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Ward

and uneąual, but occasionally very brilliant writer, it had consid-erable circulation in the north.”^{1 2 3 4 5} Similarły, in an essay on “American Poetry,” pubłished for the same magazine in July of 1850, Bristed laments the fact that “in poetry alone” Americans “are still palpably inferior,” referring to the “utilitarian character of the people” and the fact that “poetry doesn ’t pay.” Americans have not received the type of education that produces great poets, nor have they cultivated “the philo-sophic.” Then, citing Rufus W. Griswold’s anthology of American poetry {The Poets and Poetry in America), Bristed discusses Longfellow and Poe.

Take out some half dozen from the ninety and morę ten-ants ofMr. Griswolds poetical menagerie, and the verses of the rest might be shaken up promiscuously and re-dis-tributed among them without its making a difference. [...] Poe and Longfellow perhaps exhibit the most originality of thought, and marked expresssion in language, of any whom the volume contains; yet the former often shows the direct influence of Tennyson, Miss Barrett, and the Keats ’ school generally, while the latter’s ąuaint and pretty vers-es are occasionally redolent of the earlier English sacred poets.¹⁰

The two articles in ąuestion show something of Bristed’s capaci-ty for irony and his astute ability to adapt his writing to the read-ership of the periodical to which he was contributing.

118

1

The article, “The Periodical Literaturę of America,” was reprinted by Bristed in vol-

2

ume three, 14-24, of his collection of his writing, Pieces of a Broken-Down Critic,

3

Picked Up by Himself 4 vols. in 1 (Baden-Baden: Scatzniovsky, 1858-1859), here-

4

after cited as Pieces. The ąuotation is from p. 21.

5

¹⁰ Pieces, III, 29; the entire article runs from 25-30.