Part 3

Bryant was taught Greek by his uncle, the Reverend Thomas Snell of Brookfield, and mathematics by the Reverend Moses Hallock of Plainfield. He entered the Sophomore class at Williams College in October, 1810, and left the following May. He was to have spent the two succeeding years at Yale, but the plan had to be abandoned for want of money. Some time during the summer of 1811 ‘Thanatopsis’ was written in its first form and laid aside.

The poet began reading law with Judge Samuel Howe of Worthington, who once reproached his pupil ‘for giving to Wordsworth’s _Lyrical Ballads_ time that belonged to Blackstone and Chitty.’ He continued his studies under William Baylies of Bridgewater, was admitted to the bar at Plymouth in August, 1815, practised awhile at Plainfield, and then removed to Great Barrington. The lines ‘To a Waterfowl’ were written the night of the young lawyer’s arrival in Plainfield.

He made progress in his profession and was called to argue cases at New Haven and before the supreme court at Boston. The intervals of legal business were given to poetry. Bryant’s father urged him to contribute to the new ‘North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal,’ the editor of which was an old friend. The young lawyer-poet seeming indifferent to the suggestion, Doctor Bryant carried with him to Boston two pieces he had unearthed among his son’s papers, namely, ‘Thanatopsis’ in its first form, and ‘A Fragment’ now called ‘Inscription at the Entrance of a Wood.’ Both were printed in the ‘Review’ for September, 1817. Other poems followed, together with three prose essays (on ‘American Poetry,’ on ‘The Happy Temperament,’ and on the use of ‘Trisyllabic Feet in Iambic Verse’). He also contributed poems to ‘The Idle Man,’ Richard Henry Dana’s magazine, and the ‘United States Literary Gazette.’

In June, 1821, Bryant married Miss Frances Fairchild of Great Barrington. In April of this year he had been invited to give ‘the usual poetic address’ before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard. ‘The Ages’ was written for this occasion and publicly read on August 30. At the instance of his Boston friends, Bryant printed ‘The Ages’ with seven other pieces in a little pamphlet entitled _Poems_.

Never in love with the law, the poet began to regard it with aversion. He was intellectually restless and took to play-writing. A farce, ‘The Heroes,’ in ridicule of duelling, was sent to his friends, the Sedgwicks, in New York, who admitted its merits but doubted its chances of success on the stage, Bryant, at the suggestion of Henry Sedgwick, made two or three visits to the city in search of congenial work. He thought he had found it when he undertook to edit ‘The New York Review and Athenæum Magazine,’ a periodical made by amalgamating ‘The Atlantic Magazine’ with the older ‘Literary Review.’ Bryant wrote to a friend that it was a livelihood, ‘and a livelihood is all I got from the law.’

The editor of the ‘Review’ was active in various ways. He studied the Romance languages, gave a course of lectures on poetry before the Athenæum Society (1825), and annual courses on mythology before the National Academy of the Arts of Design (1826–31). He was amused with New York life; Great Barrington had not been amusing. He published verse and prose in his own review and helped Sands and Verplanck edit their annual, ‘The Talisman.’ Somewhat later he edited _Tales of the Glauber Spa_ (1832), the joint work of Sands, Leggett, Paulding, Miss Sedgwick, and himself.[1]

The ‘Review’ suffered from changes in the business management, and Bryant’s prospects became gloomy. At this juncture (1826) he was invited to act as assistant to William Coleman, editor of the ‘New York Evening Post.’ In 1828 he became ‘a small proprietor in the establishment,’ and when Coleman died (July, 1829) Bryant assumed the post of editor-in-chief and engaged as his assistant William Leggett, a young New Yorker who had shown a marked ability in conducting a weekly journal called ‘The Critic.’ ‘I like politics no better than you do’ (Bryant had written to Dana), ‘but ... politics and a bellyfull are better than poetry and starvation.’

