people in America much in the same light as did Coleridge in England. The few also, through a certain warping of the taste, which long pondering upon books as books merely never fails to induce, are not in condition to view the errors of a scholar as errors altogether. At any time these gentlemen are prone to think the public not right rather than an educated author wrong. But the simple truth is, that the writer who aims at impressing the people, is always wrong when he fails in forcing that people to receive the impression. How far Mr. Hawthorne has addressed the people at all, is of course, not a question for me to decide. His books afford strong internal evidence of having been written to himself and his particular friends alone.

There has long existed in literature a fatal and unfounded prejudice, which it will be the office of this age to overthrow-the idea that the mere bulk of a work must enter largely into our estimate of its merit. I do not suppose even the weakest of the Quarterly reviewers weak enough to maintain that in a book's size or mass, abstractly considered, there is anything which especially calls for our admiration. A mountain, simply through the sensation of physical magnitude which it conveys, does indeed affect us with a sense of the sublime, but we cannot admit any such influence in the contemplation even of "The Columbiad." The Quarterlies themselves will not admit it. And yet, what else are we to understand by their continual prating about "sustained effort?" Granted that this sustained effort has accomplished an epic-let us then admire the effort (if this be a thing admirable), but certainly not the epic on the effort's account. Common sense, in the time to come, may possibly insist upon measuring a work of art rather by the object it fulfils, by the impression it makes, than by the time it took to fulfil the object, or by the extent of "sustained effort" which became necessary to produce the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another; nor can all the transcendentalists in Heathendom confound them.

AMELIA WELBY.

MRS. AMELIA WELBY has nearly all the imagination of Maria del Occidente, with a more refined taste; and nearly all the passion of Mrs. Norton, with a nicer ear, and (what is surprising) equal art. Very few American poets are at all comparable with her in the true poetic qualities. As for our poetesses (an absurd but necessary word), few of them approach her.

With some modifications, this little poem would do honour to any one living or dead :

:

"The moon within our casement beams,

Our blue-eyed babe hath dropped to sleep,
And I have left it to its dreams

Amid the shadows deep,

To muse beside the silver tide

Whose waves are rippling at thy side.

It is a still and lovely spot

Where they have laid thee down to rest :

The white rose and forget-me-not

Bloom sweetly on thy breast,

And birds and streams with liquid lull

Have made the stillness beautiful.

And softly thro' the forest bars

Light lovely shapes, on glossy plumes,

Float ever in, like winged stars,

Amid the purpling glooms:

Their sweet songs, borne from tree to tree,
Thrill the light leaves with melody.

Alas! the very path I trace

In happier hours thy footsteps made;
This spot was once thy resting-place;
Within the silent shade

Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough

That drops its blossoms o'er me now.

'Twas here at eve we used to rove;

'Twas here I breathed my whispered vows,

And sealed them on thy lips, my love,
Beneath the apple-boughs.

Our hearts had melted into one,

But Death undid what Love had done.

Alas! too deep a weight of thought

Had fill'd thy heart in youth's sweet hour;
It seem'd with love and bliss o'erfraught;
As fleeting passion-flower
Unfolding 'neath a southern sky,

To blossom soon and soon to die.

Yet in these calm and blooming bowers,

I seem to see thee still,

Thy breath seems floating o'er the flowers,
Thy whisper on the hill;

The clear faint star-light and the sea
Are whispering to my heart of thee.

No more thy smiles my heart rejoice-
Yet still I start to meet thine eye,
And call upon the low sweet voice
That gives me no reply-

And list within my silent door

For the light feet that come no more.

In a critical mood I would speak of these stanzas thus: -The subject has nothing of originality :-A widower muses by the grave of his wife. Here then is a great demerit; for originality of theme, if not absolutely first sought, should be sought among the first. Nothing is more clear than this proposition-although denied by the chlorine critics (the grass-green). The desire of the new is an element of the soul. The most exquisite pleasures grow dull in repetition. A strain of music enchants. Heard a second time it pleases. Heard a tenth, it does not displease. We hear it a twentieth, and ask ourselves why we admired. At the fiftieth it induces ennui-at the hundredth, disgust.

Mrs. Welby's theme is, therefore, radically faulty so far as originality is concerned; but of common themes, it is one of the very best among the class passionate. True passion is prosaic-homely. Any strong mental emotion stimulates all the mental faculties; thus grief the imagina

tion;—but in proportion as the effect is strengthened, the cause surceases. The excited fancy triumphs-the grief is subdued-chastened-is no longer grief. In this mood we are poetic, and it is clear that a poem now written will be poetic in the exact ratio of its dispassion. A passionate poem is a contradiction in terms. When I say, then, that Mrs. Welby's stanzas are good among the class passionate (using the term commonly and falsely applied), I mean that her tone is properly subdued, and is not so much the tone of passion as of a gentle and melancholy regret, interwoven with a pleasant sense of the natural loveliness surrounding the lost in the tomb, and a memory of her human beauty while alive. Elegiac poems should either assume this character, or dwell purely on the beauty (moral or physical) of the departed-or, better still, utter the notes of triumph. I have endeavoured to carry out this latter idea in some verses which I have called "Lenore."

Those who object to the proposition-that poetry and passion are discordant-would cite Mrs. Welby's poem as an instance of a passionate one. It is precisely similar to the hundred others which have been cited for like purpose. But it is not passionate; and for this reason (with others having regard to her fine genius) it is poetical. The critics upon this topic display an amusing ignoratio elenchi.

Dismissing originality and tone, I pass to the general handling, than which nothing could be more pure, more natural, or more judicious. The perfect keeping of the various points is admirable—and the result is entire unity of impression, or effect. The time, a moonlight night; the locality of the grave; the passing thither from the cottage, and the conclusion of the theme with the return to "the silent door," the babe left, meanwhile, "to its dreams;" the "white rose and forget-me-not" upon the breast of the entombed; the "birds and streams, with liquid lull, that make the stillness beautiful;" the birds whose songs "thrill the light leaves with melody;" all these are appropriate and lovely conceptions:-only quite unoriginal; and (be it observed), the higher order of genius should, and will combine the original with that which is natural-not in the

vulgar sense (ordinary)- but in the artistic sense, which has reference to the general intention of Nature.-We have this combination well effected in the lines:

which are, unquestionably, the finest in the poem. The reflections suggested by the scene-commencing

"Alas! the very path I trace,"

are also something more than merely natural, and are richly ideal; especially the cause assigned for the early death; and "the fragrant bough"

"That drops its blossoms o'er me now."

The two concluding stanzas are remarkable examples of common fancies rejuvenated, and etherealised by grace of expression and melody of rhythm.

The "light lovely shapes," in the third stanza (however beautiful in themselves) are defective, when viewed in reference to the "birds" of the stanza preceding. The topic "birds" is dismissed in the one paragraph to be resumed in the other.

The repetition ("seemed," "seem," "seems ") in the sixth and seventh stanzas, is ungraceful; so also that of "heart" in the last line of the seventh and the first of the eighth. The words "breathed" and "whispered," in the second line of the fifth stanza, have a force too nearly identical. "Neath," just below, is an awkward contraction. All contractions are awkward. It is no paradox that the more prosaic the construction of verse the better. Inversions should be dismissed. The most forcible lines are the most direct. Mrs. Welby owes three-fourths of her power (so far as style is concerned) to her freedom from these vulgar, and particularly English errors-elision and inversion. O'er is, however, too often used by her in place of over, and 'twas