Page:Fitz-Greene Halleck, A Memorial.djvu/23

Rh the quotation. You know the subject is not elevated. The story of a bankrupt, retail dry-goods merchant is not a poetical theme. But the motto is the very opposite of such a story, and therein lies the wit.

Notwithstanding Halleck’s reticence in regard to his own poems, he always delighted to talk of the poetry of other authors. He had committed to memory many of Campbell’s poems, and his comments upon certain passages that he quoted were wonderfully acute and elucidative. Hohenlinden was one of his favorites.

“There,” he would say, “I defy any painter to paint that landscape! The poet in one word, bloodless, anticipates the coming struggle, the clash of men and arms, the blood-stained field that is to be, the trampled snow,—and in his prophetic vision he paints it all in a word.

“And now see how the armies are marshalled!—Not by generals and adjutants, but by a supernatural drum at midnight! An inferior poet would have put all the officers in,—pioneers and all—aids and orderlies, to summon the armies to battle,—but Campbell only uses a drum!