Text: William Gilmore Simms, “From Our Correspondent,” Southern Patriot (Charleston, SC), July 20, 1846, p. 2, cols. 3-4

[page 2, col. 3, continued:]

From our Correspondent.

NEW-YORK, July 15.

I do not know that there is any thing in the literary world to interest you. At this moment, every thing in letters is particularly dull. Some personal items may give you pleasure. Washington Irving is expected daily from Europe. It is not understood that he has been doing any thing lately. He has it is said, had a work on hand for some time, but delays its publication to more auspicious seasons. Miss J. Margaret Fuller, the author of “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” and several other works of contemplative morality — a woman of real ability and thought — is about to sail on a two years tour in Europe. Wiley & Putnam have in preparation, two pretty volumes from her pen, the subjects of which are chiefly drawn from art and literature. She was a writer for the “Dial,” and of those Boston Periodicals which our world styled transcendental, and the aim of which seems to have been spiritual progress. Mr. Cooper appears in a few days with a novel called “The Red Skins” — a title the taste of which seems very questionable. He is just now, we believe, at Philadelphia. His biographies of our naval heroes, of which two volumes have been published, have been quite successful, and deserved to be so. Mr. N. P. Willis, who is undoubtedly one of our most happy Magazine writers, is rusticating, we are told, in most unwonted obscurity. His chief literary employment seems to be in contributing in the form of correspondence, to one of the London Newspapers. His letters, which I have not seen, are said to be of the same staple with his well known productions of the same class and character, and to be equally worthy with them of the reader and himself. Fitz Greene Halleck is still banking, and likely to be so till the end of the chapter. The story of his getting up a newspaper was to those who know, mere nonsense. His poems, however, are about to undergo illustrations like those of Bryant and Longfellow. His publishers are Appleton & Co. Bryant is looking well, but doing nothing for poetry. He works all the week at the Evening Post, and hurries down on Saturday to his delightful farm, Spring Bank, Long Island. Goodwin, his son-in-law, is busy preparing the Autobiography of Goethe, — a work which is due, at once, to the claims of the author, and the desires of the public. It is for Wiley & Putnam's Library, Goodwin will give us a good translation. Among the petty excitements common to authorship is that which Mr. Edgar A. Poe is producing by his pencil sketches of the New York Literati in Godey's Lady's Magazine. He has succeeded most happily (if such was the object) in fluttering the pigeons of this dove cote. His sketches, of which we have seen but a few, are given to a delineation as well of the persons as of the performances of his subjects. Some of them are amusing enough. I am not prepared to say how true are his sketches, but they have caused no little rattling among the dry bones of our Grub street. Of Poe, as a writer, we know something. He is undoubtedly a man of very peculiar and very considerable genius —— but is irregular and exceedingly mercurial in his temperament. He is fond of mystifying in his stories, and they tell me, practises upon this plan even in his sketches; more solicitous, as they assert, of a striking picture than a likeness. Poe, himself, is a very good looking fellow. I have seen him on two or three occasions, and have enjoyed a good opportunity of examining him carefully. He [column 4:] is probably thirty three or four years old, some five feet eight inches in height, of rather slender person, with a good eye, and a broad intelligent forehead. He is a man, clearly, of sudden and uneven impulses, of great nervous susceptibility, and one whose chief misfortune is not to have been caught young and trained carefully. The efforts of his mind seem wholly spasmodic. He lacks habitual industry, I take it, which, in the case of the literary man who must look to his daily wits for his daily bread, is something of a deficiency. He, also, is in obscurity somewhere in the country, and sick, according to a report which reached me yesterday, of brain fever. By the way, the news from the West is that Henry R. Schoolcraft, the well known writer and Indian Agent has been murdered by a drunken savage at Sault de St. Marie. I trust that this report will turn out false. Schoolcraft's Algic Researches are of great value, and will rise in value as the aborignies [[aborigines]]disappear. He was for thirty years an Indian Agent under Government, married an Indian wife, and was admitted to all their mysteries. He was a gentleman of very respectable researches, considerable merit as a write and of great industry. He had but just completed an elaborate report upen [[upon]] the Indian tribes of the State of New York. His most elaborate and valuable works are “Algic Researches” and “Oneota.” We are pleased to see that Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of our most original writers, has been permitted to dip his spoon into the treasury dishes — having received some appointment in the Customs in New England. This is as it should be. Hawthorne's volume just published by Wiley & Putnam, “The Mosses from an old Manse,” is full of fresh and pleasant reading. The “Pictures of Italy, by Dickens, do not afford me pleasure. They seem laborious and strained. But they will be read on trust, — a sort of reading which never burdens the memory. A less artistical, but more readable book, is that just issued by Harper & Brothers, called “The Shores of the Mediterranean, by Francis Schroeder. It is light and sketchy, and if it taxes no thought, it at least provokes no dullness. It is a pleasant feature of these two volumes, the pictures which illustrate the most striking objects, from the pencil of the author. To those who travel there is no companion or auxiliary more commendable than the art of sketching. The on dit here is that a new “Punch” is about to be started in this city. We have heard something of the plan and the parties, but are permitted to say no more at present. They tell also of a new Monthly Magazine, to be sent forth from Manhattan, which is to confound and delight the natives. If if [[it]] appears under the management named for it, and with the designated list of contributors, it will not improbably effect this object.