and have been moral Why do we longer linger in these precincts?. izing too, eh? Only a few moments indeed. In that time, General Bravo has delivered up his sword to a lieutenant; our noble chief is directing further offensive operations; the light troops are moving; we must advance; the day's work is not half-done. Five minutes' breathing-time, and we again plunge into the strife. W. H. BROWNE. Tip-Top Ballads, IN THE MODERN STYLE OF ORIGINALITY. BY MFISTER KARI. THE AZURE ADOLESCENT. 'SLEEP'ST thou or wak'st thou, jolly shepherd, And for one blast of thy minikin mouth, Thy flock will take no harm.'- SHAKSPEARE. CERULEAN youth, arise! And wind your bugle-horn, I hear its echoes borne; For flocks are in the dewy mead, And sheep in the golden corn. Ah! fainéant! is it thus Your fleecy flock you keep? Lost in the realm of sleep, By the fragrant hay-cock high, Where nut-brown maidens reap? THE DREADFUL LEGEND OF THE DARK LADIE. THEY said she was a sorceress, Who studied gramarie, So in a donjon's deep duress They cast the dark ladie: And many a warder watched without, Lest she should flit or flee. They brought the stern witch-ladie forth: They tossed her in a blanket-lo! Upon her magic broom: 'Ho! ho! Think ye to sport with ME?' 'NORNA! NORNA! NORNA!' said I, 'Whither, ah! whither dost venture so high?' 'To sweep ARACHNE'S toils from the sky, But I will be with ye by-and-by, Ere yet the dew on the grass be dry!' And NORNA was lost in the depths of day. LITERARY NOTICES. POEMS BY ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH. In one volume: pp. 272. Hartford, Connecticut: F. A. BROWN. Ir is a fashion of the critics to preface the slightest notice of a poet, actor, or painter, with a long-winded dissertation on matters in general. A double row of colossal sphinxes, a mile in length, and leading to nothing but a sand-heap, would bring less sense of disproportion and disappointment. In truth, the sphinxes themselves would be more intelligible than most of these profoundly empty essays. To be sure it is a labor-saving process, it being much easier to expatiate in generalities than to make a careful examination of a work of art; but the labor saved to the writer is thrown upon the reader, in a way to remind one of the rather profane apothegm about 'easy writing.' It is usual to begin the preliminary remarks at the remotest possible point of association with the business in hand- very much as if the Allied Armies were to make the Cape of Good Hope their 'base of operations' in the Crimea. Perhaps, as huntsmen inclose a forest and beat it up in a narrowing circle, so the critic fancies that he will make surer of his game by commencing at a distance. Like the single-handed Hibernian, he would surround the enemy. Or possibly the motive is purely to enlighten the reader, after the manner of DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER'S History of NewYork, from the creation downward. Of course there must be a more worthy purpose than to display a small stock of ideas, or of information, which may bravely cloak a hasty and careless judgment of the work to be considered. But we must leave the critics, or we shall run into this very absurdity of theirs. We propose no leonine roaring and roaming to-and-fro in the earth, and up and down it, ending in the merest asinine kick or lick (as the case may be) at the man and thing in question. The reader may be referred to a thousand reviews, if he would be refreshed on the subject of poetry in general and the universe in particular. Our business is briefly with Mr. ELLSWORTH and his volume. Our young poets are too often poets of promise rather than of performance. But it may be gathered from this volume that its author is not in the first effervescence of youth; and we infer that he is not likely to be diverted from his aspirations by the usual press of professional or other business. There is evidence, too, that he has laid the foundations of excellence more broadly and deeply than is common, and that he loves the studious retirement and communion with nature favorable to a worthy success in the tuneful art. A manifest intellectual courage and force of will seem to complete the conditions of a safe augury of such success. Not that entire independence of mind is to be looked for, or found, in these poems. A mixture of bold originality and of resemblances to wellknown authors, is one of their most obvious and perplexing features. And yet the first essays of the truest poets even are apt to remind us of their predecessors in song; it seems almost a necessity of young genius to fall into the tone of one and another great master, before reaching the clear pitch and quality of individual music. Accordingly, not a few pages of this volume awaken in the reader, more or less faintly, a note or two of some remembered air. To a listless ear, the best of the poems might sound somewhat as echoes. We could specify a dozen pieces that remind us of the manner of as many different poets; and one of Mr. ELLSWORTH's most vigorous efforts is an undisguised casting in the mould of SCHILLER'S 'Song of the