Whitman Town (part 1 of 3)

Voice Fly Like

8UICKSAND Years 680 thers may praise what they like . 580 Thick-sprinkled Bunting . . . 680 Bathed in war's perfume . . . 681 O Captain 1 my Captain I . . . 581 When lilacs last in the door-tabd speaks A various language; for his g^yer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides « Into his darker musings, with a mUd And healing sympathy, that steals away

> This, the first great poem written in America, was published in the Nofih Amerietm Review for September, 1817, vol. V. pp. 338-340. Bryant's father had found it, together with the * Fragment,' later known as ' Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' among other papers in a desk ; and had immediately taken it to Boston and shown it to his friend Willard Phillips, one of the editors of the North American Review. When Phillips read the poem to his fellow editors, one of them, Richard H. Dana, exclaimed, * Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon ; no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses ; ' and though soon persuaded that the verses really were by an American, the editors still believed that ' Thanatopsis ' must have been .written by the young poet's father. Phillips says in a letter to Bryant, December, 1817 : * Your " Fragment " was exceedingly liked here. . . . . All the best judges say that it and your father's '' Thanatopsis " are the very best poetry that has been published in this country.'

It was preceded by four stanzas of four lines each, which did not properly belong to the poem, but had been found with it. The beginning and ending of the poem as it now stands were first given in the volume of poems published by Bryant in 1821.

shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again. And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods - rivers that move 4« In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured

Chief American Poets The Yellow Violet

* Fiffuras at the left, in italics, give the date of writing ; those at the right, in roman, the date of publication. For Bryant^B poems the dates are taken from Godwin's standard eoition of the Poetical Works.

Mr. Godwin states in his note to * Thanatopsis ' that the poem was written in the summer of 1811, which would make Bryant only sixteen years old at the time, not seventeen, as Mr. (Godwin himself elsewhere sajn Bryant's own account of the matter is given in a lette of 1866, which Mr. Godwin quotes : * I cannot give you any information of the occasion which suggested to my mind the idea of my poem ** Thanatopsis." It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old - I have not how at hand the memorandums [«ic] which would enable me to be precise - and I believe it was compoaed in my solitary rambles in the woods.'

William Cullen Bryant Inscription For The Entrance To A Wood

which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares. To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood And view the haunts of Nature. The calm roof Of green and stirring branches is alive And musical with birds, that sing and sport In wantonness of spirit; while l^Iow The squirrel, with raised paws and form its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks. Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoioe In its own being. Softly tread the marge. Lest from her midway perch thou scare the

> The poem, m first pabliahed in the North AmerU eon JUinetD for September, 1817, under the title * A Fragment,' ended at this point. The last lines were added in the first edition of the Poenu^ in 1821.

* On the origin of this poem, see Gk)d win's Life qf Bryant^ toI. i, pp. 143, 144. Eiartley Coleridge onoe called it *the best short poem in the E^lish language ; ' and Matthew Arnold was inclined to agree witii his judgment. See an account of the incident in Bigelow's J4fe 0/ BryanU^ note to pp. ^, 43.

Green River 1

When breezes are soft and skies are fair, I steal an hour from study and care. And hie me away to the woodland scene. Where wanders the stream with waters of the hill. The quivering glimmer of sun and rill With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown. Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. Oh, loveliest there the spring days come. With blossoms, and binis, and wild-bees' hum; 30 glide, Beautinil stream ! by the village side; But windest away from haimts of men, To quiet valley and shaded glen; And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill. Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still ; 30 Lonely - save when, by thy rippling tides, From thicket to thicket the angler glides, Or the simpler comes, with basket and book. For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me. To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee, Still - save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed. And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur of fairy shout, 40 From dawn to the blush of another day, Like traveller singing along his way.

clings. And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings. But I wish that fate had left me free To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 50 Till the eating cares of earth should depart, And the peace of the scene pass into my heart;

Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud - I often come to this quiet place. To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, 60 And gaze upon thee in silent dream. For in thy lonely and lovely stream An image of that calm life appears That won my heart in my greener years. 1819. 1820.

A Winter Piece

The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit - when the unsteady path Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore Their windings, were a calm society 10 with ice, While the slant sun of February pours Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach ! The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps, And the broad arching portals of the g^ye Welcome thy entering. Look 1 the massy bud With amethyst and topaz - and the place Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night, 80 And fades not in the glory of the sun; - Where crystal columns send forth slender

And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams Are just set free, and milder suns melt off The plashy snow, save only the firm drift In the deep glen or the close shade of eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at - Startling the loiterer in the naked g^ves With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and g^en leaves is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds say To the grim power, The world hath slandered thee And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy brow They place an iron crown, and call thee king Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world. Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair. The loved, the good - that breathest on the again. And thou from some I love wilt take a life Dear to me as my own. Tet while the spell Is on my spirit, and I talk with thee 20 In sight of all thy trophies, face to face. Meet is it that my voice should utter forth Thy nobler triumphs; I will teach the world To thank thee. Who are thine accusers ?

The oonqneior of nations, walks the world, And it 18 changed beneath his feet, and lUl Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm - Thou, while his head is loftiest and his heart Blasphemes, imae;ininghis ownri^ht hand 40 Almighty, thou dost set thy sudden grasp Upon him, and the links of that stroi^ chain Which bound mankind are crumbled; thou her tribes Grather within their ancient bounds again. Else had the mighty of the olden time, Nimrod, Sesostns, or the youth who feigned His birth from Libyan Ammon, smitten yet The nations with a rod of iron, and driven Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost scourge Drop lifeless, and the pitiless heart is cold. Thou too dost purge from earth its horrible And old idolatries; - from the proud fanes Each to his grave their priests go out, till

Is left to teach their worship; then the fires Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss O'ercreeps their altars; the fallen images Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns. Chanted by Reeling multitudes, the wind Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all The laws that God or man has made, and sold His conscience to preserve a worthless life. Even while he hugs himself on his escape, Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length. Thy steps overtake lum, and there is no time For parley, nor will bribes unclench thy grasp. Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long Ere his last hour. And when the reveller, Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on, And strains each nerve, and clears the path of life 90 skeleton hand Shows to the faint of spirit the right path. And he is warned, and fears to step aside. Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his when thy shafts Drink up the ebbing spirit - then the hard Of heart and violent of hand restores loi The treasure to the friendless wretch he

Its baneful lesson, they had filled the world With their abominations; while its tribes, Trodden to earth, imbruted, and despoiled^ Had knelt to them in worship; sacrifice Had smoked on many an altar, templeroofs Had echoed with the blasphemous prayer cease - For he is in his grave who taught my vouth The art of verse, and in the bud of liie Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off 139 Untimely I when thy reason in its strength. Ripened by years of toil and studious search, And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught Thy hand to practise best the lenient art To which thou gavest thy laborious days. And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when

> The poem wm at first left unflniflhed, at this point. Ita concluding lines were added after the death o|^ Bryant^B father, in 1820, at the age of fifty-three.

O FAIREST of the rural maids ! Thy birth was in the forest shades ; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky. Were all that met thine infant eye.

The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves Its playful way among the leaves.

Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their yoimg figures in the brook.

The forest depths, by foot unpressed. Are not more sinless than thy breast; The holy peace, that fills the air Of those calm solitudes, is there. 1S20, 1832.

Monument Mountain 2

wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face. Ascend our rocky moimtains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for on their tops The beauty and the majesty of earth. Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to

* The mountain called by this name is a remarkable precipice in Great Barrington, overlooking the rich and picturesque valley of the Housatonic, in the western part of Massachusetts. At the southern extremity is, or was a few years since, a conical pile of small stones, erected, according to the tradition of the surrounding countiy, by the Indians, in memory of a woman of the Stockbridge tribe who kiUed herself by leaping from the edge of the precipice. Until within a few years past, smidl parties of that tribe used to arrive from their settlement in the western part of the State of New York, on visits to Stockbridge, the place of their nativity and former residence. A young woman belonging to one of these parties related, to a friend of the author, the story on which the poem of * Monument Mountain ' is founded. An Indian girl had formed an attachment tor her cousin, which, according to the customs of the tribe, was unlawful. She was, in consequence, seized with a deep melancholy, and resolved to destroy herself. In company with a female friend, she repaired to the mountain, decked out for the occasion in all her ornaments, and, after passing the day on the summit in singing with her companion the traditional songs of her nation, she threw herself hMMJUong from the nx^- and was killed. (Betant.)

Chief American Poets

at once, Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes That only hear the torrent, and the wind. And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice 20 That seems a fragment of some mighty there Of chaUy whiteness where the thunderbolt Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing To stand upon the beetling verge, and see Where storm and lightning, from that huge scene Is lovely round; a beautiful river there Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads. The paradise he made unto himself, Mining the soil for ages. On each side The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond. Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise The mountain-columns with which earth props heaven.

a maid. The fairest of the Indian maids, brighteyed. With wealth of raven tresses, a light form, And a gay heart About her cabin-door The wide old woods resounded with her

William Cullen Bryant

She said, ' for I have told thee, all my love. And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life. All night I weep in darkness, and the mom Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed. That has no business on the earth. I hate The pastimes and the pleasant toils that

Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red. Beautiful lay the region of her tribe Below her - waters resting in the embrace Of the wide forest, and maize-planted

And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof Of him she loved with an unlawful love, And came to die for, a warm gush of tears Ran from her eyes. But ^en the sun wood. Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solenm thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences WUch, from the stilly twilight of the power And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised ? Let me,

Thou fiirst The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; Thou art in the cooler breath 41 That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the

Thee. Here is continual worship; - Nature, here. In the tranquillity that Thou dost love. Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around. From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left Thyself without a witness, in the shades. Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and smile. Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould. An emanation of the indwelling Life, A visible token of the upholding Love, That are the soul of this great universe.

Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever. Written on thy works I read The lesson of thy own eternity. Lo t all grow old and die - but see again, How on the faltering footsteps of decay Youth presses - ever gay and beautiful thus. But let me often to these solitudes Retire, and in thy presence reassure My feeble virtue, j Here its enemies, The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink And tremble and are still. O God 1 when woods And drowns the villages ; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms Its oities - who forgets not, at the sight wrath Of the mad unchained elements to teach Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate, In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, And to the beautiful order of thy works Learn to conform the order of our lives.^ 1825. 1825.

* Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles * June.' ITie rhythmical flow, here, is even Toluptuoos - no> thing could be more melodious. The poem has always affe^ed me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet*s cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul - while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impreasion left is one of a pleasurable sadneaa. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to yon, there be more or less of a similitf tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of tme Beaoty. (Poa) death. Wind of the sunny south ! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air. Like to a good old age released from care. Journeying, in long serenity, away. In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

William Cullen Bryant The Past 1

My spirit yearns to bring The lost ones back - yearns with desire intense. And struggles hard to wring Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. ao

In vain; thy g^tes deny All passage save to those who hence depart; Nor to the streammg eye Thou giv'st them back - nor to the broken heart.

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, Gratefully flows thy neshness round my brow; Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,

* This poem, by its imaginatiTe treatment of nature, and by its artistic completeness, aroused Poe*r great admiration. He speaks of the last lines in the third . as * breathing aU the spirit of Shelley.*

Inhale thee in the fulness of delight; lo And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. Gro forth into the gathering shade; go

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest, Smnmoning from the innumerable boughs 20

The faint old man shall lean his silver head To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, And dry the moistened curls that overspread His temples, while his breathing grows more deep; And they who stand about the sick man's bed. Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 30 And softly part hLs curtains to allow Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed. Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. ^

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky. Blue - blue - as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall.

Notice that Bnrant addresses his verses to a distinctively American flower; as later he chooses an American bird, the bobolink, for the subject of a poem which is to be contrasted with Wordsworth's * To the Skylark,' *To the Green Linnet,' etc. Bryant gives the reason for this choice in a letter to his brother John, Febmary 19, 1832 : * I saw some lines by you to the skylark. Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around yon, unless you are professedly composing a description of some foreign country, when, of course, you will learn what yon can from books. The skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never visited Europe has no right tc be in nfiturea about it.'

Hymn Of The City

Even here do I hehold Thy steps, Almighty 1 - here, amidst the crowd Through the great city rolled, With everlasting murmur deep and loud - Choking the ways that wind n

Thy golden sunshine comes From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies And lights their inner homes; For them Thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, And givest them the stores Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores.

And tius eternal sound - Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng - Like the resounding sea, Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee.

tme and Politics : Lowell as a Prose Writer. - Whitman (W. ), Letter to Sylyester Baxter, beg^inning, * Camden, N. J., Aug, 13, '91. Let me send my little word too to James Rnssell LowelPs memory.* (Boston Public Library MS.) - Wilkinson (W. C), A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters. - *Woodberbt (G. £.), Makers of Literature.

Tributes In Verse

Aldrich (T. B.), Unguarded Gates and Other Poems: Elm wood. - Bolton (Mrs. S. K.). The Lievitable and Other Poems : James Russell Lowell. - Cune (Helen Gray), The Ride to the Lady and Other Poems : The Gifts of the Oak. - Cbanch (C. P.), The Bird and the Bell, with Other Poems : J. R. L. on his Fiftieth Birthday. - Cranch (C. P.)t Ariel and Caliban, with Other Poems : J. R. L., on his Homeward Voyage. - Emebson, in Ghreenslet's James Rnssell Lowell, p. 144. - Field (Eugene), James RnsseU LoweU. - Gildbb (R. W.), Two Worlds and Other Poems: J. K. L., on his Birthday. - Gilder (R. W.), The Great Remembrance: Lowell. - Holmes, Farewell to James Russell Lowell. - Holmes, At a Btrdiday Festival : To James Russell Lowell. - Holmes, To James Russell Lowell. - Holmba, For Whittier's Seyentieth Birthday. - Holmes, To James Russell Lowell on his Seventieth Birthday. - *HolmB8, James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891. - *Lonofellow, The Herons of Elmwood. - Pabsons (T. W.), James Russell Lowell: in the Literary World, August 29, 1891. - Sayagb (Rev. Minot J.), These Degenerate Days. - Story (W. W.), To James Russell Lowell : in Blackwood's Bia^azine, October, 1891: also in the Critic, October JO, 1891. - *WHrrTiEB, A Welcome to Lowell. - *Whittieb, James Russell Lowell. - (See also the Literary World, June 27, 1885, for poems by Wm. Everett, Rose Terry Cooke, Charlotte Fiske Bates, Will Carleton, Margaret J. Preston, Clinton Scollard, Oscar Fay Adams, etc.)

*Lbav£S of Grass, including Sands at Seventy, Good-bye my Fancy, Old Age Echoes (Whitman's Complete Poetical Works), and A Backward Glance O^er TravelM Roads, 1 volume ; ^Complete Prose Works, 1 volume ; *Calamu8, A Series of Letters Written during the Years 1868-1880, by Walt Whitman to a young friend (Peter Doyle), edited with an Introduction by R. M. Bucke ; *The Wound Dresser, A Series of Letters Written from the Hospitals in Washington during the War of the Rebellion, edited by R. M. Bucke : Small, Maynard & Co. - *NotB8 AND Fragments : Left by Walt Whitman and now edited by Dr. R. M. Bucke : Privately Printed, 1899. (Also in the Camden Edition, below.) - In Re Walt Whitman, edited by his Literary Executors : David McKay, 1893. (Contains nine articles by Whitman.) - *Complete Works, Camden Edition, 10 volumes : G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Sold only by subscription. ) - Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada, with Extracts from other of his Diaries and Literary Notebooks, edited by W. S. Kennedy, 1904: Small, Maynard <& Co. - An American Primer, edited by Horace Traubel, 1904 : Small, Maynard <& Co. - (The above are the only authorized or in any way complete editions of Whitman's writings.) - Leaves of Grass : T. Y. Crowell <& Co. (A reprint of the 1860 edition.) - Leaves of Grass : David McKay. (Containing only such poems as had appeared before 1872, with variorum reading^) - not always accurate - from earlier editions.) - -Srlections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman, edited by O L. Triggfs. (The authorized volume of selections, and by far the best.) - *Pokm8, selected and edited by W. M. Rossetti: London. 1868; new edition, 1886. - ^Leaves of Grass, Edition of 1860, a facsimile reproduction of Whitman's copy, with his notes for revision, is announced by Horace Traubel for publication by subscription.

Biography And Reminiscences

Biogrra^hies), 1904. (The latest and best brief book on Whitman.) - *Traubel (Horace), With Walt Whitman in Camden, 11K)5. (A diary record of Whitman's life and conversation during* his last years.) - Volumes on Whitman are soon to be added to the American Men of Letters Series (by Bliss Perry), and to the English Men of Letters iSeries (by G- K. Carpenter).

Arnold (Edwin), Seas and Lands, 1891, pp. 78-84. - Askuam (Richard) [Henry Bryan BiKNs], Life of Whitman, London, 1905. - Bazaloette (L^on), Walt Whitman, Thomme, roBUvre, la proph^tie, Paris, 1905 or 1906. - Bucke (R. M. ), The Man Walt Whitman : in In Re Walt Whitman. - *Bukrougb8 (John), Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, 1867. - Camden's Compliments to Walt Whitman, May 31, 1889, edited by Horace Traubel, 1889. (Containing Whitman's Autobiographic Note and Response; Poems by Rhys and Traubel; Addresses by R. W. Qilder, Julian Hawthorne, Hamlin Garland, etc. ; and letters from Tennyson, Rossetti, Morris, Dowden, Stedman, Whittier, etc.) - Clarke (Wm.), Walt Whitman, London, 1892. - The Conservator, many articles on Whitman. - Donaldson (T. C), Walt Whitman, the Man, 1896. - Gilman (Arthur), Pen and Pencil Sketches of American Poets and their Homes, 1879. - Gk>ULD (E. P.), Walt Whitman among the Soldiers: in Gems from Walt Whitman, 1889. - Gould (£. P.), Anne GUchrist and Walt Whitman, 1900. - Hubbard (Elbert), Walt Whitman: in Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors, 1896. - Johnston (John), Diary Notes of a Visit to Walt Whitman and Some of His Friends, in 1890. Privately printed, 1890, published, 1898. - *Kennedy (W. S.), Reminiscences of Walt Whftman, with Extracts from his Letters and Remarks on his Writings, 1896. - Morse (Sidney H.), My Summer with Walt Whitman, 1887 : in In Re Walt Whitman. - O'Connor ( W. D.), The Good Gray Poet, a Vindication, 1866. (Reprinted in Buckets Walt Whitman.) - *0'Conn OR (W. D.), Three Tales. (The Caiyenfer represents Whitman.) - O'Connor (W. D.), The Good Gray Poet, Supplemental: in In Re Walt Whitman. - Rossetti (W. M.), Lives of Famous Poets, 1878. - Selwyn (George), Walt Whitman in Camden : in J. L. & J. B. Gilder's Authors at Home, 1888. - Skinner (C. M.), Walt Whitman as an Editor: in the Atlantic, November, 1903, vol. xcii, p. 679. - Stoddard (R. H.), Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets. - Traubel (Horace), Walt Whitman at Date : in the New England Magazine, May, 1891, n. s. vol. iv, pp. 275-292 ; also in In Re Walt Whitman. - Traubel (Horace), Walt Whitman : Poet and Philosopher and Man : in Lippincott's Magazine, vol. xlvii, p. 287, 1891 ; also in In Re Walt Whitman. - Traubbl (Horace), Lowell- Whitman, a Contrast: in Poet-Lore, January, 1892. - *Traubel (Horace), Notes from Conversations with George W. Whitman, 1893 : in In Re Walt Whitman. - Traubei (Horace), Conversations with Walt Whitman : in the Arena, January, 1896. - *Traubel (Horace), editor, Walt Whitman Fellowship Papers. - Traubel (Horace), editor. At the Grave-side of Walt Whitman. - *Trowbrjdge (J. T.), Reminiscences of Walt Whitman: in the Atlantic, vol. Icxxix, p. ia% February, 1902. - *Trowbridgb (J. T.), My Own Story, 1904. - Wolfe (T. F.), Literary Shrines, the Homes of Some Famous American Authors : A Day with the Good Gray Poet, 1895.

