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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11249 ***
+
+FOUR FAMOUS AMERICAN WRITERS
+
+Washington Irving
+Edgar Allan Poe
+James Russell Lowell
+Bayard Taylor
+
+
+A Book For Young Americans
+
+By
+Sherwin Cody
+
+
+
+
+1899
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE STORY OF WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+CHAPTER
+I. HIS CHILDHOOD
+II. IRVING'S FIRST VOYAGE UP THE HUDSON RIVER
+III. A TRIP TO MONTREAL
+IV. IRVING GOES TO EUROPE
+V. "SALMAGUNDI"
+VI. "DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER"
+VII. A COMIC HISTORY OF NEW YORK
+VIII. FIVE UNEVENTFUL YEARS
+IX. FRIENDSHIP WITH SIR WALTER SCOTT
+X. "RIP VAN WINKLE"
+XI. LITERARY SUCCESS IN ENGLAND
+XII. IRVING GOES TO SPAIN
+XIII. "THE ALHAMBRA"
+XIV. THE LAST YEARS OF IRVING'S LIFE
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+CHAPTER
+I. THE ARTIST IN WORDS
+II. POE'S FATHER AND MOTHER
+III. YOUNG EDGAR ALLAN
+IV. COLLEGE LIFE
+V. FORTUNE CHANGES
+VI. LIVING BY LITERATURE
+VII. POE'S EARLY POETRY
+VIII. POE'S CHILD WIFE
+IX. POE'S LITERARY HISTORY
+X. POE AS A STORY-WRITER
+XI. HOW "THE RAVEN" WAS WRITTEN
+XII. MUSIC AND POETRY
+XIII. POE'S LATER YEARS
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+
+CHAPTER
+I. ELMWOOD
+II. AN IMPETUOUS YOUNG MAN
+III. COLLEGE AND THE MUSES
+IV. HOW LOWELL STUDIED LAW
+V. LOVE AND LETTERS
+VI. THE UNCERTAIN SEAS OF LITERATURE
+VII. HOSEA BIGLOW, YANKEE HUMORIST
+VIII. PARSON WILBUR
+IX. A FABLE FOR CRITICS
+X. THE TRUEST POETRY
+XI. PROFESSOR, EDITOR, AND DIPLOMAT
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+CHAPTER
+I. HIS BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD
+II. SCHOOL LIFE
+III. HIS FIRST POEM
+IV. SELF-EDUCATION AND AMBITION
+V. A TRAVELER AT NINETEEN
+VI. TWO YEARS IN EUROPE FOR FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS
+VII. THE HARDSHIPS OF TRAMP TRAVEL
+VIII. HIS FIRST LOVE AND GREATEST SORROW
+IX. "THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAVELER"
+X. HIS POETRY
+XI. "POEMS OF THE ORIENT"
+XII. BAYARD TAYLOR'S FRIENDSHIPS
+XIII. LAST YEARS
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+[Illustration: _WASHINGTON IRVING._]
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+HIS CHILDHOOD
+
+
+The Revolutionary War was over. The British soldiers were preparing to
+embark on their ships and sail back over the ocean, and General
+Washington would soon enter New York city at the head of the American
+army. While all true patriots were rejoicing at this happy turn of
+affairs, a little boy was born who was destined to be the first great
+American author.
+
+William Irving, the father of this little boy, had been a merchant in
+New York city. He had been very prosperous until the war broke out.
+After the battle of Long Island, the British then occupying the city,
+he had taken his family to New Jersey. But later, although he was a
+loyal American, he went back to the city to attend to his business.
+There he helped the American cause by doing everything he could for
+the American prisoners whom the British held. His wife, especially,
+had a happy way of persuading Sir Henry Clinton, and when the British
+general saw her coming, he prepared himself to grant any request about
+the prisoners which she might make. Often she sent them food from her
+own table, and cared for them when they were sick.
+
+When their last son, the eleventh child, was born, on April 3, 1783,
+the parents showed their loyalty by naming him Washington, after the
+beloved Father of his Country.
+
+Six years after this, George Washington was elected president, and
+went to New York to live. The Scotch maid who took care of little
+Washington Irving made up her mind to introduce the boy to his great
+namesake. So one day she followed the general into a shop, and,
+pointing to the lad, said, "Please, your honor, here's a bairn was
+named after you." Washington turned around, smiled, and placing his
+hand on the boy's head, gave him his blessing. Little did General
+Washington suspect that in later years this boy, grown to manhood and
+become famous, would write his biography.
+
+In those days New York was only a small town at the south end of
+Manhattan Island. It extended barely as far north as the place where
+now stand the City Hall and the Postoffice. Broadway was then a
+country road. The Irvings lived at 131 William Street, afterward
+moving across to 128. This is now one of the oldest parts of New York.
+The streets in that section are narrow, and the buildings, though put
+up long after Irving's birth, seem very old.
+
+Here the little boy grew up with his brothers and sisters. At four he
+went to school. His first teacher was a lady; but he was soon
+transferred to a school kept by an old Revolutionary soldier who
+became so fond of the boy that he gave him the pet name of "General."
+This teacher liked him because, though often in mischief, he never
+tried to protect himself by telling a falsehood, but always confessed
+the truth.
+
+Washington was not very fond of study, but he was a great reader. At
+eleven his favorite stories were "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sindbad the
+Sailor." Besides these, he read many books of travel, and soon found
+himself wishing that he might go to sea. As he grew up he was able to
+gratify his taste for travel, and some of his finest books and stories
+relate to his experiences in foreign lands. In the introduction to the
+"Sketch Book" he says, "How wistfully would I wander about the
+pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to
+distant climes--with what longing eyes would I gaze after their
+lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+IRVING'S FIRST VOYAGE UP THE HUDSON RIVER
+
+
+Irving's first literary composition seems to have been a play written
+when he was thirteen. It was performed at the house of a friend, in
+the presence of a famous actress of that day; but in after years
+Irving had forgotten even the title.
+
+His schooling was finished when he was sixteen. His elder brothers had
+attended college, and he never knew exactly why he did not. But he was
+not fond of hard study or hard work. He lived in a sort of dreamy
+leisure, which seemed particularly suited to his light, airy genius,
+so full of humor, sunshine, and loving-kindness.
+
+After leaving school, he began to study law in the office of a certain
+Henry Masterton. This was in the year 1800. He was admitted to the bar
+six years later; but he spent a great deal more of the intervening
+time in traveling and scribbling than in the study of law. His first
+published writing was a series of letters signed "Jonathan Oldstyle,"
+printed in his brother's daily paper, "The Morning Chronicle," when
+the writer was nineteen years old.
+
+Irving's first journey was made the very year after he left school. It
+was a voyage in a sailing boat up the Hudson river to Albany; and a
+land journey from there to Johnstown, New York, to visit two married
+sisters. In the early days this was on the border of civilization,
+where the white traders went to buy furs from the Indians. Steamboats
+and railroads had not been invented, and a journey that can now be
+made in a few hours, then required several days. Years afterward,
+Irving described his first voyage up the Hudson.
+
+"My first voyage up the Hudson," said he, "was made in early boyhood,
+in the good old times before steamboats and railroads had annihilated
+time and space, and driven all poetry and romance out of travel.... We
+enjoyed the beauties of the river in those days.[+]
+
+[Footnote +: Irving was the first to describe the wonderful beauties
+of the Hudson river.]
+
+"I was to make the voyage under the protection of a relative of mature
+age--one experienced in the river. His first care was to look out for
+a favorite sloop and captain, in which there was great choice....
+
+"A sloop was at length chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight
+and secure a sufficient number of passengers. Days were consumed in
+drumming up a cargo. This was a tormenting delay to me, who was about
+to make my first voyage, and who, boy-like, had packed my trunk on the
+first mention of the expedition. How often that trunk had to be
+unpacked and repacked before we sailed!
+
+"At length the sloop actually got under way. As she worked slowly out
+of the dock into the stream, there was a great exchange of last words
+between friends on board and friends on shore, and much waving of
+handkerchiefs when the sloop was out of hearing.
+
+"... What a time of intense delight was that first sail through the
+Highlands! I sat on the deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of
+those stern mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at cliffs
+impending far above me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and
+screaming around them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down
+precipices; or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected in
+the glassy stream of the river....
+
+"But of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the
+most witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget
+the effect upon me of the first view of them predominating over a wide
+extent of country, part wild, woody, and rugged; part softened away
+into all the graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay
+on the deck and watched them through a long summer's day, undergoing a
+thousand mutations under the magical effects of atmosphere; sometimes
+seeming to approach, at other times to recede; now almost melting into
+hazy distance, now burnished by the hazy sun, until, in the evening,
+they printed themselves against the glowing sky in the deep purple of
+an Italian landscape."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A TRIP TO MONTREAL
+
+
+Soon after returning from this trip, Irving became a clerk in the law
+office of a Mr. Hoffman. There was a warm friendship between him and
+Mr. Hoffman's family. Mrs. Hoffman was his lifelong friend and, as he
+afterwards said, like a sister to him; and he finally fell in love
+with Matilda, one of Mr. Hoffman's daughters, and was engaged to be
+married to her. Her sad death at the age of seventeen was perhaps the
+greatest unhappiness of his life. He never married, but held her
+memory sacred as long as he lived.
+
+In 1803 he was invited by Mr. Hoffman to go with him to Montreal and
+Quebec. Irving kept a journal during this expedition, and it shows
+what a rough time travelers had in those days.
+
+Part of the way they sailed in a scow on Black River. They were
+partially sheltered from the rain by sheets stretched over hoops. At
+night they went ashore and slept in a log cabin.
+
+One morning after a rainy night they awoke to find the sky clear and
+the sun shining brightly. Setting out again in their boat, they were
+soon surprised by meeting three canoes in pursuit of a deer.
+
+"The deer made for our shore," says Irving in his journal. "We pushed
+ashore immediately, and as it passed, Mr. Ogden fired and wounded it.
+It had been wounded before. I threw off my coat and prepared to swim
+after it. As it came near, a man rushed through the bushes, sprang
+into the water, and made a grasp at the animal. He missed his aim, and
+I jumped after, fell on his back, and sunk him under water. At the
+same time I caught the deer by one ear, and Mr. Ogden seized it by a
+leg. The submerged gentleman, who had risen above the water, got hold
+of another. We drew it ashore, when the man immediately dispatched it
+with a knife. We claimed a haunch for our share, permitting him to
+keep all the rest."
+
+Irving had one or two experiences with the Indians which were not
+altogether pleasant at the time, but which afterward appeared very
+amusing.
+
+On one occasion he went with another young man to a small island in a
+river, where he hoped to be able to hire a boat to take the party to a
+place some distance farther down the stream. They found there a wigwam
+in which were a number of Indians, both men and women; but the Indian
+they were looking for was away selling furs.
+
+He soon came in, with his squaw, who was rather a pretty woman. Both
+he and she had been drinking. While the other young man was trying to
+explain their business, the Indian woman sat down beside Irving, and
+in her half drunken way began to pay him great attention.
+
+The husband, a tall, strapping Hercules of an Indian, sat scowling at
+them with his blanket drawn up to his chin, and his face between his
+hands, while his elbows rested on his knees.
+
+But soon the Indian could no longer endure the flirtation his wife was
+carrying on with Irving. He rushed upon him, calling him a "cursed
+Yankee," and gave him a blow which stretched him on the floor.
+
+While Irving was picking himself up and getting out of the way, his
+friend went to the Indian and tried to quiet him. By this time the
+feelings of the drunken redman had quite changed. He fell on the young
+man's neck, exchanged names with him after the Indian fashion, and
+declared that they would be sworn friends and brothers as long as they
+lived.
+
+Irving hastened to get into his boat, and he and his companion made
+off as quickly as possible, having no wish for any further intercourse
+with drunken Indians.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+IRVING GOES TO EUROPE
+
+
+Irving's health was by no means good, and his friends were so alarmed
+that when he was twenty-one they planned a trip to Europe for him. As
+he stepped on board the boat that was to take him, the captain eyed
+him from head to foot and remarked to himself, "There's a chap who
+will go overboard before we get across."
+
+To the surprise of the captain and other passengers, however, he did
+not die, but got much better.
+
+He disembarked at Bordeaux, in France, and joining a merry company,
+traveled with them in a kind of stagecoach called a diligence.
+
+Among the company were a jolly little Pennsylvania doctor, and a
+French officer going home to see his mother. In one of the little
+French towns where they stopped they had an amusing experience, which
+Irving has described in his journal.
+
+"In one of our strolls in the town of Tonneins," says he, "we entered
+a house where a number of girls were quilting. They gave me a needle
+and set me to work. My bad French seemed to give them much amusement.
+They asked me several questions; as I could not understand them I made
+them any answer that came into my head, which caused a great deal of
+laughter amongst them.
+
+"At last the little doctor told them that I was an English prisoner,
+whom the young French officer (who was with us) had in custody. Their
+merriment immediately gave place to pity.
+
+"'Ah, the poor fellow!' said one to another, 'he is merry, however, in
+all his trouble,'
+
+"'And what will they do with him?' said a young woman to the traveler.
+
+"'Oh, nothing of consequence,' replied he; 'perhaps shoot him or cut
+off his head.'
+
+"The honest souls seemed quite distressed for me, and when I mentioned
+that I was thirsty, a bottle of wine was immediately placed before me,
+nor could I prevail on them to take a recompense. In short, I
+departed, loaded with their good wishes and benedictions, and I
+suppose I furnished a theme of conversation throughout the village."
+
+Years afterward, when Mr. Irving was minister to Spain, he went some
+miles out of his way to visit this town. Says he:
+
+"As my carriage rattled through the quiet streets of Tonneins, and the
+postilion smacked his whip with the French love of racket, I looked
+out for the house where, forty years before, I had seen the quilting
+party. I believe I recognized the house; and I saw two or three old
+women, who might once have formed part of the merry group of girls;
+but I doubt whether they recognized in the stout, elderly gentleman,
+who thus rattled in his carriage through their streets, the pale young
+English prisoner of forty years since."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this manner he wandered about for nearly two years. He visited
+Genoa, the birthplace of Columbus, and climbed Mount Vesuvius. He
+dined with Madame de Stael, the famous author of "Corinne." At Rome he
+met Washington Allston, the great American painter, then a young man
+not much older than he. They became good friends, and Allston
+afterward illustrated some of Irving's works. Irving was tempted to
+remain in Rome and become a painter like Allston. But he finally
+decided that he did not have any special talent for art, and went home
+to finish his study of law.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"SALMAGUNDI"
+
+
+Washington Irving returned to New York, quite restored to health; and
+there he soon became a social hero. Trips to Europe were so uncommon
+in those days that to have made one was a distinction in itself.
+Besides, Irving was now a polished young gentleman, very fond of
+amusement; and having become a lawyer with little to do, he made up
+his mind to enjoy himself.
+
+He and his brother Peter, with a number of young men about the same
+age, called themselves "the nine worthies," or the "lads of Kilkenny,"
+and many a gay time they had together,--rather too gay, some people
+thought. One of their favorite resorts was an old family mansion,
+which had descended from a deceased uncle to one of the nine lads. It
+was on the banks of the Passaic river, about a mile from Newark, New
+Jersey. It was full of antique furniture, and the walls were adorned
+with old family portraits. The place was in charge of an old man and
+his wife and a negro boy, who were the sole occupants, except when the
+nine would sally forth from New York and enliven its solitudes with
+their madcap pranks and orgies.
+
+"'Who would have thought," said Irving at the age of sixty-three to
+another of those nine lads, "that we should ever have lived to be two
+such respectable old gentlemen!"
+
+About this time Irving and a friend named James K. Paulding proposed
+to start a paper, to be called "Salmagundi." It was an imitation of
+Addison's _Spectator_, and consisted of light, humorous essays, most
+of them making fun of the fads and fancies of New York life in those
+days. The numbers were published from a week to a month apart, and
+were continued for about a year.
+
+The young men had no idea of making money by the venture, for they
+were then well-to-do; but to their surprise it proved a great success,
+and the publisher is said to have made ten or fifteen thousand dollars
+out of it. He afterwards paid the editors four hundred dollars each.
+
+Irving now visited Philadelphia, Boston, and other places. He thought
+of trying for a government office, and was tempted into politics. His
+description of his experience is amusing enough.
+
+"Before the third day was expired, I was as deep in mud and politics
+as ever a moderate gentleman would wish to be; and I drank beer with
+the multitude; and I talked handbill-fashion with the demagogues, and
+I shook hands with the mob--whom my heart abhorreth. 'Tis true, for
+the two first days I maintained my coolness and indifference.... But
+the third day--ah! then came the tug of war. My patriotism all at once
+blazed forth, and I determined to save my country! O, my friend, I
+have been in such holes and corners; such filthy nooks, sweep offices,
+and oyster cellars!"
+
+He closes by saying that this saving one's country is such a sickening
+business that he wants no more of it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER"
+
+
+On October 26, 1809, there appeared in the _New York Evening Post_ the
+following paragraph:
+
+"DISTRESSING.
+
+"Left his lodgings, some time since, and has not since been heard of,
+a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked
+hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. As there are some reasons for
+believing he is not entirely in his right mind, and as great anxiety
+is entertained about him, any information concerning him left either
+at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry street, or at the office of this
+paper, will be thankfully received.
+
+"P.S. Printers of newspapers will be aiding the cause of humanity in
+giving an insertion to the above."
+
+Two weeks later a letter was printed in the _Evening Post_, signed "A
+Traveler," saying that such a gentleman as the one described had been
+seen a little above King's Bridge, north of New York, "resting himself
+by the side of the road."
+
+Ten days after this the following letter was printed:
+
+"_To the Editor of the Evening Post_:
+
+"Sir,--You have been good enough to publish in your paper a paragraph
+about Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was missing so strangely some
+time since; but a very curious kind of a written book has been found
+in his room, in his own handwriting. Now I wish to notice[+] him, if
+he is still alive, that if he does not return and pay off his bill for
+boarding and lodging, I shall have to dispose of his book to satisfy
+me for the same.
+
+[Footnote +: Legal term, meaning "to give notice to."]
+
+"I am, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"Seth Handaside,
+
+"Landlord of the Independent Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street."
+
+On November 28th there appeared in the advertising columns the
+announcement of "A History of New York," in two volumes, price three
+dollars.
+
+The advertisement says, "This work was found in the chamber of Mr.
+Diedrich Knickerbocker, the old gentleman whose sudden and mysterious
+disappearance has been noticed. It is published in order to discharge
+certain debts he has left behind."
+
+When the book was published the people took it up, expecting to find a
+grave and learned history of New York. It was dedicated to the New
+York Historical Society, and began with an account of the supposed
+author, Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker. "He was a small, brisk-looking old
+gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet
+breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few gray hairs plaited and
+clubbed behind.... The only piece of finery which he bore about him
+was a bright pair of square silver shoe-buckles." The landlord of the
+inn, who writes this description, adds: "My wife at once set him down
+for some eminent country schoolmaster."
+
+Imagine for yourself the astonishment, and then the amusement--in some
+cases even the anger--of those who read, to find a most ludicrous
+description of the old Dutch settlers of New York, the ancestors of
+the most aristocratic families of the metropolis of America. The
+people that laughed got the best of it, however, and the book was
+considered one of the popular successes of the day. The real author of
+this book was, of course, Washington Irving. When forty years later
+the book was to be included in his collected works he wrote an
+"Apology," in which he says, "When I find, after a lapse of nearly
+forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still cherished
+among them (the New Yorkers); when I find its very name become a
+'household word,' and used to give the home stamp to everything
+recommended for popular acceptance, such as Knickerbocker societies,
+Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats,
+Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker bread, and Knickerbocker
+ice,--and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves
+upon being 'genuine Knickerbockers,' I please myself with the persuasion
+that I have struck the right chord."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A COMIC HISTORY OF NEW YORK
+
+
+"Knickerbocker's History of New York" was undertaken by Irving and his
+brother Peter as a parody on a book that had lately appeared, entitled
+"A Picture of New York." The two young men, one of whom had already
+proved himself something of an author, were so full of humor and the
+spirit of mischief that they must amuse themselves and their friends,
+and they thought this a good way of doing it. There was to be an
+introduction giving the history of New York from the foundation of the
+world, and the main body of the book was to consist of "notices of the
+customs, manners, and institutions of the city; written in a
+serio-comic vein, and treating local errors, follies, and abuses with
+good-humored satire."
+
+The introduction was not more than fairly begun when Peter Irving
+started for Europe, leaving the completion of the work to the younger
+brother. Washington decided to change the plan, and merely give a
+humorous history of the Dutch settlement of New York.
+
+Let us take a peep into this amusing history. First, here is the
+portrait of "that worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has
+justly been called), Master Henry Hudson," who "set sail from Holland
+in a stout vessel called the Half-Moon, being employed by the Dutch
+East India Company to seek a northwest passage to China."
+
+"Henry (or as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a
+seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir
+Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it
+into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and
+caused him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses,
+the Lords States General, and also of the honorable East India
+Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double
+chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in
+those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant
+neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.
+
+"He wore a commodore's cocked hat on one side of his head. He was
+remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his
+orders, and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin
+trumpet--owing to the number of hard northwesters which he had
+swallowed in the course of his seafaring.
+
+"Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard so much and know so
+little."
+
+You must read in the history itself the amusing account of Ten
+Breeches and Tough Breeches. One of the Dutch colonists bought of the
+Indians for sixty guelders as much land as could be covered by a man's
+breeches. When the time for measuring came Mr. Ten Breeches was
+produced, and peeling off one pair of breeches after another, soon
+produced enough material to surround the entire island of Manhattan,
+which was thus bought for sixty guelders, or Dutch dollars.
+
+In due time came the first Dutch governor, Wouter Van Twiller.
+
+Governor Van Twiller was five feet six inches in height, and six feet
+five inches in circumference, his figure "the very model of majesty
+and lordly grandeur." On the very morning after he had entered upon
+his office, he gave an example of his great legal knowledge and wise
+judgment.
+
+As the governor sat at breakfast an important old burgher came in to
+complain that Barent Bleecker refused to settle accounts, which was
+very annoying, as there was a heavy balance in the complainant's
+favor. "Governor Van Twiller, as I have already observed, was a man of
+few words; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writings--or
+being disturbed at his breakfast. Having listened attentively to the
+statement of Wandle Schoonhoven, giving an occasional grunt, as he
+shoveled a spoonful of Indian pudding into his mouth,--either as a
+sign that he relished the dish or comprehended the story,--he called
+unto him his constable, and pulling out of his breeches pocket a huge
+jack-knife, dispatched it after the defendant as a summons,
+accompanied by his tobacco-box as a warrant."
+
+When the account books were before him, "the sage Wouter took them one
+after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively
+counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a great
+doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length,
+laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a moment,
+with the air of a man who had just caught a subtle idea by the tail,
+he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of
+tobacco smoke, and with marvelous gravity and solemnity pronounced,
+that, having carefully counted over the leaves and weighed the books,
+it was found that one was just as thick and heavy as the other;
+therefore, it was the final opinion of the court that the accounts
+were equally balanced; therefore, Wandle should give Barent a receipt,
+and Barent should give Wandle a receipt, and the constable should pay
+the costs."
+
+It is not wonderful that this was the first and last lawsuit during
+his administration, and that no one was found who cared to hold the
+office of constable.
+
+This is only one of scores of droll stories to be found in this most
+interesting "history."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+FIVE UNEVENTFUL YEARS
+
+
+It seems strange that the success of the "History of New York" did not
+make Irving a professional man of letters at once. The profits on the
+first edition were three thousand dollars, and several other editions
+were to follow steadily. But though he wished to be a literary man,
+and now knew that he might make a fair living by his writings, there
+was still lacking the force to compel him to work. He had always lived
+in easy circumstances, doing as he liked, enjoying society, and
+amusing himself, and it was hard for him to devote his attention
+strictly to any set task.
+
+He applied for a clerkship at Albany, but failed to get it. Then his
+brothers, with whom he must have been a great favorite, as he was the
+youngest of the family, arranged a mercantile business in which he was
+to be a partner. Peter was to buy goods in England and ship them to
+New York, while Ebenezer was to sell them. Washington was to be a
+silent partner, and enjoy one fifth of the profits. At first he
+objected to taking no active part in the business; but his brothers
+persuaded him that this was his chance to become independent and have
+his entire time for literary work.
+
+But five years passed away and little was accomplished. This covered
+the period of the War of 1812. At first Irving was opposed to the war;
+but when he heard the news of the burning of Washington his patriotism
+blazed forth. "He was descending the Hudson in the steamboat when the
+tidings first reached him," says his nephew in the biography which he
+wrote. "It was night and the passengers had betaken themselves to
+their settees to rest, when a person came on board at Poughkeepsie
+with the news of the inglorious triumph, and proceeded in the darkness
+of the cabin to relate the particulars: the destruction of the
+president's house, the treasury, war, and navy offices, the capitol,
+the depository of the national library and the public records. There
+was a momentary pause after the speaker had ceased, when some paltry
+spirit lifted his head from his settee, and in a tone of complacent
+derision, 'wondered what _Jimmy_ Madison would say now.' 'Sir,' said
+Mr. Irving, glad of an escape to his swelling indignation, 'do you
+seize on such a disaster only for a sneer? Let me tell you, sir, it is
+not now a question about _Jimmy_ Madison or _Jimmy_ Armstrong.[+] The
+pride and honor of the nation are wounded; the country is insulted and
+disgraced by this barbarous success, and every loyal citizen should
+feel the ignominy and be earnest to avenge it.' 'I could not see the
+fellow,' said Mr. Irving when he related the anecdote, 'but I let fly
+at him in the dark.'"
