Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1923-10-03


nature, which he must have gratifled
in the outdoor work of geology. Some
one wrote of him as having taken all
knowledge for his province" His
geological reports reflect great knowl-
edge and untiring industry, exhibiting
great detail carefully systematized-
so detailed that his Report of the
Geology of the State of Connecticut
was termed as dry book as ever was
written. He, apparently, ranked with
the greatest biologists OF his day, im-
pressing Governors Edwards and Bar
low of Connecticut and Wisconsin, re-
spectively, so fayorably that the form
er appointed him State Ceologist in
1885 and the latter il 1854, his pay In
Connecticut being very meager bu1
much better in Wisconsin, where he
was called "Old Stonebreaker" Still,
while Percival with his wonderful YER
satility turned to geological pursuits
as means Of earning his daily bread,
literary success along poetical lines
was his ambition. Poetry, however,
failed to bring him sufficient income to
have the peace OF mind conductive to
further activities in that line.
Dictum OF Contemporaries.
Let us now, having noted the man
and his works as much as the compass
of this article permits, get further
critical estimates of his poetry.
William Cullen Bryant, the author
of "Thanatopsis" and contempor
airy, wrote:
while he was one of the most
learned of poets, he was also one or
the most spontaneous in the manlfes-
tation of genius. He wrote with sort
of natural fluency which approached
nearer to Improvisation than the man
ner of most of our poets"
The next is taken from an article
contributed years ago to the North
American by Henry Ware, Jr.:
Strength and weakness are most
strangely combined, and passages OF
SURPRISING elegance and magnificence
are crowded in amongst those that are
slovenly and incomplete. Hence 1t IS
rare to meet with paragraph on any
length equally sustained throughout.
Flaws show themselves in the most
brilliant sentences, and the reader is
compelled to stop with criticism IN
the midst Of his admiration"
James Russell Lowell devotes a
chapter in his book MY Study Win
dows" to James Gates Percival, in
which we find the agency of damna-
ton, in the main, is not faint praise
On the contrary, the chapter is scath-
ing and sneering, and though it IS,
on the whole, manifestly 'unsound
and unfair''-to quote from Prof. w.
B. Cairns, who similarly characterizes
Lowell's essay on Thoreau-it was
very damaging to the waning reputa-
ton of Percival as literary man.
The following extract is more free
from ridicule and has some faint
praise"
with a mind singularly unplastic,
unsympathet and sef-involved, ne
was incapable of receiving into his
own mind tn ordinary emotions OF
men and giving them back in music;
and with a lofty conc option of the OBJ
ject and purposes of poesy, he had
neither the resolution nor the powe"
which might have enable him to real
ize it. He offers as striking an ex-
ample as could be found of the poetic
temperament UNPUBLISHED with those
less obvious qualities that make the
poetic faculty"
a proverb comes to met is from the
French, believe-and its ripe judg-
ment has always appealed to me.
When speakers and writer's become
assioned-whether they be polite
ians, preachers, or poets--it is we'll TO
remember "that error always turks in
generalities." At this point, it seems
to me appropriate to Offset the lines
T n from q
Yale Book of American Verse:
"The history of letters, in truth,
abounds in singular judgments which
men of genius have passed upon the
productions of other men of genius"
Frederick Hull Cogswell, Esq, in an
interesting address on James Gates
Percival and Friends" at a meeting,
in April, 1912 Of the Connecticut So
ciety of the Order Of the Founders and
Patriots of America, made this obser-
walton:
while Percival was complaining Of
a world that did not appreciate his
hastily wrought poems, Bryant was
polishing and perfecting his until they
compelled appreciation and admira-
ton"
The International Encyclopedia
tells us that "his poetry is generally
fluent and occasionally striking;
Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia of American
Literature, that sit would have been
better, sometimes, if the author had
waited for slow reflection and patient
elaboration-since fancy is never so
vigorous as to sustain a long journey
alone; Richardson's American Lit
erature, that Percival is better on ex-
ternal nature than on human nature
and that he is ''monotonously unread
able; Harper's Cyclopaedia of Brit
ism and American Poetry, that his
scholarship was remarkable but I'M
fruitful and that "there are evidences
of high art, as well as flashes of
genius, in some of his latest produc-
tons; Prof. w. B. Cairns, University
of Wisconsin, in his history of Ameri-
can Literature, that many fine lines
are buried amid masses of crude
verse; and while he was ga victim of
hasty composition the Coral
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