ceeded to the editorship, which he held with distinction until his death, in 1878. Although the shift from law to journalism did not withdraw him from "the sons of strife," it made him more than an adjuster of their difficulties. As a moulder of public opinion, he was doing God's work in "Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along."1 His seven trips abroad, and his nine publications of poetry in book form, after he came to New York, prove that his life was not utterly absorbed in the routine of newspaper editing. Bryant's career as a poet was very long, extending from the preparation, at thirteen, of a volume of school poems, paraphrases and translations, to the writing of "A Lifetime" and "The Flood of Years," sixtyeight years later, in 1876. Volumes of poems from his pen appeared in 1808, 1821, 1831, 1834, 1836, 1842, 1844, 1854, 1863, 1870, 1872. I. Texts. Poems, Vols. III and IV, in Life and Works of W. C. Bryant, by Parke Godwin. New York, 1883. Prose, Vols. V and VI, in Life and Works of W. C. Bryant, by Parke Godwin. New York, 1883-1884. Poetical Works. "Roslyn" edition, 1903. II. Biography. Life and Works of W. C. Bryant, Vols. I and II, by Parke Godwin. W. C. Bryant (American Men of Letters), by John Bigelow. III. Criticism. Poets and Poetry of America, by Churton Collins. Atlas Essays, by G. H. Palmer. Works of E. A. Poe, Vols. VIII, IX, X, XIII. Poets of America, by E. C. Stedman. America in Literature, by G. E. Woodberry. The Nation, "Growth of Thanatopsis," by Carl van Doren, Vol. CI, p. 432. IV. Supplementary. Publication of Century Association on the Bryant Festival, November 5, 1864. The Bryant Memorial Meeting, November 12, 1878. The most startling event that took place in Bryant's long poetic career was the publication of "Thanatopsis," in 1817. It appeared in the midst of an extremely arid period in American literature, and of a correspondingly fruitful one in England. Southey had only recently become poet laureate, and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats 1 See "Hymn of the City" and also "I broke the Spell that Held me Long," and "I Cannot Forget with What Fervid Devotion." were all at the height of their powers. In America, at this time, however, poetry quite properly shared the fate of Wordsworth's Lucy, "whom there were none to praise, And very few to love." In the period from 1813 to 1817, when, in addition to the English poets mentioned above, Crabbe, Campbell, Rogers, Hunt, Jane Austen, and Maria Edgeworth were pouring forth their best; the finest that America had produced was Allston's "Sylphs of the Seasons," Payne's "Juvenile Poems" and "Lispings of the Muse," Carey's "Olive Branch," Mrs. Sigourney's "Moral Pieces," Pierpont's "Airs of Palestine," and the one volume worth rememberingFreneau's "Poems on American Affairs." James K. Paulding was perhaps the best known native writer; Irving was in his decade of silence between the "Knickerbocker History" and "The Sketch Book," and Cooper and Halleck and Drake had not published anything. Naturally, the appearance of a great poem would have been sufficiently amazing even if it had not been composed by a boy in the 'teens. But, for this fact, Bryant has had, in a way, to suffer ever since, for popular estimation has neglected or refused to recognize that in the length of his career he ever showed any real development in artistry or increase in power. As a matter of fact, "Thanatopsis" was an extraordinary combination of boyishness and genius. The genius lay in its fine mastery of blank verse, in its free and sonorous rhythmic flow. The boyishness resided in Bryant's quite natural inclination to make his own statement of the theme that "All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." He was at the stage in life where such meditations rise in a young man's mind as were recorded in poem after poem of his until he went down to New York, where life became more fascinating to him than death. He came from an ancestry that made the Hebraic1 application in the concluding lines as natural as the last couplet in Milton's sonnet "On arriving at the Age of Twenty Three." He lived in a period when the influence of the "Graveyard Poets," Blair, White, and Porteus, was widely prevailing, and he was in part stimulated to the "Thanatopsis" writing as a commentary on and a reply to White.2 The wonder of the poem is, therefore, not that it represented unusual maturity of thought, but that it gave evidence of such poetic skill that Dana should have exclaimed upon seeing it ". no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses.' In respect to its poetic form, Bryant, perhaps, did not excel this in any other of his youthful efforts or even in the work of his later years. In content and general pervasive effect of his point of view, his work, as a whole, was