The mountains that infold, In their wild sweep, the colored landscape round, [This latter passage is especially beautiful. Happily to endow inanimate nature with sentience and a capability of action, is one of the severest tests of the poet.] .There is a power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, Pleasant shall be thy way, where weekly bows And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass.... Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore, And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem He hears the rustling leaf and running stream..... In a "Sonnet, To-," are some richly imaginative lines. I quote the whole. Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine And the vexed ore no mineral of power; The happiest finale to these brief extracts will be the magnificent conclusion of " Thanatopsis." So live, that, when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed In the minor morals of the muse Mr. Bryant excels. In versifi cation (as far as he goes) he is unsurpassed in America-unless, indeed, by Mr. Sprague. Mr. Longfellow is not so thorough a versifier within Mr. Bryart's limits, but a far better one upon the whole, on account of his greater range. Mr. B., however, is by no means always accurate or defensible, for accurate is not the term. His lines are occasionally unpronounceable through excess of harsh consonants, as in As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky. Now and then he gets out of his depth in attempting anapæstic rhythm, of which he makes sad havoc, as in And Rispah, once the loveliest of all That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul. Not unfrequently, too, even his pentameters are inexcusably rough, as in Kind influence. Lo! their orbs burn more bright. which can only be read metrically by drawing out "influence" into three marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable "Lo!" and lenghtening the short one "their." Mr. Bryant is not devoid of mannerisms, one of the most noticeable of which is his use of the epithet "old" preceded by some other adjective, e. g.— In all that proud old world beyond the deep;.... And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven, etc. etc. etc. These duplicates occur so frequently as to excite a smile upon each repetition. Of merely grammatical errors the poet is rarely guilty. Faulty constructions are more frequently chargeable to him. In "The Massacre of Scio" we read- Till the last link of slavery's chain Is shivered to be worn no more. What shall be worn no more? The chain, of course--but the link is implied. It will be understood that I pick these flaws only with difficulty from the poems of Bryant. He is, in the "minor morals," the most generally correct of our poets. He is now fifty-two years of age. In height, he is, perhaps, five feet nine. His frame is rather robust. His features are large His countenance is sallow, nearly bloodless. His eyes but thin. are piercing gray, deep set, with large projecting eyebrows. His mouth is wide and massive, the expression of the smile hard, cold. -even sardonic. The forehead is broad, with prominent organs of ideality; a good deal bald; the hair thin and grayish, as are also the whiskers, which he wears in a simple style. His bearing is quite distinguished, full of the aristocracy of intellect. In general, he looks in better health than before his last visit to England. He seems active-physically and morally energetic. His dress is plain to the extreme of simplicity, although of late there is a certain degree of Anglicism about it. In character no man stands more loftily than Bryant. The peculiarly melancholy expression of his countenance has caused him. to be accused of harshness, or coldness of heart. Never was there a greater mistake. His soul is charity itself, in all respects generous and noble. His manners are undoubtedly reserved. Of late days he has nearly, if not altogether abandoned literary pursuits, although still editing, with unabated vigor, "The New York Evening Post." He is married, (Mrs. Bryant still living,) has two daughters, (one of them Mrs. Parke Godwin,) and is residing for the present at Vice-Chancellor McCown's, near the junction of Warren and Church streets, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.* THE reputation of the author of "Twice-Told Tales" has been confined, until very lately, to literary society; and I have not been wrong, perhaps, in citing him as the example, par excellence, in this country, of the privately-admired and publicly-unappreciated man of genius. Within the last year or two, it is true, an occasional critic has been urged, by honest indignation, into very warm approval. Mr. Webber, for instance, (than whom no one *Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. James Munroe & Co., Boston. 1842. Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wiley & Putnam, New York. 1846. has a keener relish for that kind of writing which Mr. Hawthorne has best illustrated,) gave us, in a late number of "The American Review," a cordial and certainly a full tribute to his talents; and since the issue of the "Mosses from an Old Manse," criticisms of similar tone have been by no means infrequent in our more authoritative journals. I can call to mind few reviews of Hawthorne published before the "Mosses." One I remember in "Arcturus" (edited by Matthews and Duyckinck) for May, 1841; another in the "American Monthly" (edited by Hoffman and Herbert) for March, 1838; a third in the ninety-sixth number of the "North American Review." These criticisms, however, seemed to have little effect on the popular taste-at least, if we are to form any idea of the popular taste by reference to its expression in the newspapers, or by the sale of the author's book. It was never the fashion (until lately) to speak of him in any summary of our best authors. The daily critics would say, on such occasions, "Is there not Irving and Cooper, and Bryant, and Paulding, andSmith ?" or, "Have we not Halleck and Dana, and Longfellow, and-Thompson ?" or, "Can we not point triumphantly to our own Sprague, Willis, Channing, Bancroft, Prescott and-Jenkins?" but these unanswerable queries were never wound up by the name of Hawthorne. Beyond doubt, this inappreciation of him on the part of the public arose chiefly from the two causes to which I have referred --from the facts that he is neither a man of wealth nor a quack; but these are insufficient to account for the whole effect. No small portion of it is attributable to the very marked idiosyncrasy of Mr. Hawthorne himself. In one sense, and in great measure, to be peculiar is to be original, and than the true originality there is no higher literary virtue. This true or commendable originality, however, implies not the uniform, but the continuous peculiarity -a peculiarity springing from ever-active vigor of fancy-better still if from ever-present force of imagination, giving its own hue, its own character to everything it touches, and, especially, self impelled to touch everything. It is often said, inconsiderately, that very original writers always fail in popularity-that such and such persons are too origi nal to be comprehended by the mass. "Too peculiar," should be the phrase, "too idiosyncratic." It is, in fact, the excitable, undisciplined and child-like popular mind which most keenly feels the original. The criticism of the conservatives, of the hackneys, of the cultivated old clergymen of the "North American Review," is precisely the criticism which condemns and alone condemns it. "It becometh not a divine," saith Lord Coke, "to be of a fiery and salamandrine spirit." Their conscience allowing them to move nothing themselves, these dignitaries have a holy horror of being moved. "Give us quietude," they say. Opening their mouths with proper caution, they sigh forth the word "Repose." And this is, indeed, the one thing they should be permitted to enjoy, if only upon the Christian principle of give and take. The fact is, that if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not fail of making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is not original in any sense. Those who speak of him as original, mean nothing more than that he differs in his manner or tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author of their acquaintance their acquaintance not extending to the German Tieck, whose manner, in some of his works, is absolutely identical with that habitual to Hawthorne. But it is clear that the ele The element of its ment of the literary originality is novelty. appreciation by the reader is the reader's sense of the new. Whatever gives him a new and insomuch a pleasurable emotion, he considers original, and whoever frequently gives him such emotion, he considers an original writer. In a word, it is by the sum total of these emotions that he decides upon the writer's claim to originality. I may observe here, however, that there is clearly a point at which even novelty itself would cease to produce the legitimate originality, if we judge this originality, as we should, by the effect designed: this point is that at which novelty becomes nothing novel; and here the artist, to preserve his originality, will subside into the commonplace. No one, I think, has noticed that, merely through inattention to this matter, Moore has comparatively failed in his "Lalla Rookh." Few readers, and indeed few critics, have commended this poem for originality |