Barrett's sternest, stormiest utterances, still to have genius of no common order. That she is or can be a poet, we take to be beyond question. It is no discredit to her to class her far below the subject of our former paragraph, after what we have said of her. With comparatively little of the creative imagination, so far as the majority of these pieces would indicate, Mrs. Butler blends, however, the elements of thought, feeling and fancy in a strain of melody, which, though tending slightly to the monotone, gushes freely and gracefully up from the well-springs of a heart which has felt and suffered, and down from the morning heights of a mind which has conversed with the "forms of things unknown." We are not sure, however, that we should have called her more than a graceful rhymer of strong thought and fine sensibility, had it not been for a few pieces in this collection. We miss from it one which we have been accustomed to consider rather the best of her poems, the "American Indian Summer." We look upon this volume as a pledge of what Mrs. Butler can do. Some of the little songs and sonnets please us best, such as the "Faith":

one on

Better trust all, and be deceived,

And weep that trust, and that deceiving;

Than doubt one heart, that if believed,
Had blessed one's life with true believing.

Oh, in this mocking world, too fast

The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth!
Better be cheated to the last,

Than lose the blessed hope of truth."

Mr. Cranch impresses us as one who has a vast deal of

"music in his soul," whether it come out in "the sounding of the flying fingers" or through the flying pen.

say to him at times in his own language,

"Ring out, ring out

The music-shout!

I hear the sounding of thy flying fingers,

And to my soul the harmony

Comes like a freshening sea."

We can

But at other times the philosophico-sentimental seems to us to prevail over the poetic element. He certainly has an

imagination capable of grand things. He makes us think of his own "man" in the "Riddle" :

"And ever unto himself he chaunted

A half-articulate hymn."

We should call Mr. Cranch the poet of Transcendentalism. Many of his verses might say to each other, in the words of his "Ocean,"

"Tell me, brother, what are we?
Spirits bathing in the sea

Of Deity!

Half afloat and half on land."

We like his lines on Niagara as well as any we have ever seen, because of their very abandon. He seems to us to have a real and high poetic genius, but we think the "yoke," for a little while, would not hurt his "Pegasus." His is a soul which can afford to harness itself strongly. His sonnet on the violin we must quote as a most graphic and original thing.

"The versatile, discursive violin,

Light, tender, brilliant, passionate, or calm,
Sliding, with careless nonchalance, within
His range of ready utterance, wins the palm
Of victory o'er his fellows for his grace;
Fine fluent speaker, polished gentleman-
Well may he be the leader in the race
Of blending instruments - fighting in the van
With conscious ease and fine chivalric speed;
A very Bayard in the field of sound,
Rallying his struggling followers in their need,
And spurring them to keep their hard earned ground.
So the fifth Henry fought at Azincour,

And led his followers to the breach once more."

Mrs. Ellis, better known in prose than in verse, and we think, deservedly so, shows in these pieces a gentle, graceful and thoughtful heart, but not that strength of passion, nor that delicacy of harmony, which would seem to us to indicate a soul that could not, as Carlyle says, speak its thoughts, and so must "sing them." Hers seems to be a harp of one tone a sweet tone and a graceful one, but with a Hemans-like mannerism, though we by no means class her with Mrs Hemans. It may be a fault of our own, when we say there is to us little that is striking or stir

ring in Mrs. Ellis's poetry. A comparison of her lines to Queen Elizabeth, and incidentally to Queen Victoria, with Miss Barrett's "Crowned and Wedded," would express our idea of what she wants as a poet, better than any words of To the best of our recollection, Sarah Stickney's "Pictures of Private Life" contained more poetry than Mrs. Ellis's "Poems."

our own.

But now, in our descent down the sides of Parnassus, we make quite an abrupt fall and stumble upon something which seems not altogether in place here, namely, an American Epic of 1845, numbering nearly four hundred pages. We had thought and we still think, and we may show reason by and bye, that this age of mind and machinery will hardly furnish or demand or bear another Epic poem. Here, however, is the bold experiment made. We do not feel ourselves called upon, in this connexion, to decide how Mr. Hood may have managed his subject as a matter of history and romance. We are concerned with him as a poet and with the work as a poem, and we must express our conviction, that the story is far more poetical in prose than in Mr. Hood's prosy verse. We ought hardly to quote couplets or paragraphs, because it might be said that every long poem of this description requires a certain quantity of prosaic cement to hold it together, and even Milton might be cited to the point. We simply say that the work impresses us as romance of history with rhyme made for it, by one who has a great deal more zeal than skill, rather than the poetry of history making its own rhyme. We think our readers will be satisfied with one passage, the opening of Book V, which seems to us, whether in a philological, philosophical or poetic view, one of the most remarkable passages we ever encountered. The italics are our own, not the author's.