Criticism

Austin (A.), Poetry of the Period. - Buvanck (W. G. C), Poezie en Leven in de 19de Eeuw: Emerson en Walt Whitman. - Born (Helena), Whitman's Ideal Democracy and Other Writings, 1902. - Buchanan (R.), David Gray and Other Essays, 1868. - *Buchanan (R.), The Fleshly School of Poetry : note, on p. 96. - Buchanan (R.), A Look Round Literature : The American Socrates, 1886. - Bucke (K. M.), Walt Whitman and the Cosmic Sense, in In Re Walt Whitman. - Bucks (R. M.), Cosmic Consciousness, 1901. - Burke (Charles Bell), The Open Road, or the Highway of the Spirit : An Inquiry into Whitman *s Absolute Selfhood, «5. Thesis Presented to Cornell University. - Burroughs (John), Birds and Poets: The Flight of the Eagle, 1878. - Burroughs (John), Walt Whitman and his Recent Critics, in In Re Walt Whitman. - Burroughs (John), Art for Life's Sake, in the Dial, October, 1893. - (John), Whitman: A Study, 1896. - Burton (R.), Literary Leaders, 1903. - Carpenter (Edwaid), Angels* Wings : Wa^er, Millet, and Whitman, 1898. - *Chapman (J. J.), Emerson and Other Essays. - Cheney (J. V.), That Dome in Air, 1895. - - Chimenti (F.), Larghi Orizzonti : Walt Wliitman e Tarte nuova. - Clifford (W. K.), Lectures and Addresses : Cosmic Emotion. - The Conservator, many articles on Whitman. - Conway (M. D.), Walt Whitman, in the Fortnightly Review, October 15, 1865. (Quot-ed, in part, in Walsh's Pen Pictures of Modem Authors.) - *Dowdbn (Edward), Studies in Literature, 1789-1877 : The Poetry of Democracy, Walt Whitman. (From the Westminster Review, July, 1871). - *Elli8 (Havelock), The New Spirit, 1890. - '*'Emer80N, Letter to Whitman, quoted in Piatt's Walt Whitman, pp. 27, 28. - *Eif BB80N, Letter to Carlyle, May 6, 1856 : The Correspondenoe of Carlyle aud Emerson, vol. ii, p. 283. - Embbsok, in Woodbury's Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 62, 63. - Fedbrn (Karl), Essays znr amerikanisohen Litteratur, 1899. - Fobman (H. B.), Our LiTing Poets : Introdaction. - Gambbkaljb (Laigi), Canti Scelti (Italian translation of selections from Leaves of Grass) : Introduotion, 1887. - Gahbsralb (Luigi), La Vita e le Opers di Walt Whitman : in the Rivista d'ltalia, vol. i, p. 181 ; translated in part in the Conservator, September, 1904. - Gay (William), Walt Whitman : His Relation to Science and Philosophy, Melbourne, 1895. - *Gilchbi8t (Anne), An Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman ; from Late Letters to W. M. Rossetti : in H. H. Gilchrist's Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings, 1887 ; also in In Re Walt Whitman. - *Gilchbi8T (Anne), A Confession of Faith, in H. H. Gilchrist's Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings, 1887 ; also in E. P. Gould's Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman. - *G08SB (Edmund), Critical Kit-Kats, 1896. - Greg (Thomas T). Walt Whitman: Man and Poet, 1888. - Guthrie (William Norman), Modem Poet-Prophets, Elssays critical and interpretative : Walt Whitman the Camden Sage, 1897. - Harned (T. B.), The Poet of Immortality : in In Re Walt Whitman. - Harmed (T. B.), Walt Whitman and Oratory ; Walt Whitman and Physique ; Walt Whitman and his Second Boston Publishers : tM vol. viii of the Camden Edition. - HiooiNSON (T. W.), Contemporaries, 1899. - Holmes (Ediuond), Walt Whitman*s Poetry, a Study and a Selection, 1902. - Howe (M. A. DeW.), American Bookmen, 1898. - Jambs (H., Jr.), Walt Whitman's Letters to Peter Doyle : in Literature, April 16, 1898. - James (H., Jr.), The War and Literature ; The Wound Dresser : in Literature, May 7, 1898. - Jannacone (P.), La Poesia di Walt Whitman, e I'Evoluzione delle Forme Ritmiche, Turin, 1898. - Kennedy (W. S.), The Poet as a Craftsman, 1886. - Knobtz (E^arl), Vorwort und Einleitung (introducing the German translation of selected poems, by Knortz and Rolleston), Zurich, 1889; translated, in In Re Walt Whitman. - Knortz (Karl), Walt Whitman ; Der Dichter der Demokratie, 1899. - Lanier (C. D.), Walt Whitman : in the Chautauquan, 1892, vol. xv, pp. 311-313. - *Lanier, Letters, 1866 to 1881 : To Bayard Taylor, February 3. 1878. - Lanier, The English Novel and its Development ; Lecture iii. - Lb Gal- LiBNNB (R.), Walt Whitman, an Address. - *Mabib (H. W.), Backgrounds of Literature: America in the Poems of Walt Whitman, 1903. - *Macphail (Andrew), Essays in Puritanism, 1905. - Maynard (Mrs. M. T.), Walt Whitman, the Poet of the Wider Selfhood, 1903. - Matnard (Laurens), Walt Whitman's Comradeship : in the Whitman Fellowship Papers. - NiSNCiONi (E.), Letteratnra inglese : II Poeta della Guerra americana. - Newcomer (A. G.), American Literature. - Nichol (John), American Literature, an Historical Sketch, 1882. - Noble (Charles), Studies in American Literature, 1898. - *Noel (Roden), Essays on Poetry and Poets : A Study of Walt Whitman, 1886. - Notes (Carleton R), Whitman's Message to a Toung Man : in tA« Conservator, January, 1905. - Ondrbdonk (J. L.), History of American Verse, 1901'. - Raymond (G. L.), Art in Theory: Whitman as a Romanticist - Rhys (K), Poems by Walt Whitman (The Canterbury Poets) : Introduction, 1886. - Richardson (C. F.), American Literature. - Robertson (J. M.), Walt Whitman, Poet and Democrat, Edinburgh, 1884. - Rolleston (T. W.), Ueber Wordsworth und Walt AVhitman, Dresden, 1S8S; translated , in In Re Walt Whitman. - *Ro8SETTI ( W. M.), Poems of Whitman, Selected and Edited : Prefatory Notice, 1868. - Rossetti (W. M.), Ruskin, Rossetti. Pre-Raphaelitism. (Allusions to Whitman, pp. 134, 147, 150-160) - Salter (W. M.), Walt Whitman, Two Addresses: The Great Side of Walt Whitman ; The Questionable Side of Walt Whitman, 1899. - Santayana (George), Walt Whitman, A Dialogue: in the Harvard Monthly, May, 1890. - *SANTAYANil (Gteorge), Interpretations of Poetry and Religion : The Poetry of Barbarism, 19(X). - Santa- TANA ((George), Introduction to the Selections from Walt Whitman : in G. R. Caxpenter'3 American Prose. - Sarrazin (Gkibriel), La Renaissance de la po^ie anglaise, 1798-1889 Walter Whitman; the same, translated by Harrison S. Morris: in In Re Walt Whitnum. - ScHLAF (Johannes), Walt Whitman, Lyrik des chat noir, Paul Verlaine. - Schmidt (Rudolf), Buster og Masker ; Litteratur-Studier, Copenhagen, 1882 ; translated, in In Re Walt Whitman. - -Stbdman (K C.), Poets of America, 1885. - -Stevenson (R. L.), Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 1882. - Stevenson, Miscellanies, vol. ii. - Swinburne, William Blake, A Critical Essay, 1868. - *Swinburne, Under the Microscope, 1872. - *Swinburnb, Studies in Prose and Poetry : Whitmania, 1894. (From the Fortnightly Review, August 1, 1887) - *Symoni>8 (J. a.). Essays, 1890, vol. ii : Democratic Art, with Special Reference to Walt Whitman ; the same, in Essays Speculative and Suggestive. - *Symonds (J. A.), Walt Whitman, a Study, 1893. - -Thaybb (W. R.), Throne-Makers and Portraits. - *Trent (W. P.), A History of American Literature. - Trioos (O. L.), Browning and Whitman, a Stndy in Democracy, 1893. - Tbioos (O. L.), Selections from Whitman's Prose and Poetry : Introduction, 1898. - Trimble (W. H.), Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass: An Introduction, London, 1905. - Vincent (L. H-), American Literary Masters, 1905. - Von Ends (A.), Walt Whitman and Arno Hob : in Poet*

Lore, June, 1905. - Wbkdbll (B.), A Literary History of America, 1900. - *Whitman, Walt Whitman and his Poems ; Leaves of Grass ; An English and an American Poet : in In Re Walt Whitman. - Prefaces to Leaves of Grass : in Complete Prose Works. - A Backward Glance o'er Traveled Roads : in Leaves of Grass, final edijtion. - Wilkie (James), The Demooratio Movement in Literature, 1886. - Wyzbwa (T. de), Ecrivains Strangers, 1899.