quite in harmony with it as long as he remained in the little New England towns, but quite different after he had thrown himself into the metropolitan tide of affairs. Up to about 1829, when he was thirty-five years old, Bryant's thought was prevailingly self-conscious and strongly tinged with religious sentimentalism. The religious predilection was born. in him, the self-consciousness was the characteristic of his immaturity, the sentimentalism belonged to his literary generation. He was like any 1 See Matthew Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy," chapter on "Hebraism and Hellenism." See "The Nation," Vol. 101, p. 432. Article by Carl van Doren on "Growth of Thanatopsis." other impressionable youth in being a part of all he looked upon, and in his literary vista, little that he looked upon was real. "It was a needlework world, a world in which there was always moonlight on the lake and twilight in the vale; where drooped the willow and bloomed the eglantine, and jessamine embowered the cot of the village maid; where the lark warbled in the heavens, and the nightingale chanted in the grove 'neath the mouldering, ivy-mantled tower." 1 Poem after poem in these years was given a personal religious application-not only "Thanatopsis," but "The Waterfowl," "A Forest Hymn,' "The Poet," and even "To the Fringed Gentian." Poem after poem was overshadowed by the thought of dissolution. The "Hymn to Death," he acknowledged, was built upon a fallacy, but he preserved it nevertheless. He thought of the forest as a vast cemetery, of June as a pleasant month to die in, of the flowers as reminders of the brevity of human life. In two bits of reminiscence, he sentimentalized over his abandonment of poetry, evidently feeling that poetry was nothing deeper than a mildly emotional obligato to life-such a thing as Monument Mountains 2 are made of. But during the latter half of his life the general tenor of his work was changed. Entrance into the world of opinions gave him more of an interest in life itself, and less in its embellishments. Journalism absorbed most of his time and strength, and participation in public meetings no small share of his margin. There was no complete reversal of attitude in Bryant's work, but he suffered a sea change of which there were two broad indications. The first and less important was that nature did not inevitably lead to mournful or even sober thoughts. "The Planting of the Apple Tree" is serenely recorded in "quaint old rhymes"; the stanzas on "Robert of Lincoln" are positively jolly. The other sign of change appears in the increasing proportion of poems which, like his editorial articles and his commemorative addresses, were definitely related to life. He went on at once, in the "Hymn of the City," to celebrate the presence of God, in town as well as country,3 and, in “The Battle Field," to display his zest for justice and good citizenship: "The Antiquity of Freedom" and "O Mother of a Mighty Race" are both songs of democracy. So, too, with direct reference to the Civil War, are "Our Country's Call" and the small group that follow it. And, in a larger way, the "Song of the Sower" chants an ample chorus upon the implications of democracy, which deserves more attention than it has yet received. It is the logical predecessor of Timrod's "Cotton Boll" in its broadest sweep, and of Lanier's "Symphony" in its sense of the invading forces of industrialism. At the very end of his career, in his "Lifetime" and "The Flood of Years," he seems, at first glance to have reverted to his youthful point of view; but this is not a fair statement of the case, for old age may justify what was forced and exotic in young manhood. It was natural enough that at eighty-two the retrospect should be tinged with sadness and that "Nathaniel Parker Willis," by H. A. Beers, p. 78. 2 See text, pp. 171-173. 3 Compare Wordsworth's sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge." the prospect should include the life after death. The two poems, taken together, are an old man's fitting valedictory. Like his salutatory to the world at large, they present another glimpse of death, but this time it is a fair prospect of A present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw The heart, and never shall a tender tie In any general estimate of Bryant's contribution to American life and literature, the estimates of his contemporaries at his literary birthday party of 1864 are highly suggestive. Holmes sang his praises-rather vaguely as a nature lyrist, a poet of solemn cadences which baffled the commentator. By the implications in his allusions to "Thanatopsis," the Bryant of seventy could hardly aspire to do more than emulate the Bryant of seventeen. This is, in all likelihood, the uncritical but prevailing estimate even of to-day. Properly