UC-NRLF 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 T 
 
 Class 
 
jtten of 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR 
 

American St^cn of H rttrra 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT H. SMYTH 
 
 
 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ftitoetfibe press 
 
Copyright, 1896, 
 BY ALBERT H. SMYTH. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE life of Bayard Taylor was so varied and 
 so busy that a mere catalogue of his industry 
 would fill a small volume. The most difficult M 
 part of my task has been to limit the narrative. 
 I have therefore not attempted to follow him 
 carefully in his travels, but have preferred to 
 enter with more particularity into his literary 
 history at home. 
 
 His biographer must continue to draw his 
 materials from the " Life and Letters of Bayard 
 Taylor," edited by Marie Hansen-Taylor and 
 Horace E. Scudder. In addition to that admir 
 able work I have had the advantage of exam 
 ining the miscellaneous manuscript collections 
 which Mrs. Taylor generously placed at my dis 
 posal. At every turn Bayard Taylor s friends 
 and former colleagues have been kind and help 
 ful. My thanks are due to Mr. Richard Henry 
 Stoddard, Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, Rev. 
 W. R. Alger, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. John 
 Bigelow, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, Mr. Richard 
 
 213372 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 Storrs Willis, Mr. H. S. Everett, Mr. Clinton 
 Scollard, Hon. Andrew D. White, Hon. Samuel 
 W. Pennypacker, and Professors James Morgan 
 Hart and Waterman T. Hewett of Cornell Uni 
 versity. 
 
 Mr. William D. Howells very kindly placed 
 at my disposal the letters addressed by Bayard 
 Taylor to him when he was editor of the " At 
 lantic Monthly." 
 
 The reminiscences of Mrs. Sara J. Lippincott 
 (Grace Greenwood), Miss G. Bloede (Stuart 
 Sterne), Mrs. Sidney Lanier, and Mrs. Annie 
 Carey, a sister of Bayard Taylor, have been 
 very useful to me. 
 
 I have particularly to thank my friends Mr. 
 Donald G. MitcheU, Mr. William Winter, Mr. 
 J. G. Rosengarten, Dr. Horace Howard Fur- 
 ness, and Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, to whom 
 I owe on this as on all other occasions gratitude 
 heaped up and running over. 
 
 My page would be too small to contain the 
 names of all the Chester County friends, who, 
 out of their love and respect for Bayard Tay 
 lor, and the goodness of their generous hearts, 
 showed me countless courtesies. 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 I must not fail, however, to mention Mr. 
 James Monaghan of West Chester, and I can 
 not forget the constant interest and aid of my 
 old preceptor and friend, Professor Daniel W. 
 Howard. 
 
 As this is the first biography of a Pennsylva- 
 nian writer that has appeared in the Men of 
 Letters Series, I have ventured to introduce a 
 brief outline of literary history in Pennsylvania. 
 
 ALBERT H. SMYTH. 
 PHILADELPHIA, November 1, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 rum 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA IN LITERATURE ..... 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 EARLY LIFE. 1825-1847 12 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 1848-1853 ... 60 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 1854-1860 . . . 100 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 NOVEL WRITING. 1861-1866 135 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 TRANSLATING FAUST, AND OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 
 
 1867-1874 178 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 POEMS AND PLAYS 211 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 1874-1878 . . . .273 
 
 APPENDIX .... v .... 299 
 INDEX , . 309 
 
BATAED TAYLOR 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA IN LITERATURE. 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA has not been well treated by the 
 historians of American literature. Only twelve 
 of the one hundred and sixty poets recorded in 
 "Griswold s Cemetery," as Dr. Holmes called 
 " The Poets and Poetry of America," are Penn- 
 sylvanians ; and in Duyckinck s " Cyclopedia " 
 the proportion is about the same. One facetious 
 critic defined Pennsylvania as " a State more 
 famous for its coal and iron than for its litera 
 ture," and another declared that her most famous 
 men were Benjamin Franklin and Albert Gal- 
 latin : the one a native of Massachusetts, the 
 other of Geneva. 
 
 Yet, turning these jests out of service, the 
 time was when Philadelphia, the Federal City, 
 was the centre of the nation s literary life. 
 Pennsylvania had then so far allured Coleridge 
 and Southey as to give a local habitation to 
 
2 BAYARD TAYLOK. 
 
 their dreams of a Pantisocracy upon the Susque- 
 hanna ; Wyoming, although mispronounced by 
 Campbell, had a permanent place in English 
 literature ; and at least two English poets 
 Scott and Campbell had proved michers and 
 appropriated tempting lines from Philadelphia 
 poets. 
 
 As the old capital of American literature, 
 Philadelphia was commonly called " the Ameri 
 can Athens " long before the title was coveted 
 by Boston. The best library in the country 
 in colonial times was owned in Philadelphia by 
 James Logan, who had books " so scarce that 
 neither price nor prayers could purchase them." 
 Through the practical thoughtfulness of such 
 men as Franklin, and Hopkinson, and Robert 
 Grace, the city possessed the first circulating 
 library in the colonies. One hundred years ago 
 the American Academy in Boston was the only 
 scientific foundation within the Republic that 
 was not in Philadelphia. In politics and poetry 
 Pennsylvania led the country. " The Farmer s 
 Letters " of John Dickinson were the ablest and 
 most efficient political forces of the pre-revolu- 
 tionary period, and they determined the principles 
 of the Revolution. William Cliffton, a native of 
 Southwark, in Philadelphia, wrote the best verse 
 produced in America in the eighteenth century. 
 The earliest American drama, " The Prince of 
 
PENNSYLVANIA IN LITERATURE. 3 
 
 Parthia," was the work of Thomas Godfrey, a 
 Philadelphian and son of the inventor of the 
 quadrant. 
 
 The profession of letters began in this country 
 with Charles Brockden Brown, whose ancestors 
 had come to Philadelphia with William Penn in 
 the Welcome. It is a singular chapter of lit 
 erary history that finds in Shelley s interest in 
 Brown s romances the impulse to the authorship 
 of " Zastrozzi " and " St. Irvyne." Contemporary 
 with Brown, and his successor in the literary 
 guild, Joseph Dennie, "the American Addison," 
 found his congenial home in Philadelphia, and 
 drew about him in the Tuesday Club, and as 
 contributors to the " Port-Folio," nearly two- 
 score cultivated Philadelphia gentlemen, some of 
 whom have since been writ large in our literary 
 annals, while others have disappeared into the ob 
 livion they merited. The press in Philadelphia 
 was active and bold. It gave to the country, 
 in nearly every case, the first American editions 
 of the classics, and of notable English writers. 
 Joseph Hopkinson edited the first, and Joseph 
 Dennie annotated the second American edition 
 of Shakespeare ; Robert Bell printed the first 
 Milton, and Robert Aitken the first English 
 Bible. The long catalogue of minor publications 
 practically registers the culture of the nation. 
 
 Nearly every experiment in periodical litera- 
 
4 SAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 ture was first tried in Philadelphia, from the 
 first monthly magazine to the first daily news 
 paper. Even after the removal of the seat of 
 government, and the vanishing of the cosmopoli 
 tan character that for a time had given to the 
 city the air of foreign capitals, Philadelphia s 
 literary preeminence continued to draw to it the 
 writers of New York and of New England. 
 Hawthorne makes Holgrave in " The House of 
 the Seven Gables " say, " My name has figured, 
 I can assure you, on the covers of Graham and 
 Godey, making as respectable an appearance, 
 for aught I could see, as any of the canonized 
 bead-roll with which it was associated." Nearly 
 every memorable name in our literature confesses 
 some connection with the Philadelphia press. 
 Edgar Allan Poe and James Russell Lowell 
 were editorial writers upon " Graham s Maga 
 zine," John Greenleaf Whittier edited "The 
 Pennsylvania Freeman," and Washington Irving 
 conducted " The Analectic Magazine." 
 
 Pennsylvania furnishes some curious pheno 
 mena of social history. Nowhere is there a more 
 varied commingling of nationalities: English, 
 Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, Swedes, Nor 
 wegians, Danes, 1 French, and Germans. In the 
 " Urlsperger Nachrichten " (HaUe, 1735) there 
 is a summary of this amazing variety of blood 
 1 Planted by Ole Bull in 1853. 
 
PENNSYLVANIA IN LITERATURE. 5 
 
 and creed : " Diese Stadt 1st sehr florisant. . . . 
 Es 1st hier ein Sitz von alien Religionen und 
 Secten, Luther anern, Reformirten, Bischofli- 
 chen, Presbyterianern, Catholicken, Quackern, 
 Diimplern, Meunonisten, Sabbatheriens, Sieben- 
 tagern, Separatisten, Bohmisten, Schwenkfeld- 
 ianern, Tuchtfelder, Wohlwiinscher, Juden, und 
 Heyden" 
 
 The counties lying west of the Susquehanna 
 River along the Maryland line are inhabited by 
 Germans speaking a patois made up of the 
 speech of the Rhenish palatinate and an ad 
 mixture of English words and phrases. It is a 
 dialect without a literature. The only literary 
 examples it possesses are humorous experiments 
 made by philological students. The translation 
 of " Hamlet " into Pennsylvania Dutch has been 
 made memorable by its rendering of "I am 
 thy father s ghost " into the grotesque " Ich bin 
 deim dawdy, sei spook." Henry Harbaugh in 
 " S alt Schulhaus an der Krick " has humor 
 ously portrayed the provincial life. Of genuine 
 German literature there is very little in the 
 State, but a poem by a Moravian minister in 
 Bethlehem had the honor of fixing Goethe s 
 thought for a time upon Pennsylvania and of 
 eliciting from him some remarkable verse. Pas 
 tor Gregor addressed to his daughter on her 
 eleventh birthday a poetic epistle, " Aus Bethle- 
 
6 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 hem nach Herrenhut." Its quaint language 
 and naive sentiment held the attention of Goethe, 
 who wrote a parallel to it, " Nicht am Susque- 
 hanna ; " both the original epistle and the par 
 allel are printed in volume forty-seven of the 
 1833 edition of Goethe. 1 
 
 The Scotch-Irish who were originally centred 
 about Lancaster, Paxton, and Hanover have 
 now gone farther westward. With all their 
 personal force, and good qualities as pioneers, 
 they were bare of sentiment and barren of im 
 agination ; and in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, 
 showed themselves unable to shake off their 
 sterile curse. Two only of this strain contribu 
 ted to Pennsylvanian literature : H. H. Bracken- 
 ridge of Carlisle, who wrote " Modern Chivalry," 
 the first satirical novel, and D. Bruce of Wash 
 ington County, the lonely poet of his race. 2 
 
 Southern Lancaster, Southern Chester, and 
 Delaware counties have been for two hundred 
 years occupied by English Quakers, the most 
 intelligent population in the State, and the 
 descendants for the most part of Penn s colonists. 
 The territory which they have occupied is the 
 
 1 The Susquehanna flows freely through European litera 
 ture, but nowhere more sweetly than in Nicolaus Lenau s Der 
 Indianerzug. In American poetry Dr. Caleb Harlan s El- 
 flora of the Susquehanna will be remembered. 
 
 2 Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, originally written 
 under the signature of the Scots-Irishman, Washington, 1801. 
 
PENNSYLVANIA IN LITERATURE. 7 
 
 great limestone plain extending to within twenty 
 miles of Philadelphia. It is a land of old and 
 rare beauty, of rich farms and old families. It 
 is a rolling country, perpetually diversified ; its 
 pastoral loveliness, its wooded slopes, and narrow 
 valleys continually recall the scenery of midland 
 England. The roads go curling and curving 
 along the flanks of low hills, and by the wayside 
 creep the trim hedges of osage-orange. 
 
 Men and women from woody Warwickshire 
 built the comfortable stone houses upon the fat 
 farms in this mellow land, and here they lived 
 their simple lives, morally austere, 
 
 " Seeing the sternness of life, but, alas ! overlooking 1 its graces." 
 
 Simplicity of manners, loyalty to truth, justice, 
 peace, and humanity are the virtues reverenced 
 and practiced by the Quakers. But their lives 
 were not adorned and enlarged by the refining 
 influences of the gentle arts. Their sense of 
 art was dull. They hung no pictures upon 
 their blank walls, nor listened to the touches 
 of sweet harmony. No line of beauty ever 
 disturbed the grave and stern decorum of their 
 sober meeting-houses. It is not an advantage 
 to any lover of the arts to have two t>r three 
 generations of Quaker ancestry. Bernard 
 Barton, the Quaker poet of England, before 
 he published a volume of verse, consulted with 
 
8 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Robert Southey as to the propriety of his pro 
 ject, for he feared mightily the censure of his 
 friends for devoting himself to poetry. Whit- 
 tier, when making his " Songs of Three Cen 
 turies," found it necessary to omit, though with 
 some heaviness of heart, the best and most char 
 acteristic examples of Thomas Campbell, because 
 they were battle-pieces. There were books and 
 learning among the Friends ; but the unbending 
 moral austerity, the narrow grooves in which 
 their lives ran, the repression that stamped their 
 faces and their characters, the little oddities 
 and prejudices for which they passionately con 
 tended, were an unpromising soil for literature 
 to flourish in. 
 
 About 1820 the prestige of Philadelphia as a 
 literary centre began to fade. In the periodicals 
 of that period is to be detected an accent of 
 discontent and fear, rising sometimes into a note 
 of alarm. As new lights shine out in New Eng 
 land and in New York the jealous editor of the 
 " Port-Folio " writes, " With such rivalry Phila 
 delphia must yield the proud title which she has 
 borne, or rouse from the withering lethargy in 
 which she slumbers." The conservatism that 
 was fostered by the Quaker temper, and by the 
 spirit that was alien to art, was in no small 
 measure responsible for the decline of literary 
 activity. New York was responsive to the new 
 
PENNSYLVANIA IN LITEEATUEE. 
 
 forces and influences in literature. Philadelphia 
 clung to the traditions that bore sway when the 
 colony was young. Wordsworth made Bryant, 
 and Cooper followed Scott ; Philadelphia laughed 
 at all the Goths of the romantic school, and con 
 tinued to draw her poetry from Pope and her 
 prose from Addison. " William Wordsworth," 
 said the " Port-Folio " in 1809, " stands among 
 the foremost of those English bards who have 
 mistaken silliness for simplicity, and with a false 
 and affected taste filled their papers with the 
 language of children and clowns." 1 
 
 The resistance to new ideas which William 
 Cliffton at the time of Jay s treaty had lamented 
 as one of the characteristics of Pennsylvania, 
 and which had become more pronounced after 
 the disappearance of the foreign society from 
 Philadelphia, would have been enough in itself 
 to chill the literary spirit and to bring to nothing 
 its endeavor, but the passing of the sceptre was 
 greatly accelerated by the opening in 1825 of 
 the Erie Canal and the settlement of the West by 
 way of New York. 
 
 It is interesting to note that at this time, when 
 
 1 At a later period, indeed, Henry Reed was the ablest inter 
 preter of Wordsworth, and George Allen the most learned 
 disciple of Coleridge, but the former was too soon lost in the 
 wreck of the Arctic, and the genius of the latter was rather 
 critical than creative, and his influence chiefly pedagogic and 
 theological. 
 
10 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 the feuilletonists were in despair for Pennsyl 
 vania, four of the chief poets of the State, in 
 four successive years, were born : T. Buchanan 
 Read, in Chester County, in 1822, George Henry 
 Boker, in Philadelphia, in 1823, Charles Godfrey 
 Leland, in Philadelphia, in 1824, and Bayard 
 Taylor, in Chester County, in 1825. 
 
 Bayard Taylor s faith and discipline were 
 rooted in Quaker reason and practice. But he 
 was German as well as English, and the Teu 
 tonic strain saved him from the icy current and 
 compulsive course to which his surroundings 
 seemed to consign him. 
 
 " Was it my fault, if a strain of the distant and dead generations 
 Rose in my being, renewed, and made me other than these are? 
 Purer, perhaps, their habit of law than the freedom they 
 
 shrink from ; 
 
 So, restricted by will, a little indulgence is riot. 
 They, content with the glow of a carefully tempered twilight, 
 Measured pulses of joy, and colorless growth of the senses, 
 Stand aghast at my dream of the sun, and the sound, and the 
 
 splendor ! 
 
 Mine it is, and remains, resenting the threat of suppression, 
 Stubbornly shaping my life, and feeding with fragments its 
 
 hunger, 
 
 Drifted from Attican hills to stray on a Scythian level, 
 So unto me it appears, unto them a perversion and scandal." 
 
 Bayard Taylor s life is so closely interwoven 
 with the social conditions of Pennsylvania that 
 the foregoing brief recital of his racial and cul 
 tural surroundings seems indispensable to a 
 
PENNSYLVANIA IN LITEEATUEE. l 
 
 proper appreciation or interpretation. That he 
 was allied by kindred blood to Pastor Gregor s 
 people is the explanation of the Goethe studies, 
 the translation of " Faust," and the ministry to 
 Germany. Without the inherited conservatism, 
 energy, and thrift of the Cheshire Taylors and 
 Wiltshire Mendenhalls he never would have 
 built Cedarcroft, nor taken the wind of the 
 world in all its moods. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE. 
 
 1825-1847. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR was just as old as the rail 
 way. He was born at Kennett Square, Ches 
 ter County, Pennsylvania, in a two-story stone 
 house, not now standing, on the eleventh of Jan 
 uary, 1825, " the year when the first locomotive 
 successfully performed its trial trip." 
 
 His father, Joseph Taylor, was a direct de 
 scendant in the sixth generation of Robert 
 Taylor of Little Leigh, Cheshire, who came 
 over with William Penn, and settled near the 
 Brandywine Creek. The family lived obedient 
 to Quaker principles until Bayard s grandfather, 
 John Taylor, married Ann Bucher, daughter of 
 Christian Bucher, a Swiss Mennonite of Lan 
 caster County, and granddaughter of Melchior 
 Breneman, a Mennonite minister whose grand 
 father came from Switzerland in the Mennonite 
 emigration of 1709, and took up a large tract 
 of land south of the present city of Lancaster. 
 For refusing to say that he was sorry for his 
 
EARLY LIFE. 13 
 
 runaway love match, John Taylor was expelled 
 from meeting. 
 
 A second strain of German blood Bayard 
 Taylor inherited from his grandmother on the 
 mother s side, who was of South German or 
 East Switzerland origin. To this infusion of a 
 foreign element Taylor refers in " The Palm 
 and the Pine:" 
 
 " For, as a fountain disappears, 
 To gush again in later years, 
 
 " So hidden blood may find the day, 
 When centuries have rolled away; 
 
 " And fresher lives betray at last 
 The lineage of a far-off Past. 
 
 " That nature, mixed of sun and snow, 
 Repeats its ancient ebb and flow : 
 
 " The children of the Palm and Pine 
 Renew their blended lives in mine." 
 
 Doubtless to his German stock was due the 
 strong attraction that Teutonic studies had for 
 him, and to it he was wont to trace his " Lust 
 zu fabuliren." 
 
 Joseph Taylor and Rebecca Way were mar 
 ried in Brandywine Township, October 15, 1818. 
 Bayard Taylor was the fourth child of this 
 marriage, and the first to outlive infancy. 
 Through his mother, who was a granddaughter 
 
14 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 of Kebecca (Mendenhall) Way, he was related 
 to the ancient family of the Mendenhalls whose 
 ancestral home was the manor of Mildenhall 
 in Wiltshire. Benjamin Mendenhall came to 
 Pennsylvania with William Penn, and settled at 
 Concord, in what is now Delaware County. His 
 daughter Anne became the second wife of John 
 Bartram, whom Linnaeus cited as the greatest 
 natural botanist in the world. 
 
 Although Joseph Taylor was not a member 
 of the Society of Friends, his children were in 
 structed in Quaker manners and beliefs, and 
 upon Quaker principles the steadfast faith and 
 simple morals of Bayard Taylor rested. His 
 mother s earnest teaching of non-resistance and 
 the sin of swearing had its legitimate fruit in 
 " the chastity of temperate blood " and " the set 
 tled faith that nothing shakes." Once, after a 
 homily upon swearing, the lad was seized with 
 such a desire to swear that he went forth alone 
 into a field, and there " snatched a fearful joy " 
 by cleansing his stuffed bosom of all the peril 
 ous oaths he had ever heard. The childish 
 mutiny was a portent of his future rebellion 
 against the " pious Quaker repression " of which 
 he speaks in " Home Pastorals." 
 
 " Weary am I with all this preaching- the force of example, 
 Painful duty to self, and painfuller still to one s neighbor, 
 Moral shibboleths, dinned in one s ears with slavering 1 unction, 
 Till, for the sake of a change, profanity loses its terrors." 
 
EARLY LIFE. 15 
 
 Out of admiration for Senator James A. 
 Bayard of Delaware, Joseph and Rebecca Tay 
 lor gave his chivalric and poetic name to their 
 son, who in his youth wrote his name J. Bayard 
 Taylor, but a few years after coming of age 
 wisely discarded the first initial. The family 
 moved in 1829 to a farm which was a part of 
 the original land-grant made to Robert Taylor 
 by William Penn ; it was in East Marlborough 
 Township, one mile from Kennett Square. 
 Humble means and fresh country air are per 
 haps the most fortunate endowments of young 
 genius, and to the free and active life of Hazel- 
 dell Farm Bayard Taylor was indebted for the 
 robust health that enabled him to carry forward 
 his great burden of tasks, and for the buoyant 
 spirits that made him, like a holy witch, en 
 chant societies unto him. 
 
 If his childhood was remarkable for anything, 
 it was for a roving disposition that led him 
 to strange explorations, and for a fondness for 
 making collections from nature. " Almost my 
 first recollection," he wrote in " At Home and 
 Abroad," "is of a swamp, into which I went 
 bare-legged at morning, and out of which I 
 came, when driven by hunger, with long stock 
 ings of black mud, and a mask of the same. . . 
 The treasures I there collected were black terra 
 pins with orange spots, baby frogs the size of a 
 
16 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 chestnut, thrushes eggs, and stems of purple 
 phlox." As a lad of fourteen he rose to the 
 higher dignity of making a mineralogical collec 
 tion and a herbarium. 
 
 He learned to read when he was four years 
 old, and the passion for books that began with 
 "Captain Riley s Narrative," and "Peter Par 
 ley," and Scott s poetry, and Gibbon s " Rome," 
 and was whetted by the two hundred volumes of 
 the Kennett library, passed almost instantly and 
 imperceptibly into the enthusiasm for author 
 ship. He was seven years of age when he wrote 
 his first poems, and added them to the neat 
 copies that he had made of Scott and Campbell. 
 When the news of Byron s death reached Eng 
 land, Tennyson, then a lad of fifteen, crept 
 away into a lonely glen of Lincolnshire, and in 
 the bitterness of grief carved upon a rock, " By 
 ron is dead ! " A like passion for literature and 
 for men of letters possessed the boy Taylor, and 
 among his earliest memories the deaths, in 1832, 
 of Goethe and Scott held high and sacred place. 
 His fondness for books and reading and his 
 dislike of the farm labor brought him at times 
 beneath his father s frown. Hawthorne at 
 Brook Farm, with a shiver of disgust, said that 
 he had expected to live in Arcady and found 
 himself up to the chin in a barnyard ; in like 
 manner Taylor s delicately adjusted nervous or- 
 
EARLY LIFE. 17 
 
 ganization shrank from the coarse and homely 
 duties of the garden and the field, and his mo 
 ther had frequently to screen him by employing 
 him to ply some light task within the house. 
 He worked industriously at many things, some 
 times drying and selling lobelia and sumac, in 
 order to obtain pocket money whereby to in 
 crease his little store of books. 
 
 One of the distressful strokes his youth suf 
 fered was on the day that it became his duty to 
 ride to the mill and to bring home the heavy 
 flour bags which would persist in falling off, 
 whereupon he would sit in mute despair beside 
 the giant sacks and await the coming of a 
 stronger arm. He was, withal, full of fun and 
 mischief. The tricks and pranks of Joe and 
 Jake Fairthorn in "The Story of Kennett" are 
 Taylor s recollections of his own boyhood, as 
 when he frightened the old Swiss servant, Vic- 
 torine, into shrieking " Christus, Marie, und 
 Joseph ! " by his horrified report of his brother s 
 imaginary fall from the big cherry-tree (" Story 
 of Kennett," p. 51). 
 
 Pie was sent in his sixth year to a dame s 
 school kept by Ruth Anne Chambers. It was 
 a little log schoolhouse with a chestnut grove 
 behind it. " His way thither was through a 
 lonely meadow on his father s farm, and a piece 
 of woodland." He retained an abiding recol- 
 
18 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 lection of the terrors he felt in running in the 
 darkness of the wood and fearfully listening to 
 the rush of the wind. Wordsworth s " Wan 
 derer " at like age had 
 
 " Traveled through the woods with no one near 
 To whom he might confess the things he saw." 
 
 And so the foundations of Taylor s mind were 
 laid: 
 
 " In such communion not from terror free, 
 While yet a child, and long before his time 
 Had he perceived the presence and the power 
 Of greatness." 
 
 Another school to which he was put was on 
 the Toughkenamon road, a locality afterwards 
 celebrated in "The Story of Kennett," and 
 was kept by Samuel Martin. The love of color 
 which later was to light up his pictures of tropi 
 cal scenery then found its juvenile expression in 
 drawing and painting. He illustrated his verse- 
 book in colors, and made drawings of " Byron s 
 Dream " and other poetic rhapsodies. When 
 he came to write " The Picture of St. John," 
 and dedicated the work to the artists he had 
 known, he expressed, in rather juvenile verse, a 
 half regret for this untraveled roadway in his 
 life. 
 
 " And though some sportive nymph the channel turned 
 And led to other fields mine infant rill, 
 The sense df fancied destination still 
 Leaps in its waves, and will not be unlearned. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 19 
 
 I charge not Fate with having 1 done me wrong ; 
 Much hath she granted, though so much was spurned ; 
 But leave the keys of Color silent long, 
 And pour my being through the stops of song." 
 
 So genuine was this instinct for art, that in 
 1839 he addressed a letter to the distinguished 
 engraver, Mr. John Sartain, asking to be re 
 ceived as an apprentice; and the impulse to 
 painting, in 1840, was as strong with him as it 
 had been with Allston and with Read. 
 
 Joseph Taylor was elected sheriff of Chester 
 County in 1837, and the family for the three 
 years following resided at West Chester, where 
 Bayard went to Bolmar s Academy. Dr. 
 Thomas Dunn English of Philadelphia, at that 
 time unknown as an author, and newly gradu 
 ated from the medical school of the University 
 of Pennsylvania, lectured in West Chester in 
 the summer of 1839 upon phrenology. The 
 Quaker with his " inward light " and openness 
 to all spiritual influences listened attentively to 
 the presentation of the theories of Mesmer, and 
 of Gall, and Spurzheim. The morning after 
 the lecture Dr. English, at the invitation of his 
 friend and fellow-alumnus, Dr. Hartman, who 
 later acquired fame as a conchologist, visited 
 the jail and greatly amused Sheriff Taylor by 
 examining the formation of heads and casting 
 characters and dispositions. " After it was 
 
20 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 through " (writes Dr. English to me in a letter 
 of December 14, 1894), " we passed into the 
 office. There was a lank, long-legged, half -grown 
 boy seated on a high stool, and the sheriff said, 
 There is my son ; what do you think of him ? 
 I propose to make a farmer out of him. Do you 
 think he is fitted for it ? I took a glance at 
 the head, which was a very marked one, and 
 said, You will never make a farmer of him 
 to any great extent : you will never keep him 
 home ; that boy will ramble around the world, 
 and furthermore, he has all the marks of a 
 poet. At this the sheriff laughed immensely. 
 The sheriff s name was Taylor, and this was his 
 son Bayard, afterwards traveler, poet, and min 
 ister to Berlin." This story was first told in 
 the West Chester local paper by Dr. W. D. 
 Hartman, who is the -original of the old physi 
 cian in " Joseph and his Friend." Bayard was 
 at this time fourteen years old, and Dr. Eng 
 lish had curiously divined the two controlling 
 instincts of his life. Already his reading had 
 taken two directions, and poetry and travels 
 were eagerly sought after. From his seventh 
 year he composed poetry, mostly by way of im 
 itation, and in 1841 a " Soliloquy of a Young 
 Poet," his first published poem, appeared in 
 the " Saturday Evening Post." When he was 
 seventeen lie was enthusiastic over Bryant, and 
 
EAELY LIFE. 21 
 
 Longfellow, and Whittier, and Lowell, "all 
 Americans, you know," he wrote to J. B. Phil 
 lips, and he felt the greatest sorrow at the 
 death of Channing (1842), u as much so, per 
 haps, as if he were a near and dear friend." His 
 earliest prose themes were travels, or at least 
 descriptions of foreign and romantic scenes. 
 His schoolfellows ridiculed him for his dreams 
 of travel. George Macdonald represents one 
 of his heroes, a wanderer in the world, as pos 
 sessed with the instinctive desire to climb to the 
 summits of the highest hills and to the top of 
 tallest steeples to look abroad over wide stretches 
 of country. The same passion was in Taylor 
 from childhood. He wrote in " At Home and 
 Abroad : " "In looking back to my childhood I 
 can recall the intensest desire to climb upward, 
 so that without shifting the circle of my horizon, 
 I could yet extend it, and take in a far wider 
 sweep of vision. I envied every bird that sat 
 swinging upon the topmost bough of the great 
 century-old cherry-tree ; the weathercock on our 
 barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region 
 of the air ; and to rise from the earth in a bal 
 loon was a bliss which I would almost have 
 given my life to enjoy." 
 
 Shortly before the sheriff s term of service 
 expired and the family returned to Kennett, 
 Bayard Taylor was sent (1839-40) to Unionville 
 
22 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Academy, where he received the last of his 
 schooling. Union ville is an interesting village 
 of three hundred inhabitants, built upon high 
 banks along the State Road, a highway that con 
 tinues the Lancaster Pike from Philadelphia to 
 Oxford. The little houses with porches and 
 round pillars are completely embowered in trees. 
 At the east end of the town stands the ivy-cov 
 ered house of Martha Deane celebrated in " The 
 Story of Kennett." At the opposite end is the 
 schoolhouse, now enlarged and translated into 
 a high school, where fifty years ago Jonathan 
 Gause bore his mild sway; and in its new bel 
 fry swings the old bell that rang when Taylor 
 was a student, and whose clear tones can be 
 heard on favorable days in Kennett, four miles 
 away. In 1840 Union ville was a bustling place. 
 It was an important cattle-market ; often a 
 thousand head of cattle were sold in a day. 
 Bayard Taylor while a student must have seen 
 the great cattle from the Western Reserve and 
 the small kine from Maryland driven into the 
 town ; and among the drovers from a West 
 Virginian farm he may have seen a tall spare 
 youth, one year his senior, who was destined to 
 win high fame in American history and to bear 
 the name of " Stonewall " Jackson. 
 
 Jonathan Gause was thorough in his methods, 
 and successful in his teaching. From his 
 
EAELY LIFE. 23 
 
 Academy Dr. Isaac Hayes, the arctic explorer, 
 was graduated, and among Taylor s fellow 
 students were John Smith Futhey and R. E. 
 Monaghan, both of whom became prominent in 
 good works in Chester County. 
 
 These three friends made a tramp trip, April 
 5, 1840, from Union ville to the battlefield of 
 the Brandywine. It was the first of Taylor s 
 travels, and the account of it which appeared in 
 the same year in the " West Chester Register " 
 was his first publication. At this time he was 
 studying Latin and French and conning such 
 native Chester County text-books as Lewis s 
 Algebra and Gummere s Surveying. German 
 he had already in part acquired from Wieland s 
 " Oberon," and from his grandmother and the 
 Swiss servant of the family. 
 
 His verbal memory and his facility in rhymes 
 were chiefly noticeable. Gause applauded his 
 quickness, and set him upon memorizing poems 
 and orations, which he accomplished in an aston 
 ishingly short time. His memory was not only 
 quick but tenacious, and the poems committed 
 in childhood remained with him through life. 
 Indeed, as was the case with Macaulay, the 
 retentiveness of his memory was not always a 
 blessing, for it was as indiscriminate in its appro 
 priations as it was unyielding in its grasp. He 
 was forever composing acrostics on his fellow 
 
24 BAYABD TAYLOR. 
 
 students and caricaturing them in rhymes and 
 in drawings, and this pert and nimble spirit of 
 mirth continued with him through life, prompt 
 ing him to innocent mischief and making him 
 the sunniest companion in every social group. 
 He was well aware that he had no prospect of 
 collegiate education, and he made the most of 
 his time at Union ville. His restless intellect 
 was supported by abundant physical health. 
 He enjoyed the raptures of intellectual excite 
 ment. He was thrilled with the aspirations 
 which his reading kindled ; and the great world 
 of literature stood before him, the paradise 
 of his constant endeavor. He addressed a let 
 ter to Charles Dickens which brought an auto 
 graph reply, and in consequence the lad was 
 caught up into the seventh heaven of ecstasy. 
 " I can long recollect the thrill of pleasure I ex 
 perienced on seeing the autograph of one whose 
 writings I so ardently admired and to whom, in 
 spirit, I felt myself attached ; and it was not 
 without a feeling of ambition that I looked upon 
 it that as he, an humble clerk, had risen to be 
 the guest of a mighty nation, so I, an humble 
 pedagogue, might, by unremitted and arduous 
 intellectual and moral exertion, become a light, 
 a star, among the names of my country. May 
 it be ! " 
 
 No doubt when he came to write " John God- 
 
EAELY LIFE. 25 
 
 frey s Fortunes," which is more than " a story 
 of American life," as he calls it, for it is really 
 a fragment of his autobiography, he reverted in 
 affectionate memory to those early thrills and 
 aspirations when the world of letters was the 
 ideal world, and authors occupied sacred places 
 in his rapt Pantheon. It is of the publication of 
 his first poem in the " Saturday Evening Post " 
 of Philadelphia, when he was sixteen years of 
 age, that he is thinking when he makes John 
 Godfrey say : " My intention had been to de 
 liver the letter at the office of the paper as if I 
 had been simply its bearer and not its author. 
 But after I had mounted two dark steep flights 
 of steps, and found myself before the door, 
 my courage failed me. I heard voices within : 
 there were several persons, then. They would 
 be certain to look at me sharply to notice my 
 agitation perhaps to question me about the 
 letter. While I was standing thus, twisting and 
 turning it in my hand, in a veritable perspi 
 ration from excitement, I heard footsteps de 
 scending from an upper story. Desperate and 
 panic-stricken, I laid the letter hastily on the 
 floor, at the door of the office, and rushed down 
 to the street as rapidly and silently as possible. 
 Without looking around, I walked up Chestnut 
 Street with a fearful impression that somebody 
 was following me, and, turning the corner of 
 
26 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Fourth, began to read the titles of the books in 
 Hart s window. Five minutes having elapsed, 
 I knew that I was not discovered, and recovered 
 my composure, though, now that the poem had 
 gone out of my hands, I would have given any 
 thing to get it back again. 
 
 " When the next number of the paper arrived, 
 I tore off the wrapper with trembling fingers 
 and turned to the fateful column on the second 
 page. But I might as well have postponed my 
 excitement: there was no notice of the poem. 
 Perhaps they had never received the letter 
 perhaps it had been trodden upon and defaced, 
 and swept down stairs by the office boy ! These 
 were, at least, consoling possibilities, better 
 that than to be contemptuously ignored. By the 
 following week my fever was nearly over, and 
 I opened the paper with but a faint expecta 
 tion of finding anything ; but lo ! there it was 
 4 Selim at the very head of the announcements ! 
 These were the precious words : We are obliged 
 to " Selim " for his poem, which we shall pub 
 lish shortly. It shows the hand of youth, but 
 evinces a flattering promise. Let him trim the 
 midnight lamp with diligence. 
 
