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. 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 drudg ery, 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 simplest and most beautiful acts will offend most against the law of custom. Everybody keeps reminding him that he is strange, until he adopts their way and becomes a stranger to himself. Thus the poet, like a bashful child in the midst of a formidable company, is struck dumb, and is happy, if he can only escape from his awkward confusion enough to play a conventional part like the rest. The root of this tyrannizing, narrow public opinion is partly the utilitarian, money-getting spirit of the age, of which we need not speak; and partly the selfish love of comparative excellence, of individual importance in the eyes of the world, which never accepts a man for what he is, but asks how much greater or smaller is he than A or B? How far does he rise above or sink below the common run? Of course the standard by which these questions are answered, the scale of merit for all, will be whatever the majority most prize; and that is wealth. And so the poet, if he would pass for anything, must snatch for his portion, and first get to be fashionable. No one, but the artist himself, can conceive of the immense moral courage which it costs to be an artist, a true one, in such a state of society. We cannot say how far this social characteristic is connected with our republican institutions. Doubtless it is in some measure a result from them; but it were idle to charge our lack of great poets upon them. We do not believe that there is, or can be in any circumstances, such a thing as a peculiarly American poetry. An American poetry would be a poetry which should breathe the spirit of our institutions; and that, if realized, should be purely human, wide, universal, and not merely patriotic and national. It is not the love of country, but the love of man, and recognition of the spiritual equality of all men, which is the idea of our Constitution. But our Constitution is an ideal floating far above our heads, while our life is sordid in its motives, and narrow in its practical maxims; and love of power and invidious distinction, and slavery to custom, so prevail, as to make us all sadly conscious of the glaring inconsistency between profession and practice. This weighs like a spell upon everything like poetic impulse. Poetry must be the spontaneous expression of an earnest, deep, and unmisgiving life. We must live the principles of our Constitution, before we shall have that faith in them, which can overflow in song. We must live up to our Constitution, would we as a people realize the promised influence of liberty upon poetry and art. We have gone too far to return and live contentedly in the belief, that the old ways are right and well enough. And yet the old habit clings to us in spite of our new profession. This every thinking mind feels; and it is plain that the truest poetry for us at present is, to carry out in practice the ideal principles of human brotherhood and justice, which we have hung out as our national banner. Any such practical contradiction, any such consciousness" of a false position," is utterly at war with and paralyzes the creative power of genius. We believe, then, that the most ideal and poetic impulse of our people is engaged in the movements of reform; and that when our social life comes near to the beauty of our national principles, then there will be poetry gushing forth from a full heart, that trusts its own words. A state of full, entire belief is the first condition of poetry. And that occurs twice; first, in the simplicity of the olden time, when men do not dream that there may be a better state of society than that they live in, and therefore do make a shift to live in it. And secondly, when, once inspired with the idea of progress, they go the length of their idea, and do not talk about it, but live in it. The intermediate state of perpetual doubt and misgiving and self-accusation, when, having proclaimed their doctrine, they still cling timidly to the ways of the majority, robs genius of its faith in itself, haunts it with the nightmare of a morbid consciousness of self, and takes away all creative energy. J. S. D. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DR. FOLLEN. A JOURNAL, usually recognised as a dictator in the literary world, has declared, that no one can be expected to write a good biography of a near relative. This canon may safely be disputed, whether it is intended to apply to the relation of consanguinity or of friendship. And a sounder maxim would be, that no one can write a good biography of any person, to [The Works of Charles Follen, with a Memoir of his Life. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, & Co. 1842. 5 vols. 12mo.] VOL. XXXIII. - 3D s. VOL. XV. NO. I. 5 |