The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-10-02
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL TICKET.
FOR PRESH.
WILLIAM ]. Y
FOR VICE PRESIDENT.
AOLAI E. STEVENSON,
TRIBUTES TO \ GIFTED YOUTH OF
NORTH CAROLINA.


In 1875, lis writer, then editing the
war and literary magazine known as
"Our Living and Our Dead" published
a poem written in 1857 by the late Jo-
seph H. Holden, of Raleigh, then quite
a young nan. We thought il then a
production of unusual excellence among
southern poems, entitled "Hatteras,"
and believed it to be the best of all
outcomings of North Carolina verse.
Such is the recollection of our impress
sion then. We have not read it since,
and could not venture a matured opin-
ion without a fresh study of 1t. Young
Holden was undoubtedly endowed with
superior abilities. He had a fine pres
enc and a handsome face. Latterly
his fame has been revived by the Char
lotte Observers publishing the poem
upon the destruction yisited upon most
unfortunate Galveston. 1t gave the
high opinions of it's merit from Gov
ernor Fowle, DR.. Walter H. Page, Gen.
era1 7. L. Clingman and the Massa-
chusetts poet, H. w. Longfellow. The
In VI IN N4OlS dulOl
Herald, Colonel W. S. Pearson, has a.
very exalted opinion of the young
North Carolinian, regarding his genius
quite equal to Byron or Burns or Poe.
He wrote too little for US to under
TAX to compare him with poets of a
high rank and splendid endowment.
Colonel Pearson, who always writes
well, says of him:
Between his accomplishment and his
power to accomplish lay a vast gulf.
Hatteras poem, the speech at the Var
borough House Press banquet as mayor
OF Raleigh, which is a veritable idyl in
prose, and an unpublished hymn adapt
ed from the book of Job and some fugi-
tive efforts in prose and rhyme nota-
bly, a description of the Chicago fire in
a half written novel which good
judges have said eQualed Dickens de-
Scription of the Lord George Gordon
Riots in Barnaby Rudge-these are out
thistle down foated ON chance winds
from the great uncultivated gdIien we
never saw. Governor Swain who
watched Holden preside in the mouse of
representatives in August 1869 pro-
ounces him next to John StanIv and
Rufus McAden in deXtrous u.s. of the
gavel. When it is considered that this
was said of a mere youth who had
never before been in a legislati re body
n a not then a f~ortnight'S expert
ence in the chair it as great praise.
Holden had the gift of orator. as well
as of poesy."
We have long admired his
gifts, and join sincerely il. the touch
ing sentiment of Colonel Pearson that
-"it is pleasant to think thai from his
sad and wasted life there springs fer
present use this fine flower of Hatteras
recalling him again. and awakening
afresh the hope that he too may have
gained the open sea at last"
An elegy of rhythmic beauty and
sweetness might be sung over the early
death of so finely endowed a youth of
North Carolina:
Full many a gem of pureit ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean
bear"
We suppos that Joseph Holden had
genius or something verJ like il or
closely allied to it. Horace in n Of
his fine odes writes hat
He alone can claim this name, who
writes
With fancy high, and bold and daring
flights"
Hatteras seems to "fll the bill' well.
S. T. Coleridge, whom DR.. Thomas
Arnold, Of Rugby, held to be the great
est mind since Milton, had a view of
what genius is. He said that while
mere talent lying IN the UNDER.
ing. Is often inherited" that per contra.
genius being the action of reason and
imagination" is very rarely or never
inherited. Holden may have had this
exalted gift-"a power which no pre-
cept can teach, and which no industry
can give" II he had lived down to old
age, or long enough for his rich gifts
to have fully Powered, and had given
himself to study n the cultivation OF
the art of poetry, he might have indeed
secured a place among the gifted of
earth whose writings the generations
unborn would not willingly let die.