'
But among the roses of his criticisms we look in vain for thorns. In
style, it is true, these essays are halting and unequal. His adoption of
the colloquial form for the expression of opinion to the public has
never seemed to us remarkably felicitous, in spite of its venerable
precedents. Where his imagery becomes lofty and his flow of thought
should be continuous, we are indignant at its sudden arrest, and
involuntarily devote the intruder to a temporary bungalow in Timbuctoo.
It is refreshing to lose the moony Tennysonian sensuousness which
induced, with Lowell's vigorous imagination, the blank artificiality of
style which was visible in several of his early poems. There was a
tendency, too, to the Byzantine liberty of gilding the bronze of our
common words, a palpable longing after the _ississimus_ of Latin
adjectives, of whose softness our muscular and variegated language will
not admit. Mr. Lowell's Sonnets, too, we could wish unwritten, not from
any defect in their construction, but from a fancied want of
congeniality between their character and his own. In spite of its
Italian origin, the sonnet always seems to demand the severest classical
outlines, both in spirit and expression, calm and steadfastly flowing
without ripples or waves, a poem cut in the marble of stately cadences
that imprison some vast and divine thought.
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