docs, and needed some sort of encouragement. He wanted every man in the command to fully realize that he meant business. He also aimed to convince the Modoc scouts that he reposed confidence in them and had not the slightest fear of treachery. The General’s plan was a complete success. The four Modoc scouts, without doubt the worst scoundrels in the whole tribe, were ceaseless in their efforts to ferret out Captain Jack and the remnants of his band. The scouts came to regard General Davis with mingled awe and admiration. They recognized in his character those qualities which gained for him the esteem and respect of the entire expeditionary force in the field. General Davis’s services in the Modoc war constitute one of the most prominent features of his brilliant record. The operations against the Indians anterior to his appearance on the scene were terribly disastrous to the whites, and the soldiers were pretty thoroughly disheartened. In six weeks after he first arrived at the Lava Beds, the Modoc revolt was a thing of the past. He checked the demoralization resulting from repeated reverses, instituted aggressive movements, roused the soldiers with his personal magnetism, and achieved a full measure of success. A few weeks ago the nation was called upon to mourn the loss of this faithful soldier. But among the tributes so richly deserved and so freely bestowed I failed to notice any reference to the General’s reward for subduing the Modocs, which was, “the privilege of signing his brevet title of Major-General to official orders.” And such is the gratitude of a republic!
W. M. BUNKER.
ISOLATED POETS—PERCIVAL AND NEAL.
“God pity the man who does not love the poetry of Percival. He is a genius of Nature’s making—that singular and high-minded poet.
His aim has always been lofty; and if he has failed at all, he has failed in warring with the thunder-cloud, and crossing the path of the live lightning.”
We are prepared to adopt this sentiment of Whittier. If the reader is not, he must, at least, assent to the calmer words of Bryant:
“Those who look over these volumes”—Per- cival’s verse—“ will, we think, wonderthat poems which gave so much delight when they first ap- peared have been so much neglected since, and will be glad of the opportunity of renewing their acquaintance with an author who, while he was one of the most learned of poets, was also one of the most spontaneous in the manifestation of genius.”
When men and poems pass for what they are rather than for what they were, such poets as Percival will, without help, step up to a de- servedly high position. It is only this perverse clinging to the pantaloons of poetry without a grasp at its real self that still holds them back and down. When, one day, it shall strike the world that, after all, perhaps genius knows its own business, master critics will cease to wish that they might only shape and utterthe thoughts of some high thinker, and so make him a poet. If talent is true to itself, neither Percival nor another is to be charged with inadequate or even inappropriate expression.
Expression is the prime gift of genius. If the utterances be weak, it is not because the thought is misrepresented, but because there is no thought. A voice is born with every ferfect idea; and if no voice be heard, let it be believed, no rounded and complete idea lies dumb be- hind. Plenty of shapeless poetry floats silently in the minds of men—exalted feeling which stirs but does not speak. When, however, in the few instances, this feeling perfects and embodies itself—becomes a thought—then the power of articulation is proportionately devel- oped, and there exists that rare being called the poet. This we conceive to be the general law, susceptible, in particular cases, of modifi- cation.
When, therefore, we find the critic saying “Percival loses himself in verbiage,” we infer that either the poet is unusually rich and pro- fuse in thought, or that he is destitute of ideas and a mere juggler of words. What does he say for himself?—“I have of late fallen into an unconquerable habit of dreaming with my eyes wide open. My whole life has been a round of reveries. I have lived in a world of my own imagining; and such has been the vividness of my conceptions, that I can, at any moment when I have an inclination, summon them to my mental presence with the ease of a magician of old, when he evoked with his charmed rod the shades of the departed.”
The reader will be reminded of a similar con- fession by Tennyson. It is not the revelation
