing to be guided by the dicta of their eastern friends, that to this day there is scarcely man or woman on Manhattan Island who will confess a liking for Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett Browning, or Robert Browning, simply because these poets were taken up and patronized (metaphorically speaking, of course) by the ‘Mutual Admiration Society’ of Boston.

The immediate influences of this camaraderie are highly flattering and apparently beneficial to the subject of them, but its ultimate effects are most injurious to the proper developement of his powers. When the merest trifles that a man throws off are inordinately praised, he soon becomes content with producing the merest trifles. Longfellow has grown unaccustomed to do himself justice. Half his volumes are filled up with translations; graceful and accurate, indeed; but translations, and often from originals of very moderate merit. His last original poem, Evangeline,* is a sort of pastoral in hexameters. The resuscitation of this classical metre had a queer effect upon the American quidnuncs. Some of the critics evidently believed it to be a bran-new metre invented for the nonce by the author, a delusion which they of the Mutual Admiration’ rather winked at; and the parodists [page 16:] who endeavoured to ridicule the new measure were evidently not quite sure whether seven feet or nine made a hexameter.

It is really to be regretted that Longfellow has been cajoled into playing these tricks with himself, for his earlier pieces were works of much promise, and, had they been worthily followed out, might have entitled him to a high place among the poets of the language. Take, as a specimen, this delicious bit of quiet landscape, which opens the prelude to his Voices of the Night: —

Most of his poems have a vein of melancholy — not despairing, but resigned — melancholy running through them: their general tone and moral may be summed up in two of his own lines: —

Of such a cast is

The Goblet of Life.

Longfellow's poetry, whenever he really lays himself out to write poetry, has a definite idea and purpose in it — no small merit now-a-days. His versification is generally harmonious, and he displays a fair command of metre. Sometimes he takes a fancy to an obsolete or out-of-the-way stanza; one of his longest and best poems, The Skeleton in Armor, is exactly in the measure of Drayton's fine ballad on Agincourt, —

His chief fault is an over-fondness for simile and metaphor. He seems to think indispensable the introduction [page 17:] into everything he writes of a certain (or sometimes a very uncertain) number of these figures. Accordingly his poems are crowded with comparisons, sometimes very pretty and pleasing, at others so farfetched that the string of tortured images which lead off Alfred de Musset's bizarre Ode to the Moon can hardly equal them. Endymion, a very sweet little poem, begins thus: —

In Evangeline the stars are the thoughts of God in the heavens,’ and the trees wrestle with the wind like Jacob of old with the angel; and in another poem the moon going up among the stars is compared to a virgin martyr treading an ordeal through bars of hot iron! But indeed this making figures (whether from any connexion with the calculating habits of the people or not) is a terrible propensity of American writers, whether of prose or verse. Their orators are especial sinners in this respect. We have seen speeches stuck as full of metaphors (more or less mixed) as Burton's Anatomy is of quotations.

Such persons as know from experience that literary people are not always in private life what their writings would betoken, that Miss Bunions do not precisely resemble March violets, and mourners upon paper may be laughers over mahogany — such persons will not be surprized to hear that the Longfellow is a very jolly fellow, a lover of fun and good dinners, and of an amiability and personal popularity that have aided not a little the popularity of his writings in verse and prose — for he writes prose too, prettier, quainter, more figurative, and more poetic if anything, than his poetry. He is also a professor at Harvard college, near Boston.

EDGAR A. POE, like Longfellow and most of the other American poets, wrote prose as well as poetry, having produced a number of wild, grotesque, and powerfully-imagined [column 2:] tales; unlike most of them he was a literary man pur sang. He depended for support entirely on his writings, and his career was more like the precarious existence of an author in the time of Johnson and Savage than the decent life of an author in our own day. He was a Southerner by birth, acquired a liberal education, and what the French call ‘expansive’ tastes, was adopted by a rich relative, quarrelled with him, married ‘for love,’ and lived by editing magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York; by delivering lectures (the never-failing last resort of the American literary adventurer); by the occasional subscriptions of compassionate acquaintances or admiring friends — any way he could — for eighteen or nineteen years: lost his wife, involved himself in endless difficulties, and finally died in what should have been the prime of his life, about six months ago. His enemies attributed his untimely death to intemperance; his writings would rather lead to the belief that he was an habitual taker of opium. If it make a man a poet to be

Poe was certainly a poet. Virulently and ceaselessly abused by his enemies (who included a large portion of the press), he was worshipped to infatuation by his friends. The severity of his editorial criticisms, and the erratic course of his life, fully account for the former circumstance; the latter is probably to be attributed, in part at least, to pity for his mishaps.