Tributes In Verse

*Barkeb (Elsa), To Walt Whitman: in the Conservator, 1903. - Bablow (George), From Dawn to Sunset : Walt Whitman. - Block (L. J.), The New World and Other Verse : Walt Whitman. - *Bunnbk (H. C), Airs from Aroady and Elsewhere : Home, Sweet Home, with Variations : vi, Walt Whitman. (The best of all parodies on Whitman's style, and at the same time a genuine tribute to him.) - Bbown (J. U.), Poems Lyrical and Dramatic : To Walt Whitman. - D'Annunzio (Gabriele), Poema Paradisiaco, p. 216. - Garland (Hamlin), Walt Wlutman : in In Re Walt Whitman. - *Gildee (R. W.), A Wondrous Song : in the Conservator, June, 1905. - Hobton (George), in In Re Walt Whitman, p. 22. - Law (James D.), Dreams o' Hame and Other Scotch Poems : A Few Words to Walt Whitman. - Lloyd (J. William), Wind-Harp Song^ : Mount Walt Whitman. - Matnard (Laurens), For Whitman's Birthday, 1895: in the Conservator, June, 1895. - Morris (H. S.), Madonna and Other Poems: Walt Whitman; also in Stedman*s American Anthology. - Piatt (J. J.), To Walt Whitman the Man: in the Cosmopolitan, November, 1892. - Rhys (Ernest), A London Rose and Other Poems : To Walt Whitman on his Seventieth Birthday : also in Camden's Compliments to Walt Whitman. - *Stedman (E. C), Walt Whitman, March 30, 1892. - ^Symonds (J. A.), Life and Death, a Symphony : in In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 1-12. - *Swinburnb, Songs before Sunrise : To Walt Whitman in America, 1871. - Williams (F. H.), The Flute Player and Other Poems : Walt Whitman, May 31, 1886 ; Walt Whitman, March 26, 1892 : the second is also in Stedman^s American Anthology.

*PoEMS, edited by his wife, with a memorial by William Hayes Ward, 1 volume : Charles Scribner*s Sons. - *The Scibnob of English Verse, 1 volume : Charles Scribner's Sons. - Retrospects and Prospects, Descriptive and Historical Essays; Music and Poetry, m Volume of Essays ; The English Novel, A Study in the Development of Personality '. Charles Scribner's Sons. - Shaksperb and his Forerunners, Studies in Elizabethan Poetry and its Development from Early English, edited by H. W. Lanier, 2 volumes : Doubleday, Page <& Co. - ^Letters of Sidney Lanier, Selections from his Correspondence 1866-1881, 1 volume* Charles Scribner's Sons. - Select Poems, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Morgan Callaway, Jr. : Charles Scribner's Sons.

Biography And Reminiscences

Babkbryill (W. M.), Sidney Lanier : in Southern Writers, Biographical and Critical Studies, 1896-1897. - BoYKiN (Laurette), Home Life of Sidney Lanier, 1889. - Brownb (William H.), Memorial Address before the Johns Hopkins University, October 22, 1881 (privately printed). - Oilman (D. C), editor. The Forty-dxth Birthday of Sidney Lanier, February 3, 1888. (Containing poems by John B. Tabb, Riohmrd Burton, Edith Tliomas, etc. ; letters from Lowell, Stedman, Gilder, etc.; and a Ubliomphy by Richard Burton.) - *6ilmak (D. C), Sidney Lanier, Reminisoenoea and Lotteit: ta tlm Sooth Atlaatk> Quarterly, April, 1905. - Haykb (Paul H.), A Poet'sLettenitoaMwiAsiBlA0OcitSe.^roLT, im.77, 78,89,90, February 13, 20, 1886: also in Tlia Lettm of ^lUi ^ - NvtrBU. (A. CX Luiier's Life at

Wills (George S.), Sidney Lanier : in the PnblicationB of the Southern History Aisocimtion, toL iii, pp. 100-211, 1899. (With m complete bibliography of Lanier's writings.)

*Bbntzon (Th.) [Mme. Th^rtoe Blano], Choses et gens d'Am^rique : Un musioien po^tt Sidney Lanier, 1898 : translated, in Lictell's lAy'ing Age, May 14, 21, 1898. - Qosss (Edmund) Questions at Issue, 1893. - Hiooinbon (T. W.), Women and Men : The Victory of the Weak^ 1888. - *HiaoiM80N (T. W.), Contemporaries, 1899. - Hiooikbon (T. W.), and Boynton (H. W.), A Reader's History of American Literature, 1903. - 'EjcifT (Charles W.), A Study of Lanier's Poems: in the Publications of the Modem Language Association, vol. vii, pp. 33^-68, 1892. - MoBBis (H. S.), The Poetry of Sidney Lanier : in the American, Philadelphia, February 18, 1888. - Newcombk (A. G.), American literature. - Stbdman (E. C), Poets of America, 1885. - *Thaybb (W. R.), Letters of Sidney Lanier to Mr. and Mrs. Peacock, Introduction : in the Atlantic, vol. 74, pp. 14-17, 1894 ; cUso, in the Letters of Sidney Lanier, pp. 3-9. - Thateb (W. R.), in the Independent, June 12, 1884, Sidney Lanier and his Poetry ; December 18, 1884, Lanier's Poems. - Thaybb (W. R.), Sidney Lanier's Poems : in the American, Philadelphia, December 20, 1884. - Tolmam (A. H.), The Views about Hamlet and Other Essays: Lanier's Seienoe of English Verse, 1904. - Tbbnt (W. P.), Southern Writers : Introduction to the Selections from Lanier, 1905. - Wabd (W. H.), Sidney Lanier, Poet: in the Century, April, 1888. - Wbndbll (B.), a Literary History of Ajnerica. - Wilkiksoh (W C), in the Independent September, 1886.

Babbb (W.), Ashes and Incense. - Burbouohs (Ellen), tn the Literary World, vol. zzi,p. 40, February 1, 1890. - Bubton (Richard), To Sidney Lanier: tn The Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier. - Cumminos (James), The Stranger*s Invocation before the Bust of Lanier: tn Tlie Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier. - Fiskb (Isabella H.), Sidney Lanier: tn the New Tork Times Saturday Review, September 2, 1905. - Gablamd (Hamlin), tn the Southern Bivouac, vol. ii, p. 759, May, 1887. - Haynb (Paul H.), Complete Poems : The Pole of Death, In Memory of Sidney Lanier. - Haynb (William H.), Sylvan Lyrics and Other Verses :. Sidney Lanier. - *Hovby (Kichard), The Laurel, an Ode: To Mary Day Lanier. - Rbbse (Lizette W.), in the Southern Bivouac, vol. ii, p. 488, January, 1887. - Rbesb (Lizette W.), With a Copy of Lanier's Poems : tn the Independent, vol. 44, p. 322, March 3, 1892. - Robbbts (Charles O. D.), In Divers Tones : To the Memory of Sidney Lanier ; On Reading the Poems of Sidney Lanier. - Robbbts (Charles G. D.), For a Bust of Lanier : tn the Independent, vol. xlii, p. 625, Ajvil 80, 1891. - *Tabb (J. B.), Poems : p. 1 16, To Sidney Lanier ; p. 1 17, On the Forthcoming Volume of Sidney Lanier's Poems. - Thomas (Edith M.), Sidney Lanier : tn The Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier. - Tubnbull (Mrs. Lawrence), In Memoriam, Sidney Lanier, diet' September 7, 1881 : tn The Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier.

William Cullen Bryant was bom at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794. Of fhat sturdy New England stock he came may be guessed from the entry in lus mother's diary (which she kept for fifty-three years without missing a day), under that date: * Stormy wind N E - churned - unwell, seven at Night a Son Bom.* Two days later the entry reads : * Clear Wind N W - Made Austin a coat. . . .' Bryant's mother, like Longfellow's, was a descendant of John and Priscilla Alden of the Plymouth Colony. His earliest American ancestor on his father's side is said, like so many others, to have come over in the Mayflower. It is at least certain that he was at Plymouth in 1632, and he was constable of the colony in 1663. Bryant's father, his grandfather, and his grandmother's father were all New England country doctors. His father was a fi;enial and generous man, a lover of poetry, especially that of the school of Pope. He en> couraged his boy to read Pope's Iliad, and to act the old story over aeain with wooden shields and swords and mock-heroic costume; and also encouraged him m his early writing and in his later devotion to poetry, though not always in sympathy with the style and manner of his work. In all these points he reminds us of Browning s father.

