Dial Essays (1843)

Antislavery Poems. By JOHN PIERPONT. Boston: Oliver Johnson. 1843. These poems are much the most readable of all the metrical pieces we have met with on the subject; indeed, it is strange how little poetry this old outrage of negro slavery has produced.

Confessions of St. Augustine. Boston: E. P. Peabody. We heartily welcome this reprint from the recent London edition, which was a revision, by the Oxford divines, of an old English translation.

The Bible in Spain, or the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. By GEORGE BORROW. Author of The Gipsies in Spain. “This is a charming book, full of free breezes, and mountain torrents, and pictures of romantic interest.

Poems by WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. Boston. 1843. We have already expressed our faith in Mr. Channing’s genius, which in some of the finest and rarest traits of the poet is without a rival in this country.

The Dream of a Day, and other Poems. By JAMES G. PERCIVAL. New Haven. 1843. Mr. Percival printed his last book of poems sixteen years ago, and every school-boy learned to declaim his “Bunker Hill,”

The death of Dr. Channing at Bennington in Vermont, on the 2d October, is an event of great note to the whole country. The great loss of the community is mitigated by the new interest which intellectual power always acquires by the death of the possessor.

The Spanish Student. A Play in Three Acts. By H. W. Longfellow.
A pleasing tale, but Cervantes shall speak for us out of La Gitanilla.

Mr. Browning was known to us before, by a little book called “Pippa Passes,” full of bold openings, motley with talent like this, and rich in touches of personal experience. A version of the thought of the day so much less penetrating than Faust and Festus cannot detain us long;

The American Academy, the Historical Society, and Harvard University, would do well to make the Cunard steamers the subject of examination in regard to their literary and ethical influence.

Here is Carlyle’s new poem, his Iliad of English woes, to follow his poem on France, entitled the History of the French Revolution. In its first aspect it is a political tract, and since Burke, since Milton, we have had nothing to compare with it. It grapples honestly with the facts lying before all men, groups and disposes them with a master’s mind

Mr. Garrison has won his palms in quite other fields than those of the lyric muse, and he is far more likely to be the subject than the author of good poems. He is rich enough in the earnestness and the success of his character to be patient with the very rapid withering of the poetic garlands he has snatched in passing.

Our Maecenas shakes his head very doubtfully at this well-printed Ode, and only says, “An ode nowadays needs to be admirable to carry sail at all.

As we are very liable in common with the letter-writing world, to fall behindhand in our correspondence, and a little more liable because, in consequence of our editorial function, we receive more epistles than our individual share, we have thought that we might clear our account by writing a quarterly catholic letter.

The Huguenots is a very entertaining book, drawn from excellent sources, rich in its topics, describing many admirable persons and events, and supplies an old defect in our popular literature. The editor’s part is performed with great assiduity and conscience.