All nations have their message from on high,
Each the messiah of some central thought,
For the fulfilment and delight of Man:
One has to teach that Labor is divine;
Another, Freedom; and another, Mind;
And all, that God is open-eyed and just,
The happy centre and calm heart of all.
It is impossible to read such sentiments as these, without feeling our hearts open to him who gives them utterance. Mr. Lowell is one of those writers who gain admiration for their verses and lovers for themselves. We can pay him no higher compliment.
There is nothing in the title-page or appearance of this elegant volume to indicate that it is not published in Cambridge, England; but unlike the majority of American books of poetry, any page in the work will give out too strong an odor of Bunker-Hill, though we find no allusion to that sacred eminence, to allow the reader to remain long in doubt of its paternity. Although we hold that any writing worthy of being called poetry must be of universal acceptance, and adapted to the longings and necessities of the entire human family, as the same liquid element quenches the thirst of the inhabitants of the tropics and the poles, yet every age and every clime must of necessity tincture its own productions. We do not therefore diminish in the slightest degree the high poetical pretensions of Mr. Lowell’s poems, when we claim for them a national character, silent though they be upon ‘the stars and stripes,’ and a complexion which no other age of the world than our own could have given. They are not only American poems, but they are poems of the nineteenth century. There is a spirit of freedom, of love for God and Man, that broods over them, which our partiality for our own country makes us too ready perhaps to claim as the natural offspring of our land and laws. The volume is dedicated to William Page, the painter, in a bit of as sweet and pure language as can be found in English prose. It might be tacked on to one of Dryden’s dedications without creating an incongruous feeling. The dedication is as honorable to the poet as to the painter. Had all dedications been occasioned by such feelings as gave birth to this, these graceful and fitting tributes of affection and gratitude would never have dwindled away to the cold and scanty lines, like an epitaph on a charity tomb-stone, in which they appear, when they appear at all, in most modern books.
Thirty Years passed among the Players in England and America. Interspersed with Anecdotes and Reminiscences of a Variety of Persons connected with the Drama during the Theatrical Life of Joe Cowell, Comedian. Written by himself. In one volume, pp. 103. New-York: Harper and Brothers.