The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [952]
We cannot pause to comment upon Mr. Ward’s most extraordinary system of versification. Is it his own? He has quite an original way of conglomerating consonants, and seems to have been experimenting whether it were not possible to do altogether without vowels. Sometimes he strings together quite a chain of impossibilities. The line, for example, at page 51,
Or, only such as sea-shells flash,
puts us much in mind of the schoolboy stumbling-block, beginning, “The cat ran up the ladder with a lump of raw liver in her mouth,” and we defy Sam Patch himself to pronounce it twice in succession without tumbling into a blunder.
But we are fairly wearied with this absurd theme. Who calls Mr. Ward a poet? He is a second-rate, or a third-rate, or perhaps a ninety-ninth-rate poetaster. He is a gentleman of “elegant leisure,” and gentlemen of elegant leisure are, for the most part, neither men, women, nor Harriet Martineaus. Similar opinions, we believe, were expressed by somebody else — was it Mr. Benjamin? — no very long while ago. But neither Mr. Ward nor “The Knickerbocker” would be convinced. The latter, by way of defence, went into a treatise upon Sam Patch, and Mr. Ward, “in the nick of his glory,” wrote another poem against criticism in general, in which he called Mr. Benjamin “a wasp” and “an owl,” and endeavored to prove him an ass. An owl is a wise bird — especially in spectacles — still, we do not look upon Mr. Benjamin as an owl. If all are owls who disbelieve in this book, (which we now throw to the pigs) then the world at large cuts a pretty figure, indeed, and should be burnt up in April, as Mr. Miller desires — for it is only one immense aviary of owls.
WILLIAM W. LORD.
OF MR. LORD we know nothing — although we believe that he is a student at Princeton College — or perhaps a graduate, or perhaps a Professor of that institution. Of his book, lately, we have heard a good deal — that is to say, we have heard it announced in every possible variation of phrase, as “forthcoming.” For several months past, indeed, much amusement has been occasioned in the various literary coteries in New York, by the pertinacity and obviousness of an attempt made by the poet’s friends to get up an anticipatory excitement in his favor. There were multitudinous dark rumors of something in posse — whispered insinuations that the sun had at length arisen or would certainly arise — that a book was really in press which would revolutionize the poetical world — that the MS. had been submitted to the inspection of a junto of critics, whose fiat was well understood to be Fate, (Mr. Charles King, if we remember aright, forming one of the junto) — that the work had by them been approved, and its successful reception and illimitable glorification assured. — Mr. Longfellow, in consequence, countermanding an order given his publishers (Redding & Co.,) to issue forthwith a new threepenny edition of “The Voices of the Night.” Suggestions of this nature, busily circulated in private, were, in good time, insinuated through the press, until at length the public expectation was as much on tiptoe as public expectation, in America, can ever be expected to be about so small a matter as the issue of a volume of American poems. The climax of this whole effort, however, at forestalling the critical opinion, and by far the most injudicious portion of the procedure, was the publisher’s announcement of the forthcoming book as “a very remarkable volume of poems.”
The fact is, the only remarkable things about Mr. Lord’s compositions, are their remarkable conceit, ignorance, impudence, platitude, stupidity and bombast: — we are sorry to say all this, but there is an old adage about