His theory of the journalist’s function is well known. ‘He regarded himself as a trustee for the public.’[2] Party was much, and Bryant was a strong Democrat, but the people were greater than party.

Bryant’s handling of public questions belongs to political history. His lifelong fight against a protective tariff, his defence of Jackson’s policy respecting nullification and the United States Bank, his maintenance of the right to discuss slavery as freely as any other subject about which there is a difference of opinion, his insistence that the question of giving the franchise to negroes in the state of New York be settled on its merits and as a local matter with which neither Abolitionist nor slave-holder had anything to do, his determined stand against the annexation of Texas and enlargement of the area of slavery, his position on a multitude of questions which in his life as a public censor he found it necessary to defend or to attack--are fully set forth in the two biographies by his coadjutors.

From 1856 Bryant acted with the Republican party, giving his cordial support to Frémont and to Lincoln. He was a presidential elector in 1861. He advocated the election of Grant in 1868, and again in 1872, the latter time reluctantly ‘as the best thing attainable in the circumstances.’

To secure the independence and detachment that would enable him to judge measures fairly, Bryant avoided intercourse with public men, kept away from Washington, took no office, and was otherwise singular. In this way he at least secured a free pen. As to the tone of the comments on men in public life, Bryant approved the theory of a brother editor who maintained that nothing should be said which would make it impossible for him who wrote and him who was written about to meet at the same dinner-table the next day. It is not pretended, however, that he was uniformly controlled by this theory. What was the prevailing idea of his journalistic manner may be known from Felton’s review of _The Fountain_, in which he marvels that these beautiful poems can be the work of one ‘who deals with wrath, and dips his pen daily in bitterness and hate....’

Since 1821 no collection of Bryant’s verse had been made. Then after ten years he gathered together eighty-nine pieces, including the eight which had appeared in the pamphlet of 1821, and issued them as _Poems_, 1832. Through the friendly offices of Irving the book was reprinted in England with a dedicatory letter to Samuel Rogers. Notwithstanding favorable notices, both English and American, Bryant was despondent. ‘Poetic wares,’ he said, ‘are not for the market of the present day ... mankind are occupied with politics, railroads, and steamboats.’ But he found it necessary to reprint the volume in 1834 (with additional poems), and again in 1836.

His work in prose and verse after 1839 includes _The Fountain and Other Poems_, 1842; _The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems_, 1844; _Poems_, 1847; _Letters of a Traveller_, 1850; _Poems_, 1854; _Letters from Spain_, 1859; _Thirty Poems_, 1864; _Letters from the East_, 1869; _The Iliad of Homer, translated into English blank verse_, 1870; _The Odyssey_, 1871–72; _Orations and Addresses_, 1873; _The Flood of Tears_, 1878.

The introduction to the _Library of Poetry and Song_ is from Bryant’s pen, as is also the preface to E. A. Duyckinck’s (still unpublished) edition of Shakespeare. His name appears as one of the authors of _A Popular History of the United States_ (1876), together with that of Sydney Howard Gay, on whom fell the burden of the actual writing. It is unfortunate that no adequate reprint of Bryant’s political leaders has been made. As much ought to be done for him as Sedgwick did for Leggett.

Bryant found relief from the strain of editorial work in foreign travel. He was abroad with his family in 1834–36, visiting France, Italy, and Germany. He did his sight-seeing deliberately, spending a month in Rome, two months at Florence, three months in Munich, and so on. He had been four months at Heidelberg, when, says one of his biographers (in phrases which he never learned from Bryant), ‘His studious sojourn at this renowned seat of learning was interrupted by intelligence of the dangerous illness of his editorial colleague,’ and he returned home. During a visit to England in 1845 Bryant met Rogers, Moore, Herschel, Hallam, and Spedding, heard one of his own poems quoted at a Corn Law meeting, where among the speakers were Cobden and Bright, and carried a letter of introduction to Wordsworth from Henry Crabb Robinson. He made yet other journeys to Europe and to the East.

