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whether he could distinctly state the difference between an epic and an epigram. And it will not do for him to appeal from the critic tocommon readers — because we assure him his book is a veryun common book. We never saw any one so uncommonly bad — nor one about whose parturition so uncommon a fuss has been made, so little to the satisfaction of common sense. Your poem is a curiosity, Mr. Jack Downing; your “Metrical Romance” is not worth a single half sheet of the paste-board upon which it is printed. This is our humble and honest opinion; and, although honest opinions are not very plentiful just now, you can have ours at what it is worth. But we wish, before parting, to ask you one question. What do you mean by that motto from Sir Philip Sidney, upon the title-page? “He cometh to you with a tale that holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner.” What do you mean by it, we say. Either you cannot intend to apply it to the “tale” of Powhatan, or else all the “old men” in your particular neighborhood must be very old men; and all the “little children” a set of dunderheaded little ignoramouses.

MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON.

THE name of LUCRETIA DAVIDSON is familiar to all readers of poetry. Dying at the early age of seventeen, she has been rendered famous not less, and certainly not more, by her own precocious genius than by three memorable biographies — one by President Morse, of the American Society of Arts, another by Miss Sedgwick, and a third by Robert Southey. Mr. Irving had formed an acquaintance with some of her relatives, and thus, while in Europe, took great interest in all that was said or written ­of his young countrywoman. Upon his return to America, he called upon Mrs. Davidson, and then, in 1833, first saw the subject of the memoir now before us, — a fairy-like child of eleven. Three years afterwards he met with her again, and then found her in delicate health. Three years having again elapsed, the MSS. which form the basis of the present volume, were placed in his hands by Mrs. Davidson, as all that remained of her daughter.

Few books have interested us more profoundly. Yet the interest does not appertain solely to Margaret. “In fact the narrative,” says Mr. Irving, “will be found almost as illustrative of the character of the mother as of the child; they were singularly identified in taste, feeling, and pursuits; tenderly entwined together by maternal and filial affection, they reflected as inexpressibly touching grace and interest upon each other by this holy relationship, and affecting groups in modern literature, to sunder them.” In these words the biographer conveys no more than a just idea of the exquisite loveliness of the picture here presented to view.

The MSS. handed Mr. Irving, have been suffered, in a great measure, to tell their own thrilling tale. There has been no injudicious attempt at mere authorship. The compiler has confined himself to chronological arrangement of his memoranda, and to such simple and natural comments as serve to bind rather than to illustrate where no illustration was needed. These memoranda consist of relations by Mrs. Davidson of the infantine peculiarities of her daughter, and of her habits and general thoughts in more matured life, intermingled with letters from the young poetess to intimate friends. There is also a letter from the bereaved mother to Miss Sedgwick, detailing the last moments of the child — a letter so full of all potent nature, so full of minute beauty, and truth and pathos, that to read it without tears would be to prove one’s self less than human.

The “Poetical Remains” of this young creature, who perished (of consumption) in her sixteenth year, occupy about two hundred pages of a somewhat closely printed octavo. The longest poem ­is called “Lenore,” and consists of some two thousand lines, varying in metre from the ordinary octo-syllabic, to the four-footed, or twelve-syllabled iambic. The story, which is a romantic love-tale, not ill-conceived in its incidents, is told with a skill which might put more practised