Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/319

 GEOEGE W. CUTTEE. George "Washington Cutter was born in Kentucky, we believe, though pre- cisely where or when, we have been unable to ascertain. Nor, though his hfe has been eventful, have we found any source of facts and figures from which to make it appear significant on paper. The reader must therefore content himself with what vague information we can give him. Mr. Cutter appears to be about forty-five years old ; is large, well proportioned, and imposing, and has a full, flush countenance, whose handsome expression the small-pox, doing its worst, has but little impaired. He is a lawyer by profession, and was at one time a member of the Indiana Legislature. But both the appearance of the man and the spirit of his poetry evince too strong a tem- perament for the tame, "even tenor" of a civilian's life; and accordingly, when the Mexican war broke out, he joined the army as a Captain of volunteers, and served a brilliant campaign ; a spirited reminiscence of which he has given us in the poem of "Buena Vista," which he is said to have written on the field after the battle. Mr. Cutter has been twice married ; first to Mrs. Alexander Drake the actress ; and next to "Althea," whose portrait is the frontispiece of his last volume. "We beUeve he is at present a member of the Washington bar. The volume entitled "Poems, National and Patriotic," published in 1857, at Phil- adelphia, contains perhaps all the poems that Mr. Cutter has thought worthy of pres- ervation, though there are extant two other previous collections of his writings. This is a book of two hundred and seventy-nine pages, consisting of quite a lengtliy pre- face and sixty-nine poems, of which latter, " The Captive " is first in order and extent, but not first in rank, by any means. It is an Indian poem, and, like most Indian poems^ is very un-Indian indeed — making Tecumseh, the secretive and reticent savage, talk page after page of heavy tragedy, as though he had learned the whole civihzed art of how not to say it. Tecumseh shows himself versed, too, in ancient mythology, when he says, "All goddess — like the fabled birth Of Pallas from the brain ! " And, " When softly rose the Queen of Love All glowing from the sea ! " A classic Indian was Tecumseh, truly — aye, and a traveled Indian, forsooth ; else how should he fancy that " The moon was piled like a broken -syi-eath Of snow on an Alp of cloud ? " But, by these Httle phenomena of Tecumseh in "The Captive," we are led at once to the fact that Mr. Cutter is not a poet of art, but a poet born. It is not his business, any more than it is the bobolink's, to construct sweet tones into consistent tunes. The ( 303 )