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among the triflers of the age of Charles the First and Second; Cowley and Shenstone, among the garden-pastoral poets; and Rogers and Moore, among the vers du société poets of the present age; and such, it has always seemed to us, is Halleck among the poets of America. Differing widely from his good-natured puffing friends, who compare him with the greater poets, and from the general public, who buy his works by editions, we are yet disposed to consider him a man of genius and a poet; for no man save a poet could have written "Alnwick Castle," "Burns," and "Marco Bozzaris." To what class of poets he belongs, or the poetical value of the class, is another consideration, upon which we may hereafter dwell; at present it is enough for us to consider him as a poet simply, to investigate some of the merits and demerits of his poems, and, if possible, to discover their cause to do which we will glance over what little of his biography has been made known to the public. That it is not more full is to be regretted; for the lives and actions of all men, especially poets, depend oftentimes on apparently insignificant events, an ignorance of which is fatal | to a proper appreciation of their characWere we fully acquainted with the life of Halleck, the body and soul life of the man and poet, his poetry would strike us in other lights, and seem other and better than it is. As it is, however, we must do our best.

ters.

The author of " Fanny,”“ Burns,"" Marco Bozzaris," etc., says the Rev. Rufus Griswold, was born in the town of Guilford, Connecticut, in August, 1795: consequently he is now in his fifty-eighth year. It is said he evinced a taste for poetry, and wrote verses, at a very early period. What kind of poetry delighted his boyish taste, and what kind of verse emanated from his boyish pen, is open to conjecture: the last we venture to pronounce "most tolerable, and not to be endured," that being the cast of most juvenile verse. Nor is it much more difficult, we fancy, to determine the poets he read in youth, supposing his taste did not come to him by nature, like Dogberry's reading and writing. If he began to read poetry in his twelfth year and he could hardly have read it before he must have read Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and "Marmion," and Moore's "Odes and Epistles,"

and still later, his "Twopenny Post-bag," and “Fudge Family," besides the standard poets of the previous age, and the age of Elizabeth. These last, however, he would not be likely to admire much, or to imitate; the young seldom having taste enough to follow the old. rather delighting in the new ; consequently the new poet, like the rest of the world, was delighted with Scott and Moore; and their mingled influence, and the influence of Byron, as developed in "Beppo," and "Don Juan," both of which were published during Halleck's noviciate, pervaded his manner of thinking and writing. The versification of Scott and Moore, who were both masters of the octo-syllabic measure, is reproduced in "Alnwick Castle," and "Marco Bozzaris," and the ottiva rima of the Italian poets, first introduced into English by Byron, or rather by Frene, in his "Whistle-craft" poems, is reproduced, or, more strictly speaking, its style is reproduced-for Halleck wrote the verse in six lines instead of eight-in Fanny." Setting aside the fact of his borrowing other people's measures, which he had a right to do if he pleased, it is to be regretted that he borrowed their style with them—reflected their tendency to badinage and burlesque; neither of which qualities was natural to him, or worthy of his naturally serious genius. But of that more, perhaps, anon.

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In his eighteenth year, says Dr. Griswold again, Halleck removed to NewYork, where he has since resided; that is, up to the time of his (the doctor's) writing biographies of "The Poets of America." From his eighteenth year, we know next to nothing of the young poet; nor much, indeed, afterward; nor even to-day, though he is to be seen occasionally in our streets, healthy and rubicund. We should say he made a good use of his time in youth, as far as education went. He is said to be a good English scholar, beside being a proficient in several of the modern languages. There is a certain air of taste about his compositions which can only be the result of thorough scholarship. In 1819, his twenty-fourth year, we hear of his publishing what Dr. Griswold calls his "effusions," in the Evening Post, under the signatures of "Croaker," and "Croaker & Co." In the production of these pleasant satires, still says the biographical doctor, he was associated with Dr. Drake,

the author of "The Culprit Fay," a man of brilliant wit and delicate fancy, with whom he was long intimate. Drake died in 1820, and his friend soon wrote for the New-York Review, then edited by Bryant, the lines to Drake's memory, beginning, "Green be the turf above thee." What the Croaker poems were, if "The Recorder" and " The Epistles," included in some of the editions of Halleck, are not among the number, is more than we can say. They created a sensation, if that be anything in their favor. "The curiosity of the town," says William Leggett," was greatly excited to know by whom these poems had been written, and they were ascribed, at different times, to various literary gentlemen, while the real authors were for a time entirely unsuspected.”

