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Pray did you ever think the worse of Dana because your friend, John Neal, charged him with pirating upon Paul Allen, and Bryant too, in his poem of "THE DYING RAVEN?" or of yourself, because the same friend thought he had detected you in the very act of stealing from Pinckney, and Miss Francis, now Mrs. Child? Surely not. Everybody knows that John Neal wishes to be supposed to have read everything that ever was written, and never have forgotten anything. He delights, therefore, in showing up such resemblances.

And now — for the matter of Longfellow's imitations — In what do they consist? The critic is not very specific in this charge. Of what kind are they? Are they imitations of thought? Why not call them plagiarisms then, and show them up? Or are they only verbal imitations of style? Perhaps this is one of them, in his poem on the "Sea Weed."

——— drifting, drifting, drifting,

On the shifting

Currents of the restless main.

resembling, in form and collocation only, a line in a beautiful and very powerful poem of MR. EDGAR A. POE. (Write it rather EDGAR, a Poet, and then it is right to a T.) I have not the poem before me, and have forgotten its title. But he is describing a magnificent intellect in ruins, if I remember rightly — and, speaking of the eloquence of its better days, represents it as

——— flowing, flowing, flowing

Like a river.

Is this what the critic means? Is it such imitations as this that he alludes to? If not, I am at fault, either in my reading of Longfellow, or in my general familiarity with the American Poets. If this be the kind of imitation referred to, permit me to say, the charge is too paltry for any man, who valued his reputation either as a gentleman or a scholar, to make. Who, for example, would wish to be guilty of the littleness of detracting from the uncommon merit of that remarkable poem of this same Mr. Poe's, recently published in the Mirror, from the American Review, entitled "THE RAVEN," by charging him with the paltriness of imitation? And yet, some snarling critic, who might envy the reputation he had not the genius to secure for himself, might refer to the frequent, very forcible, but rather quaint repetition, in the last two lines of many of the stanzas, as a palpable imitation of the manner of Coleridge, in several stanzas of the Ancient Mariner. Let me put them together. Mr. Poe says —

Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,

Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.

And again —

It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore —

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore.

Mr. Coleridge says, (running two lines into one:)

For all averred I had killed the bird, that made the breeze to blow.

"Ah wretch!" said they, "the bird to slay, and made the breeze to blow."

And again —

They all averred I had killed the bird, that brought the fog and mist.

"'Twas right," said they, "such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist.'

I have before me an anonymous poem, which I first saw some five years ago, entitled "The Bird of the Dream." I should like to transcribe the whole — but it is too long. The author was awaked from sleep by the song of a beautiful bird, sitting on the sill of his window — the sweet notes had mingled with his dreams, and brought to his remembrance, the sweeter voice of his lost "CLARE." He says —

And thou wert in my dream — a spirit thou didst seem —

The spirit of a friend long since departed;

Oh! she was fair and bright, but she left me one dark night —

She left me all alone, and broken-hearted. . . . . .

My dream went on, and thou went a warbling too,

Mingling the harmonies of earth and heaven;

Till away — away — away — beyond the realms of day —

My angel CLARE to my embrace was given. . . . . .

Sweet bird from realms of light, oh! come gain to-night,

Come to my window — perch upon my chair —

Come give me back again that deep impassioned strain

That tells me thou hast seen and loved