You may remember Wordsworth"s fine lines on "Yarrow Unvisited," "Yarrow Visited," and "Yarrow Revisited." "America Unvisited"--that is now for me a vision of the past; that fabulous America, in which, before they come to your sh.o.r.es, Englishmen believe Pennsylvania to be the capital of Ma.s.sachusetts, and Chicago to be a few miles from New York--that has now pa.s.sed away from my mind forever. "America Visited"; this, with its historic scenes and its endless suggestions of thought, has taken the place of that fict.i.tious region. Whether there will ever be an "America Revisited" I cannot say; but if there should be, it will then be to me not the land of the Pilgrim Fathers and Washington, so much as the land of kindly homes, and enduring friendships, and happy recollections, which have now endeared it to me. One feature of this visit I fear I cannot hope to see repeated, yet one without which it could never have been accomplished. My two friends, to whom such a pleasing reference has been made by Dr. Adams, who have made the task easy for me which else would have been impossible; who have lightened every anxiety; who have watched over me with such vigilant care that I have not been allowed to touch more than two dollars in the whole course of my journey--they, perchance, may not share in "America Revisited." But if ever such should be my own good fortune, I shall remember it as the land which I visited with them; where, if at first they were welcomed to your homes for my sake, I have often felt as the days rolled on that I was welcomed for their sake. And you will remember them. When in after years you read at the end of some elaborate essay on the history of music or on Biblical geography the name of George Grove, you will recall with pleasure the incessant questionings, the eager desire for knowledge, the wide and varied capacity for all manner of instruction, which you experienced in your conversations with him here. And when also hereafter there shall reach to your sh.o.r.es the fame of the distinguished physician, Dr.
Harper, whether in England or in New Zealand, you will be the more rejoiced because it will bring before you the memory of the youthful and blooming student who inspected your hospitals with such keen appreciation, so impartially sifting the good from the evil.
I part from you with the conviction that such bonds of kindly intercourse will cement the union between the two countries even more than the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in England that my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field, pa.s.ses his mysterious existence appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in London and in New York. Of that unbroken union there seemed to me a likeness, when on the beautiful sh.o.r.es of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of America, I saw a maple and an oak-tree growing together from the same stem, perhaps from the same root--the brilliant fiery maple, the emblem of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may the two nations always rise together, so different each from each, and representing so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful sap, and the same vigorous growth.
HENRY MORTON STANLEY
THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT
[Speech of Henry M. Stanley at a dinner given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 27, 1886. Whitelaw Reid, President of the Lotos Club, in welcoming Mr. Stanley, said: "Well, gentlemen, your alarm of yesterday and last night was needless. The Atlantic Ocean would not break even a dinner engagement for the man whom the terrors of the Congo and the Nile could not turn back, and your guest is here. [Applause.] It is fourteen years since you last gave him welcome. Then he came to you fresh from the discovery of Livingstone. The credulity which even doubted the records of that adventurous march or the reality of his brilliant result had hardly died out. Our young correspondent, after seeing the war end here without his having a fair chance to win his spurs, had suddenly made a wonderful hit out of the expedition which n.o.body had really believed in and most people had laughed at. We were proud of him, and right glad to see him, and a little bit uneasy, but vastly amused over his peppery dealings with the Royal Geographers.
[Laughter.] In spite of our admiration for his pluck and his luck we did not take him quite seriously. [Laughter.] In fact we did not take anything very seriously in those days. The Lotos Club at first was younger in that hearty enthusiastic reception to Stanley fourteen years ago in that gay little clubhouse next to the Academy of Music; we were thinking far more of a hearty greeting to the comrade of the quill who had been having a hard time but had scored "a big beat" [laughter] than of adequate recognition to the man already well launched on a career that ranks him among the foremost explorers of the century. [Loud cheers.] It is the character in which you must welcome him now. The Royal Geographical Society has no further doubt as to the credit to which he is ent.i.tled. He brings its diploma of honorary membership ["Hear! Hear!"], he bears the gold medal of Victor Emmanuel, the decorations of the Khedive, the commission of the King of the Belgians. More than any of them he cherishes another distinction--what American would not prize it?--the vote of thanks of the Legislature and the recognition of his work by our Government. The young war-correspondent has led expeditions of his own--the man who set out merely to find Livingstone, has himself done a work greater than Livingstone"s.
[Applause.] He has explored Equatorial Africa, penetrated the Dark Continent from side to side, mapped the Nile, and founded the Free State on the Congo." [Applause.] All honor to our returning guest!
