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ART. VI.—Alnwick Castle, with other Poems. 1 vol. pp. 98. New York: 1836.

In a former number of this Review1 the opinion was expressed that the multifarious and bustling concerns of the American nation have, for a long time past, conspired to create an impulse which is prevalent throughout the bounds of the republic, and can hardly be said to have any direct or congenial alliance with works of the imagination. This impulse is fiery, prospective, and practical; it is connected with the enterprises of working-day spirits, and the forecast which belongs to a plodding, active life. That it has benefits immediate, and rewards ultimate, cannot be denied; and it is better, perhaps may we not say that it is best without a peradventure that such an impulse should exist, than that the people of our Union should be guided by day-dreamers, and turn from their numberless architectural erections of warehouses, tenements, towns, and cities, which spring up as it were like the gourd of Jonah, in a night, garnishing the banks of rivers, or the inland borders of western seas-to castles in the air-the Titanian piles of some visionary brain. The useful, now-a-days, must be preferred before the ornamental: the mere embellishment of life must be a secondary matter in a young republic, scarcely as yet released from its swaddling clothesrestless and revelling in the halcyon newness of its youth.

When, therefore, a departure is made from the ordinary course of men, in our country, it certainly argues a strong as well as an adventurous intellect in him who leaves, even for a little season, the beaten thoroughfares where persons jostle each other in the pursuit of gold-essaying to disport himself in the fairy gardens of imagination, and to create around him, in delicious abstraction, "his own green world of thought." It stamps the man who succeeds in this career, with the character of one equal to either fortune, good or bad. We have always repudiated the notion that high mental capacities and fine attainments can disqualify any man for the most momentous and trying duties of life; and we verily believe that the scholar, who studies mankind in his closet-who reads the present in the past-to whom the records of dead empires are merely the pregnant commentaries upon the passages of to-day's experience-can apply lesson after lesson, that he has conned in theory by himself, with practical effect, in his intercourse with We believe it impossible that such a man can dissociate himself from the world, or play the anchorite, "among his

men.

See American Quarterly Review, March, 1836.

fellows but not of them," as many are apt to contend he can. He is prepared always to make deep impressions; history, teaching by example, has fortified him with a self-adequacy for portentous emergencies, whether they are of a private or widely social character. He benefits others by his counsel; and remembering the models of goodness or evil which tradition, or the page of the annalist, may have furnished him, he applies them to his own case, or to the circumstances of communities or masses of men, with unerring advantage. A mind thus strengthened in itself, can allow relaxation to its energies, and be led into airy and delectable creations, not only without injury, but with positive benefit. Grace is added to grace in its expressions, whether poetic, or in prose; thought provokes thought; and Fancy stands ready to obey the calls of the master as the handmaid of Truth.

That the interests of literature and commerce are not more directly identical, is owing to the false and fully refuted notion that the latter pursuit is at variance with every thing dignified and useful itself. We speak now of the estimation in which it is held by the multitudes who swarm about the crowded wharves, or through the bale-obstructed streets of the Atlantic cities, and extend themselves along the iron and watery avenues of trade, from New York to the Kalamazoo, and from Philadelphia to the boundless contiguity of western shades. To the ears of such as these, the hiss of a locomotive is sweeter music than the happiest stanza that ever melted like the honey of Hybla from the divine pen of the poet, or the most eloquent sentences from the inspired lips of the ambitious statesman, or (( oily man of God." With them, taste is an arbitrary affair; the expression of an opinion on a subject allied to letters, is not a matter of much moment; the occasions in which it is required occur infrequently; and they discharge their verdict, hit or miss-unmindful of consequences, because they know that at the worst no harm is done. The latitude accorded to taste is the hobby-horse on which they ride, and which carries them triumphantly through every peril. If they shoot wide of the mark in a literary decision in company, there are no bones broken; and thus many a valuable author, a delicate-minded architect of pure and lofty verse, is dismissed with faint praise, or shop-keeping dogmatism, who deserves the honours of his contemporaries, and the thanks of the world. A state of things is thus superinduced by the ease with which a mere opinion, whether just or not, can be made to tell among a social assembly, or a community, that is decidedly inimical to the interests of poetry, and the march of inspiration. A failure in verse, with judges like these, has no special discredit about it; and many a writer, therefore, who should be proud of his tuneful abilities,

and consider them as gifts from God, is driven, by custom, to think lightly of his faculties-to depress his immortal yearnings, and subdue "the better part of man" within him; to believe the glow of thought a trifle, and the uprising of his soul toward its Maker, the play-game of an idle hour. And for whose sake is this course pursued? For whom does he thus underrate his intellect, and drive himself into the confession that he too is a muckworm, and "of the earth, earthy ?" Why, for those who think that the efforts of the soul, if not convertible at once into dollars, are of far less moment than handicraft rewarded: and who carry out to the full, in their creed, the sentiment so sententiously disclosed in Horatian numbers:

"Magnum pauperies opprobrium jubet Quidvis et facere et pati,

Virtutisque viam deserit arduæ."

