ART. VI.—AMERICAN LAKE POETRY.

1.-Poem delivered before the Society of United Brothers, at Brown University, on the day preceding Commencement, September 6th, 1831. With other poems. By N. P. WILLIS. New-York: J. & J. Harper: 1831. pp. 76.

2.-Poems by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. New-York: E. Bliss: 1831. pp. 240.

WE have always considered it very unfortunate for the reputation of American poetry, that just about the time it began to be much cultivated, a false style was introduced into poetical composition, by what are called the "Lake Poets" of England. Several of these, such as Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, being estimable men, and writers of acknowledged capacity, had sufficient influence to bring their style, repulsive as it is to the mass of readers, into favour with certain classes among the literati, who, pleased with its apparent novelty, theorized themselves into an opinion of its merits; and like all converts to a new system, became zealots in maintaining its orthodoxy as a style truly English, and in all respects preferable to that which prevailed during the last century, which they were pleased to stigmatize as too polished and artificial a vehicle for genuine poetry. The candidates for poetical renown on this side of the ocean, drawing, as they habitually do, their canons of criticism from British reviews, fell almost universally into these opinions, and adopted into their own compositions the very worst peculiarities of the new school. Had it not been for this unhappy circumstance, in this manner corrupting their taste, the talent of which there are indications scattered through the effusions of several of our poets, could scarcely have failed to bring forth verses which the world would have welcomed with delight, and repaid with solid patronage and permanent fame.

But our poets have chosen their ill-judged model. They have, in consequence, filled their compositions with epithets without meaning, and sentiment without pathos. They are careless without ease, and laborious without showing polish. Their decorations are tawdry, and impart no elegance to their diction. Their versification is in general sluggish, and often intolerably rugged. They seem to have no relish for that delightful melody, which, in well-written poetry, charms the hearts of men, and is congenial to the soul of every true bard. The result has been, what every sagacious mind would have expected-censure from the wise, and neglect from the public. And is it not to be lamented that so much poetical labour as appears to be exerted amongst us should be exerted to so little purpose? Is there no remedy? Can

the rock on which our poets wreck their fortunes, not be pointed out that they may avoid it? This it would be easy to do, if poets were like other men. With philosophers you can reason; politicians can be bribed; and soldiers may be conquered; but who can manage the self-sufficiency of a poet? We, at present, attempt the ungracious task of showing where those, whose works we have made the subject of this article, have gone astray, not so much with the view of bringing them into the right pathwhich we deem would be vain labour-as for the purpose of preventing others from following them. We will hold up their works as beacons by which future pilgrims, on the path to poetical fame, may be warned to avoid the snares into which they have fallen, too deeply, we fear, ever to rise again, and become disentangled from their error.

The injudicious praise which these poets have received from pretended friends and sciolous editors of newspapers, has been their great misfortune. It has contributed more than any thing else, to delude them into the opinion that they have adopted the right course, and are careering triumphantly to the brilliant goal of poetical immortality. Sad mistake! Their labours have all been fruitless; and the immoderate trumpeting that has heralded them from one newspaper to another, throughout all the states of this wide-spread Union, has sounded in vain—and for this simple reason-it was soon discovered that it sounded delusively. The editorial commendations of these authors, indeed, for the most part, carried their antidote with them, in quotations from their works. By reading these, whatever favourable impressions the encomiums might have excited, were uniformly extinguished, so that rational men now regard such efforts to dupe them into an approval of what nature and common sense teach them to despise, as utterly unworthy of attention.

But our poets may deem the applause of the newspaper critics, in itself, a sufficient reward for their labours. They may conceive, that although all the rest of the world shall deny their merit, so long as it is confessed and applauded by the busy paragraphists, they ought to be satisfied; for these they may esteem the candid and judicious few, whose favourable verdict is the noblest reward of genius. "A small but fitting audience," was the wish of the greatest of poets; and in his time such an audience was all that a poet could expect. Readers, in proportion to the rest of mankind, were then indeed so few, that without some great man for a patron, no poet could expect success. But the case is now different. Individual patronage, and small audiences, however fitting, can no longer secure poetical success. Readers are now, in literary countries, nearly as numerous as the population itself. Hence the public has become the great patron,

without whose favour, no writer, whether of prose or poetry, can be successful. With all due deference, therefore, we would suggest to our poetical aspirants, that on the suffrage of the general public alone, can they depend for any reputation worth making efforts to acquire. By the phrase, general public, we mean the great reading multitude of all ranks, classes, and professions, which constitute universal society, in contradistinction to the small knots of literary petitmaitres, who, careless of merit, or unable to discern it, lead inexperienced authors astray, by applauding whatever they suppose to be fashionable; or to those good-natured editors, who, from courtesy to bards or publishers, applaud, or at least give circulation to the applause of works, many of which they have not the slightest intention of ever reading;or to those gossiping critics who may be called parlour loungers, idlers in society, and affected sentimentalists, who, from a desire to be thought knowing in such matters, often talk of the beauties of new books they have never perused, and perhaps if they had, could not understand;—or to those injudicious patriots who imagine that to praise whatever an American writes, however irksome to read, is to promote the prosperity and exalt the character of our national literature. It is the ill-judged panegyrics of any or all of these that we would caution poets against mistaking for the voice of the public, which is, more frequently than otherwise, in direct opposition to theirs. They are the noisy small critics, whose rash and random encomiums, bandied from one to another, have so often intoxicated the young and inexperienced authors of our country, and induced them to believe that common-place productions, which might be creditable enough as college exercises, are not only worthy of the admiration of the world, but have secured it.