 " If the sinking sun had wheeled about and 
 gone up the western sky, or the budding trees 
 had snapped into full leaf in five minutes, I don t 
 believe it would have astonished me. I was on 
 
EARLY LIFE. 27 
 
 my way home from the post-office when I read 
 the lines, and I remember turning out of Penn 
 Street to go by a more secluded and circuitous 
 way, lest I should be tempted to cut a pigeon- 
 wing on the pavement in the sight of the multi 
 tude. I passed a little brick building, with a tin 
 sign on the shutter, 4 D. J. Mulford, Attorney 
 at Law. l Pooh ! I said to myself ; 4 what s 
 D. J. Mulford ? He never published a poem in 
 his life ! As I caught a glimpse of his head, 
 silhouetted against the back window, I found 
 myself, nevertheless, rather inclined to pity him 
 for being; unconscious that the author of The 
 
 O 
 
 Unknown Bard was at that moment passing 
 his door." l 
 
 While he thus lived in fantasy, and dreamed 
 great dreams, his connection with Unionville, as 
 student and as tutor, ceased (March 26, 1842), 
 and he went back to the farm. Upon his right 
 hand, as he journeyed away from the place where 
 the eager currents of his young life had been 
 restrained, lay the farm to which he was later 
 to give literary interest by his ballad of " John 
 Reed." And perhaps, enthusiastic as he was, 
 had he stopped to ponder upon the coming years 
 he would have anticipated the sad strain of the 
 ballad : - 
 
 1 Bayard Taylor s poem The Nameless Bard was published 
 in Graham s Magazine, August, 1843. 
 

 
 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 " It s the hankering after a life that you never have learned to 
 
 know, 
 
 It s the discontent with a life that is always thus and so ; 
 It s the wondering what we are, and where we are going to go." 
 
 He remained at home but a few weeks. He 
 was no better satisfied than he had been in child 
 hood with the labor of the farm, and his father 
 consented to apprentice him for four years to 
 Henry S. Evans, printer, in West Chester. In 
 May he began his new life as a compositor in the 
 " Village Record " office, and boarded with the 
 other apprentices in Henry Evans s house upon 
 the Strasburgh road. There was culture in 
 West Chester and there were libraries. The 
 intellectual curiosity of the people was rather 
 toward science than literature. The study of 
 plants and shells and minerals was placed higher 
 than the gift of graceful expression. The lad 
 who was helped with his herbarium and his min 
 eral cabinet was discouraged from poetry and 
 romance. The severe practicality of the Penn- 
 sylvanians, both English and German, led to the 
 achievements of Humphrey Marshall and Gott- 
 hilf Muhlenberg, the Bartrams and the Dar- 
 lingtons, and in our own day has awarded the 
 highest scientific honors to the Pennsylvania 
 German Dr. Leidy, and the English Pennsylva- 
 nians Cope and Brinton. 
 
 " The Village Record " was a good school. 
 
EABLY LIFE. 29 
 
 It had a literary tradition. Its former editor, 
 Charles Miner, who wrote the history of Wyo 
 ming, had been gifted with some sense of literary 
 form and perspective, and he had given charac 
 ter and quality to the articles in his paper. 
 Many of Taylor s fellows in apprenticeship have 
 filled places of use and of renown. They are 
 editors and jurists, and one has been chief 
 justice of the State. 
 
 As a lad of seventeen Taylor was six feet in 
 height, straight, athletic, full of life, with dark 
 brown eyes and hair. He was full of magnetism 
 to his finger tips. Mesmerism reached West 
 Chester in his adolescence and he was singu 
 larly successful in his experiments with it. This 
 personal fascination never entirely left him. 
 A subtle influence went forth from him that at 
 tracted men to him, and stole their hearts away. 
 Upon the Nile the boatmen followed him with 
 their eyes, and were prompt to render him, with 
 out thought of reward, any service in their way. 
 He tells in " Views Afoot " the pretty story of 
 a child who broke from its playmates and their 
 game to run across the street and catch his hand 
 and look up with a trusting smile into his hand 
 some face. 
 
 While in West Chester he read Herder, in 
 German, with Miss Evans ; and resumed his 
 studies in Spanish with Mrs. Evans and with 
 
30 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 Canizares, a Spaniard. With* William Butler, 
 now a judge of the United States District Court 
 and Morris Ingram, a former school-fellow at 
 Unionville, he organized a society called " The 
 Thespians," and they gave recitations and dra 
 matic performances in the Odd Fellows Hall 
 over the " Record " office. 
 
 Some verses that he had contributed to the 
 " Saturday Evening Post," particularly the 
 lines " To the Brandywine," brought him to 
 the notice of Rufus W. Griswold, then editor 
 of " Graham s Magazine " and who had just 
 published his " Poets and Poetry of America." 
 Griswold was a power in those days, and his favor 
 was anxiously solicited by young writers, and his 
 countenance coveted by older ones. His circle 
 of acquaintance included all the literati of the 
 country, and his arrogant air made his little 
 literature seem stately and imposing. " Ruffian 
 Griswold " those called him who had felt the 
 weight of his disapproval, but to many who in 
 evident sincerity solicited his aid he extended a 
 helping hand. " Graham s Magazine " was made 
 by George R. Graham in 1841 by a combination 
 of Atkinson s " Casket " and Burton s " Gen 
 tleman s Magazine." Its " canonized bead- 
 roll " contained the names of nearly all the 
 well-known writers of the country. Cooper 
 and Poe, Longfellow and Hawthorne were con- 
 
EARLY LIFE. 31 
 
 stant contributors ; and the names of " Fanny 
 Forester," Alice and Phoebe Gary, " Grace 
 Greenwood," Frances S. Osgood, N. P. Willis, 
 James K. Paulding, Park Benjamin, Charles 
 Fenno Hoffman, Alfred B. Street, and Albert 
 Pike figured frequently upon its covers. Wash 
 ington Irving alone, wholly occupied with the 
 " Knickerbocker Magazine," had no connection 
 with " Graham s." 
 
 Into this choice companionship of literary 
 names Taylor was admitted through the kindly 
 interest of Griswold, and, encouraged by the 
 Philadelphia autocrat, he began to cherish 
 "hopes of occupying at some future day a 
 respectable station among our country s poets." 
 Griswold strongly advised him to publish a 
 poetic romance that he had been engaged upon 
 for a considerable time, together with other of 
 his poems, in a volume. Mistrusting his own 
 inclination and judgment, Taylor, with his cus 
 tomary candor, submitted his verses to a few 
 trusted friends ; and as no serious attempt was 
 made to dissuade him from an enterprise which, 
 however, did not promise any particular gain or 
 benefit, he began to solicit subscriptions, and 
 early in February, 1844, appeared " Ximena ; 
 | or | The Battle of the Sierra Morena, | and | 
 other Poems, | By James Bayard Taylor. | I 
 am a Youthful Traveler in the Way. Henry 
 
32 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Kirk White | Philadelphia : | Herman Hooker, 
 178 Chesnut Street | MDCCCXLIV. | 
 
 It was dedicated to Rufus W. Griswold, "As 
 an expression of gratitude for the kind encour 
 agement he has shown the author." Bryant had 
 published " The Embargo " when fourteen years 
 of age, and a few other American poets had 
 lisped in numbers more or less musical, but the 
 firmament was not then crowded with literary 
 lights, and it was a thing more unusual than 
 now for a lad of nineteen to send forth a volume 
 of verse. It brought him some pleasant letters 
 and a little money, and gave him in popular 
 repute a place among the poets. 
 
 Never did youth entertain fairer visions of 
 fame than were the possession at this time of 
 this West Chester lad ; never did man have 
 higher and more abstracted ambition ; never did 
 a generous and gentle nature pant more eagerly 
 for recognition and for sympathy. Upon the 
 fly-leaf of a copy of " Ximena " presented to 
 Lowell, as of one presented to Longfellow, are 
 the words, " From his stranger-friend, J. Bayard 
 Taylor." The letter that accompanied the pre 
 sentation to Lowell read : "Will you receive the 
 offering of a bard unknown to you, as a small 
 return for the spiritual enjoyment you have 
 given him ? I am but a youth, and have a life 
 of toil before me, and whenever I weary of my 
 
EAELY LIFE. 33 
 
 burden, the voice of the Poet, prophet-like, bids 
 me 4 suffer and be strong. I dare not as yet 
 call myself a Brother-Bard ; but I send you the 
 first breathings of my soul, with the ardent 
 hope they will find a response in your own." 
 
 It was a boy s letter, and the book was a boy s 
 book. Too early publication is always a vain 
 regret. Taylor in after years repudiated the 
 fifteen poems that constituted the little volume, 
 and wished them forgotten. There are constant 
 recollections in them of the author s reading ; 
 and to the faint lyrical faculty that he already 
 displayed is superadded a very evident affection 
 for the manner of Scott, and Byron, and Moore, 
 and Mrs. Hemans. It is interesting to note the 
 boy Taylor looking about him for the subjects 
 of his song. He does not sigh his breath in 
 foreign clouds, nor celebrate the skylark or the 
 bulbul. He knows his native grounds and 
 loves them, and he writes poems upon Pennsyl 
 vania and Catskill and indites verses " To the 
 Brandywine." 1 
 
 1 It has hitherto passed without notice that the earliest pub 
 lication by T. Buchanan Bead was a novel whose persons and 
 places are all to be found between Philadelphia and Lancaster. 
 It is Paul Redding: A Tale of the Brandywine, printed in 
 Boston in 1845. Read ripples into verse amid his narrative 
 when he praises 
 
 " The bright, the laughing Brandywine 
 That dallies with ita hundred mills." 
 
34 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " Ximena " was published not all so much 
 for fame, as for another close intent which 
 Taylor meant to reach unto. His reading had 
 "clothed foreign countries with a splendid at 
 mosphere of poetry and art." The longing for 
 travel in those realms of gold began with his 
 acquaintance at ten years with Willis s " Pen- 
 cillings by the Way." The longing became 
 a steadfast resolve with the reading of " Hype 
 rion." The doubts created by those to whom 
 he applied for information, and who named pro 
 hibitory sums as the inevitable expenses of the 
 journey, were dissipated by Howitt s " Rural 
 Life in Germany," which confirmed him in his 
 belief that the journey might be made very 
 cheaply on foot. 
 
 Still it seemed impossible* to procure the 
 money that was necessary. The project ap 
 peared to his friends and neighbors wild and 
 visionary. He realized and resented the repres 
 sion of all that was dearest to him so inev 
 itable in the community which surrounded him. 
 When he reflected upon the impossibility of sat 
 isfying his ambition at home, he said that he 
 felt as if he were sitting in an exhausted re 
 ceiver while the air which should nourish his 
 spiritual life could only be found in distant 
 lands. While he was negotiating for the publi 
 cation of " Ximena " he frequently walked the 
 
EARLY LIFE. 35 
 
 thirty miles from Kennett to Philadelphia, and 
 in these lonely walks he was occupied in fancy 
 with the strong conflict between his desire to 
 travel abroad into the world, and the affection 
 and sense of duty to which his friends and 
 family appealed to hold him still within the 
 narrow life of home. Concerning one of these 
 occasions he wrote to his friend Phillips : " I 
 sat down by the roadside, for it was then dark, 
 and looking to heaven through my blinding 
 tears, fervently prayed for strength of spirit to 
 sustain me in my conflict with the world. And 
 the struggle in my breast ceased, and I felt 
 that the path which was to lead me onward and 
 upward was that which was the desire of my 
 soul." His first step was to buy the remainder 
 of his apprenticeship time from Mr. Evans. 
 Two weeks before the day fixed upon for leav 
 ing home he had secured no employment and 
 did not possess a dollar toward his outfit. He 
 then walked to Philadelphia, and spent two or 
 three days calling upon the principal editors 
 and publishers of the city. " At last " (he 
 wrote in the introductory chapter to " Views 
 Afoot"), "when I was about to return home, 
 not in despair, but in a state of wonder as to 
 where my funds would come from (for I felt 
 certain they would come), Mr. Patterson, at 
 that time publisher of the 4 Saturday Evening 
 
36 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Post, offered me fifty dollars in advance for 
 twelve letters, with the promise of continuing 
 the engagement, if the letters should be satis 
 factory. The Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, editor 
 of the 4 United States Gazette, then made me 
 a similar offer." Mr. Graham paid with his 
 wonted liberality for some manuscript poems, 
 and the delighted boy returned in triumph to 
 Kennett with a fund of one hundred and forty 
 dollars. He was entirely ignorant of the pro 
 ceedings necessary to procure a passport, and 
 supposed he was obliged to report himself at 
 the national capital. Accordingly he and his 
 cousin, Franklin Taylor, set forth for Wash 
 ington, a distance of one hundred miles. They 
 walked to Port Deposit, on the Susquehanna 
 River, and proceeded by boat to Baltimore. 
 
 In the night, finding every tavern closed and 
 silent, they walked the remaining forty miles 
 of their journey, tormented by raging thirst, 
 " forced to drink from ditches and standing 
 pools, closing our teeth to keep out the tadpoles 
 and water-beetles." Dusty, footsore, and faint, 
 they trudged along Pennsylvania Avenue, seek 
 ing the boarding-house where the member of 
 congress from their district lodged. Taylor 
 always declared that he never recalled that 
 night walk without " a strange reflected sense 
 of pain." The young travelers were presented 
 
EARLY LIFE. 37 
 
 to Mr. Calhoun, and Taylor felt honored in 
 taking the hand of John Quincy Adams, and 
 hearing a few words of encouragement from his 
 lips. Bayard was the youngest of " the three 
 wise men of Kennett " who were now about to 
 set forth for distant lands. The others were 
 his cousin, Franklin Taylor, and Barclay Pen- 
 nock. The former had sought out the men of 
 ripest scholarship and strongest personality in 
 New England to study under, and was now go 
 ing to complete his education in Germany. He 
 became a successful teacher and eloquent lec 
 turer, and president of the Philadelphia Cen 
 tral High School. Pennock is remembered for 
 his Scandinavian studies, and his translation of 
 Keyser s " Religion of the Northmen." 
 
 Armed at last with money and with pass 
 ports, and with light hand-baggage, " French 
 and German grammars, a portfolio, and a few 
 shirts," - the three friends, at the end of June, 
 1844, went to New York by the cheapest route, 
 to sail for England. Bayard Taylor called 
 upon N. P. Willis, who received him with gentle 
 courtesy and gave him a letter to his brother, 
 Richard Storrs Willis, who was studying music 
 in Frankfurt, Germany. This interview, from 
 which Bayard Taylor departed with a heart 
 full of gratitude and a mind filled with enthusi 
 asm for his new acquaintance, was an import- 
 
BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 ant one in Taylor s life, though he did not yet 
 know it. Willis s hand was to give the genius 
 of Taylor to the literary world. As Taylor ex 
 pressed a desire to make further engagements 
 with publishers, Willis gave him a general note 
 of introduction a roving commission which 
 was calculated to serve his turn and to further 
 his interests with any of the leading journals ; 
 but he was unsuccessful in making more than 
 a conditional engagement with Horace Greeley 
 to furnish sketches of German life and society 
 for the " New York Tribune." In 1844 it was 
 a considerably greater undertaking to cross the 
 ocean than in these times, when we have devel 
 oped a class of highly civilized beings who keep 
 hopping back and forth across the Atlantic. 
 
 In the second cabin of the Oxford, " flanked 
 with bales of cotton and fitted with temporary 
 berths of rough planks," for which accommo 
 dation and the privilege of finding their own 
 bedding and provision the travelers paid ten 
 dollars apiece, they left New York on the 1st 
 of July, bound for Liverpool. On the 26th, 
 at sunrise, the Old World dawned upon their 
 view. Taylor gazed with keen excitement upon 
 the scenes his earliest dreams had dwelt upon. 
 His enthusiasm he cast in incoherent words 
 into his diary and his letters. Soon he would 
 enjoy the loveliness that is in English scenery, 
 
EABLY LIFE. 39 
 
 and the sweetness that is in English civiliza 
 tion. This first trip to Europe meant so much 
 for him that it demands recognition in how 
 ever brief a biography. For him it was no 
 heedless scamper across a continent, nor guide 
 book pilgrimage to cathedrals and castles. It 
 was no midsummer holiday minted in a golden 
 mood. It was his university education. For 
 two years he wandered, " a pensive but un 
 wearied pilgrim," through the lands of Europe, 
 augmenting his experience and his knowledge 
 in art galleries and in streets, and reveling in 
 what of culture was accessible to him with an 
 intensity of delight of which no thorny point of 
 penury and sheer distress could rob him. 
 
 Instead of going directly to London the trav 
 elers made an excursion to the Giants Cause 
 way, and then went from Port Rush to Green- 
 ock for a run through Scotland. They climbed 
 Ben Lomond and were present at Ayr on the 
 occasion of the Burns festival, and saw the sons 
 of Burns, Professor Wilson, Alison the histo 
 rian, and Mrs. S. C. Hall. In London Taylor 
 at first found lodgings in Whitechapel bare 
 rooms and questionable beds for a shilling 
 a day, but soon shifted his quarters to the Aid- 
 gate coffee-house, " where the terms were equally 
 cheap and the society a very little better." 
 After a week of sightseeing, in which he made 
 
40 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 not a single acquaintance, he left London, and 
 crossed from Dover to Ostend. He journeyed 
 by Treckshuyt in Belgium, boated up the 
 Rhine, and walked through the Odenwald. 
 
 Frank Taylor meant to study at Heidelberg, 
 and when he registered there for the winter sem 
 ester Bayard sought Richard Storrs Willis in 
 Frankfurt and there abode six months in snug 
 domestic German quarters. It was a fortunate 
 time for both cousins, for the exodus of the lib 
 erals from Gottingen had reinforced Heidelberg 
 with Gervinus and Schlosser, and Bayard, by 
 his residence in a plain burgher family where 
 English was an unknown tongue, made the best 
 possible beginning in the study of the language 
 in which his most notable intellectual triumphs 
 were to be gained. Before the half year was 
 over he was not only fluent in conversation but 
 had written rhyming German verse. Living 
 was cheap. Taylor paid for his furnished rooms, 
 meals, light, and fuel, thirty-three cents a day. 
 Richard Storrs Willis has written pleasantly of 
 Taylor s sojourn with him. In the " Detroit 
 Free Press," May 22, 1887, he says : " Christmas 
 and Thanksgiving, these of course had to be 
 celebrated by the American colony. Thanksgiv 
 ing meant a turkey. Where to find one ? It 
 was mortifying to make it clear to our host what 
 we meant by a turkey, rare in Germany as 
 sweet corn, cranberries, and the oyster. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 41 
 
 * As the most enterprising among us, Bayard 
 was deputed to forage among the markets for 
 one. Concealment was vain and he found it. 
 What did he ever seriously undertake and not 
 accomplish? When placed upon the table, our 
 German friends greatly wondered at the un 
 wonted spectacle. 
 
 " Christmas meant a gift to our host and host 
 ess. We decided on a carpet for the best com 
 pany room. Of course we had no carpets on the 
 floor generally ; such luxury was confined to the 
 rich, and even then the carpet was mainly a rug. 
 Indeed, after becoming wonted to the cleanly 
 expanse of a floor, a carpet seemed a dusty and 
 untidy thing. We hesitated to dim the white 
 ness and scrupulous neatness of the floor with it. 
 But we knew it would please our good German 
 friends, and so, after wrestling with the difficulty 
 of choice, innocent of all housekeeping as we 
 were, and just then convinced that a lady comes 
 in very well sometimes (our landlady was out of 
 the question, it was a Christmas secret), we 
 took the risk of one. Late at night, when all 
 Germans were asleep and only Americans awake, 
 we smuggled the carpet into the room, and like 
 a band of conspirators softly displaced the f urni* 
 ture and surprised the floor with its new adorn 
 ment. 
 
 "Christmas morning, after some quite new 
 
42 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 ejaculations on the part of our host and hostess 
 (by which we grammatically profited), we suc 
 ceeded in overcoming the reluctance to step on 
 it which they at first manifested." 
 
 Loyalty to home was one of Taylor s strongest 
 traits. The recollection of the dear homestead 
 at Kennett interposed shadows of melancholy 
 amid the joy and novelty of the life that he was 
 living in the presence of strange beauty and rev 
 erend history. 
 
 He was entirely ignorant of the ways of the 
 world. Innocent of transgression, true to the 
 cardinal points of heaven and home, the un 
 tainted virtue of his years had not yet dived into 
 the world s deceit. By establishing himself in 
 Frankfurt in a simple family where the warm 
 German heart beat with affectionate hospitality 
 he but exchanged home for home. In Kennett 
 his sensibilities had been repressed, his sentimen 
 tal ardor checked and rebuked. In Frankfurt 
 he experienced the generous glow of gentle sym 
 pathies whose effusion, unrestrained by conven 
 tions, mellowed his character and liberated his 
 thought. He felt one by one the straitening 
 fetters of old prejudice fall from him, and saw, 
 wide extended before him, the horizon of that 
 untraveled world whose margin fades forever 
 and forever as we move. With fond regret, when 
 he turned away from Frankfurt, he dwelt upon 
 
EARLY LIFE. 43 
 
 the scenes now so familiar and so dear, upon the 
 old bridge with its view up the Main to the far 
 mountains of the Odenwald, and upon the re 
 membered song of the nightingales heard from 
 the lovely boulevard ; but Italy was beyond the 
 mountains, and all the latent love of the beau 
 tiful in his nature impelled him toward those 
 " happy lands " of which Bordello speaks, 
 
 " That have luxurious names 
 For loose fertility ; a footfall there 
 Suffices to upturn to the warm air 
 Half germinating 1 spices ; mere decay 
 Produces richer life ; and day by day 
 New pollen on the lily-petal grows, 
 And still more labyrinthine buds the rose." 
 
 It was a long, roundabout way through Ger 
 many that he took before descending into Italy. 
 With a passport, properly viseed, a knapsack 
 weighing fifteen pounds, and a cane from the 
 Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, he began a lonely 
 walk through Northern Germany. He entered 
 the Hartz, ascended the Brocken in a storm, and 
 visited Leipsic and Dresden. A brief sojourn 
 in Prague was followed by a journey through 
 Bohemia and Moravia, arriving at last at Vienna. 
 After a few other expeditions and much scram 
 bling among the Alps, he reached Italy by the 
 passage of the St. Gothard. 
 
 In Florence he made his longest stay. His 
 vague and sensuous delight found permanent ex- 
 
44 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 pression many years afterward in u The Picture 
 of St. John." 
 
 " On, on, through broadening vale and brightening eon 
 I walked, and hoary in their old repose 
 The olives twinkled : many a terrace rose, 
 With marbles crowned and jasmine overrun, 
 And orchards where the ivory silk-worm spun. 
 On leafy palms outspread, its pulpy fruit 
 The fig-tree held ; and last, the charm to close, 
 A dark-eyed shepherd piped a reedy flute. 
 
 " My heart beat loud : I walked as in a dream 
 Where simplest actions, touched with marvel, seem 
 Enchanted yet familiar : for I knew 
 The orchards, terraces, and breathing flowers, 
 The tree from Adam s garden, and the blue 
 Sweet sky behind the light aerial towers ; 
 And that young faun that piped, had piped before, 
 I knew my home : the exile now was o er." 
 
 Taylor was too modest to seek the acquaint 
 ance of men of note. He had that pearl of vir 
 tues, the capacity for devout veneration, the 
 sentiment 
 
 " That hallows in the core 
 Of human hearts the memory of a, wall 
 Where dwelt the wise and wondrous," 
 
 and his instant reverence, dearer to him than his 
 own praise, made him shy of intruding upon the 
 men whose names he saw shining in the world of 
 art and letters which it was his dearest ambi 
 tion to enter. He did seek out Mendelssohn and 
 Freiligrath, and enjoyed conversation with them. 
 
EAELY LIFE. 45 
 
 Iii Florence he was welcomed by Hiram Powers, 
 in whose house he became acquainted with Rich 
 ard Adams Locke, the author of the " Moon 
 Hoax." Some verses that Taylor wrote upon 
 Powers statue of Eve so pleased the sculptor 
 that he procured the author a letter of introduc 
 tion from Mrs. Trollope to John Murray, her 
 publisher. After borrowing fifty dollars from 
 Mr. Powers, Taylor and his friends found they 
 had just ninety dollars for the journey to Rome 
 and thence to Paris. Taylor had become accus 
 tomed to privation. He had known what it was 
 to subsist upon four crazie (six cents) a day, 
 and to live upon bread, figs, and roasted chest 
 nuts. On the 12th of January, 1846, he took 
 deck-passage on a Neapolitan boat from Civita 
 Vecchia for Marseilles. Sick and miserable, 
 lying on the hard deck with a knapsack under 
 his head, wet to the skin, with teeth chattering 
 and limbs numb and damp, Taylor experienced 
 seasickness in all its horrors. Fifteen francs 
 remained upon leaving Marseilles to carry him 
 to Paris. Circumstances now demanded the 
 greatest economy. " The incessant storms of 
 winter and the worn-out state of our shoes, 
 which were no longer proof against water or 
 mud, prolonged our journey considerably, so 
 that by starting before dawn and walking until 
 dark, we were only able to make thirty miles 
 
46 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 a day." The travelers reached Lyons with 
 clothes like sponges, boots entirely worn out, 
 and bodies suffering from nine days exposure 
 to the winter storms in a tramp of two hun 
 dred and forty miles. They dispatched a letter 
 to Paris requesting that a part of the remit 
 tance expected there should be forwarded to 
 Lyons, and they engaged lodgings in a common- 
 looking inn near the river. For five weary, 
 wretched days they lay in pawn, prisoners in 
 Lyons. On the sixth day a letter came but 
 the postage was fourteen sous, and neither Tay 
 lor nor his companion had a centime. By an 
 ingenious manoeuvre one of them succeeded in 
 borrowing a franc from the hostess. It required 
 a good deal of courage to break the seal, but 
 then suspense was over, and the remittance was 
 at hand. Forthwith the travelers purchased two 
 delicate cheese-cakes, and in the afternoon new 
 shoes at a small shop in the suburbs. "I gave 
 the cobbler my old pair, which he instantly flung 
 into the street, with the exclamation : 4 Us ne 
 valent pas un sous, Monsieur ! " (" Views 
 Afoot," p. 456.) 
 
 From Paris Taylor went on to Dieppe and to 
 London. " I stood upon London Bridge, in the 
 raw mist and the falling twilight, with a franc 
 and a half in my pocket, and deliberated what 
 I should d.o. Weak from seasickness, hungry, 
 
EARLY LIFE. 47 
 
 chilled, and without a single acquaintance in the 
 great city, my situation was about as hopeless 
 as it is possible to conceive." (" At Home and 
 Abroad," p. 35.) He sought again the chop- 
 house opposite the Aldgate Churchyard. His 
 room contained a miserable bed, an old spinet 
 with every key broken or out of tune, a cracked 
 looking-glass, and two chairs. " The window 
 commanded a cheerful view of the churchyard." 
 Starvation or downright vagrancy seemed in 
 store for him, his last penny had gone for bread, 
 when Mr. Putnam came to his rescue. Every 
 avenue of employment in London seemed closed 
 to him by reason of the rules of the English 
 trade, but Mr. Putnam and Mr. Stevens set him 
 upon making out catalogues and packing books, 
 and so for six weeks he earned the scanty sums 
 that were necessary for his meagre living. 
 
 He had brought with him poems which, with 
 the ignorance and enthusiasm of untried youth, 
 he believed to be of such a quality as to com 
 mand the attention of publishers and to create 
 a sensation in the world of letters. He was 
 invited by John G. Lockhart to a breakfast 
 at which he met John Murray and Bernard 
 Barton. Conversation with the editor of the 
 "Quarterly Review," and a glimpse into the 
 old culture and criticism of England, made the 
 poor little poems in the depths of Taylor s port- 
 
48 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 folio, which a short time before had seemed so 
 perfect, look shabby and strange ; but it is the 
 best evidence of his sound intellectual health 
 that the discovery brought him no disillusion 
 ment and despair, but only, after a night of 
 bitterness and tears, the brave resolve to make 
 his work acceptable to the highest taste and 
 judgment. 
 
 On the 1st of June, 1846, the travelers ar 
 rived in New York bay and went forward at 
 once to Philadelphia and Wilmington. " Now 
 came the realization of a plan we had talked 
 over a hundred times to keep up our spirits 
 when the weather was gloomy, or the journey 
 lay through some waste of barren country. Our 
 knapsacks, which had been laid down in Paris, 
 were again taken up, slouched German hats sub 
 stituted for our modern black cylinders, belt 
 and blouse donned, and the pilgrim staff grasped 
 for the rest of our journey. But it was part of 
 our plan that we should not reach home till after 
 nightfall ; we could not think of seeing any one 
 we knew before those who were nearest to us ; 
 and so it was necessary to wait a few hours 
 before starting. 
 
 " The time came ; that walk of three or four 
 hours seemed longer than many a day s tramp 
 of thirty miles, but every step of the way was 
 familiar ground. The people we met stared, 
 
EARLY LIFE. 49 
 
 laughed, or looked suspiciously after us, but we 
 were quite insensible to any observation. We 
 only counted the fields, measured the distance 
 from hill to hill, and watched the gradual de 
 cline of the broad bright sun. It went down at 
 last, and our homes were not far off. When 
 the twilight grew deeper, we parted, each one 
 of us thinking what an experience lay between 
 that moment and the next morning. I took to 
 the fields, plunged into a sea of dewy clover, 
 and made for a light which began to glimmer as 
 it grew darker. When I reached it, and looked 
 with the most painful excitement through the 
 window on the unsuspecting group within, there 
 was not one face missing." 1 
 
 Bayard Taylor returned from his eventful 
 journey with rich eyes and poor hands. His 
 mind had been enlarged but his character was 
 unchanged. " He was born," said Berthold 
 Auerbach in his funeral address, " in the New 
 World, but ripened in the Old." He had de 
 parted a youth, he returned a man. It was on 
 a day of warm sun, of blue sky and bluer sea, 
 that, walking by the Italian shore of the Medi 
 terranean, Bayard Taylor celebrated in thought 
 and thankfulness his twenty-first birthday. He 
 had endured much and suffered much, but his 
 gains were beyond his present audit. 
 1 Views Afoot, p. 494. 
 
50 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 " Who ne er his bread with sorrow ate, 
 
 Who ne er the lonely midnight hours 
 With weeping on his bed hath sate, 
 He knows ye not, ye heavenly powers." 
 
 When sauntering through the streets of Euro 
 pean towns he had frequently attracted much 
 attention, with his student cap and his year s 
 growth of hair. And now he found that at 
 home a lively interest had been awakened in 
 him by the publication of his letters in the 
 " Tribune," u Saturday Evening Post," and 
 "United States Gazette." He was advised to 
 collect his letters and publish them in a book, 
 and for that purpose he went to New York, 
 where he negotiated with Wiley & Putnam, who 
 agreed to pay him one hundred dollars for every 
 thousand copies sold. 
 
 Willis suggested the title "Views Afoot," 
 and generously wrote for the book an introduc 
 tion, " giving," as Taylor in a later edition said, 
 " the buoyancy of his name to a craft which 
 might not otherwise have ridden so fortunately 
 the capricious sea of literary success." 
 
 The poetic fervor of the book and its re 
 strained vigor of style, the tenacity of purpose, 
 the struggle, the courage, and the pluck that it 
 revealed, fascinated the public, and sufficiently 
 account for its great popularity. It appeared 
 under the title : " Views Afoot ; or, Europe seen 
 
EARLY LIFE. 51 
 
 with Knapsack and Staff. By J. Bayard Tay 
 lor, with a preface by N. P. Willis. New York : 
 Wiley & Putnam, 1846." It was dedicated to 
 his cousin, Frank Taylor, who had shared the 
 toils and enjoyments of the pilgrimage. The 
 manuscript Bayard had submitted to Hannah 
 Darlington, one of his earliest and most sympa 
 thetic friends, and her " critical judgment," he 
 declared in the copy of the book that he pre 
 sented to her, " assisted in polishing and prepar- 
 ing * it. ^ 
 
 Six editions were sold in the first year. A 
 chapter of practical hints to pedestrians was 
 added to the eighth edition. The twentieth 
 edition appeared in 1855, and it was marked 
 by a thorough revision and a new introductory 
 chapter. 
 
 Longfellow wrote of it, under date of Christ 
 mas Day, 1846: " The last chapter fills me 
 with great wonder. How could you accomplish 
 so much, with such slight help and appliances ? 
 It shows a strength of will the central fire of - 
 all great deeds and words that must lead you 
 far in whatever you undertake." 
 
 He received kind letters of appreciation from 
 Mary Howitt, Eliza Leslie, Mrs. Hale, and Ber 
 nard Barton ; and Friedrich Ger stacker wrote 
 from Germany to interest him in one of the in 
 terminable American novels that he was then 
 
52 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 writing, perhaps " Die Flusspiraten des Mis 
 sissippi." 
 
 Horace Greeley recalling his early employ 
 ment of Taylor wrote : " I say, then, most ear 
 nestly, to every youth anxious to go abroad, 
 traverse Europe, and pay his way by writing 
 for some journal, Tarry at Jericho, till your 
 beard be grown. I never knew but one of 
 your class Bayard Taylor who achieved a 
 real success in thus traveling ; and he left home 
 a good type-setter, with some knowledge of mod 
 ern languages ; so that he stopped and worked 
 at his trade whenever his funds ran short ; yet, 
 even thus, he did not wholly pay his way dur 
 ing the two years he devoted to his delightful 
 4 Views Afoot. I know it, for I employed and 
 paid him all that his letters were fairly worth, 
 though not nearly so much as his letters now 
 righteously command. He practiced a syste 
 matic and careful economy; yet he went away 
 with money, and returned with the clothes on 
 his back, and (I judge) very little more. My 
 young friend, if you think yourself better quali 
 fied than he was, go ahead, and do Europe ! 
 but don t ask me to further your scheme ; for I 
 hold that you may far better stay at home, ap 
 ply yourself to some useful branch of produc 
 tive industry, help pay our national debt, and 
 accumulate a little independence whereon, by 
 
EAELY LIFE. 53 
 
 and by, to travel (if you choose) as a gentle 
 man, and not with but a sheet of paper between 
 you and starvation." l 
 
 Almost at the same time with the approval of 
 his prose, came the first praise of his poetry. 
 In the winter of 1846-47 he published anony 
 mously " The Norseman s Ride," in the " Dem 
 ocratic Review." Whittier read it, and copied 
 it into the " National Era," prefacing it with 
 commendation. Taylor wrote to him from 
 Phoenixville under date of September 16, 1847 : 
 
 " I know you will understand the feeling which 
 prompts me, though a stranger, to address you, 
 and pardon any liberties I may have taken in 
 so doing. I was surprised and delighted a few 
 weeks ago to see in the National Era, in con 
 nection with a notice of the old northern myth 
 ology, a poem of mine, i The Norseman s Ride, 
 which was published last winter in the 4 Demo 
 cratic Review. I am an enthusiastic admirer of 
 the stirring Scandinavian sagas, some of which 
 Tegner has immortalized in his 4 Frithiof ; and 
 it was under the full influence of the spirit in 
 spired by them that the poem was written. I 
 was possessed by the subject and fancied I had 
 given it fitting expression, but the friends to 
 whom I showed it did not admire it, and I re- 
 1 Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 326. 
 
54 . BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 luctantly concluded that my heated fancies had 
 led my judgment astray, and made up my mind 
 to forget it. Judge, then, how grateful and en 
 couraging was your generous commendation. I 
 thank you sincerely and from my heart for the 
 confidence your words have given me. One day, 
 I hope, I shall be able to take your hand, and 
 tell you what happiness it is to be understood by 
 one whom the world calls by the sacred name of 
 poet. With every wish for your happiness and 
 prosperity, I am, with sincere respect and esteem, 
 your friend, J. BAYARD TAYLOR." 1 
 
 Three years later Whittier reviewed " Eldo 
 rado " in the " National Era," and suggested to 
 Taylor that he would find a promising field of 
 travel " in the vast territory of New Mexico, 
 the valley of the Del Norte, with its old Castil- 
 ian and Aztec monuments and associations ; the 
 Great Salt Lake, and the unexplored regions of 
 the great valley of Colorado, between the moun 
 tain ranges of the Sierra Madre and the Sierra 
 Nevada." Taylor replied : u If it was not time 
 that I should stop from roving and build up a 
 home for myself, I would go there next year." 
 
 The friendship so knit grew in love and loy 
 alty. Taylor s visits to Amesbury Whittier has 
 referred to in " The Last Walk in Autumn." 
 
 1 Pickard s Whittier, vol. i. pp. 325, 326. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 55 
 
 " Here, too, of answering love secure 
 
 Have I not welcomed to my hearth 
 
 The gentle pilgrim Troubadour, 
 
 Whose songs have girdled half the earth ; 
 
 Whose pages, like the magic mat 
 
 Whereon the Eastern lover sat, 
 Have borne me over Rhineland s purple vines 
 And Nubia s tawny sands, and Phrygia s mountain pines." 
 
