ure poets, and the very titles of whose principal pieces betray a dearth among them of the inventive faculty, the rest of the poetry written in England, by bards of the old school, had neither more spice nor better flavor than the produce here. We might add some other exceptions, as for instance, Montgomery, and Henry Kirke White, but their whole number would bear little proportion to the legion of other recognized rhymesters. A fitter estimate of the character of the current literature of the two countries, might be made by comparing the magazine and periodical writing of them both. But, unfortunately for this purpose, it is difficult to procure materials. Copies of the Port Folio and American Magazine, the two principal American publications of that time, can now only be found in the Astor Library, and a few other similar institutions; while, to reach their English contemporaries, would require advertisement and reward. From such comparison we must, of course, exempt the Edinburgh Review, whose blue covers had just taken flight, at the time we speak of. For it was in one of them that the censure against our national literature made its first appearance. As we cannot, therefore, pursue this course, let us adopt Barlow's Columbiad, as a representative specimen of American heroics, and endeavor to say something in favor of its pretensions; or at least to wipe out stains which have been unjustly cast upon it.

We confess we would have liked this poem much better, had it retained the title and bulk of the Vision of Columbus, as it was first written, without having been spun out to the very unreasonable length of seven thousand lines. It might have thus gone safely down the tide of time, in company with the poem on Hasty Pudding, by the same author, as wellintended and very passable eulogiums on institutions which were peculiarly American. They would have been good collaterals, and added strength to each other's claims. As it is, the weight and mass of the latter production has very much impaired the buoyancy of both. The Columbiad also contains some philological blemishes, quite unnecessary, and which have a spice of affectation and conceit about them, which is not agreeable. To call a Yankee a Colon, and to use such

murderous adjectives as homiciduous, is quite inexcusable. But these defects apart, the versification is good, sufficiently Popish and musical, and written, in all things, according to the Epical canons and recognized fashion of the day. A very considerable merit of the poem, so far as criticism is concerned, is the impossibility of making selections. We may take the two following samples as perfect specimens of the whole :"From Mohawk's mouth, far westing with the sun Through all the midlands recent channels run, Tap the redundant lakes, the broad hills brave, And Hudson marry with Missouri's wave. From dim Superior, whose uncounted sails Shade his full seas and bosom all his gales; New paths unfolding, seek Makenzie's tide, And towns and empires rise along their side! Slave's chrystal highways all his north adorn, Like corruscations from the Boreal morn. Proud Mississippi tamed and taught his road Flings forth irriguous from his generous flood

Ten thousand watery glades; that round him curled

Vein the broad bosom of the Western world."-BOOK X.

These prophecies of physical improvement have been more.. than fulfilled on our northern continent already; but, alas, tlie picture of moral supremacy, which should have accompanied. them, remains yet only a vision :

"Think not the love of gold shall here annoy,
Enslave the nation and its nerve destroy.

No useless mine these northern hills enclose,
No ruby ripens and no diamond glows.
But richer stores and rocks of useful mold
Repay in wealth the penury of gold.

Freedom's unconquered race with healthy toil
Shall lop the grove and warm the furrowed soil.
From rugged ridges break the rugged ore
And plant with men the man-ennobling shore.
Sails, villas, towns and temples round them heave,
Shine o'er the realms and light the distant wave.
Nor think the native tribes shall rue the day
That leads our heroes o'er the watery way.
A cause like theirs no mean device can mar

Nor bigot rage nor sacerdotal war.

From eastern tyrants driven, resolved and brave,

To build new states or find a distant grave.

Our sons shall try a new colonial plan,

To tame the soil, but spare their fellow-man."-Book iv..

VOL. XVII.