Near the close of 1819, Halleck published "Fanny," his longest poem. The success of "Fanny," as far as readers and editions went for it is unsuccessful as a poem-was decisive. "Who," says one of the critics of the time,-"who has not read Fanny-both the first and second editions of it—that delightful bagatelle, which some unknown and highly-favored protégé of the muses has brought out, to turn care into mirth, gravity into light-heartedness, ennui into self-complacency, and pride, pedantry, affectation, extravagance, folly, and the first society,' into fun ?"

Fanny may be said to have established Halleck's reputation. In 1827, he published a small volume containing Alnwick Castle, Marco Bozzaris, and a few other poems which had previously appeared in various miscellanies. Between this volume and the publication of " Fanny," if we may credit passages in "Alnwick Castle" and Burns," Halleck visited Europe. In the former poem he says:

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"I've wander'd through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percies of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high heroic name."

And in the latter :

"I've stood beside the cottage bed,
Where the bard-peasant first drew breath,
A straw-thatched roof above his head,
A straw-wrought couch beneath.
"And I have stood beside the pile,

His monument, that tells to heaven
The homage of earth's proudest isle

To the bard-peasant given." England and Scotland then, if there be any truth in song, were thus visited by

Halleck. In 1836 he published another volume, or rather another edition of his poems, including all his serious pieces then written. What his occupation has been for so many years is not distinctly stated. He is said to have been engaged in commercial pursuits. In "The Poet's Daughter," one of his cleverist serio-comic poems, he classifies himself as being "in the cotton trade and sugar line." It is certain that he was for some years one of the superintendents of the affairs of John Jacob Astor. He must have been a good business man to have enjoyed the confidence of such a shrewd old capitalist. Yet Astor's leaving him a paltry legacy of two hundred dollars per annum, does not say much for his estimation of him, either as a man or poet. It was a shabby affair, make the best of it.

That Halleck has written so little is not to be wondered at, when we remember the circumstances of his life. That he was able to attend to his business and write poems at all is somewhat remarkable. Not that a poet cannot be a good business man if he likes, but being that he must soon cease to be anything else; for Apollo is jealous of Plutus, and Plutus is jealous of Apollo. Plotting, scheming, and overreaching one's rivals in trade; giving notes of hand at thirty, sixty, and ninety days, and paying the same when due; hanging about Wall-street, and talking the jargon of the brokers; sitting on three-legged stools, and balancing accounts from sunrise to sunset; adding up or subtracting rows of black figures in parallel red lines; being, in fact, a commercial man-either as head of the firm, partner, or silent partner, or even clerk or book-keeper,—is not the way to become, nor the way to remain a poet, even a poor one. That Halleck, and Sprague, and Rogers, and many more whom we might name, have been able to unite the two professions, is a little surprising, and would be worthy of praise, had they only united them effectually; but the merchant has swallowed the poet, as the rod of Aaron swallowed the rods of the Egyptian enchanters.

For our single selves we wish that Halleck had never been a poet, or that, having been one, he had always remained one, excluding from his mind the merchant and man of the world. How far a man of talent is bound to work that talent for the benefit of the world, to the detriment of his

fortune, and the endangering of his luxuries and needs, will always be a matter of opinion; with genius it is never a question. Pure genius fulfills its duty and performs its mission regardless of consequences; regardless of needs and luxuries and all private considerations. And its self-sacrifice and abnegation is always repaid tenfold. When Genius begins to suffer for its genius-it sometimes suffers for its folly-it begins to grow good and great. There always seems to have been a want of earnestness in Halleck, a want of abiding faith in the beautiful and true. He is possessed by a spirit of persiflage, which leads him to laugh at his serious thoughts -we do not mean at his religious, but simply at his serious thoughts, and to cross his serious poems by touches of comic hu

mor.

What he may have written since the death of Astor, when he "cut" business, and went back to Guilford again; and what he may have on hand, in the shape of poems, if he has anything, is best known to himself and friends. A fragment, entitled “Connecticut,” published some months ago, was unworthy of living, though as good as the general run of his comic verse; it was trumpeted loudly, but made no sensation. If he has any more of the same sort left, we advise a bonfire somewhere in his neighborhood. The woods and fields which surround him at Guilford, may be inspiring to his genius. If the fountain of song be not altogether dried up in his heart, it should flow at Guilford again gladly and brightly; yet with a certain solemnity withal, the result of years of intercourse with men.

