The two great battle-poems begin, each of them, with beautiful descriptive lines, move on with gradually kindling fire, reach the highest intensity of action, till the words themselves have the weight and the rush of shot and shell, and the verses seem aflame with the passion of the conflict,--then, as the strife calms itself after the victory is won, the wild dithyrambic stanzas rock themselves into sweet, even cadences. No one can fail to be struck with the freedom and robustness of the language, the irregular strength of the rhythm, the audacious felicities of the rhyme. There are hints which remind us of many famous poets,--hints, not imitations. There can be no doubt that these were either coincidences or unconscious tricks of memory. To us they seem beauties, not defects, in poems of such originality, as in a new musical composition a few notes in some well-remembered sequence often seem to harmonize the crudeness of the newer strain,--as in many flowers and fruits Nature herself repeats a streak of color or a dash of flavor belonging to some alien growth. Thus, Drayton says,-- "With Spanish yew so strong. Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents _stung_." And Brownell,-- "Trust me, our berth was hot; Ah, wickedly well they shot; How their death-bolts howled and _stung_!" A mere coincidence, in all probability, but the word one which none but a poet could have used. There are reminiscences of Cowper's grand and simple lines on the "Loss of the Royal George," of Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic," of Tennyson's "Charge of the Six Hundred," not one of which but has a pleasing effect in the midst of such vigorous pictures as the new poet has given us fresh from the terrible original. The most obvious criticism is one which applies to the "River Fight," and which is directed against what might be thought an overstraining of the singular power in the use of words which is one of Mr. Brownell's most remarkable characteristics. "General Orders," not essential to the poem, may be admired as a _tour de force_, but cannot be properly called poetry. It is a condensed, versified edict,--true, no doubt, to the prose original, but on the whole better printed by itself, if printed at all, than suffered to distract the reader from the main narration by its elaborate ingenuity. These two poems--the "River Fight" and the "Bay Fight"--are better adapted for public reading and declamation than almost any in our literature. They hush any circle of listeners, and many cannot hear those exquisitely tender passages which are found toward the close of each without yielding them the tribute of their tears. They are to all the drawing-room battle-poems as the torn flags of our victorious armadas to the stately ensigns that dressed their ships in the harbor.