+
+[Footnote +: The Secretary of War.]
+
+As soon as he reached New York, Irving went to the governor and
+offered his services. He was immediately appointed military secretary
+and aide with the rank of colonel. His duties were neither difficult
+nor dangerous, and he enjoyed his position; but he was glad when the
+war came to an end the following year.
+
+When the War of 1812 was over, his friend Commodore Decatur invited
+him to accompany him on an expedition to the Mediterranean, the United
+States having declared war against the pirates of Algiers. Irving's
+trunks were put on board the _Guerriere_, but as the expedition was
+delayed on account of the escape of Napoleon from Elba, he had them
+again brought ashore, and finally gave up his plan of going with
+Decatur. His mind was set on visiting Europe, however, and he
+immediately took passage for Liverpool in another vessel. Little did
+he think that he was not to return for seventeen years.
+
+One of Irving's married sisters was living in Birmingham, and his
+brother Peter was in Liverpool managing the business in which he was a
+partner. Soon after Washington's arrival, however, Peter fell ill, and
+the younger brother was obliged to take charge of affairs. He found a
+great many bills to pay, and very little money with which to pay them.
+He was now beginning to face some of the stern realities of life. He
+worked hard; but the black cloud of ruin came nearer and nearer. Other
+difficulties were added to those they already had to face, and
+finally, in 1818, the brothers were obliged to go into bankruptcy.
+
+It was now absolutely necessary that Irving should earn his living in
+some way. His brothers procured him an appointment at Washington; but
+to their astonishment he declined it and said he had made up his mind
+to live by his pen.
+
+He immediately went to London and set to work on the "Sketch Book,"
+and during the next dozen years wrote the greater number of his more
+famous works.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP WITH SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+While he was worrying over the failure of his business, Irving was
+fortunate enough to make some distinguished literary friendships. He
+had already helped to introduce Thomas Campbell's works in the United
+States, and had written a biography of Campbell; one of the first
+things he did, therefore, after reaching Liverpool, was to go to see
+the English poet.
+
+It was not until a little later that he became acquainted with Sir
+Walter Scott, who was the literary giant of those times. In 1813 Henry
+Brevoort, one of Irving's most intimate boyhood friends, had presented
+to Scott a copy of the "History of New York," and Scott had written a
+letter of thanks in which he said, "I have been employed these few
+evenings in reading the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker aloud to Mrs.
+S, and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been
+absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which
+indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind."
+
+Irving, too, had been a great admirer of Scott's "Lady of the Lake."
+Campbell gave him a letter of introduction to the bard, and in a
+letter to his brother, Irving gives a delightful description of his
+visit to Abbotsford, Scott's home.
+
+"On Saturday morning early," says he, "I took a chaise for Melrose;
+and on the way stopped at the gate of Abbotsford, and sent in my
+letter of introduction, with a request to know whether it would be
+agreeable for Mr. Scott to receive a visit from me in the course of
+the day. The glorious old minstrel himself came limping to the gate,
+and took me by the hand in a way that made me feel as if we were old
+friends; in a moment I was seated at his hospitable board among his
+charming little family, and here I have been ever since.... I cannot
+tell you how truly I have enjoyed the hours I have passed here. They
+fly by too quickly, yet each is loaded with story, incident, or song;
+and when I consider the world of ideas, images, and impressions that
+have been crowded upon my mind since I have been here, it seems
+incredible that I should only have been two days at Abbotsford."
+
+And here is Scott's impression of Irving: "When you see Tom Campbell,"
+he writes to a friend, "tell him, with my best love, that I have to
+thank him for making me known to Mr. Washington Irving, who is one of
+the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day."
+
+When the "Sketch Book" was coming out in the United States, and Irving
+was thinking of publishing it in England, he received some advice and
+assistance from Scott; and finally Scott persuaded the great English
+publisher Murray to take it up, even after that publisher had once
+declined it. On this occasion Irving wrote to a friend as follows:
+
+"He (Scott) is a man that, if you knew, you would love; a right
+honest-hearted, generous-spirited being; without vanity, affectation,
+or assumption of any kind. He enters into every passing scene or
+passing pleasure with the interest and simple enjoyment of a child."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"RIP VAN WINKLE"
+
+
+Irving's most famous work is undoubtedly the "Sketch Book"; and of the
+thirty-two stories and essays in this volume, all Americans love best
+"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."
+
+After the failure of his business, when Irving saw that he must write
+something at once to meet his ordinary living expenses, he went up to
+London and prepared several sketches, which he sent to his friend,
+Henry Brevoort, in New York. Among them was the story of Rip Van
+Winkle. This, with the other sketches, was printed in handsome form as
+the first number of a periodical, which was offered for sale at
+seventy-five cents. Though "The Sketch Book," as the periodical was
+called, professed to be edited by "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.," every one
+knew that Washington Irving was the real author. In fact, the best
+story in the first number, "Rip Van Winkle," was represented to be a
+posthumous writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the author of the
+"History of New York."
+
+There are few Americans who do not know the story of "Rip Van Winkle"
+by heart; for those who have not read the story, have at least seen
+the play in which Joseph Jefferson, the great actor, has made himself
+so famous.
+
+Attached to the story is a note supposed to have been written by
+Diedrich Knickerbocker, which a careless reader might overlook, but
+which is an excellent introduction to the story. Says he:
+
+"The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but
+nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our
+old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events
+and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this
+in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well
+authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van
+Winkle myself, who, when I last saw him, was a very venerable old man,
+and so perfectly rational and consistent on every point, that I think
+no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain;
+nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject, taken before a country
+justice, and signed with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting.
+The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt."
+
+Rip was truly an original character. He had a shrewish wife who was
+always scolding him; and he seems to have deserved all the cross
+things she said to him, for he had "an insuperable aversion to all
+kinds of profitable labor--in other words, he was as lazy a fellow as
+you could find in all the country side."
+
+Nevertheless, every one liked him, he was so good-natured. "He was a
+great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who took his
+part in all the family squabbles; and never failed whenever they
+talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the
+blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would
+shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports,
+made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and
+told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he
+went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them,
+hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand
+tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him
+throughout the neighborhood."
+
+You can't find much fault with a man who is so well liked that even
+the dogs will not bark at him. You are reminded of Irving himself, who
+for so many years was so idle; and yet who, out of his very idleness,
+produced such charming stories.
+
+"Rip Van Winkle," continues the narrative, "was one of those happy
+mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy,
+eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or
+trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If
+left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect
+contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about
+his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his
+family."
+
+This description is as perfect and as delightful as any in the English
+language. Any one who cannot enjoy this has no perception of human
+nature, and no love of humor in his composition. In time Rip
+discovered that his only escape from his termagant wife was to take
+his gun, and stroll off into the woods with his dog. "Here he would
+sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents
+of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow sufferer
+in persecution. 'Poor Wolf,' he would say, 'thy mistress leads thee a
+dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt
+never want a friend to stand by thee!' Wolf would wag his tail, look
+wistfully into his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily
+believe he reciprocated with all his heart."
+
+Rip is just the sort of fellow to have some sort of adventure, and we
+are not at all astonished when we find him helping the dwarf carry his
+keg of liquor up the mountain. The description of "the odd-looking
+personages playing at nine-pins" whom he finds on entering the
+amphitheater, is a perfect picture in words; for the truly great
+writer is a painter of pictures quite as much as the great artist.
+
+"They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short
+doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts. Their
+visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large head, broad face, and
+small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of
+nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a
+little red cock's tail. They all had beards of various shapes and
+colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout
+old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced
+doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red
+stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them.... What seemed
+particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently
+amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most
+mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of
+pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of
+the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were
+rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder."
+
+But now comes a surprise. Rip indulges too freely in the contents of
+the keg and falls asleep. When he wakes he finds a rusty old gun
+beside him, and he whistles in vain for his dog. He goes back to the
+village; but every thing and everybody is strange and changed. Putting
+his hand to his chin he finds that his beard has grown a foot. He has
+been sleeping twenty years.
+
+But you must read the story for yourselves. It will bear reading many
+times, and each time you will find in it something to smile at and
+enjoy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+LITERARY SUCCESS IN ENGLAND
+
+
+"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" also purports to be written by Diedrich
+Knickerbocker, and it is only less famous than "Rip Van Winkle." When
+he was a boy, Irving had gone hunting in Sleepy Hollow, which is not
+far from New York city; and in the latter part of his life he bought a
+low stone house there of Mr. Van Tassel and fitted it up for his
+bachelor home.
+
+"The outline of this story," says his nephew Pierre Irving, "had been
+sketched more than a year before[+] at Birmingham, after a
+conversation with his brother-in-law, Van Wart, who had been dwelling
+on some recollections of his early years at Tarrytown, and had touched
+upon a waggish fiction of one Brom Bones, a wild blade, who professed
+to fear nothing, and boasted of his having once met the devil on a
+return from a nocturnal frolic, and run a race with him for a bowl of
+milk punch. The imagination of the author suddenly kindled over the
+recital, and in a few hours he had scribbled off the framework of his
+renowned story, and was reading it to his sister and her husband. He
+then threw it by until he went up to London, where it was expanded
+into the present legend."
+
+[Footnote +: That is, before it was finally written and published.]
+
+No sooner had the first number of the "Sketch Book," as published in
+New York, come to England, than a periodical began reprinting it, and
+Irving heard that a publisher intended to bring it out in book form.
+That made him decide to publish it in England himself, and he did so
+at his own expense. The publisher soon failed, and by Scott's help, as
+already explained, Irving got his book into the hands of Murray.
+Murray finally gave him a thousand dollars for the copyright. But when
+it was published, it proved so very popular that Murray paid him five
+hundred more. From that time forward he received large sums for his
+writings, both in the United States and in England.
+
+The "Sketch Book" was followed by "Bracebridge Hall," consisting of
+stories and sketches of the same character; and later by the "Tales of
+a Traveller."
+
+In the "Tales of a Traveller" we are most interested in "Buckthorne
+and his Friends," a series of English stories, with descriptions of
+literary life in London. Most famous of all is the account of a
+publishers' dinner, with a description of the carving partner sitting
+gravely at one end, with never a smile on his face, while at the other
+end of the table sits the laughing partner; and the poor authors are
+arranged at the table and are treated by the partners according to the
+number of editions their books have sold.
+
+Irving's father was a Scotchman, and his mother was an Englishwoman;
+and one of his sisters and one of his brothers, as we have already
+learned, lived in England for many years. It is not strange, then,
+that England became to him a second home, and that many of his best
+stories and descriptions in the "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge Hall," and
+the "Tales of a Traveller" relate to English characters and scenes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+IRVING GOES TO SPAIN
+
+
+When Irving went to Liverpool in 1815, it was his intention to travel
+on the continent of Europe. As we have seen, business reasons made
+that impossible. But after the publication and success of the "Sketch
+Book" he was free. He was now certain of an income, and his reputation
+was so great that he attracted notice wherever he went.
+
+In 1820, after having spent five years in England, he at last set out
+on his European journey. We cannot follow him in all his wanderings;
+but one country that he visited furnished him the materials for the
+most serious, and in one way the most important part of his literary
+work. This was Spain. Here he spent a great deal of time, returning
+again and again; and finally he was appointed United States minister
+to that country.
+
+He first went to Spain to collect materials for the "Life and Voyages
+of Christopher Columbus." This was a much more serious work than
+anything he had before undertaken. It was, unlike the history of New
+York, a genuine investigation of facts derived from the musty old
+volumes of the libraries of Spanish monasteries and other ancient
+collections. It was a record of the life of the discoverer of America
+that was destined to remain the highest authority on that subject.
+Murray, the London publisher, paid him over fifteen thousand dollars
+for the English copyright alone.
+
+In his study among the ruins of Spain, Irving found many other things
+which greatly interested him--legends, and tales of the Moors who had
+once ruled there, and of the ruined beauties of the Moorish palace of
+the Alhambra. His imagination was set on fire, he was delighted with
+the images of by-gone days of glittering pageantry which his fancy
+called up. Before his history of Columbus was finished, he began the
+writing of a book so precisely to his taste that he could not restrain
+himself until it was finished. This was the "Chronicle of the Conquest
+of Granada"--a true history, but one which reads more like a romance
+of the Middle Ages than a simple record of facts.
+
+This was followed by four other books based on Spanish history and
+legend. It seemed as if Irving could never quite abandon this
+entrancing subject, for during the entire remainder of his life he
+went back to it constantly.
+
+When his great history of the life of Columbus was published and
+proved its merit, Irving was honored in a way he had little expected
+in his more idle days. The Royal Society of Literature bestowed upon
+him one of two fifty-guinea[+] gold medals awarded annually, and the
+University of Oxford conferred the degree of L.L.D.
+
+[Footnote +: Two hundred and fifty dollars.]
+
+The "Life of Columbus" was followed in 1831 by the "Voyages of the
+Companions of Columbus." In the following year Irving returned to the
+United States after an absence of seventeen years.
+
+He was no longer an idle young man unable to fix his mind on any
+serious work; he had become the most famous of American men of
+letters. When he reached New York his countrymen hastened to heap
+honors upon him, and almost overwhelmed him with public attentions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+"THE ALHAMBRA"
+
+
+Just before Irving's return to the United States in 1832, he prepared
+for publication some sketches which he had made three or four years
+before while living for a few months in the ruins of the Alhambra, the
+ancient palace of the Moorish kings when they ruled the kingdom of
+Granada. Next to the stories of "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of
+Sleepy Hollow," nothing that Irving has written has proved more
+popular than this volume of "The Alhambra;" and it has made the
+ancient ruin a place of pilgrimage for tourists in Europe ever since.
+
+In this volume Irving not only describes in his own peculiarly
+charming manner his experiences in the halls of the Alhambra itself,
+but he gives many of the stories and legends of the place, most of
+which were told to him by Mateo Ximenes, a "son of the Alhambra," who
+acted as his guide. This is the way he came to secure Mateo's
+services:
+
+"At the gate were two or three ragged, super-annuated soldiers, dozing
+on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages;
+while a tall, meagre valet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently
+intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was
+lounging in the sunshine and gossipping with the ancient sentinel on
+duty. He joined us as we entered the gate, and offered his services to
+show us the fortress.
+
+"I have a traveler's dislike to officious ciceroni, and did not
+altogether like the garb of the applicant.
+
+"'You are well acquainted with the place, I presume?'
+
+"'Nobody better; in fact, sir, I am a son of the Alhambra.'
+
+"'The common Spaniards have certainly a most poetical way of
+expressing themselves. 'A son of the Alhambra!' the appellation caught
+me at once; the very tattered garb of my new acquaintance assumed a
+dignity in my eyes. It was emblematic of the fortunes of the place,
+and befitted the progeny of a ruin."
+
+Accompanied by Mateo, the travelers pass on to "the great vestibule,
+or porch of the gate," which "is formed by an immense Arabian arch, of
+the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On
+the keystone of this arch, is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the
+vestibule, on the keystone of the portal, is sculptured, in like
+manner, a gigantic key," emblems, say the learned, of Moorish
+superstition and religious belief.
+
+"A different explanation of these emblems, however, was given by the
+legitimate son of Alhambra, and one more in unison with the notions of
+the common people, who attach something of mystery and magic to
+everything Moorish, and have all kinds of superstitions connected with
+this old Moslem fortress. According to Mateo, it was a tradition
+handed down from the oldest inhabitants, and which he had from his
+father and grandfather, that the hand and key were magical devices on
+which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it
+was a great magician, or, as some believed, had sold himself to the
+devil, and had laid the whole fortress under a magic spell. By this
+means it had remained standing for several years, in defiance of
+storms and earthquakes, while almost all other buildings of the Moors
+had fallen to ruin and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on
+to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down
+and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all
+the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed."
+
+The travelers at once made application to the governor for permission
+to take up their residence in the palace of the Alhambra, and to their
+astonishment and delight he placed his own suite of apartments at
+their disposal, as he himself preferred to live in the city of
+Granada.
+
+Irving's companion soon left him, and he remained sole lord of the
+palace. For a time he occupied the governor's rooms, which were very
+scantily furnished; but one day he came upon an eerie suite of rooms
+which he liked better. They were the rooms that had been fitted up for
+the beautiful Elizabetta of Farnese, the second wife of Philip V.
+
+"The windows, dismantled and open to the wind and weather, looked into
+a charming little secluded garden, where an alabaster fountain
+sparkled among roses and myrtles, and was surrounded by orange and
+citron trees, some of which flung their branches into the chambers."
+This was the garden of Lindaraxa.
+
+"Four centuries had elapsed since the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet
+how much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained!
+The garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still
+presented the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been
+reflected; the alabaster, it is true, had lost its whiteness; the
+basin beneath, overrun with weeds, had become the lurking-place of the
+lizard, but there was something in the very decay that enhanced the
+interest of the scene, speaking as it did of the mutability, the
+irrevocable lot of man and all his works."
+
+In spite of warnings of the dangers of the place, Irving had his bed
+set up in the chamber beside this little garden. The first night was
+full of frightful terrors. The garden was dark and sinister. "There
+was a slight rustling noise overhead; a bat suddenly emerged from a
+broken panel of the ceiling, flitting about the room and athwart my
+solitary lamp; and as the fateful bird almost flouted my face with his
+noiseless wing, the grotesque faces carved in high relief in the cedar
+ceiling, whence he had emerged, seemed to mope and mow at me.
+
+"Rousing myself, and half smiling at this temporary weakness, I
+resolved to brave it out in the true spirit of the hero of the
+enchanted house," says the narrator. So taking his lamp in his hand he
+started out to make a midnight tour of the palace.
+
+"My own shadow, cast upon the wall, began to disturb me," he
+continues. "The echoes of my own footsteps along the corridors made me
+pause and look around. I was traversing scenes fraught with dismal
+recollections. One dark passage led down to the mosque where Yusef,
+the Moorish monarch, the finisher of the Alhambra, had been basely
+murdered. In another place I trod the gallery where another monarch
+had been struck down by the poniard of a relative whom he had thwarted
+in his love."
+
+In a few nights, however, all this was changed; for the moon, which
+had been invisible, began to "roll in full splendor above the towers,
+pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall."
+
+Says Irving, "I now felt the merit of the Arabic inscription on the
+walls--'How beauteous is this garden; where the flowers of the earth
+vie with the stars of heaven. What can compare with the vase of yon
+alabaster fountain filled with crystal water? Nothing but the moon in
+her fullness, shining in the midst of an unclouded sky!"
+
+"On such heavenly nights," he goes on, "I would sit for hours at my
+window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the
+checkered fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in
+the elegant memorials around. Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the
+clock from the distant cathedral of Granada struck the midnight hour,
+I have sallied out on another tour and wandered over the whole
+building; but how different from my first tour! No longer dark and
+mysterious; no longer peopled with shadowy foes; no longer recalling
+scenes of violence and murder; all was open, spacious, beautiful;
+everything called up pleasing and romantic fancies; Lindaraxa once
+more walked in her garden; the gay chivalry of Moslem Granada once
+more glittered about the Court of Lions!
+
+"Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and in such
+a place? The temperature of a summer night in Andalusia is perfectly
+ethereal. We seem lifted up into an ethereal atmosphere; we feel a
+serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, which
+render mere existence happiness. But when moonlight is added to all
+this, the effect is like enchantment. Under its plastic sway the
+Alhambra seems to regain its pristine glories. Every rent and chasm of
+time; every moldering tint and weather-stain is gone; the marble
+resumes its original whiteness; the long colonnades brighten in the
+moonbeams; the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance--we
+tread the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale!"
+
+When one may journey with such a companion, through a whole volume of
+enchantment and legend and moonlight, it is not strange that "The
+Alhambra" has been one of the most widely read books ever produced by
+an American writer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THE LAST YEARS OF IRVING'S LIFE
+
+
+Some people have thought that Irving's long residence abroad indicated
+that he did not care so much as he should for his native land. But the
+truth is, the years after his return to the United States were among
+the happiest of his life; and more and more he felt that here was his
+home.
+
+In 1835 he purchased, as I have already said, a small piece of land on
+the Hudson, on which stood the Van Tassel house mentioned in the
+"Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It was an old Dutch cottage which had stood
+for so many years that it needed to be almost entirely rebuilt; and
+Irving spent a considerable sum of money to fit it up as his bachelor
+quarters. First he shared it with one of his bachelor brothers; but
+soon he invited his brother Ebenezer to come with his family of girls
+to occupy it with him.
+
+As the years went on, Irving took a delight in this cottage that can
+hardly be expressed. At first he called it "Wolfert's Roost";
+afterward the name was changed to "Sunnyside," the name by which it is
+still known. Little by little he bought more land, he planted trees,
+and cultivated flowers and vegetables. At one time he boasts that he
+has become so proficient in gardening that he can raise his own fruits
+and vegetables at a cost to him of little more than twice the market
+price.
+
+During this period several books were published, among them a
+description of a tour on the prairies which he took soon after his
+return from abroad; a collection of "Legends of the Conquest of Spain"
+which had been lying in his trunk since his residence in the Alhambra
+seven or eight years before; and "Astoria," a book of Western life and
+adventure, describing John Jacob Astor's settlement on the Columbia
+river.
+
+It was his wish to write a history of the conquest of Mexico, for
+which he had collected materials in Spain; but hearing that Prescott,
+the well-known American historian, was at work on the same subject, he
+gave it up to him.
+
+The chief work of his later years was his "Life of George Washington."
+This was a great undertaking, of which he had often thought. He was
+actually at work on it for many years, and it was finally published
+only a short time before his death in 1859.
+
+Irving's friends in the United States had long wished to give him some
+honor or distinction. He had been offered several public offices,
+among them the secretaryship of the navy; but he had declined them
+all. But in 1842, when Daniel Webster was secretary of state, Irving
+was nominated minister to Spain. It was Webster's idea, and he took
+great delight in carrying out his plan. After the notification of his
+nomination had been sent to Irving, and Webster thought time enough
+had elapsed for him to receive it, he remarked to a friend:
+"Washington Irving is now the most astonished man in the city of New
+York."
+
+When Irving heard the news he seemed to think less of the distinction
+conferred upon him than of the unhappiness of being once more banished
+from his home. "It is hard--very hard," he murmured, half to himself;
+"yet," he added, whimsically enough (says his nephew), being struck
+with the seeming absurdity of such a view, "I must try to bear it.
+_God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb_." Later, however, Irving
+speaks of this as the "crowning honor of his life."
+
+He remained abroad four years, when he sent in his resignation, and
+hurried home to spend his last years at Sunnyside.
+
+His first thought was to build an addition to his cottage, in order to
+have room for all his nieces and nephews. His enjoyment in every
+detail of the work was almost that of a boy. Though now an old man, he
+seemed as sunny and as gay as ever. Every one who knew him loved him;
+and all the people who now read his books must have the same
+affectionate fondness for this most delightful of companions.
+
+In the United States he met both Dickens and Thackeray. His friendship
+with Dickens was begun by a letter which Irving wrote to the great
+novelist, enthusiastically praising his work. At once Dickens replied
+in a long letter, fairly bubbling over with delight and friendship.
+Here is a part of it:
+
+"There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt
+pleasure you have. There is no living writer, and there are very few
+among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And
+with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts,
+and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so.
+
+"I have been so accustomed to associate you with my pleasantest and
+happiest thoughts, and with my leisure hours, that I rush at once into
+full confidence with you, and fall, as it were, naturally, and by the
+very laws of gravity, into your open arms.... My dear Washington
+Irving, I cannot thank you enough for your cordial and generous
+praise, or tell you what deep and lasting gratification it has given
+me. I hope to have many letters from you, and to exchange a frequent
+correspondence. I send this to say so....
+
+"Always your faithful friend,
+
+"CHARLES DICKENS."
+
+The warmth of feeling which Dickens displays on receiving his first
+letter from Irving, we must all feel when we have become as well
+acquainted with Irving's works as Dickens was.
+
+Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at his dear
+Sunnyside, and now lies buried in a cemetery upon a hill near by, in a
+beautiful spot overlooking the Hudson river and Sleepy Hollow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE.--The thanks of the publishers are due to G. P. Putnam's Sons for
+kind permission to use extracts from the Works of Washington Irving.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+[Illustration: _EDGAR ALLAN POE_.]
+
+EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+THE ARTIST IN WORDS
+
+
+Who has not felt the weird fascination of Poe's strangely beautiful
+poem "The Raven"? Perhaps on some stormy evening you have read it
+until the "silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" has
+"thrilled you, filled you, with fantastic terrors never felt before."
+That poem is the almost perfect mirror of the life of the man who
+wrote it--the most brilliant poetic genius in the whole range of
+American literature, the most unfortunate and unhappy.
