“There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe, and so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; ’Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe; His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,-- He’s a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck; When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man. The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight; Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, She sang to her work in her sweet childish way, And found, when she’d put the last touch to his soul, That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole. “Here’s Cooper, who’s written six volumes to show He’s as good as a lord: well, let’s grant that he’s so; If a person prefer that description of praise, Why, a coronet’s certainly cheaper than bays; But he need take no pains to convince us he’s not (As his enemies say) the American Scott. Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud That one of his novels of which he’s most proud, And I’d lay any bet that, without ever quitting Their box, they’d be all, to a man, for acquitting. He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, One wildflower he’s plucked that is wet with the dew Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, He has done naught but copy it ill ever since: His Indians, with proper respect be it said, Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed over with red, And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, Rigged up in duck pants and a sou’wester hat (Though once in a coffin, a good chance was found To have slipped the old fellow away underground). All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, The _dernière chemise_ of a man in a fix (As a captain besieged, when his garrison’s small, Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o’er the wall); And the women he draws from one model don’t vary, All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. When a character’s wanted, he goes to the task As a cooper would do in composing a cask; He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful, Just hoops them together as tight as is needful, And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he Has made at the most something wooden and empty.