Srecocity in other ways. Though he was never a strong child, yet ' On my first birthay,' he says, ' there is a record that I could already go alone, and on the 28th of March, 1796, when but a few days more than sixteen month's old, there is another record that I knew all the letters of the alphabet.' He was sent to school at three years old, and could read well at four. His early verses were mostly in heroic couplets, and include school poems and versions of a part of the Book of Job and the first book of the ^neid, etc. They are much like the verses written in colonial days by worthy Puritan divines. Like Elizabeth Barrett, he published his first volume at the age of thirteen. This was a satire on the political events of the time, and it actually had a second edition the following year - a thing which probably has happened to no other poet when so young.

Bryant was prepared for college, as was usual in those times, by studying in the fiunilies of country ministers. From one he learned Latin, from another Greek. It took him e^ht months to go through the Latin g^mmar, the New Testament in Latin, Virgil's .^neid. Eclogues, and Georgics, and a volume of Cicero's orations. After a summer's work on the farm he then attacked Greek, and ' at the end of two calendar months,' according to his own testimony, < knew the Greek Testament from end to end almost as if it had been English.' This was when he was fourteen years old. The following year he mastered his mathematics, and entered the sophomore class of Williams College at the age of fifteen.

Before he had quite completed the year at Williams, he withdrew from college, intending to prepare himself for the junior class at Yale. But when the time came for entering there in the fall, it was found that the family means would not allow Bryant to finish a college course, and he accordingly turned to the study of the law as the quickest way to prepare himself for earning a living. He passed his preliminary bar examinations in 1814, was admitted as attorney in 1816, and practised for nine years.

In the meantime < Thanatopsis ' and the * Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' at first called < A Fragment,' had been published in the North American Review for September, 1817 The story of how ' Thanatopsis ' had been written when Bryant was only sixteen or seventeen years old, and how his father, having received a letter asking for contributions to the Review^ found these unfinished poems in a desk and submitted them to the editors, who were at first unable to believe that they had been written by so young a man as Bryant, or even by any one * on this side of the Atlantic,* has often been told. (See the notes on * Thanatopsis,' pp. 1, 2; Bigelow*s Bryant, pp. 38-41; or Bradley's Bryant J pp. 27-33.) Bryant was asked to be a regular contributor to the North American, and his next important poem published there was the lines * To a Waterfowl.' A collection of his Poems was published in September, 1821, containing eight pieces, five oi which are included in the present volume. The slight success of this book, of which onl} 270 copies were sold in five years, showed that an audience for the best poetry had still to be created in America. Bryant's name was already known, however, as that of the most promising of the younger poets, and he had been invited to deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard m 1821. It was for this occasion that 'The Ages/ the longest poem in the volume of 1821, had been written.

Bryant wrote very little from the time when he was admitted to the bar, in 1816, until 1821, except the noble ' Hymn to Death,' which he took up and completed at the time when his father died, in March, 1820. Soon after this a new impulse came into his life, in his love for Miss Frances Fairchild, whom he married June 11, 1821. Of the many poems written for her at this time, Bryant preserved only one, * O fairest of the rural maids.' Throughout his life he was very severe in his criticism of his own verses, and is said to have destroyed more than he printed.

Bryant was weary of the law (see the last stanza of ' Green River '), but the sale of his volume of Poems was not such as to give him hope of making a living by purely literary work. During the five years following its publication his total profit irom the sale had been '914.92. In 1825, however, after two visits to New York, he found employment there as associate editor of the New York Review and Athenceum Magazine, just about to be established. The first number appeared in June, 1825, and Bryant moved to New York to take up the editorial work which was to keep him there for the rest of his life. New York was then a village, of 150,000 inhabitants, with the northern cily limits at what is now Canal Street. The part of New York still known as Greenwich Village, south of Washington Square, was then a summer resort.

Bryant's first magazine, like so many others at that time, was not successful, and lived for onlv a year. At the beginning of 1826 he again took up the practice of the law for a short tmie. Later in the year, however, he was asked to be assistant editor of the New York Evening Post, and three years later became editor-in-chief. His connection with the paper as editor and part owner lasted for fifty-two years.

Bryant was so engrossed with his editorial work (for many years he kept office hours from seven in the morning till four in the afternoon), and with the many demands of life in a growing metropolitan and cosmopolitan city, that he gave little time to poetry. In 1832 he visited the West (accidentally seein? Lincoln, who was leading a companyof Illinois volunteers across the prairie to the Buck Hawk war), and wrote his poem < The Prairies;' he wrote no other poem of importance for three years. A new collection of his poems had been published in 1831, both in America and in England (see the note on the ' Song of Marion's Men,' p. 17), which considerably increased his reputation. In 1834 to 1836 he took his first trip to Europe, visiting England, France, Italy, and Grermany, where, at Heidelberg, he met Longfellow, then preparing himself for his professorship at Harvard.

Bryant was always fond of travelling, and visited Europe again in 1845, in 1849, in 1852-53, when he saw something of the Oriental countries also, in 1857, and again in 1858, when he met, at Rome and Florence, the Brownings, W. W. Story, Crawford, Page, Miss Hosmer (the sculptress), Frederika Bremer, Hawthorne, and liindor, whom he greatly admired ; and still ag^in in 1866. His impressions were recorded in letters to the Evening Post, some of which have been collected in his Letters from a Traveller, Letters from the East, and Letters from Spain and other Countries. He also travelled extensiyely in America at various times. His life, during all tiiese years, was uneventful ; the time which he could give to writing was almost wholly filled with editorial work, and he produced only a few poems from year to year. New editions of his poems were, however, published, always with some additions, in 1834, 1836, 1842, 1844, and a collection in two volumes in 1854.

Bryant was an active worker in the formation of the Republican party in 1855. In 1859 he presided at a lecture given by Lincoln. Lincoln said: * It was worth the journey to the East to see such a man,' and Bryant was so impressed with Lincoln's personali^ that he threw the whole influence of the Post in favor of his nomination for the Fi'esidency in the following year, and was himself presidential elector on the Republican ticket. The Post was always a distinct power in national life, and especially so during the Civil War. Bryant had never been an abolitionist, but he was one of the strongest supporters of the Union, and, once the war had begun, of the policy of emancipation. His criticism of the administration was sometimes severe, especially in the matter of its greenback policy, but he retained close relations with Lincoln and was one of his most valued advisers. The struggle of these years had but few echoes in his poetry, except in two poems of 1861, ' Our Country's Call ' and * Not Yet,' and in three later poems, < My Autunm Walk,' < The Death of Lincoln,' and the ' Death of Slavery.' He seems rather to have sought a refuge in poetry from the strain of his daily work and the anxiety of the time. It was in 1862-63 that he wrote < Sella ' and the * Little People of the Snow,' which have more li^tness and charm than anything else in his work, and made a translation of the Fifth Book of the Odyssey. A collection of his later work was published in 1863, with the title Thirty Poems,

Already Bryant had long been recognized as the chief of our elder poets, and was called the ' Father of American Song.' This position, and still more the service which he had done and was doing as a man and a citizen, almost to the exclusion of further poetical work, were practically recognized by a meeting at the Century Club in New York, of which Bryant was for many years President. To this meeting the American republic of letters sent its best representatives, men of a generation just vounger than Bryant, yet whose literary reputation was already greater than his, to do him honor on his seventieth birthday. Whittier wrote, -

Holmes sent the finest of his many poetical tributes to contemporaries, and Lowell wrote for this occasion < On Board the '76 ; ' but perhaps the greatest tribute was Emerson's address. This was the culminating point in Bryant s career. He spoke of himself as ' one who has carried a lantern in the night, and who perceives that its beams are no longer visible in the glory which the morning pours around him.' It is true that Bryant is inferior to his younger contemporaries in the scope, the abundance, and the beauty of his poetical work. But he remains the pioneer of American poetry, and neither in the high nobility of his writing, nor in his dignity and his faithful work as a man, has he been surpassed. In 1866 Mrs. Bryant died. Bryant's feeling of his loss is expressed only in the one

S«m * A Life-Time.' He gave himself up during the following years to his translation of omer. The Iliad was completed and published in 1870, the Odyssey in 1872. Durine the last years of his life he wrote a few poems, characterized by the same high dhniity of expression which marks all his best work, and showing no loss of power. ' The Flood of Years ' comes as the conclusion of his work and as a fitting pendent to < Thanatopsis ' at its commencement. This and ' A Life-Time ' were the last poems he wrote.

He continued his editorial work till the last year of his life, walking daily to his office and back, a distance of three miles. Many New Yorkers still remember his impressive personality, the large, high forehead, flowing white hair, deep-set clear-seeing eyes under shi^gy brows, and erect carriage. During these last years he was more and more in request as a public speaker, and was often oiJled ' the ola man eloquent.' Though he was not an orator in the usual sense of the word, his addresses were always impressiye, appropriate, and full of well-knit thought. The best have been preserved in his prose works, and deal with Fitz-Greene Halleck, Shakspere, Scott, Bums, Franklin, Goethe, etc. His earlier addresses, especially those on Irving (1860) and Cooper (1852), must not be forgotten. When he was in his eighty-fourth year he paid a noble tribute to MagTini in an oration at the unveiling of the statue in Central Park. He was somewhat exhausted ^ the effort and by the heat of the day ; and on returning to the home of his friend, General Wilson, he fell at the doorstep, receiving injuries which resulted in his death, June 12, 1878.

