With all this ideality, this calm enthusiasm, this love for his fellow men, this freshness and delicacy, Lowell would be entitled to rank already among the first poets of the country, if it were not for an occasional affectation, and a comparative want of artistical knowledge. His affectation is the result of his extravagant fondness for Spencer, and partakes, in a great measure, of the peculiarities of that fine poet. The most usual forms in which this affectation developes itself in Lowell, is in a tendency to push his metaphors to the verge of allegory, and in a quaintness that is as much out of place as a tie-wig on a beau of the present generation. The want of artistical knowledge is only comparative, for Lowell understands the rules of his art better than nine-tenths of the craft. Indeed we question whether the slovenliness of many of his poems, does not arise from carelessness as much as from ignorance. The writings of few men betray such rapidity of composition, evincing clearly to our mind, that the thoughts of the poet are thrown upon the paper as fast as they bubble up from his heart. Lowell seems to scorn revision. He strikes off his poems at a white heat, disdaining to polish the steel when it has grown cool. Such neglect always leads to the disbelief in an author’s artistical skill. The public will never give him the credit of being a good workman, while he shows so great an indifference to the finish of his wares. This carelessness is not only evinced in an occasional false measure, but in other ways more detrimental. One of the slovenly habits of our poet, is in the use of the accent to lengthen a short syllable. We constantly meet with such words as “poisèd” “inspirèd,” and others of like false quantity. Against such liberties we protest. It is no argument to tell us that other poets have been guilty of the practice. Twenty wrongs do not constitute a right, nor will volumes of false quantity make a poem. An author is to take the language as he finds it and evince his skill by adapting it to his purpose. If every writer is allowed to beat a short syllable into a long one, there will soon be as many varieties of accent in our language, as there are gods in the Chinese theology. If words may be twisted as we please there will be no end to the fools who write poems. It is time that men stood up for the purity of our tongue. The affectations of Hunt, Lamb, and Hazlit, might have been forgiven: but the barbarous jargon of Carlyle deserves to be damned in the first act. There is a saint in the Brahmin calendar whom a legion of devils has been tormenting for a thousand years; and the good old manly English tongue seems to be in much the same predicament. Every lustrum or two a new onset is made at its purity. Each successive generation witnesses a mania for some foreign, illegitimate, unholy alliance. The rage in the days of Pope was for the French school, in the days of Johnson for the Latin school, and just now it is for the German