"Ye tender hearts, who oft have felt the power,
And still remember the primeval hour,

When sweet affection filled your throbbing breast,
And love's soft passion hovered there to rest:

Remember ye in that delicious state,

Your very souls with joys inebriate,

How chilling thoughts would check your mind's employ,

That some blest rival might your peace destroy!

This sad reflection filled Gonzalvo's mind,

Yet still no chamber in his heart could find;

For rooted was the germ of his desire,

And in his breast increased the tender spire."

What a comfort to turn from this to the " Waif," a little selection of the choicest specimens of English verse, many anonymous, and all exquisite as amber, made by Professor Longfellow, who has prefaced it with verses of his own, which steal on the ear and over the brow and soul like the close of a mid-summer day. We venture to pronounce that so choice a "rococo," (to use Willis's word,) containing so many gems in so small a number of pieces fruit-full a wave-offering for the temple of the Muses — was never before published. The illuminated covering and the pearly page make it almost the sweetest little book that has come from our press.

SO

And from the same publisher, in a similar style,* we have Lowell's "Conversations" on Poetry and Poets; alias, on the old Drama and the young Democracy for he talks with himself exquisitely on several matters of human interest which would not by all be thought very poetical. We may fairly notice this book in connexion with the others, because it contains, besides the finest criticism and besides its amazingly fine illustrations from old poets, so much real poetry of its own in noble prose. It is not our purpose nor place here to criticise his criticisms, still less to pronounce upon the general merits of the work, but we must remark upon one thing in the preface, which goes against our intellectual conscience, and that is the author's apologizing for such "minor faults" as may be found, on the ground that the book was prepared in a hurry, and in fact was in process of writing and printing at once. Now this seems to us more than a sin against good taste, and we are sorry to see such excuses adopted by a writer of such genius. For ourselves we do not find those minor faults, when we judge the book by the writer's own plan, or absence of plan, as indicated in his preface. We are glad Mr. Lowell has concluded not to throw any more stones (as he tells his friend) against the doors of the Church, because we think the rock-gates of the Church

*Indeed the mechanical execution of all these volumes, particularly that of Mr. Cranch, is marked by a neatness and beauty exceedingly creditable to our American press.

will stand heavier stones than even his sling can throw, whatever may become of the wooden doors of the churches.

With this book of Lowell's before us, and with Emerson's Essay on the natural history of the poet - a high poem in itself, and with a single paragraph on the subject in Carlyle's book of "Heroes," in mind, we feel almost unwilling to come to the general and great theme of Poetry itself. However, we may, perhaps, say one or two things. not said by those writers.

We propose, then, now, to make some remarks on poetry, touching the three questions: What is it? What is it We shall try not to

good for? What is to become of it? write a dissertation.

The first of the three questions is the hardest to answer, and if we dwell upon it longest, it will be partly on this account, and partly because the answer to it involves, in a great degree, an answer to the other two.

Children, and many grown-up persons to the day of their death, regard poetry as synonymous with rhyme. To them Marmaduke Multiply is a Poet Laureate, and the "Thirty days hath September" contains the essentials of poetry. People who have a little more thought and feeling consider that there must be some interesting or important truth expressed in the rhyme, and then, and only then, it becomes poetry. To them the opening lines of the Second Book of Mr. Hood's Epic would be poetry: .""T is sweet indeed, when worthy hearts approve and feel emotions consecrate to love" - and so on. The sentiment is correct, and so are the syllables, and yet, after all, it is no poetry, but poor prose. It does not follow that all which is not prose is poetry, however good verse it may be. "We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps." We must own, too, that Byron spoke not wholly without book, when he said that Milton, "the prince of poets," was "a little heavy, though no less divine." Milton is more than a little heavy and prosy, when he undertakes to make the muse chant systematic theology. Verse, however finished, will not make poetry, unless there is poetry in the man when he makes the verse.

We are not underrating rhyme and rhythm. They have a great charm of themselves, and the pleasure is immensely