Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/190

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
168
The Southern

Sherwood" run on; but a new edition of Rev. Dr. Ruffner's "Judith Bensadi" and its sequel has been called forth. There is much good essaying and reviewing. Mr. Thompson uses both Sigma and his own signature. He has a poetical retrospect of 1849; a dirge for the funeral of President Taylor; and Lines to Mrs. L. G. R., on her marriage. He had heard the famous Swedish Nightingale in New York and wishes her to delight the people of Richmond as she had him. So he invokes his Muse to petition both her and her P. T. Barnum to come hither. They did come and this writer paid $144.00 for 12 tickets, for himself and some friends to hear her.

When the works of Poe came out in the edition (1850) of Willis, Lowell and Griswold, Mr. Thompson merely expressed his great disappointment. But the next month, during his absence, a review of that same edition got into the hands of his printers and he did not see it until it had gone through the press. It "lambasted" the whole editorial trio. Thompson inserted a note, in which he largely eased off Willis and Griswold, but let the flagellation remain, as deserved, on the back of Mr. Lowell.

Mr. Wm. Burke, a gentlemanly and scholarly teacher of a good many bright young men of Virginia, translates into excellent verse three books of Virgil's Æneid. He also translated, in sim-