THE NEW-ENGLAND MAGAZINE. AUGUST, 1832. ORIGINAL PAPERS. LITERARY PORTRAITS. NO. IV. CHARLES SPRAGUE. A BANK seems to be one of the last places in the world in which we should look for a poet; and, yet in one of the busiest institutions of that sort in the city, one may be found, surrounded by bustling clerks, flanked by huge piles of paper-among the active the most activediscounting and signing notes, writing letters, hurrying to and fro, talking to half a dozen men at a time-all the while displaying an ardor of interest, and apparently putting his whole soul into his work, as much as if his thoughts had never strayed an inch from his desk. His common talk is of interest, discount, per centage, credit-sounds grating to the ears of the muses, and which awaken no familiar echoes upon Parnassus. His appearance is gentlemanly and prepossessing— he has a bright eye and an animated and intellectual countenance; but you might talk with him for a long time and not suspect that he was any thing more than an uncommonly intelligent and sensible man ; until something having touched the inner chords of his spirit and awakened their slumbering music, he would delight you with some poetical fancy or eloquent expression of feeling, and with such a lighting up of eye, lip and cheek, as would show you at once that he was a gifted one. After this, we need hardly say that we are speaking of CHARLES SPRAGUE—a true poet, and a gentleman, every inch of him—a man of the highest character in every relation of life, and whom we are truly proud to have for a fellow-citizen. Mr. Sprague is alone sufficient to prove the falsehood of that absurd opinion, so venerable for its age, and supported by blockheads of all times with a constancy that shows that they understand their own interests at least, that the imagination is an infirmity, unfitting its possessor from engaging in any of the practical concerns of life; and that a slight infusion of dullness is necessary to a good business man. A man of genius is supposed to be visionary, enthusiastic, unpractical— stumbling about the world with his head in the clouds-paying his 12 VOL. III. bills without adding them up or stopping to see whether they are receipted or not-ignorant of the value of money, and imperatively requiring the aid of some plodding trustee to keep him solvent. Poets have, in an especial manner, been visited with the ridicule or the pity, as each man's disposition prompted him, of the solid part of the community. The common notion is, that a little madness is an essential ingredient in his composition; he is thought to move in a strangely eccentric orbit; in his words, actions, and opinions, he is supposed to obey laws and impulses peculiar to himself, and to be exempted, by the indulgence of mankind, from the responsibility which belongs to all others. If we be not so hard upon poetry, as, like one of the Fathers, to call it the "Devil's wine," we believe it to be an intoxicating draught, which often does the devil good service, if it do not come from him. Our readers will recollect the consternation of Owen, in the opening scene of Rob Roy, on learning that the son of his patron was given to the unprofitable and dangerous trade of versemaking; and those, who have had much knowledge of the comptinghouse and the exchange, will acknowledge that the picture is not a caricature. We have heard of "The clerk, condemned his father's soul to cross, and even in these days, there is many a good business-man, who would hear that his son had discovered a taste for poetry with much the same feeling, as if he had heard that he was addicted to drinking. Great must have been the consternation of all these good people when Mr. Sprague blazed out, all of a sudden, as a poet. Every man, who owned a dollar in the bank in which he was employed, must have been in a cold sweat at the thought of the risk he had run in suffering any of his property to pass through the hands of a man of genius, who, lost in poetic visions, might not, with the eye of his body, see the difference between tens and hundreds. But we never heard that Mr. Sprague grew careless or inaccurate or inattentive to his employment after the sin of poetry was fairly laid to his door. We know, indeed, that he is at present in a much more lucrative and responsible situation than he was when we first heard of him; and he should esteem it a piece of uncommon good luck, that he, wearing the livery of the Muses, is able to get employment in any other service than theirs. Among the first productions by which Mr. Sprague made himself known beyond the city of his birth as a poet, are two prize prologues; one at the opening of the Park theatre in New-York, in 1821, and the other for the Philadelphia theatre, in 1822. Compositions of this kind are not to be judged of by the same rules which we apply to poetry in general. There are a certain number of common-places which must be brought in; and, as they are commonly limited in length, there is very little room left for original conceptions or the development of striking thoughts; so that we may observe a strong family likeness between them, whatever difference there may be in the genius of their respective authors. They should be criticized relatively and not absolutely; and, applying this rule to Mr. Sprague's prologues, we can safely say that they deserve a place by the side of those of Lord Byron and Dr. Johnson. They have all that seems desirable in such occasional productions-strength and harmony in the versification, natural |