have galled his other nature, for, as we have seen, a Byzantine always had two natures, and these documents which M. Sathas has published prove to us that even in the darkest times of history there existed sparks of better things, which scintillate through the prevailing gloom.

J. THEODORE BENT.

ART. IV.-American Poets and Poetry.

(1) The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell, of John Greenleaf Whittier, of Bayard Taylor, of Bret Harte, of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

(2) The Emigrant's Story, and other Poems. By J. P. TROW

BRIDGE.

(3) Pike County Ballads, and other Pieces. By JOHN HAY. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Co.

(4) Bryant's Poetical Works. New York: Appleton and Co. (5) Leaves of Grass. By WALT WHITMAN. J. R. Osgood and Co. (6) Longfellow's Poems.

MR. LOWELL'S retirement from the American Ministry in London was felt as no other diplomatic change has been felt in recent English history, not only as a great social loss, but as a subject of national regret. Thousands of Englishmen who never saw or heard the Minister remember the poet and humourist with sincere and almost affectionate gratitude. They owe him many a vivid impression and profound thought, many a new view, many a hearty laugh; not a few owe him their first introduction to the native literature of his country, then scarcely emerged from infancy. A few vigorous and powerful lyrics, sadly disfigured by republican and other fanaticism, one or two graceful legends and parables, had attracted the attention of students. The Fable for Critics' first made him at all widely known to English readers. Slight in structure, full of amusing persiflage and clever criticism, that sparkling jeu d'esprit attained considerable if not general popularity, and will perhaps be remembered longer than the far more impressive and impassioned political satires on which his present reputation chiefly rests. At that time the American books that formed part of our popular reading in this country might almost have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Some of Bryant's shorter pieces were already among those that every schoolgirl learned by rote. Longfellow found a place on every young lady's book-shelf, even where Byron was excluded and Tennyson half reluctantly

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admitted by maternal strictness. The quiet and genial humour, the light and delicate pathos of Washington Irving, were enjoyed by thousands and praised by all. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was, next to the Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Robinson Crusoe,' the most universally popular of all works of fiction, owing mainly to its theme, to its intense and varied interest and tragic pathos, and, in spite of much misrepresentation and more ignorance, to the lifelike clearness and force with which it painted a social system strange and scarcely conceivable to its readers. It had, moreover, one supreme artificial advantage. It was a sensational story of sustained power and passionate feeling, licensed in a million households from which fiction as such was rigorously excluded; the first indulgence of the kind allowed to myriads of young people to whom Walter Scott and Cooper were as sternly forbidden as the excitement of the dance or the fascination of the theatre. 'Queechy' and The Wide, Wide World' were among the choicest favourites of the nursery and the schoolroom, as dear to quiet sentimental girls as Marryat's novels or Cooper's Indian tales to noisy and adventurous boys. The fiery Abolitionism of Uncle Tom,' the local flavour and colour of Miss Wetherell's tales, were unmistakably American; but many English readers hardly remembered-not a few, we believe, were actually ignorant-that the poet whose volumes stood between Tennyson and Mrs. Hemans on young ladies' private shelves, the humourist whom so many preferred as gentler and more human than Thackeray, livelier and more modern than Lamb, the authors of the only fictions they could read without reproof or self-reproach, were not their countryfolk. Mr. Lowell's metrical review, sparkling with puns and jests and jeux de mots, and above all with tours de force in rhyme unrivalled save in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' first made the rising generation aware of the existence of a real American literature.

That literature, indeed, was of somewhat recent origin. Few American books now read are fifty years old. In the first quarter of this century the reading of the American publicproportionately a larger and perhaps more discriminating public than our own was essentially English. Political and theological zeal had produced an abundant crop of controversial sermons, treatises, and pamphlets. Local patriotism had gathered, in the transactions of small societies and individual writings, materials for future history. But these, no than the newspapers and periodicals of which each elder state and each considerable city boasted one or more, were properly

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literature. The educated and lettered households of America were seldom wealthy, and yet more seldom leisurely. The aristocracy of the States consisted of lawyers and teachers, merchants, planters, and farmers, for the most part of very moderate means. The household slaves of the South required a close and constant superintendence. In the North, servants were few and costly, most of them literally helps,' taken from poorer or more numerous families to share the family life and duties of those into which they were admitted. During the day the ladies were as busy with household cares as their husbands and fathers in professional labours. Their libraries were small; distance, cost, and Puritanic tradition enforced a wholesome natural selection. Neither men nor women had time to write for love, or could hope to write for money. In the latter respect, indeed, their grandchildren are still at no little disadvantage. While the right of piracy is jealously maintained by the American public and publishers, native industry must despair of competing in the general market with the cheapness of stolen goods. Only those who enjoy a natural protection-journalists and specialists, with the few whose works, in virtue of intrinsic merit, have become classics of the common language--can hold their own against unpaid and involuntary rivals. Hence those American books which form a distinct element of our common literature, belong, with few exceptions, to two or three classes. may set aside the stores of scientific and practical information hidden in Survey Reports and State papers; and, again, that enormous mass of books and pamphlets, military and controversial, which will furnish some future writer with the materials for a classic history of the Civil War. The remaining American literature consists either of works American only by the accident of authorship, like Prescott's and Motley's histories, Longfellow's and Bryant's poems, James's and Julian Hawthorne's novels; or of works essentially national in topic and treatment, chiefly those of humourists in prose and verse, of whom Mr. Lowell and Mr. Leland, Bret Harte and Artemus Ward, are perhaps the most familiar examples -works which only Americans could or would have written. The Fable for Critics' marks a literary epoch; the fusion of American and English literature, and the growth in that common literature of a distinctive American school. Of the poets, novelists, essayists, and littérateurs so vividly, sharply, and for the most part truly characterized in Mr. Lowell's sparkling verses, a majority might have written on either side of the Atlantic. Bryant, whose works lie so wholly

