probably confessedly, and we dare say he glories | ideas, expressed in familiar words, and they underin it, to the Lake School. This school is a very write themselves after this fashion to prove it. select one in England; claiming but three writers We acquit Mr. Lord fully of sharing in this perof note, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey,-versity; if he adopts the theory, he does not practhe first considered as the founder of it, the second, tice it-some prosaic passages there are, undoubtthe most eminent disciple, and the third, as con- edly, in his poetry, but we have no idea but that nected with it, rather by his own caprice, and be- they are there against his will, and not of malice precause of his personal associations with the other pense. If Mr. Lord may be supposed, because of two, than by any ex animo adoption of their poetic this difference, not to be a thorough Laker, he vincreed. These writers have had few imitators in dicates his discipleship, by a full appropriation of England, and as far as we know, Mr. Lord is their the other characteristic, which is thus delineated first cis-Atlantic convert. They might assign to in an article in the Edinburg Review, upon Wordsthemselves a complimentary reason for the want worth. "The great characteristic of these works, of imitators, if they had not, at the same time, "a (Wordsworth's,) is a sort of emphatic inanity-a plentiful lack" of readers; but for this latter wrong, singular barrenness and feebleness of thought, disthey are without remedy in the premises, except guised under a sententious and assuming manner, in their reversionary claim upon posterity, which and a style, beyond example, verbose and obscure. would afford a better hope of remuneration for Most of the little pieces of which they are compocotemporaneous neglect, were not the inheritance sed, begin with the promise of some striking image, to be divided among so many brother poets, equally or deep reflection, and end, almost invariably, in unfortunate. disappointment, having, most commonly, no perThe real Lake School Poetry has two distinctive ceptible meaning at all, or one incredibly puerile characteristics, as variant in kind, and as ridicu- and poor, and exemplifying nothing but the very lous in union, as the two tones of orator Squeak. worthless art of saying ordinary things in an uninOne of these is affecting the Moral and Sentimen- telligible way, and hiding no meaning in a stern and tal Incomprehensible; the other, is the use in pompous wordiness." If applied to all that Wordspoetry of the most familiar and unemphatic words worth has written, this criticism is too severe, nor of prose. The first is, (at least with Coleridge do we think it applicable, without abatement, to and Mr. Lord,) Transcendentalism versified-the Mr. Lord; but in the main, it is just and discrimilast, downright babyism. For an example of mys-nating, as applied to both. The mechanical means tification, see Coleridge's Address to a Gentleman, by which the Lake School writers construct such and indeed, we may say, his serious poems passim, and if one would wish to taste the simplicity wherewith he recreates himself, let him read from "Sybilline Leaves," the poem from which the following stanzas are extracted: "And oft she said I'm not grown thin, And gazed upon her, and at first, She gently pressed her hand; "One evening, he took up a book, And nothing in it read; Then flung it down, and groaning, cried, O, heaven! that I were dead."* A multitude of passages, as bald as this, and worse, could be produced from the writings of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Their peculiar theory is, that poetic effect can be produced by plain poetry, are, in part, as follows. They select some vague subject, as Dejection, Fears in Solitude, Worship, the Sky, Calliope, or something else as indefinite; or rather, they put some such name to what they chance to write; for one of their peculiarities is, that they write all sorts of things in a jumble, under any title-then they adopt, as the form of their composition, the ode, as furnishing by its admissible irregularities the widest scope to the eccentricities of their genius, or, if the preceding piece chances to be an ode, they have recourse to blank verse, sometimes disregarding some of its best established laws, as, for instance, that it shall consist of lines of ten syllables-the liberty of inversion is used with a caprice, that seems to have no other object than to perplex the reader-parenthesis is piled upon parenthesis, and if one has occasion to turn back, as oft he needs must, he is fortunate if he finds the subject of the verb short of a dozen lines off-abundant use is made of ex clamations cast in a pious mould, but far from being reverent; and a peculiar fashion obtains with them of using the indefinite article with certain abstract nouns, not usually so accompanied. For the reader, who is moderately familiar with the * If any reader wishes to see a combination of the poems of Coleridge, the perusal of the very first Transcendental and the Nursery styles, let him attempt, what no one as yet has been able to do, viz: to