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BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES.

timents of courtesy, high-toned gallantry, and passionate tenderness as belong to the riper period of civilization. Thus idealized, the portrait, if not strictly that of the fierce and untamed son of the forest, is at least sufficiently true for poetical purposes. Cooper is indeed a poet. His descriptions of inanimate nature, no less than of savage man, are instinct with the breath of poetry. Witness his infinitely various pictures of the ocean; or still more, of the beautiful spirit that rides upon its bosom, the gallant ship, which under his touches becomes an animated thing, inspired by a living soul; reminding us of the beautiful superstition of the simple-hearted natives, who fancied the bark of Columbus some celestial visitant, descending on his broad pinions from the skies.

Brown is far less of a colourist. He deals less in external nature, but searches the depths of the soul. He may be rather called a philosophical than a poetical writer; for, though he has that intensity of feeling which constitutes one of the distinguishing attributes of the latter, yet in his most tumultuous bursts of passion we frequently find him pausing to analyze and coolly speculate on the elements which have raised it. This intrusion, indeed, of reason, la raison froide, into scenes of the greatest interest and emotion, has sometimes the unhappy effect of chilling them altogether.

In 1800 Brown published the second part of his Arthur Mervyn, whose occasional displays of energy and pathos by no means compensate the vio-