Of course this is a delicate undertaking; one in which it would not be possible to gratify the preferences of each poet and his circle of admirers, either as regards the quantity or the selection given from his pieces. Considering the difficulty, we think the task has been admirably performed. No two readers of poetry, in attempts to make a select album of the choicest verses from their favorite authors, would probably make anything like the same, hardly a similar, collection. And this partly from variety of tastes, and partly because of accidental associations; the worth of a poem to our own private mind consisting so often in the mere fact of the time when we first read it, our own outward and inward state when first it smiled and spake to us. In addition to all this, the book contains an herbarium of choice poetic flowers esteemed for their intrinsic beauty, and not as specimens of the works of those who have written enough to be called poets. Of these there are some sixty-six, some of them anonymous. To the name of each author is prefixed a brief biographical notice, sometimes with criticisms, which are generally just, often beautiful and instructive, and which show that the editor had no undiscriminating enthusiasm about American poets, and did not deceive himself into the idea, that it was all pure gold which he was offering

us.

Our long known and our newly risen bards of promise seem all to be here represented. Freneau and Trumbull and Dwight, &c. of the old school, who labored through their long heroics, in the safe old normal style of Iliad and Eneid, and Pope and Dryden, and Butler's Hudibras, are followed by the names we love, the school of more American bards, like Allston, Dana, Bryant, Percival; and the line is faithfully traced down to the present time.

But was it worth the while? And have we here a book of poetry? So inexpressible and unscrutable is that thing in its essence, which we call Poetry, that we will not attempt to define it. There is much that is beautiful; much that is melodious and gracefully turned; much that is choice in thought and diction; much that is original; and yet it is not poetry. We can tell all about it, except that in which its essential nature consists. We can give a composition credit for beauty, melody, delicacy, richness and freshness of ideas, depth of feeling and of thought, all that is desirable in poetry, and yet feel that it is not accepted of the Muse. Like everything which never

parts with the power to charm, it keeps that power a secret and a mystery. It never explains itself; but imparts itself to whom it will. It is in vain therefore, that we try to tell what poetry is, preparatory to what we may have to say upon the poetic merits of Mr. Griswold's collection. We will not complain that he has not been more select; since it was his plan, and not his taste or poetic appreciation, which led him over so wide a field, to gather up such a profusion of flowers.

Of course, among so many, (and no one can think of reviewing a hundred poets at a sweep,) there must be all varieties of excellence. There is some true poetry; some little gems, which give us the feeling which all genuine beauty gives, that the smallest thing, if only beautiful, is infinite; that all regard to length or size vanishes, that quantity ceases to be an element, so soon as quality is perfect. We can say this of all the picture-poems of Allston; of the "Thanatopsis," the "West-wind," the "Water-fowl," &c. of Bryant, (though it is only in a limited department that he is a poet, while uniformly as a describer of outward nature, and as an artist in words, rising sometimes to a diction almost Shakspearian, he is unsurpassed;) of the "Picture-song," the "Health," and the "Serenade" of Pinckney; of the Sonnets of Jones Very; of pieces by Emerson, and of many a gem scattered through the volume ;- we speak from casual recollection, and the omitting of a name is not the denying of merit.

Then there is much which has every excellence, except that of genuine poetic inspiration. There is a great amount of clever talent displayed throughout the book; lively fancy, sweetness and variety of melody, and almost universally a pure moral tone, a high ideal of virtue. All the various styles of poetry have been, to say the least, happily imitated. At first, as we have seen, it was all Pope and Dryden and Butler. Since, we have had Byron and Wordsworth, and something of Keats, (see "Hymns to the Gods," by Alfred Pike,) and quite too much of Mrs. Hemans. These, mixed in various proportions with such original force as our own most susceptible minds have found in themselves, have dictated the form, and in great part the material of our later poetry. And now, within these few years, we have Shelley, and Goethe, and Schiller, responded to in echoes of their own influence, but in notes of greatest promise; for their effect has been, not so much to set a standard, which can be tamely followed, or to create a shallow en

thusiasm, which apes their form, and voice, and manner, as to arouse and call forth by sympathy, as with the encouraging voice of an elder brother, the nobler nature and the deeper life. The spirit of the modern German muse is so manifest in almost all the best of this last and as yet tender growth of our own poetry, as to make it as yet doubtful whether we can claim much more than translation in the widest sense, namely, reproduction, of European poetry. But it is such translation or reproduction as shows deep and appreciating natures, and the soul of Poesy latent even here, which can respond so nobly to the voice from abroad. The Psalms of Professor Longfellow, for example, distinguished alike for simplicity and elegance, loved so widely for their heart-felt tone, have all the flavor of the rarest foreign fruits engrafted on a native stock.

In one department, certainly, we may say that many, very many of our bards have written well. And that is in descriptions of the beauty of nature, and of impressions received therefrom. Our glorious ravines, woods, and prairies, our sunsets, and our autumn foliage have not spoken in vain, however much we are as a people given to narrow utility. Records of genuine impressions from nature, descriptions so true to the fact, that they savor of the woods and pines, and show that they were written from individual experience, actually abound in this book.

We may contemplate this Poet's Fair, then, with some just pride. That there is any such thing as an American School of poetry; that we have a poetic literature which is truly national, it may be too early to say. But that good poetry has been written in America, and that too in goodly quantities, and of manifold varieties, is here made visible to all who will read. We yet look for our own great poet. We yet see no bold, earnest enterprise of this sort on a grand scale. No long poem has been written ;* but only brief, off-hand, casual effusions. With most of our writers it has been a mere stooping to pluck a wild-flower or two, on the way to and fro between business and home; or the bestowing of a few odd moments on the cultivation of a few choice exotic plants. No

* Our correspondent forgets The Conquest of Canaan, The Columbiad, and The Fredoniad. The first two of these are well known. Of the other it may be enough to name the titles of the three first Cantos, which stand thus; "Heaven," " Hell," "The Surrender of Detroit!"-ED.

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one has committed himself in full to the vocation of a bard. Thousands are guilty of the fantastic folly of a few rhymes in the course of their life; they get the taste of it; show that they know what it is; and then throw it by, like a plaything.

One thing strikes us, (we may almost say, startles us,) as the eye runs along over these well-spread tables of poetic home-produce. Almost every article is the product of young hands. All the rhyming now-a-days is by young men, (or young women, who sometimes hold out rather longer,) and the lyrics and smaller poems, which have been our admiration since we began to talk of American poetry, appear here as reminiscences of the youth of men, who have long since forsaken the Muse and dropped the idle reed, and are now grown gray and shrewd in practical affairs. From Percival and Bryant and Sprague we hear but seldom; from Dana never. Allston, who might have been the bard among them all, has spoken rather (and who does not feel compensated by the result?) to the eye in divine works of art, throwing out now and then some slight, but exquisite poetic interpretation, as he rested from his labors and mused upon the creations of his hand. With but few exceptions, all our poets renounced, if not the "vision," yet the "faculty divine," ere they had long reached the manly age. Surviving, as it were, this fever of their youth, they have become prudent, sober men, and utter themselves in solid prose, or still more solid deeds. Why is it? Is the poetic impulse only a disease which all must pass through once, an extravagance of youth? Or, granting it to be a wholesome and divine thing, is poetry in its very nature a flower that blossoms early, a wind-flower of the spring, whose bloom it would be unreasonable to seek to continue into the summer and antumn of life? And is this the natural economy and law of growth, that the soul, like the shrub Rhodora in the woods, shall first put out its short-lived flowers in dreams and poetry, and then the leaves which last all summer, then prosaic thought and drudgery, the earnest work of life? Not so with the genuine, the chosen, and inspired priest of song. He is always young. He carries spring-time and hope and fresh enthusiasm through life with him; and wherever he treads, fresh flowers spring up about his feet. Nay, poetry is a perpetual fountain of rejuvenescence; we drink of its waters and are young again; the sober formalist, the intellect slinks away like a self-convicted pedant, and the heart has its day, and fond ideals revive, and the first

faith of childhood triumphs for an hour over the skeptical lessons of experience. Poetry is not, in itself, unmanly, or unfit to dwell with the maturest age and wisdom. Woe to the man who allows the conventionalisms of the world to shame him out of the boyish simplicity with which he wooed the Muse, who has ceased to "reverence the dreams of his youth." Poetry forsakes not man, as he passes from youth to manhood, until he forsakes himself, and learns to temporize with fortune and with fashion.

We must seek further. Is the poetic impulse genuine, it may be asked, which so soon folds its wearied wings, and attempting no more flights in upper air, prefers to creep upon the earth with other "tame villatic fowls?" Was it not a false ambition, exciting to feeble imitation natures never born to fly? Was it not all forced work with them, which they could not force themselves to perform much longer? Doubtless in many cases this has been so. The culture, not the spirit of the man, may often lead him into efforts, not without success for a time, which, not being prompted from the inmost heart and marrow of himself, where all heavenly influence enters, must necessarily lose their strength at last for want of a perpetual spring to feed it. But the genuine in poetry, as in all arts, always approves itself at once; and we have seen that there has much been written here which gives us that true feeling, while we read it. Moreover, is not our general literature, are not our conventions where the word is spoken and not written, all glowing with unconscious poetry? The most poetic minds of the age write in prose; and there is room for beauty, fervor, and richest melody, even in that apparently unmeasured form. Has any verse more melody than Milton's prose, or much of Channing's and of Emerson's? And are not all the higher flights of eloquence poetry? And of this no people will boast more.

Where the impulse has been genuine, nay, where there has been genius of no mean quality, some condition has been wanting, it would seem, to a full development of it. The truth is, that our social life discourages all poetry. It allows none of that simple, spontaneous, self-forgetting habit of mind, which is so essential to any pure worship or fervent praise of the Ideal. Every one becomes awfully self-conscious in the glare of such a self-surrounding, criticising public opinion. He knows that every eye is upon him, questioning the utility, the motives, and the tendency of all he does and says; that his