which constitute the body of the poem, asking any of our readers to read them if they can; that is to say, we place the question, without argument, on the broad basis of the very commonest "common sense ": They 're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal . . him . . . Is some of it pr- -no, 't is not even prose . . . O'er his principles when something else turns up trumps. Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter . . Plough, dig, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make all things new But enough; we have given a fair specimen of the general versification. It might have been better, but we are quite sure that it could not have been worse. So much for "common sense," in Mr. Lowell's understanding of the term. Mr. L. should not have meddled with the anapæstic rhythm; it is exceedingly awkward in the hands of one who knows nothing about it and who will persist in fancying that he can write it by ear. Very especially he should have avoided this rhythm in satire, which, more than any other branch of letters, is depending upon seeming trifles for its effect. Two thirds of the force of the Dunciad may be referred to its exquisite finish; and had the Fable for the Critics been (what it is not) the quintessence of the satiric spirit itself, it would, nevertheless, in so slovenly a form, have failed. As it is, no failure was ever more complete or more pitiable. By the publication of a book at once so ambitious and so feeble, so malevolent in design and so harmless in execution, a work so roughly and clumsily yet so weakly constructed, so very different, in body and spirit, from anything that he has written before, Mr. Lowell has committed an irrevocable faux pas and lowered himself at least fifty per cent in the literary public opinion. K Bayard Taylor BLUSH to see, in the Literary World, an invidious notice of Bayard Taylor's Rhymes of Travel. What makes the matter worse, the critique is from the pen of one who, although undeservedly, holds, himself, some position as a poet; and what makes the matter worst, the attack is anonymous, and (while ostensibly commending) most zealously endeavors to damn the young writer" with faint praise." In his whole life, the author of the criticism never published a poem, long or short, which could compare, either in the higher merits or in the minor morals of the Muse, with the worst of Mr. Taylor's compositions. Observe the generalizing, disingenuous, patronizing tone: "It is the empty charlatan, to whom all things are alike impossible, who attempts everything. He can do one thing as well as another; for he can really do nothing. Mr. Taylor's volume, as we have intimated, is an advance upon his previous publication. We could have wished, indeed, something more of restraint in the rhetoric, but," etc., etc., etc. The concluding sentence, here, is an excellent example of one of the most ingeniously malignant of critical ruses-that of condemning an author, in especial, for what the world, in general, feel to be his principal merit. In fact, the " rhetoric " of Mr. Taylor, in the sense intended by the critic, is Mr. Taylor's distinguishing excellence. He is unquestionably the most terse, glowing, and vigorous of all our poets, young or old-in point, I mean, of expression. His sonorous, well-balanced rhythm puts me often in mind of Campbell (in spite of our anonymous friend's implied sneer at "mere jingling of rhymes, brilliant and successful for the moment "), and his rhetoric in general is of the highest order. By "rhetoric " I intend the mode generally in which thought is presented. Where shall we find more magnificent passages than these? First queenly Asia, from the fallen thrones Of twice three thousand years, Came with the woe a grieving goddess owns Who longs for mortal tears; The dust of ruin to her mantle clung While the majestic sorrows of her tongue |