+
+Poe had a singular fate. When Longfellow and Bryant and Lowell and
+Holmes were winning their way to fame quietly and steadily, Poe was
+writing wonderful poems and wonderful stories, and more than that, he
+was inventing new principles and new artistic methods, on which other
+great writers in time to come should build their finest work; yet he
+barely escaped starvation, and the critics made it appear that,
+compared with such men as Longfellow and Bryant, he was more notorious
+than really great. Lowell in his "Fable for Critics" said:
+
+"There comes Poe,... three fifths of him genius, and two fifths sheer
+fudge."
+
+But now, fifty years after his death, we see how great a man Poe was.
+Poe invented the modern art of short story writing. His tales were
+translated into French by a famous writer named Charles Baudelaire.
+Other French writers saw how fine they were and modeled their work
+upon them. They learned the art of short story writing from Poe. Then
+these French stories were translated into English, and English and
+American writers have imitated them and adopted similar methods of
+writing.
+
+Conan Doyle's detective stories would probably never have been written
+had not Poe first composed "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"; and the
+stories of horror and fear so common to-day are possible because Poe
+wrote "William Wilson," "The Black Cat," and other stories of the same
+kind.
+
+Have you ever learned to scan poetry? If you have, you know that the
+rules which tell you that a foot is composed of one long syllable and
+one short one, two short syllables and one long one, or whatever else
+it may be, are frequently disregarded. You know, too, that some lines
+are cut off short at the end, and others are made a little too long.
+Why is this permitted? In his "Rationale of Verse," Poe explained all
+these things, and showed how the learned of past ages had made
+mistakes. In a subsequent chapter we shall see just what the relation
+between music and poetry is, and what Poe taught about the art of
+making poetry.
+
+For years people thought that Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition,"
+in which he tells in what a cold-blooded way he wrote "The Raven," was
+a joke; but in later times we have learned to understand what he meant
+and to know that he was very sensible in his methods of working.
+
+When Poe was young he was not a very remarkable poet; but, as years
+went on and he learned more and more the art of writing, he rewrote
+and rewrote his verses until at last in conscious art he was almost,
+if not quite, the master poet of America.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+POE'S FATHER AND MOTHER
+
+
+Edgar Allan Poe was descended on his father's side from a
+Revolutionary hero, General David Poe. The Poes were a good family of
+Baltimore, where many of them still live as prominent citizens. It is
+said that General Poe was descended from one of Cromwell's officers,
+who received grants of land in Ireland. One of the poet's ancestors,
+John Poe, emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania; and from there the
+Poes went to Maryland. General Poe was an ardent patriot both before
+and during the Revolution.
+
+General Poe's son David, the eldest, was not much like his father. In
+Baltimore he enjoyed himself with his friends and played at amateur
+theatricals with the Thespian Club. He was supposed to be studying
+law. For this purpose he went to live with an uncle in Augusta,
+Georgia; but his father soon heard that he had given up law to become
+an actor. General Poe was very angry and after that allowed the young
+man to shift for himself.
+
+Edgar Allan Poe's mother was an English actress, whose mother had also
+been an actress. She was born at sea, and as she went with her mother
+on her travels from town to town, naturally the daughter learned the
+mother's art as a means of self-support, and in time became very
+successful.
+
+At seventeen, her mother having married again, Elizabeth Arnold, for
+that was her name, was thrown upon her own resources. She joined a
+Philadelphia company, and remained with it for the next four years. In
+June, 1802, she acted in Baltimore, and perhaps it was there that
+David Poe, Jr., first saw her. She was pretty and gay, yet a good girl
+and a very fine actress.
+
+She soon married a young Mr. Hopkins, who had been playing with the
+company, and for the following two years the young couple lived in
+Virginia. It was then that David Poe, Jr., having left his uncle's
+home at Augusta and gone on the stage in Charleston, joined the same
+company. He was not a very good actor; and he never rose to a high
+place in his profession.
+
+In the following year Mr. Hopkins died, and a few months later young
+David Poe married Mrs. Hopkins, who had been Elizabeth Arnold.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. David Poe were now husband and wife, and very poor, as
+most actors are. Soon after their marriage they went to Boston, and
+remained for some years. There Edgar Poe, their second son, was born,
+January 19, 1809.
+
+While Edgar was still a little child his parents went to Richmond,
+Virginia, to fill an engagement in the theater there. Misfortune
+followed them. His father died in poverty, and his mother did not
+survive him long. Edgar and his brother and sister were thus left
+penniless orphans. But good friends took care of them.
+
+Edgar was adopted by a Mrs. Allan, the wife of a wealthy man in the
+city of Richmond. She was very fond of the bright little boy, and as
+long as she lived he had a good home. He was petted and spoiled; but
+those were almost the only years of his life when he had plenty of
+money. He was very fond of his adoptive mother, and held her memory
+dear to the day of his death. He was now known as Edgar Allan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+YOUNG EDGAR ALLAN
+
+
+Edgar was a beautiful child, with dark eyes, curly dark hair, and
+lively manners. At six he could read, draw, and dance. After dessert,
+sometimes they would put him up on the old-fashioned table, where he
+would make amusement for the company. He could speak pieces, too, and
+did it so well that people were astonished. He understood how to
+emphasize his words correctly. He had a pony and dogs, with which he
+ran about; and everywhere he was a great favorite.
+
+In June, 1815, when Edgar was about six years old, his adoptive father
+and mother, with an aunt, went to England to stay several years.
+Before starting, Mr. Allan bought a Murray's reader, two Murray's
+spelling books, and another book to keep the little fellow busy on the
+long sailing voyage across the Atlantic; for at that time a trip to
+England occupied several weeks instead of a few days as now. When the
+family reached London and were settled down, Edgar was sent to a
+famous English school.
+
+This school was at Stoke Newington, a quiet, old-fashioned country
+town, only a few miles out from London. Here was the house of
+Leicester, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth, whose story you may read
+in Scott's "Kenilworth"; and here too was the house of Anne Boleyn's
+ill-fated lover, Earl Percy.
+
+The Manor House School, as it was called, was in a quaint and very old
+building, with high walls about the grounds, and great spiked,
+iron-studded gates. Here the boys lived and studied, seldom returning
+home, and seldom going outside the grounds, except when they went with
+a teacher.
+
+In this strange school, Edgar Allan lived and studied for five years.
+The schoolroom was long, narrow, and low; it was ceiled with dark oak,
+and had Gothic windows. The desks were black and irregular, covered
+with the names and initials which the boys had cut with their
+jackknives. In the corners were what might be called boxes, where sat
+the masters--one of them Eugene Aram, the criminal made famous in one
+of Bulwer's romances. Back of the schoolroom, reached by winding,
+narrow passages, were the bedrooms, one of which Poe occupied. When
+the boys went out to walk they passed under the giant elms, amid which
+once lived Shakespeare's friend Essex, and they gazed up at the thick
+walls, deep windows, and doors massive with locks and bars, behind
+which the author of Robinson Crusoe wrote some of his famous works.
+
+Within the walls of this school a large number of boys had a little
+world all to themselves; they had their societies and their games and
+their tricks, along with hard work in Latin and French and
+mathematics; and though such work may seem monotonous and dreary, they
+managed to enjoy it. Poe has described his life here very carefully in
+his famous story of "William Wilson." "Oh, a fine time were those
+years of iron!" says he. The life produced a deep impression on his
+mind, and molded it for the strange, weird poetry and fiction which in
+later years he was to write.
+
+At last, in 1820, the Allans returned with Edgar to their home in
+Richmond, Virginia. The lad now added his own name to that of Edgar
+Allan, and became known as Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+He was at once sent to the English and Classical School of Joseph H.
+Clarke, where he prepared for college. He did not study very hard, but
+was bright and quick, and at one time stood at the head of his class
+with but one rival. He was a great athlete, too, being a good runner
+and jumper and boxer. He was a remarkable swimmer, and it is stated
+that he once swam six miles in the James River, against a strong tide
+in a hot sun, and then walked back without seeming in the least tired.
+
+He was slight in figure, but robust and tough, and was a very decided
+character among his classmates. He took part in the debating society,
+where he was prominent, and was known as a versifier of both love
+poems and satire. When Master Clarke retired, in 1823, Poe read an
+English ode addressed to the outgoing principal.
+
+One of his friends said of him at this time that he was "self-willed,
+capricious, inclined to be imperious, and though of generous impulses,
+not steadily kind, nor even amiable." Part of this temper on his part
+may have come from the fact that the aristocratic boys of the school
+hinted that his father and mother had not been of the best people.
+They knew, however, that Mr. Allan belonged to the best society; and
+it was chiefly Edgar's imperious manners that made some of them shun
+him. He had friends, however, and Mr. Allan gave him money liberally.
+
+It was at this time that he found and lost his first sympathetic
+friend.
+
+This was Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of one of his younger
+schoolmates. When one day he went home with this friend, he met Mrs.
+Stanard, a lovely, gentle, and gracious woman, was thrilled by the
+tenderness of her tones and her sympathetic manner toward him, and
+immediately made her his boyhood friend and confidante. To his great
+grief, however, she died not very long afterward. When she was gone he
+visited her grave time after time, and in after years when he was
+unhappy he often thought and spoke of her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+COLLEGE LIFE
+
+
+Poe left the English and Classical School in March, 1825, and spent
+the next few months in studying with a private tutor.
+
+On the 14th of February, 1826, he wrote his name and the place and
+date of his birth, in the matriculation book of the University of
+Virginia, the famous college founded by Jefferson and opened about a
+year before.
+
+Poe is described at this time as short, thickset, bowlegged, with the
+rapid and jerky gait of an English boy. His face, surrounded by dark
+curly hair, wore a grave, half-melancholy look; but it would light up
+expressively when he talked. He was a noted walker; and being the
+adopted child of a rich man, he dressed well and carried himself
+proudly. He studied Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian, and
+stood well in his classes. At the end of the year he went home with
+the highest honors in Latin and French.
+
+Before the term closed, however, Mr. Allan went up to investigate some
+stories of Poe's wildness that had reached him, and found that besides
+other debts, Poe owed two thousand dollars in "debts of honor"--that
+is, gambling debts. Mr. Allan paid all but the latter, and quietly
+determined that as soon as the term closed, Poe's college life should
+end.
+
+Poe was, however, a studious and well-behaved young man in the opinion
+of the professors, and he was never found guilty of any serious
+misconduct. He was fond of wandering over the Ragged Mountains,
+whither he went alone or with only a dog, and he delighted to fancy
+that he was the very first white person to penetrate some lonely glen
+or ravine.
+
+He was also something of an artist, and decorated his rooms with
+charcoal sketches. He and a classmate bought a volume of Byron with
+steel engravings in it. The next time his friend went to see Poe he
+found him copying one of these on the ceiling, and he continued this
+until he had covered the whole of the walls with figures that were
+said to be artistic and striking.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+FORTUNE CHANGES
+
+
+At the age of eighteen there came a change in Poe's life. Until then
+he had been a petted child in a wealthy family. Mr. Allan did not have
+that affection for him which Mrs. Allan had. He did not understand the
+boy's peculiar and erratic nature, and was particularly displeased
+when he found that Edgar had run into debt at college. There was an
+angry scene between the two, and Edgar was told that he must leave the
+university and go into the counting-room. It appears that he made some
+attempt to tie himself down to figures and accounts and business
+routine; but as he had not been brought up to this kind of life, he
+soon tired of it, and decided to go into the world to seek his own
+fortune. He went to Boston, where he published a volume of poetry.
+
+In the preface to this volume, Poe says that the poems were written
+before he was fourteen. Though this may not be strictly true, there is
+little doubt that some of them were. While he was still at school he
+had collected enough of his poems to make a volume, and Mr. Allan had
+taken them up to the master of the English and Classical School to get
+his advice about publishing them. This gentleman advised against it on
+the ground that it would make Edgar conceited,--a fault from which he
+was already suffering. As soon as he was free to do as he pleased,
+therefore, it was natural that he should rewrite his poems and publish
+them.
+
+The volume was entitled "Tamerlane and Other Poems. By a Bostonian."
+It was published by a young printer named Calvin Thomas, and was a
+thin little book, not very attractive in appearance. Several of the
+pieces then published are now included in Poe's collected works, but
+they have been greatly changed.
+
+Naturally the poems of an obscure young man did not sell, and the
+volume was soon suppressed--Poe says "for private reasons." The
+"private reasons" were doubtless merely the fact that the book was a
+complete failure, and the young, proud poet was much ashamed that he
+could not sell even a dozen copies--possibly not even one.
+
+The little money Poe had was now spent, and he was obliged to do
+something to keep from starvation. The only chance he saw was to
+enlist in the army. He did so under the name of Edgar A. Perry, and
+the record of his service may be found in the War Department of our
+government at Washington. He was assigned to Battery H, First
+Artillery, and conducted himself so well that he was promoted from the
+ranks to be sergeant-major. From Boston the company was sent to
+Charleston, South Carolina, and a year later to Fortress Monroe,
+Virginia.
+
+From Fortress Monroe Poe wrote to Mr. Allan for the first time. He
+soon afterwards learned of the illness of Mrs. Allan, who died
+February 28, 1829. He got leave of absence to attend her funeral, and
+went to Richmond.
+
+Poe was such a bright young man that it seemed a pity for him to
+remain in the ranks, when he might become an officer; therefore it was
+suggested that he be sent to West Point. Mr. Allan agreed to help him;
+but it is said that, after the death of Mrs. Allan, he no longer
+entertained any affection for Edgar. In a letter to the Secretary of
+War, he said: "Frankly, sir, I do declare that he is no relation to me
+whatever; that I have many in whom I have taken an active interest to
+promote theirs; with no other feeling than that, every man is my care,
+if he be in distress. For myself I ask nothing, but I do request your
+kindness to aid this youth in the promotion of his future prospects."
+
+Poe did not like the life at West Point in the least, though he amused
+his mates by writing satirical verses about the professors. After a
+few months he asked to be discharged; but Mr. Allan would not consent.
+So Poe made up his mind that he would have himself expelled. He stayed
+away from parade, roll-call, and guard duty. As a court-martial was
+then in session, he was summoned before it. He denied the most
+flagrant charge against him; but this only made his case worse, and he
+was expelled from the academy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+LIVING BY LITERATURE
+
+
+Once more the young poet found himself cast out on the world, without
+home or friends. He could hope for nothing more from Mr. Allan, after
+his disgrace at the military academy, and he had found out that army
+life was not so fine a refuge from starvation as he had thought it. He
+was a proud, melancholy young man, and in school and college had
+learned many bad habits. He had no trade nor practical knowledge of
+any kind of work, though he was quick and ingenious. He had studied
+the art of writing, and this alone offered him the means of earning a
+livelihood. How poor and precarious a chance it was, we shall see as
+we go on.
+
+While waiting for appointment to the Military Academy the preceding
+year, Poe had made acquaintance with his father's relatives in
+Baltimore. He formed some literary connections there, and had a volume
+of his poems published. It was entitled "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and
+Minor Poems, by Edgar A. Poe." "Al Aaraaf" was a poem about a star
+that a great astronomer had seen blaze forth and then disappear.
+
+When he left West Point in April, 1831, nearly two years after the
+publication of his Baltimore volume, Poe was short of money; and to
+supply his needs his fellow-students subscribed for a new edition of
+his poems. For this, seventy-five cents was stopped out of the pay of
+each, and a publisher in New York agreed to issue the book in good
+style. The cadets thought his volume would contain the many funny
+squibs he had written on the professors; but they were disappointed.
+
+Poe next went to Baltimore. There he tried to get employment in vain.
+Friends helped him, but it was some time before he made his first
+literary success.
+
+It happened at last that a weekly paper called the _Saturday Visiter_
+was started in Baltimore. To give the paper popularity, two prizes
+were offered, one of a hundred dollars for the best short story, and
+the other of fifty for the best poem. Poe tried for both. He had six
+short stories, which he copied in a neat little manuscript volume
+entitled "Tales of the Folio Club." The poem he sent was "The
+Coliseum."
+
+The judges were well-known gentlemen of the city of Baltimore, one of
+whom, John P. Kennedy, afterward became Poe's intimate friend. When
+they met they looked over several stories, which did not interest them
+very much. They then came to the "Tales of the Folio Club." One was
+read aloud, and the three gentlemen were so much interested that they
+kept on till they had read all, and at once decided to give the prize
+to one of these. They chose Poe's famous story "A MS. Found in a
+Bottle." Afterward they decided that his poem was the best submitted;
+but noticing that it was in the same handwriting as the stories, they
+thought it best to give the prize to another. When they made their
+report they greatly complimented the stories Poe had sent in, and said
+they should be published in a volume.
+
+We have said that one of the judges, Mr. Kennedy, became Poe's friend.
+To show how very poor Poe was, I copy this passage from Mr. Kennedy's
+diary: "It was many years ago that I found Poe in Baltimore in a
+state of starvation. I gave him clothing, free access to my table, and
+the use of a horse for exercise whenever he chose; in fact, I brought
+him up from the very verge of despair."
+
+Here, too, is an extract from a letter from Poe to Mr. Kennedy:
+
+"Your invitation to dinner has wounded me to the quick. I cannot come
+for reasons of the most humiliating nature--my personal appearance.
+You may imagine my mortification in making this disclosure to you, but
+it is necessary."
+
+Mr. Kennedy did all that a friend could do for the future poet and
+story-writer. Says Poe: "He has been at all times a true friend to
+me--he was the first true friend I ever had--I am indebted to him for
+_life itself_."
+
+Poe now contributed regularly to the _Saturday Visiter,_ its young
+editor, Lambert A. Wilmer, becoming his friend and constant companion.
+It is said that at this time he dressed very neatly, though
+inexpensively, "wore Byron collars and a black stock, and looked the
+poet all over."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+POE'S EARLY POETRY
+
+
+We have seen how persistently Poe clung to his poetry. Three times he
+published the little volume of his verses, revising, enlarging, and
+strengthening. In those days there was no market for poetic writing,
+and as Poe wrote in a strange, weird style, it is not remarkable that
+no one took any notice of the contents of his little volumes. It was
+his own opinion, however, that these early poems contained more real
+poetic imagination than his later successes, and it is perhaps as well
+that we should begin our study of Poe with some of the first fruits of
+his genius.
+
+First let us read that most pathetic of autobiographical poems,
+"Alone." With strange sincerity and directness the poet tells us how
+his spirit grew and learned the burden of its melancholy, yet
+scintillating song:
+
+  From childhood's hour I have not been
+  As others were,--I have not seen
+  As others saw,--I could not bring
+  My passions from a common spring.
+  From the same source I have not taken
+  My sorrow; I could not awaken
+  My heart to joy at the same tone;
+  And all I loved, I loved alone.
+  Then--in my childhood--in the dawn
+  Of a most stormy life was drawn
+
+  From every depth of good and ill
+  The mystery which binds me still:
+  From the torrent, or the fountain,
+  From the red cliff of the mountain,
+  From the sun that round me rolled
+  In its autumn tint of gold,--
+  From the lightning in the sky
+  As it passed me flying by,--
+  From the thunder and the storm,
+  And the cloud that took the form
+  (When the rest of heaven was blue)
+  Of a demon in my view.
+
+As a poem written in early youth we should not expect this to be as
+perfect as "The Raven," for instance. Let us see if we can find some
+of its faults, as well as some of its beauties:
+
+First, we notice that it ends rather abruptly, as if it were
+unfinished. In his essay on "The Poetic Principle" Poe pointed out
+that many a poem fails of its effect by being too short. It must not
+be so long that one is wearied out before it can be read through; at
+the same time it must be long enough to convey the whole of the idea.
+This poem of his own is an example of the fault he himself pointed
+out. It is too short to give us clear ideas of all he evidently had in
+his mind. We notice, also, that it is rhymed in couplets, that is,
+every two lines are rhymed together. Now the couplets in the last half
+of the poem seem to strike the ear with more satisfaction than those
+in the first part. For instance, we are pleased with the sound of
+these lines:
+
+  From the torrent, or the fountain,
+  From the red cliff of the mountain.
+
+But in some of the lines the pauses of punctuation do not come at the
+right points to make smooth reading:
+
+  From the same source I have not taken
+  My sorrow; I could not awaken
+  My heart to joy at the same tone;
+  And all I loved, _I_ loved alone.
+
+The semicolon after "sorrow" should have come at the end of the line
+instead of in the middle. Poe had not yet learned the secret of the
+rhythmic flow which we find in such perfection in "The Bells," for
+instance.
+
+But in the last part of the poem we find a beauty of image and
+comparison that thrills us, and something of that strange, weird
+suggestiveness which was characteristic of all of Poe's poetry, the
+thing he has in common with no other poet.
+
+This weird suggestiveness is found in still greater vividness in
+another poem entitled "The Lake." In this, besides, we see how Poe had
+a sort of fascination for the horrible. Notice how he says:
+
+  Yet that terror was not fright,
+  But a tremulous delight.
+
+Here is the complete poem. The young student of poetry may study it
+for himself, and discover, if he can, its shortcomings, as we have
+pointed out the faults in the poem "Alone."
+
+  In spring of youth it was my lot
+  To haunt of the wide world a spot
+  The which I could not love the less,--
+  So lovely was the loveliness
+  Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
+  And the tall pines that towered around.
+  But when the night had thrown her pall
+  Upon that spot as upon all,
+
+  And the mystic wind went by
+  Murmuring in melody,--
+  Then,--ah, then I would awake
+  To the terror of the lone lake.
+  Yet that terror was not fright,
+  But a tremulous delight,--
+  A feeling not the jeweled mine
+  Could teach or bribe me to define,--
+  Nor Love--although the Love were thine.
+
+  Death was in that poisonous wave,
+  And its gulf a fitting grave
+  For him who thence could solace bring
+  To his lone imagining,--
+  Whose solitary soul could make
+  An Eden of that dim lake.
+
+These poems are chiefly interesting as they give us some idea of the
+nature of the young poet's mind. Poe had what may be called a
+scientific mind, infused through and through with poetry. At times he
+was exact, keen-minded, and patient as the scientist; then again he
+wandered away into mere fanciful suggestion of things that "never were
+on land or sea." His scientific turn we see in his detective stories;
+his poetic nature we see struggling against this intellectual
+exactness in the following sonnet:
+
+  Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art!
+    Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
+  Why preyest thou upon the poet's heart,
+    Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
+  How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
+    Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
+  To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies,
+    Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
+  Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
+    And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
+  To seek a shelter in some happier star?
+    Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
+  The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
+    The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+POE'S CHILD WIFE
+
+
+While Poe was in Baltimore, after he had begun to earn something by
+his pen, he went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm. She was very poor,
+and whatever Poe earned went toward the support of the whole family,
+which included not only Poe and his aunt, but her young daughter
+Virginia, at this time only eleven years of age.
+
+Virginia was an exceedingly delicate and beautiful girl. She had dark
+hair and eyes, and a fine, transparent complexion. She was very modest
+and quiet; but she had a fine mind, and a very sweet and winning
+manner. She had also a poetic nature, and became an accomplished
+musician.
+
+Mrs. Clemm, on the other hand, was a large, coarsely formed woman, and
+it seemed impossible that she could be the mother of so delicate and
+graceful a girl. She was very faithful and hardworking, however, and
+sincerely devoted to Poe as well as to her daughter. She had the
+business ability to manage Poe's small income in the best way, and
+made for him a home that would have been extremely happy had it not
+been for poverty and other misfortunes.
+
+While Poe lived in Baltimore he would go out to walk nearly every day
+with the editor of the _Saturday Visiter_; but he sometimes walked
+alone or with Virginia.
+
+After a time the young poet and story-writer decided to go to
+Richmond, his early home. He had many friends there, who welcomed him
+back, and a good position was offered him. The _Southern Literary
+Messenger_ had been started by a Mr. White, and Poe was made assistant
+editor.
+
+He had become very much attached to Mrs. Clemm and Virginia while in
+Baltimore, and now wished to marry Virginia. She was but fourteen
+years of age,--indeed, not quite fourteen,--and Mrs. Clemm's friends
+thought the girl too young to marry. But Poe gained the mother's
+consent, and he and Virginia were united in May, 1836.
+
+Virginia was Poe's ideal of womanhood, and we find her figuring as the
+model for nearly all the heroines of his poems. In a letter after the
+death of both Virginia and her poet husband, Mrs. Clemm wrote, "She
+was an excellent linguist and a perfect musician, and she was very
+beautiful. How often has Eddie said, 'I see no one so beautiful as my
+sweet little wife.'" Poe undertook her education as soon as they were
+married, and was very proud of her brilliant accomplishments.
+
+As she was the source of his greatest happiness, her loss was the
+occasion of his greatest sorrow. A year after their marriage she burst
+a blood vessel while singing. The following extract from a letter of
+Poe's to a friend will explain how this misfortune affected him.
+
+"You say," he writes, "'Can you hint to me what was the terrible evil
+which caused the irregularities so profoundly lamented?' Yes, I can do
+more than hint. This 'evil' was the greatest which can befall a man.
