How gladly his hand o'er his harp he flings,
With a minstrelsy rich and golden!

Where the yule-log flickered he sitteth and sings;
He toucheth his harp, with its unseen strings,
And bright-winged thoughts from the past he brings,
Dead years, long past and olden.

The old gray minstrel that dwelleth here,
Through many long years hath spoken

Of the lady fair, when the crystal tear

Hath fallen, a jewel, beside the bier

Of him whom she treasured with hope and fear,
Lest the cord of her love be broken.

And still he sitteth, and still he sings

With a minstrelsy rich and golden;

Where the yule-log flickered he sitteth and sings;
He toucheth his harp with its unseen strings,

And bright-winged thoughts from the past he brings,
Dead years, long past and olden.

ICTHUS

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE: With Introductions and Biographical Notices. By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. In one volume: pp. 779. New-York: CHARLES S. FRANCIS AND COMPANY. London: SAMPSON, LOW, SON AND COMPANY.

WELL and wisely was the preparation of this comprehensive and valuable work committed to the hands of Professor LONGFELLOW. Himself a poet of wide renown, an accomplished scholar, acquainted with nearly all the modern languages of Europe, which he writes and speaks with a perfection rarely attained by an Englishman or an American; of severe and delicate taste, and a love of research that no difficulty can daunt, he was the man of all others who should have been chosen to accomplish the task of which he has so nobly acquitted himself. Mr. LONGFELLOW has certainly very many of the qualities which enter into the 'standard' of a true poet, as described by ALFONSO DE BAENA, the old Spanish Jew, whom he quotes in his preface: for 'discreetly and correctly he can create and arrange, and compose and polish, and scan and measure feet, and pauses, and rhymes, and syllables;' he has a noble and ready invention, elevated and pure discretion, sound and steady judgment;' he has seen, and heard, and read many and divers books and writings;' and what is more, he has the skill and the practice of turning all this rich and various knowledge to the best account.

In the volume before us, Professor LONGFELLOW has brought together, in a compact and convenient form, as large an amount as possible of those English translations which are scattered through many volumes, and are not accessible to the general reader. In doing this, he has treated the subject historically rather than critically. "The materials have in consequence,' he remarks, 'been arranged according to their dates; and in order to render the literary history of the various countries as complete as these materials and the limits of a single volume would allow, an author of no great note has sometimes been admitted, or a poem which a severer taste would have excluded. The work is to be regarded as a collection, rather than as a selection; and in judging any author, it must be borne in mind that translations do not always preserve the rhythm and melody of the original, but often resemble soldiers moving onward when the music has ceased, and time is only measured by the tap of the drum.' The languages from which the translations in this volume are presented are ten. They embrace the six Gothic languages of the North of Europe - Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, Danish,

Swedish, German, and Dutch; and the four Latin languages of the South of Europe-French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. 'In order,' modestly remarks the editor, 'to make the work fulfil entirely the promise of its title, the Celtic and Sclavonic, as likewise the Turkish and Romaic, should have been introduced; but with these I am not acquainted, and I therefore leave them to some other hand, hoping that ere long a volume may be added to this, which shall embrace all the remaining European tongues.' A large portion of the biographical sketches prefixed to the translations are awarded to Professor C. C. FELTON, and admirably succinct and comprehensive they are. If this acknowledgment includes a like proportion of the critical 'Introductions,' we may well say of the two learned professors, 'Par nobile fratrum.' Our dog's-eared pages in this fruitful volume are 'thick as leaves in Vallambrosa: a few selections we make, but not without stint.' Of Anglo-Saxon poetry, we may say that we have never yet encountered a single example of it that we could recal long after perusal. Yet we defer to the better judgment of Professor LONGFELLOW, who hopes that the specimens here given 'may lead many to the study of that venerable language. Through such gate-ways, it is true, they will pass into no gay palace of song; but among the dark chambers and mouldering walls of an old national literature, all weather-stained and in ruins. They will find, however, venerable names recorded on those walls, and inscriptions worth the trouble of deciphering.' Chacun à son goût: meanwhile, leaving BEÖWOLF, CEDMON, King ALFRED, and the like, to those who affect them, we come down to a period a little farther this side of the great Freshet, personally regretting that there does not appear to have been a poet of that remote era who could write half so good a poem as the 'Saga of the Skeleton in Armor,' or 'The Village Blacksmith.' The German muse is well and liberally represented. We subjoin a few examples, not because they will be new to all our readers, but for the reason that we desire to secure their preservation in these pages. From VON SALIS, whose poems are characterized by a soft melancholy and deep feeling, and whose genius resembles that of MATTHISSON, we quote the 'Song of the Silent Land:'

VOL. XLV.

'INTO the Silent Land!

Ah! who shall lead us thither?

Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,
And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.

Who leads us with a gentle hand,

Thither, oh! thither,

Into the Silent Land?

'Into the Silent Land!

To you, ye boundless regions

Of all perfection! Tender morning-visions
Of beauteous souls! The future's pledge and band!
Who in life's battle firm doth stand,
Shall bear hope's tender blossoms
Into the Silent Land!

'O Land! O Land!