discover poem of Mr. Lord's collection, will be sufficient to one ray of meaning in what is called the Conclusion of identify him with the Lake School, and for one who Christabel. has never read either Coleridge or Wordsworth, longer extracts than we can here give would be scruple. The Hymn to Niagara, is an echo of necessary to make the resemblance apparent. We the Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chawill, however, present to the reader two short pas-mouny, and a very remarkable fundamental idea is sages. The first is from a poem, entitled the Sky. The first creation, built upon the form I heard like my heart's whisper to itself- Now, if standing before Niagara, Mr. Lord really had these feelings, or any like them, or any feelings for which these words can reasonably be the representatives,—if he really thought of nothing but one central stay in which he rested, while he breathed immortality in its depths, as upon the heart of universal life-then of the thousands who have stood there, he is the first who hath so felt and thought, and we venture to say, that he is the last who will thus express his feelings, though doubtless thousands more will stand there, before the coming of the hour, which, in the conclusion of the same poem, he is pleased to describe as the hour, when "these rocks, Unyielding but to thee, have worn through time common to both, though of course original only in the first. This is the notion of the incorporation of the poet into the scene upon which he gazes, or of the scene into the poet, for we are not sure which was intended to be considered the absorbent. This over-strained nonsense is a blemish in Coleridge's Hymn, and re-appearing in Lord's, it is a laughable absurdity, especially as in the closing lines of the poem, it is pushed so far, that Niagara is presented to us as an angel in Heaven, to which happy place, the poet supposes himself to have arrived, and, thereupon, he urgently proposes a swap of angel vestments, saying to his co-celestial Niagara, "Oh! give me then, Although of heaven's bright habiliments, "The force of folly can no further go." But there is in this sort of writing, of which the above is not the only specimen, nor the worst which could be given from Mr. Lord's poems, something more than folly. This irreverent audacity,—this free handling of sacred themes,-this adding fantastic accompaniments to solemn mysteries, if it is not impiety, approaches it, and contains its germ. As connected with this, and perhaps akin to it, we observe in these poems, a spirit of intense egotism, and self-exaltation, which falls little short of selfdeification. This may be nothing but Transcendentalism-we do not know, we are not skilled in that lore. It is not, however, peculiar to that school, for it is met with abundantly in the Byronic, with this difference, nevertheless, that the poets, with turned-back shirt-collars, generally pass themselves off for devils, not gods. Wherever met with, it is to be condemned, as violating, at once, truth, propriety, and good taste. We have spoken of some things in these poems, which we consider as essential defects—we will mention one thing not in them, the want of which, is a great deficiency-a national spirit. There is an Ode to England, in which she is called, "Land of the blessing! of the nations blest, Mr. Lord is not only an admirer and imitator of Coleridge, he is something more. He evidently The first reading, gave us this understanding of the considers himself upon terms of such intimate passage; a second, made it doubtful; but no number of brotherhood, that he can borrow from him, without perusals will enable us to be certain what the poet meant. Let this pass. But can we let it pass, that in an and moral peculiarities of Mr. Lord; and as to the abolition ode, after making a merit of having once loved his country, and defended her against the "scoffs from the lie-faltering lips of tyranny," he should proceed to say, "But when I saw thee drink the cup of bribes, pleasure to be derived from a regular perusal of these poems-haud inexpertus loquor—it is akin to that of the shower-bath-one feels so comfortable when it is over. But more seriously, if poetic power is a noble gift of God, for the right use of And drain the poisoned draught with eager lips, which the possessor is responsible, and if it is the Proffered by lustful slaves of power and gain, province of the true poet, to awaken all our senThen first I saw thy brightness in eclipse, sibilities for whatsoever is pure and lovely-to give Then first my heart, like death-pangs felt, its pain." an upward impulse to our grovelling nature-to In the Ode to England, the author praises Chaucer, speak, as with a commission from on high, words and Spenser, and Milton and Shakespeare, and of truth which shall cheer the present, and be food several others whom we cannot name, because, for after ages-and if Mr. Lord believes himself with our poor scholarship, we cannot recognise the to be the possessor of this power, in any good deoriginals of the portraits which he draws. This is gree, then let him ask himself, solemnly, if he has very well-but it would not have