I could not reply to this badinage, as in happier moments I might have done, but said, digressively: 

“By-the-by, while I think of it, I must put down on my tablet the order of Mr. Vernon.  He wants ‘Longfellow’s Poems,’ if for sale in Savannah.  He has been permeating his brain with the ‘Psalms of Life,’ that have come out singly in the Knickerbocker Magazine, until he craves every thing that pure and noble mind has thrown forth in the shape of a song.”

And I scribbled in my memorandum-book, for a moment, while Major Favraud mused.

“Longfellow!” he said, at last, “Phoebus, what a name!” adding affectedly, “yet it seems to me, on reflection, I have heard it before.  He is a Yankee, of course!  Now, do you earnestly believe a native of New England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know, can be any thing better than a poll-parrot in the poetical line?”

“Have we not proof to the contrary, Major Favraud?”

“What proof?  Metre and rhyme, I grant you—­long and short—­but show me the afflatus!  They make verse with a penknife, like their wooden nutmegs.  They are perfect Chinese for ingenuity and imitation, and the resemblance to the real Simon-pure is very perfect—­externally.  But when it comes to grating the nut for negus, we miss the aroma!”

“Do you pretend that Bryant is not a poet in the grain, and that the wondrous boy, Willis, was not also ‘to the manner born?’ Read ‘Thanatopsis,’ or are you acquainted with it already?  I hardly think you can be.  Read those scriptural poems.”

“A very smooth school-exercise the first, no more.  There is not a heart-beat in the whole grind.  As to Willis—­he failed egregiously, when he attempted to ‘gild refined gold and paint the lily,’ as he did in his so-called ‘Sacred Poems.’  He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of his poetry.” [2]

“This is surprising!  You upset all precedent.  I really wish you had not said these things.  I now begin to see the truth of what my copy-book told me long ago, that ‘evil association corrupts good manners,’ or I will vary it and substitute ‘opinions.’  I must eschew your society, in a literary way, I must indeed, Major Favraud.”

“Now comes along this strolling Longfellow minstrel,” he continued, ignoring or not hearing my remark, “with his dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap the climax.  Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me.  Not an original or cheerful note!  ‘Old Hundred’ is joyful in comparison!”

“You shall not say that,” I interrupted; “you shall not dare to say that in my presence.  It is sheer slander, that you have caught up from some malignant British review, and, like all other serpents, you are venomous in proportion to your blindness!  I am vexed with you, that you will not see with the clear, discerning eyes God gave you originally.”