Harp, the, from the German Love-Charm, the, from the German Tieck.. Maria Maitland Seller of Himself, the Story of a Day, the SCIENCES AND ARTS. Aurora Borealis, the 309 Paul Paragraph's letter to Peter. 171 Poet's Purgatory, No. 1... 274, 291"A Patron" rapped across the knuckles. 173 Conversations at Dr. Mitchill's 13, 46, 78, 110"Shaken but not overthrown". 60, 110, 246 To C. G. V. R. Miscellanies and Literary Varieties, 14, 15, 124 31 141 109 16, 127, 128, 144, 159, 160, 175, 176 We may conclude in the language of an 208, 240, 261, 262, 265, 271, 272 AND Phi Beta Kappa Repository. FIDE AC FIDUCIA. No. 1. NEW-YORK, SEPTEMBER 10, 1825. LITERARY. THE POST-OFFICE. THE following is from the pen of the accomplished author of the Highl anders. VOL. I. made, and conjectures formed, of which they cannot be in the least aware. amusement and instruction therefrom: I give it those who may become dramatis persona in the scene; because caution and circumspection, prudence and self-possestheir different walks of life, and that they sion may be of infinite service to them in may learn that, when they consider themA POST-OFFICE, like a direction- post or a selves as least observed, their passions may mile-stone, is passed inattentively by thou-be strongly visible, and calculations may be sands hourly; those only, who have direct dealings with this depository of commerce, confidence, mutual and common-place inter- A spy, (but spies have no hearts, and therecourse, secrets, affections, plans, plots and fore very imperfect minds) might, if he negotiations, treasons, treaties, and trivial were divested of his degradation, discover communications, stop to remark the varieties half the secrets of the town; but any man which such a spot affords; but to the calm gifted with strong perceptions might delineobserver of life, to the man who has leisure ate the passions, characters, and professions and tranquillity, the peace of the heart and of the frequenters of the post-office, as well unprejudiced views, the letter-box, the mile- the depositors as the receivers of letters, and stone, and the road-post have more in them decide from the eagerness or interest, the than mere wood and stone. The circulating expectation or trepidation, the craft or conmedium of the post-office, affects high and cealment, the ease or indifference of the low, rich and poor, foreign and domestic in-acting party, whether a miser or an ambiterests; its operations are hopeful and fearful tious one, a speculator or a suitor, a swindto many, and yet how few look attentively on ler or a forlorn fair one, a prosperous trifler, the living drama acted daily at its doors. or a mere porter of franks or letter-packets, The proud man views it not, because "my dropped the billet, or inquired for the more porter, or my agent receives my letters;" the or less important epistle; not forgetting the mercantile man waits in his counting-house author, the advertiser, the pauper, genuine for a fortune or a bankruptcy enclosed in the or pretended, and the hoaxing adventurer inmouth of secrecy, whose lips, unlike those quiring if there are no letters for the house of folly, are ever open, but speak not; the of Kite, Vanwind, and Co?-and smiling at soldier expects a dun or a love-letter, a chal- the self-written important blanks which arlenge from the drum-major, or a more fear- rive to bolster up a falling trade, or to give ful attorney's notice; whilst the few most a colouring to a bill acceptor, a money scrivfeelingly affected, draw their pains and plea- ener, a travelling trader, a straw bail, or to sures, their success or failure directly from the accomplice and accommodating partner the dumb lips of their oracle, or fortune-teller. in some nefarious traffic. The man who sails tranquilly down the Departing, however, from crime, let us stream of time, and whose correspondence pass to the higher frequenters of the postis confined to acts of friendship, and to the office. gentle usages of life, to congratulations, "Are there any letters for Sir Jeremiah condolings, orders to servants, and direc- Juniper ?" said a brazen-faced fat distiller, tions to men of business, to advice to a ne-(one of the first whom I observed at the letphew, or remittance to a weak brother, may ter-office), and who was rolled out into the 'ispassionately stand aloof to view the busy four-fold importance of an ex-mayor, an cene of the mail's arrival, and draw from it address-knight, a magistrate, and the late reflections and information; and, although purchaser of a borough. "Yes, Sir Jerry," I do not identify myself with any character, I must be permitted to take my station here, and to recount what passed before my eyes. I give it to my readers because I reaped replied a clerk in office, handing him over a packet addressed to Sir Jeremiah Juniper, Baronet, M. P. The words " SirJeremiah," occasioned a swell of consequence ; “baro net," was swallowed with complacency; | fill a nook