New Publications

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Selected and edited by Rev. Robert Aris Willmott;¹ with English and American additions arranged by Evert A. Duyckinck,² Editor of the “Cyclopedia of American Literature,” Illustrated with 132 Engravings, drawn by eminent artists. New York: Harper and Brothers.

No more splendid and appropriate gift-book for this season of gifts has been issued than the volume now under notice. For luxury of paper, type and illustration, and for the discriminating taste with which this exquisite casket has been filled with the gems of modern poesy it is unsurpassed by any collection of the kind now before the public, and no more beautiful ornament for the centre-table could be selected, and no chaster memento of love or friendship bestowed.

The volume embraces a period of about eighty-five years, commencing with Beattie and Cowper, and ending with Butler, the author of “Nothing to Wear,” and specimens are given from the writings of one hundred and eighteen poets. The English editor, a loving and judicious critic, had accomplished his task in an admirable manner so far as he went, but his selection was almost exclusively English. Mr. Duyckinck, who has been favorably known by his “Cyclopedia”—perhaps, on the whole, the best compilation of American Literature extant—has enriched the volume with the choice bits from some of our native bards, who certainly lose nothing by contrast even with the Masters in whose company they find themselves.

It is difficult to please all tastes in a book of this kind, and we feel half-disposed to regret that so much space has been devoted to the respectable commonplaces of Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Barbauld, and the like. Thus we find no less than fourteen pages of valuable space devoted to Mistress Mary Howitt, while Bailey, the author or “Festus,” is restricted to three, and Stoddard, one of the truest of our own poets, to one! We might find fault, too, with some of the selections. It appears to us that Tennyson’s verses about “The Goose” might be fittingly replaced by the same author’s exquisitely beautiful “garden scene” in “Maud,” and we doubt whether Hood can fairly be said to be represented when the two poems upon which his fame rests are ignored. Willis, too, has far higher claims upon public attention than any which he can found on “Little Florence Grey.”

But it would be impossible to say another word except in praise. The dreams of the poets are realized in the volume before us. Byron and Campbell, Coleridge and Hood, Whittier and Longfellow receive a new charm from the genius of Millais, Casilear, Darley, and the other well-known artists whose pencils have contributed to their illustration. With Genevieve’s lover we—

“Live o’er again that happy hour,

When midway on the mount he lay,

Beneath the ruined tower.”

With Scott in his melancholy latter days we gaze upon the glassy water and the distant mount when—

“The sun upon the Weirdlaw hill

in Ettrick’s vale is sinking sweet.”

We wander with “Madoc” and visit Thalaba in the tent of Moath in the beautiful illustrations to Southey’s epic verse. We gallop with “Marion’s Men” in the stirring lyric of Bryant. We see again the District School which Halleck has embalmed in his Connecticut, revived again by Darley’s magic pencil. We see the pictured avenue of elms which murmured in the ear of Hood when he wrote “A dream in the Woods.” We see in the “Poet Laureate’s” department the arm—

“Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,”

raising from the level lake King Arthur’s sword “Excalibur.” The barge that bears the dying monarch to that far off land,

“Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-awns.

And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,”

where his grievous wounds are to be healed, floats before us in the wan moonlight, filled with shadowy forms, “black-stoled, black-hooded,” and we can almost hear rising from them that,

“Cry that shiver’d to the tingling stars

And, as it were one voice, an agony

Of lamentation, like the wind, that shrills

All night in a waste land, where no one comes,

Or hath come, since the making of the world.”

These illustrations of Tennyson are indeed by far the most poetic and suggestive in the volume. Whittier, too, has no reason to complain. That poem of his, “Maud Muller,” which we are sometimes tempted to pronounce the sweetest, simplest, most pathetic gem of our literature, receives an additional charm from the spirited engraving which accompanies it. Poe’s “Raven” perches “on the pallid bust of Pallas,” “just above” the student’s chamber door, and sitting

“On the cushion’s velvet lining

With the lamp-light gloating o’er,”

we see the form of that “unhappy master” listening to his fate in the dark utterance of the mysterious bird. And that reminds us of the long promised illustrated edition of Poe which it is to be hoped will be soon forthcoming. No better subjects could be selected on which the genius of an imaginative artist might expend itself than can be found in the author’s wonderful creations.

There is a judicious mingling of the gay and mirthful in the volume, which will please those whose tastes run in that direction. Wendell Holmes’s “Old Man” is there, and accompanying the poem is an engraving of that antiquated personage, quite worthy of the verses of the Boston poet, who “never writes as funny as he can.” That cheeriest of glees, Fenno Hoffman’s “Sparkling and Bright,” laughs along the printed page, and Butler’s “Nothing to Wear” is fitly embalmed as the most successful of modern satires.

But why particularise? The volume is in every point worthy of extended circulation, and we should heartily rejoice to see such as it replace the worthless stuff which under cover of brilliant bindings now encumbers the tables and libraries of the people.

THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, FOR NOVEMBER.—

This number opens with a review of or rather a continuous attack on the bulky volumes in which Sir Archibald Alison³ has recorded the history of Europe.—The next paper is on Geology and Science, being intended to reconcile the teachings of Geology and other sciences with those of Moses in the first chapter of Genesis. The reviewer takes high Bible ground; claims that every investigator of scientific facts should set out with a belief in the plenary inspiration of Scripture, and if he finds the facts refractory, suspend judgment until other discoveries are made which will serve to cover the apparent discrepancy. Hugh Miller’s Testimony of the Rocks, the reviewer thinks, has rather damaged than advanced the cause which the author designed to subserve.—The most noticeable of the remaining articles is entitled ‘Slavery and the Slave States’; and exhibits more than the usual amount of European ignorance of the relations between the Federal and State Governments, the writer’s idea being that we shall probably elect an Anti Slavery President in 1860, who will forthwith proceed to employ the Federal authority for the emancipation of all the slaves in the Southern States.