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of their prevailing propriety and reserve. The reception which Mr. Bryant always met among literary men of distinction, especially in Great Britain, was a direct testimony to his own fine qualities. The poets Wordsworth and Rogers particularly extended to him most cordial and intimately friendly attention.

Bryant's sympathy for the kindred arts was reciprocated by its votaries—though happily not in a posthumous form—in a novel and most beautiful manner, by a tribute paid to the poet on the anniversary of his seventieth birthday. I allude to the offering of paintings and poems made to Mr. Bryant on the evening of November 5th, 1864—which was selected for the festival-by the painters and poets of America, who cherished a love and veneration for one standing as a high-priest at the altar of nature, singing its praises in most harmonious numbers, and encouraging art in all its glowing beauties. An appropriate place for the offering was the Century Club of New York, of which but five of the one hundred founders are now living. On the occasion of the festival-a memorable one not only in the annals of the society itself, but in the history of American art and letters, Bancroft delivered the congratulatory address in most touching and eloquent words, and was followed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard H. Dana, Jr., and William M. Evarts, in equally felicitous addresses. Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Sherwood, the elder Dana, Edward Everett, Halleck, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Willis, and others who were unable to be present, sent poems and epistles of affectionate greeting. Mr. Everett wrote: "I congratulate the Century Club on the opportunity of paying this richly-earned tribute of respect and admiration to their veteran, and him on the well-deserved honor. Happy the community that has the discernment to appreciate its gifted sons; happy the poet, the artist, the scholar, who is permitted to enjoy, in this way, a foretaste of posthumous commemoration and fame!'' Halleck, from a sickchamber, sent these words: "Though far off in body, I shall be near him in spirit, repeating the homage which with heart, voice, and pen I have, during more than forty years of his threescore and ten, delighted to pay him." Longfellow in his letter said: "I assure you, nothing would give me greater pleasure to Bryant at all times and in all ways, both as a poet and a man. noble verse and led a noble life, and we are all proud of him.” citous stanzas, written, be it remembered, in the third year of the war, exclaims :

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than to do honor He has written Whittier in feli

Other poetical tributes were addressed to Mr. Bryant by Boker, Buchanan Read, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Sigourney, Holmes, Street, Tuckerman, and Bayard Taylor; but the feature of the festival was the presentation to the venerable poet, in an eloquent address by the President of the National Academy, of upward of two score oil-paintings-gifts of the artist-members of the Century Club, including Church, Darley, Durand, Gifford, Huntington, Eastman Johnson, and others.

Shelley, in his " Defence of Poetry," asserts that "No living poet ever arrived at the fullness of his fame: the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging, as he does, to all time, must be composed of his peers, it must be impaneled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations." Does not the continual sale of the beloved Bryant's poems, on which criticism and panegyric are alike unneeded, and on which the American world has pronounced a judgment of unanimous admiration, prove him to be an exception to the rule laid down by the dictum of the gifted Shelley?

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As promised in his "Inscription for the Entrance of a Wood," to him who should enter and "view the haunts of Nature' "the calm shade shall bring a kindred calm," so did he truly seem to have received a quietude of spirit, a purity and elevation of thought, a "various language" of expression, which held him at once in subtle sympathy with nature and in ready communion with the minds of men. George William Curtis writes in his editorial Easy Chair of Harper's Magazine concerning Bryant, "What Nature said to him was plainly spoken and clearly heard and perfectly repeated. His art was exquisite. It was absolutely unsuspected; but it served its truest purpose, for it removed every obstruction to full and complete delivery of his message."

In December, 1867, Mr. Bryant responded in a beautiful letter to an invitation of the alumni of Williams College to read a poem at their next meeting. The brief letter of declination is poetical in its sympathy, and expresses, with pathos, not the decline of the powers of a mind yet vigorous, but a conscientious distrust of reaching that degree of excellence which his admirers might expect from his previous poems:

"You ask me for a few lines of verse to be read at your annual festival of the alumni of Williams College. I am ever ill at occasional verses. Such as it is, my vein is not of that sort. I find it difficult to satisfy myself. Besides, it is the December of life with me, I try to keep a few flowers in pots-inere remembrances of a more genial season which is now with the things of the past. If I have a carnation or two for Christmas, I think myself fortunate. You write as if I had nothing to do, in fulfilling your request, but to go out and gather under the hedges and by the brooks a bouquet of flowers that spring spontaneously, and throw upon your table. If I am to try, what would you say if it proved to be only a little bundle of devil-stalks and withered leaves, which my dim sight had mistaken for fresh, green sprays and blossoms? So I must excuse myself as well as I can, and content myself with wishing a very pleasant evening to the foster-children of old "Williams" who meet on New Year's Day, and all manner of prosperity and honor to the excellent institution of learning in which they were nurtured."