To thoroughly analyze Halleck's poetry, we should require pages; not because he has written so much, or because what he has written is of so much consequence, but because much of it violates many of the fundamental rules of taste and art, which would have to be stated and perhaps defended in full. Having neither space nor time to do this, we must content ourselves with a few examples of his merits and demerits, and a few brief remarks thereon.

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is something prompt, terse, and businesslike, in the management of the poem. Though a true poem, it does not strike us as the work of a poet, so much as the work of a practical man poetically inclined-a man with rhetoric, and the other helps to poetry, at his finger-ends. A poet, we think, would have dwelt upon its beautiful side alone; would have lingered over "The legend of the Cheviot day,

The Percy's proudest border story;" over the pictured dome, the soldiers' march, and Kate and Hotspur on the hill, to the exclusion of

"Oxen, and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boars, and plaided Scots,
Men in the coal and cattle line," etc.

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not forgetting that " ten-and-sixpence sterling," the loss of which left such an aching void in the poet's heart and pocket. Alnwick Castle belongs properly and only to the past the feudal, chivalrous pastand should never be numbered with the present the poetically common-place, but prosaically useful present. The contrasts are too glaring to meet in the same picture; the two elements will not unite. There is a quiet grace and pensive thoughtfulness about parts of the poem, which makes us forget, and almost atones for, the blemishes we have mentioned. The second stanza is beautiful :—

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think the noblest to be found in Halleck, and I would be at a loss to discover its parallel in all American poetry." Fine it certainly is, especially the line italicized, that about the race of funeral flowers, the beautiful mutes of nature.

"Marco Bozzaris" it is impossible to judge. Like Hamlet's Soliloquy, Young Norval's Grampian-Hill speech, and the other crack pieces in the school-books, it has been drilled into us till we are thoroughly tired of it; we know it so well, we cease to know it at all. Poe says it has much lyrical, without any great amount of ideal beauty. Force is its prevailing feature,-force, resulting rather from a well-ordered metre, vigorous rhythm, and a good disposal of the circumstances of the poem, than from any of the truer lyric material. "I should do my conscience," still says Poe, "great wrong, were I to speak of 'Marco Bozzaris' as it is the fashion to speak of it, at least in print.

Even as a lyric, an ode, it is surpassed by many American, and a multitude of foreign compositions of a similar character." There is nothing puny in "Marco Bozzaris," nor in that manly poem, perhaps Halleck's best, which commemorates the bard-peasant, Burns. In this last occur the felicitous lines, now familiar "as household words,"―

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In heaven with her jacket of light green, 'Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,'

Without a shoe or stocking-hoeing corn!" What was intended to be accomplished by that forced, coarse, and unnatural part, is more than we can conceive. If it is an attempt to raise a laugh, it is a failure, unless we laugh at the author's expense. It is out of" keeping," and wholly irrelevant to the matter and manner of the poem, and to the matter and manner of poetry

generally; nay, we say plumply, to all poetry. For there is no such thing as a coarse, burlesque, mocking poem; no more than a coarse beauty, a burlesque truth, a mocking religion. The divine element of the beautiful, which is the only true element of poetry, admits nothing of the kind; and, so far as a poet raises a laugh at his poetry, just so far does he degrade himself and the muse. He, of all men in the world, should be the last to doubt his inspiration, and to mock his work. If he has no faith in himself, who can have? "To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

and poems of that description, is the poem Something better than "Wyoming,"

on the death of Drake:

"Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
None named thee but to praise.

"Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long where thou art lying,

Will tears the cold turf steep.
"When hearts whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven,

To tell the world their worth. "And I, who woke each morrow

To clasp thy hand in mine, Who shared thy joy and sorrow,

Whose weal and wo were thine,

"It should be mine to braid it

Around thy faded brow;
And I've in vain essay'd it,
And feel I cannot now.

"While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fix'd too deeply

That mourns a man like thee."

