cxviii LIFE OF WILSON. 



In a poem consisting of more than two thousand lines, it would be strange 

 if some touches of excellence could not be found, some passages which prove 

 that the author not only possessed poetical ideas, but also was familiar with the 

 art of poetical expression. In his description of the calm, smoky, autumnal 

 weather, which, in America, is usually denominated the Indian Summer, we 

 are presented with a beautiful image, which I do not recollect to have seen 

 elsewhere : 



" Slow sailed the thistle-down along the lawn." 



The description of the Dutch farmer, and his habitation, would not disgrace 

 the author of Rip Van Winkle. 



In the enumeration of the miseries of a country schoolmaster there is much 

 truth ; and the picture is vividly and feelingly drawn from nature. Few had 

 more experience than Wilson of the degraded condition of a teacher, when 

 under the control of the vulgar and ignorant; a state compared with which the 

 lot of the hewer of wood, and drawer of water, is truly enviable. 



The account of dadJy Squares, the settler, and that of Pat Dougherty, the 

 shopkeeper and publican, contain some humor. The latter is a disgusting 

 exhibition of one of those barbarians, whom the traveller often meets with in 

 the interior of our country ; and whose ignorance, bestiality and vice, have the 

 tendency to disabuse one on the subject of the virtue and happiness usually 

 attributed to the inhabitants remote from our large cities, which, instead of 

 being the only nurseries of corruption, as is believed and aflSrmed, are the 

 great schools wherein science, literature, piety and manners, are most effectively 

 taught, and most beneficially practised. 



The sketch of the Indian hunter is entitled to praise, as being vigorous and 

 picturesque; and the description of the Bald or Gray Eagles, sailing amid the 

 mist of the Cataract of Niagara, is a picture drawn with fidelity — it is poetical 

 and sublime. 



After this superficial review of the poems of Wilson, the question will 

 naturally arise, ought we to consider him as one endued with those requisites, 

 which entitle his productions to rank with the works of the poets, properly so 

 called ? To write smooth and agreeable verses is an art of no very difiBcult 

 purchase; we see it daily exemplified by persons of education, whose leisure 

 permits them to beguile a lonely hour with an employment at once delightful 

 and instructive. But' when one considers the temporary nature of the great 

 mass of these fugitive essays, that they are read and remembered just so long 

 as is the ephemeral sheet, or magazine, the columns of which they adorn ; one 

 can form no high expectations of the long life of that poetry which seldom rises 

 beyond mediocrity, which sometimes sinks greatly below it; and which is 

 indebted, in no small degree, to the adventitious aid of a name, resplendent in 

 another walk of literature, for that countenance and support, which its own 

 intrinsic merits, singly, could never claim. 



I am aware that these brief observations on the poetry of Wilson, are not 

 calculated to give pleasure to those of his friends, who have been in the habit 

 of regarding him as one possessing no small claim to the inspiration of the 

 Muses. But let such remember the determination of a profound critic, that 



