True, we had the famous 'Hasty Pudding' of Joel Barlow, the 'Terrible
Tractoration' of Fessenden, and Halleck's 'Fanny,' but these were mere
_jeux_, gallant little histories, over which we laughed and _voila le
tout!_ And our Astolfo, Holmes, flying by on his winged horse, sends
down now and then
'His arrowes an elle long
With pecocke well ydight,'
which we gather, and our fair dames weave into brilliant fans that
flutter and snap in many a gay assembly, and whose myriad eyes of blue
and purple smile with irresistible mirthfulness into the most hostile
countenances. Still Holmes apparently likes best the unrestrained
freedom of prose. His genius delights in periods finished after its own
heart,--pyramidal, trapezoidian, isoscelesian, rhomboidical. But
Lowell's genius is infinitely pliable, accommodating itself without
hesitation to the arbitrary requirements of the Sieur Spondee, and
laughing in the face of the halting Dactyl. His Birdofredom could, we
doubt not, sail majestically in the clouds of a stately hexameter, make
the aristocratic Alexandrine cry for quarter, and excel the old
Trouveurs in the _Rime equivoquee_. From the quiet esteem which his
early poems and essays had won for him, he leaped at once into the high
tide of popularity, and down its stream
'Went sailing with vast celerity,'
with the 'Biglow Papers' for his sail.
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