during his long stay in Europe public taste had changed. b. 22. Drummond of Hawthornden. A Scottish poet (1585-1649). b. 49. Doomsday Book. Two volumes containing the records of the "Grand Survey" of England, made in 1086 by direction of William the Conqueror. b. 24. Giraldus Cambrensis. Like most of the other writers mentioned in this paragraph, an Anglo-Latin chronicler of the twelfth century. a. 3. Wynkyn de Worde. An English printer, successor to Caxton. He died about 1535. a. 24. Robert of Gloucester. A writer of the late thirteenth century. The poetic merit of his chronicles is so slight as to justify the phrase "Rhymes of mongrel Saxon." a. 27. Spenser. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) paid this tribute to Chaucer. The expression, which Irving has slightly misquoted, comes from The Faerie Queene, IV, 2, 32: "Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled." b. 44. Little of Latin. The now proverbial expression "small Latin and less Greek" is from Ben Jonson's poem To the Memory of . . . William Shakespeare. THE LEGEND OF THE MOOR'S LEGACY From The Alhambra. a. 4. The fortress of the Alhambra. A palace and citadel dating from the time of the Moorish occupation of Granada. The buildings which made up the large group were the work of many rulers, and were in process of erection during he hundred years following 1240. P. 29. The famous Barber of Seville. Figaro, the clever busybody who thrives on intrigue, in Beaumarchais' comedies Le Barbier de Seville and Le Mariage le Figaro, and in the operas derived rom these plays. EPH RODMAN DRAKE (1795-1820) ph Rodman Drake, physician and poet, brated with Halleck in the witty er verses, and wrote enough poetry of n to give evidence of excellent taste nusual talent. His Culprit Fay, a I thing obviously influenced by Colewas written in two days to prove e could compose a narrative poem in human beings played no part. The an Flag won immediate popularity e of its vigorous patriotism, and is still eadable than most similar work of a years ago. Had Drake lived longer, ht have achieved something notable; - his poetry marks a distinct advance at of his predecessors in America. BIBLIOGRAPHY Some fifteen editions of Drake's work have appeared since 1835, but no one is of outstanding merit. J. G. Wilson's Joseph Rodman Drake, in Harper's Monthly, June, 1874, is a competent estimate of the man and his work. Poe's comments on Drake (and Halleck) may be found in an essay originally published in the Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 2, and now included in the Virginia Edition of Poe, VIII, 275. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK (1790-1867) Halleck's life was too closely confined to the accountant's desk, at which he spent his best years, to allow him to develop much originality as a poet. Yet having a facile pen and literary taste amounting almost to talent, he managed to become a leading minor poet whose verses pleased a public not overcritical in its demands. Except for a few poems by Bryant, Poe, and Pinkney, the early years of the nineteenth century were singularly lean; contrasted with the midcentury period when Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, and Whitman were in their prime, they present a sorry spectacle. Halleck's verses, imitated from Byron and other giants of the English romantic movement, would scarcely have been noticed but for the lack of American competition. His long satiric poem Fanny is Byron without the Byronic spice; his Marco Bozzaris shows an interest in the Greek struggle for liberty that is again Byronic-but somewhat diluted. His society verse is undoubtedly clever, but where the majority of Byron's metrical lapses are both deliberate and amusing, Halleck's are commonly only clumsy and annoying. Accordingly it seems worth while to include in this volume only a few samples of his work and one elegy by which he will always be remembered the tribute to Joseph Podman Drake. BIBLIOGRAPHY The best edition of Halleck's work is The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck, with Extracts from those of Joseph Rodman Drake, ed. J. G. Wilson, N. Y. 1869, 1885. Wilson's The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck, N. Y. 1869, is still the best biography. NOTES ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 289. The verses of this elegy not only com memorate the friendship between Drake and Halleck, but also mark the highwater level of Halleck's poetic accomplishment. MARCO BOZZARIS 290. "Marco Bozzaris, one of the best and bravest of the modern Greek chieftains. He fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1822, and expired in the moment of victory." (Halleck's note.) The poem is probably the best-known example of Halleck's work. 18. Platæa. At the battle of Platea, 479 B. C., the Greeks overcame the Persians in a crucial engagement. THE IRON GRAYS 291. Halleck was a member of this New York infantry organization during the War of 1812. EDWARD COOTE PINKNEY (1802-1828) Edward Coote Pinkney-the correct spelling of his middle name has just been established by Messrs. Mabbott and Pleadwell in their definitive edition of his works-the son of William Pinkney of Maryland, was born in 1802 and died in 1828. During his short and adventurous life he was by turns an officer in the navy, a lawyer, a journalist, and a poet of more promise and ability than any American of his times, save only Bryant and Poe. His total output was small, yet among his collected works are to be found half a dozen lyrics that surpass in beauty anything that America had produced at that time, and that one still reads with pleasure. Poe admired his work, the best of which had appeared before Poe began to write, and imitated it. It would be hard to find a more certain indication of his merit. The first two of the poems here reprinted were included in Pinkney's 1825 volume. The last was first published in 1926. BIBLIOGRAPHY Pinkney's work is now available in The Life and Works of Edward Coote Pinkney, ed. T. O. Mabbott and F. L. Pleadwell, N. Y. 1926. In this edition one finds an admirable biography, as well as the entire body of Pinkney's literary work, including thirty poems or prose items hitherto unpublished. