national Literature. "This struck me," says the author in his preface," and I formed a resolution to present my country with an epic." Alas, the honest man had a shop to take care of, and how could one attend to the counter and the necessities of an epic poem. "I had the prudence," says he, “to put off the fabrication of my poem, until I should have made a fortune." It would have been a shame to have spoiled a good merchant without making a good poet. I therefore arranged my affairs, and then retired to the solitude with my imagination. Once comfortably settled in the "solitude with his imagination," the American poet" presented his country" with an extraordinary and immense production, entitled Washington, a National Epic.

The opening is simple. Washington is taking tea with his wife. The hero cries out,

"For me as from this chair I rise

So surely will I undertake this night
To raise the people."

His wife begs him to take a cup of tea before raising the people, for she was

"There by the glistening board, ready to pour

Forth the refreshment of her Chinese cups."

"Oh my dear wife," says Washington, "my time is not my own And I am come, etc., etc."

The world has seen many preposterous epics, but none quite equal to this one.

What shall we say of the great men with whom Mr. Griswold has peopled the American Parnassus, Trumbull, Alsop, Clason, Robert Payne, Charles Sprague, Cranche, Legget, Pike, Hopkinson and some fifty others. One of them, Robert

Payne, represents Washington standing up and with a drawn sword in his hand, repelling with his breast the thunderbolts, "like an electric conductor, directing the lightning towards the ocean where it is to be extinguished." This heroic lightning rod is the chef-d'œuvre of machine poetry. Some others, Percival has been still more successful in piling up words without ideas.

Mr. Charles Sprague, cashier of the Globe Bank in Massachusetts, and who leads a very retired life, fabricates laboriously, after the manner of Pope, didactic verses, agreeable enough he is a republican, American, banking Pope.

Mr. Dana, author of the Buccaneer, and Mr. Drake who wrote the Culprit Fay, are of a higher order. Mr. John Pierrepont, a lawyer and author of "Airs of Palestine,” is very moral, monotonous, and unpoetic. Several ladies, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Brooks under the title of Maria del Occidente, have published poems. Those of the first-named lady are pretensiously puerile, the second is only distinguished by wordy facility, and Mrs. Brooks, author of Zophiel, has a talent which is so fatiguing by its heaps of color, of sound, and of images, the complication of the rhythm, and the fantastic subject, that both mind and ear cry out, hold! The only names which we can single out from this forest of versifiers are Street, Halleck, Bryant, Longfellow, and Emerson.

Street is a descriptive poet, agreeable but diffuse, Halleck, superintendent of the rich Mr. Astor, is the author of Marco Bozzaris and of Red Jacket, pure and agreeable poems. William Cullen Bryant is far superior.

SECTION II.

BRYANT-EMERSON-LONGFELLOW.

Bryant has created nothing great; his voice is feeble, melodious, somewhat vague; but pure, solemn, and not imitative.

More philosophic than picturesque, the expression of melancholy sensations, born of forest and lake, finds a sweet echo in his verse. The sublime is not his territory; his peculiar charm is a chaste and pensive sadness, which associates itself with natural objects and the beings of the creation; he loves them, and the modest piety mingled with this affection, breathes a pathetic grace upon his verse. Christian and English poet, the gentle solemnity of his poetry emanates from his religious conviction. If he set his foot in the forest, he sees God there.

"Come when the rains

Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees with ice;
While the slant sun of February pours

Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy trunk
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray,
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,

That stream with rainbow radiance as they move.
But round the parent stem the long low boughs

Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide
The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot
The spacious cavern of some virgin mine,

Deep in the womb of earth-where the gems grow,

And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud
With amethyst and topaz-and the place
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam
That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night,
And fades not in the glory of the sun ;-
Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts
And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles

Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost
Among the crowded pillars.”

Sometimes the souvenir of the Indian, destroyed by civilization, gives a more vivid interest to his poems. We can cite, as chefs d'œuvre of pathos, "The Indian Girl's Lament," "An Indian at the Burial Place of his Fathers." "The Disinterred Warrior," and "Monument Mountain.”

THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR.

Gather him to his grave again,
And solemnly and softly lay,
Beneath the verdure of the plain,

The warrior's scattered bones away.
Pay the deep reverence taught of old,
The homage of man's heart to death;

Nor dare to trifle with the mould

Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath.

The soul hath quickened every part―
That remnant of a martial brow,
Those ribs that held the mighty heart,
That strong arm-strong no longer now.
Spare them, each mouldering relic spare,
Of God's own image; let them rest,
Till not a trace shall speak of where
The awful likeness was impressed,

For he was fresher from the hand
That formed of earth the human face,
And to the elements did stand

In nearer kindred than our race.
In many a flood to madness tossed,
In many a storm has been his path;
He hid him not from heat or frost,

But met them, and defied their wrath.

Then they were kind-the forests here,
Rivers, and stiller waters, paid

A tribute to the net and spear

Of the red ruler of the shade.
Fruits on the woodland branches lay,
Roots in the shaded soil below,

The stars looked forth to teach his way,
The still earth warned him of the foe.

A noble race! but they are gone,

With their old forests wide and deep,
And we have built our homes upon

Fields where their generations sleep.
Their fountains slake our thirst at noon,
Upon their fields our harvests wave,
Our lovers woo beneath their moon-

Then let us spare, at least their grave.

The Ages, a poem in the style of Childe Harold, contains a still more remarkable fragment.

Late, from this western shore, that morning chased
The deep and ancient night, that threw its shroud
O'er the green land of groves, the beautiful waste,
Nurse of full streams, and lifter-up of proud
Sky mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud.
Erewhile, where yon gay spires their brightness rear,
Trees waved, and the brown hunter's shouts were loud