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By Root 16531 0

The fact is, that very many of the most eminent men in America whom I am proud to number among the sincerest of my friends, have been rendered so solely by their approbation of my comments upon their own works — comments in great measure directed against themselves as authors — belonging altogether to that very class of criticism which it is the petty policy of the Outises to cry down, with their diminutive voices, as offensive on the score of wholesale vituperation and personal abuse. If, to be brief, in what I have put forth there has been a preponderance of censure over commendation, — is there not to be imagined for this preponderance a more charitable motive than any which the Outises have been magnanimous enough to assign me — is not this preponderance, in a word, the natural and inevitable tendency of all criticism worth the name in this age of so universal an authorship, that no man in his senses will pretend to deny the vast predominance of good writers over bad?

And now, says Outis, 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.

Elsewhere he says: —

Moreover, this poem contains an example of that kind of repetition which I have supposed the critic meant to charge upon Longfellow as one of his imitations —

Away — away — away — &c.

I might pursue it farther, but I will not. Such criticisms only make the author of them contemptible, without soiling a plume in the cap of his victim.

The first point to be here observed in the complacency with which Outis supposes me to make a certain charge and then vituperates me for his own absurd supposition. Were I, or any man, to accuse Mr. Longfellow of imitation on the score of thrice employing a word in consecutive connexion, then I (or any man) would only be guilty of as great a sotticism as was Outis in accusing me of imitation on the score of the refrain. The repetition in question is assuredly not claimed by myself as original — I should therefore be wary how I charged Mr. Longfellow with imitating it from myself. It is, in fact, a musical effect, which is the common property of all mankind, and has been their common property for ages. Nevertheless the quotation of this

—— drifting, drifting, drifting,

is, on the part of Outis, a little unfortunate. Most certainly the supposed imitation had never been observed by me — nor even had I observed it, should I have considered it individually, as a point of any moment; — but all will admit, (since Outis himself has noticed the parallel,) that, were a second parallel of any obviousness to be established from the same brief poem, "The Sea-Weed," this second would come in very strong corroboration of the first. Now, the sixth stanza of this very "Sea-Weed" (which was first published in "Graham's Magazine" for January, 1845) commences with

From the far of isles enchanted;

and in a little poem of my own, addressed "To Mary," and first published at page 636 of the first