.... .295 ..346 488 ........... .......... .......... .........238 ..574 28 Doings in the Metropolis....... .................................................................161 | Religion of Beauty... The Library 39 The Signal, a Tale... ..251 The Old Lady, a Fragment .272 The Inquest, a thrilling story.. The Secret, a Tale from the French. ..183 ....... Tragedy from Life, ....15 The reader is herewith presented with a portrait of one of our most eminent poets, skilfully engraved from a painting by one of our first artists. The friends of Halleck wtll admire in it the strength of the likeness, and those who have never seen the original will at least acknowledge the highly intellectual expression which lights up the features. so soft and tender that you willingly yield yourself up to the feeling of pathos, or to the sense of beauty it inspires, he surprises you with an irresistible stroke of ridicule. "As if himself he did disdain, And mock the form he did but feign;" as if he looked with no regard upon the fair poetical vision he had raised, and took pleasure in showing the reader that it Halleck is one of the most generally admired of all our poets, which is his peculiar endowment, accumulates graceful and was but a cheat. Sometimes the poet, with that aerial facility and he possesses what no other does, a decided local popularity. He is the favorite poet of the city of New-York, where agreeable images in a strain of irony so fine, that did not the his name is cherished with a peculiar fondness and enthusiasm. subject compel you to receive it as irony, you would take it It furnishes a standing and ever-ready allusion to all who for a beautiful passage of serious poetry-so beautiful, that would speak of American literature, and is familiar in the you are tempted to regret that he is not in earnest, and that mouths of hundreds who would be seriously puzzled if asked phrases so exquisitely chosen, and poetic colouring so brilto name any other American poet. The verses of others may do not properly belong. At other times, he produces the efliant, should be employed to embellish subjects to which they may be found in the hands of persons who possess some tinc-fect of wit by dexterous allusions to contemporaneous events, ture of polite literature-young men pursuing their studies, or introduced as illustrations of the main subject, with all the young ladies with whom the age of romance is not yet past; unconscious gracefulness of the most animated and familiar but those of Halleck are read by people of the humblest de conversation. He delights in ludicrous contrasts, produced grees of literary pretension, and are equally admired in Bond by bringing the nobleness of the ideal world into comparison street and the Bowery. There are numbers who regularly with the homeliness of the actual; the beauty and grace of attribute to his pen every anonymous poem in the newspapers, in which an attempt at humor is evident, who "know him by and laughs at the presem. He looks at them through a menature with the awkwardness of art. He venerates the past his style," and whose delight at the supposed wit is hightened dium which lends to the former the charm of romance, and almost to transport by the self-complacency of having made the discovery. His reputation, however, is not injured by exaggerates the deformity of the latter. these mistakes, for the verses by which they are occasioned are soon forgotten, and his fame rests firmly on the compo sitions which are known to be his. The high degree of local popularity has, for one of its causes, the peculiar subjects of many of the poems of Halleck, relating, as they do, to persons and things and events, with which everybody in New-York is more or less acquainted; objects which are constantly before the eyes, and matters which are the talk of every fireside. The poems written by him, in conjunction with his friend, Doctor Drake, for the Evening Post, in the year 1819, under the signature of Croaker, and Croaker and Co., and the satirical poem of Fanny, are examples of this happy use of the familiar topics of the day. He will pardon this allusion to works he has never publicly acknowledged, but which are attributed to him by universal consent, since, without them, we might miss some of the peculiar characteristics of his genius. Halleck's humorous poems are marked with an uncommon ease of versification, a natural, unstudied flow and sweetness of language, and a careless, Horatian playfulness and felicity of jest, not, however, imitated from Horace, or any other writer. He finds abundant matter for mirth in the peculiar state of our society, in the heterogenous population of the city "Of every race the mingled swarm," in the affectations of newly-assumed gentility, the ostentation of wealth, the pretensions of successful quackery, and the awkward attempt to blend with the habits of trade an imitation of the manners of the luxurious and fastidious nobility in the world-the nobility of England. Sometimes, in the midst of a strain of harmonious diction, and soft and tender imagery, ble for the melody of the numbers. It is not the melody of Halleck's poetry, whether serious or sprightly, is remarkamonotonous and strictly regular measurement. His verse is constructed to please an ear naturally fine, and accustomed to that painfully-balanced versification, that uniform succession of a wide range of metrical modulation. It is as different from iambicks, closing the scene with the couplet, which some writers practise, and some critics praise, as the note of the thrush is unlike that of the cuckoo. Halleck is familiar with those general rules and principles which are the basis of metrical harmony; and his own unerring taste has taught him the exunderstands that the rivulet is made musical by obstructions ceptions which a proper attention to variety demands. He in its channel. You will find in no poet, passages which flow with a more sweet and liquid smoothness; but he knows very well that to make this smoothness perceived, and to prevent it from degenerating into monotony, occasional roughnesses must be interposed. leck excels. He has fire, and tenderness, and manly vigor. But it is not only in humorous or playful poetry that Haland his serious poems are equally admirable with his satirical. What martial lyric can be finer than the verses on the Death of Marco Bozzaris! We are made spectators of the slumbers of the Turkish oppressor, dreaming