Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/132

124, and which would exclude such writers as Goldsmith, Pope, Campbell, Scott, Praed, Moore, and Saxe from the rank of poets, are not unfrequently reproduced in our own day. We do not perceive that they spring from a liberal or philosophical consideration of the subject. Poetry, ποίησις, or "making," creation, or re-creation, does not address itself to any single group of those faculties of our complex nature, the gratification of which brings a sense of the agreeable, the exhilarating, or the elevating. As well might we deny to didactic verse the name of poetry, as to those vers de société in which a profound truth may be found in a comic mask, or the foibles which scolding could not reach may be reflected in the mirror held up in gayety of heart. As well might we deny that a waltz is music, and claim the name of music only for a funeral march or a nocturne, as deny that Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab is as much poetry as the stately words in which Prospero compares the vanishing of his insubstantial pageant to that of

The new volume of poems by Mr. Saxe is, in many respects, an improvement on all that he has given us hitherto. There is more versatility in the style, a freer and firmer touch in the handling. Like our best humorists, he shows that the founts of tears and of laughter lie close together; for his power of pathos is almost as marked as that of fun. As good specimens of what he has accomplished in the minor key, we may instance "The Expected Ship," "The Story of Life," and "Pan Immortal." But it is in his faculty of turning upon us the whimsical and humorous side of a fact or a character that Saxe especially excels. The lines entitled "The Superfluous Man" are an illustration of what we mean. In some learned treatise the author stumbles on the following somewhat startling reflection: "It is ascertained by inspection of the registers of many countries, that the uniform proportion of male to female births is as 21 to 20: accordingly, in respect to marriage, every 21st man is naturally superfluous." Here is hint enough to set Saxe's bright vein of humor flowing. The Superfluous Man becomes a concrete embodiment, and sings his discovery of the cause of his forlorn single lot and his hopeless predicament. It flashes upon him that he is that 21st man alluded to by the profound statistician. He is under a natural ban,—for he's a superfluous man. There's no use fighting 'gainst nature's inflexible plan. There's never a woman for him,—for he's a superfluous man. The whole conception and execution of the poem afford a fine example of the manner in which a genuine artist may inform a subtile and an extravagant whim with life, humor, and consistency.

"The Mourner a la Mode" contains some good instances of the neatness and felicity with which the author floods a whole stanza with humor by a single epithet.

The sentiments of a young lover on finding that the object of his adoration had an excellent appetite, and was always punctual at lunch and dinner, are expressed with a Sheridan-like sparkle in the concluding stanza of "The Beauty of Ballston."

There is one practical consideration in regard to the poetry of Saxe, which may excite the distrust of those critics who, with Horace, hate the profane multitude. Fortunately or unfortunately for his reputation, Saxe's poems are popular, and—not to put too fine a point of it—sell. His books have a regular market value, and this value increases rather than diminishes with years. This is, we confess, rather a suspicious circumstance. Did Milton sell? Did Wordsworth sell? Must not the fame that is instantaneous prove hollow and ephemeral? Are we not acquainted with a certain volume of poems that shall be nameless, the whole edition of which lies untouched and unclaimed on the publisher's shelves? And are we not perfectly well aware that those poems—well, we can wait. If Mr. Saxe would only put forth a volume that should prove, in a mercantile sense, a failure, we think he would be surprised to find how happily he would hit certain critics who can now see little in his writings to justify their