"critics, to prove that a work, not in metre, may be a Poem, (which doctrine was partly derived from a misinterpreta"tion of a passage in Aristotle's Poetics), universal opinion "has always given a contrary decision. Any composition in verse, (and none that is not,) is always called, whether good "or bad, a Poem, by all who have no favourite hypothesis to "maintain." Now for our own part, we should have little abjection, at times, to a hypothesis which so conveniently enables us to escape debating the question whether such a work as Macpherson's "Ossian" is poetry ;-but really, if you wish to astonish a pandit, you have only to ask him gravely whether, for example, that terse melrical composition, the Nyáya compendium entitled the Bháshá-parichchheda, is a poem. If, in holding it to be as far removed as anything well ean be from poetry, he goes on a "favourite hypothesis," it is because the notion of an opposite hypothesis probably never occurred to him.

Our author, having demolished to his satisfaction the definitions of his predecessors, proceeds to give his own;-and he declares-with a brevity for which he atones by the co piousness of his subsequent explanations, that "A speech whereof the soul is flavour, is Poetry."* He adds

"We shall discuss the nature of 'flavour' (rasa) afterwards-[in Section 3rd]. Flavour alone is the soul of it [Poetry]-being, in the most intimate way, the supporter of its very life-for without that [flavour] we do not allow that the case is one of poetry at all.

The word rasa flavour' is regularly formed from the passive voice of the verb ras ‘to relish.' In it-[i. e. in the word rasa, on which the definition of poetry hinges]- -are implied also veneration' (bháva), and the 'semblance' (ábhása) of flavour."

1

"He o'er whose scaly neck the ocean rolled;
Who bore upon his back the world of old;
Who raised upon his tusk the earth, and tore
With lion's claws the demon-chief of yore;

Who traversed, in three steps, heaven earth and hell;
Before whose wrath the Kshattra armies fell;
Whose arrow pierced the ten-faced Titan-king;
Fiend-slayer:-kind to every living thing;
He at whose advent the unjust shall quail-
Whate'er his name-to Him all hail! all hail !'

Lastly, as an example of the 'semblance' (ábhása) of sentiment-there being but the semblance of human sentiment in the feelings of the lower animals, he cites the following:

"Within a single floweret's bell apart

The bee sipped honey with his loving spouse :-
Soothed by the fondling horn of her loved hart,

With eyes half-closed, the hind forgot to browse."

But it may be asked-if blemishes, as before asserted, do not annihilate poetry, have they no effect in regard to it at all? To this our author replies that "blemishes lower its character"—and what are to be reckoned blemishes he will state further on, as well as what are the beauties which ele vate its character. Here ends the first section of the Sahitya Derpana-and here we may break off for the present.

K.

ΙΙΙ.

LONGFELLOW'S POEMS AND PROSE.*

Above seventy years have passed away, since Burke electrified the Commons with that famous speech on American Conciliation, "that struck even foes with admiration, and friends with delight."† Sixty-eight years ago," spake the mighty orator, " if, amidst bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, my Lord Bathurst's Angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, and should tell him, 'Young man, there is America-which at this day serves you for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, shew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!'-if this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man! he has lived to see it! Fortunate indeed if he shall live to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, or cloud the setting of his day."

There may be one in a distant land, who shall cast his eye down the present page, and recall the glorious oratory of Burke. Let that one imagine a prophet to have continued the discourse, and predicted the achievements of the next three quarters of a century:-that counsels so wisely and weightily propounded should not avert the disasters of revolutionary warfare ;-that the pungent sarcasm of an

* Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie. Sixth Edition. Boston, 1848.

Voices of the Night. Boston, 1840.
Kavanagh, a Tale. Boston, 1849.

† Piozzi.

infidel demagogue* should prevail against the suggestions of a native and sustained loyalty, and teach a great and once enduring people the rebellious remonstrance that "a prince, marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people;"-that then should ring the tocsin, and brothers and christians be arrayed in arms, in the most momentous quarrel of modern times;-that at length the mother-land, her troops evacuating Charlestown, and conceding a victory, on terms of unmolested retreat, should repeal her restraints, and re-establish commerce, and ratify the independence of her recusant colonies;-that soon as peace could assert her gentle sway, a thousand ministrants to elegant refinement should bear her train ;that CAMBRIDGE, that pleasant monument of New Englanders' veneration for English institutions, should extend and diffuse her elevating influence, "parvam Trojam"-as President Everett has elegantly applied the poet-" simulataque magnis Pergama;"-that a blooming sisterhood of kindred influences should claim to be the Almæ Matres of a growing intellect;-that EDWARDS should propound his subtle analyses-" that most extraordinary man, who, in a metaphysical age or country, would certainly have been deemed the boast of America;"†-that PRESCOTT should charm us with his enchanting histories;-that AUDUBON's profound science and extraordinary pencil should transfer the pageantry of his country's woods, in its unapproached magnificence, to our libraries and our galleries; - that by a goodly company in that precocious land,

"

Neque tibias

Euterpe cohibet; nec Polyhymnia
Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton ;"-

could all this have been foreseen, or foretold, when Burke was haranguing, we ask where would have been the wonderat the past, or at the future ?

We love America-she is England's genial and versatile daughter. "Nature and fortune joined to make her great;" nor ever-from her first occupation by British colonists, has oppression overweighed or disappointment crippled her enterprize or her energies; until at length, having surmounted many trials, and prevailed over exceeding disparities of opportunity and era, she may claim a noble rivalry with the

* Thomas Paine, in his " Common Sense." † Mackintosh.

mother land. We know not of any people who have advanced to such a stature, in the short course of a century and a half. Her cities; her roads; her international arrangements and communications; her splendid mercantile fleet; her presses ever busy in disseminating, in wonderful numbers, and at fractional rates, the choicest eliminations of British genius; her various seats of learning; her literary population; her prolific manufactures; her extensive commerce; do all and each afford a lesson of what may be achieved by persevering industry and intellect well applied. Withal she has verified the sentence of her noblest apologist; displays no interest contrary to the grandeur and glory of England, when not oppressed by her weight; and therefore would we, that by a kinder policy, her inclination had been led to respect the acts of a superintending legislature, from discerning them to be the impositions of a power which should have been "the security, not the rival, of her secondary importance." But it was otherwise ordered, and she has worn her freedom well. This is not the place for us to take exception at what we consider the false positions in which her exuberant love of liberty, and impatience of control, political, social and religious, have sometimes forced her. Whatever these be, we trace their origin, to a very large extent, to exactions which goaded her to assert her independence, and to protracted unredress of usurious impositions. England owes it to herself that she has not, in the United States, the grandest fabric of a just and righteous Colonial dominion.

But enough of these reflections and regrets-let us turn to the work in hand-a fair acknowledgment of the excellencies, and tribute to the genius of one of America's most charming poets, for it is principally upon his verse that we undertake to review Professor Longfellow-only one little prose volume, Kavanagh, having reached so far as Benares, as we believe. We regret we have not a larger collection of his writings, which, altogether, are of considerable volume; the more especially as his last romance does not in our opinion, sustain the reputation of his previous prose compositions; especially of Hyperion, which we understand from the Revue des deux Mondes to be an æsthetical novel upon the model of Tieck's Franz Sternebalds Wanderungen; where Mr. Longfellow takes a large and accomplished survey of the fine arts in the nineteenth century, as did Tieck of those of the sixteenth. But here let us remark one of Mr. Longfellow's characteristic weaknesses. Hyperion! we beg his pardon for pre