The author of Alnwick Castle has had the discrimination to appreciate this condition of society, and has governed himself "in a concatenation accordingly," as the man says in the play. Born in the country-his young eyes familiarized with majestic and beautiful scenery-the fairest leaves of the great volume of nature opening invitingly around him, he moved onward in his juvenescence, like Obidah the son of Abensinah, in the oriental tale, who "left his caravanserai early in the morning, and pursued his course over the plains of Indostan. He was fresh and invigorated with rest; he was incited by desire; he walked swiftly forward over the valleys, and saw the hills gradually rising before him." With this freshness about his spirit, as we may easily conceive, HALLECK began his intercourse with the world. In this country, as is well known, no man can put his hand to the plough of enterprise and employment, and look back successfully therefrom. At any rate, if meaner souls indulge in the deleterious retrospections of life, the writer of Alnwick was not of the number in his early day. It came to pass that he was transplanted from the earlier retirement of the country to a city location, where he soon became commingled with the traffickers of the metropolis, and found the spirit of "the sugar trade and cotton line" descending upon him. How many lovely images, the first-born of his fancy, have been lost over the day-book or the blotter, no one but himself can tell. At night, as one may readily suppose, when his mercantile. countings, balances, and registries, were done, his countenance became sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, whose thick-coming influence marred his rest. We have no idea, however, of pitying him for his position-for it was doubtless that which compelled him to husband his best imaginings, and pour them forth, in happy moments--Heliconian emissions VOL. XXI.-NO. 42.

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-gushes of genuine inspiration. His feelings and his ideas were thus condensed into song; and he wrote that which must endure. Yet we cannot but believe that many a charming stanza has run through his mind, as he walked, "at morn or dewy eve," which perished in voiceless conception. Of his hours of retirement, it may doubtless be said, as he philosophized or built castles in town or country——

"Yet not in thoughtless slumber were they past,
For oft the heavenly fire, that lay concealed
Beneath the sleeping embers, mounted fast,
And all its native light anew revealed;

Oft as he traversed the cerulean field,

And mark'd the clouds that drove before the wind,
Ten thousand glorious systems would he build,

Ten thousand great ideas filled his mind;

But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind."

His city residence, however, did not seduce our author away from the remembrance of the country. He reverted to its

calmness, its seclusion, and its purity, in many a melodious line. To him there was a charm in recollected rocks, waters, and vernal uplands-"ruris amani rivos, et musco circumlita saxa nemusque." He heard, even in the crowded and garish ways of the town, those celestial voices which breathe at night from echoing hills and thickets, over land and sea. The power of these entered into his heart of hearts; but he was environed by the every day realities of a crowded capital; the follies of its dwellers passed in daily review before him; and, quenching within himself what we must call his better inspirations, he launched his bark of authorship upon the sea of satire. In doing this, he acquired a burlesque habitude of style, which we regret to say became afterwards almost a passion with him, and the effects of which are absent from but very few of his compositions. In the verses of Croaker, written in conjunction with others, his spirit roamed and revelled among the stupidities or the "sins, negligences, and ignorances," of the town. Many a citizen rued the movements of his caustic quill: but like the sword of Sir Lucius O'Trigger in the comedy, it was no less polished than keen. There is one species of satirists that may be called insupportable: those who condemn without grace, and rebuke without good nature. This propensity, in man or woman, but especially in the latter, is beyond endurance. It is produced from ungenial minds, and betokens the utter absence of those lovely humanities, without the enforcement of which no writer can enduringly or really please.

Since he dissolved his partnership with the firm of Croaker and Co., Mr. Halleck-who has been justly accredited in the literary world as the chief operator in the concerns of that well

known house-has had little to do with satire. Not that its vein is extinct within him; but he has too much goodness of heart to engage in the breaking of social butterflies upon the wheel of ridicule. The follies of the time are numerous enough, it is true; and no week or month elapses in which they might not be castigated with effect; but the task is an ungracious one, and is usually assumed by unamiable spirits. It was a love of effect, mainly, which induced the author of Alnwick Castle originally to adventure himself in a sphere where he doubtless would have continued to shine--but not in a light grateful to himself, in retrospective contemplation. It is certain that true satire is pleasing to all but the object, on whom it falls; "good natured friends" laugh at it; the pictures it gives are drawn with a fidelity which nothing can dislimn; every one owns the joke, though many may not approve it. It is a dangerous power, therefore; but it has its degrees. Pre-eminence in satire only, is tolerable. Its secondary grades are personality and caricature--and thus the art, in its inferior spheres, cannot be agreeable to a high-minded man, who might indeed pursue it as far as he would list, if self-respect did not constrain him. But it is with satire, we suspect, as with love--" affection ceases when contempt begins:" and he who keeps about him the constant, refreshing redolence of a gentleman, is extremely cautious to shun even the appearances of a departure from the honourable laws adopted by every one who deserves the name. Motives of this nature have unquestionably caused Mr. Halleck to stop before he violated one principle of social amenity, or alienated personal esteem. He has left the field of satirical remark to twilight spirits, and humble caricaturists, who paint without faithfulness, and revile without good nature. The editions of Croaker have been denied to the press, while the poems of which they were merely the promise still live, familiar to the eyes and lips of men.

If, however, our author ever felt a momentary regret that he did not keep up his hunt for the follies and foibles of metropolitan life, he has been abundantly consoled in the success of those better, though not more popular works, which seem to have emanated warmly from his soul, and to have been dashed upon paper by a hand burdened and busy with the genuine promptings of genius. Intending to offer proofs of his sudden power, it is not improper to preface them with our impressions of the method by which Mr. Halleck commits himself "to virgin sheets." He does not seize upon one bright and lofty thought, and, delighting in it, per se, dilute it into a column or a page; he preserves it; he joins it with others that may occur to him from time to time, whether he move at nightfall along the dim streets of the city, catching glimpses of the distant country

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