volume's size, they ushered it into the world, a candidate for its favour. Many productions, to which it would be paying an extravagant compliment to apply even the foregoing remarks, are daily appearing among us, and it becomes a delicate question with all conscientious, patriotic, and good natured critics in what manner they should be noticed. These authors, for obvious reasons, are commonly of that class of the genus irritabile vatum, who have more of the irritabile than of the vatum in their composition; and the better they are as moderate poets, the more unpromising is their condition, and the more infallibly are they involved in that sad but most oracular sentence, Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnæ. We say our duty in relation to the productions we allude to is delicate, for they are a species of thing, which our canons do not recognize. They cannot come into our court with any claim whatever. Pretty good poetry is no poetry at all. This the misguided aspirants themselves feel. Authors in most other departments think it a satisfactory praise, if they are admitted to have done as well, as their talents and means permit. But to say that poetry is not excellent is a proposition which nullifies itself; it is to deny under the tender saving of an accident, that which is essential to the substance. For this reason, most young men are glad to write their poetry, as they sow their wild oats; and think as little of building a permanent literary character on one, as a moral character on the other. But the season, while it lasts, is one of such flourish and restless excitement, there is such a bustle made about the moon and field-flowers, and nature and passion; and the whole circle of friends, acquaintances, and neighbours is kept in such an uneasy stir while the fit is on, and above all the unhappy critics are so beteased for their suffrage, then so denounced by the poet if it is adverse, and by the public if it is favourable, that for ourselves we carry a young and promising countryman through his poetry, with much the sort of feeling that a prudent mother carries her children through the measles, and are glad if he has had it well. These remarks are extorted from us by the present state of the American Parnassus. No species of mental effort appears to have been so attractive, of late, in our community as the poetical; the trunk-makers can bear us witness. The most unhappy circumstance is, that a good deal of this poetry has been quite respectable, and such as in the time and place which elicited it, would have done its authors credit; nay, of which, without a complimentary overrating, a critic might speak as hopefully, as of the majority of political pamphlets, of voyages and travels, and the journals thereof, which have been appearing simultaneously from our press. Did we however say this, did we, in reviewing such poems, observe that they discovered laudable industry, that the author had spared no pains to make them good, that we gave him credit for an intense labour bestowed on every line, that he had consulted all the preceding poets, and borrowed from them every thing which his subject admitted, that he had evinced a praiseworthy diffidence of his own powers, that there was not a couplet in his works which did not testify to a hopeful teachableness, and that in confining himself to the technical dialect of poetry, choosing no epithets but such as Pope had used before, making his heroes all corsairs, and his heroines all ladies of the lake, he was determined to approve himself as a painstaking, unpretending, and docile bard; did we say this, as we might with truth of most of our current poetry, we doubt whether the authors would even admit that we damned with faint praise. We have little question it would be set down as positive faultfinding and carping, and the old insipid changes be rung upon the injustice, the malignity, and stupidity of critics. Yet the same sort of praise would content a modest writer of almost any other description; and to be told that he had carefully studied, and faithfully followed his predecessors, would often be the highest commendation, which could be paid to an essay on ordinary topics of science and speculation. Unable, therefore, to give pleasure by honestly speaking our opinion and awarding that meed of qualified commendation which may be due, and not being particularly pleased to belie our consciences by so mean a submission as flattering poor poetry-of all poor things in the world-we have preserved a somewhat gloomy silence, with respect to many of the productions of our native bards. This silence has, we regret to say, been occasionally carried beyond its proper limits; and various causes, which will suggest themselves to those initiated into the mysteries of reviewing, have prevented our enjoying the greatest pleasure of our vocation, that of expressing our admiration of a few We were charming pieces, which have appeared among us. singularly straightened between the desire to do credit to our pages by an honourable notice of Fanny, and the difficulty we felt in these remote and somewhat saturnine latitudes in entering, with true perception, into the local spirit and humour of that agreeable little poem. We cannot, however, suppress the hope that its just and merited success will invite the author to higher efforts, and encourage him to undertake a poetical composition of elevated pretensions. We are consoled, morever, in our neglect of this and a few other pieces of genuine merit or great promise, which have appeared among us, by the consideration that of all faculties the poetical is the most independent; the least aided by applause, the least depressed by censure, the least capable of being obstructed or furthered by all that critics, of malign or benevolent aspect, can proclaim. If it dwell not in the native vivacity of the mind, you cannot create or quicken it, by the breath of fame; and if it really exist in native truth, tenderness, and power, all persecution that falls short of secluding it from pen, ink, and paper, instead of subduing, nourishes it; and, according to the temper of the individual, makes it pathetic or indignant or philosophical. Lord Byron's genius was unquestionably matured and kindled by the provoking reception of his first essays; and though Milton had fallen on evil days, and lived in a community prepared to purchase his Paradise Lost for ten pounds, it does not appear that his muse drooped a moment in the chilly atmosphere. On the contrary, we owe to it one of the sweetest strains of his heavenly lyre. So well established is it, that disappointment and sorrow are the nurse of poetical inspiration, that our philosophical statesman, in his Notes on Virginia, seriously mentions it as a circumstance that confirms the intellectual inferiority of the blacks. 