L. MIFFLIN.

NOTES.

American poetry before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies.  Who now reads “The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America,” “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America,” “The Day of Doom,” “M’Fingal,” or “The Columbiad?” Skipping a generation from Barlow’s death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre:  Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, Allston, Brainard, Mrs. Osgood, and Miss Brooks?  A few of them, to be sure, are remembered by an occasional lyric,—­Halleck by “Marco Bozzaris,” a spirited ode in the manner of Campbell; Pierpont by his ringing lines, “Warren’s Address to the American Soldiers;” Drake by “The American Flag,” conventional but not commonplace, and marked by one very imaginative line; and Allston by two rather excellent lyrics, “Rosalie” and “America to Great Britain.”  The first poet to accomplish work of high sustained excellence was Bryant.  His poetry, though never impassioned, is uniformly elegant.  It is often as chaste as Landor at his best.  But it never surprises; it is not emotional, personal, suggestively imaginative.  In fact, Bryant’s muse is not lyrical.  With the exception of Pinkney and Hoffman, whose “Sparkling and Bright,” if technically defective, is a true song, we must wait for our lyric poet till we reach Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest—­one inclines to say the only—­master of musical quality in verse whom America has produced.

The Wild Honeysuckle.—­Philip Freneau, born in 1752, was a soldier in the American Revolution.  Though never rising quite into the highest class of poets, he is our first genuine singer.  “The Indian Burying-ground” and “To a Honey-bee” are only less successful than the graceful lines quoted.

A Health.—­Poe was an enthusiastic admirer of this poem.  He pronounced it, in his essay entitled “The Poetic Principle,” “full of brilliancy and spirit,” and added:  “It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south.  Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called The North American Review.”  This passage, very characteristic of Poe’s criticisms, illustrates both his championship of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes.

Unseen Spirits.—­The earnest sincerity, evident in every line of this poem, removes it at once from the company of those gay society verses sparkling with conceits which won for Willis the satiric comment of Lowell in “A Fable for Critics:” 

  “There is Willis, all natty, and jaunty, and gay,
  Who says his best things in so foppish a way,
  With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o’erlaying ’em,
  That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying ’em;
  Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,—­
  Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!”