And yet, with the exception of two or three outbreaks and flashes, there was really nothing in his earlier manifestations to prefigure the “unrolling glory” of the “Airs,” or to justify the extravagant expectations people had entertained from the first, if you would believe them.

Robert Treat Paine having disappeared from the stage, there was nobody left but Lucius Manlius Sargent and John Pierpont for celebrations and sudden emergencies.  But Sargent never tried the heroic, and was generally satisfied with imitations of Walter Scott, and others, who were given to oddities and quaintness.  For example, “I thought,” says he, in the longest poem he ever wrote, which appeared in quarto,—­

    “I thought, than as a feather fair
    More light is filmy gossamer,
    So woman’s heart is lighter far
    Than lightest breath of summer air,
    Which is so light it scarce can bear
    The filmiest thread of gossamer,” etc., etc., etc.

While Mr. Pierpont flung himself abroad—­like Handel, over the great organ-keys at Haarlem—­as if he never knew before what legs and arms were good for, after the following fashion:—­

    “The misty hall of Odin
      With mirth and music swells,
    Rings with the harps and songs of bards,
      And echoes to their shells.

    “See how amid the cloud-wrapped ghosts
      Great Peter’s awful form
        Seems to smile,
        As the while,
      Amid the howling storm,
    He hears his children shout, Hurrah! 
      Amid the howling storm,” etc., etc.

Few men ever elaborated as he did,—­not even Rousseau, when he wrote over whole pages and chapters of his “Confessions,” I forget how many times.  Fine thoughts were never spontaneous with him, never unexpected, never unwaited for,—­never, certainly till long after he had got his growth.  In fact, some of the happiest passages we have seem to be engraved, letter by letter, instead of being written at once, or launched away into the stillness, like a red-hot thunderbolt.  Well do I remember a little incident which occurred in Baltimore, soon after the failure of Pierpont and Lord—­and Neal, when we were all dying of sheer inaction, and almost ready to hang ourselves—­in a metaphorical sense—­as the shortest way of scoring off with the world.

We were at breakfast,—­it was rather late.

“Where on earth is your good husband?” said I to Mrs. Pierpont.

“In bed, making poetry,” said she.

“Indeed!”

“Yes, flat on his back, with his eyes rolled up in his head.”

Soon after, the gentleman himself appeared, looking somewhat the worse for the labor he had gone through with, and all the happier, that the throes were over, and the offspring ready for exhibition.  “Here,” said he, “tell me what you think of these two lines,”—­handing me a paper on which was written, with the clearness and beauty of copperplate,