Text: T. L. C., “Letters from the North — Letter XVIII,” Times and Compiler (Richmond, VA), vol. 68, no. 8, January 9, 1846, p. 2, col. 5

[page 2, column 5:]

PRINCETON, Jan. 6th, 1846.

A Happy New Year to you! my dear Editors, and to all my excellent Virginia friends — especially to those “across the mountains,” who honor me by reading these letters — made somewhat readable, I trust, by help of your white paper and immaculate typography. It is a long time since I have had a moment's leisure to write you — It is a recreation occasionally to throw aside my books and chat a few minutes with you about literary matters. As for politics, trade, and breadstuffs, etc., you must go elsewhere. “The ooze of my brain goeth mainly to butter curiosity” (as that abominable Willis says) about books and book-makers.

The holyday season ha let loose such a swarm of new publications upon us that I have had no time to look at one half of them, much less to read them. I have seen no more tasteful volume among them all than the Philadelphia edition of Longfellow. I question if any other American poet, at present, would warrant such an outlay of morocco and gilding. He is read everywhere — the shilling edition of his “Voices of the Night” is to be seen in the dyed and discolored hands of the Lowell factory girls in the intervals of the loom and spindle.

Longfellow, if I recollect rightly, is a native of New England, and has passed several years of his life in Europe. On his return from one of his early tours he threw off a trashy book called “Outre Mer,” now to be found among the trunk-makers. He was for a time Professor in Bowdoin College, and now occupies the chair of Modern Languages in the ancient University of Harvard. — As I have taken occasion to say before, I cannot think Longfellow a great poet — even in the sense in which Keats or Campbell are great poet. He has not a profound soul, or a strong wing, or a tongue of fire. He is rather a thoughtful man than a deep thinker, if I may use a nice distinction once drawn by Whipple in one of his essays. His pieces are full of a quite, contemplative, and sometimes sorrowful spirit — ennobled by an earnest sympathy with the lofty and heroic in men and history. But the secret of his strength lies in his exquisite sense of the beautiful in expression. He is a consummate artist. I might waste a whole sheet in trying to give an idea of his remarkable power of rythm [[rhythm]] and “dulcet harmonies,” and not succeed as well as by simply quoting the following lines from his “Beleaguered City” — lines that appear to me to be unsurpassed for mournfully expressive beauty in the Saxon tongue:

Another of my favorites is the “Skeleton in Armor,” a bold dashing tale wrought into the most musical metre, and full of what I once heard Carlyle call “old Norse ferocity.” Motherwell could not have produced a finer specimen of Northern poetry than this verse:

His “Wreck of the Hesperus,” too, is a very perfect ballad. A man who is himself one of our best poets, tole me that when he read that for the first time he wept like a child. There is a sturdy, honest healthfulness in his portraiture of the “Village Blacksmith;”

that makes one's heart glow within him. No one could have drawn that face and those stalwart limbs who had not within himself a large humanity. I have no time to say more to-day about Longfellow — and not even a word about his “Hyperion,” which has lately been re-published in Boston in a style fit for the fingers of a Duchess.

I am happy to see that Boz is about giving us another sprightly cheerful Christmas story, called the “Cricket in the Hearth.” May it be equal to his “Christmas Carol,” which he has never excelled. It is but little more than ten years since, that Boz was running about in a seedy coat, through Pater Noster row, with the MS. of the Pickwick Papers, trying in vain to find a publisher. He at last prevailed on Chapman & Hall, print-sellers in the Strand, to bring them out in shilling numbers. They ‘took’ at once, and now C. & H, are large publishers, and Boz drives his carriage! He lies in a very respectable house, just out of Regent's Park, quite up to his income, I reckon. I once passed a delightful morning in his snug little octagonal study, on the mantel of which stood a minature [[miniature]] Pickwick and a Samivel, in effigy. His flow of talk is wonderful. It was an incessant stream of liveliness — he stopped only once to give his morning kiss to two black-eyed little Bozzes that came romping into the room. I wish he were out of the hands of Unitarianism.

That same house now publish Carlyle's books. By the way, his Cromwell is an astonishing work. It is useless to give any description of it. Some wag said that an edition would soon be published “with an interlinear translation.” It needs none certainly, except to dullards, and such, if there are any among your readers, had better let it alone.

One of the most admirable works that have appeared lately, is a small book called “Life in Earnest,” full of solemn and thoughtful precepts, to all who wish at this season for heart communings and reflection, to re-invigorate themselves, with something strong and bracing, instead of the enervating trash which the season generally calls forth. It is fit to stand on the same shelf with Taylor's “Holy Living and Dying.”

Within a few days, I have heard, by a paper from my friend Gough, that he is addressing immense crowds in Boston. He is received with loud applause. Well does he deserve it! The furious attacks of a “Five Point” press will only tend to bring out fresh testimonials to his integrity. Deacon Grant of Boston ha just published a letter in which he states that since Mr. G.'s reformation he has conscientiously cancelled his old debts, with interest, even some which had been outlawed. His benevolence has always been greater than his means. — There is a wise Providence, no doubt, in his trials — but they have not shaken my confidence in him, which I have formed from an intimacy of several months.

I see that the “Broadway Journal” has just changed hands, and that the “Dennis of American literature,” as Poe has been wittily styled — is to annoy the public, or the small portion of it who saw his paper — through its columns no longer. He signalized the close of his career by declaring lately that he considered Tennyson (the man whom he imitates) “the greatest poet that ever lived!” and by declaring farther that he was “willing to bear all the reproach this might call down on him.” His vanity might have spared itself this bravado, as men of sense have no time to waste, “reproaches on every fellow who chooses to seek notoriety by venting such swaggering absurdies [[absurdities]].”

Adieu! Thine,

T. L. C.