Bryant's life extended from the administration of Washington to that of Hayes - from the first presidency until after the centennial of the conntiy. For more than fifty years during the formative period of the nation, he was a strong though quiet influence in its development. It is therefore impossible, as it would be unjust, to ' judge him from his life apart.' A keen judge, and never too generous a critic - Edgar Almn Poe - wrote it him so early as 1846 : * In character, no man stands more loftily than Bryant. . . . dis soul is charity itself, in all respects generous and noble.' It was this generous and loble character that Bryant freely gave to his times. He entered into all the life of a great material citv, the centre of the country, as editor, orator, and public man. His life was too full for hun to devote much of it to poetry, the most lasting part of his life-work, and to take that permanently high rank among American poets which some think he might have attained. Yet it is doubtful whether, if. he had given more time to poetry, his limitations rather than his power might not have become more evident. His was not a genius of overflowing richness, of passion, of imagination. His range is narrow. But within his rang^ he is supreme. What he gives us is the expression of simple and noble thought on life, and still more on death; and our first, and still the greatest, expression of American Nature in poetry. Whether or not he is the * American Wordsworth ' (see Lowell's Fable for Critics), he is the first and greatest poet of Nature in America ; not of larks and nightingales and English primroses would he write, like most of the provincial poets who preceded him, but oi the bobolink, and the veerie, and the fringed gentian ; not of the English ponds and hills, but of the American lakes and mountains. This was America's ' Declaration of Independence ' in poetry. Then too, in the highest of poetic forms in English, he is perhaps the greatest master since Milton. The blank verse of even Wordsworth, Landor, or Browning has not the power or the convoluted richness of expression through long interwoven rhythmic periods that Bryant's has. In * Thanatopsis,' the * Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' ' A Winter Piece,' the * Hymn to Death,' * Monument Mountain ' (the best of his poems on Indian subjects), ' A Forest Hvmn,' * The Prairies,' the * Antiquity of Freedom,' and the ' Flood of 1 ears,' this noble rhythmic form fitly expresses the high dignity of his thought, and these together fitly represent his character and his life.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edoab Allan Poe was bom at Boston, January 19, 1809, in the same year as Holmes and Tennyson, Lincoln and Gladstone, Mendelssohn and Chopin, and Charles Darwin. On his father's side he came of a good Maryland family, going back to John Poe, who emigrated from the north of Ireland to Pennsylvania about the middle of the eighteenth century, and soon moved to Maryland. The poet's grandfather. General David Foe, was Assistant-Quartermaster-General in the Revolution, and a close friend of Lafayette's. His son, David Poe, Jr., studied law, but soon abandoned it for acting, and in 1806 married Elizabeth Arnold, who had been bom and brought up to the sta^. Her mother was an English actress, and she had been first married to C. D. Hopkins, a comedian, who died in 1805. It seems that David Poe proved to have little talent as an actor, and his wife, delicate, beautiful, stron^willed, and versatile, was the support of the family. They ^ad three children, of whom Fidgar was the second. The little troop wandered up and down from Maine to So. Carolina, but found their best patrons and friends in Richmond.

Edgar Allan Poe 659

Poe was adopted by Mr. John Alhin, a Scotch tobacco merchant of Richmond, not at all a rich man as has so often been stated. It is of record that he made an assignment for the benefit of creditors in 1822. In 1825, however, just before Poe left home for the University of Virgrinia, Mr. Allan received an inheritance from his uncle, one of the rich men of the State, which made him well-to-do. In the meantime he had attempted to extend his business to London. The most important result of this was -that he took Poe to £ngland and placed him for five years in the Manor House School, Stoke-Newington. Poe's story * William Wilson ' is full of reminiscences from this period, and much of his work is colored by it. Probably on some vacation trip to Scotland with his adopted parents he saw that lake among the hills which is the subject of one of his earliest vet most characteristic poems - one of those which he says were written before he was twelve years old : -

The Lake

The poem was published in this form in his first volume, when he was eighteen years old, and was retained in every subsequent edition of his poems, in the edition of 1831 being inserted as a part of * Tamerlane.' In the successive editions he made less changes in this than in any other of his earliest poems. The memory of a mystic lake of poisoned waves

* dim lake of Auber ' in his greatest poem. The love of loneliness and of night, the tremulous delight in terror, the thought of a darkened mind that seeks for death and finds in it an l^en, all remain characteristic of his later writing.

In 1820 the Allans returned to Richmond, and until 1825 Poe was at school there; he distinguished himself in athletics (especially swimming), in declamation, and in French. It was natural enough that his first school-boy love should be for a woman older than himself, but perhaps hardly natural that this should be the mother of one of his schoolmates, and certainly not so that a healthy boy should haunt her grave for months, as is recorded of Poe ; for she died in 1824, the first of his many Helens and Lenores. Just before going away to the University he had a somewhat more normal love affair with a girl nearly two years younger than he (he was sixteen himself), a Miss Royster. They became * engaged,' at least according to the lady's later account. Poe wrote to her from the University, but the letters were intercepted by her father, and she was soon married to a Mr. Shelton. Perhaps in this simple story is to be found the whole basis of Poe's ' Tamerlane,' almost certainly written during the following year.

The University of Virginia had been opened under Jefferson's patronage in March, 1825. Poe registered as a student there on February 14, 1826, and remained for one year. During this time he obtained distinction in Latin, French, and Italian, and was fairly regular in his attendance, but sometimes (not habitually) drank, and gambled with passionate recklessness. His gambling debts at the end of the year are said to have been about S2000. Mr. AUan refused to pay these debts of honor, withdrew Foe from the University, and set him to work at a desk in his own counting-room.

Poe did not submit to this employment long, but ran away, somehow reached Boston, and soon published there (1827) his first volume : Tamerlane and Other Poems^ By a Bostonian. (See note 1 on page 36, and note 2 on page 39.) By the time the book was published, Poe, perhaps unable to find any other means of subsistence, had already (May 26, 1827) enlisted in the United States army, under the name of Edgar A. Perry. He served for nearly two years. He seems to have served faithfully; on January 1, 1829, he was promoted for merit to be Sergeant-Major. Early in 1829 Mrs. Allan died. Poe had been recalled to Richmond to see her, but arrived too late. There was, however, a partial reconciliation with Mr. Allan, who obtained a substitute for him in the army, and after some effort secured his nomination to West Point.

While waiting for this appointment he had published at Richmond (1829) A I Aaraa/f Tamerlane^ and Minor Poems, For this volume he re-wrote, condensed, and for the most part greatly improved the ' Tamerlane.' (See the notes on pages 37 and 38^ ' Al Aaraaf ' is on the whole a less successful production than * Tamerlane.' In < Tamerlane ' he had deplored the triumph of ambition over* love, in * Al Aaraaf ' he seems to be celebrating the claims of beauty as superior to all others, even those of love. The poem, however, has not, as ' Tamerlane ' has, any clear thread of narrative on which to string its ideas and pictures, and even these are entirely vague and almost meaningless. < Al Aaraaf ' seems to show the influence of Shelley, as ' Tamerlane ' (in the first form of which there occurs, unquoted, * A sound of revelry by night ') shows that of Byron. ' Al Aaraaf ' also suffers from the fact that Poe never took the time to re-write it as he did * Tamerlane.' There is in it, however, one supremely beautiful * Burst of Melody ' (as Professor Trent has entitled it in his Selections from Poe), the song to Ligeia. There form of the poem ' A Dream within a Dream. When we remember that Poe was barely twenty when this volume was published, and that Keats was twenty-two when his first volume (not containing any of his greatest work except the * Sonnet on Chapman's Homer ') appeared, we feel that Lowell was almost justified in writing to Poe (May 8, 1843) : < Your early poems display a maturity which astonished me, and I recollect no individual (and I believe I have read all the poetry that ever was written) whose early poems were anything like as good.'

Poe entered West Point July 1, 1830. His work there was at first fairly good, fie ranked third in French and seventeenth in mathematics, in a class of eighty-seven. Late in this year Mr. Allan married again, and Poe seems to have felt that he had no more to expect from him in the way of support or inheritance. In January of 1831 he deliberately neglected all duties at the academy for two weeks, was court-marshalled, and dismissed.

' When in doubt, publish a volume of poems,' seems, says some one, to have been the rule of Poe's life. After his dismissal from West Point, he went to New York an^ brought out his third volume, entitled simply Poems, This volume contained (and Po( was still only twenty-two years old) what is, perhaps, his most beautiful lyric, the first * To Helen,' and the poems * Israf el,' * The City in the Sea,' * The Sleeper,' * Lenore * m its earliest form, and < The Valley of Unrest.' His fellow cadets at West Point, to whom he dedicated the volume, and through whose subscriptions he had been enabled to publish it, were naturally disappointed at receiving such poems as these, instead of the satirical verses on their professors which they had expected.

For the next two years practically nothing is known of Poe's life. We find him in Baltimore in 1833, living with his father's sister, Mrs. Clemm. He had written six Tales of the Folio Club, and one of these, * The Manuscript found in a Bottle,' won him a prize of one hundred dollars and the friendship of John P. Kennedy. The second prize of fiftv dollars, offered for the best poem submitted, would have been awarded to Poe's ' Coh- except that the judges felt nnwillmg to give both prizes to one competitor. This

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BQCcess gave Poe a practical start in literature, or rather joumalisin, and Mr. Kennedy secured for him a position on The Southern Literary Messenger^ published at Richmond.

