not intending this as very extravagant praise....
Mr. Halleck, in the apparent public estimate, maintains a somewhat
better position than that to which, on absolute grounds, he is
entitled. There is something, too, in the bonhomie of certain of his
compositions--something altogether distinct from poetic merit--which
has aided to establish him; and much also must be admitted on the
score of his personal popularity, which is deservedly great. With all
these allowances, however, there will still be found a large amount of
poetical fame to which he is fairly entitled.... Personally he is a
man to be admired, respected, but more especially beloved. His address
has all the captivating bonhomie which is the leading feature of his
poetry, and, indeed, of his whole moral nature. With his friends he
is all ardor, enthusiasm and cordiality, but to the world at large he
is reserved, shunning society, into which he is seduced only with
difficulty, and upon rare occasions. The love of solitude seems to
have become with him a passion.

[Footnote 8: Charles Sprague, born in Boston in 1791, was known in his
own day as "the American Pope."]

Macaulay has obtained a reputation which, altho deservedly great, is
yet in a remarkable measure undeserved. The few who regard him merely
as a terse, forcible and logical writer, full of thought, and
abounding in original views, often sagacious and never otherwise than
admirably exprest--appear to us precisely in the right. The many who
look upon him as not only all this, but as a comprehensive and
profound thinker, little prone to error, err essentially themselves.
The source of the general mistake lies in a very singular
consideration--yet in one upon which we do not remember ever to have
heard a word of comment. We allude to a tendency in the public mind
toward logic for logic's sake--a liability to confound the vehicle
with the conveyed--an aptitude to be so dazzled by the luminousness
with which an idea is set forth as to mistake it for the luminousness
of the idea itself. The error is one exactly analogous with that which
leads the immature poet to think himself sublime wherever he is
obscure, because obscurity is a source of the sublime--thus
confounding obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity.
In the case of Macaulay--and we may say, _en passant_, of our own
Channing--we assent to what he says too often because we so very
clearly understand what it is that he intends to sa