infant. His father, failing in business as a merchant, removed first to Tennessee, and then to Mississippi. While in Tennessee he volunteered and held a commission in the army of Jackson (in Coffee's brigade of mounted men), which scourged the Creeks and Seminoles after the massacre of Fort Mims. Our author, left to the care of a grandmother, remained in Charleston, where he received an education which circumstances rendered exceedingly limited. He was denied a classical training, but such characters stand little in need of the ordinary aids of the schoolmaster, and, with indomitable application, he has not only stored his mind with the richest literature, but has received an unsolicited tribute to his diligence and acquisitions, in the degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred upon him by the respectable University of Alabama.

At first it was designed that he should study medicine, but his inclination led him to the law. He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina when twenty-one, practised for a brief period, and became part proprietor of a daily newspaper, which, taking ground against nullification, ruined him—swallowing up a small maternal property, and involving him in a heavy debt which hung upon and embarrassed him for a long time after. In 1832, he first visited the North, where he published Atalantis. Martin Faber followed in 1834, and periodically the long catalogue of his subsequent performances.

There are few writers who have exhibited such versatility of powers, combined with vigor, originality of copious and independent ideas, and that faculty of condensation which frequently by a single pregnant line suggests an expansive train of reflection. As a poet, he unites high imaginative powers with metaphysical thought—by which we mean that large discourse of reason which generalizes, and which seizes the universal, and perceives its relations to individual phenomena of nature and psychology. His poems abound in appropriate, felicitous, and original similes. His keen and fresh perception of nature, furnishes him with beautiful pictures, the truthfulness and clearness of which are admirably presented in the lucid language with which they are painted, and, in his expression of deep personal feelings, we find a noble union of sad emotion and manliness of tone. He draws from a full treasury of varied experience, active thought, close observation, just and original reflection, and a spirit which has drank deeply and lovingly from the gushing founts of nature. His inspiration is often kindled by the sunny and luxuriant scenery of the beautiful region to which he was born, and besides the freshness and glow which this imparts to his descriptive poetry, it makes him emphatically the poet of the South. Not only has he sung her peculiar natural aspects with the appreciation of a poet and the feeling of a son, but he has a claim to her gratitude for having enshrined in melodious verse her ancient and fading traditions.

Mr. Simms commenced writing verses at a very early period. At eight years of age he rhymed the achievements of the American navy in the last war with Great Britain. At fifteen, he was a scribbler of fugitive verse for the newspapers, and before he was twenty-one he had published two collections of miscellaneous poetry, which his better taste and prudence subsequently induced him to suppress. Two other volumes of poems followed, in a more ambitious vein, which are also now beyond the reach of the collector, and were issued while he was engaged in the occupations of a newspaper editor and a student and practitioner of law. These volumes were followed by Atalantis, a poem which has been highly praised by the best critics of our time.

As a prose writer, his vigorous, copious, and original ideas are clothed in a manly, flexible, pure, and lucid style. His first production, Martin Faber, succeeded Atalantis. It was the initial of a series of tales, which we may describe as of the metaphysical and passionate or moral imaginative class. These, with two or more volumes of shorter tales, are numerous, and perhaps among the most original of his writings. They comprise Martin Faber and other Tales, Castle Dismal, Confessions, or the Blind Heart, Carle Werner and other Tales, and the Wigwam and Cabin. There are other compositions belonging to this category, and, it may be, not inferior in merit to any of these, which have appeared in periodicals and annuals, but have not yet been collected by their author.

The first novel of Mr. Simms belonged to our border and domestic history. This was Guy Rivers; and to the same class he has contributed largely, in Richard Hurdis, Border Beagles, Beauchampe, Helen Halsey, and other productions. In historical romance, he has written The Yemassee, the Damsel of Darien, Pelayo, and Count Julian, each in two volumes. The scenes of the two last are laid in Europe. His romances founded on our revolutionary history, are The Partisan, Mellichampe, and The Kinsmen. In biography and history, he is the author of The Life of Marion; The Life of Captain John Smith, founder of Virginia; a History of South Carolina; a Geography of the same State; a Life of Bayard; and a Life of General Greene.

It is impossible to enumerate accurately his poetical productions, as many, published in periodicals, have never been printed together; but the collection of his poems now in course of publication at Charleston, will supply a desideratum to the lovers of genuine American letters and art. Atalantis, Southern Passages and Pictures, Donna Florida, Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, Areytos, Lays of the Palmetto, The Cassique of Accube and other Poems, Norman Maurice, and The City of the Silent, constituting distinct volumes, are, however, well known.

The orations of Mr. Simms, which have been published, comprise one delivered before the Erosophic Society of the Alabama University, entitled, The Social Principle—the true source of National Permanence; another before the town council and citizens of Aiken, South Carolina, on the Fourth of July, 1844, entitled, The Sources of American Independence; and one delivered before literary societies in Georgia, entitled Self-development.

As a writer of criticism, Mr. Simms is known by numerous articles contributed to periodicals; by a review of Mrs. Trolloppe, in the American Quarterly, and of Miss Martineau in the Southern Literary Messenger (both subsequently republished in pamphlets, and received with general approval), as well as by many others of equal merit—a selection from which, wholly devoted to American topics, has been published in two volumes, under the title of Views and Reviews in American History and Fiction.

Scarcely a production of Mr. Simms has been unmarked by a cordial reception from the best literary journals; and the praise of the London Metropolitan and Examiner—the former when under the conduct of Thomas Campbell, the latter of Albany Fonblanque—was generously bestowed, especially on Atalantis; of which the Metropolitan said, "What has the most disappointed us is, that it is so thoroughly English: the construction, the imagery, and, with a very few exceptions, the idioms of the language, are altogether founded on our own scholastic and classical models;" and Fonblanque, in reviewing a tale by Simms, entitled, Murder will Out, said, "But all we intended to say about the originality displayed in the volume has been forgotten in the interest of the last story of the book, Murder will Out. This is an American ghost story, and, without exception, the best we ever read. Within our limits, we could not, with any justice, describe the whole course of its incident, and it is in that, perhaps, its most marvellous effect lies. It is the rationale of the whole matter of such appearances, given with fine philosophy and masterly interest. We never read any thing more perfect or more consummately told."

But the testimony of the