Notable among Bryant’s public addresses were the orations on Cooper (1852) and Irving (1860) delivered before the New York Historical Society. He was a founder and the third president of the Century Association, first president of the New York Homœopathic Society, president of the American Free Trade League, and member of literary and historical societies innumerable. He held no public office, but as time went on it might almost be said that an office was created for him--that of Representative American. He seemed the incarnation of virtues popularly supposed to have survived from an older and simpler time. He was a great public character. The word venerable acquired a new meaning as one reflected on the career of this eminent citizen who was born when Washington was president, who as a boy had written satires on Jefferson, and who as a man had discussed political questions from the administration of John Quincy Adams to that of Hayes. Other men were as old as he, Bryant seemed to have lived longer.

‘And when at last he fell, he fell as the granite column falls, smitten from without, but sound within.’[3] His death was the result of an accident. He gave the address at the unveiling of the statue of Mazzini in Central Park. Though wearied with the exertion and almost overcome by the heat, he was able to walk to the house of a friend. As he was about entering the door he fell backward, striking his head violently against the stone step. He never recovered from the effects of this fall, and died on June 12, 1878.

II

BRYANT’S CHARACTER

We seldom think of Bryant other than as he appears in the Sarony photograph of 1873. With the snowy beard, the furrowed brow, the sunken but keen eyes, a cloak thrown about the shoulders, he is the ideal poet of popular imagination. Thus must he have looked when he wrote ‘The Flood of Years,’ and it is difficult to realize that he did not look thus when he wrote ‘Thanatopsis.’ We do not readily picture Bryant as young or even middle-aged.

Parke Godwin saw him first about 1837. He had a ‘wearied, almost saturnine expression of countenance.’ He was spare in figure, of medium height, clean shaven, and had an ‘unusually large head.’ He spoke with decision, but could not be called a copious talker. His voice was noticeably sweet, his choice of words and accuracy of pronunciation remarkable. When anything was said to awaken mirth, his eyes gleamed with ‘a singular radiance and a short, quick, staccato but hearty laugh followed.’ He was more sociable when his wife and daughters were present than at other times. Bryant’s reserve was always a conspicuous trait.

Under that prim exterior lurked fire and passion. ‘In court he often lost his self-control.’ It was thought that Bryant might keep a promise he once made of thrashing a legal opponent within an inch of his life (‘if he ever says that again’) though the man was twice his size. Not long after he became editor-in-chief of the ‘Post’ Bryant cowhided a journalistic adversary who had bestowed upon him by name, ‘the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a human being.’[4] It was the only time his well-schooled temper outwitted him.

His friendships were strong and abiding. He had an inflexible will and a keen sense of justice, so keen that it drove him out of the law. No thought of personal ease or advantage could turn him from a course he had mapped out as right. He was generous. His benefactions were many and judicious, and the manner of their bestowal as unpretending as possible.

Bryant’s ‘unassailable dignity’ was a marked trait of character. He refused an invitation to a dinner given Charles Dickens by a ‘prominent citizen’ of New York. ‘That man,’ said Bryant, ‘has known me for years without asking me to his house, and I am not going to be made a stool-pigeon to attract birds of passage that may be flying about.’

He was perfectly simple-minded, incapable of assuming the air of famous poet or successful man of the world. Doubtless he relished praise, but he had an adroit way of putting compliments to one side, tempering the gratitude he really felt with an ironical humor.

III

THE LITERARY CRAFTSMAN

Bryant was a deliberate and fastidious writer. His literary executors could never have said of him that they found ‘neither blot nor erasure among his papers.’ His copy, written on the backs of old letters or rejected manuscripts, was a wilderness of interlineations and corrections, and often hard to decipher.

