Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[78] peculiarities of English poetry as compared with that of the southern nations of Europe. He gives examples to show that the English poets excel their rivals in their descriptions of morning and evening, this being due, he thinks, to their longer twilights in both directions. On the other hand, the greater dreaminess and more abundant figurative language of southern nations are qualities which he attributes to their soft, voluptuous climate, where the body lies at ease and suffers the dream fancy ‘to lose itself in idle reverie and give a form to the wind and a spirit to the shadow and the leaf.’ He then sums up his argument.

We repeat, then, that we wish our native poets would give a more national character to their writings. In order to effect this, they have only to write more naturally, to write from their own feelings and impressions, from the influence of what they see around them, and not from any preconceived notions of what poetry ought to be, caught by reading many books and imitating many models. This is peculiarly true in descriptions of natural scenery. In these, let us have no more sky-larks and nightingales. For us they only warble in books. A painter might as well introduce an elephant or a rhinoceros into a New England landscape. [This comes, we must remember, from the young poet who