On the evening of the 17th of May, 1870, Mr. Bryant delivered an address before the New York Historical Society, his subject being the "Life and

Writings of Gulian C. Verplanck." The venerable poet spoke of his friend, as in previous years he had spoken of their contemporaries, Thomas Cole, the painter, and the authors Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Fitz-Greene Halleck. These charming orations, together with various addresses, including those made at the unveiling of the Shakespeare, Scott, and Morse statues in the Central Park, were published in 1872 in a volume worthy of being possessed by all Bryant's admirers. The literary life which began more than sixty years ago was crowned by his translations of Homer. He was more than threescore and ten, when he set himself to the formidable task of adding another to the many translations of the “Iliad" and "Odyssey." The former occupied most of his leisure hours for three years, and the latter about two; being completed when Mr. Bryant was well advanced in his seventy-seventh year. The opinion has been pronounced by competent critics that these will hold their own with the translations of Pope, Chapman, Newman, or the late Earl Derby, of which latter Halleck said to the writer that "it was an admirable translation of the Iliad' with the poetry omitted !” *

To the breakfast-table at Roslyn I remember that Mr. Bryant one day brought some pages in manuscript, being his morning's work on Homer; for, like Scott, he was always an early riser, and by that excellent habit he gained some hours each day. That Bryant, Bayard Taylor, and Longfellow should have, during the past decade, simultaneously appeared as translators of Homer, Goethe, and Dante, and that their work should compare favorably with any previous renderings into English of "Faust," the "Divina Commedia," and of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," is certainly a striking illustration of advancing literary culture in the New World.

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In 1873 Mr. Bryant's name appeared as the editor of "Picturesque America," a handsome illustrated quarto published by the Appletons; and the latest prose work with which he was associated is a History of the United States," now in course of publication by the Scribners, the second volume having been completed shortly before Mr. Bryant's death, the residue of the work remaining in the hands of its associate author, Sidney Howard Gay.

To the readers of this memoir a topic of especial interest will be Mr. Bryant's connection with the volume which incloses it—“ The Library of Poetry and Song.” This began in 1870, with the origination of the book in its octavo form, and continued with constant interest, through the reconstruction and enlargement of the work in its more elaborate quarto form until its completion in 1878. His own words best show how it happened that Mr. Bryant became the sponsor of this book, which in its various editions has already taken his name into nearly a hundred thousand American homes. "At the request of the publishers," he says, I undertook to

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* Of Mr. Bryant's translations of the Iliad" and the " Odyssey" the Athenæum remarks: "These translations are with Mr. Bryant, as with Lord Derby, the work of the ripened scholarship and honorable leisure of age, and the impulse is natural to compare the products of the two minds. Mr. Bryant's translations seem less laboriously rounded and ornate, but perhaps even more forceful and vigorous, than Lord Derby's;" while the London Times expresses the judgment that "his performance fell flat on the ears of an educated audience, after the efforts of Lord Derby and others in the same direction.”

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write an Introduction to the present work, and in pursuance of this design I find that I have come into a somewhat closer personal relation with the book. In its progress it has passed entirely under my revision. I have, as requested, exercised a free hand both in excluding and in adding matter according to my judgment of what was best adapted to the purposes of the enterprise." Every poem took its place after passing under his clear eye. Many were dropped out by him ; more were suggested, found, often copied out by him for addition. In the little notes accompanying his frequent forwarding of matter to the publishers, he casually included many interesting points and hints of criticism or opinion: "I send also some extracts from an American poet who is one of our best-Richard H. Dana." "I would request that more of the poems of Jones Very be inserted. I think them quite remarkable." "Do not, I pray you, forget Thomson's Castle of Indolence,' the first canto of which is one of the most magnificent things in the language, and altogether free from the faults of style which deform his blank verse. "The lines are pretty enough, though there is a bad rhyme-toes and clothes; but I have seen a similar one in Dryden-clothes pronounced as cloes—and I think I have seen the same thing in Whittier."

