John Frost, Esq., Professor of Belles Lettres in the High School of Philadelphia, and at present editor of “The Young People’s Book,” has distinguished himself by numerous literary compositions for the periodicals of the day, and by a great number of published works which come under the head of the utile rather than of the dulce—at least in the estimation of the young. He is a gentleman of fine taste, sound scholarship, and great general ability.
His chirography denotes his mental idiosyncrasy with great precision. Its careful neatness, legibility and finish, are but a part of that turn of mind which leads him so frequently into compilation. The signature here given is more diminutive than usual.
Mr. J. F. Otis is well known as a writer for the Magazines; and has, at various times, been connected with many of the leading newspapers of the day—especially with those in New York and Washington. His prose and poetry are equally good; but he writes too much and too hurriedly to write invariably well. His taste is fine, and his judgment in literary matters is to be depended upon at all times when not interfered with by his personal antipathies or predilections.
His chirography is exceedingly illegible and, like his style, has every possible fault except that of the common-place.
Mr. Reynolds occupied at one time a distinguished position in the eye of the public, on account of his great and laudable exertions to get up the American South Polar expedition, from a personal participation in which he was most shamefully excluded. He has written much and well. Among other works, the public are indebted to him for a graphic account of the noted voyage of the frigate Potomac to Madagascar.
His MS. is an ordinary clerk’s hand, giving no indication of character.
Mr. William Cutter, a young merchant of Portland, Maine, although not very generally known as a poet beyond his immediate neighborhood, (or at least out of the Eastern States) has given to the world numerous compositions which prove him to be possessed of the true fire. He is, moreover, a fine scholar, and a prose writer of distinguished merit.