been amiss if he fulfilled in whole, or in part, by his present performhad given some, even the slightest intimation, that ance, his share of this high mission. he was aware that poetry had been written by In the general views to which our criticism has Bryant, and Dana, and Percival, and Halleck, and been confined, we have found no place for praise. Willis, and many others, whom we would be wil- Had we space for a detailed examination, there ling to compare, at a venture, with "love-lorn Por-would be some excellencies which we would freely phyro," though we confess that we have no ac- acknowledge, and among them would be freedom quaintance with him under that name and style. from common-place thought and expression, and Neither do we think it dignified in a transcendental decided skill in versification. For example, poet, who feels that, under given conditions, he "A sound so deep and loud, that at its might, to assail, as we understand him to do, in his "New Upon the whole, while we would not rashly hazard the opinion, that our author mistook his vocation when he turned poet, we have no hesitation in saying, that, in our judgment, he has failed in his first attempt. If his object was to instruct, or to please, he has failed; for no other instruction is attempted to be given, than may be found in some dim psychological intimations of the intellectual "And sometimes in the wood, At morn or even, or when the vernal rain, This sounds like L' Allegro, without its rhyme. "And nearer its swift lapse and whelming speed, Some of his shorter pieces are striking, though they all have the peculiarity of being founded upon some epigrammatic conceit. Among them we would name three which please us most: A Rime, A Dirge, (reminding one of Longfellow,) and L' Envoi. Should this notice meet the eye of Mr. Lord, he will, we suppose, take it as more than sufficient compensation for what may seem unkind in our criticism, that we have placed him in the same class with Coleridge; and for ourselves, we may say, that while we have no hesitation in condemning this, his first volume of poetry, we suspend our judgment of the poet, until we see something more, which we are inclined to believe will be something different, for we do not consider Mr. Lord's present poetic position a permanent one. We expect him to progress to further and more unpleasant developments of the characteristics which we have pointed out, or to seek the fame to which he aspires, by adopting a different and truer style of thought and expression. S. L. C. NEW WORKS RECEIVED. "THE LEAFLETS OF MEMORY:" An Annual for MDCCCXLVI. Edited by REYNELL COATES, M. D. Philadelphia: Published by E. H. Butler & Co. 1846. J. W. Randolph & Co., Richmond. We have again to hail the advent of this beautiful annual: one of the richest that ever graced an editor's table. The first of the series, which was commenced last year, received the unanimous commendation of the press of the country, and was thought to be almost unapproachable for beauty. The volume of this year, however, transcends it, not only in its illuminations, and the superior richness of its binding, but in the greater fineness of its engravings, and the merit of its literary contents. The last are from the pens of distinguished cis and trans-Atlantic writers. Its typography is unexceptionable, and the paper upon which it is printed uncommonly white and fine. Messrs. Drinker & Morris have sent us THE AMERICAN FORM-BOOK: containing legally approved precedents. With a complete index to the whole. This very useful work is by Benjamin Tate, a member of the bar in this City, and is published by Drinker and Morris. It is intended, more particularly, for the use of men of business, and those who may be prevented from obtaining the advice and assistance of the legal profession. The forms are very numerous, and collected from both English and American sources. The work also contains the Constitution of the United States, and the requisites for authenticating deeds in each State of the Union. It can not but be valuable. D. & M. have also sent us, from the Harpers' press, THE WHITE SLAVE; or, the Russian Peasant Girl. By Revelations of Russia." the author of 66 There are many white slaves out of Russia; and we point to their manacles, invisible perhaps, but galling, those who seem to have such humane intentions towards black slaves. Surely they are not enamored of the sable color! Encyclopædia of Domestic Economy. No.'s 9 and 10, COSMOS. A Survey of the General Physical History of the Universe. BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Part I. Said to be a great work,-certainly by a great author. Illustrated Shakespeare. No.'s 63, 64. "The Tempest." Illuminated Bible. No.'s 36 and 37. SCENES IN AFRICA. BY CAPT. MARRYATT. 