The last number of _Fraser's Magazine_ has a long article upon THE
POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA, in which the subject is treated with more
than the customary civility of English criticism upon this subject. We
are half inclined, indeed, to believe the article was written "above
Bleecker," or by an inhabitant of that quarter now in London. Omitting
the illustrative extracts, we copy the greater portion of the review,
in which most of those who are admitted to be poets are characterized.
"When Halleck said of New York--
Our fourteen wards
Contain some seven-and-thirty-bards,
he rather understated than exaggerated the fact. Mr. Griswold, besides
the ninety regular poets in his collection, gives an appendix of about
seventy fugitive pieces by as many authors; and bitter complaints
have been made against him in various quarters for not including
some seventy, or a hundred and seventy more, 'who,' it is said, and
probably with truth, 'have as good a right to be there as many of
those admitted.' Still it is possible to pick out a few of general
reputation, whom literati from all parts of the Union would agree
in sustaining as specimens of distinguished American poets, though
they would differ in assigning their relative position. Thus, if the
Republic had to choose a laureate, Boston would probably deposit a
nearly unanimous vote for Longfellow; the suffrages of New York might
he divided between Bryant and Halleck; and the southern cities would
doubtless give a large majority for Poe. But these gentlemen, and
some three or four more, would be acknowledged by all as occupying
the first rank. Perhaps, on the whole, the preponderance of native
authority justifies us in heading the list with Bryant, who, at any
rate, has the additional title of seniority in authorship, if not in
actual years.
"William Cullen Bryant is, as we learn from Mr. Griswold, about
fifty-five years old, and was born in Massachusetts, though his
literary career is chiefly associated with New York, of which he is
a resident. With a precocity extraordinary, even in a country where
precocity is the rule instead of the exception, he began to write _and
publish_ at the age of thirteen, and has, therefore, been full forty
years before the American public, and that not in the capacity of
poet alone--having for more than half that period edited the _Evening
Post_, one of the ablest and most respectable papers in the United
States, and the oldest organ, we believe, of the Democratic party in
New York. He has been called, and with justice, a poet of nature.
The prairie solitude, the summer evening landscape, the night wind of
autumn, the water-bird flitting homeward through the twilight--such
are the favorite subjects of inspiration. _Thanatopsis_, one of
his most admired pieces, was written at the age of _eighteen_, and
exhibits a finish of style, no less than a maturity of thought, very
remarkable for so youthful a production. Mr. Bryant's poems have
been for some years pretty well known on this side the water,--better
known, at any rate, than any other transatlantic verses; on which
account, being somewhat limited for space, we forbear to make any
extracts from them.
"FITZ-GREENE HALLECK is also a New-Englander by birth and a New Yorker
by adoption. He is Bryant's contemporary and friend, but the spirit
and style of his versification are very different; and so, it is
said, are his political affinities. While Bryant is a bulwark of
the Democracy, Halleck is reported to be not only an admirer of the
obsolete Federalists, but an avowed Monarchist. To be sure, this is
only his private reputation: no trace of such a feeling is observable
in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism,
social and political. In truth, the party classification of American
literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving
is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in
his writings anything countenancing their claim upon him. His sketches
of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; and the fourth
book of his _Knickerbocker_ is throughout a palpable satire on the
administration of Thomas Jefferson, the great apostle of Democracy.
Perhaps, however, he may since have changed his views. Willis, too,
the 'Free Penciler,' who has been half his life prating about lords
and ladies, and great people, and has become a sort of Jenkins to
the fashionable life of New York; he also is one of the Democratic
party. Peradventure he may vote the 'Locofoco ticket' in the hope
of propitiating _the boys_ (as the _canaille_ of American cities are
properly called), and saving his printing-office from the fate of the
Italian Opera House in Astor Place. But what shall we say of Cooper,
who, by his anti-democratic opinions, has made himself one of the most
unpopular men in his country, and whose recent political novels rival
the writings of Judge Haliburton in the virulence as well as the
cleverness of their satire upon Republican institutions? He, too, is
a Democrat. To us, who are not behind the curtain, these things are
a mystery incapable of explanation. To return to our present subject.
