As a result of this exceeding sensitiveness to impressions, Mr. Stoddard is open to the influence of other poets; for when a poet once ceases to exercise a jealous guardianship over the individuality of his genius, he is liable to be overcome by the superior power of the natures with whom he sympathises. Now, Mr. Stoddard is no copyist or imitator, much less a plagiarist, but he evidently has an intense love for the genius of Shelley, Keats and Tennyson, and sympathises so deeply with them that he catches the tone and tune of their spirits—sometimes sets his own songs to their music—and thus gives us original thoughts and images that _sound_ like theirs because conceived in their spirit. Thus in the “Castle in the Air” there is an original line which still has the mark of Shelley’s individuality upon it: “Like some divinest dream upon the couch of sleep.” It would be easy to select many more illustrations of this unconscious imitation, proving, not that Mr. Stoddard is a borrower, but that he is not on his guard against the magnetic power of other minds, exercised as it is through the most subtile avenues of mental influence. It should be his ambition not to differ in degree from the poets he loves, but to differ in _kind_. It is better to be Stoddard than to be a Tennysonian, especially, as in the present case, when Stoddard contains within himself the elements of a new individuality in letters, with a force and flavor and fragrance of his own. We have been thus prolix and minute in characterizing some of the peculiarities of this volume, because we are convinced that the author is a man of genius, and has a right to be tried by laws of criticism severer than those which apply to the common run of versifiers. But we are not insensible to the excellencies of the poems; willingly plead guilty to the charge of having read the volume with delight, and trust that we shall entice many of our readers into the same pleasant employment. They evince thought, sentiment, fancy, imagination, delicacy and depth of nature; every thing but directing will and a broad perception of the true poetical relations of the ideal and the actual; and these will come with the growth of his mind, and a larger and more genial experience of life. We had marked many passages to illustrate our idea both of his merits and his defects, but we have no space at present to quote them. The gorgeous “Castle in the Air,” the leading poem in the volume, would furnish many a splendid example of the fluency and fertility of his genius. “The Witch’s Whelp” is an original conception of a different kind. The Songs and Sonnets, toward the close of the volume, are perhaps, the most individual and essentially original poems of the collection, and some of them display uncommon subtilty and sharpness of mental vision. * * * * *