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IV. Hawthorne.

‘There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;
‘Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood,
With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood
Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe,
With a single anemone trembly and rathe;
His strength is so tender; his wildness so meek,
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek–
He’s a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck;
When nature was shaping him, clay was not granted
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted,
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared.
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan
For making him fully and perfectly man.
The success of her scheme gave her so much delight,
That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight,
Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay,
She sang to her work in her sweet childish way,
And found, when she’d put the last touch to his soul,
That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole.

V. Cooper.

“Here’s Cooper, who’s written six volumes to show
He’s as good as a lord: well, let’s grant that he’s so;
If a person prefer that description of praise,
Why, a coronet’s certainly cheaper than bays;
But he need take no pains to convince us he’s not
(As his enemies say) the American Scott.
Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud
That one of his novels of which he’s most proud,
And I’d lay any bet that, without ever quitting
Their box, they’d be all, to a man, for acquitting.
He has drawn you he’s character, though, that is new,
One wildflower he’s plucked that is wet with the dew
Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince,
He has done naught but copy it ill ever since;
His Indians, with proper respect be it said,
Are just Natty Bumpo daubed over with red,
And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat,
Rigged up in duck pants and a sou’-wester hat,
(Though once in a Coffin, a good chance was found
To have slipt the old fellow away underground.)
All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks
The derniere chemise of a man in a fix,
(As a captain besieged, when his garrison’s small,
bets up caps upon poles to be seen o’er the wall;)
And the women he draws from one model don’t vary,
All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie.
When a character’s wanted, he goes to the task
As a cooper would do in composing a cask;
He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful,
Just hoops them together as tight as is needful,
And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he
Has made at the most something wooden and empty.

“Don’t suppose I would underrate Cooper’s abilities
If I thought you’d do that, I should feel very ill at ease;
The men who have given to one character life
And objective existence, are not very rife,
You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers,
Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers,
And Natty won’t go to oblivion quicker
Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar.

“There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is
That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis,
Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity,
He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity.
Now he may overcharge his American pictures,
But you’ll grant there’s a good deal of truth in his
strictures;
And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.