Halleck made his _début_ in the poetical world by some satirical
pieces called _The Croakers_, which created as much sensation at their
appearance as the anonymous _Salmagundi_ which commenced Irving's
literary career. These were succeeded by _Fanny_, a poem in the
_Don Juan_ metre. _Fanny_ has no particular plot or story, but is a
satirical review of all the celebrities, literary, fashionable, and
political, of New York at that day (1821). And the satire was probably
very good at the time and in the place; but, unfortunately for the
extent and permanence of its reputation, most of these celebrities are
utterly unknown, not merely beyond the limits of the Union, but beyond
those of New York. Among all the personages enumerated we can find
but two names that an European reader would be likely to know anything
about,--Clinton and Van Buren. Nay, more, in the rapid growth and
change of things American, the present generation of New Yorkers are
likely to lose sight of the lions of their immediate progenitors; and
unless some Manhattanese scholiast should write a commentary on the
poem in time, its allusions, and with them most of its wit, will be
in danger of perishing entirely. What we _can_ judge of in _Fanny_ are
one or two graceful lyrics interspersed in it, though even these are
marred by untimely comicality and local allusions. The nominal hero,
while wandering about at night after the wreck of his fortunes, hears
a band playing outside a public place of entertainment. It must have
been a better band than that which now, from the Museum opposite the
Astor House, drives to frenzy the hapless stranger.... In Halleck's
subsequent productions the influence of Campbell is more perceptible
than that of Byron, and with manifest advantage. It may be said of his
compositions, as it can be affirmed of few American verses, that they
have a real innate harmony, something not dependent on the number of
syllables in each line, or capable of being dissected out into feet,
but growing in them, as it were, and created by the fine ear of the
writer. Their sentiments, too, are exalted and ennobling; eminently
genial and honest, they stamp the author for a good man and
true,--Nature's aristocracy.... For some unexplained reason Halleck
has not written, or at least not published, anything new for several
years, though continually solicited to do so; for he is a great
favorite with his countrymen, especially with the New Yorkers. His
time, however, has been by no means passed in idleness. Fashionable
as writing is in America, it is not considered desirable or, indeed,
altogether reputable, that the poet should be _only_ a poet. Halleck
has been in business most of his life; and was lately head-clerk
of the wealthy merchant, John Jacob Astor, who left him a handsome
annuity. This was increased by Mr. Astor's son and heir, a man of
well-known liberality; so that between the two there is a chance
of the poet's being enabled to 'meditate the tuneful Muse' for the
remainder of his days free from all distractions of business.
"LONGFELLOW, the pet poet of Boston, is a much younger man than either
Bryant or Halleck, and has made his reputation only within the last
twelve years, during which time he has been one of the most noted
lions of American Athens. The city of Boston, as every one knows who
has been there, or who has met with any book or man emanating from
it, claims to be the literary metropolis of the United States, and
assumes the slightly-pretending _soubriquet_ just quoted. The American
Athenians have their thinking and writing done for them by a coterie
whose distinctive characteristics are Socinianism in theology, a
præter-Puritan prudery in ethics, a German tendency in metaphysics,
and throughout all a firm persuasion that Boston is the fountain-head
of art, scholarship, and literature for the western world, and
particularly that New York is a Nazareth in such things, out of which
can come nothing good. For the Bostonians, who certainly cultivate
literature with more general devotion, if not always with more
individual success than the New Yorkers, can never forgive their
commercial neighbors for possessing by birth the two most eminent
prose-writers of the country--Irving and Cooper; and by adoption, two
of the leading poets--Bryant and Halleck. Nor are the good people of
the 'Empire State' slow to resent these exhibitions of small jealousy;
but, on the contrary, as the way of the world is, they are apt to
retort by greater absurdities. So shy are they of appearing to be
guided by the dicta of their eastern friends, that to this day there
is scarcely man or woman on Manhattan Island who will confess a
liking for Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett Browning, or Robert Browning, simply
because these poets were taken up and patronized (metaphorically
speaking, of course,) by the 'Mutual Admiration Society' of Boston.
"The immediate influences of this _camaraderie_ are highly flattering
and apparently beneficial to the subject of them, but its ultimate
effects are most injurious to the proper development of his powers.
When the merest trifles that a man throws off are inordinately
praised, he soon becomes content with producing the merest trifles.
Longfellow has grown unaccustomed to do himself justice. Half his
volumes are filled up with translations; graceful and accurate,
indeed; but translations, and often from originals of very moderate
merit. His last original poem, _Evangeline_, is a sort of pastoral
in hexameters. The resuscitation of this classical metre had a queer
effect upon the American quidnuncs. Some of the _critics_ evidently
believed it to be a bran-new metre invented for the nonce by the
author, a delusion which they of the 'Mutual Admiration' rather winked
at; and the parodists who endeavored to ridicule the new measure were
evidently not quite sure whether seven feet or nine made a hexameter.
It is really to be regretted that Longfellow has been cajoled into
playing these tricks with himself, for his earlier pieces were works
of much promise, and, had they been worthily followed out, might
have entitled him to a high place among the poets of the language....
