the range of reading, and the extent of knowledge of political affairs and of general history, as well as the maturity of talent and stretch of thought here exhibited, that his friends deemed it necessary, when a second edition was called for in February, 1809, to issue a kind of affidavit, assuring the public that the author's age was a matter of record, and could be verified by examination. "The Embargo" was chiefly a satirical attack upon the policy of the administration of Mr. Jefferson, who had laid an embargo on all foreign bound vessels belonging to the United States, a policy which was thought to be highly detrimental to New England, and which was most fiercely and persistently denounced in all her borders. This poem, written and passed to a second edition before the author was thirteen and a half, is really as good as most of the satirical poems on political subjects published by more ambitious authors. Its sentiments and ideas undoubtedly were learned in the daily discussions at the table of his father, and from the partisan newspapers of the vicinity, more than by his own observation or reflection; and the versification is probably due to the lad's ardent admiration of Pope and Dryden, more than to any great labor of thought, or enthusiastic inspiration of real genius or lofty purpose. It was nevertheless well received, and made the public both anxious to hear more from its young author, and fastidious concerning all that he might thenceforward compose. In 1810 Bryant entered Williams College, where he remained two years, and then devoted himself to the study of the law in Plymouth county, Massachusetts, where he was admitted to the bar as a practising attorney in 1815. About this time “Thanatopsis,” written, it is said, at the age of eighteen, was first published in one of the periodicals of the day. This poem has been a great favorite with everybody since the day it first saw the light. It purports to be the voice of Nature herself to man concerning death, and is full of noble sentiments of the pantheistic school. Its versification is liquid and flowing, and has scarcely a harsh cadence or an imperfect rhythm. It is the voice of Nature seeking to make us content to die, after a life of brave and useful labor. In 1821 "The Ages," the longest poem which Mr. Bryant has yet published, consisting, however, of only thirty-five Spenserian stanzas, was printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, together with "Thanatopsis," "To a Water-Fowl," "The Yellow Violet," "Green River," "Inscription at the Entrance of a Wood," and a few other pieces. This volume was the proper commencement of his career and fame, and it established his reputation as the first of American poets, a position from which no rival has yet dislodged him, after forty years of almost continual writing. In the year 1825 he left his native state and removed to the city of New York, where he has since resided, engaged chiefly in the business of editing a political newspaper, and devoted to the promulgation and defense of the principles of what claims to be Jeffersonian democracy. In 1834 and 1835 he traveled extensively in Europe, and in 1843 made the tour of the Mississippi and the Great West. His mind is therefore enriched by ancient and modern classical studies and literature, disciplined by the methodical training and practice of the law, polished and elevated by intercourse with the best of metropolitan society, enlarged and refined by domestic and foreign travel, and strengthened by almost daily exercise in the practice of literary composition. Add to these a genial temper, a habit of quick and correct observation, an ardent sympathy with the varying moods of nature, and a soul alive to all generous instincts and impulses, and we have a character well fitted to become a national favorite as a poet. Of all our American male writers of verse, he has been the most praised, if not the most read and most influential; and his poems are now almost daily found in the poet's corner of our multitudinous newspapers, though they may have been already fifty times printed in the former volumes of the same periodical. As a poet he therefore needs no introduction to an American or even a European auditory. Years ago his poems, edited and introduced by Irving, were dedicated to Rogers, and cordially reviewed and complimented by Christopher North in Blackwood. Their reputation is established. But Bryant is something else than a poet. The subjects sung in this volume are none other than the topics common to all true poetry, with the almost exception of religion and home, in the highest and most endearing senses of these words. No volume of poems can be at all complete where these topics are wholly neglected, nor can it be at all popular when these subjects, the noblest for human contemplation, and the dearest to the human heart, as well as the sweetest and most consoling, are not often recurred to; and therefore there is found in some one or other of its phases and appearances, on almost every page, natural religion, or that kind of quietism that may grow out of the observation of nature, and prompts to a lazy, indifferent morality and benevolence, together with those feelings and affections that make home agreeable and desirable, such as respect for age and parental authority, chivalric regard for woman and love for childhood, virtues which also grandly dignify and ennoble the character and render a people honorable, and often they are very beautifully and forcibly expressed. These in some good measure, though not fully, atone for the loss of the direct mention and open recognition of a religion daily felt in the soul, and they redeem the book from the charges of either infidelity or stoicism. Bryant has the power, if he only had the experience, to embalm in words the entrancing raptures that thrill the heart when man's affections all center in God, not as a part of nature, nor as its Creator and Governor, nor yet as the most wonderfully skillful mechanician, or