Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

RAY.

[ocr errors]

ERRATUM. - Page 88. line 19, for Ninus read Nisus.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CLX.

JULY, 1853.

ART. I. Poems. By ALEXANDER SMITH. London: Bogue. Boston: Ticknor & Co.

1853.

2. Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. By A. London: Fellowes. 1852.

3. The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems. By A. London: Fellowes. 1849.

4. The Poetical Remains of WILLIAM SIDNEY WALKER, formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Edited, with a Memoir of the Author, by the REV. J. MOULTRIE, Rector of Rugby. London: J. W. Parker. 5. Poems. By WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. London: Chapman & Hall. 1850.

1852.

POEMS by Alexander Smith, a volume recently published in London, and by this time reprinted in Boston, deserve attention. They have obtained in England a good deal more notice than is usually accorded there to first volumes of verse; nor is this by any means to be ascribed to the mere fact that the writer is, as we are told, a mechanic; though undoubtedly that does add to their external interest, and perhaps also enhances their intrinsic merit. It is to this, perhaps, that they owe a force of purpose and character which makes them a grateful contrast to the ordinary languid collectanea published by young men of literary habits; and which, on the whole, may be accepted as more than compensation for many imperfections of style and taste.

[blocks in formation]

The models, whom this young poet has followed, have been, it would appear, predominantly, if not exclusively, the writers of his own immediate time, plus Shakspeare. The antecedents of the Life-Drama, the one long poem which occupies almost the whole of his volume, are to be found in the Princess, in parts of Mrs. Browning, in the love of Keats, and the habit of Shakspeare. There is no Pope, or Dryden," or even Milton; no Wordsworth, Scott, or even Byron to speak of. We have before us, we may say, the latest disciple of the school of Keats, who was indeed no well of English undefiled, though doubtless the fountain-head of a true poetic stream. Alexander Smith is young enough to free himself from his present manner, which does not seem his simple and natural own. He has given us, so to say, his Endymion; it is certainly as imperfect, and as mere a promise of something wholly different as was that of the master he has followed.

We are not sorry, in the mean time, that this Endymion is not upon Mount Latmos. The natural man does pant within us after flumina silvasque; yet really, and truth to tell, is it not, upon the whole, an easy matter to sit under a green tree by a purling brook, and indite pleasing stanzas on the beauties of Nature and fresh air? Or is it, we incline to ask, so very great an exploit to wander out into the pleasant field of Greek or Latin mythology, and reproduce, with more or less of modern adaptation,

the shadows

Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces ? Studies of the literature of any distant age, or country; all the imitations and quasi-translations which help to bring together into a single focus, the scattered rays of human intelligence; poems after classical models, poems from Oriental sources, and the like, have undoubtedly a great literary value. Yet there is no question, it is plain and patent enough, that people much prefer Vanity Fair and Bleak House. Why so? Is it simply because we have grown prudent and prosaic, and should not welcome, as our fathers did, the

*The word spoom, which Dryden uses as the verb of the substantive spume, occurs also in Beaumont and Fletcher. Has Keats employed it? It seems hardly to deserve re-impatriation.

« ZurückWeiter »