The Knickerbocker Or New York Monthly Magazine January 1844 Vol

Chapter 1

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THE

Knickerbocker,

NEW-YORK MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VOLUME XXIII.

NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY JOHN ALLEN, NASSAU-STREET. 1844.

INDEX.

Apostrophe to an Old Hat. By J. G. SAXE, 69 A Lady on the Rights of Women, 79 A Second Ralph Ringwood, 81 Ascent of Mount Ætna. By THOMAS COLE, 103 A Night on the Prairie. By a Buffalo Hunter, 114 A Winter Trip to Trenton Falls, 133 A Veritable Sea-Story. By HARRY FRANCO, 151 A Few Hints on the Philosophy of Size, 156 American Manners and American Literature, 180 An Apostrophe to Health, 217 Anacreontic. By 'G. H. H.', 275 A Christmas Carol in Prose, 276 American Ptyalism: 'Quid Rides?' 288 A Pilgrimage to Penshurst. By C. ALEXANDER, Esq., 307 A First Night of Racine. By FLANEUR, 345 Apostrophe to Time. By Miss MARY GARDINER, 353 An Alligatorical Sketch, 361 Address and Poem at Boston, 387 A Brace of 'Pellets' from Julian, 391 A Dream. By JOHN WATERS, 432 A Piscatorial Eclogue, 46 A Picture by Murillo, 503 A Song. By JOHN WATERS, 516 Autobiography of the Prairie Hermit, 557 A Dream of Youth, 561 A New Spirit of the Age, 583 A Day With the great SEATSFIELD, 584 A Thrust with a Two-edged Weapon, 590 Another 'Pellet' from JULIAN, 595

Benthamiana, 282 Belizarius: A Historical Sketch, 337 Birth-Day Meditations, 527

Coronation of George the Fourth, 138 Curiosities of Foreign and Domestic Literature, 490 CLARK'S Literary Remains, 495, 578

Descriptive Poetry, 1 Drawings and Tintings. By ALFRED B. STREET, 387 Disguised Derivative Words in English, 570

EDITOR'S TABLE, 78, 180, 283, 389, 499, 584 Essay on a Passage in Macbeth. By JOHN WATERS, 153 Elementary Treatise on Human Physiology, 178 Early Spring at the Homestead, 438 English State Trials under the Popish Plot, 447 Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, 595

Freedom's Beacon at Bunker-Hill, 132 Fragments from the Greek. By 'G. H. H.', 361

Ganguernet: or a Capital Joke, 62 GOSSIP with Readers and Correspondents, 83, 192, 289, 396, 505, 599

I Follow: from the French, 145 Isabel: the Death of the Young, 218 Idyll: in imitation of Theocritus, 323 Inscription for a Sarcophagus, 367 Italy and the Italians. By J. T. HEADLEY, Esq., 498 Impudence of the French, 499

JOSEPH C. NEALE'S 'Charcoal Sketches,' 184

KENDALL'S Narrative of the Santa Fe Expedition, 382

Lines to a Fringed Gentian. By WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Esq., 28 Lines to Death, the Great Conqueror, 44 Letter to the Editor from Mr. JAMES JESSAMINE, 58 Love's Elysium: from the German, 61 Lines to an Evening Cloud, 73 LITERARY NOTICES, 74, 170, 276, 382, 490, 578 Lines to Time. By Mrs. J. WEBB, 113 Life's Young Dream, 119 Life: a Sonnet, 159 Lines to J. T. of Ireland. By C. W. DAY, Esq., 169 Life and Times of the late WILLIAM ABBOTT, 187 Lines sent with a Bouquet. By PARK BENJAMIN, Esq., 211 Legend of Don Roderick. By WASHINGTON IRVING, 262, 324, 418 Literary Record, 305 Lines with a 'Floral Messenger,' 534 Lines written under a portrait of Jupiter and Danäe, 430 Lines to my Sister. By R. S. CHILTON, 472 Legend of the Subjugation of Spain. By WASHINGTON IRVING, 572 Lines by Prof. Plutarch Shaw, of Tinnecum, 577 Life in the New World. By SEATSFIELD, 581