+Six years ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before,
+ruptured a blood vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took
+leave of her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She
+recovered partially and I again hoped. At the end of a year the blood
+vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene.--Then
+again--again--and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I
+felt all the agonies of her death--and at each accession of her
+disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more
+desperate pertinacity."
+
+Virginia gradually grew worse and finally died at their home at
+Fordham, near New York. After this sad event Poe wrote a poem which is
+a sort of requiem for her death. It was not published during his life,
+but after his death it appeared in the _New York Tribune_. Immediately
+it took rank as one of the three greatest poems Poe ever wrote. It is
+long enough to be complete, it has none of those metrical
+imperfections found in his earlier poems, and it possesses in a
+wonderful degree that haunting thrill so characteristic of all the
+best things Poe wrote. Moreover, it has a musical flow surpassing any
+other of Poe's poems except "The Bells," and in some respects it is
+even more pleasing to the ear when read aloud than is "The Bells."
+
+ANNABEL LEE.
+
+  It was many and many a year ago,
+    In a kingdom by the sea,
+  That a maiden there lived whom you may know
+    By the name of Annabel Lee;
+  And this maiden she lived with no other thought
+    Than to love and be loved by me.
+
+  _I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,
+    In this kingdom by the sea:
+  But we loved with a love that was more than love,--
+    I and my Annabel Lee;
+  With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
+    Coveted her and me.
+
+  And this was the reason that, long ago,
+    In this kingdom by the sea,
+  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
+    My beautiful Annabel Lee;
+  So that her highborn kinsmen came
+    And bore her away from me,
+  To shut her up in a sepulcher
+    In this kingdom by the sea.
+
+  The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
+    Went envying her and me,--
+  Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
+    In this kingdom by the sea)
+  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
+    Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
+
+  But our love it was stronger by far than the love
+    Of those who were older than we,--
+  Of many far wiser than we;
+    And neither the angels in heaven above,
+    Nor the demons down under the sea,
+  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
+    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
+
+  For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
+    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
+  And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
+    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
+  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
+  Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
+    In the sepulcher there by the sea,
+    In her tomb by the sounding sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+POE'S LITERARY HISTORY
+
+
+As assistant editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, Poe achieved
+great literary success. In this paper he began those spirited
+criticisms of the writers of the day, which attracted attention
+everywhere. He also published numerous stories. Poetry was almost
+completely abandoned for prose.
+
+The circulation of the magazine increased by the thousands, and there
+could be no doubt that its success was due chiefly to Poe. At first
+his salary was ten dollars a week; later, it was raised to fifteen
+dollars, and was to have been raised to twenty, but Poe suddenly
+resigned his position. Precisely why he did this is not known.
+
+Experiences similar to that with the _Southern Literary Messenger_
+were repeated many times afterward, during his literary career. Just
+as he was getting well settled at his work, he would have some
+difficulty with the proprietor, or commit some indiscretion, and then
+he must find some other place. In those days, when a great New York
+daily paper like Bryant's _Evening Post_ could be bought for from
+$5,000 to $10,000, there was not much money to be made in publishing
+or in literature. To make money, Poe should have been a business man,
+and he was not so in any sense. Many another literary man, even in our
+own times, has had similar misfortunes, even without those faults of
+character and that fatality for falling out with everything and
+everybody which distinguished Poe.
+
+From Richmond, Poe went with his family to New York, where Mrs. Clemm
+supported the household by keeping boarders. Poe himself spent the
+winter chiefly in writing "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," a tale
+of the sea, which was first published by Messrs. Harper and Brothers.
+
+From New York he went to Philadelphia, where he wrote various magazine
+articles and stories, and did part of the work of preparing a school
+textbook on "Conchology." He soon became associate editor of _The
+Gentleman's Magazine_ with its proprietor Burton. The following year,
+1840, his first volume of stories was published, under the title,
+"Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." The volume was not a popular
+success. An edition of seven hundred and fifty copies was barely
+disposed of, and all that Poe received was twenty copies for
+distribution among his friends.
+
+His connection with Burton's magazine did not last above a year.
+Burton had been a comic actor, and offered prizes which Poe says he
+never intended to pay. Poe's remarks on this transaction caused the
+rupture.
+
+Poe had already been thinking about starting a periodical of his own,
+and now he sent out the prospectus of _The Penn Magazine_. To found a
+magazine which should be better and higher in literary art than any
+other in America was his lifelong ambition. He tried again and again
+to do this, first with _The Penn Magazine_, and later with a
+periodical to be called _The Stylus_. He never succeeded, however.
+
+George R. Graham, proprietor of the _Saturday Evening Post_, now
+bought _The Gentleman's Magazine_, united it with a periodical of his
+own called _The Casket_, and named the new venture _Graham's
+Magazine_. Of this Poe soon became the editor.
+
+After Poe's death, Mr. Graham published an article in which he said
+that, while he was in Philadelphia, Poe seemed to think only of the
+happiness and welfare of his family. There were but two things for
+which he cared to have money--to give them comforts and to start a
+magazine of his own. He never spent any money on himself. Everything
+was intrusted to Mrs. Clemm, who managed all his household affairs.
+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,"
+says Mr. Graham, "hovering around her when she was ill, with all the
+fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born--her
+slightest cough causing him a shudder, a heart 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. It was
+this hourly anticipation of her loss which made him a sad and
+thoughtful man, and lent a mournful melody to his undying song."
+
+At last he left Philadelphia and returned to New York, where he
+remained for the rest of his life. This is the childlike way he writes
+to his mother-in-law concerning the journey:
+
+"My Dear Muddy,
+
+"We have just this minute done breakfast, and I now sit down to write
+you about everything. * * * In the first place, we arrived safe at
+Walnut St. wharf. The driver wanted to make me pay a dollar, but I
+wouldn't. Then I had to pay a boy a levy to put the trunks in the
+baggage car.
+
+"In the meantime I took Sis [Virginia] in the Depot Hotel. * * * We
+went in the cars to Amboy, * * * and then took the steamboat the rest
+of the way. Sissy coughed none at all. I left her on board the boat. *
+* * Then I went up Greenwich St. and soon found a boarding house. * *
+* I made a bargain in a few minutes and then got a hack and went for
+Sis. * * * When we got to the house we had to wait about half an hour
+before the room was ready. The house is old and looks buggy, * * * the
+cheapest board I ever knew, taking into consideration the central
+situation and the _living_. I wish Kate [Catterina, the cat] could see
+it--she would faint."
+
+They had a little cottage at Fordham, in the country just out of New
+York. It was a very humble place, but the scenery about it was
+beautiful. Poe himself became ill, and his dear Virginia was dying of
+consumption. They were so poor that friends had to help them. One of
+these friends wrote:
+
+"There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a
+snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold and the sick
+lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of
+consumption. She lay on the bed wrapped in her husband's great-coat,
+with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom."
+
+On one Saturday in January, 1847, Virginia died. Her husband, wrapped
+in the military cloak that had once covered her, followed the body to
+the tomb in the family vault of the Valentines, relatives of the
+family.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+POE AS A STORY-WRITER
+
+
+Next to "The Raven," Poe's most famous work is that fascinating story,
+"The Gold-Bug," perhaps the best detective story that was ever
+written, for it is based on logical principles which are instructive
+as well as interesting. Poe's powerful mind was always analyzing and
+inventing. It is these inventions and discoveries of his which make
+him famous.
+
+The story of the gold-bug is that of a man who finds a piece of
+parchment on which is a secret writing telling where Captain Kidd hid
+his treasure off the coast of South Carolina. The gold-beetle has
+nothing whatever to do with the real story, and is only introduced to
+mystify. It is one of the principles of all conjuring tricks to have
+something to divert the attention. Poe's detective story is a sort of
+conjuring trick, but it is all the more interesting because he fully
+explains it.
+
+Cryptographs are systems of secret writing. The letter _e_ is
+represented by some strange character, perhaps the figure 8. In "The
+Gold-Bug" _t_ is a semicolon and _h_ is 4, so that; 48 means _the_.
+Sometimes the letter _e_ is represented by several signs, any one of
+which the writer may use; and perhaps the word _the_, which occurs so
+often, is represented by a single character, like _x_. Often, too, the
+words are run together, so that at first sight you cannot tell where
+one word begins and another ends.
+
+Solving a cryptograph is like doing a mathematical problem, and Poe
+was very clever at it.
+
+He published a series of articles on "Cryptography" or systems of
+secret writing, in _Alexander's Weekly Messenger_, and challenged any
+reader to send in a cipher which he could not translate into ordinary
+language. Hundreds were sent to him, and he solved them all, though it
+took up a great deal of his time.
+
+In the same line with this was another feat of his. Dickens's story,
+"Barnaby Rudge," was coming out in parts from week to week, as a
+serial publication. From the first chapters Poe calculated what the
+outcome of the plot would be, and published it in the _Saturday
+Evening Post_. He guessed the story so accurately that Dickens was
+greatly surprised and asked him if he were the devil.
+
+Again at a later date Poe wrote a remarkable story, "The Mystery of
+Marie Roget." A young girl had been murdered in New York. The
+newspapers were full of accounts of the crime, but the police could
+get no clew to the murderers. In Poe's story he wrote out exactly what
+happened on the night of the murder, and explained the whole thing, as
+if he were an expert detective. Afterward, by the confessions of two
+of the participants, it was proved that his solution of the mystery
+was almost exactly the truth.
+
+"The Gold-Bug" was not published until sometime later, but it was as
+editor of _Graham's Magazine_ that Poe first became known as a writer
+of detective stories. One of the most famous is "The Murders of the
+Rue Morgue." It is an imaginary story, but none the less interesting.
+A murder was committed in Paris by an orang-outang, which had climbed
+in at a window and then closed the window behind it. The police could
+find no clew; but the hero of Poe's story follows the facts out by a
+number of clever observations of small facts.
+
+"The Gold-Bug" seems to have been written in 1842 for Poe's projected
+magazine, _The Stylus_. F.O.C. Darley, the well-known artist, was to
+draw pictures for it at seven dollars each. Poe himself took to him
+the manuscript of "The Gold-Bug" and that of "The Black Cat."
+
+As this magazine was never published, the story of "The Gold-Bug" was
+sent to Graham some time after Poe had left him; but he did not like
+it, and made some criticisms upon it. Poe got it back from Graham in
+order to submit it for a prize of $100 offered by _The Dollar
+Newspaper_. It won the prize, and became Poe's most popular story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+HOW "THE RAVEN" WAS WRITTEN
+
+
+"The Raven" was published in New York just two years before Mrs. Poe
+died; it instantly made its author famous, although it brought him
+little or no money. It is said that he was paid only ten dollars for
+the poem; but as soon as it appeared it was the talk of the
+nation,--being copied into almost every newspaper. Poe had written
+and published many other poems, but none of them had attracted much
+attention.
+
+We have spoken of Poe as a story-writer, and now in "The Raven" we see
+him a great poet.
+
+It is not unusual to think of poetry as the work of inspiration or
+genius; but how it is written, nobody knows. Poe maintained that
+literary art is something that can be studied and learned. To
+illustrate this he told how he wrote "The Raven." Some people
+considered this a sort of joke; but it was not. When Poe began to
+write, his work was not at all good; as years went on, he learned by
+patient practice to write well. It was more than anything else this
+long course of training that made him so great.
+
+The essay in which he tells how he wrote "The Raven," begins by saying
+that when he thought of writing it he decided that it must not be too
+long nor too short. It must be short enough so that one could read it
+through at a sitting; but also it must be long enough to express fully
+the idea which he had in mind.
+
+Then, it must be beautiful. All true poetry is about beauty. It
+doesn't teach anything useful, or analyze anything, but it simply
+makes the reader feel a certain effect. When you read "The Raven" you
+hardly know what the poet is saying; but you feel the ghostly scene,
+and it makes you shudder; and there is a strange fascination about it
+that makes you like it, even if it is horrible.
+
+He goes on to say that he decided to have a refrain at the end of each
+stanza, the single word "Nevermore." At first he thought he would have
+a parrot utter it; but a raven can talk as well as a parrot, and is
+more picturesque. The most striking subject he could think of was the
+death of a beautiful woman--this he felt to be so because of his own
+impressions concerning the approaching death of his sweet wife.
+
+Besides this, Poe said that poetry and music are much alike, and he
+tried to have his poem produce the effect of solemn music. All his
+best poetry is very much like music.
+
+With these materials at his command, he now turned his attention to
+the construction of the poem. He would ask questions, and the raven
+would always reply by croaking "Nevermore." As an answer to some
+questions, this would sound very terrible. Says he: "I first
+established in my mind the climax, or concluding query,--that query in
+reply to which the word 'nevermore' should involve the utmost
+conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. Here, then, the poem may be
+said to have its beginning--at the end, where all works of art should
+begin--for it was here, at this point of my preconsiderations, that I
+first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:--
+
+  "'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!
+  By the heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore!--
+  Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,
+  It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore,--
+  Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.'
+          Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'"
+
+This principle of beginning at the end or climax to write a poem or
+story was one so important that Poe insisted on it at great length. In
+the "Murders in the Rue Morgue" the author necessarily began at the
+end, imagined the solution of the mystery, and gradually worked back
+to the beginning, bringing in his detective after everything had been
+carefully constructed for him, though to the ordinary reader of the
+story it seems as if the detective came to a real mystery.
+
+It may be observed that all of Poe's stories and poems are built up
+about some principle of the mind. They illustrate how the mind works.
+After the principle is stated the illustration is given.
+
+Can anything be more important and interesting than to know how the
+mind thinks, how it is inspired with terror or love or a sense of
+beauty? If you know just how the mind of a man works in regard to
+these things, you can yourself create the conditions which will make
+others laugh or cry, be filled with horror, or overflow with a sense
+of divine holiness. Ordinary story-tellers and ordinary poets write
+poems or stories that are pretty and amusing; but it is only a master
+like Poe who writes to illustrate and explain some great principle.
+His stories teach us how we may go about producing similar effects in
+the affairs of life. We wish success in business, in society, in
+politics. To gain it we must make people think and feel as we think
+and feel. To do that we must understand the principles on which men's
+minds work, and no poet or writer analyzed and illustrated those
+principles so clearly as Poe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+MUSIC AND POETRY
+
+
+Poe always maintained that music and poetry are very near of kin, and
+in nearly all his greatest poems he seems to write in such a way as to
+produce the impression of music. As you read his verses you seem to
+hear a musical accompaniment to the words, which runs through the very
+sounds of the words themselves.
+
+Poe explained that poetry and music are alike in that both obey
+absolute laws of time, and that the laws of time or rhythm in poetry
+are just as exact as the laws of time in music. He wrote an essay
+entitled "The Rationale of Verse," in which he demonstrated that all
+the rules for scanning poetry are defective. Every one knows that the
+ordinary rules for meter have numerous exceptions, but that if the
+rules were exact in the first place, there would be no exceptions.
+
+Perhaps you know something about musical notes. If so, a simple
+illustration will show you what "feet" in poetry are. You have perhaps
+been taught that a "foot" in verse is an accented syllable with one or
+more unaccented syllables, and you scan poetry by marking all the
+accented syllables. In Latin, poetry was scanned by marking long
+vowels and short. Let us scan the first two lines of "The Raven":
+
+  "Ónce up | ón a mídnight | dréary, || whíle I | póndered
+      | wéak and | wéary,
+  Óver | mány a | quáint and | cúrious | vólume | óf
+      for | gótten | lóre."
+
+Observe that most of the feet have two syllables each, while two have
+three. But if you read the lines in a natural tone you will see that
+you give just as much time to one foot as to another, and where there
+are three syllables they are short and can be pronounced quickly. Some
+syllables take more time to pronounce than other syllables; and to
+accent a syllable simply means to give it more time in pronouncing. In
+music, time is accurately represented by notes, and a bar of music
+always contains exactly the same amount of time, no matter how it is
+divided by the notes; for if you wish, in place of a half note you can
+use two quarter notes, or in place of a quarter note you can use two
+eighth notes. Represented in music, our lines will be as follows:
+
+[Illustration: (music) Once up on a midnight dreary, as I pondered,
+weak and weary, O-ver man-y a quaint and cur-i--ous vol-ume of for-
+got-ten lore.]
+
+We see this still further illustrated in a poem of Tennyson's, where a
+foot consists of but one long syllable, thus:
+
+[Illustration: (music) Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O
+sea!]
+
+One of Poe's greatest poems, "The Bells," was written for the express
+purpose of imitating music in verse. The story of how it was first
+written is as follows:
+
+Poe went one Sunday morning to call on a lady friend of his, Mrs.
+Shaw, who was something of a physician and had been very kind to his
+wife. It was a bright morning, and the church bells were ringing. For
+all that, Poe felt moody, and the church bells seemed to jangle.
+
+"I must write a poem," said he, "and I haven't an idea in my head. For
+some reason the bells seem frightfully out of tune this morning, and
+nearly drive me distracted."
+
+After he had been chatting with Mrs. Shaw for some time, he evidently
+felt in better mood, and the sound of the bells grew more musical; or
+perhaps their actual sound had stopped and his imagination suggested
+bells that were indeed musical.
+
+As he kept on complaining about his inability to write a poem, Mrs.
+Shaw placed pen and ink and paper before him, first writing at the top
+of a sheet the title, "The Bells, by E. A. Poe." Underneath she wrote,
+"The bells, the little silver bells." Poe caught the idea, and
+immediately wrote the first draft of the following stanza. According
+to his habit he rewrote this poem many, many times. The original
+stanza began with the words Mrs. Shaw had written. Here are the verses
+as they may now be read in Poe's works:
+
+  Hear the sledges with the bells--
+    Silver bells!
+  What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
+    How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
+        In the icy air of night!
+    While the stars that oversprinkle
+    All the heaven, seem to twinkle
+        With a crystalline delight;
+      Keeping time, time, time,
+      In a sort of Runic rhyme
+  To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
+    From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
+        Bells, bells, bells,--
+  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
+
+Mrs. Shaw then wrote the words, "The heavy iron bells." Poe
+immediately completed the stanza which now reads:
+
+        Hear the tolling of the bells,--
+          Iron bells!
+  What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
+        In the silence of the night,
+        How we shiver with affright
+     At the melancholy menace of their tone!
+        For every sound that floats
+        From the rust within their throats
+          Is a groan.
+        And the people--ah, the people--
+        They that dwell up in the steeple,
+          All alone,
+        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
+          In that muffled monotone,
+        Feel a glory in so rolling
+          On the human heart a stone!
+        They are neither man nor woman,--
+        They are neither brute nor human,--
+          They are Ghouls;
+        And their king it is who tolls,--
+        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
+        Rolls a paean from the bells!
+        And his merry bosom swells
+        With the paean of the bells!
+        And he dances, and he yells,
+          Keeping time, time, time,
+        In a sort of Runic rhyme,
+        To the paean of the bells,
+          Of the bells.
+
+The other stanzas were written afterward. There is music in these
+words; but do not think that the music is all. Underneath is the deep
+harmony of human suggestion, as in the lines,
+
+  Feel a glory in so rolling
+      On the human heart a stone.
+
+Now let us see if we can represent by musical notes the meter in which
+this poem is written. We must remember that a punctuation mark at the
+end of a line often makes a complete pause, which is represented in
+music by a rest. In music a rest has the same effect in completing a
+bar as the corresponding note. Here are the first two lines:
+
+[Illustration: (music) Hear the sledg-es with the bells, Sil-ver
+bells!]
+
+In the two following lines the commas in the middle of the line stand
+for rests, like the punctuation at the end of the first line; or if we
+wish we can make the words "time, time, time," three longer notes. It
+all depends on how we pronounce them:
+
+[Illustration: (music) Keep--ing time, time, time, in a sort of Ru-nic
+rhyme.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+POE'S LATER YEARS
+
+
+Poe had the hardest time of his life when he was at New York, living
+in that little cottage at Fordham, where his poor wife died. He was
+always borrowing money, from sheer necessity, to keep himself and his
+wife from starvation. Once while in New York he was so hard pressed
+that Mrs. Clemm went out to see if she could not get work for him. She
+went to the office of Nathaniel P. Willis, who was the editor and
+proprietor of _The Mirror_. Willis was then starting _The Evening
+Mirror_, and said he would give Poe work. So the poet came; he had
+his little desk in the corner, and did his work meekly and
+regularly,--poor hack work for which he was paid very little.
+
+Later he had an interest in a paper called _The Broadway Journal_.
+When it was about to cease publication Poe bought it himself for fifty
+dollars, giving a note which Horace Greeley endorsed and finally paid.
+
+Once a young man wrote to Greeley, saying, "Doubtless among your
+papers you have many autographs of the poet, Edgar Allan Poe," and
+intimated that he should like to have one of them. Greeley wrote back
+that he had just one autograph of Poe among his papers; it was
+attached to a note for fifty dollars, and Greeley's own signature was
+across the back. The young man might have it for just half its face
+value.
+
+But after Poe bought _The Broadway Journal_ he had no money to carry
+it on, and its publication was soon suspended.
+
+He earned his livelihood mainly by writing stories or articles for
+various magazines and papers, which paid him from $5 to $50 each. It
+was a hand to mouth way of living, for he was often, often
+disappointed.
+
+In 1845, a volume entitled, "Tales. By Edgar A. Poe," was published by
+Wiley and Putnam, and in the same year "The Raven and Other Poems"
+appeared in book form from the same publishing house. Poe also
+delivered lectures, and by way of criticism carried on what was called
+the "Longfellow War." Though he considered Longfellow the greatest
+American poet, he accused him of plagiarism, or stealing some of his
+ideas, which was very unjust on the part of Poe. Hawthorne and Lowell
+he praised highly.
+
+After the death of his wife, Poe was very melancholy. He went to
+lecture, and to visit friends in Providence, Rhode Island, and in
+Lowell, Massachusetts, and afterward went south to Richmond, where he
+planned to raise enough money by lecturing to start _The Stylus_.
+
+He was hospitably entertained in Richmond, and became engaged to marry
+his boyhood's first love, Miss Royster, now the widow, Mrs. Shelton.
+Their marriage was to take place at once, and Poe started north to
+close up his business in New York and bring Mrs. Clemm south. In
+Baltimore it seems that he fell in with some politicians who were
+conducting an election. They took him about from one polling place to
+another to vote illegally; then some one drugged him, and left him on
+a bench near a saloon. Here he was found by a printer, who notified
+his friends, and they sent him to the hospital, where he died on the
+7th of October, 1849. He was nearly forty-one years old.
+
+Poe had a great and wonderful mind. In the latter part of his life he
+gave much of his time to a book called "Eureka," which was intended to
+explain the meaning of the universe. Of course he was not a
+philosopher; but he wrote some things in that book which were destined
+afterward to be accepted by such great men as Darwin and Huxley and
+many others.
+
+His life was so full of work and poverty, so crossed and crossed again
+by unhappiness and hardship, that he never had time or strength of
+mind to think out anything as he would otherwise have done. All his
+work is fragmentary, broken bits on this subject or on that. He wrote
+very few poems, not many stories, and only a little serious criticism.
+
+But a Frenchman will tell you that Poe, among American poets and
+writers, is the greatest; his writings have been translated into
+nearly every European language. In England, too, he is spoken of as
+our one great poet and critic, our first great story-writer, the
+inventor of the artistic short story.
+
+Poor, unhappy Poe! After his death a monument was to have been erected
+over his grave; but by a strange fatality it was destroyed before it
+was finished. Twenty-five years later admiring friends placed over his
+remains the first monument to an American poet. No such memorial was
+needed, however, for American hearts will never cease to thrill at the
+weird, beautiful music of "Annabel Lee," "The Bells," and "The Raven."
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+[Illustration: _JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL_.]
+
+JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+ELMWOOD
+
+
+James Russell Lowell was born on the 22d of February, 1819, in
+Cambridge, Massachusetts. Elmwood, the home of the Lowells, was to the
+west of the village of Cambridge, quite near Mount Auburn cemetery.
+When James Russell was a boy, Elmwood was practically in the country,
+and was surrounded on nearly all sides by woods, meadows, and
+pastures. The house stood on a triangular piece of land surrounded by
+a very high and thick hedge, made up of all sorts of trees and shrubs,
+such as pines, spruces, willows, and oaks, with smaller shrubs at the
+bottom so as to form a thick wall of green. In front of the house were
+some fine English elms, quite different from the American variety,
+and from these the house got its name. It was a large, square,
+old-fashioned wooden house, and though it had stood for over a hundred
+years, it remained during Lowell's life in perfect condition.
+
+The house was surrounded by a fine, well-kept lawn, and at the back
+were pasture, orchard, and garden, while half a mile away lay Fresh
+Pond, the haunt of herons and other shy birds and land creatures. From
+the upper windows one could look out on beautiful Mount Auburn
+cemetery, which was to the south, while to the east was a low hill
+called Symonds's Hill, beyond which could be seen a bright stretch of
+the Charles River.
+
+Elmwood faced on a lane, between two roads. In his essay in "Fireside
+Travels," entitled "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," Lowell describes the
+scene towards the village as it was in his childhood. Approaching
+"from the west, by what was then called the New Road (it is called so
+no longer, for we change our names whenever we can, to the great
+detriment of all historical association), you would pause on the brow
+of Symonds's Hill to enjoy a view singularly soothing and placid.