in their libraries, until the moth M. P. went down like a matter of right, becomes their only customer. and drew a smile from promoted insignificance as he said, "thank you, young man, there's your money." The destroyer of stomachs, and dealer in blue ruin only came to show who he now was; that was clear, and his servant went for his letters the next day. "D-n the post!" (at last), thundered out an irritated Exquisite, turning away in disgust from the office, and looking as if some unaccommodating agent, frothy professor of promised services, or hard-fisted relative, had deceived him, and left him no resource but uncle at the corner of the street, to pay his washer-woman, his perfumer and his servant's board wages, whilst his horses were, not unlikely, advertised for their standing at a livery stable. "Is there a letter directed for Lorenzo Lonsdale ?" inquired a young man of fashionable appearance, but the lines of whose countenance bespoke fear, anxiety, and selfaccusation? "For whom?" replied a coarse I shall now proceed to the depositors of voiced fellow, who was looking over a bun-communications of divers kinds. dle of letters, and the words "for whom" electrified the incognito prodigal. It was obvious to me that this romantic name was assumed, and that he had changed his own without an estate, a bequest, or any act of the herald's office; he received a packet with trembling hand, and put it in his pocket, as if he required a turn or two it the air, or a glass of brandy to give him courage to break the seal. "Ay, ay," said I to myself, "no money can be raised on your moonshine securities; post-obits, and wind bills all fail, duns are increasing at your doors, bailiffs are hunting after your person, you have not five pounds in your exchequer, and perhaps "Still you are in love and pleased with ruin." This inquirer was followed by a fellow who carried Cocker, not merely at his fingers' ends, but in every line of his features; he seemed almost to calculate how he could spare shoe leather in crossing the pavement, or how he could get the weather-gage of a fellow-traveller on life's foot path, so as to save his own coat and hat from a cloud of dust or a drop of rain by running under his lee. "What letters are there for the house?" quoth he hastily; and, on receiving half-a-dozen, he eagerly broke the seals, and seemed to chuckle at their contents, as if he would have read. "Took in Nobs and Co. finely with the hardware; got off the damaged goods safe to the continent; the dubious bill of exchange is paid; and poor Dicky Dupe safe in the sheriff's stone jug; all taken in, in different ways, and the firm snug and thriving." The first billet which I observed gently dropped into the general receiver was a love-letter: there was nothing dubious in the symptoms which characterised its nature: the bearer of it was all sympathetic sensibility; she looked around her as if she feared that the tattling breeze might disclose her lover's name. On taking the letter from her bosom, her colour acquired a deeper hue; her eye enlarged and sparkled : she seemed to breathe all she felt into every fold of the enveloppe; she read the address as if the name was dear to her, and, lastly, let it fall from her taper fingers, with a grace which was designed to give an additional charm to every line which it contained. "Credulous fair one!" said I to myself. "Alas! how uncertain is the return which thou mayst meet with for all this tenderness and truth; how probable it is that thou art only corresponding with some gay deceiver, and returning genuine affection and artless expression, for the cold hacknied promises of a betrayer.” Patience and long suffering in manly form paced after the fair one. The bearer of the next packet was a man of trading appearance, but of a cast which implied that the world went not well with him; that honest endeavour met not with corresponding success; that bad debts, a large family, the want of capital, reduced by both, kept him over backward in fortune's lists; that a wish to keep square with mankind, and a reluctance to resort to coercion, tổ fraud, to usury, or to double dealing, fettered his operations, whilst the more enterprising and lucky passed him by. Like Sysiphus, he was ever To this character succeeded a man redu- rolling the weighty mass to the mountain's ced in circumstances, who (with a sigh) de- point, but it as often revolved back upon him, manded if there was nothing addressed to and left his endeavours to be resumed again. C. D., (seedy enough in apparel). "Noth- He shook his head as he put the packet into ing!" A florid appeal of feeling (probably)| the office, addressed to lords, honourables, thrown away; quondam friends and ac- and M. P.s, to priviledged great ones at quaintances all false; the bait had doubt- home, and to dashing fashionables abroad. less failed, and a tale of real distress had" It is about twenty to one but all these aplain for days on the tables of the wealthy plications will not produce the price of the and great, but had been as little noticed as writing paper," said I to myself, for I easily the gilded New Testaments, the fixtures of found him out: he was a Dun, [the credibooksellers' shops, or the moral essays which tor is often unjustly stigmatised by the name], and I must confess that this was the first time that I ever saw one of that description in an amiable point of view. "While expletives their feeble aid do join." But to say a word respecting the twin bards whom I named first in this paper. Two merry blades hustled the dun as they Gray's mind was copious and judicious-but hastily popped their productions into the not original. Collins is, I think, superior to letter-box: they both laughed immoderate- Gray in moral power. Gray's Odes are the ly, as they lounged off arm in arm, and I was productions of a refined and well-cultivated just calculating what their characters and intellect; those of Collins are, on the other productions were, and had set down one for hand, the creations of an independent, via hoaxer, and the other for a wild spend-gorous fancy. I would always observe this thrift, either humbugging a credulous moth-distinction:-Gray's poems are not creaer or aunt, or making up a tale of marvel tions. and misery to raise the wind, when I overIn regard to sweetness, perhaps Collins heard their conversation which led to the is, in the main, (but I say it with some hesifollowing discovery; namely, that one was tation,) inferior to Gray, who was excellentforwarding an advertisement for a wife, and ly and pre-eminently skilful in the various that the other was writing to an honest cu- properties of rhythm. But it is rather sinrate, his former tutor, and pretending to be gular that Gray, with all his polish, prearrested for fifty pounds, in order to obtain this sents very numerous defective rhymes, sum from the credulity of a simple, virtuous, It is quite fair to remark a failing point of and unworldly man. "Poor old Tupto will this sort in reference to such writers nibble to a certainty, he will swallow the as I am now speaking of. They are poets bait," said the one. "What lots of fun we of little compass and great labour; every shall have, besides the chance of a deform-flaw in them is, therefore, glaring. Opening ed, disappointed old maid, or a widow weary Gray's small volume at random, I find of her weeds, with consols, navy bonds, longadores," as a rhyme to "towers"-" beannuities, &c. &c!" exclaimed the other. low" to "brow"-"youth" to "soothe❞— "Yes," muttered I to myself, "you are aware" to "cleare"-" constraint" to "bent" rare couple, equally bent on mischief, and on deceiving the other sex; the poor tutor will stand a bad chance of being paid, and the advertiser will either ruin some half idiot, or meet with diamond cut diamond in return for his schemes." Let me now advise the frequenters of the post-office to recollect that observers may watch their motions, and that a malevolent one might follow observations even to detection. This hint may be useful to timid lovers and disappointed inquirers, to pining expectancy and to self-blinded consequence; secrecy is the seal of all letters, circumspection ought to guide the pen of every writer, in whatever line he or she may correspond. Let all descriptions put this to their own breasts, and they will have no cause to reject this advice, from THE HERMIT. COLLINS AND GRAY. Of English poets, Gray and Collins have, perhaps, left us the most finished specimens of what is, by way of eminence, styled "lyrical poetry." The grasp of Milton's powers was too wide for this minute species of composition: yet he, too, bequeathed some fine lyric effusions. In times, however, distantly subsequent to our great epic era, the minutiæ of our language were more diligently cultivated; and expletives, so frequently and continually used by the old writers, were gradually reprobated and disallowed. Pope, on this particular point, held up a mirror to his contemporaries and to posterity, in the well-known line "joy" to "descry"-" men" to "train" -"pain" to "men"-and these all in one ode, that very beautiful one on the distant prospect of Eton College. This defect (for I must really presume to pronounce it a defect) is the only one that impairs or mars Gray's poetical polish. To revert to Collins. He thinks morally, when Gray thinks romantically. They are both, indeed, highly romantic; and I am very much disposed to think that Collins had more native romance of feeling about him that Gray; but Gray clings almost exclusively to the romance of the middle ages; whereas Collins not unfrequently sends his soul back to classical times. But he never thinks pedantically; and his moral tone is always perfectly independent and unfettered. The minds of both these writers were happily tinctured with that spirit of poetical fancifulness, which finely and effectively converts popular superstition into nourishment for the imagination. But the Runic mythology scarcely did so much for Gray as the popular superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland did for Collins. Gray is, always will, and indeed must be, more popular than Collins. The poetry of the latter is generally more abstracted and removed from common apprehension. His noble enthusiasm is high and peculiar; and he sometimes goes far in the choice of expressions calculated to embody and concentrate his meaning. Both these poets were curious economists in expression, and they were, in some points of view, equally felicitous; but the expressions of Collins are ge nerally more pregnant with highly-wrought | imaginative feeling. "Feel-Bards must feel, or perish. Till they Our passive breasts no sympathy can know. Turner's Prolusions, p. 125. I cannot conclude these remarks without per: I hope I shall not be thought to undervalue Gray. He has, however, less reason to complain (if parted spirits complain) of being under-valued, than any poet that ever breathed; for certainly the world has made as much out of his few productions as could citing the following capital lines from Cowpossibly be made of them by the most ingenious and partial investigation. Nothing of his is lost. But it is his Elegy which has made him universally popular. Yet the assertion, that the "Elegy," beautiful and perfect as it is, is "the corner-stone of his glory," is, after all, rather a satire on the poetical greatness of Thomas Gray. "When a poet takes the pen, On the whole, I would assert, that, if it be a question which of these justly-distinguished writers has left behind him the finest exPOPE, BOWLES, BYRON, COWPER. amples of poetical composition, it will be In 1821, Lord Byron published a very found, that the most competent and atten- clever, but not very judicious, letter on the tive readers of both esteem the spirit of Col-Rev. W. L. Bowles' Strictures on the life lins more natively poetical than that of his celebrated rival. HAPPY MOMENTS. Doctor Johnson, in his life of Gray, accuses the lyric bard of" fantastic foppery," for supposing that he could only write at certain times, or at certain happy moments; but the old critic, whatever may be said of his strictures on poetry, was any thing but a man of poetical sensibility. Though himself the author of some very correct and meritorious poems, he must, in this part of his high literary character, be accounted rather a rhetorical writer than a poet. He was eminently deficient in that glow of enthusiastic feeling which uniformly characterizes the poetical mind. Every true poet feels, I presume, with Gray, that it is only at certain happy moments he can produce verses to his mindcon amore, and from the heart. This is no affectation. It is undoubtedly easy at all times to a practised writer to compose rhythmical verses; but all rhythmical verses are not poetry. Certainly, from the head alone," thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," can never be derived. I have always very much admired Bloomfield's simple invocation in the opening of "The Farmer's Boy :" "O come, blest spirit! whatsoe'er thou art, heart!" and writings of Pope. Very many of the opinions contained in that letter are more than questionable; for Lord B. seems to have been infected with the new spirit of ultraism in favour of Pope. Mr. Bowles has, in point of fact, done great service to the Pope. He has revived his poetry, and set memory (at least the poetical memory) of all our wits (some of them very high names) to work at raking up all the exaggerated praises, aided by fresh party exaggerations, that ever were bestowed on that most eloquent reasoner and accomplished verseman. by no means acquiesce fully in Mr. B.'s opinions respecting Pope's poetry or his character; yet I certainly think that he is more correct in his estimate than his late illustrious and right honourable antagonist. The public mind may be agitated and swayof an old and acknowledged name, but it can ed awhile by virulent argument in support never ultimately be drilled into a preference of the artificial to the natural, at least in poetry. the pen strange dispute. I merely take up Speaking of Pope and Cowper, Lord B. observes, "These two writers, for Cowper is no poet! &c." Cowper no poet, forsooth! Lord Byron could not mean what he wrote; or, at least, if he did, he had changed his It is this particular "kindling warmth" opinion of Cowper since writing his "Engabout the heart that impels a naturally-in-lish Bards." It is to be wished that he had spired poet to write-that impelled the once- not presumed lightly and wantonly to attack obscure Robert Bloomfield to write. Arti- so unassailable a reputation. ficial versifiers may write without it; but to the production of genuine poetry, it is indispensable. I shall not be guilty of the folly of attempting to institute so unrequired a task as the defence of WILLIAM COWPER's poetical |