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the tithe of that amount of approbation so innocently lavished upon Brainard. But it would not suit our purpose just now, to enter into any elaborate analyses of his productions. It so happens, however, that we open the book at a brief poem, an examination of which will stand us in good stead of this general analysis, since it is by this very poem that the admirers of its author are content to swear — since it is the fashion to cite it as his best — since thus, in short, it is the chief basis of his notoriety, if not the surest triumph of his fame.

We allude to “The Fall of Niagara,” and shall be pardoned for quoting it in full.

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain

While I look upward to thee. It would seem

As if God poured thee from his hollow hand,

And hung his brow upon thy awful front,

And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him

Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake

The “sound of many waters,” and had bade

Thy flood to chronicle the ages back

And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.

Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we

That hear the question of that voice sublime?

O, what are all the notes that ever rung

From war’s vain trumpet by thy thundering side?

Yea, what is all the riot man can make

In his short life to thy unceasing roar?

And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM

Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far

Above its loftiest mountains? — a light wave

That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might.

It is a very usual thing to hear these verses called not merely the best of their author, but the best which have been written on the subject of Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only partial. We have been informed that the poet had seen the great cataract before writing the lines; but the Memoir prefixed to the present edition, denies what, for our own part, we never believed, for Brainard was truly a poet, and no poet could have looked upon Niagara, in the substance, and written thus about it. If he saw it at all, it must have been in fancy — “at a distance” — [[Greet text=]] µº±Â [[=Greek text]] — ­as the lying Pindar says he saw Archilocus, who died ages before the villain was born.

To the two opening verses we have no objection; but it may be well observed, in passing, that had the mind of the poet been really “crowded with strange thoughts,” and not merely engaged in an endeavor to think, he would have entered at once upon the thoughts themselves, without allusion to the state of his brain. His subject would have left him no room for self.

The third line embodies an absurd, and impossible, not to say a contemptible image. We are called upon to conceive a similarity between the continuous downward sweep of Niagara, and the momentary splashing of some definite and of course trifling quantity of water from a hand; for, although it is the hand of the Deity himself which is referred to, the mind is irresistibly led, by the words “poured from his hollow hand,” to that idea which has been customarily attached to such phrase. It is needless to say, moreover, that the bestowing upon Deity a human form, is at best a low and most unideal conception. In fact the poet has committed the grossest of errors in likening the fall to any material object; for the human fancy can fashion nothing which shall not be inferior in majesty to the cataract itself. Thus bathos is inevitable; and there is no better exemplification of bathos than Mr. Brainard has here given.† ­The fourth line but renders the matter worse, for here the figure is most inartistically shifted. The handful of water becomes animate; for it has a front — that is, a forehead, and upon this forehead the Deity proceeds to hang a bow, that is, a rainbow. At the same time he “speaks in that loud voice, &c;” and here it is obvious that the ideas of the writer are in a sad state of fluctuation; for he transfers the idiosyncrasy of the fall itself (that is to say its sound) to the one who pours it from his hand. But not content with all this, Mr. Brainard commands the flood to keep a kind of tally; for this