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878) Before commenting on Bryant's poetry, which is his most tangible gift to posterity, it will be well to consider briefly the facts of his life and the scope of his editorial work, which was of great importance to his contemporaries. He was born in 1794, in Cummington, Massachusetts, and in that state he spent the first thirty years of his life. His father, a physician and member of the legislature, was able to give him a good schooling in preparation for college, but the natural beauties of the Berkshire hills seem to have exerted a greater influence on his poetry than did any formal education. The family life was wholesome and happy, yet the modest sum paid the tutor Hallock for tuition and board-one dollar a week-suggests a financial stringency. It was in part lack of funds that led the poet to skip the freshman year at Williams, and that subsequently made it impossible for him to transfer to Yale, the college of his choice. After seven months at Williams he obtained an honorable dismissal and took up the study of law, but from this career his ability as a writer of both prose and verse soon turned him. The violent satire of 1808, The Embargo, had been a mere boyish tirade in verse; but the brooding on nature and death which culminated in Thanatopsis was soon supplemented by other signs of literary power: critical articles from his pen appeared in the North American Review; he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem (The Ages) at Harvard in 1821; and in the same year he published the slender volume of his Poems which, though it contained but forty-four pages, was destined to rank as the first really distinguished collection of poetry by any American. By 1825 Bryant was married and established in New York City on the staff of the Evening Post. Three years later he was editor and chief owner of the same journal, and was beginning a half century of work which was to demonstrate that a metropolitan newspaper could be dignified, interesting, and profitable, without sacrificing its independence or the ideals of its editor. Long before Horace Greeley built up the New York Tribune, Bryant had made the Evening Post the foremost newspaper of the country, and had established a new code of journalistic ethics for the English-speaking world. It is a matter of common knowledge that as time passed Bryant became New York's leading citizen, and went about the streets of the city with a quiet, austere dignity which suggested, as George William_Curtis pointed out in his funeral address on Bryant, the personality of a Spartan lawgiver. The reputation which had come to him from his poetry and from his editorial success, made him much sought after as a speaker at public meetings of special importance. To this fact we owe the series of brilliant addresses on Cooper, Irving, Halleck, and various other contemporaries. Yet arduous as were his duties as editor and orator, he was able to complete and publish blank verse translations of the Iliad (1870) and the Odyssey (1871). On the whole Bryant's life was an example to his countrymen, and indeed to the world, of the wholesome influence in public affairs which can be wielded by an independent man of letters. He died in June, 1878, a few hours after having made the chief address at the unveiling of a statue to Mazzini. In considering Bryant's poetry one passage in his brief autobiography is peculiarly significant: "In my ninth year I began to make verses, some of which were uttter nonsense. My father ridiculed them, and endeavored to teach me to write only when I had something to say." Here are suggested several points which, if space permitted, might be enlarged on-Bryant's precocity at verse-making, the value of his father's literary guidance, and the doctrine that having "something to say" is essential to writing good poetry. Four years later his first considerable poem, The Embargo, showed the results of this precocity and of his father's teaching. And still four years later, Thanatopsis illustrated on a heroic scale the same points of interest. Here is a precocity so astounding that Dana's remark has become famous: "Ah! Phillips, you have been imposed upon; no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." Here again appears the kindly influence of his father, by whose interest the poem was brought to light; and finally one notes the mark which characterizes every poem that Bryant gave to the public-he "had something to say." Thanatopsis is not only incredibly mature for a youth of seventeen, but its fundamental message is still of value, for "it takes the idea of Death out of its theological aspects and sophistications, and the perversions of conscience with which they are connected, and restores it to its proper place in the scheme of things." (From Parke Godwin's Life of Bryant, I, p. 100.) Bryant's love of nature is probably the quality which