make room for other writers. I have moreover wholly eschewed everything in the way of extracts from poems of considerable length-a sort of sample most unfair, as I conceive, to the author himself, and tedious and disgustful to the reader, if I may judge of other tastes by my own. I regard such extracts as the trifling of dabblers in poetic reading; almost worthless for the purpose of giving an idea of an author's performances, and sometimes really worse than worthless-misleading and misrepresenting; in fact, a contempt of court against the Astræa of Poesy. Another limitation in my field of selection arises from the copyright system. There are, of course, but few American poems to which this system applies, more or less fully, in England: some, however, there have been of late years, and this is the reason why I have left out the finest (as I conceive) of all Mr. Lowell's serious poems-the Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration in 1865, published here in 1869.

As to the quality of my selections, I have not admitted anything which does not appear to me entitled, in some moderately fair degree, to the name of poetry,' and a handsome proportion I apprehend to be excellent. On the other hand, I have aimed to give the whole volume a representative character; and have been more disposed to let in a secondrate composition by some writer accredited in America, if it seemed to me just up to the mark, than to stiffen the standard of quality, and so exclude the author altogether. Even as it stands, there are several names, well-reputed in the States, that do not appear at all in my pages. This

1 I should except the first anonymous composition; which, though unpoetic enough, is included in virtue of its early date, quaintness, and nationalism.

result may be due to a variety of causes. The strength of the author may perhaps lie in long compositions, which I cannot print entire, and will not cut slices from; or I may know his works only through books of selections, which may have chosen amiss; or my own judgment may be at fault :-not to hint at the possibility that Columbia may in this instance have regarded her goose as a swan.

Probably the reader would not thank me were I to hold forth at any considerable length on the merits of American poetry and poets. I shall say a little, but only a little, on each subject.

Walt Whitman, a person well able to break a butterfly without having recourse to a wheel, has spoken of the ordinary run of American verse as "either the poetry of an elegantly weak sentimentalism, at bottom nothing but maudlin puerilities or more or less musical verbiage, arising out of a life of depression and enervation as their result; or clse that class of poetry, plays, &c., of which the foundation is feudalism, with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and the manners of European highlife below-stairs in every line and verse." These are harsher expressions than one would be minded to use, were one's purpose critical rather than objurgatory still they require to be respectfully and candidly considered, and they seem to be not far from expressing the truth, as it must present itself to a nature so strong and so abounding as Whitman's. This writer himself entered the poetic arena in 1855, and performed therein some feats of athletics which have remained an astonishment to the spectators ever since. When we reflect that, at the present time, America has to show such masculine and exceptional poets as Whitman, Emer

son, Joaquin Miller, and (in the line of national humour) Lowell-along with other eminent though less strictly robust writers, such as Poe, Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow-we must admit that the contemptuous phrases just cited are only partially applicable to the existing condition of things. Partially applicable, but nevertheless truly applicable. In reading through a collection like that of Mr. Griswold, one is led to perceive that American poetry, in its ordinary character and main current, is strictly reflex poetry, and even factitious. The writers have little to announce or communicate to us: they take up with all the most accepted and well-ratified assumptions in point of character and emotion-of moral and religious begged-questions-and flood us with the wordiness born of mild and artificial enthusiasms, and of petted sympathies. These the author feels to be a credit to himself, and a claim upon the goodwill of the reader, unless indeed the latter is content to confess the thickness of his hide, and the obtuseness of his yearnings. Poetry of this sort has an invalided character, rather than a morbid one: its likings are healthy, and it asserts its right to mingle with the vigorous, and take its enjoyments along with them; but it has neither the same endurance of arduous things, nor the same indifference to slight ones the same readiness to take all ordinary vicissitudes as they come, debts punctually payable to nature because they are down "in the bond," and to pass on undismayed after paying them. In especial, the invalid naturally fancies that, when he has done with effort what the sound man does with ease, he has exhibited uncommon energy of character and body—a fine spirit and rich capabilities: the display of adventurous fire, active sympathies, and virtuous

sentiment, in the general run of American poetry, reminds me very much of this state of mind. It is not the forte of the invalid, but the faible of the invalid, to entertain and express such feelings and equally it is the faible of the American Muse which appears in such strains as I am referring to. Longfellow's Excelsior is a typical example. Certainly no mental condition is to be more respectfully approached than that which thinks reverently and tenderly of the beloved in life, now dead; and a poet suffering such a loss is more than likely to give utterance to his emotions, and this without incurring the faintest shadow of blame. Yet I was struck with the extremely bereaved condition of the American poets, as revealed in Mr. Griswold's compilation: one comes upon them time after time bending over tombs, and confident of a blissful re-union in heaven. I counted in the volume of male poets (not to speak of the more readily tearful females) no less than fifty-four such mortuary wreaths of poetry, personal to the writers; and this without taking into account the sufficiently numerous compositions in which deceased national or local celebrities are acclaimed or bewailed. On the whole, it may not untruthfully be said that there is a hectic tinge in American verse, of ordinary and average quality; and, what is worse, it is a hectic whieh speaks of the more commonplace—not the more poetically related-forms of consumption.

We have next to glance at the magnates of poetry in the New World. I conceive Walt Whitman to be beyond compare the greatest of American poets, and indeed one of the greatest now living in any part of the world. He is just what one could conceive a giant to be, if all the mental faculties and aspirations of such a being were on the same

scale with his bodily presence. We should expect his emotions and his intellectual products to be colossal, magnificent, fervid, far-reaching, many-sided-showing the most vivid perceptions and the strongest grasp. Capable of estimating all matters, but not willing to attend minutely to minutiæ, his mind would naturally go out towards the volume of things, rather than cling to the graces of things. If he were somewhat indifferent to charm of form and subtlety of art, we should be neither surprised nor offended : we should regard it as scarcely a derogation from the calibre of his intellect, but a symptom of its proportions. This is what we find in Whitman. He is not insensible to grace, nor yet to art, for his mind, besides all its other large endowments, is distinctly that of a poet; but the scale of his intuitions, his sympathies, and his observation, is so massive, and his execution has so wide a sweep, that he does not linger over the forms or the finish of his work-not at least over forms and finish of such sort as most poets delight in, though he has his own standard of performance which he willingly and heedfully observes.1 To carve the Egyptian Sphinx is, by analogy, his endowment-not to elaborate a Greek gem. The Greek gem is undoubtedly the more artistic product of the two, in an accurate though also a restricted sense of the word "artistic :" but the Sphinx is likewise a work of art, and its relations to all things in the world of nature and of mind, being vast like itself, have attained a proportional and commensurate type in its mode of execution.

1 In fact, Whitman even goes too far in perpetual revision of his old poems: though we are assured that the latest edition is to be the final one in this respect. To me at least (with all respect be it said) it seems that he goes too far, and alters and refits where neither alteration nor refitting is in demand.