A long poem, founded on the traditions of the American aborigines, and their modes of life, is a somewhat hazardous experiment. Longfellow, however, has acquitted himself quite as well as we had expected. The habits of the Indians are gracefully idealized in his verses, and we recognize the author of “Evangeline” in the tenderness of the thoughts, the richness of the imagery, and the flow of the numbers.... A love story is interwoven with the poem, and the narrative of Hiawatha’s wooing is beautifully and fancifully related. The canto of The Ghosts is wrought up with a fine supernatural effect, and the mysterious departure of Hiawatha, with which the poem closes, after the appearance of the first messenger of the Christian gospel among his countrymen, is well imagined. Lowell’s first two volumes of poems were moderately commended. “There are fine veins of thought in Lowell’s verse, with frequently a fresh and vigorous expression,” Bryant remarked of the second (Feb. 12, 1848). For Emerson there was a more glowing word of praise. He is “a brilliant writer, both in prose and verse, though perhaps, as a poet, too reflective, too subjective, the modern metaphysician would call it, to suit the popular taste,” Bryant commented in the _Post_ of Jan. 4, 1847, when Emerson’s first collection was issued. “His little address in verse to the humble bee is, however, one of the finest things of the sort--a better poem, in our estimation, than Anacreon’s famous ode to the cicada.” Whittier’s verse, he thought in 1843, writing of “Lays of My Home,” “grows better and better. With no abatement of poetic enthusiasm, his style becomes more manly, and his vein of thought richer and deeper.” References to Poe, anterior to the obituary of Oct. 9, 1849, which Bryant did not write, for he was then abroad, and which called him a “genius” and “an industrious, original, and brilliant writer,” are few. The _Evening Post_ had remarked in 1845 that he was at least within a “t” of being a poet, and had followed his lectures that year at the Society Library. The _Express_ on April 18 stated that he had discoursed at length upon the poets, and criticized his views. At this the _Post_ professed amazement, for its reporter had distinctly heard Poe postpone the lecture; had he delivered it exclusively to the _Express_?