Famous as he was for correctness, it seems a mere debauch of eulogy to affirm that all of Bryant’s contributions to the ‘Evening Post’ do not contain ‘as many erroneous or defective forms of expression’ as ‘can be found in the first ten numbers of the _Spectator_.’ But there is little danger of overestimating his influence on the English of journalism during the forty years and more that he set the example of a high standard of daily writing. He was sparing of advice, though in earlier days he could not always conquer the temptation to amuse himself over the English of his brother editors.[5] It has been denied that he had any part in compiling the famous ‘index expurgatorius,’ but it is not unreasonable to suppose that this list, embodying traditions of the editorial office, had his approval. Bryant was for directness and precision in writing. Ideas must stand on their merits, if they have them, for such phrasing will define them perfectly.

His prose style may be studied in his books of travel and his addresses. The literary characteristic of _Letters of a Traveller_ and its companion volumes is excessive plainness, a homely quality like that of a village pedagogue careful not to make mistakes. One is often reminded of the honest home-spun prose of Henry Wansey’s _Excursion to the United States_.

Turning to the volume of _Orations and Addresses_, the reader finds himself in another world. Bryant’s memorial orations are among the best of their kind, stately, uplifting, and at times even majestic. They belong to a type of composition which lies midway between oratory and literature and unites certain characteristics of each. Written primarily to be heard, and adapted to public utterance, they are also meant to be read. They must stand the test of the ear and then that of the eye. The listener must find his account in them as they come from the lips of the orator, and he who afterward turns at leisure the pages of the printed report must be satisfied. Bryant’s speeches are markedly ‘literary;’ and though oratorical they are wholly free from bombast. Poet though he was, he built no cloud-capped towers of rhetoric.

Coming now to his verse, we find that his poetic flights, though lofty, were neither frequent nor long continued. Apparently he was incapable of writing much or often. This seems true even after allowance is made for his busy and exacting life as a journalist. For years together he composed but a few lines in each year.

His theory fitted his own limitations. Bryant maintained that there is no such thing as a long poem, that what are commonly called long poems are in reality a succession of short poems united by poetical links. The paradox grows out of the vagueness attaching to the words ‘length’ and ‘poem.’ Exactly what a poem is, we shall never know. That is a shadowy line which divides poetry from verse. And there is no term so unmeaning as length. When does a poem begin to be long--is it when the poet has achieved a hundred verses or a thousand, when he has written six cantos or twelve?

To say, as Bryant is reported to have said, that ‘a long poem is no more conceivable than a long ecstasy,’ is to make all poetry dependent on an ecstatic condition. And it reduces all poetic temperaments to the same level. Why may not poetry be an outcome of ‘the true enthusiasm that burns long’?

Bryant showed skill in handling a variety of metrical forms; it is unsafe to say that he excelled only in blank verse. With declared

## partisanship for the short poem, he nevertheless did not cultivate the

sonnet. Up to the time he was fifty-eight years of age he had written but twelve, and for some of these he apologized, saying, ‘they are rather poems in fourteen lines than sonnets.’

Comparing the length of his life with the slenderness of his poetical product, we are tempted to bring against this eminent man the charge of wilful unproductiveness. This reluctance, or inertia, or whatever it may be called, has helped to give the impression of a lack of spontaneity. We are aware of the effort through the very exactness with which the thing has been done. Bryant resembled certain pianists who plead as excuse for not playing, a lack of recent practice. When after repeated urgings one of the reluctant brotherhood ‘consents to favor us,’ he plays with precision enough but rarely with abandon. The conscious and over-solicitous artist shows in every note.

If much writing has its drawbacks, it also has its value. And the poet who sings frequently cannot offer as a reason for not performing, the excuse that his lyre has not been out of the case for weeks, and that in all probability a string is broken.

IV

THE POET

The fine stanzas entitled ‘The Poet’ contain Bryant’s theory of his art. The framing of a deathless poem is not the pastime of a drowsy summer’s day.