of "victory in his guarded tent;" we see the Greek warrior nging his true-hearted band of Suliotes in the forest shades; we behold them throwing themselves into the camp; we hear the shout, the groan, the sabre-stroke, the death-shot falling thick and fast, and in the midst of all, the voice of Bozzaris bidding them to strike boldly for God and their native land. The struggle is long and fierce; the ground is piled with Moslem slain; the Greeks are at length victorious; and, as the brave chief falls bleeding 2 Fitz-Greene Halleck-The Two Homes-I Wandered by the Brook-side. from every vein, he hears the proud hurrah of his surviving comrades, announcing that the field is won, and he closes his eyes in death, "Calmly, as to a night's repose." This picture of the battle is followed by a dirge over the slain hero a glorious outporing of lyrical eloquence, worthy to have been chanted by Pindar or Tyrtæus over one of his ancestors. There is in this poem a freedom, a daring, a fervency, a rapidity, an affluence of thick-coming fancies, that make it seem like an inspired improvisation, as if the thoughts had been divinely breathed into the mind of the poet, and uttered themselves, involuntarily, in poetic numbers. We think, as we read it, of "The large utterance of the early Gods." If an example is wanted of Halleck's capacity for subjects of a gentler nature, let the reader turn to the verses written in the album of an unknown lady, entitled, "Woman." In a few brief lines, he has gathered around the name of woman a crowd of delightful associations--all the graces of her sex, delightful pictures of domestic happiness and domestic virtues, gentle affections, pious cares, smiles and tears, that bless and heal, "And earth's lost paradise restored, 'Red Jacket' is a poem of a yet different kind; a poem of manly vigor of sentiment, noble versification, strong expression, and great power in the delineation of character-the whole dashed off with great appearance of freedom, and delightfully tempered with the sattirical vein of the author.Some British periodical lately published, contains a criticism on American literature, in whish it is arrogantly asserted that Campbell's Outalissi is altogether the best portraiture of the mind and manners of an American savage which is to be found in English verse. The critic must have spoken without much knowledge of his subject. He certainly could never have read Hallock's Read Jacket. Campbell's Outalissi is very well. He is a stoic of the woods,' and nothing more; an Epictetus put into a blanket and leggins, and translated to the forests of Pennsylvania; but he is no Indian. Red Jacket is the very savage of our wilderness. Outalissi is a fancy sketch of few lineaments. He is brave, faithful and affectionate, concealing these qualities under an exterior of insensibility. Red Jacket has the spirit and variety of a portrait from nature. He has all the savage virtues and savage vices, and the rude and strong qualities of mind which belong to a warrior, a chief, and an orator of the aboriginal stock. He is set before us with sinewy limbs, gentle voice, motions graceful as a bird's in air, an air of command, inspiring deference; brave, cunning, cruel, vindictive, eloquent, skilful to dissemble, and terrible when the moment of dissembling is passed, as the wild beasts or the tempests of his own wilderness. A poem which, without being the best he has written, unites many of the different qualities of Halleck's manner, is that entitled 'Ainwick Castle.' The rich imagery, the airy melody of verse, the grace of language which belong to his serious poems, are to be found in the first half of the poem, which relates to the beautiful scenery and venerable traditions of the old home of the Percys; while the author's vein of gey humor, fertile in mirthful allusion, is witnessed in the conclusion, in which he descends to the homely and peaceful occupations of its present proprietors. Whoever undertakes the examination of Halleck's poetical character will naturally wish for a greater number of examples from which to collect an estimate of his powers. He has gviven us only samples of what he can do. His verses are like passages of some mighty choral melody, heard in the brief intervals between the opening and shutting of the doo of a temple. Why does he not more frequently employ the powers with which he is so eminently gifted? He should know that such faculties are invigorated and enlarged and rendered obedient to the will by exercise. He need not be afraid of not equaling what he has already written. He will excel himself, if he applies his powers, with an earnest and resolute purpose, to the work which justice to his own fame demands of him. There are heroes of cur own history who deserve to be embalmed for immortality in strains as noble as those which celebrate the death of Marco Bozzaris; and Halleck has shown how powerfully he can appeal to our acts of patriotism, in his "Field of the Grounded Arms," a poem which has only been prevented from being universally popular by the peculiar measure in which it is written. THE TWO HOMES. SEEST thou my home? "Tis where yon woods are waving, 'Mid these green haunts how many a spring lies gleaming, "T is where I, too, am loved with love undying, I know it not, yet trust the whisper telling I WANDERED BY THE BROOK-SIDE. BY R. M. MILNES. I wandered by the brook-side, I wandered by the mill, I could not hear the brook flow, I sat beneath the elm-tree, I watched the long, long shade, And as it grew still longer, I did not feel afraid; He came not-no, he came not, The night came on alone, The little stars sat one by one, Each on his golden throne; The evening air past by my cheek, The leaves above were stirred,But the beating of my own heart Was all the sound I heard. Fast, silent tears were flowing, I knew its touch was kind! HYDRANGEA.-It may not be known to many of our readers that this flower, which is usually of a pink color, may be made to come out a beautiful rich blue, by the simple means of filling the pot or box with the swamp or bog earth. Common garden loam produces the pink. The discovery of producing the blue was accidentally made by a friend of ours, by whom it was some time since communicated to us. We have repeated the experiment this season with good success, and now name the fact, that the lovers of variety may take advantage of it. The plant may be shifted very early in the spring. |