The present edition of Holmes, while it contains a complete collection of his published pieces, is enriched with some after dinner poems, which were not intended for the public eye. These seem to have been thrown off extempore, but they teem with brilliancies of wit and fancy, and are full of fine audacities of expression. Of these the best are “Terpsichore,” “A Modest Request,” and “Nux Postcænatica,” which contain enough spirit and poetry to make a reputation, and which almost add to that which Holmes has already made. The drinking song, slily called “A Song of Other Days,” is almost unmatched for the grandeur and splendor of its imagery, and the heartiness of its tone. The “Sentiment” which follows this right royal Anacreontic, is as glorious a tribute to water as the other is to wine—thus satisfactorily proving that Holmes is indebted to neither for inspiration. One of the most beautiful and brilliant of the poems added in this edition, is that on the Ancient Punch Bowl, and the mode in which sentiment and wit are made to shake hands, and dwell cosily together, is grandly humorous. “Urania,” we suppose, must be considered on the whole, the best production in the volume. It has touches of sentiment and pathos, so graceful, so pure, and so elusive—not to speak of its satirical and witty portions—that it would be in vain to place any other poem of the author before it. We have only space to refer to one more admirable peculiarity of Holmes, a natural consequence of the vigor, affluence and fineness of his intellect, and that is the _re-readableness_ of his productions. There is a perpetual stimulant in them which we cannot drain dry. On a fourth or fifth perusal some refinement of allusion or analogy, some delicacy of thought or expression, some demure stroke of humor, which did not at first fix the attention, repays the diligent reader. Indeed to read one of his poems for the purpose of taking in its whole meaning at once, would require the mind to be as thoroughly awake and active as if it were engaged on Hume or Butler. The very gladness and briskness with which his verse moves, the flood of radiance poured out upon it, the distinctness of much of the imagery, interfere, on the first perusal, with the perception of his minor felicities and remote combinations of fancy and wit. Holmes, indeed, is a poet to have constantly on the parlor-table, not one to be consigned to a shelf in the library; for there is hardly a page not brightened by those fine fancies which age does not dim, and which “sparkle like salt in fire.” * * * * * _United States Fiscal Department._