 In " The Tent on the Beach " Whittier brings 
 together three congenial companions within 
 sound of the bells of Newburyport, and listens 
 to the stories that they tell. Whittier and 
 James T. Fields are two of the company ; the 
 other, 
 
 " One whose Arab face was tanned 
 By tropic sun and boreal frost, 
 So traveled there was scarce a land 
 
 Or people left him to exhaust, 
 In idling mood had from him hurled 
 The poor squeezed orange of the world, 
 And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm, 
 Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm. 
 
 " His memory round the ransacked earth 
 
 On Ariel s girdle slid at ease ; 
 And, instant, to the valley s girth 
 
 Of mountains, spice isles of the seas, 
 Faith flowered in minster stones, Art s guess 
 At truth and beauty, found access ; 
 Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite, 
 Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood s dreams insight." 
 
 In this " free cosmopolite," merrily chat 
 ting with his friends, and improvising song 
 
 
 -ME 
 
56 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 and story, there must be instant recognition 
 of the far -traveled Pennsylvanian poet, who 
 in his turn gave Whittier verse for verse by 
 dedicating to him " Lars : A Pastoral of Nor 
 way." 
 
 " Through many years my heart goes back, 
 Through checkered years of loss and gain, 
 To that fair landmark on its track, 
 When first, beside the Merrimack, 
 
 Upon thy cottage roof I heard the autumn rain." 
 
 Soon after the publication of " Views Afoot " 
 Taylor visited Boston, and was feasted and 
 praised by Whipple and Fields, and presented 
 by them to Longfellow. He blushed at the 
 general chorus of compliment and congratula 
 tion, and wept for sheer excitement and for joy. 
 And now he looked about him for some occupa 
 tion that would yield him a fixed income. He 
 weighed the chances in country journalism, and, 
 reflecting that the neighboring counties, Chester 
 and Montgomery, supported seven political pa 
 pers, believed that there was a field for a periodi 
 cal devoted to literature and news. Dr. I. A. 
 Pennypacker recommended Phoenixville as the 
 place of publication. A paper already located 
 there, the " Phoenixville Gazette," was bought 
 by Taylor and his friend Frederick E. Foster, 
 and, its name being changed, was issued De 
 cember 29, 1846, as the "Phoenixville Pioneer." 
 
EARLY LIFE. 57 
 
 Taylor wrote most of the editorials and all of 
 the book reviews. 
 
 Phoenixville was a manufacturing place, re 
 sounding with the roar of forges, and brilliant at 
 night with columns of red flame rising from the 
 mills and furnaces. The chief laboring class 
 had no interest in the aims of the " Pioneer." 
 The farmers with rustic conservatism regarded 
 the town with dislike and the paper with dis 
 favor. Taylor worked faithfully at his task, 
 sped the nights with poetry and translation, 
 resumed his habit of pedestrianism, rowed in 
 the afternoons upon French Creek, and joined 
 spiritedly in the diversions of the town s small 
 society of educated persons. That he viewed 
 the slow progress of the journal with ill-concealed 
 discontent was due neither to ambition nor 
 chagrin, but to deep disappointment at his in 
 ability to compass what was then the one dar 
 ling purpose of his life. He had not breathed 
 it in his letters, he had scarcely confided it to 
 his diary, he had not whispered to a friend the 
 pure affection for one who was the purest and 
 gentlest of women, that had grown with his 
 growth and had become the precious ideal of his 
 life. His mother alone possessed the secret. 
 When he went abroad in 1844 the sorest pang 
 was parting from the one who held his heart in 
 keeping ; and the image of that sweet face lived 
 
58 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 with him in his wanderings. Thirteen years 
 before his memorable voyage, when he was a 
 child at the dame s school, Mary Agnew, a little 
 neighbor and schoolmate whom he loved, whis 
 pered to the teacher, " May I sit beside Bay 
 ard ? " The same dear companion was in his 
 mind when he gave with mingled fear and pride 
 his first volume of poems to the press. 
 
 Upon his return to Kennett, his engagement 
 became known. It is a rarely beautiful person 
 ality that is disclosed in the letters of Mary 
 Agnew as published in the "Life and Letters 
 of Bayard Taylor." Grace Greenwood once de 
 scribed her as " a dark-eyed young girl with the 
 rose yet unblighted on cheek and lip, with soft, 
 brown, wavy hair, which, when blown by the 
 wind, looked like the hair often given to angels 
 by the old masters, producing a sort of halo-like 
 effect about a lovely head." It was to provide 
 a home for her that Bayard was straining every 
 energy, but the present still seemed hopeless 
 and the future was veiled in impenetrable clouds. 
 
 A brief run to the Catskills in August gave 
 him another teasing glimpse of metropolitan life 
 in New York. After his return to Phoenixville 
 he wrote to Willis for information about New 
 York journalism, and received from him the 
 advice to negotiate by correspondence with cer 
 tain editors of the city before abandoning his 
 
EARLY LIFE. 59 
 
 business in the country. In reply to the letters 
 that he addressed to the men whom he best 
 knew, Greeley wrote dissuading him from the 
 venture ; Griswold, with his usual sanguine 
 temper, had no hesitation in bidding him come 
 at once ; Bryant knew of no vacancy ; Charles 
 Fenno Hoffman liked his idea of " 4 coming up 
 to the capital, as did the worthies of literature 
 in Johnson s time," and offered him an engage 
 ment for November and December at five dollars 
 a week upon the miscellaneous department of 
 the " Literary World." 
 
 Bayard Taylor now took the second decisive 
 step of his life. He had wasted a year in un 
 profitable toil. He had incurred what was to 
 him a serious burden of debt. He now bought 
 his release from the partnership in the " Pioneer," 
 and arrived in New York, December 17, 1847. 
 He was engaged by Hoffman at five dollars a 
 week, and he had an offer from Miss Green to 
 teach belles-lettres at her school, three or four 
 hours a week, for four dollars more. 
 
 He was in the metropolis, and he was on the 
 threshold of his fame. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 
 
 1848-1853. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR S intellectual development 
 was never steadily progressive. What he lacked 
 in originality he supplied by eager industry. 
 To get from him the best of which he was 
 capable it was necessary for him to feel strong 
 external stimulus. Throngs of men and urgent 
 competition summoned into activity all his en 
 ergies and capabilities. He adapted himself to 
 all circumstances and surroundings; he bore 
 apparently without fatigue the labors that bowed 
 and crushed other men of less heroic strength. 
 When a definite task was given him to discharge 
 and rival intellects raced with him in the per 
 formance of it, his surprising alertness of mind, 
 unfailing physical health, and astonishing indus 
 try of hand assured him a victory that was 
 always secure and sometimes brilliant. 
 
 His career, therefore, resolves itself into clearly 
 marked epochs corresponding to certain influ 
 ences entering accidentally or otherwise into 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 61 
 
 his life. The year at Phoenixville had been 
 full of restless pain; Pegasus was restive in 
 rustic harness. The removal to New York, by % 
 introducing Taylor to the best and busiest liter 
 ary life of the country, afforded scope for his 
 ambition, and gave direction to his vague and- 
 wandering aspirations. The time, too, was 
 propitious. Philadelphia had entirely lost her 
 old supremacy as the capital city of American 
 letters. 
 
 The satirist Duganne, who was for a time 
 associated with the publication of the " Iron 
 Man," a paper which, after Taylor s " Pioneer " 
 had ceased, continued a short and uneventful 
 existence in Phoenixville during 1849 and 1850, 
 said what every writer knew to be the fact, 
 
 " Yet true it is, and that t is true, t is pity, 
 The pen is penury in Penn s great city." 1 
 
 Nothing is more patent to the patient reader 
 of the Philadelphia periodicals from 1820 to 
 1840 than the swift progress of New York be 
 yond the Pennsylvanian city. With the passing 
 of Brown and Dennie, and the literary clique 
 that had supported the "Port-Folio," there 
 arose in New York a new group of writers, hav 
 ing few features in common, but conveniently 
 labeled " the Knickerbocker school." A. J. H. 
 
 1 Parnassus in Pillory, a satire, by Motley Manners, Esq. 
 New York, 1851. 
 
62 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 Duganne in " Parnassus in Pillory " lampooned 
 the American authors, and in his eagerness to 
 castigate Willis referred ironically to his kindly 
 care of Bayard Taylor : 
 
 " What time Nat Willis, in the daily papers, 
 Published receipts of shoemakers and drapers : 
 What time, in sooth, his Mirror flashed its rays, 
 Like Barnum s drummond, on the Broadway gaze ; l 
 When lisping misses, fresh from seminaries, 
 Worshiped mi-boy and brigadier 2 as lares ; 
 Then Bayard Taylor prote ge of Natty, 
 Dixon-like 3 walked into the literati ! 
 And first to proper use his genius put, 
 Like ballet-girls, by showing Views Afoot. " 
 
 New York had already assumed a cosmopolitan 
 and commercial character, and there was about 
 it a lively and extravagant tone which contrasted 
 strikingly with the seriousness of Boston and 
 the provincialism of Philadelphia. That Taylor 
 was delighted with the swifter currents of met 
 ropolitan life is evident from his letters to Ken- 
 nett Square. When he meditated a removal 
 to Philadelphia to work for Mr. Graham, he 
 wrote to Mary Agnew (May 11, 1846) : " How 
 shall I leave this mighty New York ? I cannot 
 think it will be a final departure. Something 
 
 1 The office of the Mirror was near Barnum s Museum, and 
 the Drummond light. 
 
 2 Willis and Morris signed their articles "Mi-boy," and 
 "Brigadier." 
 
 8 George Washington Dixon, " literary-musical-pedestrian." 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 63 
 
 tells me that a great part of my destiny shall be 
 worked out here. It is almost the only place in 
 this country where the mind can grow without 
 restriction. Philadelphia is merely an immense 
 provincial town ; here is the metropolis of a con 
 tinent ! " 
 
 The opinion formed upon the first encounter 
 with the literary workers of New York, Taylor 
 never found cause to change. Many years later 
 he wrote to Prof. James Morgan Hart, to whom 
 he was indebted for judicious criticism of his 
 translation of " Faust," " I wish you could have 
 settled in New York rather than in Boston. 
 The intellectual tone is higher in the latter 
 place, but freer in the former. Besides New 
 York is in the process of evolution in a literary 
 sense, which Boston does not seem to be: in 
 other words there is rather more of a future in 
 our noisy metropolis." 
 
 At the moment when Taylor " walked into 
 the literati, " Bryant, Halleck, and Willis 
 were the most prominent men of letters ; and all 
 of them were native New Englanders. Halleck 
 had counted the Muse s children in New York 
 many years before, and found that 
 
 1 Our fourteen wards 
 Contain some thirty-seven bards." 
 
 Washington Irving had freshly returned from 
 Spain and taken up his residence at Sunnyside, 
 
64 BAYAKD TAYLOR. 
 
 the "pretty little cabin," as Thackeray called 
 it, at Tarrytown; Taylor met him, and found 
 him " a glorious old man, full of kind, genial 
 feelings, and most delightful in his conversa 
 tion." 
 
 James Fenimore Cooper was living in the old 
 hall on Lake Otsego with three years of author 
 ship still before him. James Kirke Paulding 
 had practically closed his literary career, al 
 though " The Puritan and His Daughter," the 
 last of his novels, was still unpublished, and 
 had retired to " Placentia," his beautiful home 
 upon the Hudson. General George P. Morris 
 was occupying his summer home, " Undercliff," 
 opposite to West Point; and Willis, who had 
 not yet acquired the estate upon the Hudson 
 near Newburgh which, with his customary feli 
 city, he named " Idlewild," was the best-dressed 
 figure upon Broadway. 
 
 Charles Fenno Hoffman, who was the first 
 editor of the "Knickerbocker Magazine," and 
 who wrote " Monterey," a favorite poem with 
 General Grant, and the still popular song, 
 " Sparkling and Bright," had already begun to 
 show slight symptoms of the malady which is 
 sued in hopeless insanity. Hoffman s boarding- 
 house, Murray Street, near Broadway, became 
 Bayard Taylor s first residence in New York, 
 and Taylor was fascinated by the glitter of his 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 65 
 
 companion s eccentric fancy, and counted him 
 self happy in his acquaintance. The year be 
 fore Taylor appeared in New York, Verplanck 
 had published his edition of Shakespeare, with 
 notes, and the Duyckinck brothers had begun 
 " The Literary World." It was the fashion to 
 compare our writers with the English favorites 
 of the hour: Hoffman was our Knickerbocker 
 Moore, Halleck was supposed to suggest Camp 
 bell. Imitation was the life and breath of the 
 Knickerbocker literature, and it is perhaps not 
 unfair to conclude, with J. K. Dennett (" Na 
 tion," December 5, 1867), that " it is true to 
 say that the Knickerbocker school was composed 
 of authors whom we all remember as forgot 
 ten." Taylor was quickly made free of the social 
 life of New York through the courtesy of his 
 mentor, Willis, and his house-mate, Hoffman. 
 On New Year s night, 1848, he attended a con 
 versazione at Anne Lynch s (Mrs. Botta) whose 
 parlors once a week for nearly half a century 
 were hospitably open to the guilds of art and 
 letters. Hoffman introduced him to the society 
 that gathered around Mrs. Seba Smith, the 
 wife of "Major Jack Downing," in Brooklyn. 
 Much of sentimentalism and affectation, of 
 course, there was in some of the pseudo-liter 
 ary gatherings. In " John Godfrey s Fortunes " 
 Taylor satirizes the receptions of those f antastics 
 
66 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 who had " only got the tune of the time and 
 outward habit of encounter ; " no doubt there 
 were many unconventional " at homes " like 
 Adeliza Choate s Friday nights when similar 
 " fond and winnowed opinions " were idly dis 
 cussed. Lest the sarcasm in the description 
 might be interpreted wrongly, Taylor wrote, 
 with Miss Lynch s conversaziones in his mind, 
 "The Friday evening receptions of Mrs. 
 Yorkton I beg pardon, Adeliza Choate 
 continued to be given, but I did not often attend 
 them. I had been fortunate enough to obtain 
 entrance to the literary soirees of another lady 
 whom I will not name, but whose tact, true 
 refinement of character, and admirable culture 
 drew around her all that was best in letters and 
 in the arts. In her salons I saw the possessors 
 of honored and illustrious names ; I heard books 
 and pictures discussed with the calm discrimi 
 nation of intelligent criticism ; the petty vanities 
 and jealousies I had hitherto encountered might 
 still exist, but they had no voice, and I soon 
 perceived the difference between those who as 
 pire and those who achieve. Art, I saw, has its 
 own peculiar microcosm, its born nobles, its 
 plodding, conscientious, respectable middle class, 
 and its clamorous, fighting rabble." ("John 
 Godfrey s Fortunes," p. 321.) 
 
 Occasional social diversion and the writing 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 67 
 
 of poetical valentines and humorous acrostics 
 did not interfere with the rapid dispatch of 
 thorough work. Greeley was so impressed by 
 Taylor s energy and enthusiasm that before the 
 end of January, 1848, he offered him a situa 
 tion on the "Tribune." Oliver Johnson had 
 resigned, and the miscellaneous and literary de 
 partment was without a chief. To this post 
 Taylor was appointed, at a salary of twelve dol 
 lars a week, at a time when the town was full 
 of five-dollars-a-week men, and when it was 
 necessary to work for several papers in order 
 to earn enough to keep life afoot. " I seem 
 to have turned over a new leaf of life," wrote 
 Taylor to Mary Agnew, "and I shall write a 
 better story upon it than the blotted pages I 
 have left behind. * 
 
 In " John Godfrey s Fortunes " Taylor refers 
 with pleasant humor to his first experiences in 
 city journalism, and to his rapture and grati 
 tude at what he calls a " branch of Pactolus 
 bursting at my feet to bear me onward to all 
 golden possibilities." His work and manner 
 attracted almost instant attention, and the 
 stranger who had been introduced to New York 
 by N. P. Willis in January, received in the first 
 week of March invitations to four additional 
 situations. Mrs. Kirkland was going to Eu 
 rope and would have Taylor edit " The Union 
 
68 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Magazine " and " Christian Inquirer " until her 
 return ; George R. Graham, always quick to dis 
 cern new talent, engaged him to write occasional 
 book reviews ; and Henry Peterson, author of 
 " Pemberton," asked him to become the New 
 York correspondent of the " Saturday Evening 
 Post." In July one of the owners of " Graham s 
 Magazine " waited upon Taylor and offered him 
 the permanent editorship of that periodical at a 
 thousand dollars a year, but this prize he was 
 not destined to possess ; the affairs of " Graham s 
 Magazine," which had been disordered finan 
 cially, were adjusted, and Bayard Taylor contin 
 ued to hold a merely nominal editorship, and to 
 furnish regular contributions without leaving 
 New York. So quickly did his reputation kindle 
 before him that in December, 1848, James T. 
 Fields wrote to him, " You have a capital repu 
 tation now in poetry, and must be careful of 
 your muse. A good beginning is everything. 
 I stand at a desk where I can gauge a man s 
 depth in the public reading estimation, and I 
 know no youngster who stands dearer than J. 
 B. T., doffing the J." The last words of the 
 letter contained sensible advice. The " J." was 
 the Mordecai at the gate of a good and poetic 
 name. 
 
 Bayard Taylor s excitement during this busy 
 year was intense. He reveled in the delight of 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 69 
 
 the intellect. To no kind of newspaper duty 
 was he averse ; book notices, editorials, domes 
 tic news, foreign intelligence, reporter s notes, 
 fell profusely from his untiring and always care 
 ful hand. He wrote fifteen hours a day ; and 
 in his rooms at an aerial elevation, " o erlooking 
 the city s tiles/ he wrote late into the night, or 
 ran a swift race before the dawn, " resting his 
 soul with poetry after the prosaic labors of the 
 day." The vivid sensations created by the ro 
 mance of the West as it appeared in the daily 
 news from the gold-fields, stimulated him to the 
 making of the " Calif ornian Ballads," poems 
 that are spangled with such beauty as only 
 youthful passion can bestow. 
 
 The friendships that are formed in the ideal 
 izing time of generous youth are the most potent 
 and most permanent. To the romantic attach 
 ments formed by poets in their youth we often 
 owe the direction and the profit of their lives. 
 Such a friendship bound together the lives of 
 Bayard Taylor and Richard Henry Stoddard. 
 Separated during the week by sharp necessity, 
 Taylor performing his round of journalistic 
 duty, and Stoddard leaving many " weary prints 
 on the wet sands of a hated foundry," they met 
 on Saturday nights to enjoy what Taylor called 
 
 " The sunshine of the Gods, 
 The hour of perfect Song." 
 
70 BATAED TAYLOR. 
 
 To one another they dedicated their books. 
 When Taylor wrote " Ariel in the Cloven Pine- 
 Tree," Stoddard companioned it with " Caliban, 
 the Witch s Whelp," and when a great sorrow 
 fell upon Stoddard and his noble wife, it was 
 Bayard Taylor who spoke the gentlest sympa 
 thy, and sweetly recalled 
 
 u The finer soul, that unto ours 
 
 A subtle perfume seemed to be, 
 Like incense blown from April flowers 
 Beside the scarred and stormy tree." 1 
 
 " I have before me now," writes Mr. Stod 
 dard, " a vision of him [Taylor] in his young 
 manhood, tall, erect, active looking, and 
 manly, with an aquiline nose, bright, loving 
 eyes, and the dark, ringleted hair with which 
 we endow, in ideal, the head of poets. There 
 was a kindness and a courtesy in his greeting 
 which went straight to my heart, and assured 
 me that I had found a friend." 
 
 Stoddard followed Keats, and Taylor studied 
 Shelley. The revolutionary spirits of both the 
 English poets lived in the quick pulses of their 
 worshipers. Their sensuous beauty, their sub 
 tle harmonies, and their lofty imagination tor 
 tured the young imitators with exquisite delight 
 and with despair. An " Ode to Shelley " was 
 the best poem, with the possible exception of 
 
 1 Euphorion* 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 71 
 
 "The Continents," praised by Poe, that 
 Taylor composed in 1848. 
 
 When time had tried and proved the friend 
 ship that had ennobled their youth, Taylor ad 
 dressed to Mr. Stoddard the sonnet : 
 
 TO R. H. S. 
 
 The years go by, old Friend ! Each, as it fleets, 
 
 Moves to a farther, fairer realm, the time 
 
 When first we twain the pleasant land of Rhyme 
 
 Discovered, choosing side by side our seats 
 
 Below our separate Gods : in midnight streets 
 
 And haunted attics flattered by the chime 
 
 Of silver words, and, fed by faith sublime, 
 
 I Shelley s mantle wore, you that of Keats, 
 
 Dear dreams, that marked the Muse s childhood then, 
 
 Nor now to be disowned ! The years go by ; 
 
 The clear-eyed Goddess flatters us no more ; 
 
 And yet, I think, in soberer aims of men, 
 
 And Song s severer service, you and I 
 
 Are nearer, dearer, faithfuller than before. 
 
 Another poet was, in this year (1848), admit 
 ted to wear with these the muse s livery. One 
 of Taylor s earliest literary duties had been to 
 review " The Lesson of Life, and other Poems," 
 and to abuse the book. Six weeks after he had 
 obeyed the order he became acquainted with 
 the author, explained the review, and apologized 
 for the fault. Then and there began a close 
 and unfaltering friendship between Bayard Tay 
 lor and George Henry Boker. A " Sonnet to 
 G. H. B." expresses Taylor s appreciation of 
 
72 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Boker s genius, as well as his love for the 
 man: 
 
 " If that my hand, like yours, dear George, were skilled 
 To win from Wordsworth s scanty plot of ground 
 A stirring harvest, such as you have found, 
 Where strength and grace, fraternally fulfilled, 
 As in those sheaves whose rustling glories gild 
 The hills of August, folded are, and bound ; 
 So would I draw my loving tillage round 
 Its borders, bid the gentlest rains be spilled, 
 The goldenest suns its happy growth compel, 
 And bind for you the ripe, redundant grain : 
 But, ah, you stand amid your songful sheaves, 
 So rich, this weed-born flower you might disdain, 
 Save that of me its growth and color tell, 
 And of my love some perfume haunt its leaves ! " 
 
 The fourth member of the "tuneful quire," 
 and always a welcome visitor when fortune 
 brought him to New York, was T. Buchanan 
 Read. Both his arts, painting and poetry, were 
 made to express the love and friendship he bore 
 his comrades. He painted a picture, in the sen 
 timental style prevailing in the " forties," of 
 Taylor, a slender youth, of Shelley s face and 
 form, equipped with palmer s hat and blouse, 
 and a shepherd s crook doing duty for the nonce 
 as an alpenstock. In the background hills peep 
 o er hills, and Alps on Alps arise. 
 
 In poetry Read has depicted Taylor in the 
 character of Arthur in the " Home Pastorals/ 
 
 Some years later (1855) Taylor found an- 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELEE. 73 
 
 other friend in Thomas Bailey Aldrich, with 
 whom he exchanged poetic confidences, and from 
 whom he gained valuable suggestions and learned 
 profitable lessons. The best poem upon the 
 death of Taylor was Aldrich s, and the heartiest 
 sonnet that Taylor ever wrote was on Aldrich s 
 wedding. 
 
 TO T. B. A. AND L. W. 
 
 Sad Autumn, drop thy weedy crown forlorn, 
 
 Put off thy cloak of cloud, thy scarf of mist, 
 
 And dress in gauzy gold and amethyst 
 
 A day benign, of sunniest influence born, 
 
 As may befit a Poet s marriage morn ! 
 
 Give buds another dream, another tryst 
 
 To loving hearts, and print on lips unkissed 
 
 Betrothal kisses, laughing Spring to scorn ! 
 
 Yet if unfriendly thou, with sullen skies, 
 
 Bleak rains, or moaning winds, dost menace wrong, 
 
 Here art thou foiled : a bridal sun shall rise 
 
 And bridal emblems unto these belong. 
 
 Round her the sunshine of her beauty lies, 
 
 And breathes round him the Spring-time of his song ! 
 
 Taylor grew rapidly in knowledge of litera 
 ture, and acquaintance with literary men. He 
 heard Kichard Henry Dana, who was lecturing 
 in New York, in 1848, on old English Litera 
 ture, and was thereby led to the study of the 
 ballads, the dramatists, and Wordsworth. Many 
 years later (1875) Taylor was sitting with Dana 
 in his home upon the New England coast, and 
 asked him if the spirit of Lee ever rode the 
 
74 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 waters below him. Dana replied, " Twenty 
 years ago, or more, the body of a horse was 
 washed ashore here, and it happened to be a 
 white horse." 
 
 While Taylor was editing Mrs. Kirkland s 
 " Union Magazine," Greeley came to him with a 
 roll of manuscript and said, "Now you must 
 do something for this young man. His name is 
 Thoreau. He lives in a shanty at Walden Pond, 
 near Concord, on $37.21 a year, and he must be 
 encouraged." The manuscript was " Katahdin 
 [which Thoreau spelled Ktaadn] and the Maine 
 Woods." Taylor persuaded the publisher to give 
 seventy-five dollars for it, but the good that he 
 meant to do he did not do, for when the arti 
 cle appeared the shocking misprint of " scows " 
 for " aeons " in a cosmical phrase about the de 
 velopment of man s nautical genius drew Tho- 
 reau s indignation down upon Taylor s editorial 
 head. 
 
 His responsibility for the " Union Magazine " 
 ceased in September, 1848, and in the following 
 month he widened his circle of literary acquaint 
 anceship by a visit to New England which gave 
 him an evening with Lowell, a night with Long 
 fellow, a ramble with Whittier, and an opportu 
 nity to report for the " Tribune " one of Web 
 ster s speeches delivered in the pine woods of 
 Abington. He discharged all the miscellaneous 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 75 
 
 duties of a newspaper reporter, was with Willis 
 and Griswold and Lewis Gaylord Clark on the 
 first train which crossed the Cascade Ravine 
 bridge, and reported with vividness and precision 
 the frenzy of the Astor Place riots. The terri 
 ble night of the tenth of May, 1849, and the 
 military encampments in the street for the three 
 succeeding nights kindled Taylor s excitement, 
 and the accounts in the " Tribune " are equaled 
 only by the circumstantial report furnished by 
 Mr. Bangs to the " Sunday Courier." By this 
 time Taylor had been advanced upon the " Trib 
 une " and had become a stockholder in the com 
 pany. 
 
 It was just at the close of the " roaring for 
 ties " that the contagion of the " gold fever " 
 spread from California across the Continent. 
 Torrents of miscellaneous emigration set west 
 ward, and a strange and extraordinary life began 
 upon the Pacific slope. Of that wild life, " re 
 plete with a certain Greek heroism," with its 
 lapses into semi-savagery, its sudden passions, 
 and its moral romances, we have nowhere a more 
 accurate or more cheerful picture than in Tay 
 lor s letters to the " Tribune." His fame as a 
 traveler and his skill as a reporter were already 
 such that he was chosen without hesitation as 
 the likeliest man to accomplish the perilous and 
 peculiar task of describing the situation in Cal- 
 
76 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 ifornia as it really was. He was exactly of the 
 mood and temper to appreciate what he saw in 
 the young community. " Eager-hearted as a boy 
 when first he leaves his father s field," he heard 
 his days before him and the tumult of his life. 
 Full of health and hope, eager of heart and eye, 
 he was all aglow with the enthusiasm of the 
 great scenes before him. Discomforts and hin 
 drances were no impediment or discouragement 
 to him. Even of the dreadful journey across the 
 isthmus, a terror to emigrants, he says, " I feel 
 fresh enough to turn about and make the trip 
 over again." He sailed for California June 28, 
 1849, and thus summarizes his journey : " I went 
 by way of the Isthmus of Panama, the route 
 had just been opened, reached San Francisco 
 in August, and spent five months in the midst of 
 the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I 
 lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on 
 the ground with my saddle for a pillow, and 
 sharing the hardships of the gold-diggers with 
 out taking part in their labors. Returning 
 through Mexico, which I traversed diagonally 
 from Mazatlan to Vera Cruz, I reached New 
 York in March, 1850, and resumed my duties as 
 editor." In the month of his return the record 
 of his travel and its observations appeared under 
 the title, " Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path 
 of Empire ; comprising a Yoyage to California, 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 11 
 
 via Panama ; Life in San Francisco and Monte 
 rey ; Pictures of the Gold Region, and Experi 
 ences of Mexican Travel." 
 
 No more optimistic view of the life in the 
 mining camps was ever taken. Crime and dis 
 tress made no lasting impression upon Taylor. 
 " He saw whatever illustrated life, hope, vigor, 
 courage, prosperity." 1 His pages are strewn with 
 such favorable comments as, u There was as 
 much security to life and property as in any 
 part of the Union, and as small a proportion of 
 crime ; " and again, " The cosmopolitan cast of 
 society in California, resulting from the com 
 mingling of so many races and the primitive 
 mode of life, gave a character of good fellowship 
 to all its members." 
 
 The colossal features of Western scenery fas 
 cinated Taylor s imagination. He continually 
 digressed into descriptions that fell little short 
 of poetic rapture. He writes : " The broad oval 
 valleys shaded by magnificent oaks, and enclosed 
 by the lofty mountains of the Coast Range, open 
 beyond each other like a suite of parlor cham 
 bers, each charming more than the last ! " In a 
 letter to Mary Agnew he writes : " It is so deli 
 cious to fall asleep with the stars above you, 
 to feel their rays, the last thing glimmering in 
 your hazy consciousness, and then shining on, 
 1 Josiah Royce, California, p. 304. 
 
78 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 brighter and purer, in your dreams ! How often 
 under the sycamores or evergreen oaks, with 
 my head on a dragoon saddle and a Mexican 
 blanket rolled warmly around me, have I lain in 
 the silent wilderness, and thought of thee ! One 
 night which I will tell thee of when we meet, I 
 slept, or rather watched, all alone on the top 
 of a mountain, with vast plains glimmering in 
 the moonlight below me and the wolves howling 
 far down in the ravines. Was it not a glorious 
 night? " That " top of a mountain " is so like 
 Taylor. He was fond of great heights and 
 broad views ; and the child who astonished the 
 servant-girl with the discovery of the Falls of 
 Niagara from his perilous station upon the 
 comb of the steep roof of his Kennett home, was 
 father of the traveler who stood upon the high 
 places of the world and took in the widest 
 sweep of vision in the five continents. 
 
 After an experience with robbers in Mexico, 
 he reached New York, March 9, 1850. His 
 salary upon the " Tribune " was increased, and 
 he was the owner of three shares of its stock, 
 but the joy of success and the delight of ad 
 vancement were painfully checked by the appre 
 hension at Kennett. Mary Agnew became ill 
 in April with inflammation of the lungs, and 
 from the effects of that malady she never recov 
 ered. The wedding, which had been set for 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 79 
 
 June 19th, was indefinitely postponed. Taylor 
 performed his many tasks with his customary 
 alacrity and thoroughness, but back of all his 
 industry and apparent eagerness was a constant 
 agony of grief, and the haunting fear of the loss 
 of the dearest object upon earth to him, and the 
 fall at once of all the high built projects of his 
 life. 
 
 City items, California news, Cuban expedi 
 tions, and such bubbles of the moment did not 
 alone fill up his worried days. Upon the invita 
 tion early in May of the Phi Beta Kappa Society 
 of Harvard College, he set about composing a 
 poem, " The American Legend," to be read at 
 Commencement in July. It was received with 
 marked favor ; Emerson pronounced it the best 
 poem which had ever been delivered there. Tay 
 lor was elected an honorary member of the $ B K 
 Society. He received the congratulations of 
 Felton and Dana and Lowell, and with Lowell 
 started the next day for Amesbury to spend 
 a long day with Whittier. Invitations enough 
 descended upon him to furnish him, as he said, 
 " with two weeks board." But declining all in 
 ducements to stay he returned to New York 
 on Sunday morning, July 21, and the next day 
 was summoned to Fire Island to the scene of 
 the shipwreck of the Elizabeth. The American 
 Sibyl, Margaret Fuller, with her Italian hus- 
 
80 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 band, the Marquis d Ossoli, and her child, and 
 Horace Sumner (brother of Charles), after the 
 failure of the Revolution of 1848 embarked at 
 Leghorn on the merchant vessel Elizabeth for 
 New York. After a succession of mishaps the 
 gale that arose as they approached the Amer 
 ican coast strengthened into a hurricane that 
 shattered the Elizabeth to fragments upon Fire 
 Island. For a week Taylor lingered at the 
 scene of the wreck, whither Charles Sumner 
 and Henry D. Thoreau had come. Neither Mar 
 garet Fuller nor her husband was found, and the 
 manuscript of the " Revolutions in Italy " was 
 lost with them. 
 
 Free for a breathing-space from imperative 
 engagements, Taylor hastened to Kennett, 
 whence had come alarming reports of Mary 
 Agnew s condition. In the thought that a 
 change of air and scene might be beneficial, 
 she was brought by her mother and by Bayard 
 to Philadelphia for medical consultation, and 
 then taken to West Point. It soon became ne 
 cessary to seek a more quiet resort, and this was 
 found at the farmhouse of a Mrs. Sutherland 
 at Cornwall, in the highlands of the Hudson, 
 a place where the Willises were staying and 
 which subsequently became their home and 
 known to the world as Idlewild. A fortnight 
 the ladies remained at this quiet, secluded spot, 
 
EEPOETER AND TRAVELER. 81 
 
 and then returned to Kennett warned by the 
 sudden and chill approach of autumn. Mary 
 Agnew seemed improved in health, her cough 
 was less frequent and exhausting, and her 
 strength appeared to be returning. These were 
 the delusive symptoms most common in mala 
 dies like hers, but they thrilled Bayard Taylor 
 with fresh hope and devotion, and at his desk 
 in New York, bowed over the miscellaneous 
 tasks of the newspaper office, he worked with 
 a more resolute pen, and cast about him upon 
 every side for the means to make possible and 
 prosperous his married life, which was now his 
 one engrossing object. 
 
 When the Muses declare a competition there 
 is usually an astonishing revelation in the most 
 unlocked for places of the numerical force of 
 their worshipers. It is much easier to imitate 
 emotion than is popularly supposed. The little 
 ripple of laughter evoked by Mr. Douglas 
 Sladen s " One Hundred Bards of America " 
 was unreasonable, for that cunning hunter of 
 " mute inglorious Miltons " might have many 
 times multiplied his list, and still have omitted 
 some easy versifiers who are covetous of the 
 poet s name. An enterprising Western pub 
 lishing house has given the biographies and 
 portraits of more than twelve hundred " poets 
 of America " and by no means exhausted the 
 
82 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 singing choir. In the autumn of 1850 P. T. 
 Barnum, the incomparable showman, who had 
 contracted with Jenny Lind to sing for one hun 
 dred and fifty nights in America, offered two 
 hundred dollars as a prize for an original song 
 for the "Swedish Nightingale." " All the ver 
 sifiers in the land," says Stoddard, "set at 
 once to work to immortalize themselves and to 
 better their fortunes, and as many as six hun 
 dred confidently expected to do so." 1 The com 
 mittee appointed to decide among the jarring 
 claimants of the prize selected two of the contri 
 butions, and, unable or unwilling to choose be 
 tween them, submitted both to Jenny Lind, who 
 chose the shorter and more patriotic, which was 
 Taylor s. Then broke forth the high clangor 
 ous rage of the whole irritabile genus; Tay 
 lor was dubbed " Barnum s poet - laureate ; " 
 he was adjudged the winner because his pub 
 lisher, Mr. Putnam, and his fellow-editor on the 
 " Tribune," Mr. Kipley, were of the committee. 
 Newspaper offices were besieged by wild-eyed 
 poets bearing their verses with them as con 
 spicuous evidence of their superior rights to the 
 prize and the glory. The papers teemed for a 
 while with every variety of " rejected addresses," 
 " from an epigram up to an epic." 
 
 1 Taylor says there were 752 disappointed candidates. 
 [Letter to Mary Agnew, September 18, 1850.] 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 83 
 
 Bayard Taylor s unfortunately successful 
 lyric was set to music by Jules Benedict and 
 was sung by Jenny Lind at her first concert in 
 Castle Garden. 
 
 To be abused was a new sensation to Bayard 
 Taylor, and his correspondence at this period is 
 full of references to the " delightful flaying," as 
 he called it, that he was undergoing at the 
 hands of every sixpenny critic in the country. 
 Not content to vilipend the poem his critics 
 proceeded to vilify the man, and Taylor was 
 in some fear that certain of these ill-natured 
 articles might be brought to the notice of Mary 
 Agnew, who at this time was much worse. 
 " This is a proper punishment to me for having 
 defiled the temple of divine Poetry. Depend 
 upon it," he wrote to George H. Boker, " I shall 
 never do the like again, and I shall not fail 
 to woo her with prayers and penances till the 
 fault be expiated, and she admits me once more 
 into her priesthood." As with the Apothecary 
 in " Romeo and Juliet " it was Bayard Taylor s 
 poverty and not his will that consented to this 
 vulgar trial, and the bitter sense of degradation 
 that he felt was the truest testimony to his 
 nobility of purpose, and the surest prophecy of 
 his future success. 
 
