Brander Matthews

“ In verse he was in his youth a pupil of Heine's, and for a season he studied under Mr. Austin Dobson; but he would be a dull reader of "Airs from Arcady" who did not discover that in whatever workshops Bunner had spent his wander-years, he had come home with a style of his own.
So in fiction he was a close student of Boccaccio, that consummate artist in narrative. He delighted in the swiftness and in the symmetry of the best tales in the "Decameron," in their deftness of construction, in their omission of all trivial details, in their sharpness of outline. ”

“ Being a gentleman and a scholar, Bunner understood the ways of a man of the world and could record the sayings and doings of a woman of fashion; but being a man also and a good American, he had a liking for the plain people as well and an understanding of their habits of living and of their modes of thought. ”

“ Rosenfeld was in charge. What a comic paper needs above all is not a group of brilliant wits sending in their best things whenever the inspiration chances to strike them; it is the steady and trustworthy writers who can be counted on regularly, week in and week out, to supply "comic copy" not below a certain average. Bunner was very much more than a mere manufacturer of "comic copy," but he could act in this capacity also when need was.
Into the broad columns of Puck during the first ten years of its existence Bunner poured an endless stream of humorous matter in prose and verse. ”

“ In Lowell's essay on Lincoln we are told that even at the outbreak of the Rebellion there were not wanting among us men "who had so steeped their brains in London literature as to mistake cockneyism for European culture, and contempt of their country for cosmopolitan breadth of view." To say that Bunner was wholly free from any taint of anglomania is to state the case mildly; his Americanism was as sturdy as Lowell's. He was firmly rooted in the soil of his nativity. He was glad that he was an American and proud of being a New Yorker. ”

“ He was like the President in that he had made no special study of economics until a consideration of the tariff was forced upon him. This seemed to him a question to be solved by common sense; and having found a solution satisfactory to his own mind, he thought he could bring others over to his way of thinking, if he reasoned with them calmly, assuming that they knew no more than he did and that they were as disinterested as he and as intelligent. ”

“ Not a few of Bunner's two-score short stories were also studies of human nature as it has been developed nowadays in the Manhattan environment. And not a few of them were studies of human nature as it has been developed in the semi-rural region that lies within the radius of an hour's journey from New York. In this territory are the homes of thousands whose work takes them daily to the city, while they spend their nights in the country. Bunner had an extended acquaintance with the manners and customs of the hybrid being created by the immense expansion of the metropolis ”

“ To Bunner verse was perhaps the most natural form of expression; and it is as a poet that he is most likely to linger in men's memories. I think this is the fame he would have chosen for himself, and I know how careful he was that his first book of poems should contain nothing unworthy of companionship with the best he had done. ”

“ Mention has already been made of his ceaseless study of the greatest of the old masters, Boccaccio, and of the strongest of the new models, Maupassant.
Although "Zadoc Pine," with its stalwart Americanism and its needed lesson of independence, has always been a chief favorite of my own, probably the first series of "Short Sixes" has been the most popular of all Bunner's volumes of fiction. And it is very likely that here again the broad public is right in its preference. I can see how it is that "Short Sixes" may strike many as the most characteristic of Bunner's collections of tales. ”

“ Bret Harte's "Condensed Novels," not Bayard Taylor's "Diversions of the Echo Club," shows a sharper understanding of the essentials of another author's art or a swifter faculty for reproducing them, than Bunner revealed in these V. Hugo Dusenberry papers, or in his "Home, Sweet Home, with variations" (now included in his "Airs from Arcady") . There are two kinds of parody, as we all know; one is a mere imitation of the external form and is commonly inexpensive and tiresome. The other is rarer and calls for an evocation of the internal spirit ”

“ Perhaps the chief charm of Bunner's verses is also a result of this same sympathy. As Hazlitt tells us, "Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself." Often vers de société—the English translation "society verse" is painfully inadequate—often vers de société which may meet the triple test of being brief and brilliant and buoyant is also hard and narrow and cynical. Some of Prior's best pieces are cold, and some of Praed's are chilly, to say the least. A more human warmth flushes the equally delightful stanzas of the late Frederick Locker-Lampson and of Mr. ”

“ It was late in the winter of 1877 that I made Bunner's acquaintance, three or four weeks after the first number of Puck had been issued in English. In the fall of 1876 Messrs. Keppler & Schwarzmann had started a German comic paper with colored cartoons, and it had been so well received that they were persuaded to accept Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld's suggestion to get out an edition in the English language also, utilizing the same cuts and caricatures. Bunner had already aided Mr. Rosenfeld in a journalistic venture which had died young ”