Richard Henry Stoddard

“ After a year’s residence at Raymond, Nathaniel returned to Salem in order to prepare for college. He amused himself by publishing a manuscript periodical, which he called the Spectator, and which displayed considerable vivacity and talent. He speculated upon the profession that he would follow, with a sort of prophetic insight into his future. “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases,” he wrote to his mother, “nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. ”

“ The safer pillars of the State,
Whose calm, mature, wise words
Suppress the need of swords—
With no such tears as e'er were shed
Above the noblest of our Dead
Do we to-day deplore
The Man that is no more! ”

“ Journalism, though an exacting pursuit, leaves its skilful followers a little leisure in which to cultivate literature. It was the heyday of those ephemeral trifles, “Annuals,” and Mr. Bryant found time to edit one. with the assistance of his friend Mr. Verplanck and his acquaintance Robert C. Sands; and a very creditable work it was. His contributions to “The Talisman” included some of his best poems. Poetry was the natural expression of his genius, a fact he could never understand, for it always seemed to him that prose was the natural expression of all mankind. ”

“ With priestly, kingly tread,
Who, in their cerecloths, mutter
The ritual of the dead !
Who keeps a caravansary
Knows neither friend nor foe;
His doors stand wide on every side
For all to come and go. ”

“ Brook Farm, as it was called, was a social Utopia, composed of a number of advanced thinkers, whose object was so to distribute manual labour as to give its members time for intellectual culture. The scheme worked admirably—on paper; but it was suited neither to the temperament nor the taste of Hawthorne, and after trying it patiently for nearly a year he returned to the everyday life of mankind. ”

“ Bryant's poems are, perhaps, “The Land of Dreams,” “The Burial of Love,” “The May Sun sheds an Amber Light,” and “The Voice of Autumn”; and they were written in a succession of happy hours, and in the order named. Next to these pieces, as examples of pure poetry, should be placed “Sella” and “The Little People of the Snow,” which are exquisite fairy fantasies. The qualities by which Bryant's poetry are chiefly distinguished are serenity and gravity of thought; an intense, though repressed, recognition of the mortality of mankind; an ardent love for human freedom ”

“ His first public recognition came from England, where his genius was discovered in 1835 by Henry F. Chorley, one of the editors of the Athenaeum, in which he copied three of Hawthorne’s most characteristic papers from The Token. He had but little encouragement to continue in literature, for Mr Goodrich was so much more a publisher than an author that he paid him wretchedly for his contributions, and still more wretchedly for his work upon an American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, which he persuaded him to edit. ”

“ With memory proud, with pity dumb,
And strangers far and near,
For many and many a year!
For many a year, and many an Age,
While History on her ample page
The virtues shall enroll
Of that Paternal Soul!
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ There comes a day in the intellectual lives of most poets when their powers cease to be progressive and productive, or are productive only in the forms to which they have accustomed themselves, and which have become mannerisms. It was not with Mr. Bryant. He enjoyed the dangerous distinction of proving himself a great poet at an early age ”

“ These poems and others not specified here, if read continuously and in the order in which they were composed, show a wide range of sympathies, a perfect acquaintance with many measures, and a clear, capacious, ever-growing intellect. They are all distinctive of the genius of their author, but neither exhibits the full measure of his powers. The publication of Bryant's little volume of verse was indirectly the cause of his adopting literature as a profession. It was warmly commended, and by no one more so than by Gillian C. Verplanck in the columns of the New York “American.” ”

“ The young poet had read the poems of Kirke White, which, edited by Southey, were published about that time, and a small volume of Southey's miscellaneous poems; and some lines of those authors had kindled his imagination, which, going forth over the face of the inhabitants of the globe, sought to bring under one broad and comprehensive view the destinies of the human race in the present life, and the perpetual rising and passing away of generation after generation who are nourished by the fruits of its soil, and find a resting-place in its bosom. ”

“ One of Hawthorne’s earliest admirers was Miss Sophia Peabody, a lady of Salem, whom he married in the summer of 1842. He made himself a new home in an old manse, at Concord, Mass., situated on historic ground, in sight of an old revolutionary battlefield, and devoted himself diligently to literature. ”

“ He inherited the gravity of his Puritan ancestors without their superstition, and learned in his solitary meditations a knowledge of the night-side of life which would have filled them with suspicion. ”

“ ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Born, Feb. 12th, 1809.
Assassinated, Good-Friday, April 14th, 1865.
"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o' the building.
* * * * * * * * * *
"Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight
With a new Gorgon:—Do not bid me speak;
See, and then speak yourselves.—Awake! awake!
Ring the alarum-bell:—Murder! and treason!
* * * * * * * * * *
"Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself!—up, up, and see
The great doom's image! ”

“ It is not given to many poets to possess as many residences as Bryant, for he had three — a town-house in New York, a country-house, called “Cedarmere,” at Roslyn, Long Island, and the old homestead of the family at Cummington, Mass. The engraving on page 424 represents the house in Cummington; that on this page is a view of his home in Roslyn. He passed the winter months in New York, and the summer and early autumn at his country-houses. No distinguished man in America was better known by sight than he. ”

“ These poems, which cover a period of six busy years, are interesting to the poetic student as examples of the different styles of their writer, and of the changing elements of his thoughts and feelings. “Green River,” for example, is a momentary revealment of his shy temperament and his daily pursuits. Its glimpses of nature are charming, and his wish to be beside its waters is the most natural one in the world. The young lawyer is not complimentary to his clients, whom he styles “the dregs of men,” while his pen, which does its best to serve them, becomes “a barbarous pen.” ”

“ HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (1804–1864) , American writer, son of Nathaniel Hathorne (1776–1808) , was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July 1804. The head of the American branch of the family, William Hathorne of Wilton, Wiltshire, England, emigrated with Winthrop and his company, and arrived at Salem Bay, Mass., on the 12th of June 1630. He had grants of land at Dorchester, where he resided for upwards of six years, when he was persuaded to remove to Salem by the tender of further grants of land there, it being considered a public benefit that he should become an inhabitant of that town. ”

“ The honor of publishing and finishing the last was shared by Boston and New York. Profit in these publications there was none, though Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Dana, Bancroft, and Longfellow wrote for them. Too good, or not good enough, they lived and died prematurely. ”

“ Three years before (1828) he had become the chief editor of the “Evening Post.” Associated with him was Mr. Leggett, who had shown some talent as a writer of sketches and stories, and who had failed, like himself, in conducting a critical publication for which his countrymen were not ready. He made a second collection of his poems at this time (1832) , a copy of which was sent by Mr. Verplanck to Washington Irving, who was then, what he had been for years, the idol of English readers, and not without weight with the trade. Would he see if some English house would not reprint it? ”

“ Produced by The University of Michigan's Making of America
online book collection (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa/) .
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. An Horatian Ode.
By Richard Henry Stoddard.
New York:
Bunce & Huntington, Publishers,
540 Broadway. ”

“ He was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives several times, afterward to the state senate, and associated with the cultivated circles of Boston both as legislator and physician.
We have the authority of the poet himself that his father taught his youth the art of verse. ”

“ His friends came to his rescue in an “Advertisement,” prefixed to a second edition (1809) , certifying to his age from their personal knowledge. They also certified to his extraordinary talents, though they preferred to have him judged by his works, without favor or affection, and concluded by saying that the printer was authorized to disclose their addresses. ”

“ Bryant took charge of the farm on which he has always lived, laboring on it with his own hands for the greater part of the time. He is the author of “Poems,” a small volume (New York, 1855) ; “Poems written from Youth to Old Age ”