exhibited was the offspring of his malady. But his
melancholy, unlike that of Byron, did not find vent in
maledictions against his fellows, in sneers at the purity
of human nature, in impious repinings at his lot.
His heart bled for the miseries of others rather than
for himself. This feeling, united to his extreme sensitiveness, gives a character to his whole poetry, and
reveals to us Brainard the man in all his artless simplicity. This brings us to notice the want of art in
Brainard's poem .
Brainard was no artist-that is he did not understand how to make the most of his genius ; and the consequence has been that his really good poems were written by accident rather than with " malice aforethought." We do not know that we make ourselves exactly clear, but our position is, that genius will rarely produce a fine poem, unless that genius is directed by artistical skill ; and that just in proportion as this skill is increased will be the merit of the poem. Milton's Paradise Lost could never have been written, if its author had not gathered a thousand stores of learning to enrich his work, besides acquiring the management of the incidents from a study of the great epics of every age and tongue. The later poems of Burns are his best, because they are the result of study as well as of inherent genius. To apply these principles to the case of Brainard. He had genius unquestionably, and some artistical skill ; but, comparatively speaking he was almost destitute of the latter. If ever a man wrote from pure inspiration that man was Brainard. There is nothing like artifice about his poems. You can see through them into the heart of the writer as distinctly as one can see the pebbles at the bottom of a quiet pool. They are not the result of elaborate art like a painting of a French school, but the bold dashes produced by a Raphael in a moment of inspiration. They are simple, truthful and eloquent, full of natural imagery, abounding in quiet and pensive thoughts. A writer of this character will often write a dozen stanzas, and have but one really good verse among the whole, or he will compose a score of poems of which not more than four or five will be worthy of preservation . And so long as a poet writes without regard to the rules of art he will write with these varying and uncertain results. He may, and often will be successful ; but this success will be altogether a matter of chance. A man might almost as well expect to produce a fine painting without having first studied the art, as a poet imagine he can write a poem, and yet be indifferent to the precepts which are in common practice with the craft. It is of no use that Homer, Virgil, and a score of others have written, if no benefit is to be derived from analyzing their works and discovering the principles on which these great poets proceeded. Wherever a man produces a fine poem he does it according to certain fixed rules, and although he may be ignorant of these rules, he follows them unconsciously for the time, just as an uneducated orator will sometimes rival a Demosthenes by stumbling blindly on the principles which the immortal Grecian followed in his fine orations. In short both oratory and poetry may be reduced to a system. We have only to analyze them, to find out the rules which should guide us either in writing the oration or the poem. It is true that no one but a man of genius, even with the utmost artistical skill, can become either a Demosthenes or a Milton ; but neither can a man of genius, without these aids, rise above a Patrick Henry or a Hogg. There is this difference, too, perceptible betwixt the mere man of genius, and the poet who adds to his inborn qualifications a thorough skill in his art, that the former may continually be writing bad poems while the latter never will-that the one will succeed only by accident, the other to a certainty. The art of poetry is reducible to an almost mathematical problem ; for if certain powers are used according to certain rules a certain effect must be produced. There is not a bad line in the Deserted Village- and why ? Because Goldsmith was a consummate artist. Shakspeare's Macbeth is full of faults- and why ? Because the great dramatic poet of England was relatively to Goldsmith no artist at all. Yet Shakspeare was, without question, the greatest genius. We do not now speak of the schools of the two men, for we draw no comparison betwixt that of him of Avon and that of the " merry fellow" Oliver.
Brainard belonged to that class which may be calledinartistical ; and when we have said this we have unriddled the whole secret of the prevalence of bad poems in this volume. He wrote only when his feelings forced him-he wrote on the spur of the moment he wrote carelessly, hurriedly and waywardly, and we do not wonder, therefore, that, in nine cases out of ten , he wrote badly. The wonder is that he ever wrote well. There is another thing that made the matter worse. Brainard was an editor and wrote for his own paper. Many of his pieces were thrown off while the press was waiting for copy, were published in equal haste, and were never afterward corrected. Yet these poems the compiler has had the folly to reprint in the present volume. If the reputation of Brainard is not damned forever it will not be the fault of this sapient editor. Heaven save us from the kind-hearted acts of indiscreet friends ! But in spite of all this, Brainard will still be popular. The very want of art in his poems, paradoxical as it may seem after what we have said, will endear him to the hearts of the people. But then his reputation will be confined to about a dozen poems, and the paradox is explained when we consider that these poems are just such poems as Erainard would have written had he