For all the broken-hearted,

The mildest herald, by our fate allotted,
Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand
To lead us with a gentle hand
Into the land of the great departed,

Into the Silent Land!'

19

To our conception, UHLAND is among the most musical, tender, and pathetic of all the German poets whose verses have come in our way. There is one brief poem of his, (if we are not wrong in attributing it to his pen,) which we are sorry not to see in uded in the present collection. It runs as follows:

'SWEET Sabbath of the year!

Thy evening lights decay;
Thy parting steps methinks I hear
Steal from the world away.

'Amidst thy silent bowers

'Tis sad yet sweet to dwell,

Where falling leaves and fading flowers
Around us breathe 'farewell!'

'A deep and crim on streak

The dying leaves disclose,
As on Consumption's waning cheek
'Mid ruin blooms the rose.

"The scene each vision brings
Of beauty in decay,

Of fair and early-fading things,
Too exquisite to stay.

'Of loves that are no more;

Of flowers whose bloom has fled;
Of farewells wept upon the shore;
Of friends estranged or dead.

'Of all that now may seem
To memory's tearful eye

The vanished raptures of a dream,
O'er which we gaze and sigh!'

Very characteristic both of the heart and the style of this lovable author are the lines, On the Death of a Country Clergymen,' a simple tribute to a departed friend, whose counterpart is in our mind as we write:

'IF in departed souls the power remain
These earthly scenes to visit once again,
Not in the night thy visit wilt thou make,
When only sorrowing and longing wake.
No! in some summer morning's light serene,
When not a cloud upon the sky is seen;
When high the golden harvest rears its head,
All interspersed with flowers of blue and red,
Thou, as of yore, around the fields wilt walk,
Greeting the reapers with mild, friendly talk.'

Many years ago 'The Passage' was translated for the KNICKERBOCKER; but it was less felicitously rendered than in the present version, which we subjoin:

'MANY a year is in its grave

Since I crossed this restless wave;

And the evening, fair as ever,

Shines on ruin, rock and river.

"Then in this same boat beside,
Sat two comrades, old and tried:
One with all a father's truth,
One with all the fire of youth.

'One on earth in silence wrought,
And his grave in silence sought;
But the younger, brighter form,
Passed in battle and in storm.

'So whene'er I turn my eye
Back upon the days gone by,

Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,
Friends that closed their course before me.

'But what binds us friend to friend,
But that soul with soul can blend?
Soul-like were those hours of yore;
Let us walk in soul once more.

'Take, O boat-man, thrice thy fee-
Take, I give it willingly;

For, invisible to thee,

Spirits twain have crossed with me.'

If the reader would partake of the spirit which animates those who in battle 'dare to do or die,' let him peruse 'Blücher's Ball,' describing the battle of Katzbach, from the German of ADOLF LUDWIG FOLLEN, a brother of CHARLES FOLLEN, whose name is so well known in the United States. It was originally translated for this Magazine by Professor FELTON. It has the clash of bayonets, the whizzing and roaring of bullets and balls, 'the noise of the captains and the shouting,' and all under the similitude of a ball. We could wish that Mr. LONGFELLOW had made one or two brief selections from the prose of Father ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA, in the translations of the late lamented DANIEL SEYMOUR, in the tenth volume of the KNICKERBOCKER, to which he refers. There were very quaint and Germanic, and on occasion extremely effective and pathetic passages, in those papers. The following is quoted, as bearing a striking resemblance to JEREMY TAYLOR:

'I SEEM to see in fancy, holy BACHOMIUS in the wilderness, where he chose him a dwelling among hollow clefts of rock, which abode consisted in naught but four crooked posts, with a transparent covering of dried boughs. And he, when wearied with singing psalms, resorting to labor, lest the Old Serpent should catch him unemployed, and weaving rude coverings of thatch, sits by a rock, wherefrom flow forth silver veins of water, which make a pleasing murmur in their crystal descent, while around him on the green boughs play the birds of the forest, who, with their natural cadences, and the clear-sounding flutes of their throats, joining pleno choro, transform the wood into a concert; and the agile deer, the bleating hares, the chirping insects are his constant companions, unharmed and unharming, all which furnishes him with solace and contentment. But it seemeth to me that our devout hermit delighteth himself more especially in the echo which sends him back his loud sighs and petitions, as when the holy anchorite cries, 'O merciful CHRIST!' the echo, that unembodied thief, steals away the words and returns them back to him. But is he too sorely tempted, and doth he exclaim, in holy impatience, O thou accursed devil!' the echo lays aside its devout language, and sounds back to him, 'Thou accursed devil!' In a word, as a man treats Echo, so does Echo treat him.

'Now, God is just like this voice of the woods; for it is an unquestioned truth that, as we demean ourselves toward GOD, so he demeaneth himself toward us.'

We can't say that we greatly fancy the piece of verse quoted from Father ABRAHAM; nor for that matter, does the editor who cites it. It has been often said that the Dutch have 'no poetry in their souls.' Not so: for example, read the following, which not only evinces a poetical eye, but the true genial, genuine KNICKERBOCKER benevolence of feeling, and simple good. ness of heart. It is from a 'Winter Evening's Song,' by TOLLENS, a Rotter