If Longfellow's poetry is best designated as quaint, Poe's may most properly be characterized as fantastic. The best of it reminds one of Tennyson, not by any direct imitation of particular passages, but by its general air and tone. But he was very far from possessing Tennyson's fine ear for melody. His skill in versification, sometimes striking enough, was evidently artificial: he overstudied metrical expression, and overrated its value so as sometimes to write, what were little better than nonsense-verses, for the sake of the rhythm. He had an incurable propensity for refrains, and when he had once caught a harmonious cadence, [page 18:] appeared to think it could not be too often repeated.

Poe's name is usually mentioned in connexion with The Raven, a poem which he published about five years ago. It had an immense run, and gave rise to innumerable parodies — those tests of notoriety if not of merit. And certainly it is not without a peculiar and fantastic excellence in the execution, while the conception is highly striking and poetic. The author in his lonely [column 2:] chamber, mourning over his lost love and his departed hopes, and vainly seeking comfort in pondering Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, is aroused by what he takes for the knock of a visitor at his door. But no visitor is there. While perplexed by the mysterious knocking, he hears the sound repeated, and this time evidently at the window, to which unwonted place of ingress he accordingly betakes himself: — [full page:]

Half-amused and half-excited by this eccentric appearance, the student makes bold to question the ‘ungainly bird’ as to his name and errand, — not so unreasonable a proceeding, since ravens sometimes talk; and this one talks to the extent of one word, [column 2:] ‘Nevermore,’ which it pertinaciously repeats in answer to every query, and the sad negation falls chilling and ominous on all the desolate man's hopes of forgetfulness or consolation: — [full page:]

The peculiar versification of the poem — showy and not ineffective — is exhibited in the above stanzas. The metre is a modification of that used in the conclusion of Miss Barrett's [column 2:] Lady Geraldine. This is evident, not merely from a general comparison of the two, but from some particular resemblances of rhyme and phrase, e. g.: — [full page:]

The triple rhyme is introduced from one of his earlier ballads-a rather pretty one-on a girl who has [column 2:] forgotten her dead lover, and sold herself for rank and wealth: — [page 19:]

And his weakness for refrain induced the repetition of the last line in each verse.

This much notice seems due to a poem which created such a sensation in the author's country. To us it seems by no means the best of Poe's productions; we much prefer, for instance, this touching allegory, which was originally embodied in one of his wildest tales: —

The Haunted Palace.

In the very same volume with this are some verses that Poe wrote when a boy, and some that a boy might be ashamed of writing. Indeed the secret of rejection seems to be little known to Transatlantic bards. The rigidness of self-criticism which led Tennyson to ignore and annihilate, so far as in him lay, full one-half of his earlier productions, would hardly be understood by them. This is particularly unlucky in the case of Poe, whose rhymes sometimes run fairly away with him, till no purpose or meaning is traceable amid a jingle of uncommon and fine-sounding words. Thus from ‘Ulalume,’ which seems, so far as any coherent intention can be made out of it, to be a rhapsody on his wife's death, we take these two stanzas as really the most intelligible in it: —

The rhyme of these lines may be good enough, but where is the reason of them?

Though Poe was a Southerner, his poetry has nothing in it suggestive of his peculiar locality. It is somewhat remarkable that the slaveholding, which has tried almost all other means of excusing or justifying itself before the world, did not think of ‘keeping a poet,’ and engaging the destitute author from its own territory to sing the praises of ‘the patriarchal institution.’ And it would [page 20:] have been a fair provocation that the Abolitionists had their poet already. Indeed several of the northern poets have touched upon this subject; Longfellow, in particular, has published a series of spirited and touching anti-slavery poems: but the man who has made it his specialité is JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, a Quaker, literary editor of the National Era, an Abolition and ultra-Radical paper, which, in manful despite of [column 2:] Judge Lynch, is published at Washington, between the slave-pens and the capitol. His verses are certainly obnoxious to the jurisdiction of that notorious popular potentate, being unquestionably ‘inflammatory, incendiary, and insurrectionary, as the Southern formula goes, in a very high degree. He makes passionate appeals to the Puritan spirit of New England, and calls on her sons to utter their voice, — [full page:]

and protest against the shocking anomaly of slavery in a free country. At times, when deploring the death of some fellow-labourer in the cause, he falls into a somewhat subdued strain, though even then there is more of spirit and fire in his verses than one naturally expects from a follower of George Fox; but on such occasions he displays a more careful and harmonious versification than is his wont. There is no scarcity of these elegies in his little volume, The Abolitionists, even when they escape the attentions of the high legal functionary already alluded to, not being apparently a long-lived class.

