It is impossible to open this volume at any page without feeling that the author is a poet, and a poet whose promise is very much greater even than his performance. Every poem is bright and warm with imagery and feeling—poetical expressions are showered with a liberal hand—the verse has that soft and fluent movement which indicates that the thoughts they convey come from a teeming mind in a gush of melodious sentiment—and the impression left on the reader’s imagination is of a singularly rich, sensuous, fertile and poetical nature. Every poem, almost every line, is a protest against the prose of thought and the prose of life, and all the objects of sense are studiously idealized and heightened into “something rich” if not into “something strange.” The author seems to dwell in a dream of life, peopled with beauties if not with Beauty, and sweetly abandoning himself to the soft and subtle sensations they imaginatively excite. Pleasure, but a pleasure more than mortal, seems to be his aim and aspiration, and infinitely provoked is he when the hard facts of life protrude their misshapen but solid substance into his meditations, and mock his luxurious illusion. Now the mood out of which this profuse idealization of thoughts and sensations proceeds is undoubtedly poetical, but it should be exhibited in connection with higher and sterner qualities, and at best indicates the youth of the poetic vision and faculty. But, it must be admitted, that Mr. Stoddard has represented it in all its deliciousness, and no person can read his volume without being filled and stimulated with its sweetness and melody, and luxuriant fancy and opulence of sensuous forms and images. It indicates, to some extent, a sensitive and imaginative nature overmastered by the pleasant scenes and airy beings in which and with whom it revels—possessed instead of possessing—and therefore lacking that individual power which wields dominion over its own resources, selects, discriminates, rejects, governs, and, in the highest sense, combines and creates. Accordingly he does not inform objects, but is rather informed by them—does not pass into them by an internal force but is rather drawn into them by their external attraction—and thus leaves an impression rather of fertility than power. There is a great difference between the poet who merges himself in objects, and the poet who allows objects to immerge him. In the one case he is a victor, in the other a captive.