 The month following this episode was an anx 
 ious one. There was no longer any hope of Mary 
 
 
84 BAYARD TAYLOK. 
 
 Agnew s recovery. On October 24th they were 
 married. For two months the young wife lin 
 gered, quietly patient, " radiantly beautiful," but 
 not with the beauty of earth; then, "with no 
 foes to pardon and no sins to be forgiven," she 
 died, and in her grave Bayard Taylor buried the 
 first period of his literary life. 
 
 Until the close of 1850 he had undergone 
 but slight change of character. His first visit 
 to Europe, his busy editorial career in New 
 York, the revelation to him of fierce human 
 passions in California, had not materially af 
 fected his early piety and youthful aspirations. 
 He had remained through all the child of en 
 thusiasm and faith. The censurings and com 
 plainings of the friends at Kennett, who looked 
 upon him as on one fallen from grace, were 
 scarcely recognized by him as long as that one 
 angel face shone for him in the old home, and 
 with sweet affection and tender sympathy made 
 the trim Quaker land a Paradise. Now that 
 that face had vanished Kennett was a painful 
 place to him. He felt, too, the dull pain which 
 followed upon the long continued anxiety. A 
 disinclination to work possessed him. He was 
 nervous and restless, and worn in mind and 
 body. He matured his plans, long held in 
 abeyance, for a visit to the Orient. He revised 
 his poems, collected for publication the best 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 85 
 
 that he had written since the date of " Rhymes 
 of Travel" (1849), and so rolled a stone across 
 the irrecoverable and unforgettable past. He 
 looked into his financial affairs, found himself 
 three thousand dollars to the good, and the 
 owner of three shares of " Tribune " stock on 
 the first day of January, 1851, and of two more 
 on January 21st. 
 
 That he was closing one of the chapters of his 
 life not even his profound depression could pre 
 vent him from feeling. On New Year s Day, 
 1851, he wrote to George H. Boker, " This, 
 the beginning of the year, the turning-point of 
 the century, seems to me like the beginning of 
 a new career." And to James T. Fields he 
 wrote (April 19, 1851), " I am getting into a 
 very different sphere of thought, and feel that, 
 whether it be better or worse, I never can 
 wholly return to the themes I have hitherto 
 tried." 
 
 He sailed from Philadelphia, August 28, 1851, 
 on the City of Manchester, bound for Liver 
 pool. All home affairs had been set in order, 
 Greeley had promptly consented to his absence, 
 and the editing of a " Cyclopaedia of Literature 
 and the Fine Arts," for Putnam, had provided 
 him with the means of travel. He left behind 
 him his old life, and, as the crown and culmina 
 tion of it, a volume of poems, " A Book of Ho- 
 
86 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 mances, Lyrics, and Songs," published by Tick- 
 nor, Reed & Fields, soon after his departure. 
 
 In London he met the Brownings and John 
 Kenyon and Lady Stuart Wortley, and went 
 by way of Heidelberg and Niirnberg to Trieste, 
 and thence to Smyrna and Alexandria. For 
 two years and four months he was away from 
 home. His experiences were strange, and the 
 barbaric East gave him gorgeous days and sol 
 emn nights. The first year of his journey 
 found him in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Asia 
 Minor. Upon the Nile he writes, " Every day 
 opens with & jubilate, and closes with a thanks 
 giving. If such a balm and blessing as this life 
 has been to me, thus far, can be felt twice in one s 
 existence, there must be another Nile somewhere 
 in the world." 1 A fortnight before reaching 
 the turning point on the White Nile he wrote 
 the "Nilotic Drinking Song: " 
 
 "You may water your bays, brother poets, with lays 
 
 That brighten the cup from the stream you dote on, 
 By the Schuylkill s side, or Cochituate s tide, 
 Or the crystal lymph of the mountain Croton : 
 (We may pledge from these 
 In our summer ease, 
 Nor even Anacreon s shade revile us ) 
 But I, from the flood 
 Of his own brown blood, 
 Will drink to the glory of ancient Nilus 1 " 
 
 1 A Journey to Central Africa, p. 86. 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 87 
 
 He passed beyond the utmost bounds of civ 
 ilization, and up the Nubian Nile into Ethio 
 pia. After he had reached Khartoum he pro 
 ceeded by the White Nile to the country of the 
 Shillooks. At this time the strangest rumors 
 found place in the newspapers at home, now 
 to the effect that Taylor had gone to the source 
 of the Nile, and now that he was exploring the 
 Niger, or losing himself in the enormous wilder 
 ness of equatorial Africa. His letters in the 
 " Tribune " were eagerly looked for, and every 
 exaggerated report of his wanderings found 
 ready credence. Taylor had become a popular 
 figure, and he was unconsciously building up, 
 thousands of miles from home, the very reputa 
 tion that he was least ambitious to possess. The 
 secret of his immense vogue as a lecturer was 
 the universal curiosity that he had excited as a 
 traveler. Browning s " Waring " expresses the 
 feeling that most persons had for Taylor. As 
 the traveler who had penetrated the romantic 
 East, Vishnu land, " where whole new thou 
 sands are," he carried with him an atmos 
 phere of strangeness and remoteness and mys 
 tery. Longfellow dwells upon it in his verses 
 upon the death of Taylor : 
 
 " Traveler, in what realms afar, 
 In what planet, in what star, 
 In what vast aerial space 
 Shines the light upon thy face ? " 
 
88 BAYAED TAYLOE. 
 
 The most popular pictures of Taylor repre 
 sented him in Oriental garb. The first "Put 
 nam s " had him in Arab burnoose and turban, 
 and Hicks s painting of him in Eastern dress 
 and with Persian pipe was instantly recognized 
 by every one who had read (and who had not 
 read ?) " The Lands of the Saracen." 
 
 Bayard Taylor was the ideal traveler, and he 
 was most at home in the Orient. His belief 
 that in him the Palm and Pine commingled has 
 already been referred to. He invariably as 
 sumed the garb of the people among whom he 
 happened to live, and seemed to don with the 
 dress, the language and the habits of the race. 
 " It needed not," says E. C. Stedman, " Hicks s 
 picture of the bronzed traveler, in his turban 
 and Asiatic costume, smoking, cross-legged, upon 
 a roof-top of Damascus, to show us how much 
 of a Syrian he then was. We saw it in those 
 down-drooping eyelids which made his profile 
 like Tennyson s ; in his aquiline nose, with the 
 expressive tremor of the nostrils as he spoke ; in 
 his thinly tufted chin, his close curling hair, his 
 love of spices, music, coffee, colors, and per 
 fumes ; his sensitiveness to outdoor influences, 
 to the freshness of the morning, the bath, the 
 elemental touch of air and water and the life- 
 giving sun. It is to be found in the Poems of 
 the Orient, where we have these traits reflected 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 89 
 
 in diverse lyrics that make a fascinating whole. 
 In them he seemed to give full vent to his 
 flood of song." In only one respect did these 
 Arab features belie the wearer of them. The 
 Abyssinian sun had so burnt that aquiline nose, 
 which was always thin (so thin that of it in 
 Piatti s bust of him Taylor declared that it was 
 " the thinnest nose ever cast in plaster "), that 
 the skin had cracked, and there grew upon his 
 face a permanent look of disdain which repelled 
 from him many who had not learned the real 
 sweetness of his nature, and gave him at times 
 a reputation for coldness and pride which his 
 gentle and generous life in no wise deserved. 
 
 In a letter to James T. Fields, dated Constan 
 tinople, July 14, 1852, Taylor writes, " If you 
 could see me now you would swear I was a 
 disciple of the Prophet. I am become 
 
 " Long and lank and brown 
 As is the ribbed sea-sand, 
 
 but I pray you mislike me not for my complex 
 ion. I wear the tarboosh, smoke the Persian 
 pipe, and drop cross-legged on the floor with the 
 ease of any tailor whatever. When I went into 
 my bankers they addressed me in Turkish. 
 The other day, at Brousa, my fellow-Mussulmen 
 indignantly denounced me as damned, because 
 I broke the fast of the Ramazan by taking a 
 drink of water in the bazaar. I have gone into 
 
90 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 the holiest mosques in Asia Minor with perfect 
 impunity. I determined to taste the Orient as 
 it was, in reality, not as a mere outside looker- 
 on, and so picked up the Arabic tongue, put on 
 the wide trowsers, and adopted as many East 
 ern customs as was becoming to a good Chris 
 tian." 
 
 In his diary, under the date of November 5th, 
 he writes, " I have a southern soul, it seems, for 
 I feel strongest and happiest when I am where 
 the sun can blaze upon me ; " and again he adds, 
 " I am a worshiper of the sun. I took off my 
 hat to him, as I stood there, in a wilderness of 
 white, crimson, and purple flowers, and let him 
 blaze away in my face for a quarter of an hour. 
 And as I walked home with my back to him, I 
 often turned my face from side to side that I 
 might feel his touch on my cheek." 
 
 The climate of Khartoum affected him un 
 favorably. " He who lives in Khartoum in 
 the hot season," he said, "must either sweat 
 or die." He therefore turned away from " the 
 silent fiery world of tawny sand and ink black 
 porphyry mountains in the heart of Nubia," and 
 reached Cairo, April 1, 1852, and Smyrna, 
 April 22d. On horseback he proceeded to Jeru 
 salem, Damascus, Aleppo, and through Asia 
 Minor to Constantinople, where he arrived July 
 12th. He then set out for home, going first to 
 
REPORTER AND TRAVELER. 91 
 
 Malta, and thence by a small sailing-boat to 
 Catania in Sicily, where he witnessed, August 
 17-20, the festival of St. Agatha which occurs 
 but once in a hundred years. As he rode forth 
 in the diligence from Catania, he saw the 
 flames and heard the thunders of the eruption 
 of Mount Etna. By way of Leghorn, Florence, 
 and Venice he entered Germany, called at 
 Gotha upon Mr. Bufleb, the companion of his 
 voyage upon the Nile, and was again in London 
 October 11, 1852. 
 
 He renewed some old acquaintances, met 
 Mazzini, Miss Mitford, George Peabody, Mary 
 Howitt, and a few other celebrities, but in less 
 than three weeks he was away again from the 
 foggy, sticky, " bituminous metropolis." His 
 maledictions upon English sun and autumn 
 rains recall Landor s growl that "one might 
 live comfortably in England if he were rich 
 enough to possess a solar system of his own." 
 
 His course now was to the south. Through the 
 sleepless Bay of Biscay he proceeded to Spain, 
 and by the India mail steamer reached Bombay, 
 December 27, 1852. His heavy luggage he 
 sent by steamer to Calcutta, and, rid of all im 
 pedimenta, he went overland by cart to Indore, 
 Agra, and Delhi. Brief as his time was, he 
 made a hurried and rough journey to the high 
 est point in the Himalayas which could be 
 
92 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 reached in the winter season, and in less than 
 two months traveled twenty-two hundred miles 
 in the interior. But no rapidity of travel could 
 rob his eye of the beauty or deprive him of the 
 significance of the scenery and the life. At 
 Dehra he stayed with Mr. Keene, the deputy 
 marshal, the H. G. K. of " Blackwood s." At 
 Benares he was the guest of Fitzedward Hall, 
 the professor of Sanskrit. 
 
 When he had reached Constantinople in July 
 he had found a letter from the " Tribune " office 
 awaiting him. It contained a proposition to 
 him to accompany Commodore Perry s expedi 
 tion to Japan, the " Tribune " to supply the 
 funds and to obtain him a place on board of 
 the flagship. This last proved more difficult 
 than his " Tribune " associates had foreseen, and 
 Taylor was finally instructed to proceed to 
 Hong Kong, where he would meet Commodore 
 Perry, who had said that he would be very 
 " happy to see Mr. Taylor. " It was Taylor s 
 haste to reach the Chinese port that was hurry 
 ing him so rapidly across country to Delhi and 
 Calcutta. After touching at Singapore he ar 
 rived in Hong Kong March 16, 1853. Upon 
 the invitation of Captain Buchanan he went on 
 board the Susquehanna and sailed to Macao 
 and Shanghai. An ineffectual attempt was made 
 to reach Nankin, and the Susquehanna returned 
 
EEPOETEE AND TEAVELEE. 93 
 
 to Shanghai, where Taylor presented himself 
 to Commodore Perry, who had arrived from 
 Hong Kong, and received from him after some 
 delay and diplomacy the post of master s mate. 
 The rules of the service prevented Taylor from 
 writing a line for publication. He kept a care 
 ful journal which he delivered to the Navy De 
 partment, but which he was never permitted to 
 recover. It was consulted by Francis Lister 
 Hawks in his " Narrative of the Expedition of 
 an American Squadron to the China Sea and 
 Japan" (1856). 
 
 After four months service Commodore Perry 
 gave the master s mate permission to resign, and 
 Bayard Taylor, after a letter to George H. Boker 
 written from the grotto at Macao " where our 
 brother Camoens wrote the Lusiad, " went by 
 steamer to Canton and embarked on the Sea- 
 Serpent, a merchant ship bound for New York 
 round the Cape of Good Hope, and, after a long 
 tumble about the Cape, and a brief halt at St. 
 Helena, he arrived in fourteen weeks (Decem 
 ber 20, 1853) at New York. Macaulay when he 
 sailed for India took with him the seventy vol 
 umes of Voltaire for playful diversion by the 
 way ; Taylor in his ocean transit committed 
 more than a score of poems to paper, rewrote 
 the letters which had been lost at sea, and com 
 pleted the literary record of two years of travel. 
 
94 SAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 His books of travel in their time were highly 
 esteemed, for they told of striking adventure 
 and splendid courage and persistence, and they 
 still find a ready sale, although the demand for 
 that class of literature has greatly fallen off. 
 Their chief merit is reportorial. Taylor s object 
 was to give correct pictures of foreign life and 
 scenery, and he wisely left antiquarian research 
 and speculation to abler hands. His books are, 
 as he said, " a series of cosmoramic views." To 
 him " a live Arab " was more interesting than " a 
 dead Pharaoh." He had no ambition to build a 
 reputation upon his prose, but his style was al 
 ways perspicuous, and at times vivid. He resisted 
 the temptation to write flamboyant descriptions, 
 and wrote simply and concisely. His word pic 
 tures of architecture and scenery retain their 
 place in the hand-books of foreign travel to voice 
 the inarticulate emotion of the tourist, and his 
 account of a hasheesh debauch and of an Orien 
 tal bath, in " The Lands of the Saracen," justifies 
 the criticism that has named him " the best 
 American reporter of scenes and incidents." 
 
 His protracted travels broke up or interrupted 
 his associations in America. He returned from 
 distant journeys to find remarkable changes in 
 social and literary life, old cliques disbanded, 
 and former friendships dissolved. The reputa 
 tion that he had as a traveler, and the curiosity 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 95 
 
 that the people showed in him, excited the envy 
 of some of his fellows in the press. Malicious 
 falsehoods concerning him were invented and 
 circulated. One epigrammatic fiction more in 
 genious than the rest was widely repeated. It 
 has become one of the best known anecdotes of 
 literary men. The bare mention of the name of 
 Bayard Taylor is sufficient to recall the state 
 ment that Humboldt once said that of all men 
 he had ever known Taylor had traveled the 
 farthest and had seen the least. The story was 
 witty, and it had an air of verisimilitude. It was 
 such a thing as Humboldt might have said, for 
 Taylor made no pretensions to scientific know 
 ledge ; he did not assume to know scientifically 
 the geology and the sociology of the countries he 
 visited. The things over which the author of 
 " Cosmos " would have paused in delighted sur 
 prise Taylor does not see or at least says nothing 
 about. He sketches the gay, the bizarre, the ex 
 terior life of the countries that he visits. The 
 story nevertheless was entirely without founda 
 tion and was invented by Park Benjamin, who, 
 upon his death-bed, acknowledged having origi 
 nated it. 
 
 Taylor always explained the spiteful story by 
 saying that Park Benjamin had asked him for a 
 set of his works, and Taylor, feeling that he could 
 not afford to make the present, had by his re- 
 
96 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 fusal to comply with the request excited Benja 
 min s enmity and desire for revenge. 
 
 " By-Ways of Europe " was a book of trav 
 els published by Taylor in 1869. It was the 
 eleventh volume of travel that he had written 
 and published. He believed it to be probably 
 his last, and he prefaced it with " a familiar 
 letter to the reader," in which, with his finger 
 upon the reader s buttonhole, he relates the cir 
 cumstances that led to the series of personal and 
 literary experiences which his ten previous vol 
 umes had contained. " As I have been specially 
 styled, for so many years and little to my own 
 satisfaction, a traveler or a tourist, and in 
 either character have received praise and blame, 
 equally founded on a misconception of the facts 
 and hopes of my life, I claim the privilege, this 
 once, to set the truth before those who may care 
 to hear it." (" By-Ways," p. 7.) He proceeds 
 to tell how he was driven to his first tramp trip 
 (1844) by the strong necessity of providing 
 for himself sources of education which, situated 
 as he was, could not be reached at home. It 
 was as an obedient servant of the Press that 
 he had gone to California and Mexico in 1849. 
 " When, two years later, a change of scene and 
 of occupation became imperative, from the action 
 of causes quite external to my own plans and 
 hopes, my first thought naturally was to com- 
 
EEPOETER AND TRAVELER. 97 
 
 plete my imperfect scheme of travel by a journey 
 to Egypt and the Orient. I was, moreover, 
 threatened with an affection of the throat, for 
 which the climate of Africa offered a sure rem 
 edy." ("By- Ways," p. 10.) 
 
 He admits that this free rambling was " a 
 grateful release from the drudgery of the edi 
 torial room. After three years of clipping and 
 pasting, and the daily arrangement of a chaos 
 of ephemeral shreds, in an atmosphere which 
 soon exhausts the vigor of the blood, the change 
 to the freedom of Oriental life . . . was like 
 that from night to day. With restored health, 
 the life of the body became a delight in itself ; 
 a kindly fortune seemed to attend my steps ; I 
 learned something of the patience and fatalistic 
 content of the races among whom I was thrown, 
 and troubled myself no longer with an anxious 
 concern for the future." 
 
 During a winter and summer trip to the far 
 North (1856-57), and a journey to Greece and 
 Russia which immediately followed, he found, 
 as he says, that his former enjoyment of new 
 scenes and the zest of getting knowledge at first 
 hand were sensibly diminished by regret for the 
 lack of those severe preparatory studies which 
 would have enabled him to see and learn so 
 much more. He was once lamenting his lack 
 of special knowledge when Humboldt said to 
 
98 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 him, " But you paint the world as we explorers 
 of science cannot. Do not undervalue what you 
 have done. It is a real service ; and the unsci 
 entific traveler who knows the use of his eyes 
 observes for us always without being aware of 
 it." Dr. Barth and Dr. Petermann voluntarily 
 confessed their interest in the power with which 
 Taylor brought vividly home to thousands of 
 firesides clear pictures of the remotest regions 
 of the earth. The Duke of Argyll told Taylor 
 that he was the cause of Tennyson s visit to Nor 
 way ; after reading "Northern Travel" Tenny 
 son was determined to see the Northern lands. 
 
 At one time when the influence of Humboldt 
 was upon him, the idea hovered before his mind 
 of constructing " a human cosmos, which should 
 represent the race in its grand divisions, its re 
 lation to soil and climate, its varieties of mental 
 and moral development, and its social, political 
 and spiritual phenomena, with the complex 
 causes from which they spring." He read, in 
 the East, Riickert s " Morgenlandische Sagen 
 und Geschichten," and Goethe s " West-Oest- 
 licher Divan." He aspired after " the un 
 shackled range of all experience." And while 
 he did not hesitate to confess that to be styled " a 
 great American traveler " had always touched 
 him with a sense of humiliation, as if one should 
 say " a great American pupil," he realized that 
 
EEPOETEE AND TRAVELER. 99 
 
 he had gained in breadth of view and richness 
 of life, and in " 1 Envoi " to the " Poems of the 
 Orient " he wrote : 
 
 " For not to any race or any clime 
 
 Is the completed sphere of life revealed ; 
 He who would make his own that round sublime 
 Must pitch his tent on many a distant field." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LECTUKER AND LANDOWNER. 
 
 1854-1860. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR found a copy of "Eldo 
 rado " in a library at the foot of the Himalayas. 
 He had been told by James T. Fields that his 
 books were selling to travelers in England at 
 every railway station. Despite these evidences 
 of popular and unusual interest he was unpre 
 pared for the universal curiosity concerning 
 him that he found upon his return to America. 
 The " Tribune " letters had been widely and 
 eagerly read, " the 4 Tribune comes next to 
 the Bible all through the West," Bayard wrote 
 to his mother, the adventures of his youth 
 and the sad romance of his early manhood had 
 fascinated the public, and there were many 
 thousands from Maine to Wisconsin who were 
 impatient to see the returned " Waring " Av 
 atar of Vishnu land. 
 
 In the early " fifties " the lyceum lecture sys 
 tem was at its height. In the West, particu 
 larly, popular education was supposed to be 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 101 
 
 forwarded by lectures on every conceivable 
 subject delivered in every imaginable manner. 
 The prices paid to lecturers, in the Eastern 
 States at least, were not magnificent. James 
 T. Fields said humorously that he and Dr. 
 Holmes were wont to get five dollars for a lec 
 ture, and that upon one occasion the lyceum 
 refused to pay, because, said the chairman, " It 
 wa n t as good as we expected." George Wil 
 liam Curtis tried the lecture platform to retrieve 
 his fortunes from business calamity, and when 
 he received fifty dollars for one evening he ex 
 claimed jubilantly " I am now getting the price 
 of aprima donna" Still the fancy for lectures 
 was sufficiently fresh and strong to insure to a 
 popular past-master in the art an income more 
 substantial than he could hope to earn with his 
 pen. 
 
 Bayard Taylor was an excellent lecturer. His 
 manner was easy, fluent, conversational. He 
 told his story simply and frankly, and the story 
 was one of absorbing interest. He wrote three 
 lectures, " The Arabs," " India," " Japan and 
 Loo Choo," that were vivid word-pictures of 
 the lands and people they described. G. P. R. 
 James once said that Bayard Taylor was the 
 best landscape painter in words that he had ever 
 known. And this art, the reporter s art, Taylor 
 exercised without any attempt at "fine writ- 
 
102 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 ing;" he simply saw clearly the thing he de 
 scribed, and told what he saw in a plain way. 
 
 " I have a quiet laugh to myself now and 
 then," he said to J. T. Fields, " at the idea of 
 being a popular lecturer, I who have no faculty 
 for anything like oratory. I see how it is that 
 people are interested in what I say; but that 
 does n t lessen the absurdity of the thing. I 
 care no more for the applause I receive from 
 lecturing than if it were bestowed on somebody 
 else ; the only advantage I am conscious of is, 
 that I can stand up in the face of the multitude 
 without feeling embarrassed." 
 
 Between January and May, 1854, he filled 
 ninety lecture engagements, even small towns 
 paying him fifty dollars a lecture, and in the 
 fall he delivered one hundred and thirty more. 
 In Baltimore he addressed an audience of four 
 thousand persons. A special train was run from 
 Canandaigua to Penn Yan, when he was lectur 
 ing at the latter place. " Vagabondage," Taylor 
 called the nomadic life he was now living, and it 
 quickly grew repugnant to him. " I am stared 
 at and pointed at," he wrote to his mother, "as 
 if I were the great Gyaskutos [sic] itself." To 
 R. H. Stoddard he wrote, " I have lectured nine 
 times since I saw you, and have had great suc 
 cess everywhere. Crammed houses, women car 
 ried out fainting, young ladies stretching their 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 103 
 
 necks on all sides and crying in breathless whis 
 pers, there he is ! that s him ! : 
 
 Grace Greenwood tells of an interesting after 
 noon in the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, 
 when Taylor, in a weary and a somewhat petu 
 lant mood, dissuaded her from lecturing, saying 
 that it was an occupation full of misery, that he 
 himself detested it, and that an audience seemed 
 to him no other thing than a collection of cab 
 bage-heads. A few minutes later Mr. Emerson 
 congratulated her upon the thought of lecturing, 
 saying that there was recompense for all the 
 hardships of the work in the kind words and 
 the smiling faces and the bright eyes of the 
 audience. 
 
 In this busy year (1854) he published in one 
 season three books, " A Journey to Central Af 
 rica, or Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the 
 Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile," 1 "The 
 Lands of the Saracen, or Pictures of Palestine, 
 Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain," 2 and " Poems 
 of the Orient." 3 
 
 Even his buoyant spirits and abundant health 
 drooped and flagged at times, not from stress of 
 work so much as because of the tedious jour 
 neys, the ill-cooked food, and the tiresome con- 
 
 1 Published August, 1854. 
 
 2 Published October, 1854. 
 
 8 Published October 27, 1854. 
 
104 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 gratulations the thousandth time repeated. His 
 lecture engagements often carried him into a 
 zone of tough steaks, bad water, and no beer, 
 whose miseries he was constrained to endure 
 until his deliverance into a mellower region. 
 " I am quite fagged out," he writes to his 
 mother, " not with speaking, but with traveling, 
 and with being shown up, introduced, ques 
 tioned, visited, and made to visit, handshaken, 
 autographed, honorary membershiped, compli 
 mented, censured, quizzed, talked about before 
 my face by people who don t know me, written 
 about in the papers, displayed on handbills, 
 sold on tickets, applied to for charitable pur 
 poses, and the Lord knows what else." Where 
 his audiences were intelligent and sympathetic 
 Taylor found the work pleasant enough. Pitts 
 burgh he preferred to all other cities to lecture 
 in. Prosperity came with the popularity. How 
 ever distasteful the work he was doing, it 
 brought ever nearer that independence of for 
 tune which was to make possible his scheme of 
 life. The " Tribune" was paying comfortable 
 dividends, his books of travel were selling rap 
 idly, seven thousand copies of the " Journey to 
 Central Africa," and a like number of " The 
 Lands of the Saracen," having been ordered 
 before publication. He was preparing for a 
 Western house a "Cyclopaedia of Travel," 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 105 
 
 lor which, though perfunctory task work, he was 
 to receive five thousand dollars. 
 
 He had cause to congratulate himself and to 
 rejoice, to believe the singing birds musicians, 
 the flowers fair ladies, and his steps no more 
 than a delightful measure or a dance. 
 
 Before his return from Europe in 1853, the 
 Pusey farm, a tract of eighty acres near Ken- 
 nett, which he had long wanted to possess, was 
 purchased for him. In 1855 he added to it 
 about forty-five acres which he bought from his 
 father, and forty acres, with an ancient stone 
 farmhouse, obtained from his uncle. It was his 
 purpose to build a large house which should be 
 the home of all his family. He improved the 
 land, planted evergreen trees, and while busy in 
 remote parts of the country lecturing was never 
 far in thought from Kennett, and constantly 
 sent money to his mother for the purchase of 
 trees and shrubs. 
 
 Two brief vacations he allowed himself in 
 1855. He took his father and mother in May to 
 the Mammoth Cave, which, he says, is beyond 
 " Vathek s Hall of Eblis ; " and in August, as 
 representative of the " Tribune," he accompanied 
 Lieutenant Maury and Professor Silliman and a 
 scientific party to put down the submarine tele 
 graph between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. 
 Soon after his return from the latter trip he 
 
106 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 published in September "A Visit to India, 
 China and Japan in the year 1853," and fol 
 lowed it about the middle of November with 
 "Poems of Home and Travel," and a revised 
 edition of "Views Afoot" with a new preface. 
 
 The winter of 1855-56 was unusually severe. 
 Again Taylor had undertaken a heavy burden 
 of lecture engagements. In February, 1856, he 
 broke down in Boston and upon medical advice 
 canceled all his engagements, abandoned his ir 
 regular life, returned to New York and cleared 
 away all arrears of work, and completed every 
 literary obligation. Never before did he do so 
 much in the same space of time. Between the 
 first of April and the seventeenth of June, he 
 finished nine hundred royal octavo pages of the 
 " Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel," " besides pre 
 paring thirteen maps and a variety of cuts and 
 looking after the printing, engraving, etc." 
 
 Another period of his life closed when, with 
 all tasks well ended, he sailed for Europe, on 
 July 9th, taking with him his two sisters and 
 his youngest brother. For four months he 
 played the complete part of guide, philosopher 
 and friend. He traveled familiar ground, seeing 
 afresh the famous places through the delighted 
 eyes of his companions. In Germany he was 
 surprised and more than pleased at the way in 
 which he was received. He wrote to his mo- 
 
LECTUEEE AND LANDOWNER. 107 
 
 ther, to whom very frankly he related circum 
 stances which it would have savored of vanity or 
 affectation to disclose to another, " Dresden is 
 the literary city of Germany, and I met with all 
 the authors living there. I was delighted to find 
 that they all knew me. When I called on the 
 poet Julius Hammer, he was at his desk, trans 
 lating my poem of 4 Steyermark. Gutzkow 
 the dramatist, Auerbach the novelist, Dr. An- 
 dree the geographer, and others whose names 
 are known all over Europe, welcomed me as a 
 friend and brother author. We had a grand 
 dinner together the day before I left. The 
 Dresden papers spoke of me as a distinguished 
 guest, and published translations of my poems. 
 In fact I think I am almost as well known in 
 Germany as in the United States." 
 
 He settled his sisters and brother at a pension 
 in Lausanne while he returned for a second and 
 longer visit to Gotha, from whence he started by 
 way of Coburg, Dresden, and Berlin to carry out 
 his old intention of a journey to the land of the 
 midnight sun. With his companion, Braisted, 
 a sailor, who was acting as his valet, he set forth 
 from Stockholm, December 15, 1856, and in two 
 months made the tour of Lapland. 
 
 He traveled " nearly twenty-two hundred 
 miles, two hundred and fifty of them by rein 
 deer, and nearly five hundred within the Arctic 
 
108 SAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 circle." Reindeer travel he compares to a frisky 
 sturgeon harnessed to a " dug-out " in a rough 
 sea. The book that records his journey is 
 " Northern Travel : Summer and Winter Pic 
 tures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland " 
 (1857). It is a book of the thermometer. Tay 
 lor s satisfaction at his endurance of extreme 
 cold seems to take precedence of his interest in 
 the life of the country. At Kautokeino he saw 
 a day without a sun. " The snowy hills to the 
 north, it is true, were tinged with a flood of 
 rosy flame, and the very next day would prob 
 ably bring down the tide mark of sunshine to 
 the tops of the houses. One day, however, was 
 enough to satisfy me. You, my heroic friend, 1 
 may paint with true pencil and still truer pen 
 the dreary solemnity of the long Arctic night : 
 but, greatly as I enjoy your incomparable pic 
 tures, much as I honor your courage and your 
 endurance, you shall never teach me to share 
 in the experience. The South is a cup which 
 one may drink to inebriation; but one taste 
 from the icy goblet of the North is enough to 
 allay curiosity and quench all further desire." 
 ("Northern Travel," p. 132.) 
 
 As he left the solitude of the North, he writes : 
 "Not the table-land of Pamir in Thibet, the 
 cradle of the Oxus and the Indus, but this lower 
 
 1 Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 109 
 
 Lapland terrace, is entitled to the designation of 
 the c Roof of the World. We were on the sum 
 mit, creeping along her mountain rafters, and 
 looking southward, off her shelving eaves, to 
 catch a glimpse of the light playing on her ma 
 jestic front. Here for once we seemed to look 
 down on the horizon, and I thought of Europe 
 and the tropics as lying below. Our journey 
 northward had been an ascent, but now the world s 
 steep sloped downward before us into sunshine 
 and warmer air." (" Northern Travel," p. 147.) 
 
 He returned to Gotha in May, 1857, and 
 spent some time in excursions into the forests 
 and mountains. He accompanied his sisters and 
 his brother to Bremen, and then visited Eng 
 land. Thackeray, whom he had met in 1855, in 
 troduced him to Tennyson, with whom he spent 
 two days. 
 
 T. Buchanan Read took him to Hammer 
 smith to call on Leigh Hunt, then seventy- 
 three years old. Hunt showed him his curious 
 collection of locks of hair of the poets. " That 
 thin tuft of brown silky fibres," writes Taylor 
 describing his visit, " could it really have been 
 shorn from Milton s head? I asked myself. 
 1 Touch it, said Leigh Hunt, 4 and then you 
 will have touched Milton s self. There is a 
 love in hair, though it be dead, said I, as I did 
 so, repeating a line from Hunt s own sonnet on 
 this lock." 
 
110 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 To complete his northern travel, Taylor sailed 
 from Hull (July 3) for Christiania, and trav 
 eled to Drontheim. He saw the midnight sun at 
 the North Cape, " and had quite enough of the 
 North." A journey through Dalecarlia to Stock 
 holm, and to Copenhagen where he met Hans 
 Christian Andersen and Professor Rafn, com 
 pleted his quest after new sensation. 
 
 And now occurred the happiest event of his 
 life. His companion, six years before, when 
 traveling upon the Nile, was a German land 
 owner whose acquaintance he had made en route 
 from Smyrna to Alexandria. Between Mr. 
 August Bufleb, the German, and Bayard Taylor 
 there immediately grew up the most affectionate 
 friendship. Each showed for the other un 
 bounded devotion and generosity. How roman 
 tic and how real the attachment was may be 
 gathered from Bayard Taylor s letter to his mo 
 ther (December 19, 1851) : " For two days be 
 fore our parting he could scarcely eat or sleep, 
 and when the time drew near he was so pale 
 and agitated that I almost feared to leave him. 
 I have rarely been so moved as when I saw a 
 strong, proud man exhibit such an attachment 
 for me. He told me he could scarcely account 
 for it, but he felt almost ready to give up all his 
 engagements to return home and accompany me. 
 I told him all my history, and showed him the 
 
LECTURES AND LANDOWNER. Ill 
 
 portrait I have with me. 1 He went out of the 
 cabin after looking at it, and when he returned 
 I saw that he had been weeping." 
 
 When Taylor returned from Newfoundland, 
 in September, 1855, he received a letter from 
 Mr. Bufleb presenting him with a beautiful bit 
 of property in Gotha. " Whilst you," writes 
 Bufleb, " were dedicating your glorious work on 
 Central Africa to me, I was setting in order for 
 you the most cherished part of my possessions." 
 Taylor and his companions reached Gotha the 
 following August, and made their home in this 
 charming place which the thoughtful affection 
 of Mr. Bufleb had provided. " The house," 
 writes Taylor, " is furnished in antique style 
 with high-backed, red velvet chairs, Brussels 
 rugs, sofas, mirrors,* flower-stands, matches and 
 cigars on the table, tea, sugar, etc., in the cup 
 board, and beer in the cellar. Nothing was for 
 gotten ; the smallest things were all in their 
 places, and here I live like a prince." Here, too, 
 he became acquainted with the gentle lady, 
 Marie Hansen, niece of Mrs. Bufleb and daugh 
 ter of Peter Andreas Hansen, the eminent as 
 tronomer and director of the Ducal Observatory, 
 to whom he was married in Gotha October 27, 
 1857. Through the remaining twenty-one years 
 of his life she was his loyal helper in all his toil, 
 1 His picture of Mary Agnew. 
 
112 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 and after his death she collected with affection- 
 ate care his large correspondence that was dis 
 persed through many hands, and with Horace 
 E. Scudder edited the admirable and complete 
 " Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor." 
 
 After his marriage, Taylor went with his wife 
 to London, where he superintended the publica 
 tion of " Northern Travel," which was issued 
 simultaneously in New York by G. P. Putnam, 
 and in London by Sampson, Low & Co. 
 
 The farthest point reached by Taylor upon 
 his first visit to Europe, it will be remembered, 
 was Rome. Circumstances constrained him to 
 give up " the thrilling hope," as he called it, 
 "of climbing Parnassus and drinking from 
 Castaly." The long deferred visit to Greece he 
 was now about to make. He left Gotha in De 
 cember (1857) and, a voyager on the Ionian 
 blast, hailed the bright clime of battle and 
 of song. He touched at Corfu, the ancient 
 Corcyra, saw the smoke leap up from Ithaca as 
 the returning Odysseus saw it, and recalled at 
 Leucadia his own verses upon " The Death of 
 Sappho," now blended with Byron s " Leuca- 
 dia s far-projecting rock of woe." Their vessel 
 anchored off Missolonghi, where Byron s stormy 
 life ceased, and at Patras Taylor s feet first 
 pressed the " haunted holy ground." On Christ 
 mas Day his eye swept the Bay of Salamis, and 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 113 
 
 the same day he walked up the street of Hermes 
 and in the street of ^Eolus engaged apartments 
 for the winter in the Hotel d Orient. 
 