Meanwhile there had come to Poe the one genuine, deep, and lasting love of his lifetime, that for his child-cousin, Virginia Clemm. A license for marriage was obtained on September 22, 1834, when Virginia was barely twelve years old. There seems to have been no marriage at this time. In any case, after Poe moved to Richmond a new Ucense was obtained, in May, 1836, and the marriage took place, while Virginia was still only in her fourteenth year.

Poe showed great ability as an editor and journalistic writer. He made the magazine feunous, and greatly increased its circulation. But he was irregular in his habits and not to be depended upon. He had not learned to master the tendency against which he later struggled - at least for many months and even years of his life - so successfully. ' No -man is safe,' his employer wrote to him, *that drinks before breakfast.' He lost his position in January, 1837, went to New York, where he published in 1838 the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and then to Philadelphia, where he lived for the next six years.

During these years he did a g^eat amount of literary hack-work, and did it well, and also wrote some of his best stories and criticism. His Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque were published, in two volumes, at the end of 1839 (dated 1840). He was editor for a while of the Gentleman^s Magazine and later of Grahams Magazine, two of tlie most important periodicals of the time. It has repeatedly been assumed that he lost his positions on both these magazines through incapacity caused by drinking, but the weight of evidence seems to disprove this. Mrs. Clemm stated positively, speakmg of the period from 1837 to 1841, that * for years I know he did not taste even a glass of wine ' (Harrison's Life of Poe, p. 161), and this testimony is so strongly confirmed by others who knew him well during this time, that we may perhaps accept fully his own statement of the matter as made in a letter of 1841 : ' At no period of my life was I ever what men call intemperate, - I never was in the habit of intoxication. . . . But, for a period, while I resided in Richmond and edited the Messenger, I certainly did give way, at long intervals, to the temptation held out on all sides by the spirit of l^outhem conviviality. My sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement which was an every-day matter to my companions, - in short it sometimes happened that I was completely intoxicated. For some days after each excess I was invariably confined to bed. But it is now quite four years since I have abandoned every kind of alcoholic drink - four years, witli the exception of a single deviation. . . .'

A few facts seem now to be clearly established after the years of controversy over this disagreeable question. It is certain that Poe was not, as has so often been stated, an abandoned or habitual drunkard. It is also certain that the effect of even small quantities of alcohol was, in his case, especially severe ; that he was to some extent the victim of a hereditary tendency (< There is one thing,' his cousin William Poe wrote to him, ' I am anxious to caution you against, and which has been a great enemy to our family ... a too free use of the bottle^ ; and that the surroundings of his early life and the habits of the University and of West Point in those times did much to strengthen this tendency. It is also certain, and this has not been sufficiently recognized, that for many years Poe struggled manfully against this tendency, and succeeded, in spite of occasional relapses, and in the midst of all kinds of difficulties, discouragements, anxiety, poverty, and physical weakness, in doing an amount of work, and of highly intellectual work, that would have been impossible for a man so weak as he has usually been represented.

Two strong motives governed his life, so far as it could be governed : his devotion to his beautiful child-wife and to her mother, whom he calls his < more than mother ' in the beautiful sonnet which is the simple expression of his genuine feeling for her ; and his passionate desire for literary fame, which, at its worst, showed itself in pet^ envy and earping criticism of his contemporaries, but which, at its best, became a noble devotion to the ideal of beauty.

flicting statements, except one, - the genuineness, simplicity, and, until his wife's death, constioicy, of his devotion to the two women who made his home. 'I shall never forget,' wrote the owner of Graham^ s Magazine, within a year after Foe's death, when the attacks upon him were bitterest, 'how solicitous of their happiness he was. . . . His whole efforts seemed to be to procure the. comfort and welfare of his home. Except for their happiness, and the natural ambition of having a magazine of his own, I never heard him deplore the want of wealth. . . . His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. I have seen him hovering around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-bom, - her slightest cough causing in him a shudder, a breast chill, that was visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and the remembrance of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in that loved face, haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain.'

Virg^inia is described as of wonderful delicate loveliness, like that of Ligeia. She was a beautiful singer. In 1842, while singing for her husband, she broke a blood vessel in her throat, and this resulted in serious hemorrhages, which afterward recurred often, and sometimes brought her almost to the point of death. It was to Foe as if she had died many times, - as often, even, as he has expressed in his poetry that one theme which he calls the highest of all, the death of a beautiful woman.

Early in 1844 the little family moved to New York, Foe still hoping to found there a magazine of his own. For some time he worked on the staff of the Evening Mirror^ under N. P. Willis, whose description of his faithfulness, industry, and courtesy must not be overlooked by any one trying to estimate his character during these years. 1845 was the year that^ve Foe his national reputation. 'The Raven' appeared in the Evening Mirror on tHinuary 29, and was immeaiately copied by newspapers throughout the country, just as the first of Lowell's Biglow Papers was to be, a little more than a year later. His l^ales were published by Wiley and Putnam, and had considerable success. He became associate-editor of the Broadway Journal, in which be republished, in their final perfected form, many of his earlier poems. And finally, all the poems which he wished to preserve were collected and published, toward the end of the year, in a volume entitled The Raven and Other Poems,

Meantime, Foe was involved in many bitter controversies, through his severe criticism of his contemporaries. The Broadway Journal, of which he had finally obtained exclusive control m October, 1845, failed to prove a financial success, and involved him in considerable debt ; its publication had to be discontinued at the end of the year. Early in 1846 Foe moved, with his family, to the cottage at Fordham, in what is now the Borough of the Bronx, New York City. Here the little family lived through a year of wretchedness. Foe's strength, both of body and of character, was seriously impaired. Virginia's illness became more and more serious, until she died on January 30, 1847. Foe was seriously ill for a long time, but gradually recovered. It was at the end of this < most immemorial year ' that he wrote his ' Ulalume.'

In the year and a half that followed, all Foe's weaknesses were accentuated, and a new weakness, which is comprehensible, but not pleasant to contemplate, was added, in his abject appeal for the sympathy and sometimes for the hand of one woman after another. Yet his intellect and genius shone out at intervals almost more brightly than before. During this time he wrote * Eureka' and * The Bells,' the strange and wonderful lyric <For Annie,' and ' Annabel Lee' - the last certainly a reminiscence of bis child-wife Virginia. He became engaged to Sarah Helen Whitman, a poetess of extreme romantic temperament, his first meeting with whom is described in the second < To Helen ; ' but the engagement was broken through the efforts of her friends. Her loyal defence of Foe against his critics after his death is to be remembered. Foe was in Richmond in 1848, and again in 1849, hoping to get help there for the establishment of the new magazine which he was still planning; he found there the Mrs. Shelton who, as Miss Royster, had been his first love, and who was now a widow. He became eneaged to her, his friends in Richmond raised a fund to help him start anew in life, and he left Richmond on Sep- tember 90, to return to New York and settle up bis affairs. It will never be known wbat bappened on tbe following days, but be was found, October 3, in the back room of a saloon in Baltimore whicb was being used as a polling place. It bas been suggested that he was drugged by an electioneering gang and made to serve as a repeater; and also that he had been drugged by robbers, for his money was gone. He was taken to a hospital, and died there, four days later, on Sunday, October 7, without having recovered consciousness. The attending physician testified that he was not under the mfluence of liquor, but this does not seem to be important, though it may refute the repeated statement that his death was caused by delirium tremens.

Poe's character nas often been judged harshly, but the case is one rather for human pity than for harsh judgment. His life was a tragedy, and in part a tragedv of hereditanr fate, against which his human will struggled as best it could. He shoidd be judged witn the same charity which his New England contemporaries showed in their many beautiful tributes to Burns, whose life and chajracter have points of resemblance with Poe's, though Bunis*s poetry is so much more human and less strange.

In many ways Poe is unique among the chief American poets : in his life, for he is tbe only one who lived in extreme poverty and loneliness ; the only one of weak character and illrepute ; the only one (except Lanier) who died young. He is unique in his hatred of commonplace and of convention, in his intense devotion to poetry, in his love of mere music in verse, in his power to express emotion and his inability to express character, in his comparative blindness to Nature (except that strange unreal region of Nature which he creates for himself ' out of place, out of time '), in his exaltation of love, in his strange visionary conceptions of death. He is the only American who has been intensely a poet, and the only American poet (as Hawthorne is our only prose writer) who can justly be said, in any strict and narrow use of the word, to have faaa genius.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The story of Emerson's life, so far as its external events are related to his poetry, can be told briefly. He was the last of nine successive generations of ministers. Thomas Emerson emig^ted from England to Ipswich, Mass., about 1635. At about the same time, Emerson's first American ancestor in another line, Peter Bulkeley (see the beginning of ' Hamatreya '), settled in Concord as the first minister of that parish. Emerson's grand- &ther, William Emerson, was minister in Concord at the beginmng of the Revolution, and on April 19, 1775, urged the minute-men to stand their ground near his parsonage, the < Old Manse.' In 1776 he left Concord to join the troops at Ticondaroga, but caught a fever on his way there, and died in the same year. Emerson's father was minister of the First Church, Boston, which had already become Unitarian.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was bom in Boston, May 25, 1803. His father died when he was eight years old, and the family was left in comparative poverty. Yet his mother, with devoted help from her sons, succeeded in obtainmg an education for all of them. His eldest brother, William, graduated at Harvard in 1818, and studied for two years in Grermany. Ralph Waldo graduated at Harvard in 1821, and his younger brothers, Edward and Charles, in 1824 and 1828.