+In front of you lay the town, tufted with elms, lindens, and
+horse-chestnuts.... Over it rose the noisy belfry of the college, the
+square brown tower of the church, and the slim yellow spire of the parish
+meeting-house, by no means ungraceful, and then an invariable
+characteristic of New England religious architecture. On your right
+the Charles slipped smoothly through green and purple salt meadows,
+darkened here and there with the blossoming black grass as with a
+stranded cloud-shadow. Over these marshes, level as water but without
+its glare, and with softer and more soothing gradations of
+perspective, the eye was carried to a horizon of softly rounded hills.
+To your left upon the Old Road you saw some half dozen dignified old
+houses of the colonial time, all comfortably fronting southward." One
+of these, the largest and most stately, was the Craigie House, famous
+as the headquarters of Washington in 1776, and afterwards as the home
+of Longfellow. And at the end of the New Road toward Cambridge was a
+row of six fine willows, which had remained from the stockade built in
+early days as a defense against the Indians.
+
+And here is Harvard Square, where stand the buildings of the famous
+college:
+
+"A few houses, chiefly old, stood around the bare Common, with ample
+elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through
+the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery
+rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia
+general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. People
+still lived who regretted the unhappy separation from the mother
+island. . . The hooks were to be seen from which swung the hammocks of
+Burgoyne's captive redcoats. If memory does not deceive me, women
+still washed clothes in the town spring, clear as that of Bandusia.
+Commencement had not ceased to be the great holiday of the Puritan
+Commonwealth, and a fitting one it was--the festival of Santa
+Scholastica, whose triumphal path one may conceive strewn with leaves
+of spelling-books instead of bay."
+
+James was the youngest of four brothers and two sisters, a handsome
+boy, and his mother's darling. He always thought he inherited his love
+of nature and poetic aspirations from her, whose family was from the
+Orkneys--those islands at the extreme north of Scotland.
+
+His father was a strikingly handsome man, gracious and of rare
+personal qualities, and a faithful pastor over his flock. Often he
+took his youngest son on long drives with him, when he went to
+exchange pulpits with neighboring clergymen. Because of his wide
+family connection, and his father's position, James saw not a little
+of New England society as it was in those days, pure Yankee through
+and through.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+AN IMPETUOUS YOUNG MAN
+
+
+Young James was sent first to a dame school, as a private school for
+very small children kept by a lady in her own house was called in
+those days. But when he was eight or nine he was sent to a boarding
+school near Elmwood--going, of course, only as a day scholar. This
+school was kept by an Englishman named Wells, who had belonged to a
+publishing firm in Boston which had failed. This teacher was very sharp
+and severe, but he made all his boys learn Latin, as you may see by
+reading the learned notes and introductions to the "Biglow Papers,"
+supposed to have been written by "Parson Wilbur," but in reality by Lowell
+himself.
+
+We sometimes find it difficult to believe that a great man whom we
+admire was ever an ordinary human being, with faults and errors like
+our own. But when we do find natural, childish letters, or read
+anecdotes of youthful naughtiness, we immediately feel like shaking
+hands with the scapegrace, and a real liking for him begins.
+
+Lowell was so reserved in after life, and so very correct and elegant
+both in his writing and in his deportment, that when we come across
+two letters written at about nine years of age, badly punctuated and
+badly spelled, but displaying all the natural spirits of a boy, we
+begin at once to feel at home with him and to have a genuine affection
+for the man we had before only admired as a very great and learned
+author. Here are the two letters just as they were written. It will be
+a good exercise for you to rewrite them, correcting the spelling,
+punctuation, and other faults.
+
+Jan. 25, 1827.
+
+My dear brother The dog and the colt went down to-day with our boy for
+me and the colt went before and then the horse and slay and dog--I
+went to a party and I danced a great deal and was very happy--I read
+french stories--The colt plays very much--and follows the horse when
+it is out. Your affectionate brother,
+
+James R. Lowell.
+
+I forgot to tell you that sister mary has not given me any present but
+I have got three books
+
+Nov. 2, 1828.
+
+My Dear Brother,--I am now going to tell you melancholy news. I have
+got the ague together with a gumbile. I presume you know that
+September has got a lame leg, but he grows better every day and now is
+very well but limps a little. We have a new scholar from round hill,
+his name is Hooper and we expect another named Penn who I believe also
+comes from there. The boys are all very well except Nemaise, who has
+got another piece of glass in his leg and is waiting for the doctor to
+take it out, and Samuel Storrow is also sick. I am going to have a new
+suit of blue broadcloth clothes to wear every day and to play in.
+Mother tells me I may have any sort of buttons I choose. I have not
+done anything to the hut, but if you wish I will. I am now very happy;
+but I should be more so if you were there. I hope you will answer my
+letter if you do not I shall write you no more letters, when you write
+my letters you must direct them all to me and not write half to mother
+as generally do. Mother has given me the three volumes of tales of a
+grandfather
+
+  farewell
+     Yours truly James R. Lowell.
+
+You must excuse me for making so many mistakes. You must keep what I
+have told you about my new clothes a secret if you don't I shall not
+divulge any more secrets to you. I have got quite a library. The
+Master has not taken his rattan out since the vacation. Your little
+kitten is as well and as playful as ever and I hope you are to for I
+am sure I love you as well as ever. Why is grass like a mouse you cant
+guess that he he he ho ho ho ha ha ha hum hum hum.
+
+Young Lowell's life was so very quiet and uneventful that we have very
+little account of his boyhood and youth. We know, however, that he was
+fond of books and was rather lazy, and did pretty much as he pleased.
+A poem which in later years he dedicated to his friend Charles Eliot
+Norton gives a very good picture of the life at Elmwood:
+
+  The wind is roistering out of doors,
+  My windows shake and my chimney roars;
+  My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me,
+  As of old, in their moody, minor key,
+  And out of the past the hoarse wind blows,
+  As I sit in my arm-chair and toast my toes.
+
+  "Ho! ho! nine-and-forty," they seem to sing,
+  "We saw you a little toddling thing.
+  We knew you child and youth and man,
+  A wonderful fellow to dream and plan,
+  With a great thing always to come,--who knows?
+  Well, well! 'tis some comfort to toast one's toes.
+
+  "How many times have you sat at gaze
+  Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze,
+  Shaping among the whimsical coals
+  Fancies and figures and shining goals!
+  What matters the ashes that cover those?
+  While hickory lasts you can toast your toes.
+
+  "O dream-ship builder! where are they all,
+  Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall,
+  That should crush the waves under canvas piles,
+  And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles?
+  There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes,
+  While you muse in your arm-chair and toast your toes."
+
+  I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore,
+  My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar;
+  If much be gone, there is much remains;
+  By the embers of loss I count my gains,
+  You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows
+  In the fanciful flame as I toast my toes.
+
+Lowell entered Harvard College when he was but fifteen years old, very
+nearly the youngest man in his class. In those days the college was
+small, there were few teachers, and only about fifty students in a
+class.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+COLLEGE AND THE MUSES
+
+
+Soon after he entered college, young Lowell made the acquaintance of a
+senior, W.H. Shackford, to whom many of his published letters of
+college life are addressed. Another intimate friend was George Bailey
+Loring, who afterward became distinguished in politics. To one or
+other of these men he was constantly writing of his literary
+ambitions, always uppermost in his mind.
+
+Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard when Lowell was there, and
+afterward Lowell wrote an essay on "A Great Public Character," which
+describes this distinguished president. In it he refers to college
+life in a way that shows he thoroughly enjoyed it.
+
+"Almost every one," he writes, "looks back regretfully to the days of
+some Consul Plancus. Never were eyes so bright, never had wine so much
+wit and good-fellowship in it, never were we ourselves so capable of
+the various great things we have never done.... This is especially
+true of college life, when we first assume the titles without the
+responsibilities of manhood, and the president of our year is apt to
+become our Plancus very early."
+
+In another of his essays he tells one of the standing college jokes,
+which is worth repeating. The students would go into one of the
+grocery stores of the town, whose proprietor was familiarly called
+"The Deacon."
+
+"Have you any sour apples, Deacon?" the first student to enter would
+ask.
+
+"Well, no, I haven't any just now that are exactly sour," he would
+answer; "but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sour
+apple generally like that."
+
+Enter the second student. "Have you any sweet apples, Deacon?"
+
+"Well, no, I haven't any now that are exactly sweet; but there's the
+bellflower apple, and folks that like a sweet apple generally like
+that."
+
+"There is not even a tradition of any one's ever having turned the
+wary Deacon's flank," says
+
+Lowell, "and his Laodicean apples persisted to the end, neither one
+thing nor another."
+
+It did not take young Lowell long to find out that he had a weakness
+for poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his
+friend Loring, probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation,
+1836, he says, "Here I am alone in Bob's room with a blazing fire, in
+an atmosphere of 'poesy' and soft coal smoke. Pope, Dante, a few of
+the older English poets, Byron, and last, not least, some of my own
+compositions, lie around me. Mark my modesty. I don't put myself in
+the same line with the rest, you see.... Been quite 'grouty' all the
+vacation, 'black as Erebus.' Discovered two points of very striking
+resemblance between myself and Lord Byron; and if you will put me in
+mind of it, I will propound next term, or in some other letter,
+'Vanity, thy name is Lowell!'"
+
+And again, in a letter to his mother, he says, "I am engaged in
+several poetic effusions, one of which I dedicated to you, who have
+always been the patron and encourager of my youthful muse.
+If you wish to see me as much as I do you, I shall be satisfied."
+
+This is Mrs. Lowell's answer to the last wish. She and Dr. Lowell were
+then making a visit to Europe: "Babie Jamie: Your poetry was very
+pleasing to me, and I am glad to have a letter, but not to remind me
+of you, for you are seldom long out of my head.... Don't leave your
+whistling, which used to cheer me so much. I frequently listen to it
+here, though far from you." In later years Lowell would often tell how
+he used to whistle as he came near home from school, in order to let
+his mother know he was coming, and she seldom failed to be sitting at
+her window to welcome him.
+
+Early in 1837 Lowell was elected to the Hasty Pudding Club. "At the
+very first meeting I attended," he writes to his friend, Shackford, "I
+was chosen secretary, which is considered the most honorable office in
+the club, as the records are kept in _verse (mind,_ I do not say
+_poetry_). This first brought my rhyming powers into notice, and since
+that I have been chosen to deliver the next anniversary poem by a vote
+of twenty out of twenty-four."
+
+Not long afterward he writes to his friend Loring, "I have written
+about a hundred lines of my poem (?), and I suspect it is going to be
+pretty good. At least, some parts of it will take." And after a few
+lines he goes on, "I am as busy as a bee--almost. I study and read and
+write all the time." A little later he writes a letter to Loring in
+Scotch dialect verse.
+
+This was not the sort of work, however, that the college authorities
+expected of him. He was lazy and got behind his classes, so that near
+the end of his course he was rusticated, or suspended from college for
+some weeks. He had been chosen class poet, but on account of his
+suspension he could not read his poem, though it was printed.
+
+He was sent to Concord during this interval to carry on his studies
+under the minister of the town. Here he found it pretty dull, though
+Emerson and Thoreau were there. But he did not then care for either
+one of them. In one of his letters he said, "I feel like a fool. I
+must go down and see Emerson and if he doesn't make me feel more like
+one, it won't be for want of sympathy. He is a good-natured man in
+spite of his doctrines."
+
+Of Thoreau he said, "I met (him) last night, and it is exquisitely
+amusing to see how he imitates Emerson's tone and manner. With my eyes
+shut I shouldn't know them apart."
+
+In the autumn he came back to Cambridge and took his degree of
+Bachelor of Arts with his class.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+HOW LOWELL STUDIED LAW
+
+
+While at Concord, Lowell wrote to his friend Loring, as though
+explaining himself.
+
+"Everybody almost is calling me 'indolent.' 'Blind dependent on my own
+powers' and 'on fate.' Confound everybody! since everybody confounds
+me. Everybody seems to see but one side of my character, and that the
+worst. As for my dependence on my own powers, 'tis all fudge. As for
+fate, I believe that in every man's breast are the stars of his
+fortune, which, if he choose, he may rule as easily as does the child
+the mimic constellations in the orrery he plays with. I acknowledge,
+too, that I have been something of a dreamer, and have sacrificed,
+perchance, too assiduously on that altar to the 'unknown God,' which
+the Divinity has builded not with hands in the bosom of every decent
+man, sometimes blazing out clear with flame, like Abel's sacrifice,
+heaven-seeking; sometimes smothered with greenwood and earthward, like
+that of Cain. Lazy quota! I haven't dug, 'tis true, but I have done as
+well, and 'since my free soul was mistress of her choice, and could of
+books distinguish her election,' I have chosen what reading I pleased
+and what friends I pleased, sometimes scholars and sometimes not."
+
+Once out of college he had to take up some profession. Had poetry been
+a profession, he would have taken that; but such a choice at that time
+would have been considered sheer folly. He did not consider that he
+had any "call" to be a minister, still less a doctor. As there was
+nothing else left, he began the study of law. It is truly amusing to
+see how he manages to "wriggle along" until he takes his degree of
+LL.B. and is admitted to the bar.
+
+First, he announces that he is "reading Blackstone with as good a
+grace and as few wry faces as he may." Only a few days later he
+declares, "A very great change has come o'er the spirit of my dreams.
+I have renounced the law." He is going to be a business man, and sets
+about looking for a place, in a store. He is going to give up all
+thoughts of literary pursuits and devote himself to money-making. He
+also says, "I have been thinking seriously of the ministry, but
+then--I have also thought of medicine, but then--still worse!"
+
+A few days pass by. He goes into Boston and hears Webster speak in a
+case before the United States Court. "I had not been there an hour
+before I determined to continue in my profession and study as well as
+I could."
+
+Still, it was hard work to keep at his law studies. He is soon writing
+to his friend George Loring, "I sometimes think that I have it in me,
+and shall one day do somewhat; meantime I am schooling myself and
+shaping my theory of poesy."
+
+Six weeks later: "I have written a great deal of _pottery_ lately. I
+have quitted the law forever." Then he inquires if he can make any
+money by lecturing at Andover. He already has an engagement to lecture
+at Concord, where he has hopes to "astonish them a little."
+
+A fortnight later we find him in a "miserable state. The more I think
+of business the more really unhappy do I feel, and think more and more
+of studying law." What he really wants to do all the time is to write
+poetry. "I don't know how it is," he says, "but sometimes I actually
+_need_ to write somewhat in verse." Sunday is his work day in the
+"pottery business."
+
+As for the law, it is settled at last. He writes to his friend,
+"Rejoice with me, for to-morrow I shall be free. Without saying a word
+to any one, I shall quietly proceed to Dane Law College to recitation.
+Now shall I be happy again as far as that is concerned."
+
+A fortnight later he declares, "I begin to like the law, and therefore
+it is quite interesting. I am determined that I _will_ like it and
+therefore I _do_."
+
+In the summer of 1840 he completed his studies and was admitted to the
+bar. A little later he opened an office in Boston. Misfortune had
+overtaken his father, and his personal property had been nearly swept
+away. It was now necessary for the young man to earn his own living.
+His friends were therefore glad that he had his profession to depend
+on.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+LOVE AND LETTERS
+
+
+Lowell always had a presentiment that he should never practice law. He
+was always dreaming of becoming independent in some other way. "Above
+all things," he declares, "should I love to sit down and do something
+literary for the rest of my natural life."
+
+He did not then think of marrying, and it does not require much to
+support a single man. Though he opened a law office in Boston, it does
+not appear that he did any business. He wrote a story entitled "My
+First Client," but one of his biographers unkindly suggests that this
+may have been purely imaginary.
+
+All through his letters we see his ambitious yearning. "George," says
+he in one place, "before I die your heart shall be gladdened by seeing
+your wayward, vain, and too often selfish friend do something that
+shall make his name honored. As Sheridan once said, 'It's _in_ me,
+and' (we'll skip the oath) 'it shall come _out_!'"
+
+His bachelor dreams were soon dissipated, however. He went to visit a
+friend of his, W.A. White, and there met the young man's sister Maria.
+He thought her a very pleasant and pleasing young lady, and he
+discovered that she knew a great deal of poetry. She could repeat more
+verse than any other one of his acquaintances, though he laments that
+she was more familiar with modern poets than with the "pure
+wellsprings of English poesy."
+
+The friendship grew apace. In the same fall that he began the
+pretended practice of law he became engaged to her, and she caused a
+fresh and voluminous outpouring of verse. His productions were printed
+in various periodicals, such as the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, to which
+Longfellow had contributed, and the _Southern Literary Messenger_,
+which Poe once edited.
+
+Miss White was a most charming and interesting young lady. She was
+herself a poet, and had a delicate intellectual sympathy that enabled
+her to enter into her lover's ambitions, and assist him even in the
+minutest details of his work.
+
+It is fair to suppose that Lowell's friends brought every possible
+pressure to bear upon him to make him give up poetry and _dig_ at the
+law. His father's financial losses had left him without an inherited
+income; he was engaged to a beautiful girl and anxious to be married;
+in some way he must earn his living, and if possible do more. Such was
+not the effect, however. He devoted himself to poetry with an almost
+feverish activity. He has made up his mind that he will do something
+great; for only so can he hope possibly to make literature a paying
+profession.
+
+It was Maria who inspired most of his verse at this time. One of his
+best poems even to this day was written directly for her. It is called
+"Irene'." It may be taken as the best possible description of his lady
+herself:
+
+  Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear;
+    Calm beneath her earnest face it lies,
+  Free without boldness, meek without a fear,
+    Quicker to look than speak its sympathies;
+  Far down into her large and patient eyes
+    I gaze, deep-drinking of the infinite,
+  As, in the mid-watch of a clear, still night,
+    I look into the fathomless blue skies.
+
+As the struggle between money and law on the one side and literature
+on the other still went on, he expressed his feelings on the subject
+to his friend Loring in the following stanza, which puts the whole
+argument into a nutshell:
+
+  They tell me I must study law.
+  They say that I have dreamed and dreamed too long,
+    That I must rouse and seek for fame and gold;
+  That I must scorn this idle gift of song,
+
+  And mingle with the vain and proud and cold.
+      Is, then, this petty strife
+      The end and aim of life,
+  All that is worth the living for below?
+  _O God! then call me hence, for I would gladly go_!
+
+Thus he had finally come to the conclusion that he would rather die
+than give up literature.
+
+"Irené" won the good opinion of many. The young poet, though but
+twenty-one, felt that he was beginning to be a lion. His next definite
+step was to publish a volume of verses. Says he, "I shall print my
+volume. Maria wishes me to do it, and that is enough."
+
+So his first volume, "A Year's Life," was published, with the motto in
+German, "I have lived and loved."
+
+The young poet's friends were very much opposed to this publication,
+for the reason that a rising young lawyer is not helped on in his
+profession at all by being known as a poet. Who would employ a _poet_
+to defend his business in a court room? No one! A hard-headed business
+man is wanted. Walter Scott was a lawyer of much such a temperament as
+Lowell's, and when he put forth a similar volume he suffered as it was
+certain that Lowell would suffer. But it is probable that Lowell was
+now fully determined to give up law altogether.
+
+"I know," he declares passionately, "that God has given me powers such
+as are not given to all, and I will not 'hide my talent in mean clay.'
+I do not care what others may think of me or of my book, because if I
+am worth anything I shall one day show it. I do not fear criticism as
+much as I love truth. Nay, I do not fear it at all. In short, I am
+happy. Maria fills my ideal and I satisfy her. And I mean to live as
+one beloved by such a woman should live. She is every way noble.
+People have called 'Irene' a beautiful piece of poetry. And so it is.
+It owes all its beauty to her."
+
+It is very plain that she was on the side of the poet, not of the
+worldly-minded persons who advocated the law, business, money-making.
+She did not dread the prospect of being a poor man's wife. To be the
+wife of a poet, a man of courage and ambition and nobleness of heart,
+was far more to her. The turning point in Lowell's life was past; and
+he had been led to that turning point by the little woman who was soon
+to become his wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE UNCERTAIN SEAS OF LITERATURE
+
+
+As far as is known, Lowell never earned a dollar by the law. He soon
+began to pick up a five or a ten dollar bill here and there by writing
+for current periodicals. His book brought him some reputation, but not
+much. A few hundred copies were sold, and most of the reviews and
+criticisms were favorable. He received a slating from the _Morning
+Post_ in Boston, however, just as an inkling of what a literary man
+might expect.
+
+Three years of hard literary work now followed. Lowell wrote
+assiduously and heroically, getting what happiness he could in the
+meantime out of his love. He was young and strong, and life was not a
+burden. He tells us of having spent an evening at the house of a
+friend "where Maria is making sunshine just now," and he declared that
+he had been exceedingly funny. He had in the course of the evening
+recited "near upon five hundred extempore macaronic verses; composed
+and executed an oratorio and opera" upon a piano without strings,
+namely the center-table; drawn "an entirely original view of Nantasket
+Beach"; made a temperance address; and given vent to "innumerable
+jests, jokes, puns, oddities, quiddities and nothings," interrupted by
+his own laughter and that of his hearers. Besides this, he had eaten
+"an indefinite number of raisins, chestnuts(!), etc., etc., etc.,
+etc., etc."
+
+In 1842 Lowell and Cobert G. Carter, who was about the same sort of a
+business man as the poet himself, started a periodical which they
+called the _Pioneer_. They had no capital; but they did have literary
+connections, and they were able to get together for the three numbers
+they published a larger number of contributions from distinguished
+contributors than has often fallen to the lot of any American
+periodical. It is true that these men were not as famous in those days
+as they have since become; still, their names were known and their
+reputations were rapidly growing. The best known were Poe, Hawthorne,
+Longfellow, Whittier and Emerson; but there were not a few others
+whose names are well known to-day. The magazine had a high literary
+character, and was well worthy of the future greatness of the
+contributors. Unfortunately, it takes something more than literary
+excellence to make a successful magazine. Sometimes the literary
+quality is too high for the public to appreciate. This was true of the
+_Pioneer_. A magazine also requires a large capital and commercial
+ability in the business office. It is not at all strange that the
+venture did not succeed. It could not have done so. Three numbers only
+were issued, and those three left behind them a debt which the young
+publishers were unable to pay until some time after.
+
+At the same time that Lowell was having trouble with his magazine, he
+found his eyes becoming affected, and he was obliged to spend the
+greater part of the winter of 1842-43 in New York to undergo
+treatment. Here he made many new literary acquaintances, among others
+that of Charles F. Briggs, who started the _Broadway Journal_ with the
+assistance of Poe. In the meantime, he kept on writing poetry with
+more vigor than ever, and in 1843 published a second volume of verse,
+containing his best work since "A Year's Life" appeared.
+
+His contributions to the periodicals included much prose as well as
+poetry. Among other things, he wrote a series of "Conversations on
+some of the Old Poets," which was published in a volume the same year
+that the second book of poems came out. It consisted mainly of essays
+on Chaucer, Chapman, Ford, and the old dramatists. He never cared to
+reprint this first excursion into the realm of literary criticism; but
+it opened up a field which he was to work with distinction in after
+years.
+
+Lowell's prose is delicate, airy, and fanciful, but at the same time
+keenly critical and sharp in its thought. "Fireside Travels" and "From
+My Study Window" are books which are known all over the world and
+which are everywhere voted "delightful".
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+HOSEA BIGLOW, YANKEE HUMORIST
+
+
+In December, 1844, Lowell felt that his income from his literary work,
+though very small and precarious, was sufficient to justify him in
+marrying, and accordingly he was united to Miss White. She was
+delicate in health, and after their marriage the couple went to
+Philadelphia, where they spent the winter in lodgings. Lowell became a
+regular contributor to the _Freeman_, an antislavery paper once edited
+by Whittier. From this he derived a very small but steady income; and
+the next year he was engaged to write every week for the _Anti-Slavery
+Standard_ on a yearly salary of five hundred dollars. This connection
+he maintained for the next four years.
+
+In June, 1846, the editor of the _Boston Courier_, a weekly paper well
+known in the "Hub" for its literary character even to this day,
+received a strange communication. It was a letter signed "Ezekiel
+Biglow," enclosing a poem written by his son Hosea. This is the way
+the letter began:
+
+Jaylem, June, 1846.
+
+Mister Eddyter:--Our Hosea wuz down to Boston last week, and he see a
+cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking,
+with 2 fellers a drummin and fifin arter him like all nater, the
+sarjunt he thout Hosea hedn't gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a
+kindo's though he 'd jest cum down, so he cal'lated to hook him in,
+but Hosy woodn't take none o his sarse for all he hed much as 20
+Rooster's tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up
+and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let
+alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder out on.
+
+The letter was rather a long one, and closed thus. Referring to the
+verses enclosed, the writer says:--
+
+If you print em I wish you'd jest let folks know who hosy's father is,
+cos my ant Kesiah used to say it's nater to be curus ses she, she aint
+livin though and he's a likely kind o lad.
+
+Ezekiel Biglow.
