Yet even the inundation of "fugitive poetry," "other poems," and the like trash, with which the twenty-four states are deluged, has not discouraged some bold swimmers in the sea of ink. Few or none adventure successfully south of Long-Island Sound; what little poetical merit America can boast belongs wholly to the north. Who has not read Bryant, Percival, Dana, Hillhouse and Halleck? Who can deny that Sprague and Pierpont have written well? We have other sparks of genius, which might be fanned into flame, were there as much honest critical talent in the country as would suffice to remove impudent pretenders from the highways. We incline to think that few English bards write better poetry than Holmes; we are convinced that Whittier has some merit; and Willis has a musical chord in his brain, which, once in a great while, awakes to harmony.

After reading the Pleasures of Friendship, strange as it may seem, quite through, we searched our memory, in vain, for a parallel to its author. He has at least one merit; he is original, in the excess of his very dullness. We do not think that even his vanity could suggest any resemblance, unless in manifest plagiarisms, between this work and any of the English classics. The author as little resembles any of our own writers, unless it be Willis, some of whose worst pieces might have been written by M'Henry. It would be unjust to push the comparison farther. We cannot pretend to point out the distinguishing charm of the Pleasures of Friendship; the propriety and vigor of its conceptions are much the same as may be found in the Wilderness; the same gloriously inimitable confusion of ideas, which is, perhaps, a national characteristic, reigns throughout. The brogue alone is wanting. Those parts which are stolen are infinitely the best. We cannot say that the metre is absolutely bad, neither can the reverse be affirmed. A kind of Scotch mistiness of imagination seems to have suggested some of the descriptions. For example,

But soon the Tempter bade our bosoms swell
With vain desires;-we ventured and we fell!
In wretched state, how helpless then we lay

Beneath Heaven's wrath, that flamed in fierce array!

Could angels save us? could repentant tears

Arrest th unsparing sword that justice bears?
Ah! no-in vain e'en Pity pleads our cause:
Can she appease Heaven's violated laws?

Can seraph tears indemnity provide

For Heaven insulted, Deity defied?

But mark how bright the Eternal mercy shone !

The Heir of Heaven hath made our cause his own!

Almighty power is offered in our stead,

And sin, and death, and hell are captive led!

Heaven's boundless love has paid the debt we owed,

Restored our souls to happiness and God!

Our song shall hence in grateful anthems rise
To love Divine, and Friendship in the skies!

This is about as good and poetic a passage as any in the book, if it be not the very best. Passing over the bad rhymes, and Heaven's wrath in array, we would ask, how the love of God, manifested in the great atonement, can be considered one of the pleasures of friendship? We do not read our Bible so. And this is poetry! Take off the rhymes, and what remains? An amplification, a very dull and prosaic amplification, of the simple text, "God so loved the world that he gave his

only begotten son," &c. The whole appears like a paraphrase of the fag end of a camp-meeting sermon.

The following may serve as a specimen of the author's manner of depicting the passions :

Oh! with what pangs the father of our race
Bewailed his own and nature's dire disgrace;
"My son," he cried, "My righteous Abel bleeds,
Slain by his sire's and by his brother's deeds!

Ah! this is death! that death which Heaven hath sworn,
For my accurst transgression must be borne !

On me alone should all the vengeance fall;

But oh! 't will crush my children!-crush them all!"

The Doctor seems to have no very clear conception of the nature of friendship. In the twenty-seventh page he confounds it with paternal instinct, giving the joy of Israel, at recovering his son Joseph, as a striking illustration of its pleasures. It makes dull boys learn their lessons, he says, and gives a keener relish for literature. The ransom of Captain Riley by the British consul, an act which we always thought was dictated by common humanity, is noticed as a proof of its power. Friendship induced Sir Edward Pellew to bombard Algiers, and GreatBritain to interfere in the slave-trade.

In its division into cantos and the arrangement of the paragraphs, the Pleasures of Friendship resembles the Pleasures of Hope. The imitation is as close, throughout, as the Doctor's powers would admit; and, in several instances, amounts to actual plagiarism. Whoever shall read the first and last pages of the two works, will admit the truth of this. This resemblance, in our opinion, constitutes the whole merit of the Pleasures of Friendship; for, wherever the author loses sight of his model, he loses sight of poetry also.

We will give but one extract from Waltham; more the reader could scarcely endure.

