This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...of its author. This inquiry has but resulted in the confirmation of our previous opinion; and we now hesitate not to say that no man in America has been more shamefully over-estimated than the one who forms the subject of this article. We say shamefully; for, though a better day is now dawning upon our literary interests, and a laudation so indiscriminate will never be sanctioned again--the laudation in this instance, as it stands upon record, must be regarded as a laughable although bitter satire upon the general zeal, accuracy, and independence of that critical spirit which, but a few years ago, pervaded and degraded the land. In what we shall say, we have no intention of ' Geraldine,' ' Athenia of Damascus,' and ' Miscellaneous Poems.' By Rufus Dawes. Published by Samuel Colman, New York. being profound. Here is a case in which anything like analysis would be utterly thrown away. Our purpose (which is truth) will be more fully answered by an unvarnished exposition of fact. It appears to us, indeed, that in excessive generalisation lies one of the leading errors of a criticism employed upon a poetical literature so immature as our own. We rhapsodise rather than discriminate; delighting more in the dictation or discussion of a principle than in its particular and methodical application. The wildest and most erratic effusion of the Muse, not utterly worthless, will be found more or less indebted to method for whatever of value it embodies; and we shall discover, conversely, that, in any analysis of even the wildest effusion, we labour without method only to labour without end. There is little reason for that vagueness of comment which, of late, we so pertinaciously affect, and which has been brought into fashion, no doubt, through the proverbial...