A Book of Romances, Lyrics and Songs. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: Ticknor, Read & Fields, 1 vol. 16mo.
Bayard Taylor’s peculiarities as a poet are the same which have won him so much popularity as a man, and refer to his character as well as his mind. Fine, however as is the impression conveyed by his numerous prose works, we think that no reader can carefully peruse the present volume without feeling that the best embodiment of the man is in these poems. They are thoroughly genuine, recording the thoughts and aspirations nearest and dearest to the author’s heart and brain, and o’erinformed with the life of a thoughtful, imaginative and genial nature. Some of them are darkened by a recent affliction, and to those friends who know how deep and acute that affliction was, they can hardly be read without tears. But the majority of the poems express the essential happiness of the author’s spirit, and communicate happiness to the reader. That descriptive power, which has made him one of the most fascinating of modern writers of travels, is of course active in the present volume in its most exquisite form. Indeed, as a poet, he does not so much describe as represent scenery, picturing it forth to the imagination in words and images which seem the mental counterparts of the objects before his eye. As a descriptive poet alone, he would rank high among contemporary authors, but he is also a close and subtle observer of the operations of thought and passion, as modified by individual character, and numerous pieces in this volume indicate intensity and concentration of thought, exercised on some of the most elusive and etherial laws and facts of the spiritual nature. In addition to all this, his style of expression is pure, energetic and picturesque, and varies readily with his themes. The best poem in the volume, and one which we think has good pretensions to be ranked with American classics, is “Man-da-Min, or the Romance of the Maize,” an Indian legend of great beauty, and, in Taylor’s version, exquisite in idea and masterly in execution. “Hylas,” “Taurus,” “The Summer Camp,” “The Odalisque,” “The Pine Forest of Monterey,” and “The Waves,” are likewise of great merit, and exhibit the variety as well as power of the author’s mind. Cordially do we wish success to this volume, and trust that Taylor will live to write, and we to welcome many like it.
The Home Book of the Picturesque, or American Scenery, Art and Literature; with Thirteen Engravings on Steel, from Pictures by Eminent Artists, Engraved expressly for this Work. New York: George P. Putnam. 1 vol. folio.
The American public have become so accustomed to Mr. Putnam’s enterprise, that they may not be surprised even by this splendid example of it—a volume essentially American, yet in engravings, letter-press, and general execution equal to the best English annuals, and in the merits of its literary matter far superior to them. The cost and trouble of getting up the book may be conceived, when we mention that the pictures from which the exquisite illustrations of the volume are engraved, are scattered among many collectors, and that the execution of the plates exhibits the utmost skill and finish which the art of engraving has reached in America. The essays which accompany the engravings are by what old Jacob Tonson called “eminent hands.” Irving contributes a paper on the “Catskill Mountains,” which seems like an essay accidently left out of the “Sketch Book,” and is certainly worthy of a place among the most charming productions of his genius. Cooper’s article on “American and European Scenery,” is a carefully meditated and attractive disquisition on a subject which has occasioned endless discussion, but which was never treated so thoroughly and temperately before. Tuckerman’s “Over the Mountains” is an admirable essay. “Scenery and Mind,” by Magoun, is the most eloquent, thoughtful, scholarly and tasteful of his productions. Willis contributes a brilliant and sensible paper on “The Highland Terrace,” in his most fascinating style. The artists whose landscapes make the beauty of the volume, are Durand, Huntington, Beekwith, Talbot, Kensett, Cropsey, Richards, Church, Weir, Cole and Gignoux.
Altogether, the volume is the best exhibition of American art in connection with American literature we have ever seen, and must take the lead among the gift-books of the season.
The Human Body and its Connection with Man, Illustrated by the Principal Organs. By John James Garth Wilkinson. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
The author of this curious and attractive volume is well-known as the English editor of Swedenborg’s works, and the writer of Swedenborg’s life, and, in the opinion of Emerson, is “a philosophic critic, with a co-equal vigor of understanding and imagination comparable only to Lord Bacon’s.” Without attempting to discuss the accuracy of this opinion, which is at least the result of a study of Mr. Wilkinson’s whole works, it is sufficient to say here that the author of this volume is one of the most vivid, pointed and striking writers of the century; and that, however solid or doubtful may be his pretensions to great scientific merits, there can be no doubt of the brilliancy of his rhetoric and the fertility of his intellect in original thoughts. A review of the present work we do not intend to give, but simply recommend it to all readers as a powerful, independent, suggestive and stimulating book, lifting the study of anatomy and physiology into a fine art, and abounding with new views both of the body and the mind. The chief peculiarity of Mr. Wilkinson seems to us to be a singular vigor and audacity of will, in some cases running into offensive dogmatism, but generally exercised in freeing his intellect from the trammels both of accredited skepticisms and authorities, and in stamping his own opinions with such force upon the mind of the reader, as to create himself into a kind of authority. There is muscular health and strength in every sentence of his remarkable book, and a seeming gladness in the exercise of his faculties which is wonderfully inspiring to the reader.