P2571 Eutered according to the Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and forty-one, BY JOEN BISCO, In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York, C. Chemical Oil Lamps, . D. Life's a Moment, Death Another, 52 Literary Notices, . 70, 158, 253, 349, 451, 544 160 172 246 300 307 371 454 488 489 498 Disce Mori: Learn to Die,'. 28 E. M. 117 157 Mythology: the Mystic number Twelve, . 170, 358 Musings on Rivers. By Flaccus, . 392 My Father's House, . Memoir of Ludovico Ariosto,. Morning : a Lesson of Good, . N. 106 Night. By J. L. LAURIE, 474 National Academy of Design,. 408 13 New Sanctuary of Thought and Science, . 158 | The Punster King, . 164 167 189 205 Thoughts on Acting and Actors, 211 The Unknown Altar,.. 79 The Parting of the Waters, 233 2-10 The Missing Ship. By Eres SARGENT, The Messenger of Peace. By M. A BROWNE, 2.32 233 336 261 203 287 The Grave. By the late Willis GAYLORD 1 CLARK, : 102 To a Linnet frightened from her Nest, 299 308 264 | The Crayon Papers. By WASHINGTON IR- VING,.. 319 323 MAX, . 330 The Miser. By H. W. ROCKWELL, Esq., . 313 The Three Messengers. By S. D. DAKIN, 166 318 319 173 366 Twenty Years, or Reminiscences of a Spin- 378 The Day-Dream of a Grocer. By Harry 379 328 393, 474 406 418 419 212 The Mariner's Song on a Wintry Night, . The Mermaid By J. Rheyn Piksohn, 434 236 450 461 The Token and Atlantic Sonvenir for 1842, 451 469 The American Reviews for the October Quarter, 457 459 460 The Inner Life' of Things: Transcenden- 502 21 The Murderer's Death-Bed. By R. M. ('HARLTON, . 510 Stokeville Papers, 512 53 The Sun: a Sonnet,. 529 69 U. 88 317 112 125 W. 126 37 134 Woman's Heart. By Miss M. A. BROWNE, 49 144 134 355 Like all or nearly all the other nations of Europe, the Modern Greeks have two kinds, they might be called two grades, of poetry : one in all respects original and spontaneous, popular alike in substance and in form, traditional, and unwritten; the other written, and into which labor and art, imitation and learning, enter more or less largely and more or less happily, according to times, places, and individuals. The latter, springing up at about the same period with the modern literature of Europe, was at first, like that, the organ of the noblest thoughts and most refined feelings of the middle ages; and if it has not since exhibited as lofty a flight and as complete a development, the two have never at all events been totally separated from each other, nor has it failed to attain for itself a striking degree of beauty and maturity. This portion of the vulgar* Greek poetry is, if not the most interesting, at least the most extensive and varied, and comprehends the most curious and the oldest productions, as well as the most ingenious and finished compositions. But it is not of this portion that I propose to treat : such an under taking would carry me far beyond the limits within which I am circumscribed. My design is simply to communicate, with considerable minuteness of detail, some idea of the other branch of Modern Greek poetry; a poetry popular in every sense and in all the force of the term ; a direct and faithful reflection of the national character and spirit, known and felt by every Greek from the fact that it is Greek ; that it dwells on the soil and breathes the air of Greece; a poetry in short, which lives not a factitious and often but apparent life in books, but in the people themselves, and in all the life of the people. From the diversity of their subjects, the popular songs of the Greeks may all be arranged in three leading classes, domestic, historical, and romantic, or imaginative. Under the title of domestic I include such as have been composed * Vulgar is here used as synonymous with modern, in opposition to ancient or classic. VOL. XVIII. 1 |