One of his best pieces is founded on the fearful story (already commemorated in verse by Milman) of the slave-ship smitten by ophthalmia. The crew, after throwing over their diseased cargo, nevertheless all lost their sight except one man, on the preservation of whose vision their fate depended.

Toujours perdrix palls in poetry as in cookery; we grow tired after awhile of invectives against governors of slave-states and mercenary parsons, and dirges for untimely perished Abolitionists. The wish suggests itself that Whittier would not always

but sometimes turn his powers in another direction. Accordingly, it is a great relief to find him occasionally trying his hand on the early legends of New England and Canada, which do not suffer in such ballads as this: —

We have been rather liberal in our extracts from Whittier, because he is less known than several other Western bards to the English reader, and because we think him entitled to stand higher on the American Parnassus than most of his countrymen would place him. His faults — harshness and want of polish — are evident; but there is more life, and spirit, and soul in his verses, than in those of eight-ninths of Mr. Griswold's immortal ninety.

From political verse (for the Antislavery agitation must be considered quite as much a political as a moral warfare) the transition is natural to satire and humorous poetry. Here we find no lack of matter, but a grievous short-coming in quality. The Americans are no contemptible humorists in prose, but their fun cannot be set to verse. They are very fond of writing parodies, yet we have scarcely ever seen a good parody of American origin. And their satire is generally more distinguished for personality or buffoonery than wit. Halleck's Fanny looks as if it might be good, did we only know something of the people satirized in it. The reputed comic poet of the country at present is OLIVER WENDALL HOLMES, a physician. Whether it was owing to the disappointment caused by hearing too much in his praise beforehand we will not pretend to say, but it certainly did seem to us that Dr. Holmes's efforts in this line must originally have been intended to act upon his patients emetically. After a conscientious perusal of the doctor, the most readable, and about the only presentable thing we can find in him, is this bit of serio-comic:

The Last Leaf.

But within the last three years there has arisen in the United States a satirist of genuine excellence, who, however, besides being but moderately appreciated by his countrymen, seems himself, in a great measure, to have mistaken his real forte. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, one of the Boston coterie, has for some time been publishing verses, which are by the coterie duly glorified, but which are in no respect distinguishable from the ordinary level of American poetry, except that they combine an extraordinary pretension to originality, with a more than usually palpable imitation of English models. Indeed, the failure was so manifest, that the American literati seem, in this one case, to have rebelled against Boston dictation; and there is sufficient internal evidence that such of them as do duty for critics handled Mr. Lowell pretty severely. Violently piqued at this, and simultaneously conceiving a disgust for the Mexican war, he was impelled by both feelings to take the field as a satirist: to the former, we owe the Fable for Critics; [page 23:] to the latter, the Biglow Papers. It was a happy move, for he has the rare faculty of writing clever doggerel. Take out the best of Ingoldsby, Campbell's rare piece of fun The Friars of Dijon, and perhaps a little of Walsh's Aristophanes, and there is no contemporary verse of the class with which Lowell's may not fearlessly stand a comparison; for, observe, we are not speaking of mock heroics like Bon Gaultier's, which are only a species of parody, but of real doggerel, the Rabelaiesque of poetry. The Fable is somewhat on the Ingoldsby model, — that is to say, a good part of its fun consists in queer rhymes, double, treble, or polysyllabic; and it has even Barham's fault — an occasional over-consciousness of effort, and calling on the reader to admire, as if the tour de force could not speak for itself: e.g. —

But Ingoldsby's rhymes will not give us a just idea of the Fable until we superadd Hook's puns; for the fabulist has a pleasant knack of making puns — outrageous and unhesitating ones — exactly of the kind to set off the general style of his verse. The sternest critic could hardly help relaxing over such a bundle of them as are contained in Apollo's lament over the ‘treeification’ of his Daphne.