Mexico as it was and is. By BRANTZ MAYER, Esq., 77 Music, Musicians, Musical Critics, and Ole Bull, 80 Mr. CHEEVER'S Lectures on the Pilgrims, 388 MARY MAY: the Newfoundland Indian, 523 Mental Hygiene. By WILLIAM SWEETSER, M. D., 581 Magazine Writing, 589

Night and Morning. By 'POLYGON', 257 Night-Thoughts: to BLUMINE, 436 North-American Review for the April quarter, 492

Old reflections on the New Year, 78 One Reading from Two Poets. By JOHN WATERS, 218 On Rivers and Other Things. By do., 349

Poems of JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 170 Professor Shaw, of Tinnecum, 549 Poetry and History of Wyoming. By WILLIAM L. STONE, Esq., 382

Reminiscenses of a Dartmoor Prisoner, 146, 356, 517 Rêves et Souvenirs, 343 Religious Controversy. By 'FLACCUS,' 445

Song of the New Year. By Mrs. R. S. NICHOLS, 25 Stanzas suggested by GLIDDON'S Lectures, 29 Sketches of East Florida: St. Augustine, 45 Sonnet to the Old Year, 53 Some Thoughts on the Country, 70 Scenes and Scenery in the Sandwich Islands, 77 Sicilian Scenery and Antiquities. By THOMAS COLE, 103, 236 Some Sentiments on Sonnets, with Sundry Specimens, 283 Stanzas to MARY. By Mrs. M. E. HEWITT, 348 Stanzas on the Burial of an Infant, 460 Stanzas to Niagara. By CLAUDE HALCRO, 489 Stanzas to my Three Departed Sisters, 556 Stanzas Written in Indisposition. By the late WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK, 569

The Idleberg Papers: a Christmas Yarn, 11 Thoughts on Color. By JOHN WATERS, 26 The Quod Correspondence, 30, 120, 245, 368, 473, 529 Thoughts from Bulwer. By Mrs. M. T. W. CHANDLER, 52 The Mail Robber, 53 The Æneid of Virgil: with Notes by CHAS. ANTHON, 76 The Sacrifice, 127 The Death-Bed. By the 'COUNTRY DOCTOR,' 128 The Ruins of Burnside. By JAMES LAWSON, Esq., 137 The Smithy. By ALFRED B. STREET, Esq., 155 Two Pictures: Love Celestial and Love Terrestrial, 160 The Hermit of the Prairie, 161 Translation from CATULLUS. By Rev. Geo. W. BETHUNE, 166 The Painted Rock, 167 Thirty Years among the Players of England and America, 175 The Study of Woman's Life, 179 The American Review, 179 The North American Review, for January, 183 The Alms-House: a New-England Sketch, 212 The Tyranny of Affection, 222 The Fratricide's Death, 232 The Spectre Imp. By Mr. GEORGE HARVEY, 338 The Church Bell, 368 The Inner Life of Man. By Mr. CHARLES HOOVER, 389, 599 The Floral Resurrection, 417 The Dog-Star Spirit: or, Tray's Reflections, 431 The Poet Halleck: Epistle to the Editor, 437 The Plague at Constantinople in 1837, 511 The Song of Death. By MISS MARY GARDINER, 523 The Householder. by JOHN WATERS, 528 The Hearth of Home, 548

Vicissitudes, 10 Voices of Affection, 336

Winter Evening: an Extract. By J. G. PERCIVAL, Esq., 24 What is Transcendentalism? 205 Wanderings of a Journeyman Tailor, 281 What is It? A Lover's Query, 489

T H E K N I C K E R B O C K E R.

VOL. XXIII. JANUARY, 1844. NO. 1.