But man cannot to human cares be cold,

And Waltham's heart was but of human mould.
An earthly object round his soul entwined,
And greatly shared with heaven his pious mind.
'T was Ellenore, the apple of his sight,

In whom his heart now centred all delight.

VOL. II.

And she deserved his tenderest cares to move,

If e'er a child deserved a parent's love;
For she was virtuous, dutiful, and kind,
All that could please an anxious father's mind.
Her smiles had power his troubled mind to calm,
Her soft attentions were his bosom's balm;
And much she loved his sorrows to beguile,
With many a soothing art and pleasing wile.
Ceaseless the tender arts she used to cheer
A mind, to her so partial and so dear,

Dispensing filial benefit like this,

She knew was duty and she felt it bliss.

Hence, for her sire, she left without a sigh,

The attractive haunts of city luxury;

Amusement, friends, whate'er could charm the mind

Of youthful maids, she cheerful left behind;

And deep concealed in solitary shades,

Where silent sameness over all pervades,

Where those young charms are hidden from the sight,

That dawned upon the admiring world so bright!
She pines not at the change nor dull employ;
They are no sacrifice to her, but joy.

64

We do assure the reader that we have not selected this passage for its weakness. There are three cantos, or, seventy duodecimo pages, of the like sing-song monotony, of which we cannot say that one is better or worse than the rest. After reading the book through, we opened it at random, and quoted the part at which we opened. After this specimen, it is probable, that no one would desire to follow us in a critical examination of Waltham.

There are some authors, who, with a thousand glaring faults, have yet some individual merit to rescue them from contempt; there are some, whose ill-chosen subjects are forgotten, because they are brilliantly adorned; there are few who have not some peculiarity, which distinguishes them from all others. We cannot class Dr. M'Henry with any of these. If, in any part of any of his works, which is not a manifest imitation, there is one sublime, tender, or in any wise striking thought, one harmonious line, we have been unable to find it. If there is any trait, which can be said to constitute poetic character in his writings, we know not what it is, though we have diligently perused them. One of his subjects, Friendship, though well chosen, he evidently does not understand; we may venture to pronounce of the rest, that they never could have attracted popular attention. Of all the faults which have been attributed to all past and present poets, there is but one that may not be found in every page of Dr. M'Henry's poems. He is not obscure, even to the meanest capacity. All his sentences have one plain meaning, and that meaning is, that he is entitled to be called something that rhymes to pass. We trust that the quotations we have made, few though they be, will bear us out in what we have said.

It has been suggested (we believe by Mr. Dana) that it is the great fault of modern criticism to compare every work with some preconceived model. If this fault be ours, it can do Dr. M'Henry no harm, for we have as yet read no author with whom we can, for a moment, think of comparing him in any respect. If a work should be judged with sole reference to the impressions it leaves, the Doctor is safe from criticism. Each of his lines drags the same slow length along; the eye glances over each of his pages as it does over a stagnant puddle, the surface of which is unbroken, even by the rising of a mephitic bubble. We turn away from his dreary waste of words, where, to use one of his own lines, a little modified,

Stupid sameness over all pervades,

with no other feeling than that of excessive weariness. After all, we are breaking but a butterfly on the wheel, and it is time to close. How we have yawned!

We are aware that it is the fashion to decry severe criticism, where its subject is respectable in private life; but we do not, nevertheless, think it any breach of editorial courtesy to speak of any work as it deserves. He who has published a book, with his name in the titlepage, cannot be allowed to throw off the responsibility. His works, and his reputation, as far as it is connected with them, have become public property. In this case, we believe that we are giving Dr. M'Henry aid in the object which he has most at heart. He has been endeavoring to obtain notoriety for some years, by the most indecent

exposures. Such is his taste, and he has an undoubted right to enjoy it. If he should construe our well-meant intentions unfavorably, we can only say, that we have much mistaken his character; for we have always believed that nothing gave him so much pleasure as to see one of the minnows of Helicon impaled alive on the barbed hook of criticism.

G.

TO A PICTURE.

PAINTER, my thanks, that thou hast here so perfectly impressed
This tablet with the semblance of the picture in my breast;
Hast stole, as 't were, the very soul-the spirit of the shrine,
And lodged it in as fair a place, this matchless work of thine.

Eyes peeping from their jetty fringe, like two sly Cupids; hair,
Whose mimic locks the life so mock they seem to float in air;
And lips, twin sisters of the rose that buds in either cheek,

That though they breathe not, seem to breathe-though speak not, seem to speak.