apart from his life, so truly detached from the immediate interests, passions, and storms of the world around, might have dwelt in some quiet cottage at Highgate, and pursued a busy professional life, or secluded himself wholly from life's practical business, in the one city on earth noisier, busier, and wealthier than New York. The two American poets whose ranks and claims posterity may conceivably forget, but will never question-the interest of whose works is human and perennial, not local or ephemeral, whose art has drawn its inspiration and its themes from history or from natureare American by birth alone; children of the common race, masters of the common tongue, and nowise New Englanders or New Yorkers, Republicans or Democrats. Bryant's poetry is even more completely detached, more exclusively and purely poetic, more full of the calm and grandeur, the silence and immobility of Nature, the universal and eternal aspects of human life and thought and feeling than Longfellow's. It is difficult to imagine either poet a favourite of London or New York society, a man of fashion or of business, a politician or a partizan. But comparing the two, the love of Nature, the reflective calm that belongs to the ideal life of poetic seclusion, is less signally marked in the man who has always lived in a quiet, rural New England village, amid a small choice society of kindred spirits, scholars, and thinkers. The sublime repose of the ideal poet, the temper of the recluse breathe in every line of him whom his countrymen called the American Wordsworth, and whom Lowell, with more discernment, if not with full appreciation, compares to Cowper, the nervous, timid, shrinking, social hermit, and Thomson, the Quietist painter of the Seasons. It is but fair to say that, had there been many such editors, the character and reputation of the American press would be far other than it is. Yet no reader or admirer of his poems ever learnt but with a shock of incredulous surprise, that Mr. Bryant was throughout his literary life the editor of a leading journal in the very centre of political and literary conflict, a temperate, self-respecting, but staunch and steadfast partizan. Only a few indirect allusions to this striking contrast between the man and the poet, between the outer and inner life, sharpen and emphasize the lines in which the Apollo of the 'Fable' describes the Arctic stillness, the grandeur as of an iceberg, the almost chilling quietude of Bryant's poetry. Despite an evident desire to give full credit for a perfect mastery of his art, a strength and sublimity rare even in epic, and almost unequalled among lyric poets, the justice done

literature. The educated and lettered households of America were seldom wealthy, and yet more seldom leisurely. The aristocracy of the States consisted of lawyers and teachers, merchants, planters, and farmers, for the most part of very moderate means. The household slaves of the South required a close and constant superintendence. In the North, servants were few and costly, most of them literally helps,' taken from poorer or more numerous families to share the family life and duties of those into which they were admitted. During the day the ladies were as busy with household cares as their husbands and fathers in professional labours. Their libraries were small; distance, cost, and Puritanic tradition enforced a wholesome natural selection. Neither men nor women had time to write for love, or could hope to write for money. In the latter respect, indeed, their grandchildren are still at no little disadvantage. While the right of piracy is jealously maintained by the American public and publishers, native industry must despair of competing in the general market with the cheapness of stolen goods. Only those who enjoy a natural protection-journalists and specialists, with the few whose works, in virtue of intrinsic merit, have become classics of the common language--can hold their own against unpaid and involuntary rivals. Hence those American books which form a distinct element of our common literature, belong, with few exceptions, to two or three classes. We may set aside the stores of scientific and practical information hidden in Survey Reports and State papers; and, again, that enormous mass of books and pamphlets, military and controversial, which will furnish some future writer with the materials for a classic history of the Civil War. The remaining American literature consists either of works American only by the accident of authorship, like Prescott's and Motley's histories, Longfellow's and Bryant's poems, James's and Julian Hawthorne's novels; or of works essentially national in topic and treatment, chiefly those of humourists in prose and verse, of whom Mr. Lowell and Mr. Leland, Bret Harte and Artemus Ward, are perhaps the most familiar examples -works which only Americans could or would have written. The Fable for Critics' marks a literary epoch; the fusion of American and English literature, and the growth in that common literature of a distinctive American school. Of the poets, novelists, essayists, and littérateurs so vividly, sharply, and for the most part truly characterized in Mr. Lowell's sparkling verses, a majority might have written on either side of the Atlantic. Bryant, whose works lie so wholly