JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. [Born, 1795.] MR. PERCIVAL was born in Berlin, near Hart- | he intimates that its highest office is the creation ford, in Connecticut, on the fifteenth of September, 1795. His father, an intelligent physician, died in 1807, and he was committed to the care of a guardian. His instruction continued to be carefully attended to, however, and when fifteen years of age he entered Yale College. The condition of his health, which had been impaired by too close application to study, rendered necessary a temporary removal from New Haven, but after an absence of about a year he returned, and in 1815 graduated with the reputation of being the first scholar of his class. He subsequently entered the Yale Medical School, and in 1820 received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. of beauty, and that there are certain unchanging principles of taste, to which all works of art, all "linked sounds of most elaborate music," must be conformable, to give more than a feeble and transient pleasure. He began to write verses at an early age, and in his fourteenth year is said to have produced a satire in aim and execution not unlike Mr. BRYANT'S "Embargo." In the last year of his college life he composed a dramatic piece to be spoken by some of the students at the annual commencement, which was afterwards enlarged and printed under the title of "Zamor, a Tragedy." He did not appear as an author before the public, however, until 1821, when he published at New Haven, with some minor poems, the first part of his "Prometheus," which attracted considerable attention, and was favourably noticed in an article by Mr. EDWARD EVERETT, in the North American Re view. In 1822 he published two volumes of miscellaneous poems and prose writings under the title of "Clio," the first at Charleston, South Carolina, and the second at New Haven. They contain "Consumption," "The Coral Grove," and other pieces which have been regarded as among the finest of his works. In the same year they were followed by an oration, previously delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, « On Some of the Moral and Political truths Derivable from History," and the second part of "Prometheus." The whole of this poem contains nearly four hundred stanzas in the Spenserian measure. An edition of his principal poetical writings, embracing a few original pieces, appeared soon after in New York and was reprinted in London. In 1824 Dr. PERCIVAL was appointed an assistant-surgeon in the army, and stationed at West Point with orders to act as Professor of Chemistry in the Military Academy. He had supposed that the duties of the office were so light as to allow him abundant leisure for the pursuit of his favourite studies, and when undeceived by the experience of a few months, he resigned his commission and went to Boston, where he passed in various literary avocations the greater portion of the year 1825. In this period he wrote his poem on the mind, in which Early in 1827 he published in New York the third volume of "Clio," and was afterwards engaged nearly two years in superintending the printing of the first quarto edition of Dr. WEBSTER's American Dictionary, a service for which he was eminently qualified by an extensive and critical acquaintance with ancient and modern languages. His next work was a new translation of MALTEBRUN's Geography, from the French, which was not completed until 1843. From his boyhood Dr. PERCIVAL has been an earnest and constant student, and there are few branches of learning with which he is not familiar. Perhaps there is not in the country a man of more thorough and comprehensive scholarship. In 1835 he was employed by the government of Connecticut to make a geological survey of that state, which he had already very carefully explored on his own account. His Report on the subject, which is very able and elaborate, was printed in an octavo volume of nearly five hundred pages, in 1842. While engaged in these duties he published poetical translations from the Polish, Russian, Servian, Bohemian, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages, and wrote a considerable portion of "The Dream of Day and other Poems," which appeared at New Haven in 1843. This is his last volume; it embraces more than one hundred and fifty varieties of measure, and its contents generally show his familiar acquaintance with the poetical art, which in his preface he observes, "requires a mastery of the riches and niceties of a language; a full knowledge of the science of versification, not only in its own pe culiar principles of rhythm and melody, but in its relation to elocution and music, with that delicate natural perception and that facile execution which render the composition of verse hardly less easy than that of prose; a deep and quick insight into the nature of man, in all his varied faculties, intellectual and emotive; a clear and full perception of the power and beauty of nature, and of all its various harmonies with our own thoughts and feelings; and, to gain a high rank in the present age, wide and exact attainments in literature and art in general. Nor is the possession of such faculties and attainments all that is necessary; but such a sustained and self-collected state of mind as gives one the mastery of his genius, and at the same time presents to him the ideal as an immediate reality, not as a remote conception." 219 There are few men who possess these high qualities in a more eminent degree than PERCIVAL; but with the natural qualities of a great poet, and his comprehensive and thorough learning, he lacks the executive skill, or declines the labour, without which few authors gain immortality. He has considerable imagination, remarkable command of language, and writes with a facility rarely equalled; but when his thoughts are once committed to the page, he shrinks from the labour of revising, correcting, and condensing. He remarks in one of his prefaces, that his verse is "very far from bearing the marks of the file and the burnisher," and that he likes to see "poetry in the full ebullition of feeling and fancy, foaming up with the spirit of life, and glowing with the rainbows of a glad inspiration." If by this he means that a poet should reject the slow and laborious process by which a polished excellence is attained, very few who have acquired good reputations will agree with him CONCLUSION OF THE DREAM OF A A SPIRIT Stood before me, half unseen, Such as from mortal lips had never flow'd, It bow'd the listener's heart-anon it glow'd Intensely fervent, then like wood-notes thrown On the chance winds, in airy lightness rodeNow swell'd like ocean surge, now pausing fell Like the last murmur of a muffled bell. "Lone pilgrim through life's gloom," thus spake the shade, "Hold on with steady will along thy way: Of spirit aye is thine, be that thy stay: Poor are the largest stores of sordid gain, The world has never bound thee with its chain; The future age will know thee-yea, even now Hearts beat and tremble at thy bidding, tears Speakest, and each remotest valley hears: Hold on, glad spirits company thy path They minister to thee, though all unseen: Even when the tempest lifts its voice in wrath, Thou joyest in its strength; the orient sheen A holy charm that soothes thee, like the green Each longing for a fair and blest to-morrow, Joyously to him, thou canst fitly borrow The whole in its embrace-before it lie Fields of the present and of destiny: The spirit's alpine peaks; mid snow towers there With lowlier hearts in valleys green and fair,— On such who would subdue thee; thou shalt raise Reveal the secrets nature has unveil'd thee; Sorrow and gloom thy nature has entail'd thee, |