The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I, No. 6 | Page 5

whatever has been swallowed by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly to light."
"I took our mutual friends to see her."
"It was always obvious that they had nothing in common between them."
"The Indian cannot be looked at truly except by a poetic eye."
"McKenny's Tour to the Lakes gives some facts not to be met with elsewhere."
"There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the aspect of things as gives a feeling of freedom," etc., etc.
"These are merely a few, a very few instances, taken at random from among a multitude of willful murders committed by Miss Fuller on the American of President Polk. She uses, too, the word 'ignore,' a vulgarity adopted only of late days (and to no good purpose, since there is no necessity for it) from the barbarisms of the law, and makes no scruple of giving the Yankee interpretation to the verbs 'witness' and 'realize,' to say nothing of 'use,' as in the sentence, 'I used to read a short time at night.' It will not do to say in defense of such words, that in such senses they may be found in certain dictionaries--in that of Bolles', for instance;--some kind of 'authority' may be found for any kind of vulgarity under the sun.
"In spite of these things, however and of her frequent unjustifiable Carlyleisms, (such as that of writing sentences which are no sentences, since, to be parsed, reference must be had to sentences preceding,) the style of Miss Fuller is one of the very best with which I am acquainted. In general effect, I know no style which surpasses it. It is singularly piquant, vivid, terse, bold, luminous--leaving details out of sight, it is everything that a style need be.
"I believe that Miss Fuller has written much poetry, although she has published little. That little is tainted with the affectation of the _transcendentalists_, (I used this term, of course, in the sense which the public of late days seem resolved to give it,) but is brimful of the poetic sentiment. Here, for example, is something in Coleridge's manner, of which the author of 'Genevieve' might have had no reason to be ashamed:--
A maiden sat beneath a tree; Tear-bedewed her pale cheeks be, And she sighed heavily.
From forth the wood into the light A hunter strides with carol light And a glance so bold and bright.
He careless stopped and eyed the maid; 'Why weepest thou?' he gently said; 'I love thee well, be not afraid.'
He takes her hand and leads her on-- She should have waited there alone, For he was not her chosen one.
He leans her head upon his breast-- She knew 'twas not her home of rest, But, ah! she had been sore distrest.
The sacred stars looked sadly down; The parting moon appeared to frown, To see thus dimmed the diamond crown.
Then from the thicket starts a deer-- The huntsman seizing on his spear Cries, 'Maiden, wait thou for me here.'
She sees him vanish into night-- She starts from sleep in deep affright, For it was not her own true knight.
Though but in dream Gunhilda failed-- Though but a fancied ill assailed-- Though she but fancied fault bewailed--
Yet thought of day makes dream of night; She is not worthy of the knight; The inmost altar burns not bright.
If loneliness thou canst not bear-- Cannot the dragon's venom dare-- Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair.
Now sadder that lone maiden sighs; Far bitterer tears profane her eyes; Crushed in the dust her heart's flower lies.'
"To show the evident carelessness with which this poem was constructed, I have italicized an identical rhyme (of about the same force in versification as an identical proposition in logic) and two grammatical improprieties. To lean is a neuter verb, and 'seizing _on_' is not properly to be called a pleonasm, merely because it is--nothing at all. The concluding line is difficult of pronunciation through excess of consonants. I should have preferred, indeed, the ante-penultimate tristich as the finale of the poem.
"The supposition that the book of an author is a thing apart from the author's self, is, I think, ill-founded. The soul is a cipher, in the sense of a cryptograph; and the shorter a cryptograph is, the more difficulty there is in its comprehension--at a certain point of brevity it would bid defiance to an army of Champollions. And thus he who has written very little, may in that little either conceal his spirit or convey quite an erroneous idea of it--of his acquirements, talents, temper, manner, tenor and depth (or shallowness) of thought--in a word of his character, of himself. But this is impossible with him who has written much. Of such a person we get, from his books, not merely a just, but the most just representation. Bulwer, the individual, personal man, in a green