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Jos. M. Metcalf. I think that as a writer you possess considerable merits. Whether you excel most in prose or poetry, I shall not undertake to decide. Your prose writings, as far as I have seen them, certainly exhibit a considerable and very commendable degree both of vigor and excellence of thought, and of correctness and terseness of style. They show also, in my opinion, what, in a young writer, is especially valuable, a capability of improvement. They show a vigorous and well disciplined mind, capable of active thought, and also of acquiring the power or faculty of illustrating and moulding that thought, forming it into those shapes and sounds of strength and beauty which make it truly valuable. What you most need appears to me to be a more extended knowledge of general literature, a fuller acquaintance with the most valuable writers. -- a study of them, not merely either as a seeker of thought, of ideas, but an acquaintance with such writings as mediums of thought, as styles. You perhaps lack, in ease & beauty of expression, in aptness and power of illustration. It is not the mere statement of fact or arguments which is especially valuable; it is rather the dressing up, comparing and illustrating those facts and arguments so as to make them not please the ear alone, but excite the attention, while they please the mind, take it captive by a sort of insensible power which -- There I have forgot what I was last writing. Your practical productions, I suppose those pieces in your last were yours, I should think had the same excellence & same defects defect which I have mentioned above. By the way I am no judge of poetry, and entirely unable to criticise it. I did once try to write verses

Written upside down across the top: I had a letter from Milo informing me of the great event, birth of a "son and heir", as Lucy has it, to the "house of Rich." Lucy has been recently in Bangor. What think of her health.