"The Dying Alchymist" is another of his most successful pieces—a very effectively told story of an aged suicide—one who, sent blindfold on a path of light, had turned aside to perish—"a sun-bent eagle stricken from his high soaring down—an instrument broken with its own compass." The dramatic poem entitled "Lord Ivon" has also won large approval—containing as it does passages of more sustained vigour and less finical pretence than is the author's wont. Some of his shorter fragments, devoted to household ties and the domestic affections, are however his likeliest claims to anything beyond ephemeral repute—marked as these are, sometimes in a memorable degree, by a tenderness and sincerity of emotion that at once conciliate censorship, and that have probably made more than one hostile critic shed "some natural tears," however scrupulous his highness may have been to wipe them soon.
Nevertheless, Mr. Willis can hardly be ranked very high among poets, and those American poets. His strains are too glib and fluent, too dainty-sweet and prettily-equipped, too evidently the recreation of an easy-minded essayist, instead of being fraught with sighs from the depths of a soul travailing in the greatness of its strength. He sings, and we listen as to one who has a pleasant voice, and can play well upon an instrument; and having heard him, we pass on, and forget the melody, though we do not forget what manner of man he was. Speaking of a lyrical minstrel—some say, the eminent N. P. Willis himself—Emerson describes his head as a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and his skill and command of language as never to be sufficiently praised. To whomsoever this may refer, what follows will apply to his Eminence: "But when the question arose, whether he were not only a lyrist, but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man." Yes; that is unmistakably true of N. P. Willis. Plainly a contemporary—a nineteenth-century being—coeval with Gore House—synchronous with the fashion of "Hurrygraphs." Not at all an eternal man—although the North American Review, in its pride and pleasure, did dub him the American Euripides, and thereby gave the cue to a thousand wittols to exclaim, A very American one indeed! Emerson goes on to say of his lyrist, that he does not stand out of our low limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running up from the torrid base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but is rather the landscape garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and terraces. "We hear, through all the varied music, the ground-tone of conventional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is primary"—in disregard of the truth that it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem—that in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form—"a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing." How plainly Mr. Willis is thought a contemporary, not an eternal man,[1] by the scribe of the Biglow Papers, Miss Bremer's Apollo's Head, let these lines testify:
- ↑ In appraising himself, by-the-by, Ms. Willis has characteristicaUy said, "I
