  “THERE is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection ’tis kindled o’ nights, With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation (There’s no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation); Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on; He’s too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on; Unqualified merits, I’ll grant, if you choose, he has ’em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. ...... “Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who’s hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd’s worth. No, don’t be absurd, he’s an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you’ll endanger the life of your client By attempting to stretch him up into a giant. ...... “There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne’er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard, and all that kind of thing; And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it) From the very same cause that has made him a poet— A fervour of mind which knows no separation ’Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If ’twere I, or mere wind, through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favourite direction, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar’s not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he’s prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats, When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, And can ne’er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before: Like old What’s-his-name there at the battle of Hastings (Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings), Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor: Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, Vestis filii tui, O leather-clad Fox? Can that be my son, in the battle’s mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly’s spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling? ...... “There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; ’Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe; His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek— He’s a John Bunyan FouquÉ, a Puritan Tieck; When nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man. The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight; Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, She sang to her work in her sweet, childish way, And found, when she’d put the last touch to his soul, That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole. ...... “There’s Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit— A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems ’tis painful sometimes, and invites Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully, As if you got more than you’d title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild Father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you a fright’ning. He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e’er achieved aught in’t so worthy of praise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand ‘Marseillaise.’ You went crazy, last year, over Bulwer’s ‘New Timon’; Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne’er reach the best point and vigour of Holmes. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes.” James Russell Lowell. |
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