Besides these seducers of young poets, there are the hireling puffers, whose business is, for pay, to write commendatory notices and reviews of new works for the booksellers. These often bespatter the selected author so immoderately with praise, that he himself, on reading their remarks, grows astonished at the vastness of his own merit. He imagines that he has become, all at once, the favourite bard of the times; that he has attained the very quintessence of the poetic art; and that, consequently, he need make no further effort towards improvement; but, by continuing to give verses of the same quality to mankind, he will oblige them to admire, and accord to him a glorious position in the temple of fame. These easy-conscienced critics, it is true, are occasionally not altogether useless in their vocation. The ultimate injury they do to poets and poetical literature, by their ill-founded praise, is immense. But they sometimes answer the temporary purposes of their employers, by duping the public into the purchase of an edition or two of the merest trash, as

was lately witnessed in the case of that monstrous poetical abortion "The Siamese Twins." This, in the end, however, turns to the disadvantage of even their employers, by rendering the public suspicious of all literary puffing, even when applied to works of merit. It would seem, therefore, that a judicious regard to their own interests, should induce publishers to discourage a system which they have of late so industriously promoted, and which they may be assured, is, by its intolerable abuse, fast working its own cure.

The author of the first work which we have placed at the head of this article, is a young man whom the ill-directed panegyrics of unthinking editors have done more to spoil as a poet, by confirming him in the bad taste of the Lake School, which, at his outset, he had unluckily made his model, than perhaps any poetical adventurer this country has yet produced. Where is the newspaper reader that has not heard of his fine genius, and seen, we will not say read, many an incomprehensible proof of it, to his great annoyance, staring him in the face on opening his morning Gazette in search of the news of the day? If the reader be a politician, and impatient for foreign news, how often has he been provoked, when, on eagerly opening the just-arrived sheet of intelligence, instead of the announcement of "Late and important from Europe," he finds "A Poetical Fragment, by N. P. WILLIS, Esq." If he be a merchant, how has he been chagrined, when, instead of the arrival of the packet ship Britannia, in which he has embarked a large amount of seasonable goods, he meets with "The Leper, a poem by N. P. WILLIS, Esq. ?" Does a manufacturer of woollens expect to be edified with Mr. Clay's last speech in defence of the tariff, it is ten to one but he is, instead of it, saluted with "The Wife's Appeal, by N. P. WILLIS, Esq." The words N. P. WILLIS, Esq. constitute the eternal heading which has, for the last three or four years, like an evil conscience, haunted for his sins many an unfortunate newsmonger, who would rather suffer a fit of the night-mare, than be condemned to read a single paragraph of the whining puerilities, or unintelligible jargon, that uniformly follow the provoking an

nouncement.

Seriously speaking, what good has all this eternal blazoning of his name, done this young man? Has it made his poetry popular? Has it made it saleable? Has it made it readable? We deny that it has done either the one or the other. The test of poetical popularity is not the number of newspaper puffs a poet may receive in a given number of months, but the number of persons into whose possession his works have made their way. This is also the test of their being saleable and readable, provided the public have not, as in the already cited case of "The Siamese Twins," yielded to a temporary delusion. In the case of Willis,

notwithstanding all the editorial trumpeting in his favour, this delusion has certainly not taken place, for we will venture to say, that with the reading public he is decidedly and almost universally unpopular. As an illustration, we will cite the city of Philadelphia, which contains a population as much inclined to poetical reading, as any of the same number, promiscuously taken, in the United States. Now, of its two hundred thousand inhabitants, we are certain there is no risk in saying, that not two hundred are in possession of any volume of Willis's Poems; nor do we believe that any two hundred of them have ever read even the much lauded production by which, if the Brothers of Brown University have sensations like other men, their patience must have been exquisitely tried on the memorable 6th of September last. Well may their endurance on that day be entered on their archives, to be held forth to their successors, as an instance of philosophical forbearance which they may long admire, but never hope to imitate. For our own parts, if the poem was recited as drowsily as it is written, we pity those good brothers who had not provided themselves with pillows, when the leaden influence of strains so soporific began to work. What a precious concert of somniferous sounds there must have been, when the nasal tubes of the audience began, in comfortable snores, to chime in with the lullaby strains of the poet? But we must be consistent. We just now represented the audience, not as sleeping but as suffering; and it is, indeed, more creditable to lovers of learning, such as they, to suppose that the tension to which they strained their faculties, in order to discover meaning where it could not be found, must have kept them laboriously awake.

If there is ridicule in the foregoing remarks, we wish none of it to fall on the respectable body which composed the audience, except what little they deserve for the palpable blunder they committed in selecting so devoted a follower of the most drowsy of all poetical schools, to exhibit his monotonous and incomprehensible abstractions on such an occasion. Could they not have found a better poet in New England?-By the bye, we fear not. Poetry is not the pursuit in which the truly enlightened inhabitants of that section of our country seem to excel. Their great men, and great men they have produced in abundance, have excellencies of a more substantial nature on which to value themselves. They have Webster's oratory and general grasp of intellect-they have the science of Silliman, the ethical philosophy of Sparks, the eloquent literature of Everett-and, more than all, they have the general good sense, and the diffused information, which characterize a population, that, in point of intelligence, is second to none in the world, of which to be proud. Well may they, therefore, spare, without a grudge, to other lands, the