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He was not a man given to humorous turns, yet he was not deficient in the sense of the comical. In forwarding some correction for an indexed name, he writes: "It is difficult always to get the names of authors right. Please read the inclosed, and see that Mrs. be not put into a pair of breeches.'

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In specifying some additional poems of Stedman's for insertion, he says: "I think Alectryon' a very beautiful poem. It is rather long. 'The Old Admiral' should go in-under the head of Patriotism' I think; or, better, under that of Personal.' The Door Step' is a poem of 'Love ;' but it is pretty enough for anywhere," etc. "I do not exactly like the poem 'To a Girl in her Thirteenth Year,' on account of the bad rhymes; nor am I quite pleased with Praed's 'I remember, I remember,' printed just after Hood's-it seems to me a little flippant, which is Praed's fault." The scrupulous care which Mr. Bryant exercised in keeping the compilation clean and pure was exemplified in his habitual name for it in correspondence and conversation-"The Family Book;" "The Family Library." He writes: "I have made more suggestions for the omission of poems in the humorous department than in any other; several of them being deficient in the requisite literary merit. As to the convivial poems, the more I think of it the more I am inclined to advise their total omission.”

When the book appeared in 1870, it met with an instant and remarkable popular welcome, selling more than twenty thousand copies during the first six months, which, for a book costing five dollars in its least expensive style, was certainly unusual. In 1876 it was determined to give the work a thorough revision, although it had been from time to time benefiting by the amendments sent by Mr. Bryant or suggested by use. Mr. Bryant took a keen interest in this enlargement and reconstruction, and, as stated in the Publisher's Preface to the quarto edition, it entailed upon him much labor, in conscientious and thorough revision of all the material-canceling, inserting, suggesting, even copying out with

his own hand many poems not attainable save from his private library; in short, giving the work not only the sanction of his widely honored name, but also the genuine influence of his fine poetic sense, his unquestioned taste, his broad and scholarly acquaintance with literature." Both the octavo and the quarto editions now contain his much-admired Introduction, in the form of an essay on "The Poets and Poetry of the English Language." Of this, Edmund Clarence Stedman, in an admirable paper on Bryant as "The Man of Letters," contributed to The Evening Post since the poet's death, says: " This is a model of expressive English prose, as simple as that of the Spectator essayists and far more to the purpose. Like all his productions, it ends when the writer's proper work is done. The essay, it may be added, contains in succinct language the poet's own views of the scope and method of song, a reflection of the instinct governing his entire poetical career."

Bryant's prose has always received high commendation. A little collection of extracts from his writings has been compiled for use in schools, as a model of style. The secret of it, so far as genius can communicate its secrets, may be found in a letter addressed by Mr. Bryant to one of the editors of the Christian Intelligencer, in reply to some questions, and published in the issue of that journal, July 11th,

1878:

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"ROSLYN, LONG ISLAND, July 6, 1863.

'It seems to me that in style we ought first, and above all things, to aim at clearness of expression. An obscure style is, of course, a bad style. In writing we should always consider not only whether we have expressed the thought in a manner which meets our own comprehension, but whether it will be understood by readers in general.

"The quality of style next in importance is attractiveness. It should invite and agreeably detain the reader. To acquire such a style, I know of no other way than to contemplate good models and consider the observations of able critics. The Latin and Greek classics of which you speak are certainly important helps in forming a taste in respect to style, but to attain a good English style something more is necessary-the diligent study of good English authors. I would recur for this purpose to the elder worthies of our literature -to such writers as Jeremy Taylor and Barrow and Thomas Fuller-whose works are perfect treasures of the riches of our language. Many modern writers have great excellences of style, but few are without some deficiency.

"I have but one more counsel to give in regard to the formation of a style in composition, and that is to read the poets-the nobler and grander ones of our language. In this way warmth and energy is communicated to the diction and a musical flow to the sentences.

"I have here treated the subject very briefly and meagrely, but I have given you my own method and the rules by which I have been guided through many years mostly passed in literary labors and studies."

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Quite recently the writer has seen a document which, in these days of international copyright agitation, is of some interest. It runs thus: “ The British and American Copyright League is an association having for its object the passage of an International Copyright Law in America and in England, and in favor of such other countries as are willing to reciprocate, which shall secure to authors the same control over their own productions as is accorded to inventors, who, if they so elect, can patent their inventions in all the countries of Europe. This is the first organized attempt that has

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