Bell.' Indeed, we shrewdly suspect that he has more than once availed himself of others' musical forms of expression, in a conscious and defiant way, as if, like sovereign minds before him, he would freely appropriate any thing to his own purposes, by virtue of some divine right. Were these resemblances all, the book would not be worthy of notice. But a careful reading persuades us that some of the very pieces which suggest to memory the poems of others, are as true and distinct creations as a newly-found species of honey-suckle or magnolia. There is a clear, strong conception — a fertility of thought, a heartiness of spirit, a quaint variety, and fearless energy of utterance, all together indicating a native spring of the waters of poesy, not a mere artificial fountain drawn from old reservoirs of inspiration. Under all his assumed or accidental disguises, Mr. ELLSWORTH is his free, self-possessed, and purposed self. A mind with the qualities of his, if it have also the prime requisite of toilful persistence, will come wholly to itself by the very process of trying all the great forms and moods of song, and so will be thenceforth entirely itself. Though it may wander about at first in such channels as it finds ready-made, it will gather volume enough to mark out its own. It is unfortunate that a poem has been placed first in the book so little enriched with the author's various merit, and so open to cavils about imitation, as the one entitled 'The Chimes.' More to be regretted is the occasional excess of colloquialism, descending in some instances to slang, as in the pieces named 'The Seasons,' and 'The Cock of the Walk.' It may be well enough in 'The Yankee,' and 'A Domestic Lyric,' and in passages of the good downright 'Ballad of NATHAN HALE,' or wherever the author does not speak in his own person, and only aims at bold faithfulness to character. To us, such audacities ventured upon by a writer of manifestly pure and elevated mind—are signs rather of promise; they evince an old-fashioned, -a lusty strength, and a contempt of mincing monotony and euphemism freedom from sickly taste. As they stand, however, many of these phrases are blemishes, offering a temptation to critics to dismiss the volume with an unfair quotation and a sneer. But they are confined to a few poems. A like discrimination applies to the author's humor. When he writes in his own person, it tends to overflow too broadly, becoming more like a muddy freshet than a mellow, pervading moisture, which is the nature of true humor. In some instances it is very happy, as for example this description of a barn-yard king: 'WITH breast so sleek, and eye so bright, As if you were the pink of honor, Good as this is, we feel hardly safe with our poet when he is in a jocular mood. Our fastidiousness is in a state of anxiety lest it receive, not a very severe, but some degree of shock. The merry passages appear to us somewhat as those of most writers of the olden time appear-indiscriminate, blunt, far-fetched, or awkward and forced. Yet, when Mr. ELLSWORTH enters into and assumes a specific, humorous character-such as that of a Yankee or a gossip-he succeeds admirably. His playful vein is good wherever it is subservient to a dramatic purpose, for there it is either excused or limited by some sharply-conceived character. There are many who object to TENNYSON's recent battle-song, on the score of such lines as, 'Some one had blundered.' Some verses in the book before us may raise a similar objection. We think, however, that it is unfounded whenever a poem as a whole satisfies the imagination. Every line in such an organic whole, if it be needed to tell the story, is pervaded with the vitality of the work, though taken separately it may be prosaic. An arm-bone or muscle of a beautiful woman may be a prosy thing in itself, but the whole living woman is a perfect poem. Mr. ELLSWORTH has command of a lofty poetic diction; and an occasional letting down of this gracefully is a charm and a relief. As to the pieces of indifferent merit throughout, it is perhaps well enough to include some of them in the collection. They show the different sides of the writer's nature; they may have a special value to his friends. We see no occasion to make a book of verse so small and select that nothing is left but riddles for the critical, as the manner of some volumes is. The poet speaks to all classes; it is well that common-place minds find something congenial in a work of miscellaneous contents. Any one of eight or ten of the poems now under consideration, is sufficient to save the book from the fate of the thousand and one tomes of mediocre poetry issued in this country. Thus much by way of exception and volunteered excuse. The merits of the author may be touched upon in the order first of his manner, then of the matter. One of his obvious excellencies is a familiarity with old English words and idioms, together with a measurable avoidance of the mere affectation of using obsolete words and orthographies. He seems to have steeped himself in the spirit and language of SHAKSPEARE, MILTON, and the ancient |