Somewhat different is the fine poem of "Red Jacket." Never has the Indian character generally, and the character of Red Jacket particularly, been more happily analyzed and described, than in the concluding stanzas. The poem opens with a rather equivocal compliment to Cooper :

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Cooper, whose name is with his country's

woven,

First in her files, her pioneer of mind,

wanderer now in other lands has proven

His love for the young land he left behind; "And throned her in the senate-hall of nations, Robed like the deluge rainbow, heavenwrought,

Magnificent as his own mind's creations,

And beautiful as its green world of thought."

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Setting aside the nonsense of weaving
a name, it is absurd to call Cooper the
pioneer of American mind. That he
wrote the first strictly American novel, in
the popular way of talking, we are willing
to admit; but surely other kinds of writ-
ing required mind as well, and engaged
the attention of American minds before
Cooper was thought of. There were
great men living in Greece before Aga-
memnon, and mind-pioneers in America
before James Fennimore Cooper. In
writings of pure mind, we have as yet
produced nothing superior, if indeed any-
thing equal, to old Jonathan Edwards's
"Treatise on the Will," the arguments
of which a recent French critic has
pronounced to be equal to those of Des-
cartes. Equally absurd is the picture of
America robed in the deluge rainbow!
Fancy the tableau. Here is Asia, with
the dust of ruin on her mantle; there
Africa, the fetters on her hands; yonder
Europe, the stately Amazon, stern in her
mailed charms;* and here, towering be-
fore us, our own great country, robed in
a deluge rainbow, magnificently enough!
But how magnificent? we want a com-
parison here.
Magnificent as his (Coop-

er's) own mind's creations,
"And beautiful as its green world of thought."

literature, among whom there is not one whose productions have not been grossly overrated by his countrymen. Hitherto we have been in no mood to view with calmness, and discuss with discrimination, the real claims of the few who were first in convincing the mother country that her sons were not all brainless, as at one period she half affected, and wholly wished to believe. Is there any one so blind as not to see that Mr. Cooper, for example, owed much, and Mr. Paulding nearly all, of his reputation as a novelist to his early occupation of the field? Is there any one so dull as not to know that fictions which neither of these gentlemen could have written, are written daily by native authors, without attracting much more of commendation than can be included in a newspaper paragraph? And again, is there any one so prejudiced as not to acknowledge that all this happens because there is no longer either reason or wit in the query, 'Who reads an American book?""

But to return to Halleck, to whom this will apply as well as to Paulding and Cooper. The local allusions in many of Halleck's poems interfere greatly with one's enjoyment in reading them. The epistles and comic poems refer to men, manners, and politics obsolete and forgotten, and should be elucidated with notes, Really, gentlemen, you are too mod- those sinking millstones on verse, but neest entirely; it really can't be so grand, cessary in such cases, even if the poem must this little America of ours. To be sure founder; it had better founder than strand we have some tolerable forests, mountains and decay away on the sands. In some inand prairies, a few great lakes and rivers, stances the locale is confined to a line or two; and the falls of Niagara, (but never a poet in others it is the warp and woof of the poem. to sing it!) some odd number of battle- This is to be regretted, as it will be a serious fields stained in the old time with free drawback to their future and permanent blood, but certainly nothing from Maine to fame. Your true and profound artist, we California equal to Cooper's novels and remark en passant, be he poet, painter, or Halleck's poems. A few words here from sculptor, works for the future, in preferPoe. He has been speaking of the early ence to the present; laboring for all time American writers, and their extravagant rather than for the day, shaping from time fame. "Those rank first," says he, "who whatever of the permanent it embodies, were first known. The priority has estab-recasting its ideals into creations for eterlished the strength of impression. Nor is this result to be accounted for by mere deference to the old saw-that first impressions are strongest. Gratitude, surprise, and a species of hyper-patriotic triumph have been blended and finally confounded with admiration or appreciation in regard to the pioneers of American

It is scarcely necessary to say that these impersonations are taken from Bayard Taylor's fine poem, "The Continents."

nity.

Every real work of art is complete and perfect in itself; in so far as art needs explanation, needs to be labeled and commented upon, needs accessories and surroundings, just so far it is imperfect and incomplete. Halleck, if we may judge of his feelings by a clever passage in his clever epistle "To the Recorder," does not agree with us in this matter, and in that of future fame. "For me," says he, in his graceful and melodious lines,—

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