rather largely to the fabulist's verses, but the first of them did not introduce those which follow:
What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain,
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,
And the gravest sweet humour, that ever was there
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair;******
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good-will,
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell,
The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well,
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain,
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves,
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee,—just Irving.
Mr. Halleck is reviewed in no such complimentary fashion—himself being pronounced a good deal better than his books—his mind being refused the claim of greatness, but congratulated as a very fortunate one, which "contrives to be true to its natural loves" amid the distractions of back-offices, ledgers, and broker's lists—while a tribute of respect is paid to his "genial manliness," and a regret uttered
That so much of a man has been peddled away.
The ill-starred Edgar Allan Poe is summoned before us
with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge;—
}and is roundly rated (together with Cornelius Matthews) for flinging mud-balls at Longfellow, whose kindly nature and poetical merits are gracefully vindicated. The Countess d'Ossoli (Margaret Fuller) is palpable as Miranda:
But there comes Miranda,—Zeus! where shall I flee to?[1]
She has such a penchant for bothering me too!
She always keeps asking if I don't observe a
Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva;
She tells me my efforts in verse are quite clever;—
She's been travelling now, and will be worse than ever;
One would think, though, a sharp-sighted noter she'd be
Of all that's worth mentioning over the sea,
For a woman must surely see well, if she try,
The whole of whose being's a capital I:
She will take an old notion, and make it her own,
By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone,
Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep,
By repeating it so as to send you to sleep;
And she well may defy any mortal to see through it,
When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it, &c.
- ↑ The reader of Moore's Diary will be reminded, by this panic utterance, of a strictly parallel cry of bewilderment, wrung (heart-deep) from a distinguished peer, when he heard that Madame de Staël was coming.