Longfellow's poetry, whenever he really lays himself out to write
poetry, has a definite idea and purpose in it--no small merit
now-a-days. His versification is generally harmonious, and he displays
a fair command of metre. Sometimes he takes a fancy to an obsolete
or out-of-the-way stanza; one of his longest and best poems, _The
Skeleton in Armor_, is exactly in the measure of Drayton's fine
ballad on Agincourt. His chief fault is an over-fondness for simile
and metaphor. He seems to think indispensable the introduction into
everything he writes of a certain (or sometimes a very uncertain)
number of these figures. Accordingly his poems are crowded with
comparisons, sometimes very pretty and pleasing, at others so
far-fetched that the string of tortured images which lead off Alfred
de Musset's bizarre _Ode to the Moon_ can hardly equal them. This
_making figures_ (whether from any connection with the calculating
habits of the people or not) is a terrible propensity of American
writers, whether of prose or verse. Their orators are especial sinners
in this respect. We have seen speeches stuck as full of metaphors
(more or less mixed) as Burton's _Anatomy_ is of quotations.
"Such persons as know from experience that literary people are not
always in private life what their writings would betoken, that
Miss Bunions do not precisely resemble March violets, and mourners
upon paper may be laughers over mahogany--such persons will not be
surprised to hear that the Longfellow is a very jolly fellow, a lover
of fun and good dinners, and of an amiability and personal popularity
that have aided not a little the popularity of his writings in
verse and prose--for he writes prose too, prettier, quainter, more
figurative, and more poetic if anything, than his poetry. He is also a
professor at Harvard College, near Boston.
"EDGAR A. POE, like Longfellow and most of the other American poets,
wrote prose as well as poetry, having produced a number of wild,
grotesque, and powerfully-imagined tales; unlike most of them he was
a literary man _pur sang_. He depended for support entirely on his
writings, and his career was more like the precarious existence of
an author in the time of Johnson and Savage than the decent life of
an author in our own day. He was a Southerner by birth, acquired a
liberal education, and what the French call 'expansive' tastes, was
adopted by a rich relative, quarreled with him, married 'for love,'
and lived by editing magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New
York; by delivering lectures (the never-failing last resort of the
American literary adventurer); by the occasional subscriptions of
compassionate acquaintances or admiring friends--any way he could--for
eighteen or nineteen years: lost his wife, involved himself in endless
difficulties, and finally died in what should have been the prime of
his life, about six months ago. His enemies attributed his untimely
death to intemperance; his writings would rather lead to the belief
that he was an habitual taker of opium. If it make a man a poet to be
Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love,
Poe was certainly a poet. Virulently and ceaselessly abused by his
enemies (who included a large portion of the press), he was worshiped
to infatuation by his friends. The severity of his editorial
criticisms, and the erratic course of his life, fully account for the
former circumstance; the latter is probably to be attributed, in part
at least, to pity for his mishaps.
"If Longfellow's poetry is best designated as quaint, Poe's may most
properly be characterized as fantastic. The best of it reminds one
of Tennyson, not by any direct imitation of particular passages, but
by its general air and tone. But he was very far from possessing
Tennyson's fine ear for melody. His skill in versification, sometimes
striking enough, was evidently artificial; he overstudied metrical
expression and overrated its value so as sometimes to write, what
were little better than nonsense-verses, for the rhythm. He had an
incurable propensity for refrains, and when he had once caught a
harmonious cadence, appeared to think it could not be too often
repeated. Poe's name is usually mentioned in connection with _The
Raven_, a poem which he published about five years ago. It had an
immense run, and gave rise to innumerable parodies--those tests of
notoriety if not of merit. And certainly it is not without a peculiar
and fantastic excellence in the execution, while the conception is
highly striking and poetic. This much notice seems due to a poem which
created such a sensation in the author's country. To us it seems by
no means the best of Poe's productions; we much prefer, for instance,
this touching allegory, which was originally embodied in one of his
wildest tales, _The Haunted Palace_. In the very same volume with this
are some verses that Poe wrote when a boy, and some that a boy might
be ashamed of writing. Indeed the secret of rejection seems to be
little known to Transatlantic bards. The rigidness of self-criticism
which led Tennyson to ignore and annihilate, so far as in him lay,
full one half of his earlier productions, would hardly be understood
by them. This is particularly unlucky in the case of Poe, whose rhymes
sometimes run fairly away with him, till no purpose or meaning is
traceable amid a jingle of uncommon and fine-sounding words....
