And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star.
Some of these passages cannot be fully appreciated apart from the context—but we address these who have read the book. Of the translations we have not spoken. It is but right to say, however, that “The Luck of Edenhall” is a far finer poem, in every respect, than any of the original pieces. Nor would we have our previous observations misunderstood. Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. His artistical skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong; and this we shall prove at some future day—to our own satisfaction, at least. His didactics are all out of place. He has written brilliant poems—by accident; that is to say when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional habit of thinking—a habit deduced from German study. We do not mean to say that a didactic moral may not be well made the under-current of a poetical thesis; but that it can never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the majority of his compositions. There is a young American who, with ideality not richer than that of Longfellow and with less artistical knowledge, has yet composed far truer poems, merely through the greater propriety of his themes. We allude to James Russel Lowell; and in the number of this Magazine for last month, will be found a ballad entitled “Rosaline,” affording excellent exemplification of our meaning. This composition has unquestionably its defects, and the very defects which are never perceptible in Mr. Longfellow—but we sincerely think that no American poem equals it in the higher elements of song.
| [5] | We allude here chiefly to the “David” of Coëtlogon, and only to the “Chûte d’un Ange” of Lamartine. |
| [6] | C. Julia Nyberg, author of the “Dikter von Euphrosyne.” |
The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Henry Lord Brougham, to which is Prefixed a Sketch of his Character. Two volumes. Lea and Blanchard.
That Lord Brougham was an extraordinary man no one in his senses will deny. An intellect of unusual capacity, goaded into diseased action by passions nearly ferocious, enabled him to astonish the world, and especially the “hero-worshippers,” as the author of Sartor-Resartus has it, by the combined extent and variety of his mental triumphs. Attempting many things, it may at least be said that he egregiously failed in none. But that he pre-eminently excelled in any cannot be affirmed with truth, and might well be denied à priori. We have no faith in admirable Crichtons, and this merely because we have implicit faith in Nature and her laws. “He that is born to be a man,” says Wieland, in his ‘Peregrinus Proteus,’ “neither should nor can be anything nobler, greater, nor better than a man.” The Broughams of the human intellect are never its Newtons or its Bayles. Yet the contemporaneous reputation to be acquired by the former is naturally greater than any which the latter may attain. The versatility of one whom we see and hear is a more dazzling and more readily appreciable merit than his profundity; which latter is best estimated in the silence of the closet, and after the quiet lapse of years. What impression Lord Brougham has stamped upon his age, cannot be accurately determined until Time has fixed and rendered definite the lines of the medal; and fifty years hence it will be difficult, perhaps, even to make out the deepest indentations of the exergue. Like Coleridge he should be regarded as one who might have done much, had he been satisfied with attempting but little.
The title of the book before us is, we think, somewhat disingenuous. These two volumes contain but a small portion of the “Critical and Miscellaneous Writings” of Lord Brougham; and the preface itself assures us that what is here published forms only a part of his anonymous contributions to the Edinburgh Review. In fact three similar selections from his “Miscellaneous Works” have been given to the world within a year or two past, by Philadelphian publishers, and neither of these selections embrace any of the matter now issued.