Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/110

 94 OTWAY CURRY. [1830-10. In his home he found a paradise. Thither his steps tended when the toils of the day were over ; there, among his little ones, he talked as a child, he thought as a child, he played as a child ; there, too, he rejoiced with the wife of his youth, and found in her smiles a recompense for his labors and a refuge from his cares. He was a man of fervent and unostentatious piety, and he delighted in simplicity of worship. He had a fine imagination, which was not, perhaps, always properly restrained. In youth he indulged m castle-building, delighted in tales and romances, and dwelt much in fairy -land ; so much so that he was deemed, by those who did not know him well, to be moody in his temper and dreamy in his views. Mr. Gallagher, speaking of him in early life, says: "The peculiar characteristics of Mr. Curry, since freely developed, were then distinctly lined. He cultivated music with literature, and pei'- formed well upon the flute. The strains of his instrument were touchingly sweet, as were those of his pen. Both lacked vigor of expression, and were dreamy in the extreme. His flute drew its airs from a feudal and castled age, when melancholy minstrels wooed romantic maidens by stealth, and chivalrous knights dared death and dishonor for the favor of high-born dames. His pen found a feast, also, in his imag- inative soul, and from that drew pensive airs which melted his own heart to tears, and touched the hearts of others. But of the music of the battle-field, or that of the stage, or of the fashionable saloon, his flute rarely discoursed ; so of the conflict of opinion, the struggles of the muses, the aspirations of the soul after a higher and nobler freedom here upon earth, the clamor, and clash, and upheaving, and down- throwing that are of the elements of progress, his pen took no note." His writings seem wanting in some of the fruits of imagination. They exhibit no wit or humor — not, however, because of incapacity, but because they were unsuitable to his themes. He was of too serious and reverent a spirit to mingle grotesque images and unexpected associations with subjects of religious faith. He had but little oratorical genius. He could not arouse and amuse a popular assembly. His prose is remarkably free from tropes and metaphors. Even his poetry lacks too much the charm of figurative language. He never presents us with the terrible, rarely with the grand, never with the sublime. It must be admitted, therefore, that his imagina- tion was not of the highest order ; still it was superior, and being active in his youth, it directed his reading, selected his comparisons, shaped his course in life, and con- tributed greatly to his sorrows and his joys. He dwelt much in the inner world, which he made more beautiful and enchanting than the outer. Here were fountains that never failed, grass that concealed no snakes, forests traversed by no savage foe, angels whom he could see face to face. This weakened his attention to the real world, and rendered him ayerse to its struggles, frivolities, and pursuits, and even reluctant to enter upon the duties of life and the enterprises of science and virtue. Rebecca S. Nichols, herself a child of song, and a friend of IMr. Curry, thus beautifully describes his soul-life : Within, tlie holy fire of poesy burned clear and bright, refining the material man. and lifting the more ethereal element of our twofold nature up to the realms of love, and feitb, and peace, where