+
+The poem itself began with this stanza:
+
+  Thrash away, you'll _hev_ to rattle
+    On them kittle-drums o' yourn,--
+  'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle
+    Thet is ketched with mouldy corn;
+  Put in stiff, you fifer feller,
+    Let folks see how spry you be,--
+  Guess you'll toot till you are yeller
+    'Fore you git ahold o' me!
+
+The letter and the poem were printed together in the _Courier_, and
+immediately were the talk of the town. You will remember that in 1846
+the war with Mexico was just beginning, and many people were opposed
+to it as the work of "jingo" politicians, controlled in some degree by
+the slavery power. Southern slaveholders wished to increase the
+territory of the United States in such a way as to enlarge the
+territory where slavery would be lawful. The antislavery people of New
+England were violently opposed to the war, and this poem by the Yankee
+Hosea Biglow immediately became popular, because it put in a humorous,
+common-sense way what everybody else had been saying with deadly
+earnest.
+
+Charles Sumner saw the common sense of the poem, but didn't see the
+fun in the bad spelling. Said he, "This Yankee poet has the true
+spirit. He puts the case admirably. I wish, however, he could have
+used good English." Evidently Sumner did not suspect that so cultured
+and polished a poet as James Russell Lowell was the author of a stanza
+like this:
+
+  'Wut 's the use o' meetin'-goin'
+    Every Sabbath, wet or dry,
+  Ef it's right to go amowin'
+    Feller-men like oats and rye?
+  I dunno but wut it's pooty
+    Trainin' round in bobtail coats.--
+  But it's curus Christian dooty,
+    This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats.
+
+The fact is, however, Lowell had written all this, even the letter
+with bad spelling purporting to come from Ezekiel Biglow. He was
+deeply interested in the antislavery cause, in good politics and sound
+principles; yet he saw that it would be useless for him to get up and
+preach against what he did not like. There were plenty of other
+earnest, serious-minded men like Garrison and Whittier who were
+fighting against the evil in the straightforward, blunt way. Lowell
+was as interested as they in having the wrongs righted; but he was
+more cool-headed than the rest. He considered the matter. A joke, he
+said to himself, will carry the crowd ten times as quickly as a
+serious protest; and people will listen to one of their own number, a
+common, every-day, sensible fellow with a spark of wit in him, where
+they would go away bored by polished and cultured writing full of
+Latin quotations. This is how he came to begin the Biglow papers.
+Their instant success proved that he was quite right.
+
+Of course it was not long before shrewd people began to see that this
+fine humor, with its home-thrusts, was not in reality written by a
+country bumpkin. Through the rough dialect and homely way of stating
+the case, there shone the fine intellect of a cultivated and skillful
+writer. The _Post_ guessed that James Russell Lowell was the real
+author. This was regarded only as a rumor, however, and many people
+scouted the idea that a young poet, whose books sold only in small
+numbers and were known only to literary people, could have written
+anything as good as this.
+
+"I have heard it demonstrated in the pauses of a concert," wrote
+Lowell afterward, "that I was utterly incompetent to have written
+anything of the kind."
+
+It was early in this same summer of 1846 that Lowell made his contract
+to write regularly for the _Anti-Slavery Standard_; and he soon began
+sending the "Biglow" poems to that paper instead of to the _Courier_.
+
+The most popular of the whole series of poems by Hosea Biglow was the
+one on John P. Robinson. Robinson was a worthy gentleman who happened
+to come out publicly on the side of a political wire-puller.
+Immediately Hosea caught up his name and wrote a comic poem on voting
+for a bad candidate for office. Looked at in that light, the poem
+applies just as well to political candidates to-day as it did then.
+Here are a few stanzas of the poem. You will want to turn to "Lowell's
+Poetical Works" and read the whole piece.
+
+WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.
+
+  Guvener B. is a sensible man;
+    He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
+  He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
+    An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
+      But John P.
+      Robinson he
+      Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
+
+  My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?
+    We can't never choose him o' course--thet's flat;
+  Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)
+    An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that,
+      Fer John P.
+      Robinson he
+  Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
+
+  Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
+    He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
+  But consistency still wuz a part of his plan--
+    He's been true to _one_ party--an' thet is himself;
+      So John P.
+      Robinson he
+      Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
+
+  Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
+    He don't vally principle more'n an old cud;
+  Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
+    But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
+      So John P.
+      Robinson he
+      Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
+
+  The side of our country must ollers be took,
+    An' President Polk, you know, _he_ is our country.
+  An' the angel that writes all our sins in a book
+    Puts the _debit_ to him, an' to us the _per contry_;
+        And John P.
+        Robinson he
+        Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.
+
+There is a story that Mr. Robinson couldn't go anywhere after this
+poem was published without hearing some one humming or reciting,
+
+  Fer John P.
+  Robinson he
+  Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
+
+School children shouted it everywhere, people on the street repeated
+it as they met, and the funny rhyme was heard even in polite
+drawing-rooms, amid roars of laughter. Mr. Robinson went abroad, but
+scarcely had he landed in Liverpool before he heard a child crooning
+over to himself,
+
+  Fer John P.
+  Robinson he
+  Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
+
+In Genoa, Italy, it was a parody, telling what John P.--Robinson
+he--would do down in Judee.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+PARSON WILBUR
+
+
+In the course of time the "Biglow Papers" were published in book form.
+Not only was Lowell's name not yet connected publicly with the Yankee
+humor, but the poems were provided with an elaborate introduction,
+notes and comments, by the learned pastor of the church at Jaalam,
+Homer Wilbur. His notes and introduction are filled with Latin
+quotations, and he appears as much a scholar as Hosea Biglow does a
+natural. He says he tried to teach Hosea better English, but decided
+to let him work out his own ideas in his own way. Still, he endorses
+Hosea's principles, and is in every way thoroughly his friend.
+
+This Parson Wilbur is almost as much of a character in the book as
+Hosea himself, and his prose, printed at the beginning and end of each
+poem in small type, is almost as clear and effective and interesting
+as Hosea's poems. We are always tempted to skip anything printed in
+small type, and placed in brackets; but in this case that would be a
+great mistake.
+
+Speaking of "What Mr. Robinson Thinks," Parson Wilbur says, "A bad
+principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an
+abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is
+printed in that large type which all men can read at sight, namely the
+life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular persons....
+
+"Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not
+to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and as Truth and
+Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along
+together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the
+latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at
+the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so
+brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous
+than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual
+use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes
+more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may
+put on his boxing gloves, and yet forget that the older they grow, the
+more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of
+contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose
+tawdry tinsel glitters through the dust of the ring which obscures
+Truth's wreath of simple leaves."
+
+There is another very interesting passage which is said to be an
+extract from one of the Parson's sermons, describing the modern
+newspaper.
+
+"Wonderful, to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the newspaper.
+To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in
+my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of
+a strolling theater, or rather of a puppet-show, on whose stage,
+narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in
+little. Behold the huge earth sent to me hebdomidally in a brown paper
+wrapper."
+
+You see that what he says is very learned in its choice of words; but
+if you read it carefully you will find it interesting.
+
+But after all, Parson Wilbur is a humorous character, though he has
+his sense, too. At the end of his introduction are some fragmentary
+notes which are intended as a general satire on editors of books. He
+goes on at some length to say that he thought he ought to have his
+picture printed in the book which he professes to be editing. But he
+has only two likenesses, one a black profile, the other a painting in
+which he is made cross-eyed. He speaks of it as "strabismus," which
+sounds very learned of course, and he goes on to explain that in
+actual fact this is not a bad thing, for he can preach very directly
+at his congregation, and no one will think the preacher has him
+particularly in his eye. He also says Mrs. Wilbur objected to having a
+cross-eyed picture reproduced, and he is therefore driven to take the
+position of those great people who refuse to have their features
+copied at all. Then he puts in a lot of absurd genealogical notes.
+
+At the beginning of the book there are also a number of imaginary
+notices of "the independent press." Of course there are no such papers
+as those mentioned, and the praise and the blame are alike satirical.
+
+In the original volume of "Biglow Papers," part of a page at the end
+of these "Notices of the Press" remained unfilled, and the printer
+asked Lowell if he could not send in something to occupy that space.
+As poetry came easiest, Lowell wrote a number of stanzas about
+"Zekle's Courtin'." There were only six stanzas in the original
+edition. Lowell wrote more, but told the printer to break off when the
+page was filled. This the printer did, and the stanzas which were not
+put in type were lost, as Lowell had kept no copy. This piece became
+so popular that friends urged the poet to finish the story, and he
+wrote a few more stanzas. Then he wrote still others. In the course of
+time it developed into the long poem printed with the second series of
+"Biglow Papers," under the title of "The Courtin'."
+
+This is the way it runs in the first version; but you will want to
+read it also in its complete form:
+
+  Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown,
+    An' peeked in thru the winder,
+  An' there sot Huldy all alone,
+    'ith no one nigh to hender.
+
+  He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
+    Some doubtfle o' the sekle,
+  His heart kep' goin' pitypat,
+    But hern went pity Zekle.
+
+  He stood a spell on one foot fust,
+    Then stood a spell on tother,
+  An' on which one he felt the wust
+    He could n't ha' told ye, nuther.
+
+  Sez he, "I'd better call agin;"
+    Sez she, "Think likely, _Mister_;"
+  The last word pricked him like a pin,
+    An'--wal, he up and kist her.
+
+When in the course of the publication of the second series of "Biglow
+Papers," twenty years after the first, it was announced that Parson
+Wilbur was dead, people who had read the first series felt very much
+as though they had lost a personal friend. The public had learned to
+love the pedantic, vain old man as if he were a real human being.
+Lowell had created in him a great character of fiction, almost as if
+he were a novelist instead of a poet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A FABLE FOR CRITICS
+
+
+Lowell's next attempt in the satirical and humorous line was a long
+poem written somewhat after the style of the old Latin fable writers,
+and hence called "A Fable for Critics." It was written in double
+rhymes, for the most part, which are very hard to make, and not
+altogether easy to read; but they help the humorous impression.
+
+This poem was published anonymously, and in it the author hits off all
+the prominent authors of the day, speaking as the god Apollo. Of
+course he did not attach his name to it, and as it appeared
+anonymously he felt that he could say what he liked--in other words,
+tell the truth about his friends and acquaintances, or at least give
+his opinion of them. Incidentally, he pokes fun at the literary fads
+of the day.
+
+Among other things, to give the impression that he was not the author
+of the poem, he puts in a free criticism of himself:
+
+  There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
+  With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme.
+  He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
+  But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders.
+  The top of the hill he will never come nigh reaching
+  Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;
+  His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
+  But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,
+  And rattle away till he's old as Mathusalem,
+  At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.
+
+Evidently he thought that he paid too much attention to politics, as
+in the "Biglow Papers," and to lecturing, and various side issues,
+when he ought to be cultivating pure poetry more assiduously; or
+rather, he would have liked to be a simple poet and do nothing else,
+not even earn a living.
+
+The way he characterizes in this poem the great writers whom we know
+is both amusing and interesting, and he generally tells the truth. For
+instance, he writes--
+
+  There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
+  Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge.
+
+The best of his criticisms are not satirical, but true and appreciative.
+Thus, Hawthorne:
+
+  There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
+  That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
+  A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
+  So earnest, so graceful, so lithe, and so fleet,
+  Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet.
+
+His reference to Whittier, too, is a noble tribute by one poet to
+another:
+
+  There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
+  Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
+  And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect,
+  Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect.
+
+Bryant was the oldest of the American poets, and the generation to
+which Lowell belonged had been taught to look up to him as the head of
+American poetical literature. Of course the younger poets felt that
+they ought to receive a share of the homage, and perhaps they were a
+little jealous of Bryant.
+
+  There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
+  As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified,
+  Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' nights
+  With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
+
+This is not at all complimentary, it would seem, but a little farther
+along Lowell makes up for it in part by saying--
+
+  But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears,
+  Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers;
+  If I call him an iceberg I don't mean to say,
+  There is nothing in that which is grand in its way;
+  He is almost the one of your poets that knows
+  How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose.
+
+You will remember that in one of his college letters, written while he
+was at Concord because rusticated, Lowell did not seem to care for
+Emerson. He afterward became his great admirer, and in this fable
+leads off with Emerson, saying:
+
+  There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
+  Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,
+  Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows,
+  Is some of it pr--No, 'tis not even prose.
+
+Irving and Holmes are two more of his favorites. Of the first he says:
+
+  What! Irving? Thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain,
+  You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,
+  And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there
+  Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair.
+
+Holmes he happily hits off thus:
+
+  There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit;
+  A Leyden jar always full charged, from which flit
+  The electrical tingles of hit after hit.
+  His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric
+  Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric;
+  In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes
+  That are trodden upon are your own or your foe's.
+
+And he ends by saying:
+
+  Nature fits all her children with something to do;
+  He who would write and can't write, can surely review,
+  Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his
+  Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies.
+
+Lowell was a good critic, and clearly saw the merit of the really
+great writers of his time. We have quoted his characterizations of
+those he admires. His keen thrusts at those who are not half as great
+as they would have us believe are both amusing and true, and no doubt
+made their victims smart sharply enough, for instance that--
+
+  One person whose portrait just gave the least hint
+  Its original had a most horrible squint.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE TRUEST POETRY
+
+
+While Lowell was becoming famous indirectly as the anonymous author of
+the "Biglow Papers" and "A Fable for Critics," he was writing and
+publishing over his own name sweet, simple lines that came straight
+from his heart and which will no doubt be remembered when the uncouth
+Yankee dialect of Hosea Biglow and the hard rhymes of the "Fable" are
+forgotten. The simpler a true poet is the more beautiful and really
+poetic he is likely to be. The simplest thing Lowell ever wrote was
+"The First Snow-Fall," composed in 1847 after the death of his little
+daughter Blanche, with the sorrow for whose loss was mingled the joy
+at the coming of another child.
+
+THE FIRST SNOW-FALL.
+
+  The snow had begun in the gloaming,
+    And busily all the night
+  Had been heaping field and highway
+    With a silence deep and white.
+
+  I stood and watched by the window
+    The noiseless work of the sky,
+  And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
+    Like brown leaves whirling by.
+
+  I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
+    Where a little headstone stood;
+  How the flakes were folding it gently,
+    As did robins the babes in the wood.
+
+  Up spoke our own little Mabel,
+    Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
+  And I told of the good All-father
+    Who cares for us here below.
+
+  Again I looked at the snow-fall,
+    And thought of the leaden sky
+  That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
+    When that mound was heaped so high.
+
+  I remembered the gradual patience
+    That fell from that cloud like snow,
+  Flake by flake, healing and hiding
+    The scar that renewed our woe.
+
+  And again to the child I whispered,
+    "The snow that husheth all,
+  Darling, the merciful Father
+    Alone can make it fall!"
+
+  Then with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
+    And she, kissing back, could not know
+  That my kiss was given to her sister,
+    Folded close under deepening snow.
+
+Lowell's greatest poem, "The Vision of Sir Launfal," was written in
+the same simple, beautiful spirit of "The First Snow-Fall," and that
+is why we all like to read it over and over again. "Sir Launfal" was a
+favorite with Mrs. Lowell from the beginning. She probably knew better
+that it was a great poem than the poet himself did.
+
+The "Prelude" to the first part is beautiful because it contains so
+much that cannot but touch the heart of every one, however he may
+dislike poetry. A great poem like this cannot be read hastily, nor
+must we stop with reading it once. Great poetry must be read so many
+times that it is committed entirely to memory before we begin to reach
+the end of the beauties in it. Each time we reread we see new
+beauties, we feel new thrills.
+
+  Over his keys the musing organist,
+    Beginning doubtfully and far away,
+  First lets his fingers wander as they list,
+    And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay;
+  Then, as the touch of his loved instrument
+    Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,
+  First guessed by faint auroral flashes sent
+    Along the wavering vista of his dream.
+
+The first time you read this passage it may mean little to you; but as
+you read again and again you gradually picture in your mind a grand
+cathedral, just filling with people for the morning worship. The
+organist begins with a few light notes, fanciful, merely suggestive;
+then louder and louder swells the strain; the music begins to bring up
+before your mind pictures of waterfalls, cities, men and women with
+passionate hearts; at last, in the grand flood of the music, you
+forget yourself, the world around you, the church, the thronging
+congregation, everything.
+
+After this pretty and suggestive prelude, describing the musician, we
+read such passages as this, which suggest the theme as by a "faint
+auroral flash":
+
+  And what is so rare as a day in June?
+    Then, if ever, come perfect days;
+  Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
+    And over it softly her warm ear lays.
+
+A little farther along the music seems to broaden and deepen:
+
+  Now is the high-tide of the year,
+    And whatever of life hath ebbed away
+  Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
+    Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
+  Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
+    We are happy now because God wills it.
+
+You must read the rest of the poem for yourself, ever remembering that
+to read poetry so that you understand it and love it means that you
+yourself are a poet at heart; and if you come to love a great poem you
+may be proud of your achievement.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+PROFESSOR, EDITOR, AND DIPLOMAT
+
+
+There was a touching and very warm affection between Longfellow and
+Lowell. Mrs. Lowell says of it, "I have never seen such a beautiful
+friendship between men of such distinct personalities, though closely
+linked together by mutual tastes and affections. They criticise and
+praise each other's performances with frankness not to be surpassed,
+and seem to have attained that happy height of faith where no
+misunderstanding, no jealousy, no reserve exists." Often in his diary
+Longfellow speaks of "walking to see Lowell," who was either "musing
+before his fire in his study," or occupied in his "celestial study,
+with its pleasant prospect through the small square windows."
+
+Longfellow was some dozen years the elder; and when the time came that
+he wished to retire from the professorship of belles-lettres in
+Harvard College, he was very desirous that Lowell should take the
+place. There were others who wanted it; but it was arranged that
+Lowell should become Longfellow's successor. Lowell had never before
+been a professor and he did not particularly like the work. In 1867 he
+speaks of "beginning my annual dissatisfaction of lecturing next
+week." Still, he was popular with the students and highly successful
+because of his fine gift of literary criticism. Here, for instance, is
+his definition of poetry: "Poetry, as I understand it, is the
+recognition of something new and true in thought or feeling, the
+recollection of some profound experience, the conception of some
+heroic action, the creation of something beautiful and pathetic."
+
+In his diary Longfellow sometimes refers to Mrs. Lowell, "slender and
+pale as a lily"; and once when he and Charles Sumner had gone to see
+Lowell and found that he was not at home, Longfellow adds, "but we saw
+his gentle wife, who, I fear, is not long for this world."
+
+His words were prophetic. She gradually failed in strength. Of their
+four children, three died while mere babes. In 1853 Mrs. Lowell
+herself died.
+
+The appointment to Longfellow's professorship did not come until a
+little over a year after the death of Mrs. Lowell. During her life Mr.
+Lowell's income was very small and irregular, a few hundred dollars a
+year in payment of royalties on his books and for articles and poems
+contributed to various periodicals. With his appointment to the
+Harvard professorship he became financially independent for the first
+time. To prepare for it he went abroad, spending most of his time at
+Dresden.
+
+He returned sooner than he expected, and for a reason that very well
+illustrates his business habits. When he set out he had a limited
+amount of money. This he placed with London bankers, arranging to draw
+on them for such sums as he might need from time to time. He asked
+that when he had drawn down to a certain sum the bankers should notify
+him, and then he would immediately prepare to return home. He settled
+down, and thought that he was getting on moderately well and had a
+considerable sum still to draw. What was his surprise when he was
+notified by his bankers that he had drawn his account down to the
+amount he had mentioned! As there was nothing better for him to do, he
+packed his trunk and went home.
+
+Some years after that, he received a letter from these London bankers
+informing him that an error had been made in his account, and that a
+draft for a hundred pounds sterling (five hundred dollars) which had
+been drawn by some other person named Lowell had by mistake been
+charged to his account. This money, with compound interest, was now at
+his disposal. The bankers suggested, however, that if he was not in
+immediate need of the money, they would use it for an admirable
+investment they knew of which might considerably increase it within a
+year. At the end of a year he received a draft for seven hundred
+pounds. This he used to refurnish Elmwood. "Now, you, who are always
+preaching figures and Poor Richard, and business habits," said he, in
+telling the story to some friends, "what do you say to that? If I had
+kept an account and known how it stood, _I should have spent that
+money_ and you would not now be sitting in those easy chairs, or
+walking on Wilton carpet. No; hang accounts and figures!"
+
+In 1857 the _Atlantic Monthly_ was started, and Lowell was made
+editor, with a salary of three thousand dollars a year, of course in
+addition to his salary as a Harvard professor. Though he was the
+editor, he recognized that the success of the magazine would be made
+by Holmes. Said he, "You see, the doctor is like a bright mountain
+stream that has been dammed up among the hills and is waiting for an
+outlet into the Atlantic. You will find that he has a wonderful store
+of thought--serious, comic, pathetic, and poetic,--of comparisons,
+figures, and illustrations. I have seen nothing of his preparation,
+but I imagine he is ready. It will be something wholly new, and his
+reputation as a prose writer will date from this magazine." When you
+recollect the success of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" you
+cannot help remarking that Lowell was a veritable prophet.
+
+President Hayes, soon after his inauguration, offered Lowell an
+appointment as minister to Austria, but Lowell declined. When he was
+asked if he would accept an appointment as minister to Spain, he
+consented, and thither he went in the early part of President Hayes'
+administration. After a time he was transferred to London, where he
+became a striking diplomatic figure.
+
+He was one of the most popular and polished gentlemen ever sent as
+ambassador to a European nation, and as such his presence at the Court
+of Saint James was highly appreciated by the English people. When, in
+1884, on the election of Cleveland to the presidency, he prepared to
+leave London, many glowing tributes were paid him by the English
+press, but none was more hearty than this, printed in _Punch_:
+
+  Send you away? No, Lowell, no.
+    That phrase, indeed, is scarce well chosen.
+  We're glad, of course, to have you go
+    More like a brother than a cousin;
+  True, we must "speed the parting guest,"
+    If such a guest from us _must_ sever;
+  But what we all should like the best
+    Would be to keep you here forever.
+
+  You've won our hearts; your words, your ways,
+    Are what we like. Without desiring
+  To sicken you with fulsome praise,
+    We think you've seen no signs of tiring.
+  Of graceful speech, of pleasant lore,
+    How much to you the English mind owes!
+  We're sad to think we'll see no more
+    Of you--save through your Study Windows.
+
+  Well, well, the best of friends must part;
+    That's commonplace, like Gray, but true, sir.
+  Commend us to the Yankee heart;
+    If you can come again, why, _do_, sir.
+  What Biglow calls our "English sarse,"
+    Is not _all_ tarts and bitters, is it?
+  Farewell!--if from us you must pass,
+    But try, _do_ try, another visit!
+
+After his return from England, Mr. Lowell did comparatively little
+literary work. Some years before this, he had married the lady who was
+educating his only daughter. He now spent the most of his time at
+Elmwood among his books and in the society of his friends. In 1888 a
+volume of his later poems appeared, bearing the title of "Heartsease
+and Rue." About the same time "Democracy," a collection of the
+addresses which he had delivered in England, was published. But
+neither of these volumes added materially to his fame.
+
+On the twelfth of August, 1891, the famous poet, essayist, and man of
+affairs died. He was nearly seventy-three years of age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[NOTE.--The thanks of the publishers are due Messrs. Harper & Brothers
+for permission to use extracts from "Letters of James Russell Lowell,
+edited by Charles Eliot Norton," and to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin &
+Co. for permission to use extracts from the Poetical Works of Lowell.]
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+[Illustration: BAYARD TAYLOR.]
+
+BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+HIS BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD
+
+
+Bayard Taylor was born in the country village of Kennett Square,
+Chester County, Pennsylvania, Jan. 11, 1825, "the year when the first
+locomotive successfully performed its trial trip. I am, therefore," he
+says, "just as old as the railroad." He was descended from Robert
+Taylor, a rich Friend, or Quaker, who had come to Pennsylvania with
+William Penn in 1681, and settled near Brandywine Creek. Bayard's
+grandfather married a Lutheran of pure German blood, and on that
+account was expelled from the Society of Friends, which at that time
+had very strict rules regarding the marriage of its members. Although
+the family still used the peculiar speech of the Quakers, and clung to
+the Quaker principles of peace and order, none of them ever returned
+to the society.
+
+When Bayard was four years old, the family moved to a farm about a
+mile from the village. There they lived, until, years afterward, the
+successful traveler and poet bought an estate near by and built a
+magnificent house upon it, into which he received his father and
+mother and brothers and sisters, with that open-hearted generosity and
+hospitality which was so much a part of his nature.
+
+He was the fourth child of his parents; but the three older children
+had died in infancy, and he remained as the eldest of the family.
+
+Chester County, Pennsylvania, has always been a rich farming region,
+peopled by solid, well-to-do farmers, many of whom are Quakers. Here
+the northern elms toss their arms to the southern cypresses, as the
+poet has it; the two climates seem to meet and mingle, in a sort of
+calm, neutral zone, and the vegetation of the North is united with the
+vegetation of the South, to produce a peculiar richness and variety.
+
+In such surroundings the boy grew up, a farmer's lad, and learned that
+love of nature which was a part of his being till the day he died.