 Bayard Taylor knew no more Greek than 
 John Keats, but he had appropriated with kin 
 dred intuition the spirit of Greek life and art. 
 Every moment ran itself for him in golden 
 sands. Delicious indeed was the first breakfast 
 in Athens, with honey from Mt. Hymettus. 
 The lovely isles of Greece took his reason pris 
 oner. Excursions were made to Crete, to the 
 Morea, and to Thessaly ; and through Mycenae 
 and Tiryns he rode with unknown treasures 
 under his feet. He began the study of modern 
 Greek and learned sufficient to answer the ne 
 cessities of travel. Ancient Greek he did not 
 take up until the last years of his life. William 
 D. Howells, in " Harper s Magazine " for May, 
 1894, writes, " I remember that I met him once 
 in a Cambridge street with a book in his hand 
 which he let me take in mine. It was a Greek 
 author, and he said he was just beginning to 
 read the language at fifty ; a patriarchal age to 
 me of the early thirties ! I suppose I intimated 
 the surprise that I felt at his taking it up so late 
 in the day, for he said, with charming seriousness, 
 4 Oh, but you know, I expect to use it in the 
 other world. Yes, that made it worth while, I 
 consented ; but was he sure of the other world ? 
 
114 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 4 As sure as I am of this, he said ; and I have 
 always kept the impression of the young faith 
 which spoke in his voice, and was more than his 
 words." 
 
 Alfieri in his delightful Autobiography tells 
 how he began Greek at forty-eight, " reading 
 the aspirates, accents, and diphthongs as they 
 are written and not as they are stupidly pro 
 nounced by the modern Greeks, who have an 
 alphabet of five iotas, making their language 
 a continual iotacism, more worthy of the neigh 
 ing of horses than the most harmonious tongue 
 in the world." Taylor, who never forgot any 
 thing, found his Romaic serviceable, when, in 
 long railroad journeys, he refreshed himself by 
 studying ancient Greek, and he therefore used 
 the modern pronunciation and read his Homer, 
 as Alfieri would have said, with " vile iotacism." 
 
 A journey was made into Crete, of which Tay 
 lor records nothing memorable. In a monastery 
 among the ruins of Aptera, where he spent a 
 night, he found " the sacerdotal fleas were as 
 voracious as Capuchin friars." 
 
 He reached Corinth at the time of the great 
 earthquake of February 21, 1858, and went 
 south into Sparta, where he was entertained by 
 relatives of Dr. Kalopothakes, who for more 
 than thirty years has taken American visitors 
 to Greece under his hospitable care. 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 115 
 
 At the Piraeus Taylor saw Mrs. Black, " the 
 Maid of Athens " to whom Byron sang in impos 
 sible and imgrammatical Greek. Mavrocorda- 
 tos, old and blind, the friend and ally of Byron, 
 was still living. Dr. Schbll, in whose arms 
 Otfried Miiller died, and who was one of the 
 physicians who attended upon Byron at Misso- 
 longhi, recounted the closing scene of the poet s 
 life to Taylor, while Mr. Finlay, the historian of 
 Mediaeval Greece, told him the circumstances 
 under which Byron contracted his fatal illness. 
 
 From Athens (May 6th) Taylor departed to 
 Constantinople, where he said he noticed but 
 three changes since 1852 : that Per a is lighted 
 with gas, that the hotels have raised their prices 
 five francs a day, and that the dogs of Stam- 
 boul no longer bark at Giaours. He returned 
 by the Danube to Gotha, where Mrs. Taylor 
 was established in her former home, and again 
 set out on the third of June for Poland and 
 Russia, returning to Gotha at the end of July. 
 His only child, Lilian, was born August 3, 1858. 
 
 Before the first of October, the time fixed 
 by Taylor to return to America, occurred the 
 three hundredth anniversary of the University 
 of Jena, of which he has left a vivid account in 
 " At Home and Abroad." Here at the Kneipe 
 he made the interesting acquaintance of Fritz 
 Renter, and tells with delight of his volleys of 
 Low German fun. 
 
116 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 On the 24th of October the Taylors arrived 
 at Kennett Square. 
 
 Deep in his heart Bayard Taylor bore a 
 warm affection for Chester County, the place 
 of his birth. His love of country life and the 
 ambition to furnish a generous roof-tree for 
 his family seemed now about to be gratified ; 
 in the repose of his own home, and in the peace 
 of a quiet neighborhood, he could develop the 
 poems that were kindling in him and which 
 he believed the world would not willingly let 
 die. Upon the spot which he had chosen for 
 his ideal and idyllic home the ground was now 
 broken, and while the work went forward 
 Taylor established his family with Richard II. 
 Stoddard and his family in Brooklyn, and then 
 departed upon another lecturing tour in which 
 the entire winter was consumed. When sum 
 mer came the building of the house engaged his 
 attention. At this time he was writing sketches 
 of travel for the " New York Mercury." He 
 had purchased the stereotype plates of his works 
 from Mr. Putnam after the latter s business em 
 barrassments, and Putnam now acted for him, as 
 for Washington Irving, in the capacity of agent. 
 To his books of travel Taylor added, in 1859, 
 " Travels in Greece and Russia, with an Excur 
 sion to Crete," and " At Home and Abroad : A 
 Sketch Book of Life, Scenery and Men." 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 117 
 
 From California, whither he had gone on a 
 three months lecturing tour, he returned de 
 lighted and surprised at the magic growth of 
 the country. He wrote of it : 
 
 ON LEAVING CALIFORNIA. 
 
 O fair young land, the youngest, fairest far 
 
 Of which our world can boast, 
 Whose guardian planet, Evening s silver star, 
 
 Illumes thy golden coast, 
 
 The marble, sleeping in thy mountains now, 
 
 Shall live in sculptures rare ; 
 Thy native oak shall crown the sage s brow 
 
 Thy bay, the poet s hair. 
 
 Thy tawny hills shall bleed their purple wine, 
 
 Thy valleys yield their oil ; 
 And Music, with her eloquence divine, 
 
 Persuade thy sons to toil. 
 
 Till Hesper, as he trims his silver beam, 
 
 No happier land shall see, 
 And earth shall find her old Arcadian dream 
 
 Restored again in thee ! 
 
 He was more than ever weary of lecturing, 
 two hundred and seventy lectures he had given 
 in eighteen months. His eagerness to occupy 
 the great house that was now approaching com 
 pletion, and his excitement at the nearness of 
 that period when time and peace should be his 
 to walk in the fields of his heart and to dedicate 
 the best of himself to poetic endeavor, increased 
 
118 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 his irritation at the uncongenial tasks that 
 pressed upon him. He went with his family 
 to the old homestead until May, 1860, when 
 they moved into the new home which he called 
 " Cedarcroft," and with him he took his father 
 and mother and his two sisters. The house had 
 cost him seventeen thousand dollars, and the 
 stereotype plates of his books had cost him five 
 thousand more. All debts were paid and he 
 seemed about to enter into the enjoyment of 
 a rest that he had well earned. He invited 
 the " Return of the Goddess : " - 
 
 " Not as in youth with steps outspeeding morn, 
 
 And cheeks all bright, from rapture of the way, 
 But in strange mood, half cheerful, half forlorn, 
 She comes to me to-day. 
 
 " Does she forget the trysts we used to keep, 
 
 When dead leaves rustled on autumnal ground, 
 Or the lone garret, whence she banished sleep 
 With threats of silver sound ? 
 
 " Doe s she forget how shone the happy eyes 
 
 When they beheld her, how the eager tongue 
 Plied its swift oar through wave-like harmonies^ 
 To reach her where she sung ? 
 
 " How at her sacred feet I cast me down ? 
 
 How she upraised me to her bosom fair, 
 And from her garland shred the first light crown 
 That ever pressed my hair ? 
 
 ** Though dust is on the leaves, her breath will bring 
 Their freshness back : why lingers she so long ? 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 119 
 
 The pulseless air is waiting for her wing 1 , 
 Dumb with unuttered song. 
 
 " If tender doubt delay her on the road 
 
 Oh let her haste to find the doubt belied ! 
 If shame for love unworthily bestowed, 
 That shame shall melt in pride. 
 
 " If she but smile, the crystal calm shall break 
 
 In music, sweeter than it ever gave, 
 As when a breeze breathes o er some sleeping lake, 
 And laughs in every wave. 
 
 " The ripples of awakened song shall die 
 
 Kissing her feet, and woo her not in vain 
 Until, as once, upon her breast I lie 
 Pardoned, and loved again ! " 
 
 " When I build a house," Taylor had said in 
 his youth, " I shall build it upon the ridge, with 
 a high steeple from the top of which I can see 
 far and wide." Cedarcroft is conspicuous by its 
 lofty tower and stands upon high ground about 
 a mile north of the built-up portion of Kennett 
 Square. On the eastern side of the Kennett 
 road, within a stone s throw of the domain of 
 Cedarcroft, at the end of a long lane of tall old 
 cedars, is a two-story gray house, with a wooden 
 porch and rustic dooryard which was the home 
 of Taylor s childhood. Over the front arch of 
 the main entrance to Cedarcroft is a square of 
 white stone bearing the legend 
 
120 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 BAYARD MARIE TAYLOR. 
 
 1859. 
 
 In the rear of the house is a belt of cedars 
 and behind these rise gigantic forest trees. 
 Not even the mighty oaks of Charlecote Park, 
 where young Shakespeare went poaching, Taylor 
 was fond of saying, equal these secular trees 
 of Cedarcroft. There is but one open space in 
 the zone of trees, where the sloping sward ends 
 to the southeast, at a distance of a quarter of a 
 mile, in an artificial pond. Doubtless it was 
 when this violet-starred bank flashed upon the 
 inner eye which is the bliss of solitude that 
 Taylor wrote : 
 
 " The violet loves a sunny bank, 
 
 The cowslip loves the lea ; 
 The scarlet creeper loves the elm, 
 But I love thee." 
 
 No one can ever quite know what manner of 
 man Bayard Taylor was who has not known him 
 as host and friend at " Towered Cedarcroft." 
 All the future circumstances of his life were 
 indissolubly knit to this rural home. With 
 what affection he watched its rise, with what joy 
 he witnessed its completion, can only be appre 
 ciated when we enter into Taylor s ardent nature 
 and realize how he panted for recognition and 
 for sympathy and how dear to him was the 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 121 
 
 native soil of his loved Chester County. Out of 
 that soil and from his own domain he dug the 
 clay and baked the bricks to build these massive 
 walls. His was the primal eldest passion, the 
 love of the earth ! Like Scott at Abbotsford he 
 desired a large estate, rich acres that he might 
 call his, and a mansion, baronial in its extent, 
 not for shallow pride and ostentation, but that it 
 might be the comfortable home of his kindred 
 and furnish free-hearted hospitality to his friends. 
 And like Scott at Abbotsford, and Burke at 
 Beaconsfield, the home that he had longed for 
 and toiled for became a burden and a weary 
 weight, prematurely ending his overtaxed life. 
 
 The great entrance door opened upon a broad 
 hall and wide oaken stairway, to the left of which, 
 and facing south and west, was the splendid 
 library room. Here Taylor carried forward his 
 literary work. Here he wrote " The Poet s 
 Journal," " The Picture of St. John," and " Home 
 Pastorals ; " two of his novels, " Joseph and his 
 Friend," and " The Story of Kennett," besides 
 his translation of " Faust," and vast quantities 
 of miscellaneous task-work. Here while he hur 
 ried the busy pen he smoked his narghile, or 
 his cigar ; and here he entertained his friends, 
 poets, journalists, painters to whom the hall 
 doors swung widely open. 
 
 Busts of Shakespeare, Goethe, Bryant, and 
 
122 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 Virgil overtopped the bookcases, and framed 
 autographs of Thackeray and Tennyson hung 
 upon the walls. The great house with its broad 
 acres was a splendid monument to the unflagging 
 zeal of its humbly proud master, who but fifteen 
 years before had gone forth a poor lad to see 
 the world, and to win the recognition that now 
 in such heaping measure was already his. 
 
 Taylor s rambles in England had impressed 
 him with the importance of adorning the physi 
 cal aspect of America by reproducing within it 
 the sweetness and beauty of the domestic and 
 religious spirit of the older civilization. The 
 welfare of the future, he taught, lies in the wor 
 ship of beauty. He knew that American life 
 needed nothing so much as repose. Donald 
 Grant Mitchell, " the Horatian classic of Ameri 
 can letters " as William Winter has so happily 
 called him, who always had a strong fondness 
 for rural life, in 1869 edited the " Hearth and 
 Home," for which Taylor wrote articles upon 
 landscape gardening. In Mitchell s home at 
 Edgewood Taylor drew plans for the projected 
 house at Cedarcroft, and in conversation with 
 Mitchell agreed that while the old halls and 
 manor houses of England are the best models 
 for such a structure, yet our brighter sky and 
 southern summer require a lighter and more 
 cheerful aspect. He once wrote to Mitchell, 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 123 
 
 " No man can do better work for this coun 
 try and people than to create such a taste 
 for country life as will elevate and refine the 
 character of our country society." He enjoyed 
 greatly the cultivation of his acres. A new 
 addition to his garden he hailed with a delight 
 scarcely less keen than that with which he 
 greeted the idea of a new poem. The seed of a 
 melon from the Caspian bought at Nijiii-Nov- 
 gorod, mixed with " Mountain Sweet " and 
 planted in Cedarcroft garden, produced a new 
 and capital variety of watermelon. Seed of 
 the Latakia (Laodicea) tobacco brought from 
 Egypt was planted in the same rich soil, and 
 soon the " great vegetable " was thriving at 
 Cedarcroft. 
 
 Miss Laura Eedden (Howard Glyndon) 
 when staying at Cedarcroft asked Bayard Tay 
 lor why he had created a pond at the foot of 
 the lawn. Taylor replied that it was useful as 
 well as ornamental as he intended to drown in 
 it all his disagreeable neighbors. And indeed 
 those neighbors were not few. He had been 
 but a short time at Cedarcroft before he found 
 himself estranged from his old associates. The 
 neighborhood had two passionate interests, Abo 
 lition and Temperance. Across the county 
 from Kennett to Longwood Meeting were 
 rious stations of the Underground Rai}wi*s^ J 
 
 op 
 
124 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 W. L. Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Wendell 
 Phillips, Starr King, Lucretia Mott and all 
 the notable abolitionists had traveled the Ken- 
 nett roads and had spoken at yearly meeting at 
 Longwood. There Anna Dickinson had held 
 aloft her white arm and cried that she would be 
 glad and proud if colored blood coursed in her 
 veins. The restraint and outward calm of the 
 sober Quaker community when stirred by such 
 sentiments of humanity burst into lightning-like 
 passion. 
 
 The fancy of total abstinence had become 
 with them a vital principle. Without it there 
 was no salvation. Taylor had acquired in his 
 travels and in his experience in cities a rational 
 conception of life. He had learned that in ex 
 ercise and not in repression was life s chief ben 
 efit and virtue. 
 
 His " Alongshore " letters to the " Tribune " 
 in 1875 contained a sensible defense of nutri 
 tious and wholesome ale over limestone water 
 and hayseed tea. He was a fit and faithful 
 student of Aristology, which Mortimer Collins 
 says is the art of having the best dinner in 
 the best way. He was wont to describe what 
 he chose to call " the cooking belt " in Amer 
 ica, which continues south from West Chester, 
 New York, through Chester County, Pennsyl 
 vania, to the terrapin and canvas-back of the 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 125 
 
 Maryland market. A profuse dinner at the 
 northern end of the belt Cooper has described in 
 " The Spy," when the procession of waiters at 
 the Locusts bring on " whole flocks of pigeons, 
 certain bevies of quails, shoals of flat-fish, bass, 
 and sundry woodcock ; " and the produce of the 
 Chester and Lancaster farms have given a tra 
 ditional and enviable reputation to the West 
 Chester dinners in Pennsylvania. 
 
 The people of Kennett were offended by the 
 manner of Bayard Taylor s life. The wine upon 
 his table, the beer and whiskey consigned to 
 him from Philadelphia and New York and taken 
 through the town to Cedarcroft were cause of 
 grave concern to his friends and acquaintances. 
 They remonstrated with him ; and he resented 
 the remonstrance. The open, honest life he 
 lived was interpreted by them as hostility and 
 defiance. A physician of Kennett censured him 
 for his manner of life. Taylor retaliated by 
 introducing him into the novel of " Hannah 
 Thurston " as an impertinent temperance crank. 
 He could have no sympathy or patience with the 
 narrow intolerance and impertinence that would 
 compel others to live the life of the community. 
 
 They, with intemperance of speech, assailed 
 his temperance of life, and malicious falsehoods 
 were engendered and circulated, and found their 
 unclean ways into journals, and led to petty an- 
 
126 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 noyance and to ignominious contests. Cynical 
 skeptics who wailed the loss of a stomach or the 
 incapacity of a palate, and anaemic ascetics who 
 diluted their anacreontics with water and cele 
 brated with timid voices the sparkle of Apolli- 
 naris, found a virtue in denouncing Bayard Tay 
 lor s "indulgence." The same people found 
 Longfellow guilty of a serious misdemeanor 
 when he declared that the best thing he had 
 found in England was Bass s ale. The whole 
 truth is that Taylor was a robust man of vigor 
 ous appetite. He ate heartily, drank suffi 
 ciently, and worked enormously. 
 
 " Earth-Life " was written by him out of 
 sheer weariness of the perpetual prate that he 
 heard about him of " soul-life " and " spirit s 
 mission." The voice of his irritation escapes 
 again in " In My Vineyard." 
 
 " The secret soul of sun and dew 
 
 Not vainly she distilleth, 
 And from these globes of pink and blue 
 
 A harmless cup she filleth : 
 Who loveth her may take delight 
 
 In what for him she dresses, 
 Nor find in cheerful appetite 
 
 The portal to excesses. 
 
 " Yes, ever since the race began 
 
 To press the vineyard s juices, 
 It was the brute within the man 
 
 Defiled their nobler uses ; 
 But they who take from order joy, 
 
 And make denial duty, 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 127 
 
 Provoke the brute they should destroy 
 By Freedom and by Beauty ! 
 
 He wrote to his old friend, J. B. Phillips, 
 "There are no such quietly impertinent and 
 meddlesome old Betties in domestic matters as 
 some old male Quakers." He withdrew himself 
 more and more from the people whose simple 
 lives had seemed so beautiful when seen from 
 the thronged pavements of New York. In his 
 correspondence there is a frequent note of 
 discontent and disillusionment : "I live in a 
 loneliness which is rarely pleasantly broken " 
 (October 31, 1870), and "Pennsylvania is vastly 
 behind Massachusetts, but that is partly owing 
 to the stagnation of Quakerism. All the appre 
 ciation I get comes from New England. Penn 
 sylvania gives me nothing but sneers and abuse, 
 and I am a little tired of it." 
 
 While this unfortunate sentiment existed in 
 Kennett, Taylor was not without his loyal 
 friends. When he occasionally drove, farmer- 
 like, into West Chester in a dilapidated old 
 wagon with a leisurely horse, and smoking a 
 cigar of the period, tolerable in a high wind, 
 there were many faces that brightened with 
 pleasure and many hands that were extended 
 in hearty greeting. One literary friendship de 
 serves more particular attention, as it lent much 
 pleasure to Taylor s life, and profited him 
 
128 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 greatly in his most ambitious work. Twenty 
 miles away in an adjacent county, in the beauti 
 ful region of Wallingford, was the summer 
 home of Dr. Horace Howard Furness. When 
 Bayard Taylor was engaged upon his transla 
 tion of " Faust," and was puzzling over difficult 
 tangles that other translators had found " too 
 intrinse t unloose," he was wont to clear his 
 mind by a visit to Lindenshade, as the estate at 
 Wallingford was called, and a talk with Dr. Wil 
 liam H. Furness, for whose German scholarship 
 and poet s intuition Taylor had the highest re 
 spect and veneration. The days at Lindenshade 
 were golden ones in Taylor s calendar. Almost 
 the only literary atmosphere he breathed was 
 at the Furness home. Dr. H. H. Furness was 
 beginning those studies in Shakespeare which 
 were to culminate in the " New Variorum edi 
 tion," the most magnificent monument that ever 
 has been reared to the memory and the know 
 ledge of Shakespeare. His sister, Mrs. Wister, 
 was engaged upon those translations of Ger 
 man novels that have been more popular than 
 any other books rendered from German into 
 English. 
 
 After a happy summer s day spent in talk 
 upon the second part of " Faust," Taylor ad 
 dressed the following poem (which is now for 
 the first time printed) to his friends. 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 129 
 
 GRUSS AN LINDENSCHATTEN. 
 
 Der gliickliche Tag ist voriiber, 
 So lange ersehnt und gehofft : 
 
 Wir gestehen, es ware uns lieber 
 Wenn solche genossen wir oft. 
 
 Gesprache im Schatten der Linden, 
 Gesang und den perlenden Wein : 
 
 Wo Freuden wie diese wir finden, 
 Fliesst ruhig das Leben, und rein. 
 
 Gemiith harmonirt mit Gemiithe ; 
 
 Gedanken entfalten sich frei : 
 Ja, das ist die einzige Bliithe 
 
 Die duf tet wenn Sommer vorbei ! 
 
 So lasst uns die Stimmung bewahren, 
 Und gb nnt uns das heitere Gliick, 
 
 In diesem und komraenden Jahren 
 Zu ruf en die Tage zuriick ! 
 
 Die Linden die summen noch immer 
 Von Stimmen und Liedern und Spiel ; 
 
 Uber Alles verweilt noch ein Schimmer, 
 Es waren der Freuden so viel ! 
 
 Doch wir, ach ! wir sitzen so einsam, 
 Und od ist das griine Gefild : 
 
 Geniesst man die Stunden gemeinsam, 
 Da giebt s ein vollkommenes Bild ! 
 
 Es sehnen sich nun uns re Baume 
 Nach den Gasten, die fehlen so lang 
 
 Die Sale, die hausliche Raume, 
 Sie lauschen auf Lust und Gesang. 
 
130 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 So kommt, eh verwelket die Matten ! 
 
 Dass der Tag uns bald wieder erschein , 
 Wo uns Cedern, nicht Linden, beschatten 
 
 Im f rohlichen, lieben Verein ! 1 
 
 To this Dr. W. H. Furness replied: 
 " MY DEAR BAYARD TAYLOR, I trust you 
 do not mean to claim these lovely German verses 
 (I know no measure more delicious one can 
 afford to let the rhymes take care of themselves, 
 come or stay away as they please bless me ! 
 what a long parenthesis this is, but hold on) 
 as original, because if you do one of the enclosed 
 papers will prove them to have been translated 
 from the English. I grant your translation im 
 proves upon the original, but still it is too literal 
 to be anything but a translation. You thought it 
 would not be found out, but I read your verses 
 over only once or twice and instantly the origi 
 nal came to me, but I don t know whose it is, or 
 where it is to be found." (July 25, 1869.) 
 
 With this playful charge of plagiarism Dr. 
 Furness sent the following beautiful translation 
 of Taylor s German verses. 
 
 CEDARCROFT TO LINDENSHADE. 
 
 The day that we longed for is over. 
 
 It is numbered with days that are gone, 
 
 How blest would this life be, if often 
 Such calm pleasant days would return. 
 
 1 The poem is in the style of Kotzebue : 
 " Wir sitzen BO frdhlich beisamen." 
 
LECTUEEE AND LANDOWNER. 131 
 
 We sat and we talked neath the lindens, 
 We had poems and pearly bright wine, 
 
 How smoothly life passes and purely 
 When with it such joys we entwine. 
 
 Attuned was each heart to the others, 
 
 Our thoughts and our fancies flowed free. 
 
 Ah ! these are the blooms that are fragrant 
 When summer has long ceased to be. 
 
 Then let us, their fragrance preserving, 
 
 The seasons are flying so fast, 
 In this and in all coming summers 
 
 Call back the bright days that are past. 
 
 Still, still do they whisper, those Lindens, 
 
 Of voices and music and play, 
 Over all there still lingers a shimmer, 
 
 So full was the joy of that day. 
 
 But we, ah ! we sit now so lonely, 
 
 And bare are the green fields around. 
 Only when we are merry together, 
 
 Only then does enjoyment abound. 
 
 These old trees of ours now long for 
 
 The guests whom they so long have missed ; 
 
 The dear household places, the parlor 
 Awaits for the song and the jest. 
 
 So come, let the day be repeated, 
 
 Ere the glories of summer shall fade, 
 Where not Lindens but evergreen Cedars 
 
 Shall cover us all with their shade. 
 
 Taylor never shut himself up to write. His 
 library doors were always open, for the presence 
 
132 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 of his guests or of the members of the house 
 hold did not disturb him in his work. And 
 those guests were numerous. Often he cast 
 aside the pen to greet a chance caller, or to 
 welcome in a friend of fame in art or letters. 
 His generous hospitality was freely given to 
 every visitor ; he was the best conditioned and 
 unwearied spirit in doing courtesies. When 
 Cedarcroft was finished in the summer of 1860, 
 Taylor gave a housewarming, and he and Rich 
 ard Henry Stoddard wrote a play, as Stoddard 
 said, " for the delectation of the good, honest 
 country folk, who had no idea that they wit 
 nessed what the world s people would call a 
 theatrical performance." The bill of the per 
 formance, set up with flaming head-lines, read : 
 
 CEDARCROFT THEATRE! 
 
 GREAT ATTRACTION ! 
 
 Saturday, August 18, 1860, 
 
 will be presented for the first time a 
 
 NEW COMEDY 
 
 In One Act, entitled 
 
 LOVE AT A HOTEL! 
 
 By the World-Renowned Dramatic Authors, 
 
 MR. B. T. CEDARCROFT 
 
 and 
 MR. R. H. S. CUSTOMHOUSE. 
 
LECTURER AND LANDOWNER. 133 
 
 " The comedy was a great success," said 
 Stoddard, " and deserved to be (before a coun 
 try audience), for there was not an original 
 scene, situation, thought, or word in it." 1 
 
 Whittier and Lowell had visited Taylor at 
 the old farm at Kennett. Emerson, Curtis, 
 Boker, Stedman, Aldrich, Greeley, and many 
 artists and authors came to Cedarcroft. When 
 E. C. Stedman was Taylor s guest in June, 1865, 
 a picnic on the Brandywine was planned. The 
 feast was rudely disturbed by the advance of 
 a herd of cattle, one hundred strong, who de 
 ployed in line of battle, and threatened the se 
 curity of the small company. " Mr. Stedman, 
 in great glee, flung himself upon the back of a 
 fine short-horned steer, and Bayard Taylor, like 
 a sacrificial priest, took hold of one of the horns, 
 and, swinging his staff, led the astonished animal 
 and his rider about in triumphal procession." 2 
 
 Taylor has celebrated this incident in his 
 sonnet to E. C. S., Christmas, 1865 : 
 
 " When days were long, and o er that farm of mine, 
 Green Cedarcroft, the summer breezes blew, 
 And from the walnut shadows I and you, 
 
 Dear Edmund, saw the red lawn-roses shine, 
 
 Or followed our idyllic Brandywine 
 
 Through meadows flecked with many a flowery hue, 
 To where with wild Arcadian pomp I drew 
 
 Tour Bacchic march among the startled kine, 
 
 1 The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1879. 
 
 2 Life and Letters, p. 432. 
 
134 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 You gave me, linked with old Maeonides, 
 Your loving- sonnet, record dear and true 
 Of days as dear : and now, when suns are brief, 
 
 And Christmas snows are on the naked trees, 
 I give you this a withered winter leaf, 
 Yet with your blossom from one root it grew." 
 
 NOTE. Fire damaged apart of Cedarcroft in Christmas 
 week, 1894. An addition that had been built to the house 
 was destroyed, and the woodwork of the library was scorched 
 and burnt. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 NOVEL WETTING. 
 
 1861-1866. 
 
 IT is a commonplace to speak of Bohemian- 
 ism in New York about 1860. Yet to speak 
 accurately, there were no Bohemians in New 
 York. There was much convivial and uncon 
 ventional life, there were those who were care 
 less what they did to spite the bourgeois world, 
 but there was no real Bohemianism. The poets 
 and journalists, though depending on small and 
 precarious incomes, had washerwomen and lodg 
 ings, and generally paid their debts, notwith 
 standing that at times they were detained by 
 their landlady for indifference to rent-day, and 
 sometimes locked up in Jefferson Market for 
 pranks that are now popularly believed to be 
 performed by college sub-freshmen only. To 
 appreciate what Bayard Taylor did, it is neces 
 sary to understand the background of his life 
 in New York, and to know the sort of thing 
 that was going on. The conditions of author 
 ship had greatly changed from what they were 
 
136 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 when he first came to the city. The Knicker 
 bocker school had faded out. A brilliant circle 
 of young writers of erratic lustre and small 
 reverence had appeared. Washington Irving, 
 " the first literary ambassador from the New 
 World to the Old," died in 1859 ; and in the 
 same year death claimed in this country Rufus 
 Choate and William Hickling Prescott, and in 
 England Leigh Hunt, Thomas De Quincey and 
 Lord Macaulay. In that year " The Knicker 
 bocker Magazine," the tower of literary strength 
 in New York, came to an end ; and N. P. 
 Willis published his last book, " The Convales 
 cent." The cessation of " The Knickerbocker " 
 and of " Putnam s Magazine " marked the pass 
 ing of the old regime. 
 
 In 1857 the " Atlantic Monthly " was begun 
 in Boston. Holmes named it ("not because 
 it was a notion "), Lowell became its editor- 
 in-chief, and all the well-known writers of the 
 country were among its contributors. " The 
 Saturday Press " was started in New York, Oc 
 tober 23, 1858, by Henry Clapp, Jr., a cynical 
 journalist who could throw more bitterness into 
 a single sentence than any man of his period. 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich was associate editor, 
 and Fitz- James O Brien was dramatic editor. 
 In December, 1860, the publication was discon 
 tinued, but after some years it was resumed 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 137 
 
 with the appropriate explanation : " This paper 
 was suspended for lack of funds ; it is now 
 recommenced for the same reason" John 
 Brougham had begun " The Lantern," an illus 
 trated comic paper, in 1852. " Mrs. Grundy," 
 commenced by A. L. Carrol and edited by 
 Charles Dawson Shanly, and "Vanity Fair," 
 edited by Frank Wood, followed the " Sat 
 urday Press." Among the contributors to these 
 vivacious and reckless journals were E. G. P. 
 Wilkins, W. L. Symonds, Henry Neill, N. G. 
 Shepherd, C. D. Shanly, C. I. Gardette, 
 Fitz-Hugh Ludlow, C. F. Browne (Artemus 
 Ward), George Arnold, Fitz- James O Brien, 
 E. C. Stedman, T. B. Aldrich, and William 
 Winter. 
 
 In New England, upon the " Atlantic 
 Monthly," there was culture and tradition, 
 order and decorum. Among the contributors 
 to the New York papers there was fever and 
 recklessness, gayety and melancholy. No re 
 spect was shown by the younger writers for 
 "the various camphorated figure-heads which 
 were then an incubus upon American letters." 
 
 John Brougham gave weekly dinners at 
 Windust s, near the original Park Theatre, 
 which were attended by the Aladdins who 
 " trimmed the wick of the Lantern/ The 
 staff of " Vanity Fair " met on Fridays in the 
 
138 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 old editorial rooms, 113 Nassau Street, and 
 drank, and smoked, and discussed the next 
 issue. The general gathering place of the clan, 
 however, was in PfafFs beer cellar in Broadway. 
 If the New England authors, serene upon their 
 transcendental heights, taught the virtues of 
 plain living and high thinking, the frequenters 
 of Pfaff s believed as potently in high thinking 
 and hard drinking. George Arnold, the lau 
 reate of the long table in this dingy cellar, is 
 authority for it that 
 
 " We were all very merry at Pfaff s." 
 
 Hither came Walt Whitman, whose cause 
 the " Saturday Press " had taken up with its 
 accustomed vigor, looking like the Phidian Jove. 
 Here too came O Brien, disfigured by pugilism, 
 a gypsy of letters whose long periods of idleness 
 were broken by such sudden raptures of creation 
 as " A Fallen Star " and " The Diamond Lens ; " 
 " Fitz - Gammon O Bouncer " William North 
 styled him. Here came " Ned " Wilkins, feed 
 ing on Montaigne, as George Arnold fed upon 
 Balzac ; and the cynical Clapp, who originated 
 the saying, " A self-made man, yes, and worships 
 his creator ; " and Shepherd, who wrote the 
 " Roll Call," and Shanly, who should be re 
 membered for his " Rifleman, shoot me a fancy 
 shot." 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 139 
 
 Mr. William D. Howells has recently related 
 the impression made upon him by a visit to 
 Pfaff s in 1860 " At one moment of the orgy, 
 which went but slowly for an orgy, we were 
 joined by some belated Bohemians whom the 
 others made a great clamor over ; I was given to 
 understand they were just recovered from a 
 fearful debauch; their locks were still damp 
 from the wet towels used to restore them, and 
 their eyes were very frenzied. I was presented 
 to these types, who neither said nor did anything 
 worthy of their awful appearance, but dropped 
 into seats at the table, and ate of the supper 
 with an appetite that seemed poor. I stayed, 
 hoping vainly for worse things till eleven o clock, 
 and then I rose and took my leave of a literary 
 condition that had distinctly disappointed me." 
 
 Taylor, as a companion of Willis, who was 
 styled by "Vanity Fair" the "pink of the 
 press," was not of the " Bohemian " crew, al 
 though he was an occasional visitor at Pfaff s. 
 The " Albion " had published a truculent article 
 upon him, and " Vanity Fair " launched at him 
 mild squibs. Although Taylor held himself 
 aloof from the noisy midnight life, he had 
 many valued friends in the "snapping turtle 
 press," and he was in no small degree influenced 
 by the life that was about him. Without doubt 
 he was saved from the experience that so many 
 
140 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 of the young journalists of the great city knew, 
 by his foreign travel and his touch upon Euro 
 pean culture and Oriental calm. 
 
 Stoddard, Taylor and O Brien were frequently 
 amiable rivals in the rapid making of burlesque 
 rhymes. Stoddard in his reminiscences thus re 
 calls these nights of literary frolic. " We sat 
 around a table and whenever the whim seized 
 us, which was often enough, we each wrote down 
 themes on little pieces of paper, and putting 
 them into a hat or box we drew out one at ran 
 dom, and then scribbled away for dear life. We 
 put no restriction upon ourselves : we could be 
 grave or gay, or idiotic even ; but we must be 
 rapid, for half the fun was in noting who first 
 sang out, Finished/ It was a neck and neck 
 race between Bayard Taylor and Fitz-James 
 O Brien, who divided the honors pretty equally, 
 and whose verses, I am compelled to admit, were 
 generally better than my own. Bayard Taylor 
 was very dexterous in seizing the salient points of 
 the poets we girded at, and was as happy as a 
 child when his burlesques were successful. He 
 reminded me, I once told him, of Katerfelto 
 
 With his hair on end 
 At his own wonders. 
 
 He blushed, laughed, and admitted that his clev 
 erness pleased him, and he was glad that it 
 
NOVEL WEITING. 141 
 
 pleased us also. It is good sport, he remarked ; 
 4 but poetry, that is very different. " 
 
 A permanent friendship, too, was formed with 
 William Winter, for whose complete mastery of 
 the eighteenth century manner Bayard Taylor 
 had the highest respect and admiration. In 
 1876, when Taylor was occupied with the Cen 
 tennial Ode, he was requested to prepare a poem 
 for the Society of the Army of the Potomac. 
 Unable to discharge both tasks he transferred 
 the latter to Winter, who read at the Academy 
 of Music in Philadelphia, June 6, 1876, his com 
 memorative poem, " The Voice of the Silence." 
 
