and vigor of treatment and exquisite delicacy of detail are everywhere harmoniously blended and the unity of pure art is attained. It was worth going to the ends of the world to be able to write “The Prairies.”
Confiding in the discretion of his associate, Mr. Leggett, and anxious to escape from his daily editorial labors, Bryant sailed for Europe with his family in the summer of 1834. It was his intention to perfect his literary studies while abroad, and devote himself to the education of his children; but his intention was frustrated, after a short course of travel in France, Germany, and Italy, by the illness of Mr. Leggett, whose mistaken zeal in the advocacy of unpopular measures had seriously injured the “Evening Post.” He returned in haste early in 1836, and devoted his time and energies to restoring the prosperity of his paper. Nine years passed before he ventured to return to Europe, though he visited certain portions of his own country. His readers tracked his journeys through the letters that he wrote to the “Evening Post,” which were noticeable for justness of observation and clearness of expression. A selection from his foreign and home letters was published in 1852, under the title of “Letters of a Traveller.”
The last thirty years of Bryant's life were devoid of incident, though one of them (1865) was not without the supreme sorrow, death. He devoted himself to journalism as conscientiously as if he still had his spurs to win, discussing all public questions with independence and fearlessness; and from time to time, as the spirit moved him, he added to our treasures of song, contributing to the popular magazines of the period, and occasionally issuing these contributions in separate volumes. He published “The Fountain and Other Poems” in 1842; “The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems” in 1844; a collected edition of his poems, with illustrations by Leutze, in 1846; an edition in two volumes in 1855; “Thirty Poems” in 1864; and in 1876 a complete illustrated edition of his poetical writings. To the honors that these volumes brought him he added fresh laurels in 1870 and 1871 by his translation of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” — a translation which was highly praised both at home and abroad, and which, if not the best that the English language is capable of, is, in many respects, the best that any English-writing poet has yet produced.
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; he preserved this distinction to the last, for the sixty-four years that elapsed between the writing of “Thanatopsis” and the writing of “The Flood of Years” witnessed no decay of his poetic capacities, but rather the growth and development of trains of thought and forms of verse of which there was no evidence in his early writings. His sympathies were enlarged as the years went on, and the crystal clearness of his mind was colored with human emotions. To Bryant the earth was a theatre upon which the great drama of life was everlastingly played. The remembrance of this fact is his inspiration in “The Fountain,” “An Evening Revery,” “The Antiquity of Freedom,” “The Crowded Street,” “The Planting of the Apple-Tree,” “The Night Journey of a River,” “The Sower,” and “The Flood of Years.” The most poetical of Mr. 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; and unrivalled skill in painting the scenery of his native land. He had no superior in this walk of poetic art — it might almost be said no equal, for his descriptions of nature are never inaccurate or redundant. “The Excursion” is a tiresome poem, which contains several exquisite episodes. Bryant knew how to write exquisite episodes and omit the platitudes through which we reach them in other poets.
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.
“O good gray head that all men knew”
rose unbidden to one's lips as he passed his fellow-pedestrians in the streets of the great city, active, alert, with a springing step and a buoyant gait. He was seen in all weathers, walking down to his office in the morning, and back to his house in the afternoon — an observant antiquity, with a majestic white beard, a pair of sharp eyes, and a face that, when observed closely, recalled the line of the poet:
“A million wrinkles carved his skin.”
Bryant had a peculiar talent, in which the French excel — the talent of delivering discourses upon the lives and writings of eminent men; and he was always in request after the death of his contemporaries. Beginning with a eulogy on his friend Cole, the painter, who died in 1848, he paid his well-considered tributes to the memory of Cooper, Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and Verplanck, and assisted at the dedication in the Central park of the Morse, Shakespeare, Scott, and Halleck statues. His addresses on these and other occasions were models of justice of appreciation and felicity of expression. His last public appearance was at the Central park, on the afternoon of 29 May, 1878, at the unveiling of a bust of Mazzini. It was an unusually hot day, and after delivering his address, which was remarkable for its eloquence,