+"The child," says he, "that has tumbled into a newly plowed furrow
+never forgets the smell of the fresh earth.... Almost my first
+recollection is of a swamp, into which I went barelegged at morning,
+and out of which I came, when driven by hunger, with long stockings of
+black mud, and a mask of the same. If the child was missed from the
+house, the first thing that suggested itself was to climb upon a mound
+which overlooked the swamp. Somewhere among the tufts of rushes and
+the bladed leaves of the calamus, a little brown ball was sure to be
+seen moving, now dipping out of sight, now rising again, like a bit of
+drift on the rippling green. It was my head. The treasures I there
+collected were black terrapins with orange spots, baby frogs the size
+of a chestnut, thrush's eggs, and stems of purple phlox."
+
+He loved his home with a passionate intensity; but he also had
+yearnings for the unknown world beyond the horizon. "I remember," says
+he, "as distinctly as if it were yesterday the first time this passion
+was gratified. Looking out of the garret window, on a bright May
+morning, I discovered a row of slats which had been nailed over the
+shingles for the convenience of the carpenters in roofing the house,
+and had not been removed. Here was, at least, a chance to reach the
+comb of the steep roof, and take my first look abroad into the world!
+Not without some trepidation I ventured out, and was soon seated
+astride of the sharp ridge. Unknown forests, new fields and houses,
+appeared to my triumphant view. The prospect, though it did not extend
+more than four miles in any direction, was boundless. Away in the
+northwest, glimmering through the trees, was a white object, probably
+the front of a distant barn; but I shouted to the astonished servant
+girl, who had just discovered me from the garden below, 'I see the
+Falls of Niagara!'"
+
+He was a sensitive child and had a horror of dirty hands, "and," says
+he, "my first employments--picking stones and weeding corn--were
+rather a torture to this superfine taste." In his mother, however, he
+had a friend who understood and protected him. So his life on the farm
+was as happy as it well could be, in spite of its roughness. He
+himself has described it with a zest which no one else could lend it.
+"Almost every field had its walnut tree, melons were planted among the
+corn, and the meadow which lay between never exhausted its store of
+wonders. Besides, there were eggs to hide at Easter; cherries and
+strawberries in May; fruit all summer; fishing parties by torchlight;
+lobelia and sumac to be gathered, dried and sold for pocket money; and
+in the fall, chestnuts, persimmons, wild grapes, cider, and the grand
+butchering after frost came, so that all the pleasures I knew were
+incidental to a farmer's life. The books I read came from the village
+library, and the task of helping to 'fodder' on the dark winter
+evenings was lightened by the anticipation of sitting down to
+'Gibbon's Rome' or 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' afterwards."
+
+He was fond of reading, and especially fond of poetry, and his wife in
+her biography says: "In the evening after he had gone to bed, his
+mother would hear him repeating poem after poem to his brother, who
+slept in the same room with him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+SCHOOL LIFE
+
+
+Bayard had the advantage of regular attendance at the country schools
+near his father's home, with two or three years at the local academy;
+but his father could not afford to send him to college. He enjoyed his
+school life, and in after years wrote to one of his early Quaker
+teachers thus:
+
+"I have never forgotten the days I spent in the little log schoolhouse
+and the chestnut grove behind it, and I have always thought that some
+of the poetry I then copied from thy manuscript books has kept an
+influence over all my life since. There was one verse in particular
+which has cheered and encouraged me a thousand times when prospects
+seemed rather gloomy. It ran thus:
+
+  'O, why should we seek to anticipate sorrow
+    By throwing the flowers of the present away,
+  And gathering the dark-rolling, cloudy to-morrow
+    To darken the generous sun of to-day?'
+
+Thou seest I have good reason to remember those old times, and to be
+grateful to thee for encouraging instead of checking the first
+developments of my mind."
+
+You may easily guess from this letter that Bayard's school life was
+very sedate and Quakerish. Nearly all the people in Kennett Square
+were Quakers, and though Bayard's father and mother were not, they had
+all the Quaker habits. Among other things, he was taught the
+wickedness of all kinds of swearing. His mother "talked so earnestly
+on this point that his mind became full of it; his observation and
+imagination were centered upon oaths, until at last he was so
+fascinated that he became filled with an uncontrollable desire to
+swear. So he went out into a field, beyond hearing, and there
+delivered himself of all the oaths he had ever heard or could invent,
+and in as loud a voice as possible." After this he felt quite
+satisfied to swear no more.
+
+When Bayard was about twelve years old, his father was elected sheriff
+of the county and went to live at West Chester for three years. The
+young lad was sent to Bolmar's Academy at that place; and when the
+family went back to the farm he was sent to the academy at Unionville,
+three or four miles from his home. Here, at the age of sixteen, he
+finished his regular schooling. During the last two years he studied
+Latin and French, and during the last year Spanish. His Latin and
+French he continued by private study for three years longer.
+
+He now went back to work on the farm for a season, and, as he says,
+"first felt the delight and refreshment of labor in the open air. I
+was then able to take the plow handle, and I still remember the pride
+I felt when my furrows were pronounced even and well turned. Although
+it was already decided that I should not make farming the business of
+my life, I thrust into my plans a slender wedge of hope that I might
+one day own a bit of ground, for the luxury of having, if not the
+profit of cultivating, it. The aroma of the sweet soil had tinctured
+my blood; the black mud of the swamp still stuck to my feet."
+
+After a few weeks of farm life he was apprenticed to a printer in West
+Chester for a term of four years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+HIS FIRST POEM
+
+
+It is the will and the spirit that makes every life seem happy or the
+reverse. If Bayard Taylor had remained a farmer in Kennett Square all
+his life, he would not have looked back on his early experiences with
+so much pleasure as he did. Indeed, we may safely say that he would
+not have liked his life so well at the time had it not been for his
+buoyant and hopeful nature, which made him feel that he was destined
+for higher and better things, for a world beyond the horizon.
+
+Already he was a poet, with all a poet's aspirations and eagerness. A
+year before he left the academy his first printed poem appeared in the
+_Saturday Evening Post_ of Philadelphia. It is not wonderful as
+poetry. Yet we read it with interest, because it shows so plainly the
+earnest and ambitious, yet cheerful, nature of the boy. He did not
+merely sit and hope; he was determined to _win his way_. It is
+entitled, "Soliloquy of a Young Poet."
+
+    A dream!--a fleeting dream!
+  Childhood has passed, with all its joy and song,
+  And my life's frail bark on youth's impetuous stream
+    Is swiftly borne along.
+
+    High hopes spring up within;
+  Hopes of the future--thoughts of glory--fame,
+  Which prompt my mind to toil, and bid me win
+    That dream--a deathless name.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    I know it all is vain,
+  That earthly honors ever must decay,
+  That all the laurels bought by toil and pain
+    Must pass with earth away.
+
+    But still my spirit high,
+  Longing for fame won by the immortal mind--
+  On fancy's pinion fain would scale the sky,
+    And leave dull earth behind.
+
+    Yes, I would write my name
+  With the star's burning ray on heaven's broad scroll,
+  That I might still the restless thirst for fame
+    Which fills my soul.
+
+Bayard Taylor was not a great genius, and he did not succeed in
+winning quite all of that high fame for which he struggled throughout
+his life. He never expected to have earth's blessings showered upon
+him without working for them; and the fact that he failed somewhat in
+his highest ambition--to be a far-famed poet--makes his life seem
+nearer to our own. We call him a great man because he did well what
+came to him to do, working hard all his life. In this we can all
+follow his example.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+SELF-EDUCATION AND AMBITION
+
+
+"The Village Record" (to the proprietor of which Bayard was
+apprenticed) was printed upon an old-fashioned hand press, and it was
+the business of the apprentices to set the type, help make up the
+paper, pull the forms, and send the weekly issues off to the
+subscribers.
+
+The mechanical work was soon learned, and the young apprentice
+found considerable time for reading. He now began that work of
+self-education which he carried on through his whole life. Already,
+before he left the academy, he had become acquainted with the works of
+Charles Dickens, and had secured the great man's autograph. "I went to
+the Academy," says he, "where I received a letter that had come on
+Saturday. It was from Hartford; I knew instantly it was from Dickens.
+It was double, and sealed neatly with a seal bearing the initials C.D.
+In the inside was a sheet of satin notepaper, on which was written,
+'Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens, City Hotel, Hartford, Feb. 10,
+1842'; and below, 'with the compliments of Mr. Dickens.' I can long
+recollect the thrill of pleasure I experienced on seeing the autograph
+of one whose writings I so ardently admired, and to whom, in spirit, I
+felt myself attached; and it was not without a feeling of ambition
+that I looked upon it that as he, a humble clerk, had risen to be the
+guest of a mighty nation, so I, a humble pedagogue [he was then pupil
+teacher at the Academy], might by unremitted and arduous intellectual
+and moral exertion become a light, a star, among the names of my
+country. May it be!"
+
+When he went to work at West Chester his reading was chiefly poetry
+and travel. The result of his "fireside travels" we shall soon see.
+The way in which he read poetry may be gathered from the following
+extract from a letter to one of his comrades:
+
+"By the way, what do you think of Bryant as a poet, and especially of
+'Thanatopsis? For my part, my admiration knows no bounds. There is an
+all-pervading love of nature, a calm and quiet but still deep sense of
+everything beautiful. And then the high and lofty feeling which
+mingles with the whole! It seems to me when I read his poetry that our
+hearts are united, and that I can feel every throb of his answered
+back by mine. This is what makes a poet immortal. There are but few
+who make me feel so thrillingly their glowing thoughts as Bryant,
+Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell (all Americans, you know), and these
+I _love_. It is strange, the sway a master mind has over those who
+have felt his power."
+
+Another poet of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer was Tennyson. He
+had read a criticism by Poe. "I still remember," he wrote afterward,
+"the eagerness with which as a boy of seventeen, after reading his
+paper, I sought for the volume; and I remember also the strange sense
+of mental dazzle and bewilderment I experienced on the first perusal
+of it. I can only compare it to the first sight of a sunlit landscape
+through a prism; every object has a rainbow outline. One is fascinated
+to look again and again, though the eyes ache."
+
+He contributed several poems to the _Saturday Evening Post_, and then
+wrote to Rufus W. Griswold, who, besides being connected with the
+_Post_, was the editor of _Graham's Magazine_, the leading literary
+periodical at that time. Those of us who know the life of Poe remember
+Griswold as the man who pretended to be his friend, but who after
+Poe's death wrote his life, filling it with all the scandalous
+falsehoods he could hear of or invent. To Bayard Taylor, however, he
+seems to have been a helpful friend.
+
+"I have met with strange things since I wrote last," writes Taylor to
+a school friend in March, 1843. "Last November I wrote to Mr.
+Griswold, sending a poem to be inserted in the _Post_. However, I said
+that it was my highest ambition to appear in _Grahams Magazine_. Some
+time ago I got an answer. He said he had read my lines 'To the
+Brandywine,' which appeared in the _Post_, with much pleasure, and
+would have put them in the magazine if he had seen them in time. He
+said the poem I sent him would appear in April in the magazine, and
+requested me to contribute often and to call on him when I came to
+town. I never was more surprised in my life."
+
+He went to Philadelphia the next autumn, and consulted Griswold
+regarding a poetic romance he had written--about a thousand lines in
+length--and Griswold advised him to publish it in a volume with other
+poems. He wrote to a friend to inquire how much the printing and
+binding would cost, and finding that the expense would not be very
+great, he concluded to ask his friends to subscribe for the volume.
+When he had received enough subscriptions to pay the cost of
+publication, he brought the volume out. It was entitled "Ximena; or,
+The Battle of the Sierra Morena, and Other Poems. By James Bayard
+Taylor." (The James was added by mistake by Griswold.) It was
+dedicated "To Rufus W. Griswold, as an expression of gratitude for the
+kind encouragement he has shown the author."
+
+The poems contained in this volume were never republished in after
+years. The book was fairly successful, and was distinctly a step
+upward; but it did not fill the young writer with undue conceit. In
+writing to a friend of his ambition at this time, he says: "It is
+useless to deny that I have cherished hopes of occupying at some
+future day a respectable station among our country's poets. I believe
+all poets are possessed in a greater or less degree of ambition; it is
+inseparable from the nature of poetry. And though I may be mistaken, I
+think this ambition is never given without a mind of sufficient power
+to sustain it, and to achieve its lofty object. Although I am desirous
+of the world's honors, yet with all the sincerity I possess I declare
+that my highest hope is to do good; to raise the hopes of the
+desponding; to soothe the sorrows of the afflicted. I believe that
+poetry owns as its true sphere the happiness of mankind."
+
+What could be nobler and more sensible than that! Even his earliest
+poetry has in it no false, slipshod sentiment. Its subject is nature
+and heroic incident, and is indeed a faithful attempt to carry out the
+aim so well stated above. Some have doubted whether Bayard Taylor
+really had the power which he says he thinks is given to all who have
+the ambition which he felt. But none can fail to admire the spirit in
+which he worked, and to feel satisfied with the results, whatever they
+may be.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A TRAVELER AT NINETEEN
+
+
+It was not as a poet, however, that Bayard Taylor was to win his first
+fame. At the age of nineteen, when he had but half completed his four
+years' term of apprenticeship, he made up his mind to go to Europe. He
+had no money; but that did not appear to him an insurmountable
+obstacle. He thought he could work his way by writing letters for the
+newspapers. So he went up to Philadelphia and visited all the editors.
+For three days he went about; but all in vain. The editors gave him
+little encouragement. He was on the point of going home, but with no
+thought of giving up his project.
+
+At last two different editors offered him each fifty dollars in
+advance for twelve letters, and the proprietor of _Graham's Magazine_
+paid him forty dollars for some poems. So he went back to Kennett
+Square the jubilant possessor of a hundred and forty dollars.
+
+He succeeded in buying his release from the articles of
+apprenticeship, and immediately prepared to set out on foot for New
+York, where he and two others were to take ship for England. That was
+the beginning of a career of travel which lasted many years, and
+brought him both fame and money.
+
+In a delightful essay on "The First Journey I Ever Made," he says that
+while other great travelers have felt in childhood an inborn
+propensity to go out into the world to see the regions beyond, he had
+the intensest desire to climb upward--so that without shifting his
+horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of
+vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the
+topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock
+on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and
+to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost
+have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the
+practical form of wishing to climb a mountain. By great economy he
+saved up fifteen dollars, and with a companion who had twenty-seven
+dollars (enormous wealth!) he set out for a walking tour to the
+Catskills, with the hope of going even so far as the Connecticut
+valley.
+
+No doubt the feelings he experienced in setting out on that excursion,
+at the end of his first year as an apprentice, would apply equally
+well to the greater journey he was to attempt a year later.
+
+"The steamboat from Philadelphia deposited me at Bordentown, on the
+forenoon of a warm, clear day. I buckled on my knapsack, inquired the
+road to Amboy, and struck off, resolutely, with the feelings of an
+explorer on the threshold of great discoveries. The sun shone
+brightly, the woods were green, and the meadows were gay with phlox
+and buttercups. Walking was the natural impulse of the muscles; and
+the glorious visions which the next few days would unfold to me, drew
+me onward with a powerful fascination. Thus, mile after mile went by;
+and early in the afternoon I reached Hightstown, very hot and hungry,
+and a little footsore. Twenty-five cents only had been expended thus
+far--and was I now to dine for half a dollar? The thought was banished
+as rapidly as it came, and six cakes, of remarkable toughness and
+heaviness, put an effectual stop to any further promptings of appetite
+that day.
+
+"The miles now became longer, and the rosy color of my anticipations
+faded a little. The sandy level of the country fatigued my eyes; the
+only novel objects I had yet discovered were the sweep-poles of the
+wells....The hot afternoon was drawing to a close, and I was wearily
+looking out for Spotswood, when a little incident occurred, the memory
+of which has ever since been as refreshing to me as the act in itself
+was at the time.
+
+"I stopped to get a drink from a well in front of a neat little
+farmhouse. While I was awkwardly preparing to let down the bucket, a
+kind, sweet voice suddenly said: 'Let me do it for you.' I looked up,
+and saw before me a girl of sixteen, with blue eyes, wavy auburn hair,
+and slender form--not strikingly handsome, but with a shy, pretty
+face, which blushed the least bit in the world, as she met my gaze.
+
+"Without waiting for my answer, she seized the pole and soon drew up
+the dripping bucket, which she placed upon the curb. 'I will get you a
+glass,' she then said, and darted into the house--reappearing
+presently with a tumbler in one hand and a plate of crisp tea-cakes in
+the other. She stood beside me while I drank, and then extended the
+plate with a gesture more inviting than any words would have been. I
+had had enough of cake for one day; but I took one, nevertheless, and
+put a second in my pocket, at her kind persuasion.
+
+"This was the first of many kindnesses which I have experienced from
+strangers all over the wide world; and there are few, if any, which I
+shall remember longer.
+
+"At sunset I had walked about twenty-two miles, and had taken to the
+railroad track by way of change, when I came upon a freight train,
+which had stopped on account of some slight accident.
+
+"'Where are you going?' inquired the engineer.
+
+"'To Amboy.'
+
+"'Take you there for a quarter!'
+
+"It was too tempting; so I climbed upon the tender and rested my weary
+legs, while the pines and drifted sands flew by us an hour or more--
+and I had crossed New Jersey!"
+
+This little description may be taken as a type of the way in which he
+traveled and the way in which he described his travels--a way that
+almost immediately made him famous, and caused the public to call for
+volume after volume from his pen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+TWO YEARS IN EUROPE FOR FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS
+
+
+A journey to Europe was not the common thing in those days that it has
+since become, and no American had then thought of tramping over
+historic scenes with little or no money. So this journey, projected
+and carried out by Bayard Taylor, was really an original and daring
+undertaking. It was all the more remarkable from the fact that the
+people of the community where he had been born and brought up had
+scarcely ever gone farther from their homesteads than Philadelphia.
+
+In New York he visited all the editors with an introduction from
+Nathaniel P. Willis; but none of them gave him any encouragement,
+except Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the _Tribune_. Here is
+Bayard Taylor's own description of the interview: "When I first called
+upon this gentleman, whose friendship it is now my pride to claim, he
+addressed me with that honest bluntness which is habitual to him: 'I
+am sick of descriptive letters, and will have no more of them. But I
+should like some sketches of German life and society, after you have
+been there and know something about it. If the letters are good, you
+shall be paid for them, but don't write until you know something.'
+This I faithfully promised, and kept my promise so well that I am
+afraid the eighteen letters which I afterward sent from Germany, and
+which were published in the _Tribune_, were dull in proportion as they
+were wise."
+
+The journey was indeed to Taylor a serious thing. "It did not and does
+not seem like a pleasure excursion," he writes; "it is a duty, a
+necessity."
+
+On the 1st of July, 1844, Taylor and his two companions embarked on
+the ship "Oxford," bound for Liverpool. They had taken a second-cabin
+passage, the second cabin being a small place amidships, flanked with
+bales of cotton and fitted with temporary and rough planks. They paid
+ten dollars each for the passage, but were obliged to find their own
+bedding and provisions. These latter the ship's cook would prepare for
+them for a small compensation. All expenses included, they found they
+could reach Liverpool for twenty-four dollars apiece.
+
+At last they were actually afloat. "As the blue hills of Neversink
+faded away, and sank with the sun behind the ocean, and I felt the
+first swells of the Atlantic," he writes, "and the premonitions of
+seasickness, my heart failed me for the first and last time. The
+irrevocable step was taken; there was no possibility of retreat, and a
+vague sense of doubt and alarm possessed me. Had I known anything of
+the world, this feeling would have been more than momentary; but to my
+ignorance and enthusiasm all things seemed possible, and the
+thoughtless and happy confidence of youth soon returned."
+
+The experiences of the next two years he has also told briefly and
+tersely. "After landing in Liverpool," he says, "I spent three weeks
+in a walk through Scotland and the north of England, and then traveled
+through Belgium, and up the Rhine to Heidelberg, where I arrived in
+September, 1844. The winter of 1844-45 I spent in Frankfurt on the
+Main [in the family in which N.P. Willis's brother Richard was
+boarding], and by May I was so good a German that I was often not
+suspected of being a foreigner. I started off again on foot, a
+knapsack on my back, and visited the Brocken, Leipsic, Dresden,
+Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich, returning to Frankfurt in July.
+A further walk over the Alps and through Northern Italy took me to
+Florence, where I spent four months learning Italian. Thence I
+wandered, still on foot, to Rome and Civita Vecchia, where I bought a
+ticket as deck-passenger to Marseilles, and then tramped on to Paris
+through the cold winter rains. I arrived there in February, 1846, and
+returned to America after a stay of three months in Paris and London.
+I had been abroad two years, and had supported myself entirely during
+the whole time by my literary correspondence. The remuneration which I
+received was in all $500, and only by continual economy and occasional
+self-denial was I able to carry out my plan. I saw almost nothing of
+intelligent European society; my wanderings led me among the common
+people. But literature and art were nevertheless open to me, and a new
+day had dawned in my life."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+THE HARDSHIP OF TRAMP TRAVEL
+
+
+Making a journey without money, without knowing the language of the
+people, and without any experience in travel is not at all the sort of
+thing it seems to one who has not gone through its toils, but only
+sees the glow and glamour of success. We cannot pass on without giving
+some of the details of commonplace hardship which Bayard Taylor
+endured on this first European journey.
+
+Taylor knew a little book French, but neither he nor either of his
+companions could speak it or understand it when spoken, and they knew
+nothing at all of German. When they reached Frankfurt they tried to
+inquire the way to the house of the American consul. At first they
+were not at all able to make themselves understood; but finally they
+found a man who could speak a little French and who told them that the
+consul resided in "Bellevue" street. It was in reality "Shone
+Aussicht," which is the German for beautiful view, as Bellevue is the
+French. But the young travelers knew nothing of this. They went in
+search of "Bellevue" street, and though they wandered over the greater
+part of the town and suburbs, they did not find it. At last they
+decided to try all the streets which had a beautiful view, and in this
+way soon found the consul's house.
+
+Not only did they have very little money in any case, but they were
+frequently obliged to wait months for remittances. While in Italy,
+Taylor's funds ran so low, and he became so discouraged, that he gave
+up going to Greece, as he had at first planned. He was expecting a
+draft for a hundred dollars; but that would barely pay his debts. "My
+clothes," he writes to one of his companions, "are as bad as yours
+were when you got to Heidelberg, nearly dropping from me; and I cannot
+get them mended. What is worse, they must last till I get to Paris."
+Later he speaks of spending three dollars for a pair of trousers, as
+those he wore would not hold together any longer. In despair, he
+exclaims, "It is really a horrible condition. If there ever were any
+young men who made the tour of Europe under such difficulties and
+embarrassments as we, I should like to see them."
+
+But all this only urged him to greater efforts. "I tell you what,
+Frank," he writes almost in his next letter, "I am getting a real rage
+in me to carve out my own fortune, and not a poor one, either.
+Sometimes I almost desire that difficulties should be thrown in my
+way, for the sake of the additional strength gained in surmounting
+them."
+
+These words were written from Italy; but yet harder things were in
+store for him. "I reached London for the second time about the middle
+of March, 1846," he writes in his paper on "A Young Author's Life in
+London," "after a dismal walk through Normandy and a stormy passage
+across the Channel. I stood upon London Bridge, in the raw mist and
+the falling twilight, with a franc and a half in my pocket, and
+deliberated what I should do. Weak from sea-sickness, hungry, chilled,
+and without a single acquaintance in the great city, my situation was
+about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive. Successful authors in
+their libraries, sitting in cushioned chairs and dipping their pens
+into silver inkstands, may write about money with a beautiful scorn,
+and chant the praise of Poverty--the 'good goddess of Poverty,' as
+George Sand, making 50,000 francs a year, enthusiastically terms
+her;--but there is no condition in which the Real is so utterly at
+variance with the Ideal, as to be actually out of money, and hungry, with
+nothing to pawn and no friend to borrow from. Have you ever known it,
+my friend? If not, I could wish that you might have the experience for
+twenty-four hours, only once in your life."
+
+On this occasion Bayard Taylor went to a chop-house where he could get
+a wretched bed for a shilling. The next morning he took a sixpenny
+breakfast, and started out to look for work. By good fortune he met
+Putnam, the American publisher, who lent him a sovereign (five
+dollars) and gave him work that would enable him to earn his living
+until he could get money from America for his return passage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+HIS FIRST LOVE AND GREATEST SORROW
+
+
+At the very first school which Bayard Taylor attended there was a
+little Quaker girl who would whisper with a blush to her teacher, "May
+I sit beside Bayard?" Her name was Mary Agnew. As schoolmates and
+neighbors the two children grew up together; and in time Bayard began
+to confide to his diary his dream of happiness with her. Toward this
+object, all his thoughts and plans were gradually directed.
+
+Mary Agnew's father did not countenance this neighbor lover, however,
+and when Bayard set out for Europe he was not allowed to write to her.
+He sent messages through his mother, and occasionally heard from the
+young girl in the same way. On his return, however, he grew more bold,
+and soon became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly
+beautiful one; for this fair girl who was his inspiration during the
+years of his hardest struggles, finally fell into a decline and died
+just as he was beginning to earn the money that would have made them
+happy together.
