charming productions. Why do not a greater number of people write? and why do not writers oftener speak "according to knowledge," whether gravely or gayly? The "shop" has been too much cried down. The fault of the poem called "The Shipwreck" is, not that it is too nautical, but too little so. I do not mean in a technical sense; for much technicality is at no time desirable; but in the homely, natural, and hearty sense; the sense that has given so much popularity to the prose writings of Smollett, Cooper, and others, and the sea-songs of Dibdin. Garth, the author of "The Dispensary," who was a physician as well as a wit, did not disdain to avail himself of his professional knowledge for the purpose of writing that satire on behalf of a charity; and much the more effective for the knowledge it was. Warton's sonnet upon his favorite pursuit, literary antiquities, was the best he wrote, and everybody admires it; but who cares for his laureate odes, or for his "Pleasures of Melancholy"? What a pity that Michel Angelo did not write artistical, instead of philosophical sonnets; and that Corelli, Scarlatti, and others, who were members of the rhyming Arcadian Society, did not tell us something, in verse, of their exquisite musical perceptions! All persons who are able to do it should give us the pleasure, in like manner, of seeing what they can best do, and what most heartily enjoy. L. H. URNING from the Italian and English sonnet-writers and their productions to the poets of America who have contributed something to the same department of verse, we feel as though we were about to pass out of a region of the most abundant and delicate bloom into a field comparatively barren and uninviting. a The same causes which have hitherto prevented the appearance in this country of any truly great poem poem like the masterpieces of English imagination, expressing the culture, the knowledge, the matured genius of a great nation-have operated to prevent also the cultivation of the legitimate sonnet. For the requisitions of the drama, nay, even of the epic itself, are not proportionably greater as I think the former part of this work has proved than the requisitions of this "little poem of fourteen lines." A perfect sonnet cannot often be dashed off "at a heat," but demanding the nicest polish, and considerable patience in its composition, the majority of our poets, influenced by the eager, restless |