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106 In their mere didactics, however, they err essentially and primitively, inasmuch as such things are the province rather of Minerva than of the Camenæ. Of imagination, we discover much—but more of its rich and certain evidences, than of its ripened fruit. In all the minor merits Mr. Bryant is pre-eminent. His ars celare artem is most efficient. Of his "completeness," unity, and finish of style we have already spoken. As a versifier, we know of no writer, living or dead, who can be said greatly to surpass him. A Frenchman would assuredly call him "un poëte des plus correctes."

Between Cowper and Young, perhaps, (with both of whom he has many points of analogy,) would be the post assigned him by an examination at once general and superficial. Even in this view, however, he has a juster appreciation of the beautiful than the one, of the sublime than the other—a finer taste than Cowper—an equally vigorous, and far more delicate imagination than Young. In regard to his proper rank among American poets there should be no question whatever. Few—at least few who are fairly before the public, have more than very shallow claims to a rivalry with the author of "Thanatopsis."

[National Melodies of America, by George P. Morris, reviewed in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, December, 1839. Poe came later to consider "indefinitiveness" an essential of poetry whether wedded to song or not. Of Tennyson he writes in 1844: "There are passages in his works which rivet a conviction I had long entertained, that the indefinite is an element