has witnessed the publication of two volumes by Mr. Bret Harte;
of one volume by Mr. John Hay; and of one volume by Mr. William
Winter. The title of Mr. Winter's volume, "My Witness," (J.R.
Osgood & Co.) is a happy one. It is not every American writer who
can afford to place his verse on the stand as his witness; and it
is not every American writer whose verse will substantiate what
he is so desirous of proving, viz., that he is an American poet.

Mr. Winter is not without faults--what American writer is?--but
he endeavors to write simply. The virtue of simplicity--always a
rare one, and never so rare as at present--he possesses. We have
Tennyson, who is not simple; we have Browning, who is not simple;
we have Swinburne, who is not simple; and we have Mr. Joaquin
Miller, who is not simple.

Mr. Winter's book has its defects--among which we observe an
occasional lapse into Latinity--but with all its defects it is a
very _poetical_ book. Mr. Winter reminds us, more than any recent
American poet, of the English poets of the reigns of Charles the
First and Second. He has, at his best, all their graces of style,
and he has, at all times, the grace of Purity, to which they laid
no claim. With the exception of Carew (whom, we dare say, he has
never read), Mr. Winter is the daintiest and sweetest of amatory
poets. He has the fancy of Carew, without his artificiality; he
has Carew's sweetness, without his grossness of suggestion.

There is a tinge of sadness in some of Mr. Winter's poems, and
the critics, we suppose, will censure him for it. If so, they
will be in the wrong. The poet has the right to express his
moods, sad or merry, and he is no more to be judged by his sad