The years have left their marks upon his frame and their honors upon his name. Let us make him forget the fevers that have parched him, the wild beasts and the more savage men that have pursued him.
["Hear! Hear!"] He is once more among the friends of his youth, in the land of his adoption. Let us make him feel at home. [Applause.]
I give you the health of our friend and comrade."]
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LOTOS CLUB: One might start a great many principles and ideas which would require to be ill.u.s.trated and drawn out in order to present a picture of my feelings at the present moment. I am conscious that in my immediate vicinity there are people who were great when I was little. I remember very well when I was unknown to anybody, how I was sent to report a lecture by my friend right opposite, Mr. George Alfred Townsend, and I remember the manner in which he said: "Galileo said: "The world moves round," and the world does move round," upon the platform of the Mercantile Hall in St.
Louis--one of the grandest things out. [Laughter and applause.] The next great occasion that I had to come before the public was Mark Twain"s lecture on the Sandwich Islands, which I was sent to report. And when I look to my left here I see Colonel Anderson, whose very face gives me an idea that Bennett has got some telegraphic despatch and is just about to send me to some terrible region for some desperate commission.
[Laughter.]
And, of course, you are aware that it was owing to the proprietor and editor of a newspaper that I dropped the pacific garb of a journalist and donned the costume of an African traveller. It was not for me, one of the least in the newspaper corps, to question the newspaper proprietor"s motives. He was an able editor, very rich, desperately despotic. [Laughter.] He commanded a great army of roving writers, people of fame in the news-gathering world; men who had been everywhere and had seen everything from the bottom of the Atlantic to the top of the very highest mountain; men who were as ready to give their advice to National Cabinets [laughter] as they were ready to give it to the smallest police courts in the United States. [Laughter.] I belonged to this cla.s.s of roving writers, and I can truly say that I did my best to be conspicuously great in it, by an untiring devotion to my duties, an untiring indefatigability, as though the ordinary rotation of the universe depended upon my single endeavors. [Laughter.] If, as some of you suspect, the enterprise of the able editor was only inspired with a view to obtain the largest circulation, my unyielding and guiding motive, if I remember rightly, was to win his favor by doing with all my might that duty to which according to the English State Church Catechism, "it had pleased G.o.d to call me." [Laughter and applause.]
He first despatched me to Abyssinia--straight from Missouri to Abyssinia! What a stride, gentlemen! [Laughter.] People who lived west of the Missouri River have scarcely, I think, much knowledge of Abyssinia, and there are gentlemen here who can vouch for me in that, but it seemed to Mr. Bennett a very ordinary thing, and it seemed to his agent in London a very ordinary thing indeed, so I of course followed suit. I took it as a very ordinary thing, and I went to Abyssinia, and somehow or other good-luck followed me and my telegrams reporting the fall of Magdala happened to be a week ahead of the British Government"s.
The people said I had done right well, though the London papers said I was an impostor. [Laughter.]
The second thing I was aware of was that I was ordered to Crete to run the blockade, describe the Cretan rebellion from the Cretan side, and from the Turkish side; and then I was sent to Spain to report from the Republican side and from the Carlist side, perfectly dispa.s.sionately.
[Laughter.] And then, all of a sudden, I was sent for to come to Paris.
Then Mr. Bennett, in that despotic way of his, said: "I want you to go and find Livingstone." As I tell you, I was a mere newspaper reporter. I dared not confess my soul as my own. Mr. Bennett merely said: "Go," and I went. He gave me a gla.s.s of champagne and I think that was superb.
[Laughter.] I confessed my duty to him, and I went. And as good-luck would have it, I found Livingstone. [Loud and continued cheering.] I returned as a good citizen ought and as a good reporter ought and as a good correspondent ought, to tell the tale, and arriving at Aden, I telegraphed a request that I might be permitted to visit civilization before I went to China. [Laughter.] I came to civilization, and what do you think was the result? Why, only to find that all the world disbelieved my story. [Laughter.] Dear me! If I were proud of anything, it was that what I said was a fact ["Good!"]; that whatever I said I would do, I would endeavor to do with all my might, or, as many a good man had done before, as my predecessors had done, to lay my bones behind. That"s all. [Loud cheering.] I was requested in an off-hand manner--just as any member of the Lotos Club here present would say--"Would you mind giving us a little resume of your geographical work?" I said: "Not in the least, my dear sir; I have not the slightest objection." And do you know that to make it perfectly geographical and not in the least sensational, I took particular pains and I wrote a paper out, and when it was printed, it was just about so long [indicating an inch]. It contained about a hundred polysyllabic African words. [Laughter.] And yet "for a" that and a" that" the pundits of the Geographical Society--Brighton a.s.sociation--said that they hadn"t come to listen to any sensational stories, but that they had come to listen to facts. [Laughter.] Well now, a little gentleman, very reverend, full of years and honors, learned in Cufic inscriptions and cuneiform characters, wrote to "The Times" stating that it was not Stanley who had discovered Livingstone but that it was Livingstone who had discovered Stanley. [Laughter.]
