it, a proposition
sufficiently absurd--yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly
Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly
considered--there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a volume is
concerned which has so continuously elicited admiration from these
saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of
physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of
the sublime--but no man is impressed after this fashion by the material
grandeur of even "The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies have not
instructed us to be so impressed by it. _As yet_, they have not
_insisted_ on our estimating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollok by
the pound--but what else are we to _infer_ from their continual prating
about "sustained effort"? If, by "sustained effort," any little
gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for the
effort,--if this indeed be a thing commendable,--but let us forbear
praising the epic on the effort's account. It is to be hoped that
common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of
Art, rather by the impression it makes--by the effect it produces--than
by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of
"sustained effort" which had been found necessary in effecting the
impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius
quite another; nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound
them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just
urging, will be received as self-evident. In the mean time, by being
generally condemned as falsities they will not be essentially damaged
as truths.

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief.
Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A _very_ short
poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces
a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down
of the stamp upon the wax. Beranger has wrought innumerable things,
pungent and spirit-stirring; but, in general, they have been too
imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public opinion, and
thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be
whistled down the wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a
poem--in keeping it out of the popular view--is afforded by the
following exquisite little serenade:--

I arise from dreams of thee
In the f