No smooth array of phrase, Artfully sought and ordered though it be, Which the cold rhymer lays Upon his page with languid industry, Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed, Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read.

The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will? Let thine own eyes o’erflow; Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill; Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past, And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

* * * * *

Yet let no empty gust Of passion find an utterance in thy lay, A blast that whirls the dust Along the howling street and dies away; But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, Like currents journeying through the windless deep.

This is flat contradiction of the idea that entirely self-conscious and self-controlled art can avail to move the reader. Bryant pleads for deepest feeling in exercise of the poetic function; it is more than important, it is indispensable. Of that striking poem ‘The Tides,’ he said ‘it was written with a certain awe upon me which made me hope that there might be something in it.’ The poem proved to be one of Bryant’s noblest conceptions. Yet a lady of ‘judgment’ told one of Bryant’s friends, who of course told him, that she did not think there was much in it.

Nature appeals to Bryant in her broad and massive aspects. ‘The Prairies’ is an illustration. Gazing on the ‘encircling vastness’ for the first time, the heart swells and the eye dilates in an effort to comprehend it:--

Lo! they stretch, In airy undulations, far away, As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, And motionless forever.

As the poet looks abroad over the vast and glowing fields, there sweeps by him a vision of the races that have peopled these solitudes and perished to make room for races to come. It is magnificent even if it is not scientific. In the sense it gives of the spaciousness of the prairies with the myriad sounds of life projected on the great elemental silence, it is a true American poem.

‘A Hymn of the Sea’ is another illustration of that largeness of view characteristic of Bryant. Each thought is lofty and far-reaching. The cloud that rises from the ‘realm of rain’ shadows whole countries, the tornado wrecks a fleet, whirling the vast hulks ‘like chaff upon the waves:’--

These restless surges eat away the shores Of earth’s old continents; the fertile plain Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down, And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets Of the drowned city.

He conveys the idea not only of spaciousness but of endless duration in the lines describing the coral worm laying his ‘mighty reefs,’ toiling from ‘age to age’ until

His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan.

Certain lines in ‘A Forest Hymn’ are also remarkable for the sense they give of vast reaches of time, stretching not forward but backward into eternity:--

These lofty trees Wave not less proudly that their ancestors Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost One of earth’s charms: upon her bosom yet, After the flight of untold centuries, The freshness of her far beginning lies And yet shall lie.

The ‘Song of the Stars,’ though not one of Bryant’s happiest poems,--the hypercritical reader feeling that the ‘orbs of beauty’ and ‘spheres of flame’ might have made a more appropriate metrical choice for their song,--shows none the less the poet’s strength in dealing with nature in the large. The lines ‘To a Waterfowl’ are magical in part by virtue of the impression they make of immense distance. With the poet’s penetrating vision we can see the solitary way through the rosy depths, the pathless coast, and the one bit of life in

The desert and illimitable air.

Bryant’s mind readily lifts itself from the minute to the massive, as in the poem ‘Summer Wind,’ a fine example of the crescendo effects he knew so well how to produce. In a few lines he gives the sensation of heat, closeness, exhaustion, and pictures the plants drooping in a stillness broken only by the ‘faint and interrupted murmur of the bee.’ His thought then sweeps upward to the wooded hills towering in scorching heat and dazzling light, and then still higher to the bright clouds,

Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven-- Their bases on the mountains--their white tops Shining in the far ether....

The poet never wearies of this majestic pageantry of the natural world. In ‘The Firmament,’ in ‘The Hurricane’ (imitated from Heredia), in ‘Monument Mountain,’ his chief thought is to translate the reader to his own lofty vantage-ground.

But Nature is not merely a spectacle, it has a power to heal and invigorate. Life loses its pettiness when one leaves the city and seeks the forest. The holy men who hid themselves ‘deep in the woody wilderness’ perhaps did not well--

But let me often to these solitudes Retire, and in thy presence reassure My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink And tremble and are still.