expanded, it gives him recognition for his firsthand treatment of native life and scenery, and for his emancipation from the inflexible verse forms of the 18th century. Lowell went a step farther in paying tribute to Bryant as a poet of faith and freedom, and as a publicist who gave heart and life to the nation during the crisis of the Civil War. In this respect, the author of "The Song of the Sower" was quite as much of a pioneer as in his poems about birds and flowers. He was far ahead of most of his countrymen in his sense of America as a nation among nations-not merely in the half petulant mood of "O Mother of a Mighty Race," but better in his sense of new occasions and new duties. Finally, Whittier extolled Bryant as a man. With all admiration for his art, His life is now his noblest strain His manhood better than his verse. In the light of these tributes, his own lines on "The Poet," written in this same year, are very much to the point. An artist's criticism of his art is almost always defective or, fragmentary, but almost always illuminating in its presentation of his ideal. In 1864, Bryant was writing of the poet of stirring times, and so he wrote of flame, burning words, tears, and passion. To contrast these stanzas with Lowell's earlier criticism of Bryant's "iceolation" in "The Fable for Critics," is to ignore the difference between '48 and '64. In those sixteen years, Lowell had_changed his mind partly because, Bryant had changed his method. For the fact is that Bryant sometimes deserved Lowell's comments and sometimes deserved his own. He was what is often meant by the term "classical" in showing a refined and controlled sense of form, and in giving evidence of serene poise where there was no occasion for excitement; but he was also in the truest sense classical in giving vent to depth and heights of feeling on themes which evoked feeling. As a philosopher, he was not so much restrained as quietly meditative. As a participant in the life of his generation, he was full of ardor. RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) Ralph Waldo Emerson, descendant of a line of Puritan clergymen, was born in Boston in 1803. The death of his father in 1811 left the family in straitened circumstances, yet the courageous mother succeeded in educating all five of her sons. Ralph prepared for college in the Boston Latin School, and matriculated at Harvard in 1817. He was at no time distinguished as a student. After graduating at eighteen, he taught school -an occupation he cordially disliked-and later entered the Harvard Divinity School; the family tradition was clerical. Perhaps the chief event of his brief ministry was the leaving of it. In 1832 he found that he could not conscientiously administer the communion, and he resigned the pastorate-it was the Hanover Street Church in Boston. He had been married in 1829 to Ellen Tucker, to whom several love lyrics are addressed, but her health was frail, and she died two years later. To obtain surcease from sorrow, Emerson went abroad, founding on this journey (1832-1833) his lifelong friendship with Carlyle. Upon his return to Concord, the poet began a long and serene career as a lecturer and writer. "The American Scholar" (1837), and the Divinity School address (1838), aroused controversies whose proportions we cannot now appreciate. His first book, "Nature," appeared in 1836; the famous "Essays" (first series) in 1841, and the second series of essays in 1844. He was married to Lydian Jackson in 1835. The chief events of Emerson's life are largely domestic: the loss of one brother in 1834, and of another in 1836, commemorated in the "Dirge," and the death of his eldest son in 1842, that "sweet and wonderful boy," who lives forever in the "Threnody." Yet his life was golden, enriched by many famous friends and by the reverence of the public which he slowly won. In the storm and stress preceding the Civil War, Emerson took an inconspicuous personal part, but his influence was all-pervading. To him, said Lowell, "the young martyrs of our Civil War owe the astounding strength of [their] thoughtful heroism." His first_collection of poems appeared in 1846 (1847); another collection, "May Day and Other Pieces," in 1867, and "Select Poems" in 1876. Emerson made several trips to Europe and innumerable American journeys, on which he lectured to audiences that always reverenced him, if they could not always understand him. About 1870 his mind began to fail, but, fortunately, his work was done. He died April 24, 1882. I. Texts. Centenary Edition of the Works of R. W. Emerson, 12 vols., 1904, Vol. IX. New Household Edition, I vol. II. Biography. See Bibliography appended to His Life, Writings and Philosophy, by G. W. Cooke, for minor references. Memoir, by J. B. Cabot, 2 vols.; See "Thine Eyes Still Shined," p. 196. |