2 vols. Written for young people, whom it will interest. Mr. A. G. Pendleton has sent us MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF GEO. W. BURNAP. "Author of Lectures to Young Men;" "Lectures on the Sphere and Duties of Woman," &c., &c. Baltimore, John Murphy: 1845. A Collection, by the author, of various Lectures, Addresses, and Discourses, which have already received public approbation, in their separate forms. Chine. Par M. G. Pauthier, lembre de l'Académie de Besançon, et de la Société Asiatique de Paris. valuable work. It constitutes a part of "L' Univers PitWe are much indebted to Mr. Gliddon, for a copy of this toresque, Histoire et Description de tous Les Peuples," into its contents. We hope to be able to give our readers an insight ton, Bookseller and Importer, Philadelphia. may be procured from John PenningHISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA. &c. It We have had the honor to receive, from Gov. D. L. Swain, President of the University of N. Carolina, the first volume issued by the Historical Society of that University. It was intended to be presented to the "Historical Society of Virginia," which is not only dead, but has neither heir nor representative. We shall retain the book, as requested by Gov. Swain, and hope to have the plea sure of presenting it, this winter, to the body for which it was intended. MY UNCLE HOBSON AND 1; OR SLASHes at Life, with The Appletons have sent us, through Mr. Joseph Gill, A FREE BROAD-AXE. BY PASCAL JONES. The title of this work seems to have been suggested by Willis' "Dashes at Life, with a free pencil;" and perhaps it may contain some "slashes" at that personage. Read it and see. Also, GERTRUDE. A Tale. By the author of Amy Herbert. Edited by the Rev. W. Sewell, M. A. This is the first No. of Appleton's "Literary Melange." which is designed to embrace " productions which shall enlighten without corrupting, interest without any tendency to pernicious emotions, and commingle the poetry of life' with descriptive accuracy and the philosophy of truth." Amy Herbert has doubtless prepared the way for Gertrude, in many pure young hearts. Also, Rudimental Lessons in Music. For all beginners in the Art, whether Vocal or Instrumental. By James F. Warner. It is hoped, with the author, that this neat little work "will do something towards the advancement of a very interesting art,"-yea, a divine and enchanting art. say Also, Michelet's History of France. No. 4. We can not much of this work yet, of our own knowledge; but it has strong and concurring testimony in its favor. Its type and paper are superior to those of a majority of the repub lications. We have derived great pleasure and improvement from a perusal of Kohlrausch's Germany, which we can confidently commend. We wish that it were less deficient in Literary History, and abounded less in generalizations. But to D. and M. have also sent us, from the press of Lea & these the author was, no doubt, compelled, in order to keep Blanchard, MODERN COOKERY, in all its branches: reduced to easy practice, for the use of private families. BY ELIZA ACTON. With numerous woodcuts. The whole revised and prepared for American Housekeepers, By Mrs. S. J. Hale. From the 2nd London Edition. within the space, which constitutes one recommendation of his work. The Appletons have sent us, through Messrs. Nash & Woodhouse, A Cyclopædia of Several Thousand Practical Receipts, and collateral information in the Arts, Manufac tures and Trades, including Medicine, Pharmacy, and Domestic Economy. Designed as a compendious book of We do not see how any housekeeper,-especially any reference for the Manufacturer, Tradesman and Heads of young one, can get along without such a work. LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. By Agnes Strickland. Vol. VIII. Containing the lives of Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I., and Catharine of Braganza, consort of Charles II.,-of England. Families. By Arnold James Cooley. Illustrated with numerous engravings." No. 2. N. & W. have also sent us, from the press of Greely & McElrath, Parts II. and VIII., of Lardner's Popular Lectures on Science and Art. THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER. NOVEMBER, 1845. AUTUMN. BY THE STRANGER. Summer's sunny days are ended, Screaming thro' the long night shrill; All have fled from vale and hill. On the gale, the steady beating As it dies o'er hill and plain,- As it beateth out the grain. Herds, no more thro' green fields grazing, Breaks the cold winds as they blow: Ever coming as they go. Cold, on lap of Autumn lying, VOL. XI-82 Like a cherished infant dying On a mother's frozen breast ;Early fallen leaves are flying, Startled by a voice defying, The sharp voice of Winter crying From the boisterous north-west. Now the forest green is broken, For their mighty forms are bare;And, the moon-light on them playing, Seem they like a still host praying, Words of earnest import saying, With pale arms uplifted there. While clear rills, thro' meadows rolling, Seem some stifled grief controlling, Funeral bells all faintly tolling, For the lovely race that's dead: But the winter, in his gladness, Laugheth at their whispered sadness,Giveth ice-chains in his madness, Pluck'd from off his snow-white head. And the fadeless pines are sweeping, Sleeping in the frost-bed hoar. Angry clouds on earth are scowling, And they walk the heavens, howling; While the frosty billows, growling, Answer from the sea-beat shore. As those clouds are over going, Driven by the north wind blowing, |