s
acquainted with Mr. Heavysege, and whose account of his patience, his
quiet energy, and serene faith in his poetic calling strongly interested
us. It was but a few hours before our departure; there was a furious
snow-storm; yet the gentleman ordered a sleigh, and we drove at once to
a large machine-shop, in the outskirts of the city. Here, amid the noise
of hammers, saws, and rasps, in a great grimy hall smelling of oil and
iron-dust, we found the poet at his work-bench. A small, slender man,
with a thin, sensitive face, bright blonde hair, and eyes of that
peculiar blue which burns warm, instead of cold, under excitement,--in
the few minutes of our interview the picture was fixed, and remains so.
His manner was quiet, natural, and unassuming: he received us with the
simple good-breeding which a gentleman always possesses, whether we find
him on a throne or beside an anvil. Not a man to assert his claim
loudly, or to notice injustice or neglect by a single spoken word; but
one to take quietly success or failure, in the serenity of a mood
habitually untouched by either extreme.

In that one brief first and last interview, we discovered, at least, the
simple, earnest sincerity of the man's nature,--a quality too rare, even
among authors. When we took our seat in the train for Rouse's Point, we
opened the volume of "Saul." The first part was finished as we
approached St. Albans; the second at Vergennes; and twilight was falling
as we closed the book between Bennington and Troy. Whatever crudities of
expression, inaccuracies of rhythm, faults of arrangement, and
violations of dramatic law met us from time to time, the earnest purpose
of the writer carried us over them all. The book has a fine flavor of
the Elizabethan age,--a sustained epic rather than dramatic character,
an affluence of quaint, original images; yet the construction was
frequently that of a school-boy. In opulence and maturity of ideas, and
poverty of artistic skill, the work stands almost alone in literature.
What little we have learned of the history of the author suggests an
explanation of this peculiarity. Never was so much genuine power so long
silent.

"Saul" is yet so little known, that a descriptive outline of the poem
will be a twice-told tale to very few readers of the "Atlantic." The
author strictly follows the history of the renowned Hebrew king, as it
is related in I Samuel, commencing with the tenth chapter, but divides
the subject into th