the swelling notes of his praise echoing and reechoing until they have reached our ears from across the Atlantic."
Joaquin Miller's complete poetical works have been abridged and published in a very neat volume of 330 pages. The poet of the Sierras has become his own censor so that he might give to the world in one volume only the cream of all that he has written; and no critic could have been more judicious and severe than he. The preface is an autobiography coupled with some of his "lessons not found in books." This is Joaquin Miller's greatest book, for in it his gentleness of manner and simplicity of style leads the reader to feel that the bard upon the Heights has in the evening of life tuned his harp in perfect accord with the sweeter, softer, gentler strains of the bird song in the land of the western sunset.
England insists on placing Joaquin Miller in the front rank of living American poets. But Joaquin Miller's life and lines can never be fully understood and appreciated without some acquaintance with Minnie Myrtle Miller, his wife, who stood unrivalled for her peculiar versatility. She could carry a gun into the mountain fastness and slay a deer, an elk, or a bear, on which to dine, or she could relapse into quietude and write a poem that showed undoubted genius, or she could appear in high social circles with a queenly grace and there entertain the rich and the princely.
