On the storied monument it falls,
Blots out the studied verse,
And covers all the high and low
With one unsculptured hearse.
Methinks it lies more lightly on
The grave of the broken-hearted one.
The folds of a Paynim turban now
The village spire doth hide;
And see! it dresses the old yew-tree
As gay as a bonny bride;
With an ermine-cloak it wraps the plain,
And shuts the blast from the growing grain.
Come on! come on! old Winter!
Spring wears a winning smile,
And Summer has a lulling art
To charm and to beguile;
And Autumn is in beauty drest;
But thy rough form I love the best!
Thou tellest me 'of long ago,'
Of childhood's spotless day;
Of boyhood's freaks by th' old fire-side—
Of friends now passed away:
Albeit to me thy accents drear
Tell that Life's winter draweth near!
The 'Tribune' daily journal finds the October number of the Knickerbocker 'well filled with readable and pleasant papers, upon a gratifying variety of topics;' its 'Literary Notices extended and interesting;' and 'its Editor's Table admirably filled, as usual, with whatever is light, graceful, and pleasing.' We hold ourselves bound to be duly grateful for praise so much beyond our deserts; but we cannot permit the young associate-editor of that print, howsoever prompted, to misrepresent us, as he has done, in the notice from which we derive the encomiastic tributes we have quoted. We are accused of 'going out of our way' to attack the writings and the fame (Heaven save the mark!) of the author of 'Puffer Hopkins;' and of being actuated in this by a spirit of malevolence and personal pique. We choose, for the nonce, to occupy space which we could much better employ, in opposing a point-blank denial to this charge. Such a course is not the wont of the Knickerbocker; a fact no better known to our readers themselves than to the absent senior editor of the 'Tribune,' with whom for ten years and upward we have walked hand-in-hand in the support and encouragement of such native literature as was worthy of the name. Were this Magazine accustomed to be swayed in its judgments by private pique, its adverse opinions would need no corrective; its 'sneers' would be impotent; its 'satire' unavailing. No; our sin consists in exposing, without fear, favor, or hope of reward, the literary pretensions of one who has no claim to be regarded as an 'American author;' who has foisted upon the community such works as we have elsewhere considered; and whose efforts to establish a literary reputation are of a kind to heighten rather than to lessen the effect of his uniform failures. We are gravely told, that this writer has 'just conceptions of what an American literature ought to be; of the mission of the American writer,' and so forth. We have had and have nothing to say of his 'conceptions' of what our literature should be, nor of his ideas of literary 'missions;' but we have had something to say of his performances, and of the manner in which they have been presented to and received by the public; and for this reason, and this alone, are we accused of being actuated by private prejudice. But so it has always been. 'Tell these small-beer littérateurs,' says Christopher North, 'that they are calves, and sucking calves too, and they low against you with voices corroborative of the truth they deny.' We should like to know whether all who hold our own opinions touching 'Puffer Hopkins' and the other 'writings' of its author are also actuated by 'personal pique.' If so, there is a goodly number of us! ''Fore Heaven,' as Dogberry says, 'we are all in a case;' for we can truly say, that we never heard an individual speak of these productions, who did not agree with us entirely in the estimate we had formed of them. 'Personal pique!' Was it this which led the kindly 'Boston Post' to pronounce 'Puffer Hopkins' 'about as flat an affair as it ever tried to wade through?' and the 'Poem on Man' a 'mere pile of words,' in which even poetical thoughts were 'completely spoiled by verbiage?' Was it this which prompted our own lively 'Mercury' to say that Mr. Mathews had 'no more humor than a crying crocodile,' and that his short-lived Arcturus 'died of a lingering 'Puffer Hopkins?'' Was it this which caused a monthly metropolitan contemporary to declare, that his writings were 'characterized by an air of pretension, and an eternal succession of futile attempts at humor, which at once disposed the reader to dislike him and his works?' Was it 'malevolence' which prompted the publishers of 'Behemoth,' (over whom the writer had 'come the evil eye,') when they saw his proposals for a 'new edition,' to advertise their's—'four years old and complete'—at half the money? Was it 'personal pique' which caused the house whose name appears as publishers on the title-page of his last work, to complain that it had previously been used by him without their consent, and to object to its being again employed?