has chiefly endeared him to us as a poet. There is an intimacy amounting almost to personal affection in his feeling for the yellow violet, the fringed gentian, and the bobolink; the poems in which he sings their praises are not copied from Burns, Wordsworth, or any other poet of nature. They are the self-sufficient expressions of his own personality-too measured and restrained to be spontaneous, and thus lacking one of Burns's chief merits, yet gaining something by this very calmness. In no sense such a mystic as was Wordsworth, Bryant felt, nevertheless, the presence of God in nature; his Forest Hymn-not to mention the richness of its blank verse-shows that to him every object in nature was An emanation of the indwelling Life, The same religious significance of nature is suggested, though less clearly, in several other poems, especially in the introductory lines of Monument Mountain; but the For est Hymn is to many readers his most notable treatment of nature. Bryant was not a great poet, in the sense in which the adjective may be applied to some of his English contemporaries. He was neither a profound thinker nor an unfailing master of the technique of verse. His themes were few, and of the sort that tend to become monotonous: the beauty of Nature, the inevitableness of death. But in its simplicity, its dignity, its concrete picturing of nature, and its pervading "high seriousness," his best work presents a combination of qualities which made him worthy to be-what in fact he was the first of the major poets of America. BIBLIOGRAPHY EDITIONS. Parke Godwin's Life and Works of William Cullen Bryant, N. Y. 1883-1889, 6 vols., is the most valuable single contribution to our knowledge of the poet, and contains well edited texts of both his poetical and prose works. The best one-volume edition of the poems is the Roslyn, edited by H. C. Sturges and R. H. Stoddard, Appleton, N. Y. 1903, 1910. The text of the present selections is taken, by permission of the publishers, from this edition. BIOGRAPHIES. In additition to Godwin's life, W. A. Bradley's William Cullen Bryant, N. Y. 1905 (E. M. L.), is a valuable study. G. W. Curtis's The Life, Character and Writings of William Cullen Bryant, N. Y. 1879, is of particular interest because of the fact that Bryant and Curtis were personal friends. J. G. Wilson's Bryant and his Friends, N. Y. 1886, is useful on account of its treatment of men like Drake and Halleck. Poe discussed Bryant's work several times, most effectively in an article published in Godey's Lady's Book, April, 1846, and now included in vol. 6 of the Stedman-Woodberry edition of Poe, p. 105. NOTES THANATOPSIS 292. Bryant wrote the main portion of this poem when he was only seventeen years old, after reading Blair's Grave, Porteus's Death, Cowper's Tusk, and various poems by Southey and Henry Kirke White. Some years later the unpublished manuscript was discovered by Bryant's father, and sent, without the author's permission, to the North American Review, where it appeared in September, 1817. Bryant subsequently added lines 1-16 and 66-81, thereby altering considerably the philosophical significance of the poem. For an interesting study of the history of the poem, see an article by Carl Van Doren in The Nation, October 7, 1915. ROBERT OF LINCOLN 307. Bird-lovers enjoy this poem for its accuracy of detail, and especially for the success with which the refrain imitates the song of the male bobolink. JONES VERY (1813-1880) Jones Very, poet, teacher of Greek at Harvard, and Unitarian minister, was one of the most spiritual among the many friends of Emerson. Despite the esteem in which he was held by other Transcendentalists, there was something futile about his life in the busy world: although licensed as a minister, he never had charge of a church; his influence as a teacher was negligible; his friends were frequently called on to testify as to his sanity; and his first published volume of poems (1839) was the only one that appeared during his lifetime. On the other hand, these early poems, and those which he contributed to various magazines, are remarkable not only for their perfection of expression but also for occasional glimpses into the author's moods of mysticism and religious exaltation. BIBLIOGRAPHY The best edition of Very's work is that edited by William P. Andrews, Boston, 1883. The introductory memoir gives an adequate account of Very's life. All the selections in the present volume are taken from Very's Poems and Essays, Boston, 1839. EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) Although some of the details of Poe's life are still obscure, the chief facts are well known. He was born in Boston, on January 19, 1809, the son of David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. His parents, who at the time of his birth were itinerant actors of considerable ability, were both dead by 1811, and Edgar-the second of their three childrenwas adopted by John Allan, of Richmond, whose name he thereafter bore. Allan, and more particularly, perhaps, his wife, felt an interest in the helpless ward, and as he grew to boyhood gave him the best education Virginia afforded, supplemented by five years (1815-1820) in school at Stoke Newington, England. By 1826 the boy was ready for college, and entered the newly established University of Virginia. Here the freedom from discipline proved a misfortune, for in a year Poe accumulated large gambling debts, and became somewhat notorious for his fondness for alcohol. At the end of a year Allan removed him from the University, refused to pay his debts