the most bountiful benefactor, but as the One only lovely, supremely just and holy, revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, and felt in the soul as an indwelling power and impulse. His religion (and there is a large amount of it in various poems) is the natural religion which is content to rest in the inactive organism of the plant or flower, not that of Paul, which burns, and glows, and feels its own life, and demands to be reckoned among the working and transforming powers in the earth. These poems have no Saviour. Almost all their religion might have been known and described (for there is no attempt to dramatize it) by Plato himself. Here is the most observant pantheism, and the most sympathetic accordance with every frown, or smile, or look of nature. And the heaven to which the soul aspires is commonly nothing more than this earth a very little idealized; the heaven of some of Swedenborg's followers, or that of a portion of those who, so proudly and with such arrogant assumption, style themselves spiritualists. This beautifully versified passage is an illustration. It occurs in a poem entitled the "Two Graves," a most lovely painting: ""Tis said that when life is ended here, 'Tis a cruel creed, believe it not! They are here, they are here, that harmless pair, In the light cloud-shadows that slowly pass, In the sounds that rise from the murmuring grass. Of the brook that wets the rocks below," They watch, and wait, and linger around, Till the day when their bodies shall leave the ground." Pp. 149, 150. This may be very touching, and expressive, and really enchanting "To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms;" but it is not the desire nor the language of a soul "born of God," and adopted to be the brother and servant of the Lord Jesus, whose whole heart is fired with the blessed idea of Christ's mediatorial office, and who cries with the Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven. but THEE? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides THEE." To such a one, longing to dwell in the immediate and visible presence ("the pure in heart shall see God") of the Creator, all the works of nature, however manifold, and in whatever excellent wisdom made, are but incentives to reach after a still more appreciable intercourse with him in personal communion; and all of God that he sees in the glorious forms of nature, is nothing more than the shadow of its mother which the child sees thrown by the lamplight on the curtains of its couch, making it long to be folded in the warm arms to the beating bosom of that mother. The real Christian, or if an abstract term is preferred, the true religionist only sees the moving shadow of God in these multiform and almost miraculous works of nature. All her divine and soul-elevating beauties are less suggestive even than shadows, and can no more satisfy his soul and fill his love, than the faintest echo of the voice of his newly married bride could satisfy the heart and soul of an enraptured bridegroom. The only reference, except in the translations, to Christ, with any distinctness, occurs in "The Conqueror's Grave" in which he is called "The Mighty Sufferer," and the "Great Master." The poem is a grand one, and thus closes in a noble strain of hopeful courage, sublime resolve, and cheering promise: "O gentle sleeper, from thy grave I go Consoled though sad, in hope and yet in fear. The warfare scarce begun; Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won. Still flows the fount whose waters strengthen'd thee; Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory, That ministered to thee, is open still."-P. 322. I may be said that Bryant is not a sacred poet, and therefore he is not bound to make any reference to this matter of a personal religion and spiritual communion with God. If this is granted, it follows that instead of striking all the keys in the great organ of the human heart, he has left untouched that which gives forth the most thrilling notes, and produces, in concert with the others, the most exalting harmonies. But it will not do to make this admission, even while it will not cover or excuse his deficiencies. No man who pretends to be a poet has any more right to ignore "God in Christ Jesus," than he has to ignore God in nature; and if he does thus keep silence upon this dearest of all topics, then the world ought to be put on its guard against worshiping him as the perfect poet. Many will be pained to find here no religion of repentance and faith in Christ, nothing but cold communion with nature and with God through her; and there is no Jesus with his wounded flesh and unspeakable love, who appears and becomes most really appreciable to the longing soul. On those great subjects that interest all and make men always feel them, life and death, there are some excellent descriptions and some noble moralizings. The "Hymn to Death" is sublime, wonderfully so in parts, and is highly suggestive of patient heroism, brave endurance, and lofty philosophy. Its calm and defiant waiting for a better day, and its certain faith in the steady approach of that good time, are more than heroic. And the pathos of its close, sung apparently upon the harp, with its strings broken by the rude hand that had struck down the father of the poet while he was singing, is irresistible. Yet he might have spared the last line, or at least changed the last two words, which are unworthy both the poet and his theme: "Shuddering I look On what is written, yet I blot not out Few poems of its kind in our English tongue are finer, notwithstanding the grand doctrine of immortality does not sufficiently add its cheering strains to swell the noblest part of the chorus, an omission detracting from its real power and lasting influence. Yet listen to a few lines from it: "Raise then the hymn to Death. Deliverer! And crush the oppressor. When the armed chief, Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes Gather within their ancient bounds again.”—P. 48. |