 A small circle of writers still eddied about 
 Willis and Morris and the " Home Journal ; " 
 the " Bohemians " foregathered at Pfaff s, and 
 the " respectables," the oldest and strongest men 
 in art and letters, belonged to the Century Associ 
 ation which, in 1846, had grown out of the Sketch 
 Club and the Column Club. Washington Irving 
 named the "Century," and S. F. B. Morse, 
 W. J. Hoppin, A. B. Durand, William Cullen 
 Bryant, Henry T. Tuckerman, G. C. Verplanck, 
 Gouverneur Kemble and John F. Kensett were 
 members. Bayard Taylor was made a centurion 
 in 1851. Another semi - literary organization 
 was the Press Club, which originated in 1852 
 while Kossuth was in America ; Henry W^ard 
 Beecher was its secretary, and Charles A. Dana, 
 
142 BAYABD TAYLOR. 
 
 Henry J. Raymond, John Bigelow and Parke 
 Godwin were among its members. The club 
 dined at stated occasions at the Astor House, 
 and Bayard Taylor was occasionally of the party. 
 
 From first to last Taylor s relations were clos 
 est with the " Tribune " set. He was one of the 
 earliest stockholders of the paper and served it 
 in one capacity or another from his first entrance 
 into New York until his death. Horace Greeley, 
 a few weeks before January 1, 1849, invited 
 certain persons employed in leading positions in 
 the several departments of the paper to join him 
 as co-partners. Bayard Taylor and Charles A. 
 Dana were among those who availed themselves 
 of this opportunity. Among Taylor s associ 
 ates on the Tribune were Sydney Howard Gay, 
 Charles T. Congdon, Edward H. House, and 
 William H. Fry (who came from Philadelphia). 
 Taylor had reverential cordiality for George Rip- 
 ley and was intimate with Charles A. Dana, 
 George William Curtis and James S. Pike. He 
 knew A. D. Richardson and George W. Smalley, 
 but not well. He had high regard for the liter 
 ary judgment of Col. John Hay, and the varied 
 experiences of both had given them abundant 
 interests in common. 
 
 Such was the literary and social life of New 
 York when Bayard Taylor was scurrying across 
 the continent on a lecturing tour or peacefully 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 143 
 
 cultivating his strawberries, figs and pomegran 
 ates at Cedarcroft. 
 
 Meanwhile a portentous shadow was falling 
 across the country. The terrible urgency of 
 civil war, and an immense physical activity, were 
 temporarily to retire art, and to direct genius 
 to more immediate and practical ends. The 
 best years of the young writers of the " Saturday 
 Press " and the other Bohemian publications of 
 New York were absorbed and consumed in the 
 wild years of the Rebellion. When the war was 
 over, a certain phase of literary history had 
 passed forever from America. At the outbreak 
 of the struggle there was an instant stagnation 
 in literature. Publishers were fearful, authors 
 were enlisting. Repose is essential to perma 
 nent beauty. Great works ripen slowly. The 
 awful pageantry of civil strife for those who felt 
 the sharpness of the quarrel had no romantic 
 glamour. 
 
 During 1860 Bayard Taylor had published a 
 revised and enlarged edition of the " Cyclopedia 
 of Modern Travel," and continued his letters of 
 travel to the " Tribune." He contributed to the 
 " Mercury " various papers upon California, and 
 translated the article upon Martin Luther from 
 Gustav Freytag s " Pictures of Life in Germany 
 during the last Four Hundred Years." His 
 German friends, the Buflebs, visited Cedarcroft, 
 
144 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 and with them Taylor made a trip to the White 
 Mountains and up the Saguenay. 
 
 As the Presidential election of 1860 drew near 
 the political excitement ran high. At a mass 
 meeting of Republicans held upon the old battle 
 field of the Brandywine, Bayard Taylor presided 
 and said : 
 
 "It is a national, not a party struggle in 
 which we are engaged ; for the question whether 
 our national policy shall or shall not be based 
 upon the recognition of the natural rights of 
 man upon the rights of labor, the untrammeled 
 freedom of thought and speech upon those 
 principles, in fact, on which the progress of the 
 race depends concerns not merely a party, but 
 all mankind." 
 
 In the middle of October Taylor resumed 
 lecturing, and soon had reason to know the in 
 tense party feeling that existed in the country. 
 We were then in what Harriet Martineau called 
 " our martyr age," when eloquence was dirt 
 cheap, and the eloquent speakers often suffered 
 seriously for their advocacy of unpopular prin 
 ciples. A mob arose against George William 
 Curtis in Philadelphia as against Garrison in 
 Boston. A storm of popular indignation burst 
 in Brooklyn upon Bayard Taylor for his defense 
 of the course taken by Curtis. Girt about by 
 policemen Taylor delivered his lecture in Phila- 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 145 
 
 delphia the following week. A lecture bureau 
 in the South canceled its engagements with him 
 after this open definition of his position, and 
 a wordy war followed in which Taylor had 
 distinctly the best of the argument. With the 
 actual burst of war he sold a share of " Tribune " 
 stock to enable his youngest brother, Frederick, 
 to enlist in the army ; this he said was his con 
 tribution toward putting down the Rebellion. 
 In the spring of 1861 he abandoned his New 
 York home and moved all his possessions to 
 Cedarcroft. In May he sailed with his wife for 
 Germany, and proceeded to Gotha, whence he 
 made an excursion into the Franconian moun 
 tains. Numerous descriptive letters were sent 
 to the " Tribune " and to the " Independent." 
 He returned to New York in August and went 
 at once to Cedarcroft, where he wrote a number 
 of magazine articles, notably one upon Hebel, 
 " the German Burns," and a story, "The Haunted 
 Shanty." His lecture upon " The American 
 People in their Social and Political Aspects " 
 was prepared at this time. The year closed 
 with another lecturing tour in the northeast 
 which was neither extensive nor profitable, for, 
 as Taylor wrote, " These war times are hard on 
 authors; the sword of Mars chops in two the 
 strings of Apollo s lyre ! " 
 
 Early in March, 1862, Taylor was in Washing- 
 
146 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 ton as war correspondent of the " Tribune," and 
 before the end of the month it was proposed 
 that he should accompany Simon Cameron, the 
 newly appointed minister to Russia, as Secretary 
 of the Legation. Here was an opportunity to 
 accomplish under Russian protection that ex 
 ploration of Central Asia which he had so long 
 wished to make. The salary, too, was sufficient 
 to relieve him from the hated drudgery of lec 
 turing. He was assured that Cameron would 
 return in the fall, leaving him acting charge 
 d affaires, and that it was quite probable that 
 the ministry itself would ultimately be his. He 
 sailed on the Persia in May, 1862, with Mr. 
 Cameron s party. For a time Bayard Taylor 
 and his family were the guests in Paris of James 
 Lorimer Graham, a fellow-member of the Cen 
 tury Club. They then went on to Gotha, 
 whence Taylor continued with Simon Cameron 
 to St. Petersburg. 
 
 During the remainder of the year much writ 
 ing was done : a Quaker story, " Friend Eli s 
 Daughter," a simple tale of Philadelphia and 
 the valley of the Neshaminy, and several sketches 
 of travel were sent to the " Atlantic Monthly ; " 
 a poem on the one thousandth anniversary of the 
 Russian Empire pleased Prince Gortschakoff, 
 by whom it was shown to the Emperor, who sent 
 word to Bayard Taylor that he was touched and 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 147 
 
 delighted. Two excursions taken in July and 
 at the close of August furnished material for 
 " Atlantic " papers. The first was " A Cruise on 
 Lake Ladoga ; " Taylor was the first American 
 who had visited the northern portion of the lake. 
 The other, the account of which was published 
 in 1864 under the title " Between Europe and 
 Asia," was to the Nijni-Novgorod fair, where he 
 witnessed a remarkable performance of Macbeth 
 by Ira Aldridge, the Baltimore mulatto who was 
 called the " African Roscius," and who was a 
 pupil of Edmund Kean. " A mulatto Macbeth 
 in a Russian theatre with a Persian and Tartar 
 audience ! " To the Tartar camp on the hill 
 of Novgorod, Taylor went for an experimental 
 draught of koumiss, the fermented milk of 
 mares. " Having drunk palm-wine in India, 
 samshoo in China, saki in Japan, pulque in 
 Mexico, bouza in Egypt, mead in Scandinavia, 
 ale in England, bock-bier in Germany, mastic in 
 Greece, calabogus in Newfoundland, and soda- 
 water in the United States, I desired to complete 
 the bibulous cosmos in which koumiss was still 
 lacking." (" By- Ways of Europe," p. 79.) The 
 taste, Taylor declared, was that of " aged butter 
 milk mixed with ammonia." The subject of a 
 curious Russian story, " Beauty and the Beast," 
 that was published in 1865, was also at this time 
 obtained. 
 
148 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 Simon Cameron left Russia in September, 
 and Taylor continued as charge d affaires until 
 May 7, 1863, when Cassius M. Clay, the new 
 minister, was received by the Emperor. One 
 month after the responsibility of the Russian 
 Legation had been fastened upon Bayard Taylor 
 he sent a dispatch to the Department of State, 
 which is quoted here as illustrating the character 
 of his diplomatic correspondence, and also the 
 regard in which he was held at the Russian 
 court : 
 
 MR. TAYLOR TO MR. SEWARD. 
 
 LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 ST. PETERSBURG, October 29, 1862. 
 
 SIR, I have the honor to report to you that, 
 immediately after the receipt of your dispatch 
 No. 14, of September 26, I applied for an inter 
 view with Prince Gortchacow, for the purpose 
 of deliverins: into his hands the letter of his ex- 
 
 O 
 
 cellency the President to his Imperial Majesty 
 Alexander II. My request was at once granted, 
 and an early hour the next day was appointed ; 
 but the Prince having in the mean time been 
 summoned to the town of Gatschina, some thirty 
 miles from here, to confer with the Emperor, 
 the interview was postponed until to-day. 
 
 After having received the President s letter, 
 which he promised to present to his Imperial 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 149 
 
 Majesty without delay, the Prince entered upon 
 a conversation concerning American affairs, 
 which I deem so important that I hasten to re 
 port it, while his expressions are yet fresh in my 
 mind, and can be communicated to you with the 
 greatest possible exactness. 
 
 He began by stating in the strongest terms 
 his concern at the course which events are tak 
 ing in the United States. "Your situation," 
 said he, " is getting worse and worse. The 
 chances of preserving the Union are growing 
 more and more desperate. Can nothing be 
 done to stop this dreadful war ? Can you find 
 no basis of arrangement before your strength is 
 so exhausted that you must lose, for many years 
 to come, your position in the world ? " I an 
 swered that the critical period in the fortunes 
 of the war seemed now to be passed ; our arms 
 were again victorious, and, could the military 
 strength of the rebellion be once fairly broken, 
 it would be almost impossible for it to maintain 
 itself longer. "It is not that alone," said he, 
 " but the fury that seems to possess both sides, 
 the growth of enmities which are making the 
 gulf continually wider between the two sections. 
 The hope of their reunion is growing less and 
 less, and I wish you to impress upon your gov 
 ernment that the separation, which I fear must 
 come, will be considered by Russia as one of the 
 greatest possible misfortunes." 
 
150 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " To loyal Americans," I answered, " separa 
 tion seems nothing less than national ruin, and, 
 precisely for this reason, ther j can be no nego 
 tiations at present with the rebel authorities. 
 They would listen to no terms which did not in 
 clude separation, and hence the War is still a 
 terrible necessity. I have hopes, however, that 
 a change may occur before the term of grace 
 allowed by the President s proclamation expires. 
 Have you noticed that the State of North Caro 
 lina is already taking some action on the sub 
 ject? " " Yes," said he, " I have seen it. ... 
 Russia alone has stood by you from the first, 
 and will continue to stand by you. We are 
 very, very anxious that some means shall be 
 adopted, that any course should be pursued 
 which will prevent the division that now seems 
 inevitable. One separation will be followed 
 by another ; you will break into fragments. 
 . . . You know the sentiments of Russia," the 
 Prince exclaimed with great earnestness. " We 
 desire above all things the maintenance of the 
 American Union, as one indivisible nation. 
 We cannot take any part more than we have 
 done. We have no hostility to the Southern 
 people. Russia has declared her position and 
 will maintain it. There will be no proposals for 
 intervention. We believe that intervention could 
 do no good at present. Proposals will be made 
 
NOVEL WEITING. 151 
 
 to Russia to join in some plan of interference. 
 She will refuse any invitation of the kind. 
 Russia will occupy the same ground as at the 
 beginning of the struggle. You may rely upon 
 it, she will not change. But we entreat you to 
 settle the difficulty. I cannot express to you 
 how profound an anxiety we feel, how serious 
 are our fears." 
 
 We were standing face to face during the 
 conversation, and the earnest, impassioned man 
 ner of the Prince impressed me with the fact 
 that he was speaking from his heart. At the 
 close of the interview he seized my hand, gave 
 it a strong pressure, and exclaimed, " God bless 
 you!" 
 
 Although disappointed in his ambition for 
 the ministry Taylor was glad of the insight he 
 had had into diplomatic affairs. It was in no 
 small measure due to him that Russia continued 
 friendly to the Union when the Southern Con 
 federacy appeared to be victorious, and a propo 
 sition was submitted by France to England and 
 Russia that the three powers should conjunc 
 tively propose * to the belligerent parties in 
 America to agree to an armistice of six months." 
 Taylor submitted to Prince Gortchakoff, with 
 whom his relations were more than friendly 
 even confidential a detailed statement of the 
 
152 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 national debt of the United States ; " the esti 
 mated annual revenue under the new laws ; the 
 additions made to the active force of our armies 
 during the last three months ; the number of 
 iron-clad vessels in process of construction and 
 the important movements already commenced 
 in the West and on the seacoast." The state 
 ment of facts which he had drawn with great 
 care and presented with clearness and force was 
 intended to convince Gortchakoff that an armis 
 tice at this time could only be of advantage to 
 the rebellious states, and that no proposition 
 of the kind could be entertained by the fed 
 eral government. President Lincoln expressed 
 through William H. Seward his gratification at 
 Bayard Taylor s performance, even though the 
 action was a departure from the strict line of 
 duty of the charge d affaires. The communica 
 tion had dispelled the despondency and allayed 
 the impatience of the imperial government of 
 Russia, and it elicited from Gortchakof? the as 
 surance " that the policy of Russia in regard 
 to the United States is fixed, and will not be 
 changed by the course adopted by any other 
 nation." 
 
 After Bayard Taylor had acquainted Minister 
 Clay with the business of the legation, and writ 
 ten to the President that he would not remain 
 under any conditions, he went to Gotha, where 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 153 
 
 he awaited dispatches which he was assured that 
 he would receive from Washington. Mr. Cam 
 eron wrote that the government felt that Taylor 
 had been treated rather shabbily, when for party 
 reasons the office of minister had been given to 
 another, and that it was altogether likely that 
 amends would be made by sending him on a 
 .special mission to Persia, to cement more firmly 
 the friendly alliance with Russia, whose ambi 
 tion to advance upon the frontier of Persia was 
 well understood. While awaiting dispatches, 
 Taylor made a ten days trip to the Bohemian 
 forest, was entertained by the Duke of Saxe- 
 Coburg Gotha at Castle Kallenberg, near Co- 
 burg, and paid his last visit to Eiickert. June 
 30th he left Gotha for a four weeks tour of 
 Switzerland and the Italian lakes. Upon his 
 return he received the news of his brother s 
 death in the battle of Gettysburg, and he im 
 mediately returned home, sailing August 29th 
 on the Scotia. No explanation was forthcom 
 ing of the tedious delay in forwarding the dis 
 patches from Washington. President Lincoln, 
 surprised at his return, said that he had believed 
 him to be in Persia. Secretary Seward alone 
 knew why instructions and funds had not been 
 sent to him two months before in St. Peters 
 burg. 
 
 What Taylor thought of Seward s duplicity 
 
154 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 and intrigue he expressed in the sonnet entitled 
 " A Statesman." 
 
 "He knew the mask of principle to wear, 
 
 And power accept while seeming to decline ; 
 So cunningly he wrought, with tools so fine, 
 
 Setting his courses with so frank an air, 
 
 (Yet most secure when seeming most to dare,) 
 He did deceive us all : with mien benign 
 His malice smiled, his cowardice the sign 
 
 Of courage took, his selfishness grew fair, 
 
 So deftly could his foiled ambition show 
 As modest acquiescence. Now, t is clear 
 What man he is, how false his high report ; 
 
 Mean to the friend, caressing to the foe ; 
 
 Plotting the mischief which he feigns to fear : 
 Chief Eunuch, were but ours the Sultan s court ! " 
 
 Pilloried by Taylor s personal anger and pa 
 triotic indignation, in companion sonnets, stand 
 Secretary Seward and President Johnson. To 
 the latter the lines to " A President " are ad 
 dressed. 
 
 " Thou, whom the slave-lords with contemptuous feet 
 Spurned in their double insult taunting thee, 
 As born of Labor and of Poverty, 
 With scorn in thine abasement most unmeet 
 How dost thou find their false embraces sweet ! 
 How so insanely blind, thou canst not see 
 What shameless scoffs in their applauses be ? 
 So took the drunken slave, in Roman street, 
 The homage of his master s mocking mirth : 
 
 And thou, who might st have lifted up thy race, 
 Dost rather take from Toil its dignity, 
 
 And unto ignorance addest fresh disgrace. 
 But we shall sweep that system from the earth 
 Which gave us Treason, war, and lastly thee 1 * 
 
NOVEL WEITING. 155 
 
 A restless intellect caused Bayard Taylor to 
 try his hand at all forms of literature. It was 
 also with the hope of working a lucrative liter 
 ary vein that would take the place of the repug 
 nant lecturing trade, that he undertook the 
 composition of a novel. The work was begun 
 in 1861, and before he left the country to as 
 sume the duties of the legation at St. Peters 
 burg he had written seven chapters. It was 
 finished in Russia and published November, 
 1863, in New York and London under the title 
 " Hannah Thurston, A Story of American 
 Life." 
 
 The novel was dedicated to George P. Put 
 nam. Tennyson once said that he never knew 
 an honest publisher until he became acquainted 
 with Macmillan. It is well known that Campbell 
 defined a publisher as the author s natural 
 enemy. Taylor s friendship for Putnam and 
 for Fields was an interesting example of the 
 understanding and sympathy that are popularly 
 supposed not to exist between publisher and 
 author. The encouragement of Mr. Putnam at 
 a critical moment of Taylor s young and timid 
 life had cheered him in the long toilsome career 
 he was to run. 
 
 The scene of the story is said to be central 
 New York. The events occur in the village of 
 Ptolemy on Atauga Lake, upon the northern 
 
156 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 side of the watershed between the Susquehanna 
 and the rivers which flow into Lake Ontario. 
 Despite the distinctness of topographical defini 
 tion, and the near neighborhood of Ptolemy to 
 Anacreon, Tiberius, Nero Corners and other 
 names whose classical origin and antique lexical 
 relish bespeak the nomenclatorial fancy of Sim 
 eon De Witt, who, out of Lempriere s Diction 
 ary, gave to commonplace New York villages 
 the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that 
 was Rome, no one familiar with Pennsylvania 
 and its people could for a moment fail to recog 
 nize in the happenings of the story and the dia 
 lect of its characters the life of Chester County. 
 Mr. Maxwell Woodbury, the hero, has re 
 turned from wandering over the world and in 
 tends to resume his life in the home of his child 
 hood. The delight with which he greets the old 
 scenes, familiar to him after twenty years, and 
 the generosity with which he seeks to create " a 
 warm atmosphere around his future home," are 
 soon chilled by the petty slanders that the vil 
 lage breathes, and the tyranny of shallow and 
 mistaken lives. Immediately before the publica 
 tion of " Hannah Thurston," Taylor had gone 
 through an unpleasant literary experience from 
 which he was still smarting. The publishers of 
 his poem, " A Poet s Journal," into which he had 
 introduced certain moods of his mind and life, 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 157 
 
 advertised the work as the record of his own ex 
 perience. It was humiliating to Taylor even to 
 seem to have unlocked his heart to public gaze, 
 and the distress that the unhappy announcement 
 occasioned him was real and lasting. In the 
 preface to " Hannah Thurston " he protested 
 against the popular superstition that an author 
 must necessarily represent himself in one form 
 or another, saying, " I am neither Mr. Wood- 
 bury, Mr. Waldo, nor Seth Wattles." One 
 cannot avoid, however, reading into the book 
 some of Bayard Taylor s experience at Cedar- 
 croft. When he says of Maxwell Woodbury : 
 * In the dreams of home which haunted him in 
 lonely hours, on the banks of the Hoogly or the 
 breezy heights of Darjeeling, Lakeside always 
 first arose, and repeated itself most frequently 
 and distinctly," it is of his own dreams, when 
 lotos-eating in Egypt, or tanking in Syria, that 
 he is thinking. He too, like Woodbury, had been 
 first excited, then wearied by the atmosphere 
 of the city after " he had slowly and comforta 
 bly matured his manhood in the immemorial re 
 pose of Asia." And like Woodbury " he simply 
 wished to have a home of his own an ark of 
 refuge to which he could at any time return a 
 sheltered spot where some portion of his life 
 might strike root." 
 
 " Hannah Thurston " might be called a prose 
 
158 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 parallel of Tennyson s " Princess." It is the 
 merest thread of a story, and almost without a 
 plot. The characters are types, not individuals. 
 The heroine is a good and interesting personal 
 ity ; the hero is but a quintain, a mere lifeless 
 block. The book is a very obvious satire of the 
 fads and "isms " of the hour. All the characters 
 are possessed by the most curious crotchets, 
 spiritualism, vegetarianism, teetotalism and abo 
 lition come in for their share of honest and 
 wholesome rebuke. The Reverend Mr. Styles 
 fears that so many lights at the sewing union 
 " looks a little like levity ; " Mrs. Waldo, the 
 reasonable wife of a reasoning clergyman, " was 
 the oleaginous solvent, in which the hard yelk 
 of the Mission Fund, the vinegar of the Cim 
 merians, and the mustard of the Abolitionists 
 lost their repellent qualities and blended into 
 a smooth social compound." In the society of 
 Ptolemy " Scandal was sugar-coated in order to 
 hide its true character : love put on a bitter 
 and prickly outside, to avoid the observation of 
 others ; all the innocent disguises of society were 
 in as full operation as in the ripened atmosphere 
 of great cities." 
 
 The villain of the story is the spiritualistic 
 medium, Mr. Dyce, who, at a seance, is trapped 
 by Mr. Woodbury s servant, who smears soot 
 upon the piano keys ; and when light is admitted 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 159 
 
 to the chamber the soot is upon the very ma 
 terial hands that in the darkness had played 
 the weird music that thrilled the hearers with 
 its spiritual origin and import. Woodbury, re 
 calling with repugnance the occurrences of the 
 evening, says to himself : " Better a home for the 
 soul within the volcanic rings of yonder barren 
 moon with no more than the privacy it may 
 command in this life, than to be placed on the 
 fairest star of the universe, and be held at the 
 beck and call of every mean mind that dares to 
 juggle with sanctities." 
 
 The great sewing union at Ptolemy, the spirit 
 ualistic seance, the meeting in favor of " Wo 
 men s Eights," and the " temperance " camp- 
 meeting, are all definite and innocent and more 
 or less vulgar phases of American life as Bayard 
 Taylor saw it ; and that which he saw he re 
 ported with his usual downright perspicacity of 
 speech. At the entrance to the grove where the 
 Annual Temperance Convention was to be held, 
 " venders of refreshments had erected their 
 stands, and displayed to the thronging visitors 
 a tempting variety of indigestible substances. 
 There was weak lemonade, in tin buckets, with 
 huge lumps of ice glittering defiantly at the sun ; 
 scores of wired bottles, filled with a sarsaparilla 
 mixture, which popped out in a rush of brown 
 suds ; ice-cream, the cream being eggs beaten 
 
160 BAYABD TAYLOB. 
 
 up with water, and flavored with lemon sirup ; 
 piles of dark, leathery ginger-cakes, and rows of 
 glass jars full of candy-sticks ; while the more 
 enterprising dealers exhibited pies cut into 
 squares, hard-boiled eggs, and even what they 
 called coffee. . . . After an appropriate prayer 
 by the Rev. Lemuel Styles, a temperance song 
 was sung by a large chorus of the younger 
 members. It was a parody on Hoffman s charm 
 ing anacreontic, Sparkling and Bright, the 
 words of which were singularly transformed. 
 Instead of 
 
 " As the bubbles that swim on the beaker s brim 
 And break on the lips at meeting, 
 
 the refrain terminated with 
 
 " There s nothing so good for the youthful blood 
 Or so sweet as the sparkling water ! 
 
 in the style of a medicinal prescription. Poor 
 Hoffman ! Noble heart and fine mind, untimely 
 darkened ! He was at least spared this desecra 
 tion ; or perhaps, with the gay humor with which 
 even that darkness is still cheered, he would 
 have parodied the parody to death." It was at 
 this memorable convention that Mr. Grindle, in 
 a burst of marvelous rhetoric, referred to "the 
 hookah filled with its intoxicating draught," and 
 to the tottering steps of those into whose brains 
 " the fumes of sherbet have mounted." 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 161 
 
 Hannah Thurston, like Tennyson s Princess, 
 whose surrender to love she reads and under 
 stands when her own heart is touched and her 
 cold reason yields, at last "lays her masculine 
 ambition in the hands of love." 
 
 The book was widely read, and commented 
 upon with favor by the judicious and with in 
 dignation by the " reformers." Taylor was 
 charged with misrepresentation and exaggera 
 tion. He replied that far from being exagger 
 ated, the picture of the community was subdued. 
 Hawthorne wrote to him, " The book is an ad 
 mirable one, new, true, and striking, worthy 
 of such a world-wide observer as yourself, and 
 with a kind of thought in it which does not lie 
 scattered about the world s highways." Even 
 the London " Spectator " bowed its crested head 
 to say that it was " half inclined to suspect that 
 Bayard Taylor had placed himself in the front 
 rank of novelists." 
 
 While Putnam was printing fifteen thousand 
 copies of "Hannah Thurston" in the fall and 
 winter of 1863, Taylor was continuing a long 
 poem, translating German, delivering his new 
 lecture on " Eussia and her People," and solicit 
 ing in Canada an English copyright for his 
 novel. 
 
 The success of this first attempt at fiction 
 was instantaneous. It appeared in Germany in 
 
162 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 translation, in Russian at St. Petersburg, and 
 in Swedish at Stockholm. Taylor was encour 
 aged to try a second novel. In New York, 
 March 14, 1864, he began "John Godfrey s 
 Fortunes ; Related by Himself. A Story of 
 American Life," and the book was published by 
 Putnam in November. The summer in which 
 it was written was fully occupied with house 
 affairs and farm duties, a brief lecturing tour, 
 poetry and translation, and magazine articles. 
 In October Ticknor & Fields printed "The 
 Poems of Bayard Taylor " in the beautiful and 
 popular " Blue and Gold " edition. 
 
 Taylor wrote with such rapidity that he could 
 complete a duodecimo volume in a fortnight. 
 His industry of hand was amazing. He seemed 
 never to weary, and his handwriting was excep 
 tionally neat and fine. A comparison of letters 
 written in his seventeenth year and in his fif 
 tieth shows almost no change of hand. His 
 penmanship and his style were formed early 
 and changed little. In the long manuscript of 
 " Faust" there is scarcely a misformed or care 
 lessly made letter. He was a genuine artist in 
 black and white, and his highest happiness was 
 to sit from morn till dewy eve, smoking a cigar 
 that was not too good, and filling page after 
 page with his neat chirography. A surprising 
 instance is recorded of his facility and speed. In 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 163 
 
 a night and a day he read Victor Hugo s volumi 
 nous " La Legende des Siecles," and wrote for 
 the "Tribune" a review of it which fills eight 
 een pages of his " Essays and Literary Notes," 
 and contains five considerable poems which are 
 translations in the metre of the original. 
 
 "John Godfrey " was written amid all manner 
 of interruptions and in "the languor of an Afri 
 can summer," between March 15th and Au 
 gust llth. It contains five hundred and eleven 
 pages, or five hundred and ninety-four pages of 
 Taylor s closely written manuscript. The crudi 
 ties of style and the infirmities of construction in 
 " Hannah Thurston " and " John Godfrey " are 
 to be ascribed to the tearing speed at which they 
 were written ; and necessity s sharp pinch was 
 ithe promoter of that speed. It was not so with 
 poetry. With the exception of an occasional 
 impromptu like f Icarus," the hundred verses of 
 which were dashed off without pause and with 
 out blot or erasure, Taylor would spend hours 
 over a couplet, fashioning it to the figure in his 
 mind. But prose was with him purely pedes 
 trian. He built no reputation on it, and was 
 content that it should supply him with the 
 means to live and to write poetry. Poverty has 
 doubtless done more than wealth in the literary 
 world ; but in that world, too, it is no mean 
 happiness to be seated in the mean, and the 
 
164 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 prayer of Agur is the petition of wisdom. Tay 
 lor declared that he sang better after the thorn 
 was pulled out of his breast : " Freedom from 
 pecuniary anxiety," he said, " gives my brain a 
 genial glow, a nimble ease, a procreative power, 
 which I never feel at other times." Fitz-James 
 Stephen, when he was appointed to a judgeship, 
 wrote to Lord Lytton that he felt like a man 
 who had got into a comfortable carriage on a 
 turnpike road after scrambling over difficult 
 mountain paths. In like manner Bayard Tay 
 lor, when the year 1865 closed with a comfort 
 able surplus of income, drove his " new tandem " 
 prose by day and poetry by night smoothly 
 and well, and with a glad content. 
 
 While not an actual sketch of the author s life, 
 " John Godfrey s Fortunes " is a reminiscence 
 of certain moods of that life and of literary and 
 social experiences in New York. It is no wonder 
 that the readers of the book continued, maugre 
 the author s protest, to see in it a personal his 
 tory, when they read of John Godfrey s birth 
 place : " The Cross-Keys lay aside from any of 
 the main highways of the county, and the farm 
 ers around were mostly descendants of the origi 
 nal settlers of the soil, a hundred and fifty 
 years before. Their lives were still as simple 
 and primitive as in the last century. Few of 
 them ever traveled farther than to the Philadel- 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 165 
 
 phia market, at the beginning of winter, to 
 dispose of their pigs and poultry. A mixture 
 of the German element, dating from the first 
 emigration, tended still further to conserve the 
 habits and modes of thought of the commu 
 nity. My maternal grandfather Hatzfeld was 
 of this stock, and many of his peculiarities, 
 passing over my mother, have reappeared in 
 me, to play their part in the shaping of my for 
 tunes." 
 
 It was Taylor s habit to gather the traits and 
 peculiarities of his characters from various 
 sources. Not one is drawn entirely from life, 
 but the reader who is familiar with Taylor s 
 surroundings can see just where he has appro 
 priated the old materials that he has so dexter 
 ously welded into new creations. There are 
 memories of Fitz-James O Brien in Mr. Branda- 
 gee ; and at least one whimsy of Estelle Ann 
 Lewis Poe s "rival of Sappho" is remem 
 bered in the account of " Adeliza Choate," who 
 tells Godfrey : " I feel the approach of Inspira 
 tion in every nerve. ... It always comes on 
 about three o clock in the afternoon when the 
 wind blows from the south. I change my dress 
 and put on a long white gown which I wear at 
 no other time, take off my stays, and let my 
 hair down my back." It was only with her hair 
 streaming over her shoulders that the female 
 
1G6 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 Petrarch," the "rival of Sappho," was able to 
 obey the Muse. 
 
 The short stories that Taylor contributed to 
 the magazines, and some of which were re 
 printed in the volume, " Beauty and the Beast : 
 and Tales of Home" (1872), were usually 
 founded upon incidents in Chester County his 
 tory or tradition. 
 
 The Quaker widow, in the ballad, recalling 
 after fifty years that seem " but one long 
 day, one quiet Sabbath of the heart" the 
 little romance of her marriage, says : 
 
 " Indeed t was not the least of shocks, 
 For Benjamin was Hicksite, and father Orthodox." 
 
 In lives that seemed to have little more of 
 change or excitement than the Vicar of Wake- 
 field s migrations from the brown bed to the 
 blue, and back again from the blue bed to the 
 brown, Taylor found color and incident enough 
 to weave an innocent romance. In the story 
 of "The Strange Friend," a Quaker, Henry 
 Donnelly by name, arrives from Adams County 
 and rents a farm at Londongrove. He and 
 his family " become a permanent part and par 
 cel of the remote community, wearing its peace 
 ful color and breathing its untroubled at 
 mosphere." De Courcy, the son with " the 
 outlandish name," rides a gallant horse, dresses 
 a little more elegantly than his membership 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 167 
 
 prescribes, and is frequently seen to ride up 
 the Street Road " in the direction of Fagg s 
 Manor, towards those valleys where the brick 
 Presbyterian church displaces the whitewashed 
 Quaker meeting-house." The tragical death of 
 the lad is almost immediately followed by the 
 arrival of a long-expected agent from Europe, 
 who brings to the strange friend assurance that 
 his long voluntary exile is over, that his estate 
 is free, and that he can now return as Lord 
 Henry Dunleigh to Dunleigh Castle. 
 
 Even here it was not fiction that Taylor was 
 writing, but history. Henry Hamilton Cox, 
 who had inherited a heavily encumbered landed 
 estate in Ireland, came to Pennsylvania and lived 
 in obscurity first in York County and then in 
 Chester County, until the income arising from 
 the estate had cleared it of debt. He lived as 
 a member of the Society of Friends until 1817 
 when he returned to Ireland, throwing his 
 broad-brimmed hat, it is said, into the ocean. 
 He was the author of " The Pennsylvania 
 Georgics." 
 
 Caleb Taylor and Ellwood Garrett, natives 
 of Chester County, on May 29, 1851, were at 
 Castle Rock, overlooking the rocks where the 
 notorious highwayman Fitzpatrick the terror 
 of the county, who scoured the country at his 
 will between the Schuylkill and the Susque- 
 
168 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 hanna is supposed to have secreted his plun 
 der. Mr. Garrett spoke of writing a story about 
 Fitzpatrick, but he afterwards suggested the 
 theme to Bayard Taylor, who converted the 
 robber into the Sandy Flash of his third and 
 best novel, " The Story of Kennett " (1866). 
 It is a true idyl of Pennsylvanian country life, 
 and there are in it sharply defined characters 
 and vivid flashes of tragedy. It has made the 
 name of the little town of Kennett familiar 
 in literature : " The lovely pastoral landscapes 
 which I know by heart have been copied, field 
 for field and tree for tree, and these you will 
 immediately recognize," he writes in his Pro 
 logue addressed to his friends and neighbors 
 of Kennett. " Many of you will have no diffi 
 culty in detecting the originals of Sandy Flash 
 and Deb Smith ; a few will remember the 
 noble horse which performed the service I have 
 ascribed to Roger ; and the descendants of a 
 certain family will not have forgotten some of 
 the pranks of Joe and Jake Fairthorn." 
 
 The landscapes of " the park-like region of 
 Kennett " are described with a richness of 
 phrase that is heightened by the evident affec 
 tion of the author for the places of his descrip 
 tion. He misses no feature of the scene : the 
 swelling slopes of clover and stubble-field, the 
 blue level of Toughkenamon, the oak woods of 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 169 
 
 Avondale, the massive stone farm-houses, the 
 walled gardens, the hedges of hawthorn and 
 blackthorn, the young white-oak leaves on the 
 twentieth of April the size of a squirrel s ear, 
 the snowy pyramids of dogwood bloom, the 
 "lush, tropical splendor of vegetation such as 
 England never knew [which] heaped the woods 
 and hung the roadside with sprays which grew 
 and bloomed and wantoned, as if growth were 
 a conscious joy rather than blind obedience to 
 a law." 
 
 Like Plumer Ward s De Vere who had got 
 by heart every leaf and lady in the Mall of 
 St. James s Park, Bayard Taylor knew every 
 feature of Chester County, from " the red um 
 bels of the tall eupatoriums in the meadow," 
 that announce the close of summer, to the 
 " pink-veined bells of the muskodeed," that are 
 prophecies of spring. 
 
 To the people of Kennett the book had a 
 special value and interest, for it contained 
 events that they remembered and people whom 
 they knew. The memory of the deeds of Fitz- 
 patrick (Sandy Flash) was still rife in Chester 
 County minds, and searches were still instituted 
 after his hidden treasure. Dougherty, the Irish 
 hostler of the Unicorn tavern in the story, was 
 actually an accomplice of Fitzpatrick, though 
 the real place of his employment was one mile 
 
 
170 SAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 northwest of Newtown Square at a tavern once 
 called Pratt s House and in the last century- 
 kept by Benjamin West s father. 1 
 
 " Deb " Smith, who, with a strange stirring 
 of a better self not altogether coerced and 
 strangled in her brutalized nature, befriended 
 and served Gilbert Potter, 2 was well known in 
 East Marlborough Township and the neighbor 
 hood as Rachel McMullen, and was popularly 
 believed to be colleagued with the highwayman. 
 
