Hammond's strain (once called the English Ovid), which has been long since, and not unjustly, forgotten.

A delicate volume might be made up of single poems of English and American poets of this century. In English poetical literature, Mrs. Southey's Pauper's Death-Bed, - Noel's Pauper's Funeral, delicate verses of Darley, Montgomery's Grave, &c., &c.

Our American Parnassus entertains many occupants, who can prefer but a single claim (or two) for possession. The following are all of the gems we can, at present, recall. The famous song of R. T. Paine, entitled Adams and Liberty, though its poetical value we forget, was the best paid copy of verses ever printed here, and exceedingly popular the spirited "Indian Burial Ground," of Frenpeau, which Longfellow has lately recovered, and whence Campbell borrowed a line or two (a common trick with him): Coke's Florence Vane, Neal's Birth of a Poet, Wilde's My Life is like a Summer's Rose, Pierpont's affecting lines on his dead child, Lindley Murray's charming verses to his wife, Pinckney's spirited and truly poetical songs, Aldrich's Death Bed, Field's Dirge on a young girl, Woodworth's Old Oaken Bucket, Eastman's Farmer, &c. But our best fugitive poetry has been written by prose writers. Irving's delicious lines, the Dull Lecture, illustrating, or illustrated by (we know not which), a capital picture of Stuart Newton; and his classic verses to the Passaic River, as graceful and picturesque as that winding stream. C. C. Moore has in a choice volume, among other delicate verses, included three classic poems sufficient to secure a place for their author on the same shelf with Gray, Campbell, and Logan: the capital humorous visit of St. Nicholas-with the verses to the Poet's

wife, and the lines to his children, accompanying their father's portrait: verses worthy of Goldsmith. A noble poem on Alaric, by Governor Everett; some fine versions from the German, by the Hon. Alexander Everett; three or four admirable pieces by John Waters; the two last addressed to ladies, printed in the American newspaper, some six or seven years ago. Nicholas Biddle wrote some very agreeable jeux d'esprit and vers de société. A lively epistle of this kind appeared in the weekly New Mirror last summer. A noble poem, "The Days of my Youth and of my Age contrasted," by the Hon. St. Geo. Tucker, of Virginia, has been going the rounds of the papers for a year past. Can no printed book or magazine show us more of the author? We often ask ourselves this question, with regard to many other authors, without ever receiving a satisfactory answer. Very many such we still remain in utter ignorance of, in common with the reading public, and this fact must account for our omis sions. When we think of the stupid long poems, with which the world has been deluged for years past, and recollect how many exquisite brief pieces are lost merely by their brevity, as a jewel is hidden in a pile of common stones, we often wish that a critical police might be continually kept up, to pound all stray poetical cattle; or, at least, to advertise where they might be found.

XII.

ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS.

THE day of prefaces and courtly dedications is well nigh past. The readers of the present generation are generally in too great a hurry to penetrate the inner courts of the Temple of Truth, or oftener of Pleasure, to linger long about the sacred Porch, and are too apt to neglect the formal compliments and elaborate address of the janitor, at the gate. With a disregard and indifference (more especially with us Americans) to the amenities of social intercourse, has also been introduced a carelessness on the part of authors. Rarely we meet a conciliatory poem or an affectionate salutatory; still less frequently we encounter a critical introduction, or argument of the work. Modern society laughs at the studied courtesies of the old school of politeness; and modern critics are equally inclined to ridicule the hyperbolical praises and scholastic introductions of their literary forefathers. But let us discriminate. At the same time, that the herd of authors (not very different in the most unpleasant aspects, at any one period from what they are at all others) ran riot in extravagant adulations, and prolix, stupid and tiresome self-eulogium, or worse yet, self-censure, there were writers living who have made the Preface and the Dedication

classical provinces of elegant composition; whose skill in spirited portrait and delicate flattery, in the last department, and whose clear, acute and copious analogies and illustration, in the first, have rendered them indispensable appendages to the work, we are accustomed to regard as standards in their class.

A preface may be regarded as having the same relation to the work that follows, as the symphony bears to the opera or oratorio; a prologue to a play; or when extended and explanatory, as an overture to an opera. It should give the reader the key-note to the book itself, and the harmonies it is supposed to contain. Or else it should, in a bird's-eye view, display the whole scope of the theme, with all its bearings. It should rarely admit of an apologetic tone, and never deprecate the honest severity of just criticism. That is a bad book as well as a feeble character, that begs off from a close inspection. There should be no petitio principii, no morbid modesty; neither any false fears, nor artful affectations. Its business is to speak the truth, yet not necessarily the whole of the truth. It is well to keep something in reserve; to promise too little rather than too much; to know how to disappoint one's friends the right way.

In the Dedication, the writer makes his bow and presents his compliments; addressing a near friend, or heart's idol (a great author or public character, who stands on an elevation far above him, yet whom he cherishes with an affectionate veneration); and, although the custom is rapidly falling into disuse, it seems to us as disrespectful to the reader for a writer to omit this piece of introductory civility, as it would appear to any well-bred company for a person to enter without saluting any member of it, and

depart in the same graceless manner. A similar omission in letters, of an epithet of attachment or regard, strikes us much in the same way, as if one stopped another in the street, and fell at once into conversation with him, without shaking of hands, a smile, an inquiry after the person's health who is addressed, a passing good-morrow, or even a civil nod. When a man wishes to assume a magisterial air, to write in the imperative or minatory mood, he may waive all forms of address. But between friends, it is one of the indispensable bonds of connexion, and furnishes one of the strongest ties (however slight it may appear) to lasting attachment.

Not to trench further upon the confined limits to which our lucubrations are restricted, we must make an end of these prefatory remarks and come to the point.

In looking through the Index to the first series of the Curiosities of Literature, we remarked a section on Prefaces; and began to think we had chanced upon a topic already exhausted by the learned research and ingenious criticism of the elder D'Israeli. But a reference to the paragraph in question speedily satisfied us how much more. had been left for subsequent essayists; that the liberal antiquary had by no means employed a tithe of his researches, had merely indicated a point or two, leaving the multifarious instances for future inquirers to accumulate and dispose. Of what he has written, however (a page or two only), we readily avail ourselves, for who has more justly gained the title of the Literary Antiquary than D'Israeli, and from whose books can our later critics gain a better insight into many varieties of letters and the profession of authorship, than from the fragmentary note-books of the same author?