'Misery,' he beautifully observes, 'is often the parent of the most affecting touches of poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.* Were the poets among us as miserable as their works, there would be some hope. We are therefore quite sure no permanent injury is done to a poet of the true vein, by a temporary neglect of his productions. So far from this, we can name more than one living bard, in our own language, who, could he by any momentary insen * Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, p. 274. sibility of the public, have been forced in upon his resources, wrought or stung to higher efforts, to longer and more exalted vigils, would have consulted his permanent reputation. Lord Byron tells us in the letter reviewed in our last number, that, excepting Campbell and Rogers, all the living poets have written too much. Scott first proved this, and so much to his own conviction, that he has wholly ceased; and though we happen to be of the number who have read all his larger poetical works with delight, and have found on them all the impress of a poetical genius of the first order, yet the public was growing a-weary of so protracted a series of productions, which in the main were merely pleasing and lively, better, to be sure, of their kind than any body but their own author could write, but proved by the simple rapidity of their succession, to be beneath his own powers. Moreover, as the public interest began to flag in Scott, Byron urged it with so much intensity and assiduity, that it was the sooner exhausted, alike toward the one and the other; and though the adventurous cast of Byron's character and writings, have fixed the public interest longer upon him, than it appears to have dwelt on Scott, yet we presume the noble bard had felt the public pulse, and took warning, when on publishing one of the latest of his larger poems, he said that it was the last which for many years he should submit to the public. Though it would have cost us the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold, and Manfred, we are sorry he did not keep his word. This fatal popularity of his works, like the 'fatal facility,' as his lordship calls it, of the eight syllable verse, has betrayed both him and his poetical colleagues into the composition of more poetry, than they could finish in a style worthy of themselves. Without pursuing this topic, we cannot but observe that we see no consideration of duty or patriotism, which calls on us to exert the little credit we may have with the public, in encouraging the multitude of indifferent poetical essays which are made among us. It is almost the only species of literature which practice and pains do not make perfect. It is the first duty of the critic to foster the science and literature of his * In the dedication of the Corsair to Mr Moore in June 1814 his lordship says, 'I dedicate to you the last production with which I shall trespass on public patience, and your indulgence for some years; and I own that I feel anxious to avail myself of this latest and only opportunity of adorning my pages with a name,' &c. country, and we can boldly appeal to our pages themselves for the proof, that we have been ready to go as far as conscience would let us, in encouraging every thing American. Where we could not commend positively, or augur favourably, we have been silent; and with all the indifferent and wretched trash, which is issuing from the American, as from every other free press, and out of which it would cost us no effort to enliven our heavy pages, and furnish many a gay interlude to our sober speculations; we cannot recal three instances, in which we have indulged in what most of our readers would think our bounden duty to them, that of saving them the trouble and cost of finding out the worthlessness of the productions in question. Farther than this, however, we shall not be carried on the lenient extreme. Apart from every consideration of duty, no kindness can be more treacherous than the encouragement given to ordinary verses called poetry. They lead to nothing good. Their author is but flattered the more deeply into his delusion, to be awakened at last more bitterly therefrom; while the credit of the public literature is suffering in the accumulation of these productions. The reasons which exist for encouraging moderate merit in other departments, really do not exist here; for moderate merit in poetry will not grow into excellence; and, as we have already said, the poetry that is not excellent is not worth any thing. The only result, on the most favourable supposition of this ill-judged kindness, is the production of such compositions as Barlow's Columbiad, a heavy epic, laboriously wrought out of an over-flattered occasional poem; a work which, as a poem, contains nothing o. which an American can be proud, and which can have no effect but that of misleading the taste of the young at home, and the judgments which critics abroad entertain of our literature. We fear it will be a characteristic of these remarks, which have swelled in length and formality beyond our original purpose, that, like most prefaces, they have little connexion with what is to follow them. The poems before us of Mr Percival appear to us to contain decided indications of genuine poetical talent. We have not the pleasure of knowing any thing of the author, beyond the showing of these his works, nor are we informed whether his vocation will continue to lead him along the flowery paths of the muses. Sure we are, however, that the little volume which he has presented us, contains the marks of an inspiration more lofty and genuine than any similar col |