"Though Poe was a Southerner, his poetry has nothing in it suggestive
of his peculiar locality. It is somewhat remarkable that the
slave-holding, which has tried almost all other means of excusing or
justifying itself before the world, did not think of 'keeping a poet,'
and engaging the destitute author from its own territory to sing the
praises of 'the patriarchal institution.' And it would have been
a fair provocation that the Abolitionists had their poet already.
Indeed several of the northern poets have touched upon this subject;
Longfellow, in particular, has published a series of spirited
and touching anti-slavery poems; but the man who has made it his
_specialité_ is JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, a Quaker, literary editor of
the _National Era_, an Abolition and ultra-Radical paper, which, in
manful despite of Judge Lynch, is published at Washington, between the
slave-pens and the capitol. His verses are certainly obnoxious to the
jurisdiction of that notorious popular potentate, being unquestionably
'inflammatory, incendiary, and insurrectionary,' as the Southern
formula goes, in a very high degree. He makes passionate appeals to
the Puritan spirit of New England, and calls on her sons to utter
their voice,
... From all her wild green mountains,
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie,
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear cold sky--
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges--from the fisher's skiff,
With white sails swaying to the billow's motion
Round rock and cliff--
From the free fireside of her unbought farmer,
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel.
From the brown smithy where, beneath the hammer,
Rings the red steel--
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land and left us to an evil choice;--
"and protest against the shocking anomaly of slavery in a free
country. At times, when deploring the death of some fellow laborer in
the cause, he falls into a somewhat subdued strain, though even then
there is more of spirit and fire in his verses than one naturally
expects from a follower of George Fox; but on such occasions he
displays a more careful and harmonious versification than is his
wont. There is no scarcity of these elegies in his little volume,
the _Abolitionists_, even when they escape the attentions of the
high legal functionary already alluded to, not being apparently a
long-lived class.
"_Toujours perdrix_ palls in poetry as in cookery; we grow tired after
awhile of invectives against governors of slave-states and mercenary
persons, and dirges for untimely perished Abolitionists. The wish
suggests itself that Whittier would not always
'Give up to a party what is meant for mankind,'
but sometimes turn his powers in another direction. Accordingly, it is
a great relief to find him occasionally trying his hand on the early
legends of New England and Canada, which do not suffer such ballads as
_St. John_....
"Whittier is less known than several other Western bards to the
English reader, and we think him entitled to stand higher on the
American Parnassus than most of his countrymen would place him. His
faults--harshness and want of polish--are evident; but there is
more life, and spirit, and soul in his verses, than in those of
eight-ninths of Mr. Griswold's immortal ninety.
"From political verse (for the anti-slavery agitation must be
considered quite as much a political as a moral warfare) the
transition is natural to satire and humorous poetry. Here we find no
lack of matter, but a grievous short-coming in quality. The Americans
are no contemptible humorists in prose, but their fun cannot be set
to verse. They are very fond of writing parodies, yet we have scarcely
ever seen a good parody of American origin. And their satire is
generally more distinguished for personality and buffoonery than
wit. Halleck's _Fanny_ looks as if it might be good, did we only know
something of the people satirized in it. The reputed comic poet of the
country at present is OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, a physician. Whether
it was owing to the disappointment caused by hearing too much in his
praise beforehand we will not pretend to say, but it certainly did
seem to us that Dr. Holmes' efforts in this line must originally
have been intended to act upon his patients emetically. After a
conscientious perusal of the doctor, the most readable, and about the
only presentable thing we can find in him, is the bit of seriocomic
entitled _The Last Leaf_.
"But within the last three years there has arisen in the United States
a satirist of genuine excellence, who, however, besides being but
moderately appreciated by his countrymen, seems himself in a great
measure to have mistaken his real forte. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, one of
the Boston coterie, has for some time been publishing verses, which
are by the coterie duly glorified, but which are in no respect
distinguishable from the ordinary level of American poetry, except
that they combine an extraordinary pretension to originality, with a
more than usually palpable imitation of English models. Indeed, the
failure was so manifest, that the American literati seem, in this
one case, to have rebelled against Boston dictation, and there is
sufficient internal evidence that such of them as do duty for critics
handled Mr. Lowell pretty severely. Violently piqued at this, and
simultaneously conceiving a disgust for the Mexican war, he was
impelled by both feelings to take the field as a satirist: to the
former we owe the _Fable for Critics_; to the latter, the _Biglow
Papers_. It was a happy move, for he has the rare faculty of writing
_clever doggerel_. Take out the best of _Ingoldsby_, Campbell's rare
piece of fun _The Friars of Dijon_, and perhaps a little of Walsh's
_Aristophanes_, and there is no contemporary verse of the class with
which Lowell's may not fearlessly stand a comparison; for, observe, we
are not speaking of mock heroics like Bon Gaultier's, which are only
a species of parody, but of real doggerel, the Rabelaisque of poetry.