 Martha Deane, " the dear and noble woman " 
 whose character shines with the purest radiance, 
 one of the gentlest and sweetest figures in 
 American literature, was Ruth Baldwin, who 
 as the wife of Thomas Wilson lived in the vine- 
 covered house at the east end of Unionville. 
 Her grave is a short distance out of Unionville 
 on the road to Cedarcroft. 
 
 Bayard Taylor s grandfather is farmer Fair- 
 thorn, whose marriage, "having been a stolen 
 match, and not performed according to 4 Friends 
 ceremony, occasioned his excommunication. 
 He might have been restored to the rights of 
 membership by admitting his sorrow for the 
 offense, but this he stoutly refused to do." The 
 
 1 In the neighboring Seventh - Day Baptist Churchyard 
 some of West s family are buried, and Anthony Wayne s 
 mother and four of her children. 
 
 2 Gilbert Potter s house still stands, two miles south of 
 Kennett. 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 171 
 
 farmhouse stood on the right of the wood im 
 mediately north of Kennett Square, "in the 
 hollow into which the road dips, on leaving the 
 village." 
 
 The two mischievous boys, Joe and Jake Fair- 
 thorn, are Bayard Taylor s father and uncle, 
 though many of the pranks ascribed to them 
 Taylor drew from the recollections of his own 
 childhood. " The boys had been in the habit 
 of taking the farm-horses out of the field and 
 riding them up and down the Unionville road. 
 It was their habit, as soon as they had climbed 
 * the big hill, to use stick and voice with great 
 energy, force the animals into a gallop, and so 
 dash along the level. Very soon, the horses 
 knew what was expected of them, and whenever 
 they came abreast of the great chestnut-tree on 
 the top of the hill, they would start off as if 
 possessed. If any business called Farmer Fair- 
 thorn to the Street Road, or up Marlborough 
 way, Joe and Jake, dancing with delight, would 
 dart around the barn, gain the wooded hollow, 
 climb the big hill behind the lime-kiln, and hide 
 themselves under the hedge, at the commence 
 ment of the level road. Here they could watch 
 their father, as his benign unsuspecting face 
 came in sight, mounting the hill, either upon 
 the gray mare, Bonnie, or the brown gelding 
 Peter. As the horse neared the chestnut-tree, 
 
172 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 they fairly shook with eager expectancy then 
 came the start, the astonishment of the old man, 
 his frantic Whoa, there, whoa ! his hat soar 
 ing off on the wind, his short stout body boun 
 cing in the saddle, as, half unseated, he clung 
 with one hand to the mane and the other to the 
 bridle ! while the wicked boys, after breath 
 lessly watching him out of sight, rolled over and 
 over on the grass, shrieking and yelling in a 
 perfect luxury of fun. 
 
 " Then they knew that a test would come, and 
 prepared themselves to meet it. When, at din 
 ner, Farmer Fairthorn turned to his wife and 
 said, Mammy, (so he always addressed her) 
 4 1 don t know what s the matter with Bonnie ; 
 why, she came nigh runnin off with me ! 
 Joe, being the oldest and boldest, would look up 
 in well-affected surprise, and ask, Why, how, 
 Daddy ? while Jake would bend down his head 
 and whimper, 4 Somethin s got into my eye " 
 (p. 147). So real are the characters through 
 out that when they speak one almost seems to 
 hear the " close wiry twang peculiar to South 
 ern Pennsylvania." Miss Betsy Lavender, the 
 all-knowing spinster whose " knowledge of 
 farms, families, and genealogies extended up to 
 Fallowfield on one side, and over to Birmingham 
 on the other," is a masterpiece of character- 
 drawing, but Taylor always denied that in 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 173 
 
 this instance he had any particular person in 
 mind. 1 
 
 " Hannah Thurston " represented " the serious 
 people" of Chester County; "The Story of 
 Kennett" depicts "the old time cheer." With 
 a sigh for the mirth that was gone, Taylor wrote 
 in the " Proem " to " Home Pastorals : " 
 
 " Gone are the olden cheer, the tavern-dance, and the fox-hunt, 
 Muster at trainings, buxom lasses that rode upon pillions ; 
 Husking-parties and jovial home-comings after the wedding, 
 Gone, as they never had been ! and now, the serious people 
 Solemnly gather to hear some wordy itinerant speaker 
 Talking of Temperance, Peace, or the Right of Suffrage for 
 Women." 
 
 The fox chase in Avondale Woods with which 
 the story of Kennett begins, and the wedding 
 with which it ends, are bold and faithful delin 
 eations of the characteristically English life of 
 the Pennsylvanian country. The most powerful 
 and dramatic chapter however, and that which 
 excited most comment, is the funeral of Abiah 
 Barton. For twenty-five years Mary Potter had 
 been secretly married to old Barton s son Al 
 fred, and had taken an oath not to speak of the 
 marriage until the old man s death. For a 
 
 1 Mr. Julius F. Sachse believes that the original of Betsy 
 Lavender was Gobitha Withers, a member of St. James s 
 Church, Maryborough, Chester County, Pa. St. James s is 
 known as the " lost " parish. It is the only pre-revolutionary 
 parish that has gone out of existence. 
 
174 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 quarter of a century her lips were sealed and 
 the shadow of ignominy fell upon Gilbert, her 
 noble son. Her time of justification comes with 
 Barton s death and at the funeral she has her 
 day. The critics disputed her right to call it 
 " her day/ and " to make the old man s coffin a 
 platform on which to exhibit her triumph or her 
 justification. " Mr. J. B. Phillips, a life-long 
 friend of Taylor, used a friend s prerogative 
 and expressed with uncompromising candor and 
 force the opinion that must be shared by many 
 readers of the book : " The principal person 
 who has my sympathy on that occasion is Gil 
 bert Potter. He is the man that is pilloried. 
 For him the thing must have been perfectly 
 awful. I can t imagine how his worst or mean 
 est enemy, by the utmost stretch of malice, 
 could have by any possibility contrived a more 
 harrowing way of breaking to him a most loath 
 some fact. His humiliation is perfect and com 
 plete. I agree with him that Sandy Flash were 
 a much better father. I fail to see much 
 triumph in Mary s hanging on to Alf s rotten 
 carcass. The funeral becomes a rabble not 
 pleasant to contemplate. The procession is 
 broken, and men lash their horses to get ahead 
 and gloat their greedy eyes on the pilloried Alf 
 and Potter and the triumphant Mary Potter." 
 Taylor defended what he called the most jus- 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 175 
 
 tifiable chapter in the book by saying " she had 
 fixed, for years, just this justification in her 
 mind ; there is a vein of superstition about her ; 
 she sees simply what she believes the Lord has 
 directed her to do and she does it. ... I was 
 a year studying out the plot before I began to 
 write, and the idea of the denouement at the 
 funeral came to me like an inspiration." Never 
 theless the chapter remains a repulsive one, and 
 the reader recoils from its horror and its shame. 
 
 The pretty scene of love-making between Gil 
 bert Potter and Martha Deane seems to me not 
 only the best chapter in the book but the most 
 exquisite incident of the kind in American liter 
 ature. The sylvan setting of the scene of ten 
 der and pure emotion is full of charm : 
 
 " The long rays of sunset withdrew to the 
 treetops, and a deeper hush fell upon the land. 
 The road, which had mounted along the slope 
 of a stubble-field, now dropped again into a 
 wooded hollow, where a tree, awkwardly felled, 
 lay across it. Roger pricked up his ears and 
 leaped lightly over. Martha s horse followed, 
 taking the log easily, but she reined him up the 
 next moment, uttering a slight exclamation, and 
 stretched out her hand wistfully towards Gilbert. 
 
 " To seize it and bring Roger to a stand was 
 the work of an instant. What is the matter, 
 Martha ? he cried. 
 
176 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " I think the girth is broken/ said she. 
 The saddle is loose, and I was nigh losing my 
 balance. Thank you, I can sit steadily now. 
 
 " Gilbert sprang to the ground and hastened 
 to her assistance. Yes, it is broken, he said, 
 4 but I can give you mine. You had better dis 
 mount, though ; see, I will hold the pommel 
 firm with one hand, while I lift you down with 
 the other. Not too fast, I am strong; place 
 your hands on my shoulders, so ! 
 
 " She bent forward and laid her hands upon his 
 shoulders. Then, as she slid gently down, his 
 right arm crept around her waist, holding her 
 so firmly and securely that she had left the sad 
 dle and hung in its support Awhile her feet had 
 not yet touched the earth. Her warm breath 
 was on Gilbert s forehead ; her bosom swept his 
 breast, and the arm that until then had sup 
 ported, now swiftly, tenderly, irresistibly em 
 braced her. Trembling, thrilling from head to 
 foot, utterly unable to control the mad impulse 
 of the moment, he drew her to his heart, and 
 laid his lips to hers. All that he would have 
 said all, and more than all, that words could 
 have expressed was now said, without words. 
 His kiss clung as if it were the last this side of 
 death, clung until he felt that Martha feebly 
 strove to be released. 
 
 " The next minute they stood side by side, and 
 
NOVEL WRITING. 177 
 
 Gilbert, by a revulsion equally swift and over 
 powering, burst into a passion of tears. He 
 turned and leaned his head against Eoger s 
 neck. 
 
 " Presently a light touch came upon his shoul 
 der. 
 
 " 4 Gilbert ! 
 
 " He faced her then, and saw that her own 
 cheeks were wet. 4 Martha ! he cried, 4 un 
 less you love me with a love like mine for you, 
 you can never forgive me ! 
 
 44 She came nearer ; she laid her arms around 
 him, and lifted her face to his. Then she said, 
 in a tender, tremulous whisper, 
 
 44 4 Gilbert Gilbert ! I forgive you. " 
 
 The fourth and last of Bayard Taylor s novels, 
 44 Joseph and his Friend : A Story of Pennsyl 
 vania," was begun in January, 1869, at Cedar- 
 croft, contributed serially to the 44 Atlantic," and 
 published by Putnam, November 24, 1870. It is 
 an unpleasant story of mean duplicity and pain 
 ful mistakes. The characters are shallow and 
 their surroundings shabby. There is not a 
 single pleasing situation or incident in the book. 
 Bismarck told Bayard Taylor that he had read 
 the novel twice and was sure that it contained 
 one serious defect. He said, 44 You let your 
 villain escape too easily ; that is not poetic jus 
 tice, nor any kind of justice, in my opinion." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 TRANSLATING FAUST, AND OTHER GERMAN 
 STUDIES. 
 
 1867-1874. 
 
 " THE Story of Kennett " and " The Picture 
 of St. John" were published in 1866. The 
 former was Bayard Taylor s best prose work, 
 the latter his first sustained poem. Between 
 the publication of the novel in the spring, and 
 the poem in the fall, two summer months were 
 spent roughing it in the Kockies. 1 Looking 
 back across the twenty years of authorship that 
 lay between " Views Afoot," and " The Story 
 of Kennett," Bayard Taylor regarded the prod 
 ucts of those years as so many phases of an 
 education which circumstances had compelled 
 him to acquire in the sight of the public. " In 
 a literary sense," he wrote to J. B. Phillips, 
 August 5, 1866, " I have almost entirely 
 changed in the last five years." 
 
 Between his return from Europe in 1858 and 
 
 1 Colorado : A Summer Trip (1867) is the narrative of this 
 vacation. 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 179 
 
 his departure again in 1867 he had published 
 nine volumes and given six hundred lectures. 
 He was exhausted, and longed for rest ; but he 
 felt that his Wanderjahre were over, and that he 
 had solid ground beneath his feet and a definite 
 place in the world of letters. 
 
 He was growing vigorously and continuously. 
 The phrase " cosmical experience," so often on 
 his lips, was the expression of his eager joy in 
 progress, and of the delight he felt as he wheeled 
 into a new orbit, in exploring new lands, or en 
 countering new lives. He craved intellectual 
 novelty, and quieted the demands of his nervous 
 intellect by taking up unusual studies or essay 
 ing the painter s brush in place of the pen. 
 
 His early life had been warped by sentimen 
 tality and cribbed by repression. Two centu 
 ries of Quaker ancestry had condemned him to 
 slow development. From the first there was a 
 purely literary strain in his blood, but the nice 
 sense of proportion and of harmony was slowly 
 arrived at. He was, he said, ten years behind 
 every other American author ; but when those 
 who had the start of him flowered and ceased he 
 was stepping on with quick impatience to more 
 novel experiments and to more conspicuous re 
 sults. The really great things of which he was 
 capable were still before him when he died, with 
 more unfulfilled renown and unaccomplished 
 
180 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 growth within him than any other man in 
 American letters. 
 
 It was characteristic of such a nature, and of 
 such an intellectual history, to regard with dis 
 satisfaction that was sometimes almost shame 
 the works of the earliest stages of its devel 
 opment. Always the last thing he did he re 
 garded as his best. He had no interest in work 
 behind him. The book he was writing was 
 leagues in advance of anything he had written. 
 He was offended, or at least hurt, when in an 
 swer to the question he so frequently put to his 
 friends, " Which book of mine do you like the 
 best ? " one said " Poems of the Orient " and 
 another "John Godfrey s Fortunes." He was 
 extremely sensitive to critical opinion, and inno 
 cently vain of his personal history. It was his 
 natural and inevitable hunger for recognition 
 and sympathy that made him repeat with keen 
 enjoyment the favorable words of men whom he 
 respected. 
 
 After the Civil War, Taylor found a new set 
 of literary men in New York ; the old order 
 had changed, giving place to new. He began to 
 see better work in store for him, and with 
 splendid energy and resolution he undertook to 
 bury his superficial, ephemeral popularity as 
 traveler and journalist, and to acquire another 
 and higher reputation. 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 181 
 
 About 1850 he first conceived the idea of 
 translating " Faust." In September or October, 
 1863, he commenced the work; in May, 1870, 
 he finished it. The notes were written in nine 
 months more, and the first part was published in 
 December, 1870, and the second part in March, 
 1871. " Genius," said Carlyle, " is the capacity 
 for taking infinite pains." Only a fellow of the 
 craft can know the all-unestimated sum of pains 
 that went to the magnificent success of Taylor s 
 matchless rendering of the great German poem. 
 He toiled terribly upon it. He mastered much 
 of the prodigious literature that has accumulated 
 about the greatest poem of the nineteenth cen 
 tury. He familiarized himself with the ramifi 
 cations of the legend in history and art. He ex 
 amined a score of translations, read commenta 
 ries, compared sundry editions, and compressed 
 the labor of a lifetime into seven years. The 
 learned world at first mistrusted him, the task 
 seemed so impossible ; but with the completion 
 of the work all doubts and distrust were lost in 
 the universal appreciation and acceptance of the 
 splendid achievement. 
 
 Bayard Taylor s education had come largely 
 from travel. He picked his knowledge from 
 the living bush. He was not a learned man ; 
 indeed he was notoriously no scholar. He was 
 not sure of the correctness of the Latin title of 
 
182 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 his poem, " Notus Ignoto." He was fifty, as 
 has been already noted, before he took up the 
 study of Greek. He was, however, a close and 
 rapid reader, and had a tenacious memory that 
 dropped not a single thread. After the lapse of 
 twenty or thirty years he could still promptly 
 recall poems that he had committed to memory 
 in his youth. Indeed, his memory was sometimes 
 a thwart disnatured torment to him, when some 
 wretched doggerel that he had read once and 
 incontinently rejected arose in his recollection 
 after a score of years with distressing distinct 
 ness. He knew by heart the entire First Part 
 of Faust and most of the Second ; and he fre 
 quently made his translation from the ring of 
 the original in his ear and not from a perusal 
 of the printed page. 
 
 The great world of eye and ear had taught 
 him more than it vouchsafes to most men who 
 lift its jealous veils. He had a wide knowledge 
 of men and affairs that spread a far horizon 
 about his literary work. He had lived and 
 looked about him. He was once surprised at 
 Cedarcroft with an order from the " Tribune " 
 to prepare a sketch of Louis Napoleon " to be 
 used in the event of the emperor s abdication." 
 Drawing almost entirely from the stores of his 
 memory, Taylor wrote in three days an entire 
 page of the " Tribune." 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 183 
 
 It is doubtful if any foreigner ever obtained 
 more complete mastery than Bayard Taylor of 
 the resources of the German language. At 
 Vienna, when he was reporting the Exhibition 
 of 1873 for the "New York Tribune," in an 
 impromptu speech at the journalists banquet 
 he coined a new and felicitous German word, 
 Weltgemuthlichkeit, which was received with 
 approbation and was made the title of a leading 
 article in one of the Viennese dailies. 
 
 His German style was idiomatic, his vocabu 
 lary full, and his command of the harmonies 
 of verse extraordinarily prompt and accurate. 
 One pretty little poem in the manner of Kotze- 
 bue has been already quoted, but as Goethe in 
 general and " Faust " in particular were Tay 
 lor s cult, the object of his best directed ener 
 gies, and as his studies in German led to his 
 most positive and permanent literary triumphs, 
 it seems well to illustrate a little further his skill 
 and originality in marshaling German verse. 
 
 After the surrender of MacMahon s army 
 Taylor wrote " Jubel-lied eines Amerikaners," 
 which was published in " Lieder zu Schutz 
 und Trutz " (Berlin, 1870), and republished in 
 the " Neue Reichs-Commersbuch," edited by 
 Miiller von der Werra. It was set to music 
 by Jakob Blied. This popular triumph -lied 
 ran: 
 
184 BA YARD TA YLOB. 
 
 " Triumph ! das Schwert in tapf rer Hand 
 
 Hat hohe That vollbracht ; 
 Vereint ist nun das deutsche Land 
 
 Zum Sieg und Ruhm erwacht ! 
 Die Macht, die jiingst so hohniseh prahlt 
 
 Giebt auf die letzte Wehr, 
 Und neuer Glanz der Thaten strahlt 
 
 Auf Deutschlands Helden heer ! 
 
 " Heil edles Volk ! dem neu das Hers 
 
 So unerschiittert schlug ! 
 Das sich verband und allerwarts 
 
 Verwarf den frank schen Trug ! 
 Das, fest und heilig, Glied an GHed, 
 
 Stand endlich ira Verein 
 Mit Trost und Muth, Gebet und Lied, 
 
 Eine einz ge Wacht am Bhein ! 
 
 " Kanonen, donnert noch einmal ! 
 
 Den Frieden nun ihr bringt : 
 Ihr Glocken, iiber Berg und Thai 
 
 Von Tausend Thiirmen klingt ! 
 Fromm neige dich, O deutsches Land 
 
 Lass Rache ruhn und Spott : 
 Dein Gott erhalf und iiberwand 
 
 Nun danket Alle Gott ! " 
 
 Bayard Taylor s intellect was of that activity 
 that it gave him trouble not to work ; and his 
 superabundant animal spirits abandoned him in 
 his hours of relaxation to the most riotous quips 
 and voluntary absurdities. At his evenings at 
 home in New York he and his merry comrades 
 played practical jokes and fantastic pranks ; and 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 185 
 
 in the " Echo Club " in frolicsome mood he trav 
 estied the gravest lines of serious men. Humor 
 is a severe test of a translator s skill. Jests are 
 such frail atomies that they scarcely bear trans 
 port from their native territory. The gibe that 
 in one country makes the whole quire hold their 
 hips and laugh, and waxen in their mirth, ap 
 pears dull and leaden unto another people. 
 
 That Taylor had acquired with the German 
 tongue a full appreciation of the quality of 
 German humor appears in the following parody 
 extemporized at Gotha : 
 
 " Kennst du das Land, wo schonste Braten bliihn, 
 Im Lettichlaub die goldnen Eier gliihn, 
 Ein sanfterer Duft vom Marcobrunner weht 
 Gemiise still, und hoch das Wildpret steht, 
 Kennst du es wohl ? Dahin, dahin, 
 Mocht ich, geliebte Frau, zum Essen mit dir ziehn ! 
 
 " Kennst du das Haus ? Gastfreundlich ist sein Dach : 
 Die Liebe wohnt im Saal und im Gemach, 
 Und edle Wirthe stehen und sehen uns an : 
 Was haben sie schon oft so viel fur uns gethan ! 
 Kennst du es wohl ? Dahin, dahin, 
 Mocht wieder ich mit der Familie ziehn ! 
 
 " Kennst du den Berg und seinen Gartensteg ? 
 Durch Himbeerstrauch die Gaste ziehen ihren Weg, 
 Doch oben wohnt das theure edle Paar, 
 Die uns bewirthet schon so manches Jahr, 
 Kennst du sie wohl ? Dahin, dahin, 
 So oft sie rufen, woll n wir Alle ziehn." 
 
186 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 In his translation of " Faust " Taylor aimed 
 to reproduce the rhythm, the oral effect of the 
 original, no less than its logical or grammatical 
 meaning. Enamored of his toil, and thrilled 
 with the mighty melody of the verse, he con 
 ceived the lines " An Goethe " which stand at 
 the front of his translation. They seem to me 
 resplendent with gleams that are kindred to the 
 great spirit with whom Taylor had held such 
 close and high converse : 
 
 " Erhabener Geist, im Geisterreich verloren ! 
 Wo immer Deine lichte Wohnung sey, 
 Zum hbh ren Schaff en bist Du neugeboren, 
 Und singest dort die voll re Litanei. 
 Von jenem Streben das Du auserkoren, 
 Vom reinsten Aether, drin Du athmest frei, 
 O neige Dich zu gnadigem Erwiedern 
 Des letzten Wiederhalls von Deinen L iedern ! 
 
 " Den alten Musen die bestaubten Kronen 
 Nahmst Du, zu neuem Glanz, mit kiihner Hand : 
 Du lost die Rathsel altester Aeonen 
 Durch jiingeren Glauben, helleren Verstand, 
 Und machst, wo rege Menschengeister wohnen, 
 Die ganze Erde Dir zum Vaterland ; 
 Und Deine Jiinger sehn in Dir, verwundert, 
 Verkorpert schon das werdende Jahrhundert. 
 
 " Was Du gesungen, Aller Lust und Klagen, 
 Des Lebens Wiederspriiche, neu vermahlt, 
 Die Harf e tausendstimraig frisch geschlagen, 
 Die Shakspeare einst, die einst Homer gewahlt 
 Darf ich in fremde Klange iibertragen 
 Das Alles, wo so Mancher schon gef ehlt ? 
 
FAUST OTHER GEEMAN STUDIES. 187 
 
 Lass Deinen Geist in meiner Stimme klingen, 
 Und was Du sanest, lass mich es Dir nachsingen! " 
 
 Concerning these verses, which moult no 
 feather in comparison with Goethe s own, Tay 
 lor wrote to Professor James Morgan Hart : 
 " It would be impossible for me to translate 
 my own German proem, because it was con 
 ceived in German. I could only give the same 
 thought, in English although my own in 
 paler colors." 
 
 The translation of " Faust " was not done in 
 leisure or without interruption. The hope of 
 reducing his expenses, and the pleasant antici 
 pation of meeting old friends and family con 
 nections in Germany, led Taylor, in February, 
 1867, to sail for Europe. Rest was his inten 
 tion, but the necessity of providing for the 
 expenses of Cedarcroft compelled him to write 
 a number of letters to the "Tribune," and 
 articles for the " Atlantic Monthly." 
 
 From England, where he met several men of 
 letters, he went to Gotha, and then to Lausanne. 
 He did considerable painting in both oil and 
 water colors, and he made two trips, one to " the 
 little land of Appenzell," and one to Paris to see 
 the International Exhibition. His letters to the 
 " Tribune " related chiefly to the art collections 
 of the exhibition, and his judgments upon the 
 American works were at once candid and kind. 
 
188 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 At the close of May lie started for Spain 
 intending to visit some out of the way places of 
 Europe. The first of the " Atlantic " papers 
 that record this journey is " From Perpignan 
 to Montserrat." He has written few better 
 descriptions than that of the serrated mountain, 
 the " strange, solitary, exiled peak, drifted 
 away in the beginning of things from its breth 
 ren of the Pyrenees." No doubt his chief inter 
 est in it was because Goethe had appropriated 
 the scenery of Montserrat for the fifth act of 
 the second part of " Faust." 
 
 He made one excursion to the Balearic 
 Islands, another over Catalonian bridle-roads to 
 the little republic of Andorra in the Pyrenees, 
 undisturbed by the changes of a thousand years 
 of history. He was the first American who 
 ever saw this forgotten corner, which is probably 
 even now known only through Halevy s opera 
 "Le Val d Andorre." 
 
 He returned to Lausanne and Gotha by way 
 of the Grande Chartreuse and the Chateau 
 Bayard. He rested during July and August at 
 Friedrichrode, where he, together with James 
 Lorimer Graham, had taken a villa. " Our 
 cottage," he wrote to Mr. Stedman, "has a 
 flagstaff, and on that staff floats the American 
 flag ; inside we have German lessons, exercises 
 in art, beer, wine, occasional trout, visitors from 
 
FAUST OTHER GEEMAN STUDIES. 189 
 
 Gotha, chess, and my papers for the Atlan 
 tic. " 
 
 After a little visiting among friends and 
 relatives, and an excursion to Kyffhauser (for 
 its legends of Barbarossa), Taylor and his party 
 turned southward again over the Brenner Pass 
 into Italy. He became ill at Verona, but pushed 
 on to Venice where the travelers halted for 
 a while, and Taylor, sketching by the canal, 
 became poisoned with malaria and rapidly de 
 veloped the latent fever in his system. Fortu 
 nately the party reached Florence before the 
 illness culminated, and, in Casa Guidi, he lay 
 in delirium for four weeks. His strong consti 
 tution, the wise services of his English physi 
 cian, and the sedulous care of those about him 
 saved his life. After his recovery he wrote a 
 poem, suggested by the circumstance that in 
 the house in which he had been nursed back to 
 life Elizabeth Barrett Browning had once lived, 
 and written some of her most memorable verse, 
 and died; and he sent the poem to Robert 
 Browning. 
 
 " Returned to warm existence, even as one 
 Sentenced, then blotted from the headsman s book, 
 Accepts with doubt the life again begun, 
 I leave the duress of my couch, and look 
 Through Casa Guidi windows to the sun. 
 
190 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " She came, whom Casa Guidi chambers knew, 
 And know more proudly, an Immortal, now ; 
 The air without a star was shivered through 
 With the resistless radiance of her brow, 
 And glimmering landscapes from the darkness grew. 
 
 " Thin, phantom-like ; and yet she brought me rest. 
 Unspoken words, an understood command, 
 Sealed weary lids with sleep, together pressed 
 In clasping quiet wandering hand to hand, 
 And smoothed the folded cloth above the breast. 
 
 " The tablet tells yon, Here she wrote and died, 
 And grateful Florence bids the record stand : 
 Here bend Italian love and English pride 
 Above her grave, and one remoter land, 
 Free as her prayers would make it, at their side." 
 
 After his convalescence he spent a month 
 (January, 1868) in Naples, living on the quay 
 of Santa Lucia from which he moved just in 
 time, for he had been gone but four days when 
 the great rock of Pizzofalcone behind the quay 
 fell, demolishing among others the house in 
 which he had lived and killing eighty persons. 
 "Atlantic" papers, " A Week on Capri" and 
 " A Trip to Ischia," were written in February 
 at Sorrento. In March he arrived in Rome, 
 where he spent two months with Buchanan Read 
 and Bierstadt and troops of friends ; he engaged 
 a studio and spent the forenoons figure-painting. 
 After a brief sojourn in Florence, in the old 
 quarters at Casa Guidi, he made an excursion to 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 191 
 
 Corsica and the Island of Maddalena, where he 
 had " a distant view of Caprera," as Garibaldi 
 declined to see him. 
 
 In September, 1868, he returned to America 
 and to Cedarcroft. He celebrated the golden 
 wedding of his parents with a week of mirth and 
 frolic. Health seemed to be held in the Taylor 
 family by tenure of gavelkind ; three genera 
 tions in succession had celebrated their golden 
 wedding. Boker and Stoddard, who on this 
 occasion were present, read poems, and Taylor 
 composed a pretty little masque in the pleasant 
 ancient manner. 
 
 The year 1869 was spent almost entirely at 
 Cedarcroft. It began with the writing of " No- 
 tus Ignoto" and ended with the approaching 
 completion of "Faust." The arduous studies 
 for the latter work were made more toilsome by 
 the distraction of the " Gettysburg Ode." The 
 great significance of the dedication of the monu 
 ment at Gettysburg, and his own personal associ 
 ations with that fatal field on which his brother 
 fell, prompted him to the most painful care in 
 the performance of what was always an uncon 
 genial and difficult task to him, the making 
 of a poem of which he had not had at first the 
 vision in his own imagination. Soon after the 
 reading of the " Ode " at Gettysburg he was 
 called upon to deliver the oration at Guilford, 
 
192 BAYAED TAYLOE. 
 
 Connecticut, upon the dedication of the granite 
 obelisk erected in honor of Fitz-Greene Halleck, 
 the first public monument raised to an 
 American poet. Nor was this all ; in Ripley s 
 absence from the " Tribune " Taylor prepared 
 in his stead many important book reviews. He 
 saw a new edition of " Views Afoot " through 
 the press, and published " By- Ways of Europe." 
 He also voluntarily interrupted his German 
 studies to write " An August Pastoral," in which 
 his love of the scenery and his notion of the life 
 of his native place find a higher literary expres 
 sion than in his novels. 
 
 " Therefore be still, thou yearning voice from the garden in 
 Jena, 
 
 Still, thou answering voice from the park-side cottage in 
 Weimar, 
 
 Still, sentimental echo from chambers of office in Dres 
 den, 
 
 Ye, and the feebler and farther voices that sound in the 
 
 Each and all to the shelves I return : for vain is your com 
 merce 
 
 Now, when the world and the brain are numb in the torpor of 
 August." 
 
 Taylor s " Faust " was to be published by 
 Fields, Osgood & Co. in a volume uniform with 
 the quarto editions of Longfellow s "Dante," 
 and Bryant s " Iliad." Such companionship put 
 Taylor on his mettle. A large edition appeared 
 December 14, 1870, and nearly all the copies 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 193 
 
 were sold upon that day. In the evening, at 
 the home of James T. Fields, a small but 
 distinguished company met to congratulate 
 the successful translator. Longfellow, Lowell, 
 Holmes, Howells, Aldrich, and Osgood sat 
 around a bust of Goethe which was placed upon 
 the library table, and the night was dedicated 
 to Goethe and to Taylor. Whittier, who could 
 not be present, sent a letter of regret in which 
 he noted with fondly partial pride that "the 
 best translation of Tasso is that of the Quaker 
 Wiffin, and now we have the best of Goethe 
 from the Quaker-born Taylor." 
 
 George Bancroft, at that time minister to 
 Germany, took charge of the copies that were 
 sent to Berlin for distribution, and almost the 
 first copy presented in Germany was to Bis 
 marck, who had expressed a desire to have the 
 translation. 
 
 It was Taylor s belief that poetry absolutely 
 required for its successful translation the origi 
 nal metres. And in the original metre he ren 
 dered " Faust." The merits of his version, it 
 has been said, are sympathetic quality, rapid 
 poetic handling, and fidelity to text. The trans 
 lation of the " astonishing chorus " of the arch 
 angels with its " planetary cosmic harmony " 
 has never been surpassed in English except by 
 Shelley s almost inspired version. Over every 
 
194 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 word of " Faust " Bayard Taylor pondered with 
 the minutest care. Twenty or thirty synonyms 
 for every chief word in a quatrain were hunted 
 up, and hours, days, and weeks spent in making 
 the crooked words lie smooth. He was right 
 when he said that the resonance of the original 
 can only be preserved when the measure is 
 clearly marked and the vowel harmonies imi 
 tated. 
 
 Frederick Harrison deplores that Coleridge 
 did not act upon Shelley s suggestion and give 
 us " Faust " in the language of " Wallenstein," 
 " Kubla Khan," and " Christabel." True, great 
 poets, of imagination all compact, with poetic 
 intuition have interpreted the wonderful atmos 
 phere which envelops .great poems and which 
 seems to defy all attempts at translation. Yet 
 even Shelley, who had for years studied and 
 imitated the archangels chorus, and had de 
 clared that "the volatile strength and delicacy 
 of the ideas escape in the crucible of transla 
 tion," has but little surpassed Taylor in these 
 particular lines. In the prologue to " Hellas " 
 Shelley had imitated the chorus ; and one year 
 later (1822) he attempted both a literal and 
 poetic translation of Goethe s lines. Where 
 Shelley has, as it seems to me, far excelled Tay 
 lor is in the mocking irreverence of Mephis- 
 topheles. He has caught the spirit of the lines 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 195 
 
 " Von Zeit zu Zeit seh ich den Alien gern, 
 
 Und hiite mich mit ihm zu brechen. 
 Es ist gar hiibsch von eineni grossen Herrn, 
 
 So menschlich mit dem Teufel selbst zu sprechen," 
 
 which he renders, 
 
 " From time to time I visit the old fellow, 
 And I take care to keep on good terms with him. 
 Civil enough is the same God Almighty 
 To talk so freely with the Devil himself." 
 
 How much more appropriate is this jaunty 
 irreverence than Bayard Taylor s sedate 
 
 " I like at times to hear the Ancient s word, 
 
 And have a care to be most civil : 
 It s really kind of such a noble Lord 
 So humanly to gossip with the Devil." 
 
 September 2, 1869, Bayard Taylor accepted 
 his election to the non-resident professorship of 
 German literature at Cornell University. In 
 the spring of the following year, April 20-May 
 2, he delivered a course of lectures before the 
 university upon Lessing, Klopstock, Schiller, 
 Goethe, and Humboldt. In order that the citi 
 zens of Ithaca, as well as the students, might 
 attend, the lectures were given in Library Hall. 
 
 The following year Taylor wrote new lectures 
 upon the earliest German literature, the Minne 
 singers, the Mediaeval Epic, the Nibelungenlied, 
 the literature of the Kef ormation, and the litera 
 ture of the seventeenth century. These were 
 read in Ithaca, in June, 1871, and repeated May 
 
196 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 21-29, 1877. In May, 1875, he lectured upon 
 Lessing, Klopstock, Herder, Wieland, Richter, 
 Schiller, and Goethe. Many warm friendships 
 began between the lecturer and members of 
 the faculty of Cornell University ; Goldwin 
 Smith " carried away a pleasant memory of his 
 pleasant lectures," and from Professor Willard 
 Fiske and Professor W. T. Hewett, Taylor re 
 ceived scholarly suggestions that his quick brain 
 wrought into fresh material for literary fame 
 and profit. 
 
 A cough which had been troublesome through 
 the winter of 1869-1870, and caused some con 
 cern to his friends, clung to him so persistently 
 that in May, 1870, he started for California, 
 hoping not only to regain his wonted health, but 
 to earn by lecturing some much needed money. 
 Every anticipation was disappointed, and he re 
 turned home, confessing a loss of several hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 It is unfortunate that the lives of authors 
 should come to be sordid or shabby histories of 
 financial distress, mere records of getting and 
 spending. The French, with justice, censure 
 English biography for the perpetual presence in 
 it of the guinea s stamp. But in the story of 
 Taylor s life it seems inevitable that his biogra 
 pher should refer frequently to his business vi 
 cissitudes, for Taylor s life was a struggle for 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 197 
 
 the means to live, and the intensity of the strug 
 gle is the measure of the difficulties that beset 
 those who in America made literature their pro 
 fession. 
 
 Throughout 1871 he was continually battling 
 against ill-health. He published the second 
 part of "Faust," a story in the "Atlantic 
 Monthly," a paper on Humboldt and "Down 
 the Eastern Shore," in " Harper s Weekly," two 
 articles for " Scribner s Magazine " and one for 
 the " Independent." He began his editorial 
 work upon the " Library of Travel " for Scrib- 
 ners, and furnished frequent articles and reviews 
 for the "New York Tribune." He made two 
 excursions, one to the eastern shore of Mary 
 land, which he described in a magazine article 
 for " Harper s," and the other to Lakes Supe 
 rior and Winnipeg, with Whitelaw Reid and a 
 party of editors, which he wrote about in letters 
 to the " Tribune." It is not work that kills, but 
 worry, and the cares of Cedarcroft were weigh 
 ing heavily upon him. The crops failed, the 
 cost of living increased, his own income was di 
 minishing ; debts accumulated and added to the 
 nagging of the neighbors at Kennett. Debt is 
 always more harshly considered in the country 
 than in cities, and particularly so among the 
 Quakers, who are rigidly exact and prompt in 
 the settlement of money transactions. He had 
 
198 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 outlived the sentiment that attached him to the 
 spot. " Seclusion in our country," he said, 
 " means nothing but moral and intellectual 
 stagnation." He saw the life of peace and 
 poetry that he had dreamed of, receding from 
 him. He realized that his move to Kennett had 
 been a mistake, and in heavy disappointment he 
 resolved to withdraw forever from the place. 
 This meant a revising and recasting of his plan 
 of life. He put Cedarcroft in the hands of an 
 agent and offered it for sale. He went to New 
 York, and in comfortable quarters at 12 Uni 
 versity Place passed the winter. 
 