If it had not been for that unbelief, I don"t believe I should ever have visited Africa again; I should have become, or I should have endeavored to become, with Mr. Reid"s permission, a conservative member of the Lotos Club. [Laughter.] I should have settled down and become as steady and as stolid as some of these patriots that you have around here, I should have said nothing offensive. I should have done some "treating."
I should have offered a few cigars and on Sat.u.r.day night, perhaps, I would have opened a bottle of champagne and distributed it among my friends. But that was not to be. I left New York for Spain and then the Ashantee War broke out and once more my good-luck followed me and I got the treaty of peace ahead of everybody else, and as I was coming to England from the Ashantee War a telegraphic despatch was put into my hands at the Island of St. Vincent, saying that Livingstone was dead. I said: "What does that mean to me? New Yorkers don"t believe in me. How was I to prove that what I have said is true? By George! I will go and complete Livingstone"s work. I will prove that the discovery of Livingstone was a mere fleabite. I will prove to them that I am a good man and true." That is all that I wanted. [Loud cheers.]
I accompanied Livingstone"s remains to Westminster Abbey. I saw those remains buried which I had left sixteen months before enjoying full life and abundant hope. The "Daily Telegraph"s" proprietor cabled over to Bennett: "Will you join us in sending Stanley over to complete Livingstone"s explorations?" Bennett received the telegram in New York, read it, pondered a moment, s.n.a.t.c.hed a blank and wrote: "Yes. Bennett."
That was my commission, and I set out to Africa intending to complete Livingstone"s explorations, also to settle the Nile problem, as to where the head-waters of the Nile were, as to whether Lake Victoria consisted of one lake, one body of water, or a number of shallow lakes; to throw some light on Sir Samuel Baker"s Albert Nyanza, and also to discover the outlet of Lake Tanganyika, and then to find out what strange, mysterious river this was which had lured Livingstone on to his death--whether it was the Nile, the Niger, or the Congo. Edwin Arnold, the author of "The Light of Asia," said: "Do you think you can do all this?" "Don"t ask me such a conundrum as that. Put down the funds and tell me to go. That is all." ["Hear! Hear!"] And he induced Lawson, the proprietor, to consent.
The funds were put down, and I went.
First of all, we settled the problem of the Victoria that it was one body of water, that instead of being a cl.u.s.ter of shallow lakes or marshes, it was one body of water, 21,500 square miles in extent. While endeavoring to throw light upon Sir Samuel Baker"s Albert Nyanza, we discovered a new lake, a much superior lake to Albert Nyanza--the dead Locust Lake--and at the same time Gordon Pasha sent his lieutenant to discover and circ.u.mnavigate the Albert Nyanza and he found it to be only a miserable 140 miles, because Baker, in a fit of enthusiasm had stood on the brow of a high plateau and looking down on the dark blue waters of Albert Nyanza, cried romantically: "I see it extending indefinitely toward the southwest!" Indefinitely is not a geographical expression, gentlemen. [Laughter.] We found that there was no outlet to the Tanganyika, although it was a sweet-water lake; we, settling that problem, day after day as we glided down the strange river that had lured Livingstone to his death, we were in as much doubt as Livingstone had been, when he wrote his last letter and said: "I will never be made black man"s meat for anything less than the cla.s.sic Nile."
After travelling 400 miles we came to the Stanley Falls, and beyond them, we saw the river deflect from its Nileward course toward the Northwest. Then it turned west, and then visions of towers and towns and strange tribes and strange nations broke upon our imagination, and we wondered what we were going to see, when the river suddenly took a decided turn toward the southwest and our dreams were put an end to. We saw then that it was aiming directly for the Congo, and when we had propitiated some natives whom we encountered, by showing them crimson beads and polished wire, that had been polished for the occasion, we said: "This is for your answer. What river is this?" "Why, it is _the_ river, of course." That was not an answer, and it required some persuasion before the chief, bit by bit digging into his brain, managed to roll out sonorously that, "It is the Ko-to-yah Congo." "It is the river of Congo-land." Alas for our cla.s.sic dreams! Alas for Crophi and Mophi, the fabled fountains of Herodotus! Alas for the banks of the river where Moses was found by the daughter of Pharaoh! This is the parvenu Congo! Then we glided on and on past strange nations and cannibals--not past those nations which have their heads under their arms--for 1,100 miles, until we arrived at the circular extension of the river and my last remaining companion called it the Stanley Pool, and then five months after that our journey ended.