The _Fable_ is somewhat on the Ingoldsby model,--that is to say, a
good part of its fun consists in queer rhymes, double, treble,
or poly-syllabic; and it has even Barham's fault--an occasional
over-consciousness of effort, and calling on the reader to admire, as
if the _tour de force_ could not speak for itself. But _Ingoldsby's_
rhymes will not give us a just idea of the _Fable_ until we superadd
Hook's puns; for the fabulist has a pleasant knack of making
puns--outrageous and unhesitating ones--exactly of the kind to set
off the general style of his verse. The sternest critic could hardly
help relaxing over such a bundle of them as are contained in Apollo's
lament over the 'treeification' of his Daphne.... The _Fable_ is a
sort of review in verse of American poets. Much of the Boston leaven
runs through it; the wise men of the East are all glorified intensely,
while Bryant and Halleck are studiously depreciated. But though thus
freely exercising his own critical powers in verse, the author is most
bitter against all critics in prose, and gives us a ludicrous picture
of one--
A terrible fellow to meet in society,
Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea.
And this gentleman is finely shown up for his condemnatory
predilections and inability to discern or appreciate beauties. The
cream of the joke against him is, that being sent by Apollo to
choose a lily in a flower-garden, he brings back a thistle as all he
could find. The picture is a humorous one, but we are at a loss to
conjecture who can have sat for it in America, where the tendency
is all the other way, reviewers being apt to apply the butter of
adulation with the knife of profusion to every man, woman, or child
who rushes into print. Some of his complaints, too, against the critic
sound very odd; as, for instance, that
His lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him.
Surely the very meaning of _learning_ is that it is something which
a man learns--_acquires_ from other sources--does not originate in
himself. But it is a favorite practice with Mr. Lowell's set to rail
against dry learning and pedants, while at the same time there are no
men more fond of showing off cheap learning than themselves: Lowell
himself never loses an opportunity of bringing in a bit of Greek or
Latin. Our readers must have known such persons--for, unfortunately,
the United States has no monopoly of them--men who delight in quoting
Latin before ladies, talking Penny-Magazine science in the hearing of
clodhoppers, and preaching of high art to youths who have never had
the chance of seeing any art at all. _Then_ you will hear them say
nothing about pedantry. But let a man be present who knows more Greek
than they do, or who has a higher standard of poetry or painting or
music, and wo be to him! Him they will persecute to the uttermost.
What is to be done with such men but to treat them _à la_ Shandon,
'Give them Burton's _Anatomy_, and leave them to their own abominable
devices?'
"The _Biglow Papers_ are imaginary epistles from a New England farmer,
and contain some of the best specimens extant of the 'Yankee,' or New
England dialect,--better than Haliburton's, for Sam Slick sometimes
mixes Southern, Western, and even English vulgarities with his Yankee.
Mr. Biglow's remarks treat chiefly of the Mexican war, and subjects
immediately connected with it, such as slavery, truckling of
Northerners to the south, &c. The theme is treated in various ways
with uniform bitterness. Now he sketches a 'Pious Editors Creed,'
almost too daring in its Scriptural allusions, but terribly severe
upon the venal fraternity. At another time he sets one of Calhoun's
pro-slavery speeches to music. The remarks of the great Nullifier form
the air of the song, and the incidental remarks of honorable senators
on the same side make up a rich chorus, their names supplying happy
tags to the rhymes. But best of all are the letters of his friend the
returned volunteer, Mr. Birdofredom Sawin, who draws a sad picture
of the private soldier's life in Mexico. He had gone out with hopes
of making his fortune. But he was sadly disappointed and equally so
in his expectations of glory, which 'never got so low down as the
privates.'
"But it is time to bring this notice to a close not, however, that
we have by any means exhausted the subject. For have we not already
stated that there are, at the lowest calculation, ninety American
poets, spreading all over the alphabet, from Allston, who is
unfortunately dead, to Willis, who is fortunately living, and writing
_Court Journals_ for the 'Upper Ten Thousand,' as he has named the
quasi-aristocracy of New York? And the lady-poets--the poetesses, what
shall we say of them? Truly it would be ungallant to say anything ill
of them, and invidious to single out a few among so many; therefore,
it will be best for us to say--nothing at all about any of them."
* * * * *