and subjective....  We might indulge in some criticisms, but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being.  As it is, he has a wonderful pose, which flits from flower to flower, and bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede) to the ‘highest heaven of invention.’ ...  We love a book so purely objective ...  Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity....  In fine, we consider this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age.  We know of no English author who could have written it.  It is a work to which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds, may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved Europe....  We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving enduring fame.  Already we should be inclined to assign him a high position in the bright galaxy of our American bards.

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From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom.

A volume in bad grammar and worse taste....  While the pieces here collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must expect the lash he so richly merits....  Contemptible slanders....  Vilest Billingsgate....  Has raked all the gutters of our language....  The most pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant venom....  General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies....  The Reverend Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth....

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From the World-Harmonic-AEolian-Attachment.

Speech is silver:  silence is golden.  No utterance more Orphic than this.  While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed....  Under mask of quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship-wracked) soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate, but ever climbing hopefully toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow....  Yes, thou poor, forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this life of ours has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity and laughingest mirth.  Conceivable enough!  Through coarse Thersites-cloak, we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, that is in him.  Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the ‘nicer proprieties,’ inexpert of