An elegy of which it can be truly said, as of how few persons through all time, that there is not one idea wanting, or one superfluous; not one word that could be altered without injuring the beauty and force of the ensemble. The most frequently quoted of Mr. Halleck’s poems, are “The Death of Bozzaris,” and “Alnwick Castle,” the latter perhaps the most generally popular of all his writings. But, in my judgment, the best, beyond all doubt, is “The Field of the Grounded Arms;” which, because it is entirely beyond the low sphere of New York poetical criticism, as being writ in unrhymed lyric lines, has been little praised or noticed, in proportion to its real merits, which are of the highest. The same exquisite power and felicity in the fitness of wording, noticed above, of the lines “On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake,” and the terseness of phraseology, in which Mr. Halleck clearly surpasses every contemporaneous poet, native or foreign, is here most conspicuous; as is the perfect harmony, which causes unrhymed metric lines, which some wiseacres would doubtless call rhythmic prose, to read melodious and sonorous as the most perfect rhymed lyrics. My limits will not allow me to quote this beautiful poem, breathing the true fire of honest and impartial patriotism and love of country; and, as it is already long before the public, and known to all judicious readers, I prefer to pass on to a long extract from an unpublished poem on “Connecticut,” the poet’s birth-place and heart’s home, a portion of which is now for the first time suffered to see the light. “Connecticut” is in our poet’s favorite measure, the decasyllabic stanza of eight lines, and in his favorite vein, the serio-humorous style of “Fanny.” I confess, for my own part, that I prefer the simple-serious to the semi-comic semi-sentimental strain; for a sweet fall of pathos melting into a dying close, and then abruptly terminated by a sarcasm or a sneer, rather strikes me with a jarring violence, like that arising from a musical discord, than charms me by the contrast it affords. Admiration, at the dexterity of the versifier, mingles too largely with vexation at the violence done to the harmony of beauty. But of Mr. Halleck’s genial and various genius no component part is more clearly marked than his hearty pantagruelism, which finds something humorous in the deepest of sentiments, which must have its shot at every folly as it flies, and which must vent its sarcasm at the weak point, even in what it most admires; and never, it must be said, was wit of the most pointed less ill-natured, humor more fairy-like and fanciful, or sarcasm more softly veiled in dewy flowers of immortal verse.