It gives us great pleasure to announce the appearance of a new and revised edition of Dr. Holmes’s poems, printed in a style of simplicity and elegance creditable to the publishers and appropriate to him. It contains a large number of pieces which have never before appeared in any collection of his poems, and also a number which are now printed for the first time. A volume which is so emphatically “a nest of spicery,” which sparkles on every page with wit, fancy, and imagination, and which contains some of the most perfect specimens of versification and true poetical expression ever produced in the country, will be sure of a rapid and a large circulation. The author has been literally mobbed for many years to prepare an edition of his poems, and we now have one which fairly reflects his character and powers.
In criticising a poet, the too common method pursued by the craft is to fix upon him some time-honored and time-worn phrases and epithets, which apply to him only as they apply to all poets, and to avoid that task of analysis which would bring out the peculiarities of his genius. Holmes has especially suffered from this mode of criticism; and thus one of the most singular and individual of our poets, a man who, whatever may be thought of the scope and domain of his genius, is still a strictly original writer, is described in terms which are as applicable to Longfellow and Bryant as to him.
The great mental peculiarity of Holmes is fineness of intellect—subtilty in the perception of resemblances, subtilty in the perception of differences, and subtilty in the conception of remote and filmy shades of thought. He has a most acute and inevitable perception of the ludicrous, but it is ever passed through his intellect before it is expressed; and, accordingly, his wit and humor have the certainty of demonstration, and never miss their mark. He has a no less acute perception of the pathetic, the beautiful, and the grand, but he never hazards their expression from the simple impulse of enthusiasm, but passes them also through his intelligence, scrutinizes them as they lie mirrored on his imagination, and gives them utterance only when he is satisfied intellectually and consciously of their validity and excellence. Such a man would naturally be accused of lacking sensibility, sensitiveness to impressions; but no careful reader of his writings, who considers their singular wealth and variety of sensuous imagery, of niceties and felicities of description, can fail to discern the intense sensibility to external objects they continually imply, however much he may be puzzled to account for the form in which it is expressed. The truth is, we should judge, that Holmes’s extreme sensitiveness made him skeptical, or fearful of the quality, and that he arraigned his impressions, his spontaneous combinations and strange freaks of juxtaposition, his teeming throng of fanciful images, his impatient, voluble, and affluent verbal extravagances, before the tribunal of his intellect, to see if they would bear the tests by which the bizarre is discriminated from the picturesque, levity from wit, drollery from humor, sentimentality from pathos, flightiness from ideality. Were it not for his detecting, exacting, sure and fine intellect, there would be no rein on his wild colt of a fancy, and the result would be more portentous freaks of deviltry and mischievousness, and perhaps more direct expression of impatient passion and tender feeling, but the whole would be but splendid disorder and aimless brilliancy. It is thus from the very fulness and fierce pressure of his sensitive nature for expression, that Holmes has become so eminently an intellectual poet, and that all his writings indicate an intense working of faculties rather than a heedless expression of affinities. Take up any one of his poems, witty or serious, subject it to the chemical processes of criticism, and it is surprising what seemingly untameable elements of thought and emotion are revealed. This mastery of his impulses, as seen in the intellectual form of their expression, is the peculiarity of Holmes, and gives to his poems that character of certainty, decision, and restrained exuberance, which constitutes so much of their charm. Such a man must have rejected more brilliancies and grotesque strokes of fanciful wit, than most men have ever conceived. Nothing which his fancy or his wit, his Ariel or his Puck, pitches into his mind, can pass muster, unless it can bear the sharp, close, microscopic glance of his sure and subtle intellect.
In respect to the intellectuality of his processes, Holmes bears some resemblance to Tennyson, with the exception that Tennyson’s mind pierces patiently into a different and more mysterious domain of spiritual phenomena, and bears the marks of a slower reduction of film to form. The mind of Holmes acts with the rapidity of lightning. It examines and dissects as instantaneously as it feels and conceives. There is no patient contemplation of the object of his thought, but a quick, brisk, almost nervous seizure of it. His mind works with such intensity, all its faculties are so perfectly under his control, that what it grasps it grasps at once with the celerity of intuition. Nothing comes to him by degrees and slow steps. He does not wait for the Muse to turn her countenance gradually upon him, unfolding feature after feature, but he impatiently seizes her by the shoulders, twirls her round, and looks her right in the face. He is not abashed by her reproof, and disregards all her airs and assumptions of dignity. He seems plainly to tell her that he will stand none of her nonsense—that he knows her secret—that she cannot impose upon him—that if she do not choose to smile he can sail along very well without her assistance. Such spiteful treatment from any body else, would draw down her wrath; but Holmes seems a favorite, and has his mischievous ways indulged.
There is observable in Holmes’s long poems one defect which springs from the refinement of his perceptions. Though his writings evince no lack of vivid and palpable imagery, the curious subtilty of his mind leads him often into a remoteness of allusion whose pertinence and beauty are not apprehended by the ordinary reader. The leading idea of some of his poems, though obvious enough if sharply scrutinized, is still not prominent enough to enforce attention of itself. The result is that “Poetry” and “Urania,” appear at first like aggregates of brilliant parts rather than as vital wholes. The unity of each is perceived only on an after examination. This is an artistical defect which mars their excellence and effectiveness.
The present edition of Holmes, while it contains a complete collection of his published pieces, is enriched with some after dinner poems, which were not intended for the public eye. These seem to have been thrown off extempore, but they teem with brilliancies of wit and fancy, and are full of fine audacities of expression. Of these the best are “Terpsichore,” “A Modest Request,” and “Nux Postcænatica,” which contain enough spirit and poetry to make a reputation, and which almost add to that which Holmes has already made. The drinking song, slily called “A Song of Other Days,” is almost unmatched for the grandeur and splendor of its imagery, and the heartiness of its tone. The “Sentiment” which follows this right royal Anacreontic, is as glorious a tribute to water as the other is to wine—thus satisfactorily proving that Holmes is indebted to neither for inspiration. One of the most beautiful and brilliant of the poems added in this edition, is that on the Ancient Punch Bowl, and the mode in which sentiment and wit are made to shake hands, and dwell cosily together, is grandly humorous. “Urania,” we suppose, must be considered on the whole, the best production in the volume. It has touches of sentiment and pathos, so graceful, so pure, and so elusive—not to speak of its satirical and witty portions—that it would be in vain to place any other poem of the author before it.
We have only space to refer to one more admirable peculiarity of Holmes, a natural consequence of the vigor, affluence and fineness of his intellect, and that is the re-readableness of his productions. There is a perpetual stimulant in them which we cannot drain dry. On a fourth or fifth perusal some refinement of allusion or analogy, some delicacy of thought or expression, some demure stroke of humor, which did not at first fix the attention, repays the diligent reader. Indeed to read one of his poems for the purpose of taking in its whole meaning at once, would require the mind to be as thoroughly awake and active as if it were engaged on Hume or Butler. The very gladness and briskness with which his verse moves, the flood of radiance poured out upon it, the distinctness of much of the imagery, interfere, on the first perusal, with the perception of his minor felicities and remote combinations of fancy and wit. Holmes, indeed, is a poet to have constantly on the parlor-table, not one to be consigned to a shelf in the library; for there is hardly a page not brightened by those fine fancies which age does not dim, and which “sparkle like salt in fire.”
United States Fiscal Department.
In a republican government entire simplicity in all that relates to public affairs, is not only convenient to the officers, but is a duty to the public, every man of whom is a party in the business. We are reminded of the value of simplicity and order by two quarto volumes now before us, which point out the order, and show how simplicity is to be attained in whatever relates to the fiscal department of the government of the United States.