after a celebrated man, in the express hope that should he at any time feel sinking to the degradation of a mean action, the sound of his name might recall him to the path of honor! There are, notwithstanding, many happy instances of Mr. Longfellow's talent for applying a fact to a feeling, and of illustrating the processes of duty by metaphors drawn from outside life. This very facility is sometimes fatal: it very often becomes common-place, so that we feel inclined now and then to resent a truism as though it were a falsehood; at all events, to treat it as an impertinence or an intrusion. This strikes us as the prevailing defect in many otherwise very fine poems. We may instance as a proof of this, some otherwise very fine lines which are spoiled by this obtrusive subjectiveness. ६ This sounds more like Watts's hymns than a philosophical reflection modified by the spirit of poetry, the highest expression of philosophy. Although somewhat out of keeping, we cannot help here quoting a ludicrous explanation which Leigh Hunt once gave of the difference between philosophy and poetry. He said it was the difference between mutton and venison and apostrophized "venison as the poetry of mutton!" In the commencement of the "Hymn to the Night” there is an instance of bad taste in the selection of metaphors, which rarely happens to our author. "I heard the trailing garments of the night I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light He redeems this artificial imagery by the following verse: We must, however, warn Mr. Longfellow against the indis criminate use of 66 stars " and celestial machinery: it shows either a poverty of illustration, or an indolence in searching after new combinations. In the following he copies some of the puerilities of Wordsworth's earlier poems. It should, however, be borne in mind that the English reformer of verse had an object in view when he thus violently rushed into the opposite extreme, which Longfellow has not. When Wordsworth wrote, the Rosa-Matildaish style was predominant. The moon, stars, and other natural objects were banished from decent poetry, and "luna," "stella," "lamps of light," "Apollo," &c., were invoked by the whole regiment. The palate then was so diseased that a violent remedy was required. "The night is come, but not too soon, And sinking silently, All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky." In the "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year," our American poet has forgotten how completely Alfred Tennyson had anticipated him. The same remark applies to the poem entitled, "Woods in Winter:" it is too much like Southey's poem 66 On Winter." Mr. Longfellow has only to be warned of these coincidences, for we are sure he has too much poetical wealth of his own to render borrowing from another necessary. The great fault of many of the poems before us is their elegant diffusiveness: they would have been twice as good had they been only half as long. There is, however, a want of condensation in most of his productions. As a proof of success in the difficult department of sonnet writing, we shall quote one on 66 DANTE. "Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, As up the convent walls, in golden streaks, 6 Thy voice along the cloister whispers, Peace!" Our limits will not allow us to bestow any space upon "Kavanagh." Although in prose, there is too much poetry in Longfellow's mind to take him into the lower region of art, without a constant return to the loftier realms. Its popularity renders quotation needless. We shall, therefore, content ourselves by stating that it displays powers of observation and skill in writing of the peculiarities of New England life, we did not give our author credit for. We conclude this attempt to examine the works of a popular poet by the opinion that his great want is self-reliance. He is too apt to consult poetical precedents, instead of boldly chalking out a path for himself. His very studies have been against him. When a poet trusts to another for his thoughts he will soon lose his individuality. We do not say this has actually happened to Mr. Longfellow, but we see many evidences of a tendency to indulge in that fatal habit, which we think in his case springs more from indolence than want of power. Let him resolutely think and write for himself, retaining his force, elegance, and purity of diction, but throwing from him his undue elaboration and diffusiveness of execution : let him care less for what others have written, and more of what he ought and can write, and boldly throwing away his artificial supports, soar unaided into an element of his own: let him scorn another's balloon, and boldly take to his own wings, and then America will have reason to consider as one of her best poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. |