At first it was designed that he should study medicine, but his inclination led him to the law. He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina when twenty-one, practised for a brief period, and became part proprietor of a daily newspaper, which, taking ground against nullification, ruined him--swallowing up a small maternal property, and involving him in a heavy debt which hung upon and embarrassed him for a long time after. In 1832, he first visited the North, where he published Atalantis. Martin Faber followed in 1834, and periodically the long catalogue of his subsequent performances. There are few writers who have exhibited such versatility of powers, combined with vigor, originality of copious and independent ideas, and that faculty of condensation which frequently by a single pregnant line suggests an expansive train of reflection. As a poet, he unites high imaginative powers with metaphysical thought--by which we mean that large discourse of reason which generalizes, and which seizes the universal, and perceives its relations to individual phenomena of nature and psychology. His poems abound in appropriate, felicitous, and original similes. His keen and fresh perception of nature, furnishes him with beautiful pictures, the truthfulness and clearness of which are admirably presented in the lucid language with which they are painted, and, in his expression of deep personal feelings, we find a noble union of sad emotion and manliness of tone. He draws from a full treasury of varied experience, active thought, close observation, just and original reflection, and a spirit which has drank deeply and lovingly from the gushing founts of nature. His inspiration is often kindled by the sunny and luxuriant scenery of the beautiful region to which he was born, and besides the freshness and glow which this imparts to his descriptive poetry, it makes him emphatically the poet of the South. Not only has he sung her peculiar natural aspects with the appreciation of a poet and the feeling of a son, but he has a claim to her gratitude for having enshrined in melodious verse her ancient and fading traditions. Mr. Simms commenced writing verses at a very early period. At eight years of age he rhymed the achievements of the American navy in the last war with Great Britain. At fifteen, he was a scribbler of fugitive verse for the newspapers, and before he was twenty-one he had published two collections of miscellaneous poetry, which his better taste and prudence subsequently induced him to suppress. Two other volumes of poems followed, in a more ambitious vein, which are also now beyond the reach of the collector, and were issued while he was engaged in the occupations of a newspaper editor and a student and practitioner of law. These volumes were followed by Atalantis, a poem which has been highly praised by the best critics of our time.