His MS. is more like that of Mr. Benjamin than that of any other literary person of our acquaintance. It has even more than the occasional nervousness of Mr. B.’s, and, as in the case of the editor of the “New World,” indicates the passionate sensibility of the man.
Thomas G. Spear is the author of various poetical pieces which have appeared from time to time in our Magazines and other periodicals. His productions have been much admired, and are distinguished for pathos, and grace. His MS. is well shown in the signature. It is too clerky for our taste.
Mr. Morris ranks, we believe, as the first of our Philadelphia poets, since the death of Willis Gaylord Clark. His compositions, like those of his late lamented friend, are characterised by sweetness rather than strength of versification, and by tenderness and delicacy rather than by vigor or originality of thought. A late notice of him in the “Boston Notion,” from the pen of Rufus W. Griswold, did his high qualities no more than justice. As a prose writer, he is chiefly known by his editorial contributions to the Philadelphia “Inquirer,” and by occasional essays for the Magazines.
His chirography is usually very illegible, although at times sufficiently distinct. It has no marked characteristics, and like that of almost every editor in the country, has been so modified by the circumstances of his position, as to afford no certain indication of the mental features.
Ezra Holden has written much, not only for his paper, “The Saturday Courier,” but for our periodicals generally, and stands high in the public estimation, as a sound thinker, and still more particularly as a fearless expresser of his thoughts.
His MS. (which we are constrained to say is a shockingly bad one, and whose general features may be seen in his signature,) indicates the frank and naïve manner of his literary style—a style which not unfrequently flies off into whimsicalities.
