Year: 1870

| "a
he shook not only the ground, but the ar,
with his ponderous tread. When he was gone
the frogs were moved to ecstatlc imitation
"Was he as big as this " they anMously
asked one another, swelling and wabbhng
AS this Or this ~ and so swelled until they
unfortunately burst. We have a gloomy fore
boding that something of the same KIND Is
boppening now. Ii il but few weeks ago
that Victor Hugo Illuminated his famous letter,
TO which Swinburne, with electric prOmptltude,
renlied bv his Ode, and our own Train by his
speecb at Marseilles As these several thun-
der-claps in literature shook France and En-
gland, we laid our hands upon our mouths IN
the dust and were dumb. Had Jura taken to
calling to the misty Alps again, VINO
answered her alOudf If we could not
understand, we could at least silently
wonder and admire But when the
ponderous echoes have died away, we are
perplexed, if not in despair, to find that the
contagion of these vociferous examples has
spread with frightful rapidity All the lesser
frogs in literature and politics are swelling
and wabbling after the manner OF these I'M
mortal oxen. Penny papers in New-York and
Philadelphia are issuing editorial manifestoes
| in dislOcated sentences Ia the seer OF
Jersey the last months English and Amer
lean magazines bubble over with poems that
bear a similiude to the Ode as ginger-pOp re-
sembles the froth on Perkins's entire. Writers
who have hitherto made their mark by sound
common sense in sound common words, sud
denly affect the popular bulgy, gaseous style
| Our friend Swinburne as we all know, talks
as familiarly of gods in solid or Hquescent
state as a noted friend among us talks OF
Jenny Arc and these, his imitators, follow
ing him afar off, have scraped up an ac-
quaintance with Dooms and angels, and intro
duce us to them in an off-hand way which is,
to say the least, bewildering to the ordinary
| New-York mind.


Jean Ingelow, who so long as she told us OF
grass and high or low tides, or matters which
! she and we knew something about, was one
of the truest and sweetest of poets, has lately
| betaken herself to this table-land OF Parnassus,
and has had interviews with Fancy and Time
! for the benefit of a November periodical
| Fancy appears to have exhibited herself Win
an eye to publication, after the manner OF
most distinguished people when approached
| by reporters, as Miss IngelOw informs us that
she is a bird with feathers which smell OF
! cinnamon, like those of another tusaS nature
unknown we are afraid to naturalists. Before
we have time to question OF Our aching Draln,
why cinnamon? we are shown the aforesaid
| bird "stirring flax which Old Fate had spun"
| and waving with its hands memorial grass
"of Marathon doubtless, as we are led to
suppose, for bleaching purposes. Miss lngel0w
then begs of the bird to "play, but
"be gentle; not as on the day ! saw
"thee running down the rims of Doom,
"with stars thou hadst been stealing
"clasped to thy breast.n Can this remarkably
useful though dishonest bird be any relation
to tho respectable hen, well known to our
childhood who washed all the dishes and
"went for the flour ~ Why, if it must
steal steal stars Government picdngs,
even Erie shares, would suggest themselves to
any bird of ordinary intelligence as more
profitable and safer. What are the rims of
| Doom Is Doom to be regarded as a COM


panon of thieves and receiver of stolen
goodsY Are we to be driven to the cOnclu


sion that he actually lives in a bowl We
| have all looked for fortune in the grounds of
q tea-cup, but Doom in propria persona in
bowl is an unlocked view of the subject, and
a perplexing one. Granting all that, however,
how could any fowl be reasonably expected to
run round the rim of it, carrying stars


These difficulties thicken on us, when we
are led to contemplate Time as a grim Old
| lion mumbling a tomb in his teeth, and a
queen who was not queen, but a star weep
ing a tear which was not tear but diamond,
into his mouth. When we lay down Jean
Ingelow and look at home our pcrplexity
becomes distraction. The HugO-Train dialect
has become epidemic; our women, who are the
first to catch a bad or good thing, are
beginning to chatter it one by one. One,
formerly notably prominent among us for her
power on the compact utterance of sound
thoughts, pictured her husband to us last week
as a heart of flame flung against q century OF
ice an awkward situation which, we judge,
must have surprised the old gentleman no
little; and herself as a lasso binding
Philadelphia audience of broad -brimmed
Quakers like a trapped buffalo. Now, public
speakers are surely open to criticism and
remonstrance, but we venture to make neither.
We only wish to know definitely if this thing
is to be permanent. Are we all to talk
hcnceforth in tropes and figures Are we to
eat raw beef like Dryden, on going to bed, To
bring our brains into conditionf Must We
bring up our children on hashish and absinthe9
Is Fancy, for all of us, no longer to busy her
self with true sincere passions and emotions,
but to run round the rim of Doom and dry
memorial grass of MarathonP Or are we tn
take our stand on the old ground of true
criticism and warn our poets and women who
are bewildered by the glare of Swinburne
and IIugo's popularity, that the idea which
comes to us bedecked with cheap frippery and
spangles has always betaken itself to such con
cealment from Il sense of its own want Of