of honor, and acquiesced, after a quarrel, when Poe went to Boston and on May 26, 1827, enlisted in the United States Army. or two years he served in the coast artily, and made an admirable record. The disline under which he found himself was a adying influence; his own intelligence and lity made it inevitable that he should in the service. It is not to be wondered that within two years he had become regintal sergeant-major, the highest grade to ch an enlisted man could attain, or that officers should unite in recommending 1 for a cadetship at West Point, to which ce he was transferred in 1829. [is enlistment in the army in 1827 had been ost coincident with the appearance of his publication, Tamerlane and Other ms, which was announced as "By a Bos an. He continued to write after enterWest Point, and in 1829 and 1831 pubed two more volumes of poems, over his . name. In the last of these "the real may be said to have appeared for the time. At the same time, however, he court-martialed and dismissed from the tary academy, having deliberately set ut to accumulate demerits, and thus win freedom, when he learned that Allan prod to make no addition to the salary on h he would be expected to support himwhen he should receive his commission as nd lieutenant. uring the rest of his career Poe was writfor a living, often in absolute want, and er free from the fear of poverty. In 1836 publicly married his cousin, Virginia hm, thirteen years of age, whom he had ably privately married the year before. ough his personal habits made it diffifor him to continue long in a position ny responsibility, he had at times edi1 connections of importance with several zines and newspapers, including the hern Literary Messenger, Burton's Genn's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, The ing Mirror, and The Broadway Journal. publication of The Raven, in 1845, made internationally famous, but added only dollars to his bank account. After the of his wife in 1847, Poe suffered a comcollapse, and was for a time supported is friends. His recovery was sufficient ermit his doing a little further literary both writing and lecturing, but his was so weakened and his spirit so broken his life came to a tragic close on Octo, 1849, in a Baltimore hospital. valuable clue to an understanding of genius lies in the fact that he was one e few authors to attempt a somewhat ific solution of the problems of literary The same methods that enabled him to cryptograms with amazing speed and acy, also enabled him to excel at "the mical creation of beauty" in poems, and e creation of original and astonishing in his short stories. What these methere may be inferred partly from a study e Poetic Principle, The Philosophy of Composition, and of a single paragraph in the criticism of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Talesthe one beginning: "A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale." In more detail they may be grasped by a study of his most brilliant productions. Had such methods been applied with mechanical rigidity, the poems would doubtless be puerile, and the stories immature. But Poe had just the flexibility necessary to escape-at least on occasionfrom science into art, and to let his own intense personality give both life and color to his output. Indeed, in the field of criticism the personal elements of friendship and jealousy were at times too strong to allow him to write impartially of his contemporaries. His genius thus manifested itself clearly in poems, tales, and critical essays dealing with literary theory. To Poe the first essential of great poetry was an approach to beauty through some emotional appeal heightened by all the devices of a skilled versifier; any appeal to the intellect or to the moral sense was subordinate to this, which he carefully defined as "the rhythmical creation of beauty." His temperament and circumstances were such that grief was the emotion he could most easily arouse, and accordingly the prevailing atmosphere of his poetry is one of brooding melancholy. In some cases the music and the attempted emotional appeal are so devoid of human interest that the result is little more than a glorified jingle; in other cases the verse is so melodious and the mood so compelling that the reader is, at least for the moment, enthralled. In a number of poems, of which The Raven and The Bells are outstanding representatives, there is a mechanical perfection of technique which astounds one on first reading, but which gains little with increasing familiarity. In others, of which To One in Paradise and To Helen are fair examples, the metrical effects, though less dazzling, are of the subtle sort that gain from re-reading, and the imagery is far more suggestive. The lines To Helen are themselves rich with "the glory that was Greece." The Conqueror Worm abounds with effective symbolism and sounds a note of gloom far deeper than that of The Raven; Annabel Lee and Lenore likewise are perfect examples of their own type-a type which creates through beauty and sorrow the peculiar exaltation of feeling of which Poe was master. It is past debate that Poe's poetry has but a limited range; much of life that stirred Whitman, much that inspired Browning, was far beyond Poe's ken. Nevertheless, within the scope to which he confined his poetic efforts, he has not been surpassed; and in this very limited field one may say of him, as Matthew Arnold said of Keats, "He is with Shakespeare." Poe's tales-published in a score of contemporary magazines-are too well known to require a detailed enumeration; they have |