18*

These two extracts are very fair specimens of the versification of the poem, and they compare very well, in construction, with other English heroics of the same day. They are not less musical and well divided, than those of Falconer and Darwin, which latter they somewhat resemble. But if, from the mechanical execution of the verses, we turn to the design of the poem, the fault is but too apparent, and must, in some measure, have been due to the unnatural enlargement which it underwent second-handed. The writer has attempted to give us the history of the civilization of a whole continent, and the muster roll of three armies, with a detail of their movements, in the same book, and this without selecting any one cardinal point of interest, about which the narration might be made to turn. The fields of Ilion and Latium, with slight diversity of sea, plain, mountain and river, held all the embattled hosts of Homer and Virgil, while our enterprising countryman was scarce content with the Thirteen States and a great part of Canada, and operated his armies from Quebec to Charleston, turning Apollo into a gazetteer. Such a scope of intention, no human skill or genius could properly fill up, nor the result be other than a long and listless story. When, however, our poetical annals shall have become fuller than they are now, the Columbiad will serve as a good point of reference, from which we may see our early condition, entitled to respect, more for its antiquity than its merit, the American fag-end of a critical and imitated school of English poetry, which can never be in Vogue again. We should not be ashamed of it now, but treat it kindly, and criticise it with forbearance. It may hereafter hold the same relation to the poetry of palmier times, which the Prognostics of Aratus do to the Georgics of Virgil. No one now would think of putting these into comparison with each other, without due consideration of the different times in which they had been written.

The increased vigor and animation which had arisen among the bards and critics of England, soon after the publication of Scott's first metrical Romances, came by degrees across the Atlantic, and was felt among us. Indistinct harpings began to be heard, every now and then, which gave evidence of better taste

and more culture; and that true love of nature, as it is best known to us in the peculiar exhibitions of our native land, began to overflow in lays and stories, which had the true metal and the true ring. Some of the legends of our own land were already old enough to require the helping hand of genius to preserve them, and the salient parts of Yankee and Southern character presented a rich variety of national specimens. At this stage of our progress, or, as we remember it, in the Fall of 1818, there appeared in the New York Evening Post, at irregular and not unfrequent intervals, a series of well-aimed and pleasant satires, which hit the prevalent follies and vices of the city so well and fairly as soon to attract very general notice. The writer was evidently a very familiar spirit, who knew the city, from the Battery flag-staff to Bellevue, and showed himself, moreover, to be a spirit of a kind and genial temperament,―a hobgoblin of the Robin Goodfellow order,-playing his pranks rather for mischief than in malice; rubbing with his wing, or pecking with his bill, at the blotches and humors of the great world, not forgetting, at the same time, a touch, now and then, on the freckles and pimples which marred the visages of the more lowly and obscure. These little songs bore the signature of Croaker, were easily and fearlessly written, making sport of the learned and the rich, the silly and the bad, and caring as little for the wrath of St. Tammany, as of the Recorder. They were merrily and melodiously put together, just cynical enough to make them piquant, without bitterness, yet sometimes so pointed in their allusions as to excite the wrath of people who had previously thought themselves secure against all newspaper animadversion. In one or two instances, the weak points of some of the magnates, or leaders in politics and fashion, had been so dexterously struck at, that the Editor was, we believe, threatened, and the letterbox watched, in hopes of detecting the culprit. This however only tended to augment the public curiosity and excitement, which continued undiminished for about a year, when it was partially gratified by the discovery that the lyrics in question had been the offspring of a coterie of literary contributors, of which Mr. Fitz Greene Halleck was the principal. This gen

tleman soon after gave us Fanny, we believe without a name. But the mask had already fallen off, and he has now long been known among us, not only as the author of these first fruits, but also of many other more widely known contributions to our national literature. It is, we think, to be regretted, that most, if not all of the earlier pieces of this author, or his confreres, are now no longer in print, or only to be found in the columns of the Post, where they were first published. For, to our mind, there was a freshness and grace about them which merits preservation. Besides, we have an idea that the vivacity with which this censure was then administered, as well as the happy choice of the personnel upon whose backs it was laid, tended, in no small degree, to check and abate a taste for vicious and expensive indulgence, which was then just beginning in the city, and has, since that time, borne such hideous fruits.

About this time, or soon after, we heard the first chants of Hillhouse, Bryant, Willis and Morris, an early choir, which has since been augmented by Holmes, Saxe, Longfellow, and others, making now a troupe who can easily sing down any merely critical authority which might be brought against them, and have only to fear the danger of becoming too ultra-American and conceited among themselves. But, with due allowance for all the rare merits of this fraternity, we shall always hold Mr. Halleck in peculiar and grateful remembrance, as the first swallow, whose earlier gyrations gave notice of the bounteous and over-laden spring which was about to break upon us. He seems, himself, early to have been aware of the good time that was coming, and in his characteristic and cheery manner, welcomes two of his rivals into the same ring with himself: