We think we have now established the resemblance between these two genuine poets to which we have referred a resemblance that strikes us as a very singular literary fact, worthy of more particular investigation. Both writers have proved themselves to have been too rich in original thought and poetical power to have borrowed from the other. The poem which we have just given from the Irish poet will, we have no doubt, awaken the curiosity of many persons about his writings. They are certainly as deserving of being collected into a permanent form as those of the brilliant American, with whom we are at present more immediately concerned. As it is only fair that he should have the last word, we shall take our leave of Edgar Allan Poe, by quoting a simple but beautiful little ballad, which paints, under a transparent veil of allegory, that search after the impossible. that hope of reaching the region of true happiness in this life. It is an especial favourite of ours : ELDORADO. "Gaily bedight A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. "Poems." By Alexander Smith. "But he grew old, This knight so bold, And o'er his heart a shadow Fell, as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. "And as his strength Failed him, at length He met a pilgrim shadow'Shadow,' said he, 'Where can it be, This land of Eldorado?' "Over the mountains Down the valley of the shadow The shade replied, 'If you seek for Eldorado!"'" We have thus devoted some time to watching the brilliant, though eccentric evolutions of one of the late luminaries of the poetical empyrean of our cousin Jonathan, which, in departing, has thrown a quivering light of golden splendour over the highest regions of transatlantic song. We have now to look nearer home, and to chronicle the appearance of a dazzling meteor, willo-the-wisp, star, planet, comet, sun, or moon (made of green cheese, and full of maggots), whichever it will eventually prove to be, which has just shot above the horizon of our own. Comets are so plenty now-a-days (at least so the astronomers tell us), that nothing but a tremendous collision between these swift-flying high-comotives would draw the attention of the unscientific world to their proceedings, or rather the unscientific world has been so often deceived the cry of "Comet! comet!" like that of "Wolf! wolf!" has been so often raised, when no comet was to be seen-that it has grown quite sceptical upon the matter, and seems disposed to agree with Mrs. Prigg, that "there aint sich a person, or thing." We shall not chronicle the various attacks of influenza, twitches of sore-throat, avant-couriers of asthma, incipient barkings of bronchitis, which we endured some years ago in looking out for that Mrs. Harris of the starry system-Halley's comet. We have grown wiser since then; and now when Professor Airy or Mr. Hind endeavours to inveigle us out of our comfortable quarters to get a peep at London: David Bogue. 1853, these interesting strangers, like Dr. Johnson, we can philosophically exclaim, "We can wait," until the certainty or the advantage of the introduction becomes more apparent. As it has been in the scientific, so has it been in the poetical world. Politicians and progressists (if we may coin a word) so often announced that the "coming MAN" had come, that the disappointed public got angry, and declared that the expectation should have foreshadowed a woman, and that it has been realised in the person of Mrs. Stowe; while every little poetical coterie worshipped its own diminutive Saint Catherine's wheel, as the star whose rays were destined to illumine the long vacant vault of poesy. It was thus that the good, easy, incredulous world smiled at the announcement which the Herschel of "The Critic" recently made, that he had just discovered a tremendous thundering, blazing, many-tailed, no-humbug of a comet, which was advancing with all the velocity of the steam-press, and which would soon appear, shaking its horrid hair in the face of the sceptics, and, as far as popular favour went "With fear of change, Perplexing Laureates." The public were, as usual, for a while, indifferent, so the critical astronomers had it all to themselves. Some of them, on turning their telescopes in the direction of the supposed luminary, were as dazzled as Herschel at the first sight of Uranus, which he described as resembling in brilliancy "a coach lamp," the critics doubtless taking our poet for a similar adjunct to the chariot of Apollo. Others went blind, and were thus prevented from examining with any certainty the material or actual nature of the phenomenon. Others, on the contrary, phoo-phooed! and said it was but one of the brilliant belts that had slipped from the loins of Saturnian Keats, or a small new satellite revolving on the ever-growing atmosphere of Jupiter Shelley. There were not a few that said it was but a fire-baloon which some urchin had let off from Mr. Tennyson's garden. A still fewer number denied its existence altogether. All of them, however, had something or another to say on the subject. What have WE? We must look closely at it. The principal poem in the collection -that one which has attracted the at tention we have adverted to above, and to which our own remarks shall be confined-is called "A Life-Drama." We doubt very much that this title is judiciously selected, as it raises expectations of actual portraitures of existence not certainly to be met with in the poem itself. We think "A Poet's Dream of Life," or "Truth and Fiction from a Poet's Life:" the Dichtung und Wahrheit, which Goethe has so skilfully blended in his autobiography, would more clearly indicate the nature of the work that was to follow. This would be a trifling matter if the author did not appear to be under the impression that he was really traeing the outline of one of the grandest pictures the dramatic canvas can hold, namely, "A LIFE," and not combining those shining but unsubstantial atoms "of which dreams are made." The poem is divided into thirteen scenes of unequal length, through a few of which we beg to conduct the reader, rapidly, indeed, but not carelessly. The first scene introduces us at once to the hero Walter, a young poet, whose aspirations for "Fame! fame! fame! next grandest word to God," as he himself says, are written with all the enthusiasm that might be expected from so fond an idolater of this second divinity. His soul is "followed" (a rather incorrect word)— "By strong ambition to out-roll a lay, Whose melody will haunt the world for nye, Having, however, a sort of misgiving that his name, like that of Keats, "was writ on water," he tears up the paper on which he had commenced to outroll his lay, and " paces the room with disordered steps." Mr. Smith, somehow or another, has picked up these scattered sibyline leaves, and with them he commences his drama. Though having no direct resemblance, except the rhymes of the second, fourth, and fifth lines, to the opening stanza of the "Revolt of Islam," they recall it to the mind, and leave an impression that the poet intended to have adopted the measure of that poem, which at the first difficulty he seems to have capriciously abandoned. Here they are: "As a wild maiden, with love-drinking eyes, Sees in sweet dreams a beaming youth of glory, And wakes to weep, and ever after sighs For that bright vision, till her hair is hoary; Even So, alas is my life's passion story, And then follow the three lines we have already quoted. There is nothing, perhaps, deserving of particular notice in this passage, except the evidence which it gives, at the very threshold of the poem, of the want of truth which characterises many of the similes and figures of our poet-beautiful and original as some of them unquestionably are. As they, indeed, form the principal feature of the poem-as the poem seems to have been written rather as a vehicle for their introduction, than they to illustrate it; we must draw particular attention to them as they occur. We have very little doubt that maidens at that uncertain period of life, or phase of existence, which the poet calls "wild," occasionally See in sweet dreams a beaming youth of glory," and small blame to them. "The Wild Irish Girl," we may be tolerably certain, was thus somnolently blest, and it is not impossible that she may still continue to be so, now that her hair is hoary." But that most of the elderly "maidens" of our acquaintance, whose hair has assumed this venerable hue, have their midnight visions disturbed by apparitions of beaming youths of glory," when their waking thoughts seem to be so charitably and happily occupied with the "babes and youths uproary" of their married brothers and sisters, we beg, for their sakes, respectfully to deny. But the poet continues"Poesy! poesy! I'd give to thee As passionately my rich-laden years, The last is one of those fine lines of which we shall find abundant examples. But what does the poet mean by his "awful joys." Dull proser that we are, we looked at the end of the volume to see if, in any list of errata, this word should be printed " lawful;" but that would never suit "a beaming youth of glory," like the poet Walter. It is a favourite word of the author, and be sure we shall meet with it pretty frequently. The next line is also a very fine one: "Bare, bald, and tawdry, as a fing❜red moth." Such, he says, is his life; but poesy, he continues rather affectedly, can, by a single smile, clothe him with kingdoms." This, we must confess, is a sort of apparel "a world too wide for our shrunk shanks." We then come on the "wild maiden" again, who, it appears, has given up dreaming, and taken to something more substantial. The passage is a fine one, nevertheless: "O fair and cold! As well may some wild maiden waste her love He then proceeds to paint the agony of that soul which, with every inclination "to hew a name out upon time, as on a rock," finds it a more difficult achievement than was at first imagined. In vain he endeavours to console himself with the philosophical reflection— "That great and small, weakness and strength, are naught, That each thing being equal in its sphere, Is worthy as the mighty moon that drowns Not content with this beautiful description of the moon, he must, in the very next lines, give a new occupation to that luminary which has rather a ludicrous effect "This-this, were easy to believe, were I The planet that doth nightly wash the earth's Fair sides with moonlight; not the shining worm." Why the moon should neglect the face of the earth, and apply its ablutions only to its "sides," particularly as a little farther on in the poem our globe is represented as "lying on its back," watching the silent stars? (p. 19), we are at a loss to imagine. This position of our planet however prevents any irreverent critical Mephistopheles from suggesting another adjective in the place of the word "fair." The soliloquy is continued a little longer in the same strain, and then the poet musters up courage enough to have a peep at this celestial washerwoman while champooing the sides of the earth— "I am fain To feed upon the beauty of the moon." He then throws open the casement with the most cool-blooded determination that we have ever heard of, to make as many similes and images at her expense as he can. Some people there may be to whom the following will appear very fine, but to us it is sheer nonsense, at least that portion of it that relates to the "widow." The fancy of the stars being the "hand-maidens of the moon, is not very new. Troilus and Cressida (Act 5, s. ii.), the faithless heroine swears— "By all Diana's waiting women;" In or, as Dryden more literally expresses it in his alteration of this play "By all Diana's waiting train of stars." But with regard to the meaning of the entire passage, in its totality, the beautiful, calm joyousness of a moonlight night never really or naturally suggested the idea to the most imaginative mind. If, indeed, the figure bore any connection with the previous train of thought in the poet's mind, its introduction might be pardoned, but here its very abruptness shocks the mind of the reader almost as much as its extravagance "Sorrowful moon! seeming so drowned in woe, A queen, whom some grand battle-day has left Unkingdomed and a widow, while the stars, Thy handmaidens, are standing back in awe, Gazing in silence on thy mighty grief!” He then tells us that there are "men" as well as "maids who love the moon;" that Adam had occasionally an innocent flirtation with the beloved of Endymion; and that Anthony (a tremendous favourite with our poet), was once caught ogling the lady of the night, by Cleopatra, who reprimanded the hero in the following words "Now, by my Egypt's gods, That pale and squeamish beauty of the night Has had thine eyes too long; thine eyes are mine. Alack! there's sorrow in my Anthony's face! Dost think of Rome? I'll make thee, with a kiss, Richer than Cæsar! Come, I'll crown thy lips." A certain matter-of-fact bishop is said to have declared, after reading "Gulliver's Travels," that he did not believe a word of them. In the same manner we must be permitted to ex press our incredulity of this story. The fair Queen of the Nile would scarcely have ventured to recall the name of one, whom she had made every bit as "rich" as it was possible to make Anthony, and whose lips she had "crowned" exactly in the same way. The scene, however, concludes with some noble lines "I seek the look of fame! Poor fool, so tries Some lonely wanderer 'mong the desert sands By shouts to gain the notice of the sphynx, Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes." -p. 6. The next scene represents a sort of idyllic meeting between the poet and a lady, who is wandering about a forest with a fawn. He has been reading some book which has set him so soundly to sleep, that the lady has time to make a very exact examination of his appearance, and to make a poetical daguerrotype of him which might raise the envy of Professor Glukman. The poet lavishes his gifts with a liberal hand, for while he is described as rivalling the lady in beauty, she is made as poetical as himself; quite as apt and felicitous at a figure or a trope. As usual, there are passages of exquisite beauty side by side with affectations and extravagances such as we have pointed out. We are reminded of other poets occasionally in this scene, but still more so in the following one, where the resemblance strikes us as being more than accidental, which rather surprises us; as a certain daring, at least of illustration, is one of the characteristics of our author. The thought in the following line has, perhaps, spontaneously suggested itself to most poets "Each leaf upon the trees doth shake with joy." But Mr. Longfellow has expressed it with such paramount felicity as to have made it almost exclusively his own ⚫ Beneath some patriarchal tree The other passage we shall refer to at the proper time. As we are dividing our praise and censure pretty equally, we must support each by ex tracts: MAN AND NATURE. "Better for man Were he and nature more familiar friends! mony that deserve and compel our approbation. But we are sorry to say there are many others of a very dif ferent description. First and foremost, with regard to our poet's rhymed or lyrical verses, we must pronounce them in general complete failures. The ear that seems so exquisitely modulated to all the harmonies of blank verse, forgets its cunning altogether when a lighter measure is attempted. Thus, in a long poem introduced into the present scene, and supposed to have been written by some unknown friend of the hero, some one whose superiority to himself he acknowledges in the following rather humble confession : "He was the sun, I was that squab-the earth!" Or more figuratively, in the following correct and intelligible comparison : "Lady! he was as far 'bove common men As a sun-steed, wild-eyed, and meteormaned, Neighing the reeling stars (!) is 'bove a hack With sluggish veins of mud."-p. 24. In this poem, attempted to be written in the metre of "Locksley Hall," the correct flow and music of the lines are lost at least six times. The first break is at the fifth line, the second at the eleventh, the third at the thirty-fifth, the fourth at the fortieth, the fifth at the forty-sixth, and the sixth at the seventy-fifth line. We are thus particular to show that any charges we bring against our author are not made carelessly or at random, and that they are intended for his good. The poem itself is a sort of "life drama" within a life drama; a dream within a dream. The poet's friend seems to have gone through the same phases as the poet himself. The poet of " Rimini," in some of the early editions of that poem, makes one of his heroes confess, that "He had stout notions on the marrying score." But stout as they were, they must have been "plain X" to the opinions of the gentleman who makes the following candid admission : "In the strong hand of my frenzy, laws and statutes snapt like reeds, And furious as a wounded bull I tore at all the creeds!" A Papal Bull might have been correctly described as tearing away at some of the creeds, and getting himself occa |