After that I had a very good mind to come back to America, and say, like the Queen of Uganda: "There, what did I tell you?" But you know, the fates would not permit me to come over in 1878. The very day I landed in Europe the King of Italy gave me an express train to convey me to France, and the very moment I descended from it at Ma.r.s.eilles there were three amba.s.sadors from the King of the Belgians asked me to go back to Africa. "What! go back to Africa? Never! [Laughter.] I have come for civilization; I have come for enjoyment. I have come for love, for life, for pleasure. Not I. Go and ask some of those people you know who have never been to Africa before. I have had enough of it." "Well, perhaps, by and by?" "Ah, I don"t know what will happen by and by, but, just now, never! never! Not for Rothschild"s wealth!" [Laughter and applause.]
I was received by the Paris Geographical Society, and it was then I began to feel "Well, after all, I have done something, haven"t I?" I felt superb [laughter], but you know I have always considered myself a Republican. I have those bullet-riddled flags, and those arrow-torn flags, the Stars and Stripes that I carried in Africa, for the discovery of Livingstone, and that crossed Africa, and I venerate those old flags.
I have them in London now, jealously guarded in the secret recesses of my cabinet. I only allow my very best friends to look at them, and if any of you gentlemen ever happen in at my quarters, I will show them to you. [Applause.]
After I had written my book, "Through the Dark Continent," I began to lecture, using these words: "I have pa.s.sed through a land watered by the largest river of the African continent, and that land knows no owner. A word to the wise is sufficient. You have cloths and hardware and gla.s.sware and gunpowder and these millions of natives have ivory and gums and rubber and dye-stuffs, and in barter there is good profit."
[Laughter.]
The King of the Belgians commissioned me to go to that country. My expedition when we started from the coast numbered 300 colored people and fourteen Europeans. We returned with 3,000 trained black men and 300 Europeans. The first sum allowed me was $50,000 a year, but it has ended at something like $700,000 a year. Thus, you see, the progress of civilization. We found the Congo, having only canoes. To-day there are eight steamers. It was said at first that King Leopold was a dreamer. He dreamed he could unite the barbarians of Africa into a confederacy and called it the Free State, but on February 25, 1885, the Powers of Europe and America also ratified an act, recognizing the territories acquired by us to be the free and independent State of the Congo.
Perhaps when the members of the Lotos Club have reflected a little more upon the value of what Livingstone and Leopold have been doing, they will also agree that these men have done their duty in this world and in the age that they lived, and that their labor has not been in vain on account of the great sacrifices they have made to the benighted millions of dark Africa. [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
TRIBUTE TO RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
[Speech of Edmund Clarence Stedman as chairman of the dinner given by the Authors" Club to Richard Henry Stoddard, New York City, March 26, 1897.]
GENTLEMEN:--The members of the Authors" Club are closely a.s.sociated to-night with many other citizens in a sentiment felt by one and all--that of love and reverence for the chief guest of the evening.
He has our common pride in his fame. He has what is, I think, of even more value to him, our entire affection. We have heard something of late concerning the "banquet habit," and there are banquets which make it seem to the point. But there are also occasions which transfigure even custom, and make it honored "in the observance." Nor is this a feast of the habitual kind, as concerns its givers, its recipient, and the city in which it is given. The Authors" Club, with many festivals counted in its private annals, now, for the first time, offers a public tribute to one of its own number; in this case, one upon whom it long since conferred a promotion to honorary membership. As for New York, warder of the gates of the ocean, and by instinct and tradition first to welcome the nation"s visitors, it constantly offers bread and salt--yes, and speeches--to authors, as to other guests, from older lands, and many of us often have joined in this function. But we do not remember that it has been a habit for New York to tender either the oratorical bane or the gustatory antidote to her own writers. Except within the shade of their own coverts they have escaped these offerings, unless there has been something other than literary service to bring them public recognition. In the latter case, as when men who are or have been members of our club become Amba.s.sadors, because they are undeniably fitted for the missions to Great Britain and France, even authors are made to sit in state. To-night"s gathering, then, is, indeed, exceptional, being in public honor of an American author here resident--of "one of our own"--who is not booked for a foreign mission, nor leaving the country, nor returning, nor doing anything more unusual than to perform his stint of work, and to sing any song that comes to him--as he tells us,
"Not because he woos it long, But because it suits its will, Tired at last of being still."
