Text: N. P. Willis (?), Review of Arthur Cleveland Cox, Halloween, a Romaunt, Evening Mirror (New York), January 23, 1845, vol. 1, no. 90, p. 1, col. 6

[page 1, column 6, continued:]

Literary.

Halloween, a Romaunt; with lays mediation and devotional. By the author of “Christian Ballads.”

There is a strange echo-ishness about these pieces. As we read on, praising sometimes the smoothness of the verse, and sometimes the piety of the sentiment we are unavoidably reminded of poet after poet whose verses are better known to us that those of Mr. Arthur Cleveland Cox, who is understood to be “the author of Christian Ballads.” T. H. Bayly, Pinckney, Moore, Bishop, Heber, Percival, Muhlenberg, Longfellow, Byron — we take a few names in the order is which they occur to us — recur unavoidably; and this, without quite making us set down the reverend author as a plagiarist. We consider him only as one of the many poets of our day who write because they have a taste for poetry. One must be very good-natured indeed, not to consider Byron's “There's not a joy this world can give,” as the original of Mr. Cox's “Oh! where's the hope like morning's star;” and the attentive reader will find resemblances equally obvious throughout the volume. Yet there is a quaintness in several of the pieces a kind of antique elegance, such as grows naturally from much reading of the elder English. And Mr. C. will, perhaps, remind us that, according to Coleridge, “To criticize such trifles, shows nothing, except that you are not the person for whom they were written,” and we forbear; citing, however, one little thing, as a favorable specimen of the whole, and as being less known that some other of the shorter pieces.

CANZONET.