Essays and Reviews Volume 1 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " And wider yet in thought and deed Our still diverging paths incline, Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, While answers to my spirit's need The Yorkshire peasant's simple line: For thee the priestly rite and prayer, And holy day and solemn psalm; For me the silent reverence, where My brethren gather, slow and calm." Whittier has the soul of a great poet, and we should not be surprised if he attained the height of excellence in his art. The faults of his mind, springing from excessive fluency and a too excitable sensibility, exaggerated as they have been by the necessities of hasty composition, have prevented him from displaying as yet the full power of his genius. It is by no means unlikely, that, when he has somewhat tamed the impetuosity of his feelings, and brooded with more quiet intensity over the large stores of poetry which lie chaotically in his nature, he may yet produce a work which will rival, and perhaps excel, the creations of his most distinguished contemporaries. He has that vigor, truthfulness, and manliness of character, ? that freedom from conventional shackles, ? that careless disregard of Mr. Pretty- man's notion as to what constitutes the high, and Miss Betty's notion as to what constitutes the low, ? that native energy and independence of nature, ? which form the basis of the character of every great genius, and without which poetry is apt to be a mere echo of the drawing-room, and to idealize affectations instead of realities. We are glad to perceive that Mr. Griswold has done some justice to the poetical powers of Mrs. Maria Brooks, author of " Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven."This lady has generally written under the name of Maria del Occidente. Her poems evince mental qualities, which, if they had been employed on themes or incident...