Our homage is rendered, with love and enthusiasm, for his service to "mere literature"--for his indomitable devotion throughout half a century to the joy and toil of his profession, in which he has so fought the fight and kept the faith of a working man of letters. It is rendered to the most distinguished poet, of his country and generation, still remaining with us and still in full voice. It is rendered to the comrade--to the man who, with his modesty and fort.i.tude and the absence of self-seeking--with the quips and quirks that cover his gravest moods, with his attachment for the city which has given him that which Lamb so loved, "the sweet security of streets"--it is rendered, I say, to the man who best preserves for us, in his living presence, the traditions of all that an English-speaking poet and book-fellow should be to const.i.tute a satisfying type.
There is, perhaps, a special fitness in our gathering at this time. I sometimes have thought upon the possible career of our poet if his life had been pa.s.sed in the suburbs of the down-east Athens, among serenities and mutualities so auspicious to the genius and repute of that shining group lately gathered to the past. One thing is certain, he would not have weathered his seventieth birthday, at any season, without receiving such a tribute as this, nor would a public dinner have reminded him of days when a poet was glad to get any dinner at all. Through his birth, Ma.s.sachusetts claims her share in his distinction. But, having been brought to New York in childhood, he seems to have reasoned out for himself the corollary to a certain famous epigram, and to have thought it just as well to stay in the city which resident Bostonians keep as the best place to go to while still in the flesh. Probably he had not then realized the truth, since expressed in his own lines:--
"Yes, there"s a luck in most things, and in none More than in being born at the right time!"
His birthday, in fact, comes in midsummer, when New York is more inert than an a.n.a.lytic novel. This dinner, then, is one of those gifts of love which are all the more unstinted because by chance deferred.
It was in the order of things, and no cause for blame, that, after this town pa.s.sed from the provincial stage, there was so long a period when it had to be, as De Quincey said of Oxford Street, a stony-hearted mother to her bookmen and poets; that she had few posts for them and little of a market. Even her colleges had not the means, if they had the will, to utilize their talents and acquirements. We do owe to her newspapers and magazines, and now and then to the traditional liking of Uncle Sam for his bookish offspring, that some of them did not fall by the way, even in that arid time succeeding the Civil War, when we learned that letters were foregone, not only inter arma, but for a long while afterward. Those were the days when English went untaught, and when publishers were more afraid of poetry than they now are of verse.
Yet here is one who was able to live through it all, and now sees a changed condition, to the evolution of which he contributed his full share. But he is no more a child of the past than of the present, nor need he repine like Cato, as one who has to account for himself to a new generation. He is with us and of us, and in the working ranks, as ever.
For all this he began long enough ago to have his early poetry refused by Poe, because it was too good to be the work of an obscure stripling, and to have had Hawthorne for his sponsor and friend. His youth showed again how much more inborn tendency has to do with one"s life than any external forces--such as guardianship, means, and what we call education. The thrush takes to the bough, wheresoever hatched and fledged. Many waters cannot quench genius, neither can the floods drown it. The story of d.i.c.kens"s boyhood, as told by himself, is not more pathetic--nor is its outcome more beautiful--than what we know of our guest"s experiences--his orphanage, his few years" meagre schooling, his work as a boy in all sorts of shifting occupations, the attempt to make a learned blacksmith of him, his final apprenticeship to iron-moulding, at which he worked on the East Side from his eighteenth to his twenty-first year. As Dr. Griswold put it, he began to mould his thoughts into the symmetry of verse while he moulded the molten metal into shapes of grace. Mr. Stoddard, however, says that a knowledge of foundries was not one of the learned Doctor"s strong points. Yet the young artisan somehow got hold of books, and not only made poetry, but succeeded in showing it to such magnates as Park Benjamin and Willis.
