We pass by the 'Legend of Brittany,' which, as a mere artistic study of light and shade in words, is worthy an extended notice. Its fine polish and refinement of feeling remind us of Spencer's silver verses, frosted here and there with the old fret-work of his lovable affectations. But we pause at the 'Prometheus,' honestly believing that no poem made up of so many excellences was ever written in America. Its defects are not of conception, but in an occasional carelessness of execution--a gasp in the rhythm; and when we consider its richness and majesty, when we feel its resistless grasp upon the heart, we could pardon it if its great pearls were strung on straws or its diamonds hidden in a sand-hill of sentimentality. But never was poem freer from morbidness: it repels the sickly pallor of our modern stereotyped sorrow, and is made up only of a grief that is regal--more--divine. If any place by its side the Prometheus of Æschylus and appeal to the unapproachable dignity of their model, we can only say that we hold these two poems distinct as the East is from the West, only between them springs boldly the blue arch of a universal humanity that suffered and enjoyed as now when the earth was young. But it must not be forgotten that the Greek lived when with men was born a boundless sympathy for, and pride in, their gods; that what are now to us but the wonderful dreams of a primeval poesy, shadowing mighty truths, were to the ancients living influences that molded their lives. And if it be urged that already faith must have grown dim in so great a mind as that of Æschylus, then indeed we wonder not at the marvels of magnificent despair, the death-in-life of a godlike suffering which reach in his 'Prometheus Chained' a height of sublimity we may scarcely hope to see approached in modern times, for the mind that created it stood in a light shallop, drifting away from the old landmarks of a worn-out creed into the dark, unknown night of doubt and speculation. But the Prometheus of Lowell is not the god-man writhing in an awful conflict with his slavery but begun. His heart 'For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.' The defiant pride and scornful dignity that raised him above our sympathy in Æschylus, are tempered by Lowell with a human longing for comfort that, in its mighty woe, might melt adamant, or draw from the watchful heavens 'Mild-eyed Astarte, his best comforter, With her pale smile of sad benignity.' Chained to the rock in utter loneliness he lies. Long since the 'crisped smiles' of the waves and the 'swift-winged winds' had ceased to listen to his call.