The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 | Page 5

better than any joke in the
book. It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years

every little bon mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the
puniest youngest brat of them being christened "Old Joe."
After Joseph Miller had become what Mercutio calls "a grave man," his
descendants went into literature largely, as any one may see by turning
to Allibone's very voluminous dictionary, where upwards of seventy of
the name are immortalized, the most noted of whom are Thomas Miller,
basket-maker and poet, and Hugh Miller, the learned stone-mason of
Cromarty, whose many works, we confess with much humility, we
have not read. To the sixty-eight Millers in Allibone (if that be the
exact number), must now be added another--Mr. Joaquin Miller, who
published, two or three months since, a collection of poems entitled
"Songs of the Sierras." From which one of the Millers mentioned above
his ancestry is derived, we are not informed; but, it would seem, from
the one first-named. For clearly the end of all things literary cannot be
far off, if Mr. Miller is the "coming poet," for whom so many good
people have been looking all their lives. We are inclined to think that
such is not the fact. We think, on the whole, that it is to the other
Miller--Joking Miller--his genealogy is to be traced.
But who is Mr. Miller, and what has he done? A good many besides
ourselves put that question, less than a year ago, and nobody could
answer it. Nobody, that is, in America. In England he was a great man.
He went over to England, unheralded, it is stated, and was soon
discovered to be a poet. Swinburne took him up; the Rossettis took him
up; the critics took him up; he was taken up by everybody in England,
except the police, who, as a rule, fight shy of poets. He went to
fashionable parties in a red shirt, with trowsers tucked into his boots,
and instead of being shown to the door by the powdered footman, was
received with enthusiasm. It is incredible, but it is true. A different state
of society existed, thirty or forty years ago, when another American
poet went to England; and we advise our readers, who have leisure at
their command, to compare it with the present social lawlessness of the
upper classes among the English. To do this, they have only to turn to
the late N.P. Willis's "Pencilings by the Way," and contrast his
descriptions of the fashionable life of London then, with almost any
journalistic account of the same kind of life now. The contrast will be
all the more striking if they will only hunt up the portraits of Disraeli,
with his long, dark locks flowing on his shoulders, and the portrait of

Bulwer, behind his "stunning" waistcoat, and his cascade of neck-cloth,
and then imagine Mr. Miller standing beside them, in his red shirt and
high-topped California boots! Like Byron, Mr. Miller "woke up one
morning and found himself famous."
We compare the sudden famousness of Mr. Miller with the sudden
famousness of Byron, because the English critics have done so; and
because they are pleased to consider Mr. Miller as Byron's successor!
Byron, we are told, was the only poet whom he had read, before he
went to England; and is the only poet to whom he bears a resemblance.
How any of these critics could have arrived at this conclusion, with the
many glaring imitations of Swinburne--at his worst--staring him in the
face from Mr. Miller's volume, is inconceivable. But, perhaps, they do
not read Swinburne. Do they read Byron?
There are, however, some points of resemblance between Byron and
Mr. Miller. Byron traveled, when young, in countries not much visited
by the English; Mr. Miller claims to have traveled, when young, in
countries not visited by the English at all. This was, and is, an
advantage to both Byron and Mr. Miller. But it was, and is, a serious
disadvantage to their readers, who cannot well ascertain the truth, or
falsehood, of the poets they admire. The accuracy of Byron's
descriptions of foreign lands has long been admitted; the accuracy of
Mr. Miller's descriptions is not admitted, we believe, by those who are
familiar with the ground he professes to have gone over.
Another point of resemblance between Byron and Mr. Miller is, that
the underlying idea of their poetry is autobiographic. We do not say
that it was really so in Byron's case, although he, we know, would have
had us believe as much; nor do we say that it is really so in Mr. Miller's
case, although he, too, we suspect, would have us believe as much.
Mr. Miller resembles Byron as his "Arizonian" resembles Byron's
"Lara." Lara