The kindly Willis said that he had brains enough to make a reputation, but that "writing was hard work to do, and ill paid when done." But the youth was bound to take the road to Arcady. He asked for nothing better than this ill-paid craft. His pa.s.sion for it, doubtless was strengthened by his physical toil and uncongenial surroundings. For one I am not surprised that much of his early verse, which is still retained in his works, breathes the spirit of Keats, though where and how this strayed singer came to study that most perfect and delicate of masters none but himself can tell. The fact remains that he somehow, also, left his moulding and trusted to his pen. To use his own words, he "set resolutely to work to learn the only trade for which he seemed fitted--that of literature." From that time to this, a half century, he has clung to it. Never in his worst seasons did he stop to think how the world treated him, or that he was ent.i.tled to special providences. He accepted poverty or good-luck with an equal mind, content with the reward of being a reader, a writer, and, above all, a poet. He managed not to loaf, and yet to invite his soul--and his songs are evidence that the invitation was accepted. If to labor is to pray, his industry has been a religion, for I doubt if there has been a day in all these fifty years when, unless disabled bodily, he has not worked at his trade.
We all know with what results. He has earned a manly living from the first, and therewithal has steadily contributed a vital portion to the current, and to the enduring, literature of his land and language.
There was one thing that characterized the somewhat isolated New York group of young writers in his early prime--especially himself and his nearest a.s.sociates, such as Taylor and Boker, and, later, Aldrich and Winter. They called themselves squires of poesy, in their romantic way, but they had neither the arrogance nor the chances for a self-heralding, more common in these chipper modern days. They seem to have followed their art because they adored it, quite as much as for what it could do for them.
Of Mr. Stoddard it may be said that there have been few important literary names and enterprises, North or South, but he has "been of the company." If he found friends in youth, he has abundantly repaid his debt in helpful counsel to his juniors--among whom I am one of the eldest and most grateful. But I cannot realize that thirty-seven years of our close friendship have pa.s.sed since I showed my first early work to him, and he took me to a publisher. Just as I found him then, I find him any evening now, in the same chair, in the same corner of the study, "under the evening lamp." We still talk of the same themes; his jests are as frequent as ever, but the black hair is silvered and the active movements are less alert. I then had never known a mind so stored with bookish lore, so intimate with the lives of rare poets gone by, yet to what it then possessed he, with his wonderful memory, has been adding ever since.
If his early verse was like Keats, how soon he came to that unmistakable style of his own--to the utterance of those pure lyrics, "most musical, most melancholy"--"to the perfection of his matchless songs," and again, to the mastery of blank verse, that n.o.blest measure, in "The Fisher and Charon"--to the grace and limpid narrative verse of "The King"s Bell,"
to the feeling, wisdom--above all, to the imagination--of his loftier odes, among which that on Lincoln remains unsurpa.s.sed. This is not the place to eulogize such work. But one thing may be noted in the progress of what in Berkeley"s phrase may be called the planting of arts and letters in America. Mr. Stoddard and his group were the first after Poe to make poetry--whatever else it might be--the rhythmical creation of beauty. As an outcome of this, and in distinction from the poetry of conviction to which the New England group were so addicted, look at the "Songs of Summer" which our own poet brought out in 1857. For beauty pure and simple it still seems to me fresher and more significant than any single volume produced up to that date by any Eastern poet save Emerson. It was "poetry or nothing," and though it came out of time in that stormy period, it had to do with the making of new poets thereafter.
In conclusion, I am moved to say, very much as I wrote on his seventieth birthday, that our poet"s laborious and n.o.bly independent life, with all its lights and shadows, has been one to be envied. There is much in completeness--its rainbow has not been dissevered--it is a perfect arc.
As I know him, it has been the absolute realization of his young desire, the unhasting, unresting life of a poet and student, beyond that of any other writer among us. Its compensations have been greater than those of ease and wealth. Even now he would not change it, though at an age when one might well have others stay his hands. He had the happiness to win in youth the one woman he loved, with the power of whose singular and forceful genius his own is inseparably allied. These wedded poets have been blessed in their children, in the exquisite memory of the dead, in the success and loyalty of the living. His comrades have been such as he pictured to his hope in youth--poets, scholars, artists of the beautiful, with whom he has "warmed both hands before the fire of life."
None of them has been a more patient worker or more loved his work. To it he has given his years, whether waxing or waning; he has surrendered for it the strength of his right hand, he has yielded the light of his eyes, and complains not, nor need he, "for so were Milton and Maeonides."
What tears this final devotion may have caused to flow, come from other eyes than his own. And so, with gratulation void of all regrets, let us drink to the continued years, service, happiness of our strong and tender-hearted elder comrade, our white-haired minstrel, Richard Henry Stoddard.