—on the ground, too, that they did not desire their names to appear upon any of his productions? Was it 'malevolence' which suggested a new title-page, at the publisher's expense, from which their names might be omitted? As well might 'the disaffected' upon whom a humorous 'work' of the author had been inflicted abroad, be accused of acting from 'personal pique' in deciding that for them at least 'one such fun, it was enough!' Æsop is dead, but his frog is still extant; and if we were not at the end of our tether, we could 'illustrate this position' to the satisfaction of every body save Mr. Mathews himself. As it is, we take our leave of him, with no fear that he will write less creditably, and no hope that he will print less frequently, than heretofore; for such is his cacoëthes scribendi, that we verily believe he would be an author, if he were the only reader in the world. Indeed, we even hear of another edition of his writings, 'at the risk of the owner,' to be sent forth from his stereotype-plates, by our friends the Harpers! We had intended a word or two touching Mr. Mathews's position in the 'Copy-right Club'—for we hear there are two sides to that matter—but we wish well to a cause of which this Magazine was the earliest, and has been a constant advocate, and to Mr. Mathews's efforts in it; and if he is to prepare an address to the public, we earnestly hope that it may be clear, simple, and direct, as becomes the plain truths it should present; and that 'giants, elephants, 'tiger-mothers,' and curricles, angels, frigates, baronial castles, and fish-ponds,' will be carefully excluded from its arguments and its expostulations. By the by: this reminds us that we have an error to correct, alike unintentional and immaterial. It was at the Society Library, not the Tabernacle, that Mr. Mathews's great lecture on copy-right was delivered. On this point, the following passage from an editorial paragraph in the 'New World' may be deemed pertinent by many readers, and impertinent, perhaps, by one or two: 'The 'Tribune' accuses the Knickerbocker of mistaking the Tabernacle for the Society Library, as the place where Mr. Mathews delivered his lecture on copy-right to a beggarly account of empty benches, last winter, after placarding the town with the fact that 'the author of 'Puffer Hopkins' was to be heard and seen at that place. But is the fact altered by this trifling error? Was there not a 'capacious edifice' almost empty, and tickets numbered as high as twelve hundred, and not fifty persons in the room?—and half of those 'dead heads?'—as dead as the lecturer's? If this is denied, it can easily be proved.' * * * We are obliged for the kind wishes and intentions of our friend and correspondent 'F.;' but he must allow us to say, that his 'Sketch of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell' embodies many anecdotes of that learned and eccentric person, which are already familiar to the public. The story of the semi-black man is 'as old as the hills.' The following, however, which we segregate, is quite new, at least to us: 'Jarvis, celebrated no less as an artist than as a pleasant social companion, walking one sultry summer morning with a friend down Murray-street, encountered the Doctor, with a pound of fresh butter upon a cabbage-leaf. 'I'll lay you a small wager,' said he to his companion, 'that I'll cross over on the sunny side, and engage the doctor in conversation, until his butter has melted completely away!' No sooner said than done. Jarvis entertained him with inquiries upon abstruse themes, which Dr. Mitchell took great delight in answering in detail, as well as the objections which Jarvis occasionally urged against the correctness of his conclusions. Meanwhile, the butter dripped slowly away upon the walk, until it was utterly wasted. The waggish painter then took leave of the Doctor, who now for the first time glanced at his cabbage-leaf, exclaiming: 'You've almost made me forget my errand, Jarvis; I started to get some fresh butter from Washington-market!' * * * We shall venture to hope that in declining the 'Stanzas to my Boy in Heaven' we shall give no pain to the bereaved author. The feeling of the lines is itself eloquent poetry; but their execution is in certain portions marked by deficiences in rythm and melody. Will the writer permit another to express for her the very emotions which she evidently depicts with her 'heart swelling continually to her eyes?'
'The nursery shows thy pictured wall.
Thy bat, thy bow,
Thy cloak and bonnet, club and ball;
But where art thou?
A corner holds thy empty chair.
Thy playthings idly scattered there
But speak to us of our despair.
'Even to the last thy every word,
To glad, to grieve,
Was sweet as sweetest song of bird
On summer's eve;
In outward beauty undecayed.
Death o'er thy spirit cast no shade.
And like the rainbow thou didst fade.
'We mourn for thee, when blind blank night
The chamber fills;
We pine for thee, when morn's first light
Reddens the hills:
The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea,
All, to the wall-flower and wild pea,
Are changed—we saw the world through thee!
'And though, perchance, a smile may gleam
Of casual mirth,
It doth not own, whate'er may seem.
An inward birth;
We miss thy small step on the stair;
We miss thee at thine evening prayer;
All day we miss thee, every where.
'Yet 'tis sweet balm to our despair.
Fond, fairest boy!
That heaven is God's, and thou art there.
With Him in joy;
There past are death and all its woes;
There beauty's stream for ever flows;
And pleasure's day no sunset knows.
'Farewell, then—for a while farewell—
Pride of my heart!
It cannot be that long we dwell,
Thus torn apart;
Time's shadows like the shuttle flee;
And, dark howe'er life's night may be,
Beyond the grave I'll meet with thee.'