DESCRIPTIVE POETRY.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

Whatever the poets may say, it is incontrovertible that the great majority of men look upon the beauties and glories of Nature that surround them with almost entire indifference. We shall not inquire whether this is the result of a natural incapacity to perceive and admire the beautiful and sublime, or whether it is that their impressions are so deadened by familiarity as to be passed by unnoticed. Probably the former is the case with the greater number; although we cannot believe with some writers, that all our ideas of beauty are but the results of association, or of our perceptions of the proportion, or fitness, or utility of things. When we say that some things are naturally agreeable, and others naturally disagreeable, we have said all that we know about the matter; and this amounts to nothing more than a confession of our ignorance. Yet, if we admit in all men the existence of a natural sense of beauty, daily observation shows us that the pleasure arising from it is in most cases very feeble and evanescent. How many live in the midst of the most magnificent natural scenery, and never perceive its beauties until they are pointed out to them by some intelligent traveller! And often if admiration be professed, it is of that vague, undistinguishing kind, which indicates little knowledge of the causes why they admire. Even among men of cultivated tastes, there is much more of affected than real enthusiasm.

If what we have said be true, it is a curious subject of inquiry why descriptive poetry has been so popular. How happens it that so many who have looked upon Nature herself with great indifference, have been so much delighted with the reflection of her image in the pages of the poets? We suspect, indeed, that a part of the popularity of this class of writers is factitious. THOMSON, the most popular, is we suspect oftener purchased than read; and his 'Seasons' are not unfrequently spoken of with admiration by those who know little of them but the episodes. The chief interest of the 'Task' is to be sought for in other sources than its descriptions, notwithstanding the _curiosa felicitas_ of Cowper's diction.

The pleasure which we feel in reading descriptive poetry may perhaps in all cases be traced to one of the three following sources: the conception in our own minds of objects corresponding in a greater or less degree to those which exist in the mind of the poet; the train of associations which his language awakens; or the moral interest with which he invests what he describes. In the case first mentioned, the emotions we feel are similar to those which the sight of the objects themselves would produce; if beautiful, of pleasure; if terrible, of awe. A painting, which is an accurate representation of nature, regarded irrespective of the skill of the artist, would affect us in the same way. But the effects resulting from this cause are too inconsiderable to require particular mention. The picture which words are able to present is so indistinct and vague as rarely to produce any strong emotion. If the objects themselves are generally looked upon with indifference, much less can a verbal description of them afford us any great degree of pleasure.

The language which the poet uses often suggests to the mind of the reader trains of thought and imagery which were never present to his own mind. Hence many expressions which are in themselves eminently poetic, will arouse associations, oftentimes, that entirely spoil the passage. On the other hand, an expression low and vulgar may be ennobled by its associations, and give dignity and force to the composition. We not unfrequently meet phrases which have great beauty in the eyes of one man, which seem flat and insipid in the eyes of another. Every writer who has attempted dignified or pathetic composition, has felt how difficult it is to avoid those words which will suggest ideas that are unworthy of the subject. If, however, the poet is sometimes a loser, he is also sometimes a gainer from this cause. The reader often finds in his own associations, sources of pleasure independent of the poet. The light that illumines the page is but the reflected radiance of his own thoughts, and is unseen by all save himself.

But it is in the moral interest with which the poet invests the objects he describes, that the chief source of our pleasure is to be found. The poet paints Nature, not as she is, but as she seems. He adorns her with beauty not her own, and presents her thus adorned to men, to admire and to love. It is by interweaving human sympathies and feelings with the objects of the material world, that they lose their character of 'mute insensate things,' and acquire the power to charm and to soothe us, amidst all the cares and anxieties of our life. The intellectual process which here takes place is so interesting and important that we shall make no apology for treating the subject at some length.

