Holmes, Lowell, and a score of others represent the East, while Bret Harte, Col. Baker, Samuel L. Simpson, Minnie Myrtle Miller, Ella Higginson, and many others have caught and fixed the brightest tints of the western sunset, and sung sweet melodies along the golden shores of the Pacific; but among the first of the Western poets, and superior to them all, is Oregon's adopted son, Joaquin Miller, the subject of this sketch,—he who has said to the world:
"In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I hesitate to draw a line
Between the two when God has not."
He has attracted more attention and provoked more discussion than any other one of them all. Adverse criticism no less than the praise he has won marks him as a poet of no ordinary talent, and insures him a lasting place in literature. Today he can truly say to those who derided his earliest efforts, as Joseph said to his brethren, "Ye thought evil of me, but God meant it for good." They had sold Joseph into slavery, but when they were hungry, he gave them bread, and they were reconciled unto each other; the poet, like Joseph, has given his brethren bread when they were hungry. Will they not be reconciled unto him?
