Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we That hear the question of that voice sublime? O, what are all the notes that ever rung From war’s vain trumpet by thy thundering side? Yea, what is all the riot man can make In his short life to thy unceasing roar? And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might. It is a very usual thing to hear these verses called not merely the best of their author, but the best which have been written on the subject of Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only partial. We have been informed that the poet _had seen_ the great cataract before writing the lines; but the Memoir prefixed to the present edition, denies what, for our own part, we never believed; for Brainard was truly a poet, and no poet could have looked upon Niagara, in the substance, and written thus about it. If he saw it at all, it must have been in fancy—“at a distance”—εκας—as the lying Pindar says he saw Archilocus, who died ages before the villain was born. To the two opening verses we have no objection; but it may be well observed, in passing, that had the mind of the poet been really “crowded with strange thoughts,” and not merely _engaged in an endeavor to think_ he would have entered at once upon the thoughts themselves, without allusion to the state of his brain. His subject would have left him no room for self. The third line embodies an absurd, and impossible, not to say a contemptible image. We are called upon to conceive a similarity between the _continuous_ downward sweep of Niagara, and the momentary splashing of some definite and of course trifling quantity of water _from a hand_; for, although it is the hand of the Deity himself which is referred to, the mind is irresistibly led, by the words “poured from his hollow hand,” to that idea which has been _customarily_ attached to such phrase. It is needless to say, moreover, that the bestowing upon Deity a human form, is at best a low and most unideal conception.[4] In fact the poet has committed the grossest of errors in _likening_ the fall to _any_ material object; for the human fancy can fashion nothing which shall not be inferior in majesty to the cataract itself. Thus bathos is inevitable; and there is no better exemplification of bathos than Mr. Brainard has here given.[5]