It is sufficiently obvious that an accurate description of nature, or a beautiful work of art, is not poetical. On the other hand, in proportion as the minuteness of the description is increased, the poetry vanishes. The traveller who should give us the exact dimensions of the pyramids, the precise height of the terraces, the width and height of the inner passages, would give us much more definite ideas of those structures than he who should paint to us the effects produced on his own mind by their vastness, their antiquity, and the solitude that surrounds them. So in descriptions of natural scenery, the geographer who gives us the measurement of mountains, and rivers, and plains, is much more accurate than he who describes them solely from the picture that exists in his fancy. We wish to be rightly understood. We do not mean that vagueness and generality are essential to poetical description. As on the one hand, mathematical accuracy, by allowing no play to the imagination, produces a feeble impression, so on the other the indistinctness arising from indefinite expressions is equally unfavorable. But in neither is the poetry of the description dependent on the greater or less degree of minuteness with which particular objects are spoken of. When Whitbread described the Phenix, according to Sheridan's version, 'like a poulterer; it was green, and red, and yellow, and blue; he did not let us off for a single feather,' he did not fail more egregiously than Thomson in the following lines, in which, by the force of language, a flock of geese are made highly poetical objects:

'Hushed in short suspense The plumy people streak their wings with oil, To throw the lucid moisture trickling off, And wait the approaching sign to strike at once Into the general choir.'

The poet indeed must give us a lively and definite image of the scene or object which he undertakes to describe. But how shall this be done? Simply by telling us how it appeared to him; introducing those circumstances which had the greatest effect on his own imagination. He looks on nature neither as a gardener, a geographer, an astronomer, nor a geologist, but as a man, susceptible of strong impressions, and able to describe clearly to others the objects which affected himself. This he will do in the style which the emotion raised within him naturally dictates. His imagery, his illustrations, his whole language, will take the hue of his own feelings. It is in describing accurately the effect, not the cause, the emotion, not the object which produced it, that the poet's fidelity to nature consists. Let us illustrate our meaning by two or three examples. In Thomson we find the following description of a thunder-storm:

'A boding silence reigns Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound That from the mountain, previous to the storm, Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood, And shakes the forest leaf without a breath. Prone to the lowest vale, the aërial tribes Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens Cast a deploring eye, by man forsook, Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast, Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave. 'Tis listening fear, and dumb amazement all, When to the startled eye the sudden glance Appears far south, eruptive through the cloud And following slower in explosion vast, The thunder raises his tremendous voice. At first heard solemn o'er the verge of heaven The tempest growls; but as it nearer comes And rolls its awful burthen on the wind, The lightnings flash a larger curve, and more The noise astounds; till over head a sheet Of livid flame discloses wide; then shuts And opens wider; shuts, and opens still Expansive, wrapping ether in a blaze. Follows the loosened, aggravated roar, Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal Crushed horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.'

MR. IRVING describes a similar scene in the following terms: 'It was the latter part of a calm sultry day, that they floated quietly with the tide between these stern mountains. There was that perfect quiet which prevails over nature in the languor of summer heat; the turning of a plank, or the accidental falling of an oar on deck, was echoed from the mountain side, and reverberated along the shores. To the left the Dunderberg reared its woody precipices, height over height, forest over forest, away into the deep summer sky. To the right strutted forth the bold promontory of Antony's nose, with a solitary eagle wheeling about it; while beyond, mountain succeeded to mountain, until they seemed to lock their arms together, and confine this mighty river in their embraces. In the midst of his admiration, Dolph remarked a pile of bright snowy clouds peering above the western heights. It was succeeded by another and another, each seemingly pushing onward its predecessor, and towering with dazzling brilliancy in the deep blue atmosphere; and now muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard rolling behind the mountains. The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping up it. The fish-hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high dry trees; the crows flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks, and all nature seemed conscious of the approaching thunder gust. The clouds now rolled in volumes over the mountain tops; their summits still bright and snowy, but the lower parts of an inky blackness. The rain began to patter down in broad and scattered drops; the winds freshened, and curled up the waves; at length it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came rattling down. The lightning leaped from cloud to cloud, and streamed quivering against the rocks, splitting and rending the stoutest forest trees; the thunder burst in tremendous explosions; the peals were echoed from mountain to mountain; they clashed upon Dunderberg, and then rolled up the long defile of the Highlands, each headland waking a new echo, until old Bull Hill seemed to bellow back the storm.'