and he saw many Indians from various tribes. Naturally he gave to the Indian as a subject of romance a certain epic largeness, a touch of idealism, in keeping with the poetic conception of a retreating race battling for its very life before the advancing pale-face hosts. And so, whether he was true to facts is of minor consequence; the thing to be remembered is that he made the people of two continents feel a new interest in the Indian.

Cooper was the first writer to give to the world the romance of the American forest. What Irving did for the Hudson River region, Cooper did for the Otsego Lake district. Charles Brockden Brown had put Indians into one of his novels, but only incidentally, as it were; it remained for Cooper to make them an essential part of fiction. Across the sea Walter Scott had won fame before the American began his forest stories, but in a few years the latter rivaled in popularity the Wizard of the North. In 1833 Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, wrote: "In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper were conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop. They are published as soon as he produces them in thirty-four different places in Europe. They have been seen by American travelers in the languages of Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan." It is safe to say that the "Leatherstocking Tales" have had a wider reading in Europe than any other series of books by an American author. Cooper was, moreover, the first American to write romantic sea tales; he created the novel of the ocean in our literature, out of his own experience. He gave us, too, the historical novel. His best work is made up from native material: when he touched the forest, the prairie, the sea, he was at home; in the larger poetry of nature he is a master, and his romances form thus far the truest epic in American literature. Along the trail he blazed, many storytellers have passed, but no one of them has shaped with so vital a hand the crude material of pioneer days.

His Life.-William Cullen Bryant, greatest of the poets of the "Knickerbocker Group," was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, in 1794, the son of a country physician of prominence and culture. He was of sound Puritan stock, and on his mother's side was descended from John Alden and Priscilla. In his childhood he read much in the Bible and heard it read in his home; the prayers of visiting clergymen made a deep impression on him, many of these prayers being, as he afterward said, "poems from beginning to end." Of the beautiful country of western Massachusetts he was very fond, so that he came to know intimately all the features of those picturesque landscapes. These first experiences had much to do with the making of his poetry and the determining of his ideals. His father had a good library of eighteenth century classics, and here the boy read widely. Even in his childhood he prayed that he "might receive the gift of poetic genius and write verses that might endure." In those early days his favorite poets were Pope, Blair, and Kirke White; a little later he fancied Scott and Byron, but Wordsworth soon took hold of him and remained to the end his

favorite poet. Young Bryant was prepared for college under private tutors, and at the age of sixteen entered Williams College as a sophomore. His father not being able to keep him in college, the boy left after less than a year's residence and turned to the study of law.

For the next three or four years (1811-'15) Bryant was working at his legal studies, for which, like other literary men before and since, he had no very great enthusiasm; in 1815 he was admitted to the bar, however, and for ten years practised his profession with fair success in two towns of western Massachusetts, Plainfield and Great Barrington. Meanwhile he had married and was writing poetry. Long before this, when he was only thirteen, he had written a satiric poem, "The Embargo," which had an extensive local circulation; there are verses extant, indeed, and not such bad ones either, written at the age of nine. At seventeen he wrote "Thanatopsis," but laid it away; two years later he composed the lines "To a Waterfowl"; in 1821 he read his poem, "The Ages," before the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard, an unusual honor certainly for a young country poet. It will be seen therefore that for the young attorney law was unequally dividing honors with literature. In fact, so great had grown his dissatisfaction with his profession, that in 1825 he gave up his practice and went to New York to become an editor.

The rest of Bryant's long life was spent in New York. He was for two or three years connected with a literary periodical there; when that failed, he was offered the position of associate editor of the New York Evening Post. In 1828 he became editor-in-chief of this paper, and a few years later, both editor and proprietor. For the next fifty years he directed the policies of the Evening Post, making it one of the most influential newspapers in America. Bryant went to Europe in 1834 and spent two years; the broadening effect of this European travel was seen both in his editorial and literary work. He made a number of other trips to Europe, besides journeys to the Orient, the West Indies, and Mexico. In 1843 he bought an estate on Long Island, near Roslyn, and there built a suburban residence; about twenty years later he acquired the old Bryant homestead at Cummington, Mass., and gave to the little town a public library. His editorial labors he varied by writing poetry, translating Homer, contributing literary articles to magazines, and making memorial addresses. On special occasions of a commemorative nature he was much in demand. The last public appearance of Bryant was in Central Park, New York, in the spring of 1878, when he made an address on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue to Mazzini, the Italian patriot. As the poet was entering the house of a friend after the exercises, he fell, striking his head on the

stones; from the effects of this fall he died in two weeks, aged eightyfour. He was buried at his country home, Roslyn, Long Island.

His Personality.-In his prime, Bryant, according to his son-in-law and biographer, Godwin, was of "medium height, spare in figure, with a clean-shaven face, unusually large head, bright eyes, and a wearied, severe, almost saturnine expression of countenance. One, however, remarked at once the exceeding gentleness of his manner, and a rare sweetness in the tone of his voice, as well as an extraordinary purity in his selection and pronunciation of English." In his old age he looked like a patriarch, with his abundant white beard and his silvery hair. He came of sturdy New England stock, and there was in the man as well as in the poet a reflection of that sturdiness, touched with a certain austerity bordering on coldness. He was singularly regular in his habits and simple in his diet; he walked to his office and back, a distance of several miles, regardless of the weather, and he was fond of long country rambles. He particularly loved to work in his garden and among his flower-beds. To this simple manner of life was due in large measure his vigorous old age.

Dignity, purity of character, calmness, reserve, these are some of the personal traits that suggest themselves to the reader of Bryant's life and writings. He awakened respect and admiration rather than enthusiasm, more of reverence than of love. His native kindliness of spirit was somewhat obscured by his outward reserve. The Puritan element in him was strong. He was a striking figure in his later years: men are still living who recall the impressive, distinguished appearance of the venerable poet and editor in the streets of New York.

His Poetry.-Bryant's collected works consist of two volumes of prose essays, sketches, addresses,-a translation of Homer into blank verse, and a small volume of poems. It is only as a poet, however, that he is entitled to a place among standard

authors. His prose work shows a scholarly taste and a polished style, but is not remarkable; his memorial addresses are admirable examples of formal eulogy. Bryant was a busy editor and found little time for writing verse; this will account in part for the slender product of his muse. At least one fourth of his poetry was written before he went to New York to live in 1825, and the rest was composed at irregular intervals during the next fifty-odd years. Several of his greatest poems belong to the early period.

"Thanatopsis," the most famous of Bryant's poems and the first great poem written in America, was published in the North American Review for September, 1817, though it had been composed six years before, when the poet was in his eighteenth year. The beginning and the ending of the poem as we now have it, first appeared in the little volume of his poems issued by the author in 1821. Young Bryant had written "Thanatopsis" and laid it away in his desk; the poet's father found it and sent it to the magazine, but the editors could hardly believe that so mature a piece had been written by a boy, and for a while persisted in attributing its authorship to the elder Bryant. During a ramble in the solitary woods in 1811 the youthful poet composed most of the now familiar lines, the title of which, "Thanatopsis," means a view or vision of death. He was of Puritan ancestry, be it remembered, and to his mind the somber aspects of nature carried a solemn message. "Thanatopsis" at once became popular: no such lines had yet been read in American literature; schoolbooks reprinted them and public speakers, particularly ministers, quoted them; soon their magnificent harmony was a possession of all serious souls.

The lines "To a Waterfowl," which many discriminating readers consider Bryant's best poem, were written when the poet was twenty-one or twenty-two, about the time he was beginning the practice of law. One December afternoon he was walking over the hills of western Massachusetts, feeling