Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), June 7, 1845, vol. 1, no. 23, p. ???-???

[page 362, column 2, continued:]

MAGAZINES AND REVIEWS.

THE DEMOCRATIC Review for June, is illustrated by a portrait of M. B. Lamar, of Texas. It contains a long poem by Whittier; a spirited paper on Oregon, by D. D. Field; a peculiarly unintelligible essay on Emerson, by a “Disciple;” an article by J. T. Headly, and a very pleasant collection of miscellanies, besides reviews and critical notices.

HUNT’S MAGAZINE, has its usual variety of excellent papers on commerce and political economy, and an able article on the commercial associations of France and England, by Henry C. Carr, of Philadelphia.

THE AMERICAN REVIEW contains two articles of unusual force for a magazine; the “Mystery of Iniquity,” continued from the last number, by Dr. Bacon, and an essay on American Letters, by Mr. Johnson, the author, we believe, of the literary notices in the National Intelligencer. The essay is written with vigor and, to a very great extent, with discrimination; but the writer betrays an inexcusable ignorance [page 364:] of his subject, or a very reprehensible prejudice against American authors. As a specimen of his feeling for poetry, we quote his concluding paragraph.

“Still there is some comfort. Verse is daily getting into disrepute, which delights me. There is nothing of which a London or New York bookseller is so shy. Shortly we trust to see it abandoned to tailors and man-milliners, as congenial to their pursuits alone, and employed to popularize, as it is already adequately doing, patent blacking, hoarhound candy and quack medicines. They who rhyme upon these subjects give us hopes, for they are the only ones we see who are equal to their subjects.”

This is decidedly cool, considering that the editor of the Review is himself the author of the longest American poem which has been published. The new Johnson has something of the imperative manner of his great namesake. He is evidently not a person to spoil a joke for relation sake. Ne sutor ultra crepidam, however. We regret, for the Review's sake, that so absurd an article has been admitted into its columns.