"Evening Post" upon the table where their children and their guests might take it up.

Uncompromising in what his convictions commanded, and never evading the frankest expression of his real opinion, however unpopular, he was felt to be above mere partisanship, and so had a decided influence with men of all political preferences. His prose was in its way as good as his poetry, and has aided greatly to correct the taste for swollen, gaudy and pretentious writing in the public press. He was not alone in this respect, for none can fail to recall the services in this direction of Charles King and Horace Greeley, not to name less conspicuous instances. But Bryant's poetic fame gave peculiar authority to his editorial example, and made his style specially helpful and instructive.

That he should have succeeded in keeping the poetic temperament and the tastes and pursuits of a poet fully alive under the active and incessant pressure of his journalistic labors, making his bread and his immediate influence as a citizen and a leader of public sentiment by editorial work while he "built the lofty rhyme" for the gratification of his genius and for the sake of beauty and art, without one glance at immediate suffrages or rewards, if not a solitary, is at least a perfect example of the union in one man of the power to work with nearly equal success in two planes where what he did in one did not contradict or conflict with what he did in the other, while they were not mingled or confounded. Nobody detects the editor, the politician, the man of business, in Bryant's poetry, and few feel the poet in his editorial writings; but the man of conscience, of humanity, of justice and truth, of purity and honor, appears equally in

both.

This is somewhat the more remarkable, because affluence,

versatility, and humor are not characteristic of his genius. It is staid, earnest, profoundly truthful and pure, lofty and perfectly genuine; but not mercurial, vivacious, protean and brilliant. Like the Jordan that leaps into being full, strong, crystal-pure, but swells little in its deep bed all its course to its sea, admitting few tributaries and putting out no branches, Bryant's genius sprang complete into public notice when he was still in his teens; it retained its character for sixty years almost unchanged, and its latest products are marked with the essential qualities that gave him his first success. Never, perhaps, was there an instance of such precocity in point of wisdom and maturity as that which marked "Thanatopsis," written at eighteen, or of such persistency in judgment, force, and melody as that exhibited in his last public ode, written at 83, on occasion of Washington's last birthday. Between these two bounds lies one even path, high, finished, faultless, in which comes a succession of poems always meditative, always steeped in love and knowledge of nature, always pure and melodious, always stamped with his sign-manual, a flawless taste and gem-like purity-but never much aside from the line and direction that marked the first outburst and last flow of his genius.

Happy the man that knows his own powers their limits and their aptitudes and who confines himself rigidly within the banks of his own peculiar inspiration. Bryant was too genuine, too real a lover of nature, too legitimate a child of the muse, ever to strain his own gift. He never made verses, but allowed his verse to flow, inspired by keen observation and hearty enjoyment of nature, watching only that it flowed. smoothly and without turbulence or turbidness, which his consummate art enabled him perfectly to accomplish.

Never, perhaps, was a natural gift more successfully

trained and cultured, without losing its original raciness and simplicity. Nothing less than the widest and deepest study of poetry, in all literatures, young and old, in all languages and schools, could have enabled him to keep his verse in such perfect finish for sixty successive years. He knew all the wiles of the poet, some of which he disdained to practise but of no man in his time was it less safe to assume ignorance or neglect of anything that belonged to the poet's art. His knowledge of poetry was prodigious, his memory of it precise and inexhaustible. He had considered all the masters, and knew their quality and characteristics.

But marked as his own style is, it is marked only with its native hues. There is no trick in his adroitness, no artifice in his art; nothing that tires, except it be the uniformity of its excellence. Considering how long his genius has been known and acknowledged, and how thoroughly he represents the old school of Dryden in his purity and fastidiousness of language, it is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that his popularity, as a citizen and a man, has even somewhat eclipsed his immediate popularity as.a poet. I think him fortunate in not having the popularity of novelty, of fashion, of sing-song verse, of morbid sentiment, of mere ingenious thinking, or some temporary adaptation to passing moods of popular feeling, whether in universities or in social circles.

He curiously escaped, if indeed his truthful genuineness of nature did not give him an original defence against it, from the introversive, self-considering, and individualistic temper which has characterized much of the poetry of the highest academic culture in our time. Either he was born too early, or he emigrated from New England too early, to fall under the influence of this morbid subjectiveness; or his active and practical pursuits kept him in the current of real

At any

there is

life, and near to the universal feeling of men. rate, free, rational, as his genius ever was, not a suspicion of the sceptical or denying element in his works. He is not sick or morbid, or melancholy, or discouraged.

Sentiment enough he has, but no sentimentality; awe of the Infinite, but no agnosticism; a recognition of all human sorrows and sins, but no querulousness, much less any despair. He loved and honored human nature; he feared and reverenced his Maker; he accepted Christianity in its historic character; he believed in American institutions; he believed in the Church and its permanency, in its ordinances and its min istry; and he was no backward-looking praiser of the times that had been and a mere accuser and defamer of the times that are.

The

This made his poetry, as it made his prose and his whole influence, wholesome, hopeful, nutritious; young, without being inexperienced; ripe, without tending to decay. very absence of those false colors which give immediate attractiveness to the clothing of some contemporary poetry, gives his undyed and natural robes a fadeless charm which future generations will not forget to honor. Every one must notice that great immediate popularity is not a good augury for enduring fame; and further, that poetry, like all the products of the fine arts, must have not only positive quality, power and harmony, but must add to these freedom from defects.

It is strange what an embalming power lies in purity of style to preserve thoughts that would perish, even though greater and more original if wrapped in a less perfect vesture. What element of decay is there in Bryant's verse? How universal his themes; how intelligible and level to the com

mon heart; how little ingenious, vague or technical; how free from what is provincial, temporary, capricious; how unflawed with doubtful figures or strained comparisons or new and strange words; how unmarred by a forced order or weary mannerisms!

He is a rigid Puritan, alike in his morals and his vocabulary; there is scarcely a false foot, a doubtful rhyme, a luckless epithet, a dubious sentiment anywhere to be found in his works. And, perhaps nature withheld from him what is called an ear for music only to emphasize his ear for rhythm and save him from the danger of a clogging sweetness and a fatiguing sing-song.

It is the glory of this man that his character outshone even his great talent and his large fame. Distinguished equally for his native gifts and consummate culture, his poetic inspiration and his exquisite art, he is honored and loved to-day, even more for his stainless purity of life, his unswerving rectitude of will, his devotion to the higher interests of humanity, his unfeigned patriotism and his broad humanity. It is remarkable that with none of the arts of popularity a man so little dependent on others' appreciation, so self-subsistent and so retiring, who never sought or accepted office, who had little taste for co-operation, and no bustling zeal in ordinary philanthropy, should have drawn to himself the confidence, the honor and reverence of a great metropolis, and become, perhaps, it is not too much to say, our first citizen.

It was, in spite of a constitutional reserve, a natural distaste for crowds and public occasions, and a somewhat chilled bearing toward his kind, that he achieved, by the force of his great merit and solid worth, this triumph over the heart of his generation. The purity of the snow that enveloped him was more observed than its coldness, and his fellow citizens