Or in this catalogue of a graveyard and its contents, —

The Fable is a sort of review in verse of American poets. Much of the Boston leaven runs through it; the wise men of the East are all glorified intensely, while Bryant and Halleck are studiously depreciated. But though thus freely exercising his own critical powers in verse, the author is most bitter against all critics in prose, and gives us a ludicrous picture of one, —

And this gentleman is finely shown up for his condemnatory predilections and inability to discern or appreciate beauties. The cream of the joke against him is, that being sent by Apollo to choose a lily in a flower-garden, he brings back a thistle as all he could find. The picture is a humorous one, but we are at a loss to conjecture who can have sat for it in America, where the tendency is all the other way, reviewers being apt to apply the butter of adulation with the knife of profusion to every [page 24:] man, woman, or child who rushes into print. Some of his complaints, too, against the critic sound very odd; as, for instance, that

Surely the very meaning of learning is that it is something which a man learns — acquires from other sources — does not originate in himself. But it is a favourite practice with Mr. Lowell's set to rail against dry learning and pedants, while at the same time there are no men more fond of showing off cheap learning than themselves: Lowell himself never loses an opportunity of bringing in a bit of Greek or Latin. Our readers must have known such persons — for, unfortunately, the United States has no monopoly of them — men who delight in quoting Latin before ladies, talking Penny-Magazine science in the hearing of clodhoppers, and preaching of high art to youths who have never had the chance of seeing any art at all. Then you will hear them say nothing about pedantry. But let a man be present who knows more Greek than they do, or who has a higher standard of poetry or painting or music, and wo be to him! Him will they persecute to the uttermost. What is to be done with such men but to treat them à la Shandon, ‘Give them Burton's Anatomy, and leave them to their own abominable devices?’

The Biglow Papers are imaginary epistles from a New-England farmer, and contain some of the best specimens extant of the Yankee,’ or New-England dialect, — better than Haliburton's, for Sam Slick sometimes mixes Southern, Western, and even English vulgarities with his Yankee. Mr. Biglow's remarks treat chiefly of the Mexican war, and subjects immediately connected with it, such as slavery, truckling of northeners to the south, &c. The theme is treated in various ways with uniform bitterness. Now he sketches a ‘Pious Editor's Creed,’ almost too daring in its Scriptural allusions, but terribly severe upon the venal fraternity, whose un-virtuous indignation must have been greatly moved by the stout satire of lines like these, — [column 2:]

At another time he sets one of Calhoun's pro-slavery speeches to music. The remarks of the great Nullifier form the air of the song, and the incidental remarks of honourable senators on the same side make up a rich chorus, their names supplying happy tags to the rhymes.

But best of all are the letters of his friend the returned volunteer, Mr. Birdofredom Sawyer, who draws a sad picture of the private soldier's life in Mexico. He had gone out with hopes of making his fortune.

But he was sadly disappointed, and equally so in his expectations of glory, which ‘never got so low down as the privates.’

But it is time to bring this notice to a close — not, however, that we have by any means exhausted the subject. For have we not already stated that there are, at the lowest calculation, ninety American poets, spreading all over the alphabet, from Allston, who is unfortunately dead, to Willis, who is fortunately living, and writing Court Journals for the ‘Upper Ten Thousand,’ as he has named the quasi-aristocracy of New York? And the lady-poets — the poetesses, what shall we say of them? Truly it would be ungallant to say anything ill of them, and invidious to single out a few among so many; therefore, it will be best for us to say — nothing at all about any of them.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 9:]

* 1. The Poets and Poetry of America. By Rufus Willmot Griswold. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart. 1843.

2. Bryant's Poems. New Edition. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart. 1849.

3. Fanny, with other Poems. By Fitz-Greene Halleck. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1845.

4. Voices of the Night. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Cambridge: J. Owen. 1840.

5. Ballads and Other Poems. Cambridge: J. Owen. 1842.

6. Poems. By John G. Whittier. Philadelphia: 1838.

7. The Raven and Other Poems. By Edgar A. Poe. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 1845.

8. A Fable for Critics. New York: G. P. Putnam. 1848.

9. The Biglow Papers. Cambridge: George Nichols. 1848.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 11:]

* We have before us an article which opens with this quiet assumption: — ‘The fact is as undeniable as it is generally acknowledged, that, since the death of Lord Byron, the best fugitive poetry of the United States has been greatly superior to that of England.’

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 15:]

* See Fraser's Magazine for March 1848, p. 295.