And brows so fine, 't would seem as, ere those line-like shades she drew,
Her smallest pencil Nature chose and dipped in twilight dew;

And neck, beside which, bedded in locks loosely curled and light,
The lily were not graceful nor were falling snow-flakes white.

For these are features, that, though but their image on the brain
A glance impress, once printed there, indelible remain;

The things Remembrance hides within her inmost room, where dwell
The forms whose mould is not of clay-the idol of her cell :

Idol of misspent hours, and still, to Memory's sleepless eye,
A cynosure, that sets not in the night of years gone by;
And this dumb mimicry of thee, what power to it is given!
Of one that made each spot of earth she touched a part of heaven.

They passed as silently away,-those young and thoughtless hours,-
As they had from a spirit stole his wings, or trod on flowers.
They were too happy to return, those vanished hours,-or last;
Since when my mind's eye dwells for aye, a Janus, on the past.

'T were vain to listen to thy voice and look upon thine eye,
The spirit there, and think that they like common things must die;
As well believe the music and the glory of yon spheres
Shall perish, nor go shining on and sounding through all years.

I know not how it is with thee; but, had we never met,
With me there had been more to hope and much less to regret.
Within my breast thine image dwells, a sleepless thought, the blow
That would efface the picture there must break the tablet too.

G. H.

THE GODDESSES.

FROM THE GERMAN OF ENGEL.

[John James Engel was one of the most distinguished German prose writers of the last century. Under the immediate patronage of the King of Prussia, he passed his life in active labor for the cause of science and literature. Among his principal efforts in the latter department, is his Philosoph. für die Welt, a work of extreme beauty and strength. Its object seems to be, under the form of allegories, and visions, and illustrations from actual life, to convey high moral instruction. The imagination of the author is unbounded; but it is every where tempered by good taste, and even in its most elevated flights, is found supporting some great truth. The article translated below, for example, though inferior in reach of fancy to many other pieces, by the same author, illustrates a fundamental truth with the most philosophic accuracy. Amid interesting scenes of rivalry between the goddesses of Wisdom and of Love, it is taught, that man is not solely an intellectual, a moral, or a sensitive being. His nature is a union of these characteristics; and a rational enjoyment of each is safe and beneficial. TRANSLATOR.]

THE goddesses of Wisdom and of Love lived in perpetual disagreement. Each wished to extend her dominion over the whole earth; but the man who worshiped one would not easily offer at the altar of the other; he must first become wearied with the service of Venus, before he could forsake it, and betake himself to the service of Minerva. Very rarely was a mortal found who divided his offerings between both;_and he, in the private opinion of Minerva, was ever the wisest. Each goddess strove to make an entire conquest of him, and each, for this purpose, showered upon him her sweetest benefits and best blessings.

The jealousy between the goddesses but seldom broke out into violent contest. They feared to offend father Jupiter, who always wrinkled his venerable brow when they quarreled. On the one hand, Minerva was the daughter of his own head, and for such a child his love was necessarily very fervent; on the other, Venus had placed him under very strong obligations, for she had given him many hours of happy love, in which he forgot his majesty, and recompensed himself for the numerous anxieties of his reign.

The goddesses commonly displayed their feelings towards each other, by envious looks, or allusions, and sallies of irony. A kind of little needle-fight was carried on, in which the dames endeavored to inflict painful wounds upon each other, after the manner of men. In this, the goddess of Cytherea had a decided advantage. Minerva was too serious. She would not desist from her grave, philosophizing tone, long enough for the liveliness of satire. Venus, on the other hand, watched every opportunity to secure influence in Olympus. Whenever Apollo yawned in his sleep, so that his laurels nestled,-whenever Bacchus stood leaning on one of the pillars in the divine hall, or with distended belly, and both arms dangling down, strode grunting over the apartment,-whenever the noble Jove himself bent on the top of his immortal sceptre in sweet and picturesque slumber,-such as Pindar describes, then the careful Venus would play upon them all her pleasant tricks; and she would throw herself into the arms of her Vulcan, though he was black with soot, and lavish upon him so many caresses, tell him of so many delightful little follies, impress upon his cheeks and lips so many ambrosial kisses, that, at such times, she would entertain all the divinities, and none of them would listen to the wisdom of Minerva. They would all of them, often, almost burst into a laugh at the strict matron, who took all their jest and folly so seriously, and was unwilling to allow herself any joy and tenderness.