The year has been fertile in American verse.  How much Poetry it has produced is a question into which we do not care to enter.  It 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 moods than his merry ones.  He is to be judged by both, and the sum of both—­if the critic is able to add it up—­is the poet.  As far as he is revealed in his book, that is, but no further.  There is such a thing as Dramatic Poetry, as some critics are aware, and there is such a thing as Representative Poetry, as few critics are aware.  The former deals with the passions, the latter with those shadowy and evanescent sensations which we call feelings.  Mr. Winter is not a dramatic poet, but he is, in his own way, a representative poet.  His poem “Lethe” represents one set of feelings; “The White Flag” another; and “Love’s Queen” another.  We like the last best.  For, while we believe the others to be equally genuine, they do not impress us as being the best expression of his genius.  What we feel most after finishing his volume, what seems to us most characteristic of his poetry, is loveliness—­the tender loveliness that lingers in the mind after we have seen the sun-set of a quiet summer evening, or after we have heard music on a dreamy summer night.  If this poetic melancholy be treason, the critics may make the most of it.  Mr. Winter has nothing to fear.  He has the authority of the greatest poets with which to defend himself, and confute the critics.