THE POET BRYANT AS A HUMORIST.
Those who are familiar with Mr. Lowell’s Fable for Critics, will remember the lines:—
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 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 by the very North Pole.
The Cambridge wit has either misjudged the character of Bryant’s genius, or he has sacrificed a man to an epigram, and subordinated fact to a jeu d’esprit. Though “quiet and dignified,” Mr. Bryant possesses a rare vein of humor, but its bubbling fancies are not generally known or suspected for the reason that he unbends anonymously. Only one of the diversions of his muse appears in his published works—and that is his invocation “To a Mosquito,” which begins thus:—
Fair insect! that with thread-like legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail’st about,
In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins would bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.
One day, when Mr. Bryant discovered in a fresh number of the Atlantic Monthly a so-called poem, which struck him as uncommonly absurd, he sat down and produced a travesty of it, which was much more effective in its ridicule than any sharper criticism could have been made. Here are the two in conjunction:—