RS. Ellett, or Ellet, has been long before the public as an author. Having contributed largely to the newspapers and other periodicals in her youth, she first made her début on a more comprehensive scale, as the writer of Teresa Contarini, a five-act tragedy, which had considerable merit, but was withdrawn after its first night of representation at the Park. This occurred at some period previous to the year 1834; the precise date I am unable to remember. The ill-success of the play had little effect in repressing the ardor of the poetess, who has since furnished numerous papers to the magazines. Her articles are, for the most part, in the rifacimento way, and although, no doubt, composed in good faith, have the disadvantage of looking as if hashed up for just so much money as they will bring. The charge of wholesale plagiarism which has been adduced against Mrs. Ellett, I confess that I have not felt sufficient interest in her works to investigate, and am therefore bound to believe it unfounded. In person, short and much inclined to embonpoint.

R. Henry B. Hirst, of Philadelphia, has, undoubtedly, some merit as a poet. His sense

of beauty is keen although indiscriminate; and his versification would be unusually effective but for the spirit of hyperism, or exaggeration, which seems to be the ruling feature of the man. He is always sure to overdo a good thing; and, in especial, he insists upon rhythmical effects until they cease to have any effect at all; or until they give to his compositions an air of mere oddity. His principal defect, however, is a want of constructive ability; he can never put together a story intelligibly. His chief sin is imitativeness. He never writes anything which does not immediately put us in mind of something that we have seen better written before. Not to do him injustice, however, I here quote two stanzas from a little poem of his called The Owl. The passages italicized are highly imaginative:

When twilight fades and evening falls

Alike on tree and tower,

And Silence, like a pensive maid,

Walks round each slumbering bower;

When fragrant flowerets fold their leaves,

And all is still in sleep,

The horned owl on moonlit wing

Flies from the donjon keep.

And he calls aloud-" Too-whit! too-whoo!"

And the nightingale is still,

And the pattering step of the hurrying hare

Is hushed upon the hill,

And he crouches low in the dewy grass

As the lord of the night goes by,
Not with a loudly whirring wing
But like a lady's sigh.

No one, save a poet at heart, could have conceived these images; and they are embodied with much skill. In the "pattering step," etc., we have an admirable "echo of sound to sense," and the title, "lord of the night," applied to the owl, does Mr. Hirst infinite credit, if the idea be original with Mr. Hirst. the whole, the poems of this author are eloquent (or perhaps elocutionary) rather than poetic; but he has poetical merit, beyond a doubt,-merit which his enemies need not attempt to smother by any mere ridicule thrown upon the man.

Upon

To my face, and in the presence of my friends, Mr. H. has always made a point of praising my own poetical

efforts; and, for this reason, I should forgive him, perhaps, the amiable weakness of abusing them anonymously. In a late number of the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, he does me the honor of attributing to my pen a ballad called Ulalume, which has been going the rounds of the press, sometimes with my name to it, sometimes with Mr. Willis's, and sometimes with no name at all. Mr. Hirst insists upon it that I wrote it, and it is just possible that he knows more about the matter than I do myself. Speaking of a particular passage, he says:

"We have spoken of the mystical appearance of Astarte as a fine touch of art. This is borrowed, and from the first canto of Hirst's Endymion [The reader will observe that the anonymous critic has no personal acquaintance whatever with Mr. Hirst, but takes care to call him "Hirst " simply, just as we say " Homer "] —from Hirst's Endymion, published years since in the Southern Literary Messenger.

Slowly Endymion bent, the light Elysian

Flooding his figure. Kneeling on one knee,

He loosed his sandals, lea

And lake and woodland glittering on his vision

A fairy landscape, bright and beautiful,

With Venus at her full.

"Astarte is another name for Venus; and when we remember that Diana is about to descend to Endymion;

that the scene which is about to follow is one of love; that Venus is the star of love; and that Hirst, by introducing it as he does, shadows out his story exactly as Mr. Poe introduces his Astarte, the plagiarism of idea becomes evident."

Now I really feel ashamed to say that, as yet, I have not perused Endymion, for Mr. Hirst will retort at once, "That is no fault of mine, you should have read it, I gave you a copy; and, besides, you had no business to fall asleep when I did you the honor of reading it to you." Without a word of excuse, therefore, I will merely copy the passage in Ulalume, which the author of Endymion says I purloined from the lines quoted above:

And now, as the night was senescent

And star-dials pointed to morn,
As the star-dials hinted of morn,
At the end of my path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn,
Astarte's bediamonded crescent,

Distinct with its duplicate horn.

Now, I may be permitted to regret-really to regret— that I can find no resemblance between the two passages in question; for malo cum Platone errare, etc., and to be a good imitator of Henry B. Hirst is quite honor enough for me.