ide all the flaunt and tawdriness of her
similes and figures, and then strive to express a lively emotion or an
interesting expression, with the simplest words, first in prose--and
_then_ in verse. What she has written should then be carefully thought
over--every line and word tested, and no inaccuracy in poetical
perceptions, no oblique expression, and no metrical defect be suffered
to remain."

_Authors and Books._

A new German work, entitled _Klopstock in Zurich from the years 1730 to
1751_, gives quite a new portrait of the poet of the Messias, who, both
by the time of his appearance and by the dignity of his theme, is held
as the patriarch of German poetry. In this sprightly little volume the
mystic halo with which an exaggerated homage has invested the head of
the genial young German rolls away, and we behold a pleasant fellow in
gay summer costume, floating about upon the blue lake of Zurich,
surrounded by a circle of fair and admiring votaries, to whom he chants
strains from his immortal poem, and reaps a harvest of kisses in return.
We behold a chivalrous equestrian dashing through the still streets of
old Zurich, draining unreasonable depths of beer with wild students,
biting glass, and swallowing coal, until the old Bodmer with whom he was
living--a reverential admirer of the great Prophet of the Messias, and
in whose imagination Klopstock sat separate in a godlike and passionless
serenity--was bitterly grieved by these earthly experiences of a Greek
rather than of a Christian divinity, complained, remonstrated, rebuked,
until the jovial poet was forced to leave the good Bodmer's house, and
betake himself to Rape's, with whom he sat in silken hose, and
speculated upon the universe. It is always pleasant to hear these human
facts of the heroes of fame and imagination. Few things remove
Washington farther from the general sympathy than the unbending
austerity of hue in which his mental portrait is always colored. Why
should our great men, whose humanity makes them dearer, go so solemnly
and sadly through all posterity? Burns could draw the tired hostlers of
village inns from their beds to listen open-mouthed and open-hearted to
his wondrous and witching stories. Shakspeare shall always have stolen
sheep, even though De Quincy proves by splendid and resonant reasoning
that he could never have done it. Raphael shall have been a warm-blooded
man, spite of our cold-blooded speculations upon his saintship,