Ralph was prepared for Harvard at the Boston Latin School, where, in his eleventh year, he made a brief verse translation from Virgil's Eclogues, which has been preserved and published. He entered college in 1817, with the appointment of < President's Freshman,' receiving free lodging for the work of carrying official messages ; and he saved three-fourths of the cost of his board by waiting at table in the college Commons, and in the last years of his course earned something by tutoring. He did not especially distinguish himself in his studies, being generally thought the least brilliant of the brothers, but he was well liked by both teachers and students, and was elected class poet at the end of his course, as Lowell was later. He was only eighteen when he graduated, but immediately began work as a school-teacher, and when & older brother, William, went to

Germany, took charge of his school for young ladies in Boston. He wrote long after : 'I was nineteen, had grown up without sisters, and, in my solitary and secluded way oi living, had no acquaintance with girls. I still recall my terrors at entering the school.' It was on the occasion of his weekly escape from these * terrors ' to his home in Roxbury, which was then the country (and not at his retirement to Concord, as has often been said), that he wrote the poem * (xood-bye, proud world.*

He soon entered the Divinity School at Harvard, where he studied under Dr. W. E. Channing and Professor Andrews Norton ; and was * approbated to preach ' in October, 1826. He had no settled parish, and had not as yet much confidence in himself, his doctrines, or his power to speak. * Whatever Heaven has given me or withheld,' he wrote at this time, * my feelings, or the expression of them, is very cold, my understanding and my tongue slow and ineffective.' His feelings were soon to be roused and quickened, however, and his expression vivified. In Deceniber, 1827, he was preaching at Concord, N. H., and met there Miss Ellen Tucker, then sixteen years old, to whom he became engaged just a year later. Of the beautiful lyrics written for her, one, beginning * And Ellen, when ]he graybeard years,' which was written in 1829, but remained unpublished for seventyfive years, deserves to stand beside anything even of Landor's for its simplicity and condensation, and for that peculiar feeling of the eternal which a brief and peiHEect poem can g^ve.

In 1829 he was appointed assistant pastor of the Hanover Street Church, Boston (the church of the Mathers). In September he was married. His wife was already frail from consumption, and she died two years later. Emerson found even the liberal doctrines and simple forms of the Unitarian Church somewhat too strict for him, and felt himself compelled, in the following year, 1832, to give up his pastorate. He still preached occasionally for a few years, but for the rest of his life the public lecture platform was his chief pulpit ; for he never ceased to be, in a way, a preacher.

In December, 1832, Emerson sailed for Europe, going by the then unusual southern route, and visited first Sicily and Italy. The fragment * Written in Naples,' and ' Written at Rome,' are significant of his mood and thoughts at this time. The first, with its remembrance of and reminds us that Emerson was to be the poet of * Woodnotes,' and, after Bryant, the chief poet of Nature in America, with its own peculiar and distinctive beauties. The second, 'Written at Rome,' with its

He soi^ht in Europe not things but men, not relics of the past but living thoughts. For him Florence seems to have meant Landor, in his villa at the foot of the Fiesolan bill. He passed through France uncomprehending, thinking it a land * where poet never grew,' and went to visit the almost unknown Carlyle on his Scotch hillside, and Wordsworth by his English Ijakes. His friendship for Carlyle lasted till the end of his life, and he did Carlyle great service in introducing bis works to America, taking charge of all the material details of their publication here. He seems to have been much amused at first to see Wordsworth pause in his garden walks and stand apart to declaim his own sonnets, but on second thought recollected that that was what he had come for, and listened with reverence.

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Wanderjahrej had found his own place, intellectually and spiritually, in the universe, and had acquired confidence in his own thought and his right and power to deliver a message to the world. He now abandoned, as unimpomint, the negative side of his earlier Unitarianism and of his revolt from the forms and formal beliefs even of Unitarianism itself; and insisted on what is the positive side of Unitarianism, and, more broadly, of idel^istic philosophy, - the thought that every man (as well as the Christ, though not in the same degree) has in himself something of the divine, is himself a part of the * World- Soul,' and therefore has within himself, and himself is, the measure of all things ; and BO can meet fearlessly all the Sphinx-riddles of the universe. The other side of this conception is his thought that all Nature is but another manifestation, or another part of the same manifestation, of the ' World-Soul; ' and that Nature is thus most closely related to the central reality in man. Hardly more than this need be said, I think, in elucidation of the so-called obscure and mystic poems of Emerson, and in elementary statement of his much-discussed * transcendentalism.'

Strong in this belief in the intellectual independence of himself and of every individual man, Emerson prepared that famous address on ' The American Scholar,' which was given before the Phi Beta Ka^pa of Harvard University in 1837. That and his little book called iVia^ure, published m the previous year, give us the two sides of his thought just stated. In the Phi Beta Kappa address, however, he stated this thought more especially as related to the intellectual attitude of America in 1837, and as a protest against its provincialism. ' Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close . . . We will walk on our own feet ; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds ... a nation of men will for the first time exist, be^ cause each believes himself inspired by the Divine Will, which also inspires all men.' This address was America's Declaration of Independence in the intellectual life. His Divinity School address, in the following year, was a spiritual declaration of independence : ' Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone ; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil . . . Thank God for these good meu, but say, " I am also a man." . . . Yourself a new-bom bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint yourself at first hand with the Deity.' These two addresses aroused great opposition, but Emerson entirely disregarded it, and went quietly on his way. He seems to have re^^tted it only so far as he felt that opposition to him personally might injure the success m America of Carlyle's works, for which he stood sponsor.

In the years of this (as it then seemed) revolutionary thinking and speaking, Emerson was living a quiet, simple, practical life at Concord, taking his part in the adBfairs of the village, even accepting an election as hog-reeve of the township, delivering the Bi-Centennial Address in 1835, and writing the Hymn for the Completion of the Battle Monument in 1837. In 1834 his brother Edward died, and in 1836 his youngest brother, Charles. It was in 1838, ' at the mid-point of life's pathway,' as Dante expresses it in the first line of his Divina Commedia, that Emerson wrote the beautiful ' Dirge ' for them : -

From this time on, Emerson's life was diyersified only by home joys and sorrows. He married in 1935 Miss Lidian Jackson of Plymouth. In October, 1836, was bom the beautiful boy who died in January, 1842, the * wondrous child ' of his ' Threnody.' Some of his most important poems were published in the Dial in 1840 and 1841, and he was editor of that short-lived transcendentalist magazine from 1842 to 1844. The first series of his Essays was published in 1841, the second in 1844, the second edition of Nature in 1849, Representative Meti in 1850, and English Traits in 1856. He had taken a second brief trip to Europe in 1847-^. The only important collections of his verse during his lifetime were the Poems of 1846 (dated 1847\ May Day and Other Pieces^ 1867, and a selection in the Little Classics edition, 1876, including a few poems not previously collected. The editions of the Poems, 1883, and 1904 (Centenary Edition), both contain very important additions. His lecture field was extended in 1843 to New York and Philadelphia, in 1847- 48 to England and Scotland, in 1854 to the States of the new Northwest, Michigan and Wisconsin, in 1862 to Washington, where Lincoln attended his lecture on ' American Civilization.' From 1854 to 1868 he gave many lecture courses in the West, and in 1871 went as far as the Pacific coast, but the larger part of his lectures were still given in New England, especially at Boston and Concora. In 1870 he gave a regular course in the Graduate School of Harvard, then just established. During these years his life in Concord was enriched by the friendships with Thoreau, Alcott, and EUery Channing, as well as by his acquaintance in Boston and Cambridge with Longfellow, Agassiz, Holmes, and Lowell ; he and Hawthorne were good neighbors, but never intimate friends. Concord became a shrine of pilgrimage, and many of the best and ablest minds of the time, as well as many unbalanced and vag^e idealists, made themselves, like Lowell, Emerson's faithful * lieg^ men.'

Emerson always refused to be drawn into the anti-slavery contest as an active worker. He gives his reasons in full in the * Ode to W. H. Channing.' He advocated the purchase of the slaves, for two billion dollars, - less than the war ultimately cost, in mere money expenditure, to the North alone. But though he did not identify himself with the abolitionists, he never hesitated on occasion to express his views clearly. His first speech on American Slavery was given at Concord in 1837, and his address on Emancipation in 1844; he voted with the Free-Soil party in 1850, joined in the mistaken opposition to Webster in 1851, denounced the Fugitive Slave Law and the assault on Charles Sumner, and took part in the memorial service for John Brown of Ossawatomie. In January, 1861, with Wendell Phillips, he was mobbed at the Tremont Temple in Boston. During the war he was a strong advocate of unconditional emancipation. But that he did wisely m keeping for the most part to * his chosen work,' was proved by the outcome. His political idealism, his belief in man, which finds its perfect expression in the famous quatrain of ' Voluntaries,' became a pervading influence. To this influence, more than to anything else, said Lowell, < the voung martyrs of our Civil War owe the astounding strength of thoughtful heroism that is so touching in every record of their lives.' It was Emerson who was chosen

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 667

The last ten years of Emerson's life were somewhat clouded by a gradual failure of his mental powers, especially of the memory, but he was always, as W£tman has described him in his reminiscences, beautiful in old age. Holmes tells us of the last time he saw Emerson, at Longfellow's funeral, in 1882. Twice he rose, and looked intently on the face of the dead poet, and the last time turned and said to a friend near him, * That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name.' Emerson died just a month after Longfellow, April 24, 1882.