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and gives a more sensuous property to his imagination than what simply inheres in it. Were it not that young misses have made the phrase of equivocal meaning, we would call him "a beautiful poet." He has a feeling exquisitely fine for what is generally understood by the term beauty, that is, for actual, earthly beauty, idealized and refined by the imagination, embodied in graceful shapes, or beheld in that soft, dreamy light of fancy, which makes it more witching to the senses than when seen in bolder outlines. There is a slight dash of epicureanism in his conception of the quality, when his sentiment and sensations are commingled by his imagination; and a sense of luxury steals over the heart, in reading many of his apparently most spiritualized descriptions.

His sense of beauty, though uncommonly vivid, is not the highest of which the mind is capable. He has little conception of its mysterious spirit;—of that Beauty, of which all physical loveliness is but the shadow, which awes and thrills the soul into which it enters, and lifts the imagination into regions "to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil." His mind never appears oppressed, nor his sight dimmed, by its exceeding glory. He feels, and loves, and creates, what is beautiful; but he hymns no reverence, he pays no adoration, to the Spirit of Beauty. He would never exclaim with Shelley, "O awful Loveliness!"

We say this rather to make a distinction than to note a fault; to show how far the spiritual element in Longfellow's poetry is modified by the sensuous properties of his genius, than to blame him for the combination. Indeed, by a majority of critics and readers, this combination is deemed a high merit. If they found any

fault with Longfellow, it would be, that he is too transcendental. It is the cant nowadays, that poetry is soaring beyond the ken of us "poor humans." A poet, who occasionally dwells in abstract imaginations, is pelted with pet epithets, and accused of lacking human sympathy. This arises, we think, from a too narrow definition of the term. It is true, that men have a quicker sense of their relations to external nature and to each other than to God; to shows rather than to substances; and their hearts are more readily kindled by what is addressed to their blood and physical temperament, than by what speaks to their spiritual nature. Still, he must be a daring and somewhat impudent person, who decides upon the whole reach of human sympathies by the range of his own, and calls that meaningless and unprofitable which his own heart echoes feebly or not at all. Lust, falsehood, and intemperance, have been so often idealized by poets, and have found so ready a response from "human sympathies," that in some minds they have become significant of the whole meaning of the phrase. If the term human weakness, or criminality, were substituted for it in many cases, there would be a gain to the science of definition. Every man has a theory of human sympathies to fit his own tastes; and his system is often so sharp a satire on his moral perceptions, that he would manifest much more prudence in its concealment than in shouting it forth in the markets and public places of criticism.

The sympathies which Longfellow addresses are fine and poetical, but not the most subtle of which the soul is capable. The kindly affections, the moral sentiments, the joys, sorrows, regrets, aspirations, loves, and wishes of the heart, he has consecrated by new ideal forms and

ascriptions. He inculcates with much force that poetic stoicism which teaches us to reckon earthly evils at their true worth, and endure with patience what results inevitably from our condition, as in the "Psalm of Life," "Excelsior," "The Light of Stars," and in passages of other poems. "The Village Blacksmith" and "God's Acre" have a rough grandeur, and "Maidenhood" and "Endymion" a soft, sweet, mystical charm, which advantageously display the range of his powers. Perhaps "Maidenhood" is the most finely poetical of all his poems. Nothing of its kind can be more exquisitely beautiful than this delicate creation. It appears like the utterance of a dream. In "The Spanish Student," the affluence of his imagination in images of grace, grandeur, and beauty, is most strikingly manifested. The objection to it, as a play, is its lack of skill or power in the dramatic exhibition of character; but read merely as a poem cast in the form of dialogue, it is one of the most beautiful in American literature. None of his other. pieces so well illustrates all his poetical qualities, — his imagination, his fancy, his sentiment, and his manner. It seems to comprehend the whole extent of his genius.

To write good comic verse is a different thing from writing good comic poetry. A jest or a sharp saying may be easily made to rhyme; but to blend ludicrous ideas with fancy and imagination, and display in their conception and expression the same poetic qualities usually exercised in serious composition, is a rare distinction. Among American poets, we know of no one who excels HOLMES in this difficult branch of the art. Many of his pleasant lyrics seem not so much the offspring of wit, as of fancy and sentiment turned in a humorous direction. His manner of satirizing the foi

bles, follies, vanities, and affectations of conventional life, is altogether peculiar and original. He looks at folly and pretension from the highest pinnacle of scorn. They never provoke his indignation, for to him they are too mean to justify anger, and hardly worthy of petulance. His light, glancing irony, and fleering sarcasm, are the more effective, from the impertinence of his benevolent sympathies. He wonders, hopes, wishes, titters, and cries, with his victims. He practises on them the legerdemain of contempt. He kills with a sly stab, and proceeds on his way as if "nothing in particular” had happened. He picks his teeth with cool unconcern, while looking down on the captives of his wit, as if their destruction conferred no honor upon himself, and was unimportant to the rest of mankind. He makes them ridicule themselves, by giving a voice to their motions and manners. He translates the conceited smirk of the coxcomb into felicitous words. The vacant look and trite talk of the bore he links with subtle analogies. He justifies the egotist unto himself by a series of mocking sophisms. He expresses the voiceless folly and affectation of the ignorant and brainless by cunningly contrived phrases and apt imagery. He idealizes nonsense, pertness, and aspiring dulness. The movement of his wit is so swift, that its presence is known only when it strikes. He will sometimes, as it were, blind the eyes of his victims with diamond dust, and then pelt them pitilessly with scoffing compliments. He passes from the sharp, stinging gibe to the most grotesque exaggerations of drollery, with a bewildering rapidity.

Holmes is also a poet of sentiment and passion. "Old Ironsides," "The Steamboat," "Qui Vive," and numerous passages of "Poetry," display a lyrical fire

and inspiration which should not be allowed to decay for want of care and fuel. In those poems of fancy and sentiment, where the exceeding richness and softness of his diction seem trembling on the verge of meretricious ornament, he is preserved from slipping into Della Cruscanism by the manly energy of his nature, and his keen perception of the ridiculous. Those who know him only as a comic lyrist, as the libellous laureate of chirping folly and presumptuous egotism, would be surprised at the clear sweetness and skylark thrill of his serious and sentimental compositions.

Of Willis G. Clark, Mr. Griswold writes: "His metrical writings are all distinguished for a graceful and elegant diction, thoughts morally and poetically beautiful, and chaste and appropriate imagery." This praise is substantiated by the extracts which follow it. There is much purity and strength of feeling in many of Mr. Clark's poems. Though not marked by much power of imagination, they are replete with fancy and sentiment, and have often a searching pathos and a mournful beauty, which find their way quietly to the heart.

C. P. Cranch has worked with some success in the transcendental vein. The "Hours," "Stanzas," "My Thoughts," are specimens of the results of his labors. William Pitt Palmer, whose name we see occasionally flitting through the periodical world, has written a poem on "Light," in the stanza of Shelley's "Cloud," far superior in diction and imagery to a large portion of our miscellaneous poetry. Mr. Griswold would have done well to place him in the body of the volume, instead of the Appendix. He is worthy of a more prominent station than he occupies.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER is one of our most char

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