+
+"I remember him," says a neighbor, speaking of the two at this time,
+"as a bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and
+with him I always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with
+matchless eyes, who inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death
+filled the nest of love with snow."
+
+Mary Agnew reminds us of Poe's beautiful Virginia Clemm, his "Annabel
+Lee." Grace Greenwood wrote of her as "a dark-eyed young girl with the
+rose yet unblighted on cheek and lip, with soft brown, wavy hair,
+which, when blown by the wind, looked like the hair oft given to
+angels by the old masters, producing a sort of halo-like effect about
+a lovely head."
+
+And Taylor at this time was evidently her match in looks as well as
+spirit. A German friend describes him thus: "He was a tall, slender,
+blooming young man, the very image of youthful beauty and purity. His
+intellectual head was surrounded by dark hair; the glance of his eyes
+was so modest, and yet so clear and lucid, that you seemed to look
+right into his heart."
+
+On his return from Europe, young Taylor found that his letters to the
+newspapers had attracted some attention, perhaps largely owing to the
+fact that one who was almost a boy had made the journey on foot, with
+little or no money. At the same time he had told his story in a
+simple, straightforward way, which proved him to be a good reporter.
+Friends advised him to gather the letters into a volume, which he did
+under the title, "Views Afoot; or Europe Seen with Knapsack and
+Staff." Within a year six editions were sold, and the sale continued
+large for a number of years.
+
+Yet this success, quick as it was, did not solve all his difficulties
+at once. He was anxious to earn a good living as soon as possible,
+that he might marry Mary Agnew. After looking the field over, he and a
+friend bought a weekly paper published in Phoenixville, a lively
+manufacturing town in the same county as his home. This, with the aid
+of his friend, he edited and managed for a year. He not only failed to
+make money, but accumulated debts which he was three years in paying
+off. At the same time he found that he could no longer endure a narrow
+country life. He tried to give his paper a literary tone; but the
+people did not want a literary paper. They cared more for local news
+and gossip, which he hated.
+
+The old ambition and aspiration to be and to do something really worth
+doing was still uppermost with him. In a letter to Mary Agnew he says:
+"Sometimes I feel as if there were a Providence watching over me, and
+as if an unseen and uncontrollable hand guided my actions. I have
+often dim, vague forebodings that an eventful destiny is in store for
+me; that I have vast duties yet to accomplish, and a wider sphere of
+action than that which I now occupy. These thoughts may be vain; they
+spring only from the ceaseless impulses of an upward-aspiring spirit;
+but if they _are_ real, and to be fulfilled, I shall the more need thy
+love and the gladness of thy dear presence."
+
+He wrote to his friends in New York about getting work there, but they
+did not encourage him much. Horace Greeley bluntly advised him to stay
+where he was. The editor of the _Literary World,_ however, offered him
+employment at five dollars a week. He thereupon sold out his interest
+in his country paper at a loss, and went to try his fortunes in New
+York. Before he had been there many weeks, Horace Greeley offered him
+a position on the _Tribune_ at twelve dollars a week. The connection
+thus begun lasted for the rest of his life. It was as the _Tribunes_
+correspondent that he traveled all over the world. He was soon able to
+buy stock in the _Tribune_ company, and this was the foundation of his
+future fortune.
+
+He had many literary and other distinguished friends in New York. And
+during these first few years he worked very hard indeed, hoping soon
+to earn enough money to provide for Mary Agnew. In 1850, after three
+years in New York, he was able to set the date of their marriage. But
+it was postponed from time to time on account of her illness. At last
+he knew that she could never be well again; yet in any case he wished
+the marriage ceremony performed. They were accordingly married October
+24, 1850; and two months later she was dead.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+"THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAVELER"
+
+
+It had been Bayard Taylor's boyhood ambition to become a great poet;
+but it seemed as if fate meant him for a great traveler. He was sorry
+that this was so: yet he was fond of travel, and never refused any
+opportunity to visit other lands. In 1849, when the California gold
+fever was at its height, he was sent by the _Tribune_ to the Pacific
+Coast.
+
+"I went," he says, "by way of the Isthmus of Panama--the route had
+just been opened--reached San Francisco in August, and spent five
+months in the midst of the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I
+lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on the ground with my
+saddle for a pillow, and sharing the hardships of the gold diggers,
+without taking part in their labors."
+
+On his return he gathered his letters into a volume entitled
+"Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire: comprising a voyage to
+California, via Panama; Life in San Francisco and Monterey; Pictures
+of the Gold Region, and Experiences of Mexican Travel."
+
+He now began to feel the strength and confidence of success; his brain
+was seething with new ideas, and he felt as if he could do that which
+would realize the destiny of which he had dreamed. But sorrow was
+already at his door. His hopes were for the time broken and thrown
+back by the death of Mary Agnew.
+
+In the summer of 1851 he found himself worn out and depressed. His
+health was shattered and his mind was overpowered. But a change and
+rest were at hand. The editors of the _Tribune_ suggested his going to
+Egypt and the Holy Land. In the autumn he set out, and spent the
+winter in ascending the Nile to Khartoum. He even went up the White
+Nile to the country of the Shillooks, a region then scarcely known to
+white men.
+
+Bayard Taylor fancied that he had two natures, one a southern nature
+and one a northern nature. Of course the northern nature was his
+regular and ordinary one. In one of his later journeys, when he had
+entered Spain from France and was sitting down to a breakfast of red
+mullet and oranges fresh from the trees, "straightway," he says, "I
+took off my northern nature as a garment, folded it and packed it
+neatly away in my knapsack, and took out in its stead the light,
+beribboned and bespangled southern nature, which I had not worn for
+eight or nine years."
+
+He donned this southern nature for the first time on his trip to
+California by way of Panama. Horace Greeley especially commended his
+letter from Panama. But it was during his journey in Egypt that he
+became most saturated with the south, and composed his "Poems of the
+Orient"--perhaps the best he ever wrote. He had not been in Alexandria
+a day and a half before he wrote to his mother that he had never known
+such a delicious climate. "The very air is a luxury to breathe," he
+said. "I am going to don the red cap and sash," he wrote from Cairo,
+"and sport a saber at my side. To-day I had my hair all cut within a
+quarter of an inch of the skin, and when I look in the glass I see a
+strange individual. Think of me as having no hair, a long beard, and a
+copper-colored face." So much like a native did he become that when he
+entered the bank in Constantinople for his letters and money, they
+addressed him in Turkish.
+
+He made the journey up the Nile on a boat with a wealthy German
+landowner, a Mr. Bufleb, who became to him like a brother, though he
+was nearly twice the age of Taylor. Some years later the young man
+married Mrs. Bufleb's niece.
+
+When he reached Constantinople he received a letter from the managers
+of the _Tribune_ suggesting that he go across Asia to Hong-Kong,
+China, and join the expedition of Commodore Perry to Japan. As the
+expedition would not reach Hong-Kong for some months, however, he had
+time to visit his German friend and go on to London. From London he
+returned through Spain and went by way of the Suez, Bombay, and
+Calcutta to China, stopping on the way to view the Himalayas.
+
+Commodore Perry made the young journalist "master's mate," and gave
+him a place on the flagship. This was necessary, because no one not a
+member of the navy was allowed to accompany the expedition.
+
+There is not space to detail the wonderful sights he saw or the
+interesting experiences he had. He reached New York, December 20,
+1853, after an absence of more than two years, and found that in his
+absence he had become almost famous. His letters in the _Tribune_ had
+been read all over the country, and everybody wanted to know more of
+the "great American traveler."
+
+He at once prepared for the press three books. They were "A Journey to
+Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro
+Kingdoms of the Nile "; "The Land of the Saracens; or, Pictures of
+Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain"; and "A Visit to India,
+China, and Japan in the Year 1853."
+
+He had hundreds of calls to lecture; and thereafter for several years
+he made lecturing his principal business. From his books and his
+lectures he received large sums of money, so that before he was thirty
+he had accumulated a modest fortune.
+
+In 1856 Bayard Taylor took his two sisters and his youngest brother to
+Europe. He left them in Germany, while he himself carried out a plan
+long in his mind, of visiting northern Sweden and Lapland in winter.
+The following summer he visited Norway, and later published the
+results of these journeys in "Northern Travel."
+
+While in Germany, after his trip to Sweden, he became engaged to Marie
+Hansen, daughter of Prof. Peter A. Hansen, the noted astronomer and
+founder of Erfurt Observatory. They were married in the following
+autumn, October 27, 1857.
+
+He now hurried home with his wife and prepared to build a house and
+lay out the country estate which he called Cedarcroft. The land had
+belonged to one of his ancestors, and he was very proud of his fine
+country house; but he found it a rather expensive enjoyment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+HIS POETRY
+
+
+We have seen how in youth Bayard Taylor conceived the ambition to be
+known as one of his country's great poets. He saw his books of travel
+sell by the hundred thousand; but while this brought him money and
+notoriety, he clung still to his poetry. He even felt annoyed when he
+heard himself spoken of as "the great American traveler" instead of
+the great American poet. The truth is, he had not been able to give to
+poetry the time or energy he could have wished; and he afterwards
+worked with desperate energy to recover those lost poetic
+opportunities.
+
+Yet in his busiest days he was always writing verses, which in the
+minds of excellent judges are the best he ever did. From time to time
+he published volumes of poetry, and with certain of his intimate
+friends he always maintained himself on the footing of a poet.
+
+We remember the publication of his first volume, entitled "Ximena,"
+which he never cared to reprint in his collected works. During his
+first European trip he wrote a great deal. Some of his shorter poems
+he afterwards published under the title "Rhymes of Travel." The fate
+of a longer poem we must hear in his own words.
+
+"I had in my knapsack," he says, "a manuscript poem of some twelve
+hundred lines, called 'The Liberated Titan,'--the idea of which I
+fancied to be something entirely new in literature. Perhaps it was. I
+did not doubt for a moment that any London publisher would gladly
+accept it, and I imagined that its appearance would create not a
+little sensation. Mr. Murray gave the poem to his literary adviser,
+who kept it about a month, and then returned it with a polite message.
+I was advised to try Moxon; but, by this time, I had sobered down
+considerably, and did not wish to risk a second rejection.
+
+"I therefore solaced myself by reading the immortal poem at night, in
+my bare chamber, looking occasionally down into the graveyard, and
+thinking of mute, inglorious Miltons.
+
+"The curious reader may ask how I escaped the catastrophe of
+publishing the poem at last. That is a piece of good fortune for which
+I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford. We were
+fellow-passengers on board the same ship to America, a few weeks later,
+and I had sufficient confidence in his taste to show him the poem. His
+verdict was charitable; but he asserted that no poem of that length
+should be given to the world before it had received the most thorough
+study and finish--and exacted from me a promise not to publish it
+within a year. At the end of that time I renewed the promise to myself
+for a thousand years."
+
+Of other poems written at that time he thought better. In the preface
+to his volume he says of them,--"They are faithful records of my
+feelings at the time, often noted down hastily by the wayside, and
+aspiring to no higher place than the memory of some pilgrim who may,
+under like circumstances, look upon the same scenes. An ivy leaf from
+a tower where a hero of old history may have dwelt, or the simplest
+weed growing over the dust that once held a great soul, is reverently
+kept for memories it inherited through the chance fortune of the
+wind-sown seed; and I would fain hope that these rhymes may bear with
+them a like simple claim to reception, from those who have given me their
+company through the story of my wanderings."
+
+Soon after he went to New York he began a series of Californian
+ballads, which were published anonymously in the _Literary World_, and
+attracted considerable attention. They appeared before he had made his
+trip to California; but while on that trip he wrote still others. At
+the same time he began several more ambitious poems, among them
+"Hylas," and just before he set out for Egypt he had another volume of
+poems ready for the press. It was entitled "A Book of Romances, Lyrics
+and Songs," and was published in Boston just after he set out on his
+Eastern journey. But while his volumes of travel sold edition after
+edition his volumes of verse scarcely paid expenses.
+
+The previous year, however,--1850,--he had had a bit of success which
+caused him no end of annoyance. Jenny Lind had been brought to America
+to sing, and her manager had offered a prize of $200 for the best song
+that might be written for her. "Bayard Taylor came to me one
+afternoon early in September," says Mr. R.H. Stoddard, "and confided
+to me the fact that he was to be declared the winner of this perilous
+prize, and that he foresaw a row. They will say it was given to me
+because Putnam, who is my publisher, is one of the committee, and
+because Ripley, who is my associate on the _Tribune_, is another.'"
+
+Mr. Stoddard kindly suggested to him that if he feared the results, he
+might substitute his (Stoddard's) name for the real one, and take the
+money while Stoddard got the abuse. He did not choose to do this,
+however, and the indignation of the seven or eight hundred
+disappointed contributors was unbounded. Taylor bore their abuse well
+enough, but he was heartily ashamed of the reputation which the poem
+brought him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+"POEMS OF THE ORIENT"
+
+
+During the months he spent in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, Bayard
+Taylor wrote his "Poems of the Orient," of which Mr. Stoddard says, "I
+thought, and I think so still when I read these spirited and
+picturesque poems, that Bayard Taylor had captured the poetic secret
+of the East as no English-writing poet but Byron had. He knew the East
+as no one can possibly know it from books."
+
+Certainly these poems of the East have a haunting ring that can never
+be forgotten. What more stirring than this Bedouin love song!
+
+  From the desert I come to thee
+    On a stallion shod with fire;
+  And the winds are left behind
+
+    In the speed of my desire.
+  Under thy window I stand,
+    And the midnight hears my cry:
+  I love thee, I love but thee,
+    With a love that shall not die,
+             _Till the sun grows cold,
+                And the stars are old,
+                And the leaves of the Judgment
+                         Book unfold_!
+
+Or what more grand and affectionate than this from "Hassan to his
+Mare":
+
+  Come, my beauty! come, my desert darling!
+    On my shoulder lay thy glossy head!
+  Fear not, though the barley-sack be empty,
+    Here's the half of Hassan's scanty bread.
+
+  Thou shalt have thy share of dates, my beauty!
+    And thou know'st my water-skin is free;
+  Drink and welcome, for the wells are distant,
+    And my strength and safety lie in thee.
+
+  Bend thy forehead now, to take my kisses!
+    Lift in love thy dark and splendid eye:
+  Thou art glad when Hassan mounts the saddle,--
+    Thou art proud he owns thee: so am I.
+
+  Let the Sultan bring his boasted horses,
+    Prancing with their diamond-studded reins;
+  They, my darling, shall not match thy fleetness
+    When they course with thee the desert plains!
+
+  Let the Sultan bring his famous horses,
+    Let him bring his golden swords to me,--
+  Bring his slaves, his eunuchs, and his harem;
+    He would offer them in vain for thee.
+
+  We have seen Damascus, O my beauty!
+    And the splendor of the Pashas there:
+  What's their pomp and riches? Why, I would not
+    Take them for a handful of thy hair!
+
+Another stirring poem of the East is "Tyre."
+
+  The wild and windy morning is lit with lurid fire;
+  The thundering surf of ocean beats on the rocks of Tyre,--
+  Beats on the fallen columns and round the headlands roars,
+  And hurls its foamy volume along the hollow shores,
+  And calls with hungry clamor, that speaks its long desire:
+  "Where are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty ships of Tyre?"
+
+In his "L'Envoi" at the end of these poems, Bayard Taylor gives us a
+hint of his meaning when he spoke of his "southern nature" as
+distinguished from his "northern nature."
+
+  I found, among those Children of the Sun,
+    The cipher of my nature,--the release
+  Of baffled powers, which else had never won
+    That free fulfillment, whose reward is peace.
+
+  For not to any race or any clime
+    Is the complete sphere of life revealed;
+  He who would make his own that round sublime,
+    Must pitch his tent on many a distant field.
+
+  Upon his home a dawning lustre beams,
+    But through the world he walks to open day,
+  Gathering from every land the prismal gleams,
+    Which, when united, form the perfect ray.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+BAYARD TAYLOR'S FRIENDSHIPS
+
+
+A biography of Bayard Taylor would not be complete without some
+account of his friendships. He was always on the best of terms with
+all living beings, and this subtle attraction of his nature was an
+important part of his greatness.
+
+In "Views Afoot" he tells of a charming little incident which is
+enough in itself to make us love the man. It occurred in Florence,
+Italy, where he was a stranger, a foreigner; and this makes the
+incident in itself seem the more wonderful. "I know of nothing," he
+writes, "that has given me a more sweet and tender delight than the
+greeting of a little child, who, leaving his noisy playmates, ran
+across the street to me, and taking my hand, which he could barely
+clasp in both his soft little ones, looked up in my face with an
+expression so winning and affectionate that I loved him at once."
+
+We recall the girl with the tea-cakes whom he met on his first journey
+while tramping across New Jersey. There was also something of human
+love and fellowship in his familiarity with wild animals in Egypt. In
+a free, joyous letter to his betrothed, Mary Agnew, he tells a curious
+incident of a similar kind, which occurred while he was editing the
+paper at Phoenixville. "On Sunday," says he, "I took [Schiller's] 'Don
+Carlos' with me in our boat, and rowed myself out of sight of the
+village into the solitude of the autumn woods. The sky was blue and
+bright as that of Eden, and the bright trees waved over me like
+gorgeous banners from the hilltops. I sat on a sunny slope and read
+for hours; it was a rare enjoyment! As I moved to rise I found a
+snake, which had crept up to me for warmth, and was coiled up quietly
+under my arm. I was somewhat startled, but the reptile slid
+noiselessly away, and I could not harm it."
+
+A pretty story is told of Taylor by one who called on him when he was
+on one of his lecture tours. He was a stranger in the house of
+strangers, and no doubt as much a stranger to the cat as to any of the
+people; but it did not take him long to slip into easy intercourse
+with men or animals. "I had listened for some time to his intelligent
+descriptions, enunciated with extreme modesty in the modulated tones
+of his pleasing voice, when Tom, a large Maltese cat, entered the
+room. At Mr. Taylor's invitation Tom approached him, and as he stroked
+the fur of the handsome cat, a sort of magnetism seemed to be imparted
+to the family pet, for he rolled over at the feet of his new-made
+friend, and seemed delighted with the beginning of the interview. In
+the most natural manner possible, Mr. Taylor slid off, as it were,
+from the sofa on which he had been sitting, and assumed the position
+of a Turk on the rug before the sofa, playing with delighted Tom in
+the most buoyant manner, still continuing his conversation, but
+changing the subject, for the nonce, to that of cats, and narrating
+many stories respecting the weird and wise conduct of these animals,
+which are at once loved and feared by the human race."
+
+He even felt a sort of personal tenderness for the old trees on his
+place at Kennett. He said that friends were telling him to cut this
+tree and cut that. To him this would have been almost a sacrilege. The
+trees seemed to depend on him for _protection_, and they should have
+it. Writing from this country home which he had built, he says, "The
+birds know me already, and I have learned to imitate the partridge and
+rain-dove, so that I can lure them to me."
+
+And Bayard Taylor was the accepted friend of nearly all the
+distinguished men of letters of his time. He knew Longfellow, Lowell,
+Whittier, and Holmes in Boston, and even in his early years, when he
+first went to New York to work, he was able to pay them such flying
+visits as he describes in the following to Mary Agnew: "Reached Boston
+Sunday morning, galloped out to Cambridge, and spent the evening with
+Lowell; went on Monday to the pine woods of Abingdon to report
+Webster's speech, and dispatched it to the _Tribune_; got up early on
+Tuesday and galloped to Brookline to see Colonel Perkins; then off in
+the cars to Amesbury, and rambled over the Merrimac hills with
+Whittier; then Wednesday morning to Lynn, where I stopped a while at
+Helen Irving's; back in the afternoon to Cambridge, where I smoked a
+cigar with Lowell, and then stayed all night at Longfellow's."
+
+In New York his enjoyment of his friends, whom he met often and
+familiarly, was of the keenest. Says Mr. R. H. Stoddard, "I recall
+many nights which Bayard Taylor spent in our rooms.... Great was our
+merriment; for if we did not always sink the shop, we kept it solely
+for our own amusement. Fitz-James O'Brien was a frequent guest, and an
+eager partaker of our merriment, which sometimes resolved itself into
+the writing of burlesque poems. We sat around a table, and whenever
+the whim seized us, we each wrote down themes on little pieces of
+paper, and putting them into a hat or box we drew out one at random,
+and then scribbled away for dear life. We put no restriction upon
+ourselves: we could be grave or gay, or idiotic even; but we must be
+rapid, for half the fun was in noting who first sang out, 'Finished!'"
+
+The reader will remember Taylor's joy when a boy at receiving the
+autograph of Dickens. The time was coming when he should be on terms
+almost of intimacy with all the leading poets and writers of London.
+"I spent two days with Tennyson in June," he writes to a literary
+friend in 1857, "and you take my word for it, he is a noble fellow,
+every inch of him. He is as tall as I am, with a head which Read
+capitally calls that of a dilapidated Jove, long black hair, splendid
+dark eyes, and a full mustache and beard. The portraits don't look a
+bit like him; they are handsomer, perhaps, but haven't half the
+splendid character of his face. We smoked many a pipe together, and
+talked of poetry, religion, politics, and geology.... Our intercourse
+was most cordial and unrestrained, and he asked me, at parting, to be
+sure and visit him every time I came to England."
+
+A similar tale might be told of his relations with Thackeray and a
+score of others.
+
+But an account of his friendships would not be complete without a
+reference to Mr. Bufleb, whom he met on his journey up the Nile.
+Taylor writes to his mother from Nubia: "I want to speak of the friend
+from whom I have just parted, because I am very much moved by his
+kindness, and the knowledge may be grateful to you. His friendship for
+me is something wonderful, and it seems like a special Providence that
+in Egypt, where I anticipated the want of all near sympathy and
+kindness, I should find it in such abundant measure. He is a man of
+totally different experience from myself: accustomed all his life to
+wealth, to luxury, and to the exercise of authority. He was even
+prejudiced against America and the Americans, and he confessed to me
+that he was by nature stubborn and selfish. Yet few persons have ever
+placed such unbounded confidence in me, or treated me with such
+devotion and generosity.... For two days before our parting he could
+scarcely eat or sleep, and when the time drew near he was so pale and
+agitated that I almost feared to leave him. I have rarely been so
+moved as when I saw a strong, proud man exhibit such an attachment for
+me.... I told him all my history, and showed him the portrait I have
+with me [that of Mary Agnew]. He went out of the cabin after looking
+at it, and when he returned I saw that he had been weeping."
+
+Surely, there must have been something peculiarly noble and sweet in
+Bayard Taylor's nature to have drawn to him so powerfully a man of
+another nation and another race. The friendship was lasting, and
+Taylor spent many happy weeks at Mr. Bufleb's home in Gotha, Germany.
+The latter even bought a little house and garden adjoining his own
+estate, which was for the special use of his friend, and he closes the
+letter which describes it by saying: "You see how I have written to
+you, my dear Taylor. In spite of our long separation and remoteness
+from each other, your heart I know could never tell you of any change
+in my feelings and thoughts. On the contrary, this _rapport_ which we
+enjoy has for me a profound meaning; whilst you were dedicating your
+glorious work on Central Africa to me, I was setting in order for you
+the most cherished part of my possessions."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+LAST YEARS
+
+
+With the building of Cedarcroft, and the publication of his "Poet's
+Journal," Bayard Taylor's fame and fortune reached their height. The
+Civil War was now on the point of breaking out. He entered into the
+Northern cause with ardor, and even sold a share of _Tribune_ stock to
+raise a thousand dollars with which to fit out his brother Frederick
+and provide arms for his neighbors to defend their homes.
+
+But the war put an end to his lectures, and cut off other sources of
+his income. In 1862 he was appointed secretary of legation at the
+court of St. Petersburg, and not long after was left there as _charge
+d'affaires_. The cause of the Union had received some heavy reverses,
+and France had invited England and Russia to join her in intervening
+between the combatants. But, perhaps owing to Bayard Taylor's
+diplomatic skill, Russia refused to take part in such an enterprise
+without the express desire of the United States.
+
+About this time, also, Taylor began to write a series of novels, in
+the hope of bettering his fortunes thereby. The books brought him some
+reputation, but to-day "Hannah Thurston" and "John Godfrey's Fortunes"
+are seldom read.
+
+A more important undertaking was his translation of "Faust," which was
+accepted abroad as a monument of his scholarship, and remains to-day
+one of the best translations into English of the great Goethe's most
+famous work.
+
+Other books of travel were written and published, and various fresh
+volumes of poems. During this period of his life he produced most of
+his longer descriptive and philosophic poems, such as "The Picture of
+St. John," "Lars," and "Prince Deukalion"; but his songs and ballads
+have proved more popular than these, though he threw into them all his
+energy and ambition.
+
+On July 4, 1876, he delivered his stately National Ode at the
+Philadelphia Centennial, and the same year he returned to his desk at
+the _Tribune_ office. But failing health compelled him to give up this
+drudgery, and in the following year he was nominated United States
+minister to Berlin. A grand banquet at which Bryant presided was given
+him in New York, on April 4, the eve of his departure; but before the
+year was finished he died in Berlin--December 19, 1878.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Famous American Writers:
+Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, by Sherwin Cody
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11249 ***