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The writer would not care to assert that Father Ryan's poems possess
the majestic grandeur and elaborate finish of the great masters,
whose productions have withstood the severe criticism of ages,
and still stand as the highest models of poetic excellence.
His style is not that of Milton, who soared aloft into the eternal mansions
and opened their portals to our astonished and admiring gaze,
picturing to us "God in His first frown and man in his first prevarication."
Nor is it that of Shakespeare, whose deep and subtle mind
fathomed "the dark abysses of the human heart," and laid bare and naked
the varied doings of mankind! Nor is it, least of all,
that of Dante, who, with even greater boldness than Milton,
plunged into the impenetrable depths of the infernal regions,
whose appalling misery and never-ending woe he has described
in words of fearful and awe-inspiring grandeur. Neither is his style
like unto that of any one of the several leading American poets,
so far as their works are known to the writer, though some have said
that his style resembles that of the highly gifted and lamented Poe.
The writer will not undertake to say what place Father Ryan
will occupy in the Temple of Fame, though he believes that
an enlightened public sentiment would accord to him a high position.
The chief merits of his poems would seem to be the simple sublimity
of his verses; the rare and chaste beauty of his conceptions;
the richness and grandeur of his thoughts, and their easy, natural flow;
the refined elegance and captivating force of the terms he employs
as the medium through which he communicates those thoughts
and the weird fancy which throws around them charms peculiarly their own.
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