 The next year, 1872, he made another radical 
 move in life. He was worn with much labor, 
 fatigued and worried. He found that the new 
 works of real literary merit upon which he had 
 been for seven years engaged did not appeal to 
 the masses ; they were caviare to the general. 
 The books of travel which he had written in his 
 salad days he could not look into without wincing 
 with a feeling of positive pain; yet for these 
 books of immature intellect, and at times flip 
 pant style, he had received splendid remunera 
 tion, while from the serious and toilsome products 
 of his ripe age, with their due proportion and 
 developed art, he had now to be content with 
 the most meagre profits. Not at any time did 
 he stand more in need of money than now. 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 199 
 
 Lecturing was no longer a successful occupa 
 tion, nor was it to be entered upon without 
 actual hazard of health. The capital invested 
 in his country property was unproductive. The 
 " Tribune" undertook a building enterprise 
 which absorbed its funds, and the last dividend 
 upon the shares that Taylor held was paid in 
 the spring of 1872. 
 
 The need of rest and the desire to collect 
 materials for the lives of Goethe and Schiller, 
 which it had already become his ambition to 
 write, determined him to go to Germany, and 
 to remain there for one or two years. Cedar- 
 croft was leased in three parts ; all his personal 
 property was placed in storage, and the old par 
 ents were comfortably established in a house in 
 Kennett. Taylor left his home of twelve years 
 never to return to it save as a visitor, and sailed 
 June 6, 1872, upon the steamer Westphalia for 
 Hamburg. The autumn he spent in the Thii- 
 ringerwald ; in Gotha he lived at the observatory 
 at the corner of the park. The close of the 
 year brought him the news of Horace Greeley s 
 death, and the " Tribune s " misfortune ; al 
 though he did not yet know it, he was to receive 
 during the remainder of his life no dividend 
 upon his " Tribune " shares. The only ray of 
 consolation for all the blackness that surrounded 
 him was the generous and ample recognition in 
 
200 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Germany of his translation of " Faust." Every 
 where he came upon materials for his life of 
 Goethe which kindled him with new eagerness 
 and curiosity. At Ilmenau he was put into the 
 room where Goethe celebrated his last birthday 
 in 1831. At Rudolstadt, in July, 1872, he 
 rambled along the paths which Schiller had fol 
 lowed ; he visited the forge where Schiller stud 
 ied the staffage for his ballad of " Fridolin," 
 and " The Song of the Bell," but was too late 
 to see the lodge on the Kickelhahn, destroyed 
 by fire eighteen months before, where Goethe 
 wrote upon the wall, " Ueber alien Gipfeln ist 
 Huh." The Grand-Duke of Saxe- Weimar, grand 
 son of Carl August, invited Taylor, in October, 
 to dinner in the Sangersaal in the Wartburg. 
 The dinner was served in " the same old Byzan 
 tine hall where Tannhauser sang," between the 
 pillars "against which certainly must have 
 leaned Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther 
 von der Vogelweide." 
 
 December 12, 1872, at Gotha he lectured in 
 German upon American literature for the bene 
 fit of the Frauenverein. " I have written it 
 directly in German," he wrote to his friend 
 Professor Hart, " but have no idea how I shall 
 succeed in the delivery, as I have never before 
 tried such a thing." The lecture was repeated 
 in Weimar upon the invitation of Wieland s 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 201 
 
 granddaughter, before the Gustav- Adolf Verein. 
 It was given in the hall of the mediaeval society 
 of Arquebusiers. After the lecture the Grand- 
 Duke said to Taylor, " You have made one seri 
 ous omission ; you have said nothing about your 
 self." The whole court was present on this 
 occasion ; and among Taylor s auditors were the 
 grandchildren of Carl August, Goethe, Schiller, 
 Herder, and Wieland. 
 
 At Weimar Taylor became acquainted with 
 Baron von Stein, grandson of Frau von Stein, 
 Baron von Gleichen-Russwurm, Schiller s grand 
 son, the painter Preller, a protege of Goethe 
 whose son died in his arms, and the scholar 
 Schbll, chief librarian at Weimar. " My great 
 encouragement," he wrote, "is that after test- 
 ing my own conception of Goethe here, by those 
 who knew him, I am not obliged to make any 
 change." He visited Staatsrath Stichling, the 
 grandson of Herder, made a most interesting 
 acquaintance in Wolfgang von Goethe, another 
 in Herr von Salis, and yet another in Fraulein 
 Frommann, the foster-sister of Minna Herzlieb, 
 the "Ottilie" of Goethe s " Wahlverwandt- 
 schaften." " Yesterday I met," he wrote, No 
 vember 12, 1873, to Professor Hart, "the 
 daughter of Falk, and so it goes, every day 
 the grand old time comes nearer to me through 
 those who partly lived in it." 
 
202 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 When he first called upon Preller he saw in 
 the artist s room a cast of Trippel s bust of 
 Goethe, the Apollo head, modeled in Rome in 
 1787. Taylor said, "I see the same head of 
 Goethe here, and in the same position, as in 
 my own room at home ; only opposite, I have 
 placed the Venus of Milo. He, as man, should 
 stand beside her, as woman." Preller arose, 
 seized Taylor by the arm, and pointed to a bust 
 of the Venus of Milo. " There she is, " he ex 
 claimed, " I see her every day of my life, but I 
 never pass her without saying to myself : My 
 God, how beautiful she is ! 
 
 Taylor s enthusiasm ran high, rich stores of 
 materials were opening before him, and already 
 the dual biography of Goethe and Schiller was 
 taking form in his imagination. It is a little 
 curious that his own intellectual life had fol 
 lowed the course of Goethe s. Like him he had 
 begun his German life in Frankfurt, and now 
 it was culminating with him in Weimar. The 
 " Westoestlicher Divan " had perhaps exerted 
 some influence over him when he was writing 
 " Poems of the Orient ; " now it was his ambi 
 tion to give to American literature a poem in 
 the style of " Faust " or " Pandora." Goethe 
 had become his one intense literary passion ! 
 
 Dogged by ill-fortune and suffering ill-health, 
 Taylor sought the softer air of Italy, in Janu- 
 
FAUST OTHEE GERMAN STUDIES. 203 
 
 ary, 1873, resting on the way at Lausanne. He 
 resumed his old quarters in Florence at Casa 
 Guidi. He reported the exposition at Vienna 
 for the " Tribune," and in summing up the lit 
 erary achievement of the twelvemonth he wrote, 
 " This is perhaps the most fruitful certainly 
 the most laborious year of my life." In Lau 
 sanne, January, 1873, he began a school history 
 of Germany for Messrs. Appleton a potboiler 
 by which he expected speedily to earn two or 
 three thousand dollars. He continued the work 
 in Florence, Gotha, and Vienna, and finished it 
 on the first of August. In October and Novem 
 ber he wrote " The Prophet," a play. That he 
 was still oppressed by financial embarrassment 
 is clear from the following letter to William D. 
 Howells : 
 
 GOTHA, GERMANY, February 6, 1874. 
 
 MY DEAR HOWELLS, Your very welcome 
 letter was forwarded to me from Florence three 
 days ago. We were just ready to leave here, 
 the first week in January, when my daughter 
 was suddenly taken down with a severe attack 
 of fever, from which she is now slowly recover 
 ing. We have had a month of anxiety, of wait 
 ing and watching, instead of a sunny Italian 
 month of rest ; but we must be grateful and 
 hopeful. I hope to get away in four or five 
 days more. 
 
204 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Herewith I send you a short story, which is 
 hardly included in our bargain, but inasmuch as 
 short stories with meanings in them are not very 
 abundant in the market, I conjecture that you 
 may be willing to get it. I began an article on 
 Weimar, but Lilian s fever interrupted me, and 
 the fleeting fancy of the story thrust itself be 
 tween. The money for it is needed in Pennsyl 
 vania ; so please have it sent as soon as possible, 
 to my mother, Mrs. Rebecca W. Taylor, Ken- 
 nett Square, Pennsylvania, and you will greatly 
 oblige me. 
 
 I am glad you did not misinterpret the spirit 
 of my letter. I have told you (more than once, 
 I fancy) that I am engaged in the somewhat 
 desperate task of burying such reputation as 
 I had ten years ago several thousand fathoms 
 deep, and creating a new one. I have always 
 felt that you cordially recognized this endeavor, 
 but the words in which you now say it are like 
 an additional prop thrust under my will and 
 patience. The fact that you returned the poem 
 which I consider much the more important and 
 original of the two was a little discouraging, 
 coming, as it did, upon the heels of two months 
 of steady bad news of every possible kind. I 
 see no American papers, I do not know how my 
 articles are received, and may, therefore, under 
 estimate the standing I have already gained 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 205 
 
 with such men as yourself. As for the super 
 cilious fashion in which I am treated by many 
 newspaper writers, it has long ceased to be an 
 annoyance. 
 
 I gladly accept your offer for four articles. 
 It leaves me a certain amount of freedom, which 
 I always need, in order to work satisfactorily. 
 As for poems, I confess I am still a little puz 
 zled how to decide what you are likely to like 
 in mine. A man s taste is much more difficult 
 to understand than his character. However, I 11 
 try again when the next one comes. I feel more 
 at home in the " Atlantic " than anywhere else. 
 
 My situation is a little difficult. I may tell 
 you now, that for two years past I have had no 
 income from my few " Tribune " shares, shall 
 have none for two more to come, and am now 
 devouring the last of the proceeds of one which 
 I was forced to sell. Except a pittance of about 
 750 dollars a year from all my books, I have no 
 income at all, except my immediate earnings, 
 and nearly all my labor for eighteen months past 
 is not yet remunerative. For instance, I spent 
 eight months of last year, averaging eight hours 
 a day, on a history of Germany for schools, 
 which Appletons have not yet brought out. 
 Under all these restrictions, I dare not neglect 
 the more important Goethe studies, and when 
 they are finished I shall hasten home to work 
 
206 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 for a living until the better time comes. There 
 has been an unusual mental, moral, and physi 
 cal strain upon me ever since leaving home, and 
 a cheery word from a friend never had such a 
 value as now. . . . Good luck to the "Atlan 
 tic," under H. and H. ! 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 BAYAKD TAYLOR. 
 
 The History of Germany was based on Miil- 
 ler s large work, and upon Dittmar and von 
 Eochau, and while accurate and comprehensive, 
 was not condensed with particular originality or 
 skill, and was scarcely available for the school 
 use for which it was intended. Appleton & Co. 
 found it unsatisfactory so far as the illustrations 
 were concerned, and publication was deferred 
 until the close of 1874, to the great disappoint 
 ment of the author. Another disappointment 
 was the English edition of " Lars : A Pastoral 
 of Norway." It was the first of Taylor s poems 
 to be published in England, and the sale was 
 just one hundred and eight copies. 
 
 February, March, and April, 1874, Bayard 
 Taylor and his family spent in an excursion 
 to Italy and to Cairo. He wrote eleven let 
 ters from Egypt to the " Tribune." He made 
 the acquaintance of Mariette Bey and studied 
 with delight the new discoveries in Egyptology. 
 
FAUST OTHER GERMAN STUDIES. 207 
 
 After his return to Germany he went to Leipzig 
 to avail himself of Hirzel s invitation to ex 
 amine his unique Goethe and Schiller library. 
 While turning over these volumes, examining 
 eighteen folio scrapbooks of newspaper articles 
 concerning Goethe, and making notes to bear 
 away with him to America, an urgent request 
 was received from Whitelaw Reid to go to Ice 
 land as the representative of the " Tribune " to 
 report the commemoration of the millennial an 
 niversary of the first settlement of the island. 
 He controlled his impatience to return home, 
 saying that " to the few who have never known 
 any other Alma Mater than the New York 
 Tribune 
 
 " ( Stern rugged nurse, thy rigid lore 
 With patience many a year I bore ! ) 
 
 her (or its) call is like that of the trumpet unto 
 the war-horse." He made the journey to Ice 
 land in company with Cyrus Field, Murat Hal- 
 stead, Dr. I. I. Hayes, one of Mr. Gladstone s 
 sons, and Professor Magnusson, upon a steamer 
 that had been chartered by Mr. Field. 
 
 On the way from Edinburgh where he 
 was entertained by Mr. Nelson in his magni 
 ficent home " Hope Park, " at the foot of Ar 
 thur s Seat to Aberdeen, Taylor looked forth 
 upon Ury, famed in Whittier s ballad, where 
 once lived Robert Barclay, the Apologist, and 
 
208 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 which in 1874 was the home of Alexander 
 Baird. A few days later Taylor was sailing 
 through the straits between Pomona and Shap- 
 inshay, from which latter little island Wash 
 ington Irving s father had emigrated, and on 
 through " desolate rainy seas " to Iceland. 
 
 Taylor was profoundly interested in all that 
 he saw. " If you step on a blossom," he wrote 
 in " Egypt and Iceland," " it may be an Arctic 
 plant, unknown elsewhere ; if a bird flies over 
 head it is probably an eider duck ; if a boy 
 speaks in the street, he may use words made 
 venerable in the Eddas of Saemund and Snorre 
 Sturlesson " (p. 206). 
 
 At Reikiavik Taylor presented a poem 
 "America to Iceland" which was immediately 
 translated into Icelandic by Mathias Jochums- 
 son, the translator of " Lear " and " Macbeth." 
 Taylor in turn Englished Magnusson s Icelandic 
 address to King Christian IX. 
 
 His farewell reflections upon Iceland were : 
 " Not Thingvalla, or Hekla, or the Geysers, 
 not the desolate fire-blackened mountains, the 
 awful gloom of the dead lava plains, the bright 
 lakes and majestic fiords, have repaid me for 
 the journey, but the brief glimpse of a grand 
 and true-hearted people, innocent children in 
 their trust and their affection, almost more than 
 men in their brave unmurmuring endurance ! " 
 
FAUST OTHER GEEMAN STUDIES. 209 
 
 The Iceland trip postponed Taylor s return to 
 America for a month ; it was not until Septem 
 ber 9, 1874, that he arrived in New York. He 
 brought home with him a considerable library 
 containing many rare and valuable books upon 
 Goethe and Schiller. He went at once to Ce- 
 darcroft, where he was a guest of his own family, 
 and set about a mountain of work. He put 
 in order the letters he had sent to the " Trib 
 une " and published them in October under the 
 title " Egypt and Iceland ; " he wrote the first 
 of his papers on Weimar for the " Atlantic 
 Monthly ; " many invitations to lecture were ac 
 cepted, and a new lecture, " Ancient Egypt," 
 was prepared ; an immense correspondence was 
 dispatched, and above all the distractions of the 
 moment and brightening over the mass of toil 
 that filled his busy hours, shone the alluring 
 prospect of the new Life of Goethe. " My one 
 great encouragement since coming here," Tay 
 lor had written from Weimar, " is the assurance 
 that I have nothing to unlearn. My auffassung 
 of Goethe, as man and poet, in every import 
 ant point is confirmed by those who knew him 
 personally." The chief encouragement after his 
 return was the cordial recognition of the merit 
 of his literary work, and most of all the simple 
 but sincere welcome which he received within 
 three months of his fiftieth year from his Ches- 
 
210 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 ter County friends and neighbors at Mount 
 Cuba, the scene of some of the incidents of 
 " Lars." The spontaneity and simplicity of the 
 greeting, the soft air and tender pastoral land 
 scape, wiped from his mind many rude memories 
 of the conflicts of opinion and habit that the 
 jarring years had written there, and he thanked 
 God and took courage, facing bravely the new 
 work that was to build for him the reputation 
 that he still yearned for in the highest courts of 
 literature. 
 
 Another recognition, too, he appreciated 
 highly. Upon the invitation of the Delta 
 Kappa Epsilon fraternity he acted as chairman 
 of their national convention at the University of 
 Virginia and delivered an oration. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POEMS AND PLAYS. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR was never more delighted 
 than when in Iceland he was called " the Ameri 
 can Skald." Nothing kindled his pride and his 
 pleasure like praise of his poetry. His fame as 
 a traveler and a journalist, however wide and 
 secure, was slightly weighed by him ; and the 
 superficial repute that came with lecturing and 
 with editing brought him regret rather than sat 
 isfaction. The laurels he coveted were far other 
 than these. In his inmost heart, nourishing 
 his wonderful vitality, burned a sacred and un 
 quenchable ambition to bear the name of Poet, 
 and to be reckoned with those great singers who 
 have flashed the torch of spiritual life above the 
 throngs of men. All other efforts and aspira 
 tions were subordinated to this absorbing passion. 
 No praise of his miscellaneous achievements, 
 when he was winning and wearing proud distinc 
 tion in statecraft, in scholarship, and in letters, 
 could reconcile him to the slightest sense of 
 failure in his poetic endeavor. He toiled ter 
 ribly, he exhausted himself with the multitude 
 
212 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 of his tasks, " he wore himself out and perished 
 prematurely of hard and sometimes bitter work." 
 The recompense was in the sweet silent hours 
 " the holy hours," as Klopstock called them 
 dedicated to poetry. He was saved from the 
 cynicism and hardness that are often the con 
 sequence of such companionship and such toil as 
 were sometimes his in New York, not only by 
 the sweetness and gentleness of his disposition 
 but by the refreshing and purifying influence 
 of his single-hearted devotion to the highest 
 poetry. George Henry Boker well says : " His 
 childlike purity and joyousness of heart he owed 
 to the worship of an art for which his reverence 
 was boundless. . . . He believed himself to be 
 a poet, of what stature and quality it is now 
 for the world to decide, and in that faith he 
 wrought at his vocation with an assiduity and a 
 careful husbanding of his time and opportuni 
 ties for mental and for written poetical compo 
 sition, that was wonderful as an exhibition of 
 human industry, and in its many and varied re 
 sults, when we take into consideration his wan 
 dering life and his diversified and exacting em 
 ployments." 
 
 The passion to be remembered with those who 
 in song have lent a glory to the language we 
 inherit, was the inspiration and the disappoint 
 ment of his life. It was with a smile that had a 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 213 
 
 touch of sadness in it that he told of his en 
 counter with a stranger who asked permission to 
 take him by the hand, saying that he had read 
 and enjoyed all his books. 
 
 " And what do you think of my poetry ? " 
 asked Taylor. 
 
 " Poetry," was the astonished reply, " did you 
 ever write any poetry ? " 
 
 We have seen how with trembling hesitation 
 he addressed a copy of his first frail volume of 
 collected verses to Longfellow, and another to 
 Lowell, hardly daring to hope, in his boyish 
 phrase, that he might call himself " a brother- 
 bard." Once when alone in Lowell s library, he 
 came upon a copy of his translation of " Faust " 
 lying idly, with the leaves uncut, upon the shelf, 
 and his sensitive nature sustained an instant 
 wound, to which no philosophy could make 
 him indifferent. 
 
 The fellow craftsman s sympathy he longed 
 for, and was at his best when in the company 
 of poets. After reading Poe s criticism upon 
 Tennyson, he eagerly sought for the volume, and 
 the mature man, recalling the raptures of the 
 lad of seventeen, wrote, " I remember also the 
 strange sense of mental dazzle and bewilderment 
 I experienced on the first perusal of it. I can 
 only compare it to the first sight of a sunlit land 
 scape through a prism : every object has a rain- 
 
214 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 bowed outline. One is fascinated to look again 
 and again, though the eyes ache." 
 
 Twenty-five years after thai first looking into 
 Tennyson, Bayard Taylor spent a long day at 
 Farringford with the Laureate. He was shown 
 a great stretch of wheat-fields bought by " Enoch 
 Arden ; " he was treated to Napoleon s port and to 
 bumpers of rich brown sherry, out of magnums, 
 thirty years old, " meant to be drunk by 
 Cleopatra or Catherine of Russia," said Tenny 
 son. He heard the Laureate read " Guinevere," 
 in " a strange monotonous chant with unexpected 
 falling inflections," and essay the difficult " Bo- 
 adicea," " chanting the lumbering lines with 
 great unction." Mrs. Browning says, that 
 
 " Poets ever fail in reading 1 their own verses to the worth, 
 The chariot wheels jar in the gates thro which they drive 
 them forth." 
 
 Tennyson read his " Idylls of the King " with 
 choral intonation, for he was completely domi 
 nated by the metrical sense. He read for " at 
 mosphere," letting the intellectual articulation 
 take care of itself. Bayard Taylor read for the 
 " sense ; " all that he did was done, as Bacon 
 would have said, " in dry light." The spiritual 
 man in Tennyson moulded and informed his 
 verse ; with Taylor the verse was built up by 
 intellectual intention. 
 
 Soon after the visit or visitation, to Tennyson, 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 215 
 
 Taylor called upon Matthew Arnold, whose ap 
 pearance immediately reminded him of George 
 William Curtis, and upon Robert Browning, 
 on whose table he found "The Picture of St. 
 John." To Swinburne, Taylor read his " Sun 
 shine of the Gods : " 
 
 " Be glad, for this is the token, 
 The sign and the seal of the Poet ; 
 Were it held by will or endeavor, 
 There were naught so precious in Song. 
 Wait : for the shadows unlifted 
 To a million that crave the sunshine, 
 Shall be lifted for thee erelong. 
 Light from the loftier regions 
 Here unattainable ever, 
 Bath of brightness and beauty, 
 Let it make thee glad and strong ! 
 Not to clamor or fury, 
 Not to lament or yearning, 
 But to faith and patience cometh 
 The Sunshine of the Gods, 
 The hour of perfect Song ! " 
 
 and elicited the criticism that the poem should 
 either contain more rhyme or none at all. He 
 profited by the advice of the master of harmonies, 
 as he had profited by the lessons of life his 
 hard task-master and rested humbly proud 
 that to his faith and patience had come, ndt 
 once, but often, in soft subordination, " the Sun 
 shine of the Gods, the hour of perfect Song," 
 admitting him to the choice companionship of 
 
216 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 those whose fame he had reverenced and followed 
 afar off. 
 
 How in early childhood he began to make 
 verses, and to enjoy the " airy ecstasy " of ima 
 gination, and to feel " the first delicious thrills 
 of faith and pride " has been already told. His 
 earliest incentive to poetry he has analyzed in 
 " The Picture of St. John." 
 
 " Our state was humble, yet above the dust, 
 If deep below the stars, the state that feeds 
 Impatience, hinting yet denying- needs, 
 And thus, on one side ever forward thrust 
 And on the other cruelly repressed, 
 My nature grew, a wild-flower in the weeds, 
 And hurt by ignorant love, that fain had blessed, 
 I sought some other bliss wherein to rest." 
 
 The first timid collection of his poems, " Xi- 
 mena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and 
 other Poems," now an extremely rare volume, is 
 imitative and not indicative of unusual promise. 
 
 The " Ehymes of Travel, Ballads and Poems," 
 published in December, 1848, was approvingly 
 criticised by Edgar Allan Poe. The qualities 
 which Poe found in "The Continents," glow 
 ing imagination and " sonorous well-balanced 
 rhythm," are precisely the merits of Taylor s 
 maturest verse. In his " Epistle from Mount 
 Tmolus " Taylor refers to 
 
 " The curse 
 
 Or blessing, which has clung to me from birth 
 The torment and the ecstasy of verse." 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 217 
 
 In his youth he coveted the flash and glitter of 
 rhetoric, with little consideration for, the sub 
 stance of poetry. The people of America had 
 then what Charles Lamb called " the albuminous 
 fever." Annuals containing pretty poems were 
 cherished by the household; newspapers had 
 their poet s corner for artificial sentiment; 
 commonplace books were filled with select 
 stanzas and favorite fancies from Rufus Dawes, 
 and Grenville Mellen, and Brainard, and Sands, 
 admiringly bayoneted with exclamation marks. 
 The prevailing sentimentality is in the titles of 
 the approved books of 1840 : " Mildred s Lov 
 ers," " The Jar of Honey, and other Poems." 
 Bayard Taylor began in this environment, and 
 beat his way out of the wilderness to symmetri 
 cal conceptions and proportioned Art. 
 
 From 1849 to 1852, Bayard Taylor was revel 
 ing in the delight of the intellect, and writing 
 poems in a furor. The first adequate measure 
 of his lyrical power was " A Book of Romances, 
 Lyrics and Songs," which appeared in 1851. The 
 longest poem in the collection, " Mon-da-min, 
 or the Romance of Maize," is drawn, like Hia 
 watha, from Schoolcraft. Here, too, " Hylas " 
 is found, the best of Taylor s classical poems, 
 and worthy to stand beside all but the best of 
 Walter Savage Landor. Two Eastern poems 
 prelude "the full meridian deluge" of the 
 
218 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " Poems of the Orient." Both these, " Kubleh," 
 and "The Soldier and the Pard," illustrate 
 Taylor s skill in narrative verse and his love for 
 all animal creation. " Hassan to his Mare " 
 and the capital ballad " Eric and Axel " are 
 among the finest poems on the horse that our 
 literature contains. 
 
 Taylor makes his Lars say, 
 
 " The honest things 
 Like him that likes them, over all the world." 
 
 and the poor creatures of earth seemed to be at 
 tracted to Taylor in the same way that men were. 
 "The Poems of the Orient" (1854) is 
 the highest expression of Taylor s delight in 
 the world. It contains the best of his lyrical 
 genius, and the most brilliant of his purely 
 sensuous verse. It was his custom to copy his 
 poems for the printer. The neatly written and 
 faultless manuscripts that he furnished to his 
 publishers have misled some of his critics into 
 thinking that he wrote without correction. 
 However rapid might be his dispatch of prose 
 composition, he thought long over his verse, 
 and fashioned it with conscience and with 
 care. After he had completed his translation 
 of the first part of " Faust," he proceeded, with 
 that amazing industry of the hand which is one 
 of his remarkable characteristics, to copy it in 
 exquisite caligraphy into a book. From this 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 219 
 
 book he copied the whole once more for the 
 printer, nor resting here, again reproduced it in 
 his own hand for a gift of friendship. 
 
 The reiterated writing seemed to direct his 
 attention to blemishes that otherwise lurked un 
 seen. Writing was a great pleasure to him. 
 " Do you know anything more fascinating than 
 a great white virgin sheet of paper ? " he would 
 sometimes ask. " Lars " and " The Prophet " 
 and " Prince Deukalion " he copied into books 
 which are now in the library of Harvard Uni 
 versity. The poems that he brought back with 
 him from the Orient, and which were published 
 in 1854, he copied into a manuscript book 
 which is now in the possession of Kichard Henry 
 Stoddard, and from it may be learned the date 
 of the composition of each of the " Poems of the 
 Orient." * 
 
 There is perpetual delight in these poems for 
 him who loves a lyric line. They do not cloy 
 with monotonous sweetness like Moore s Oriental 
 idyls, nor weary with unpoetic diffuseness like 
 Southey s never ending epics. They teach the 
 eternal calm and brooding thought of the East. 
 They relate stories that are full of dramatic force 
 and fire, " The Temptation of Hassan Ben 
 Khaled," and " Amran s Wooing," are fasci 
 nating narratives deftly told. In one golden 
 
 1 The dates of these poems will be found in the Appendix. 
 
220 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 moment he minted the shining song whose im 
 mortality one feels to be secure. Beyond a 
 doubt the magnificent " Bedouin Song " is a dis 
 tinct addition to the imperishable things of our 
 literature. 
 
 " From the Desert I come to thee 
 On a stallion shod with fire ; 
 And the winds are left behind 
 In the speed of my desire. 
 Under thy window I stand, 
 And the midnight hears my cry : 
 I love thee, I love hut thee, 
 With a love that shall not die 
 
 Till the sun grows cold, 
 
 And the stars are old, 
 
 And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold I 
 
 " Look from thy window and see 
 My passion and my pain ; 
 I lie on the sands below, 
 And I faint in thy disdain. 
 Let the night winds touch thy brow 
 With the heat of my burning sigh, 
 And melt thee to hear the vow 
 Of a love that shall not die 
 
 Till the sun grows cold, 
 
 And the stars are old, 
 
 And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold I 
 
 " My steps are nightly driven, 
 By the fever in my breast, 
 To hear from thy lattice breathed 
 The word that shall give me rest. 
 Open the door of thy heart, 
 And open thy chamber door, 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 221 
 
 And my kisses shall teach thy lips 
 The love that shall fade no more 
 
 Till the sun grows cold, 
 
 And the stars are old, 
 
 And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold ! " 
 
 Taylor s " Orientalities " had what Moore, 
 and Southey, and Monckton Milnes " Palm- 
 Leaves," and Yictor Hugo s " Les Orientales " 
 lacked, a profound and vital appreciation of 
 the life of the East. Ross Browne s Syrian 
 dragoman, when he listened to the reading of 
 " Hassan to his Mare," " sprang up with tears 
 in his eyes, and protested that the Arabs talked 
 just that way to their horses." 
 
 A poem, that is now printed among the 
 " Poems of the Orient," but which was not 
 written until May, 1869, entitled " Shekh Ah- 
 naf s Letter from Baghdad," met with unfavor 
 able comment as an improbable and unreal 
 creation. It was declined by the " Atlantic 
 Monthly," partly on account of its length, and 
 partly because of its lack of dramatic truth. 
 Yet here as always Taylor was sure of his sub 
 ject, and was proceeding upon actual knowledge 
 where his critics were walking in ignorance. 
 He wrote to William D. Howells : " The letter 
 is genuine ; that is, such a letter describing just 
 such a scene, was written from Bagdad by a 
 Morocco Moslem ; and I should not much won- 
 
222 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 der if the very things that might seem out of 
 keeping with the character, to a reader, were 
 the things which the Shekh did write. I found 
 the letter a few weeks ago, and I altered no 
 thing of his tone and manner, in the poem. 
 Therein he seemed to me especially Moslem. 
 This is a private explanation in my own justi 
 fication ; for I can easily see what must have 
 appeared to you forced and undramatic. The 
 letter made a deep impression upon me, so much 
 so that I cannot dissociate it from the poem, 
 and am therefore less able to judge objectively 
 how it might strike another." 1 
 
 Rich imagery and conscientious finish are 
 the chiefest characteristics of these Oriental 
 poems. The restraint or abstinence exerted by 
 a writer so young and so ardent is more remark 
 able than the tropical opulence of Hugo or 
 the magical melody of Riickert. " Daughter of 
 Egypt, veil thine eyes ! " and " When Camadeva 
 came " are models of artistic proportion and 
 repression. The first challenges a comparison 
 with anything of the same kind in literature. 
 There are some Elizabethan and Caroline lyrics 
 of release and delight that are finer in their 
 way, but Taylor s song presents the moral na 
 ture recoiling upon the passionate and holding 
 it in suppression. 
 
 1 Written at Cedarcroft, May 10, 1869. 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 223 
 
 " Daughter of Egypt, veil thine eyes I 
 
 I cannot bear their fire ; 
 Nor will I touch with sacrifice 
 
 Those altars of Desire. 
 For they are flames that shun the day, 
 
 And their unholy light 
 Is fed from natures gone astray 
 
 In passion and in night. 
 
 " The stars of Beauty and of Sin, 
 
 They burn amid the dark, 
 Like beacons that to ruin win 
 
 The fascinated bark. 
 Then veil their glow, lest I forswear 
 
 The hopes thou canst not crown, 
 And in the black waves of thy hair 
 
 My struggling manhood drown ! " 
 
 " Camadeva " is the attempt to express the 
 most stupendous conception of the Hindu myth 
 ology, the saturation or suffusion of the uni* 
 verse with the divinity of love. 
 
 " All breathing life a newer spirit quaffed, 
 
 A second life, a bliss beyond a name, 
 And Death, half-conquered, dropped his idle shaft 
 When Camadeva came." 
 
 Lowell feared that Bayard Taylor might be 
 come too deeply enamored of the sensuous in 
 poetry, but when the wonder book that con 
 tained the best of Taylor s endeavor prior to 
 his thirtieth year was closed, his style seemed 
 to lose its fervor and intense expression. The 
 scents and secrets of the East vanished, and 
 
224 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Taylor passed from the sensuous toward the 
 psychological. In " L Envoi " he bids 
 
 " Unto the Desert and the Desert steed 
 
 Farewell ! The journey is completed now : 
 Struck are the tents of Ishmael s wandering breed, . 
 And I unwind the turban from my brow. 
 
 " The sun has ceased to shine ; the palms that bent, 
 
 Inebriate with light, have disappeared ; 
 And naught is left me of the Orient 
 
 But the tanned bosom and the unshorn beard." 
 
 He made a further collection of his poems, 
 including a number of new ones, and published, 
 in 1855, " Poems of Home and Travel." Then 
 supervened a long period when but little poetry 
 was written. He was fighting hard for free 
 dom to live the life of which he dreamed and 
 for which he planned. When Cedarcroft was 
 acquired the poetical faculty reasserted itself. 
 The great sorrow that had overshadowed his 
 young life in the death of his first wife, and 
 had driven him to foreign lands to ease the 
 restless anguish of his heart, now found its 
 voice in many poems that uttered the sad expe 
 rience he had known. " Poets learn in sadness 
 what they teach in song." Goethe said that 
 he disposed of his griefs by putting them in a 
 book. The memorable comparison of Thomas 
 Moore reminds us that it is the wounded tree 
 that drops the healing gum. " The Phantom," 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 225 
 
 " Moan, ye wild winds around the pane ! " and 
 "She came, long absent from my side," are 
 examples of the poems that commemorate the 
 romantic attachment of Taylor s youth and its 
 tragedy. When rest came, and his family was 
 at home at Cedarcroft, he gathered the recollec 
 tions of his moods, and told the story of his 
 voyage from pain to peace, in "The Poet s 
 Journal" (1862). He was vexed that the 
 publishers should have advertised the book as 
 the record of his life, for its associations were 
 too sacred for the public square. He insisted 
 that Ernest was but one half himself, and 
 Edith only one fourth his wife, but the mischief 
 had been done and the book that he should 
 always most have prized became an almost 
 painful memory. He had melted his sorrows 
 and had run them into a mould from which he 
 lifted a form of beauty that was a benefaction 
 to the world. This was the spirit in which the 
 work was performed : 
 
 " This arbor, too, was Ernest s hermitage : 
 Here he had read to me his tear-stained page 
 Of sorrow, here renewed the pang supreme 
 Which burned his youth to ashes ; here would try 
 To lay his burden in the hands of Song, 
 And make the Poet bear the Lover s wrong. 
 But still his heart impatiently would cry : 
 * In vain, in vain ! You cannot teach to flow 
 Jn measured lines so measureless a woe, 
 First learn to slay this wild beast of despair, 
 Then from his harmless jaws your honey tear I n 
 
226 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 No part of " The Poet s Journal " is superior 
 to the verses with which the book begins, in 
 scribed "To the Mistress of Cedarcroft," 
 and closing : 
 
 " Come, for my task is done : the task that drew 
 My footsteps from the chambers of the Day, 
 That held me back, Beloved, even from you, 
 That are my daylight ; for the Poet s way 
 Turns into many a lonely avenue 
 Where none may follow. He must sing 1 his lay 
 First to himself, then to the One most dear ; 
 Last, to the World. Come to my side, and hear ! 
 
 The poems ripened in a heart at rest, 
 
 A life that first through you is free and strong, 
 
 Take them and warm them in your partial breast, 
 
 Before they try the common air of song ! 
 
 Fame won at home is of all fame the best ; 
 
 Crown me your poet, and the critic s wrong 
 
 Shall harmless strike when you in love have smiled, 
 
 Wife of my heart, and mother of my child ! " 
 
 The entire poem is the glorification of family 
 love, in its wholeness and its wholesomeness. 
 
 In June, 1850, he began to meditate a poem 
 whose theme was pictorial art. He had then, 
 he said, " no more serious purpose than to write 
 a narrative poem of love and sorrow, with an 
 artist as the hero." Either through a temporary 
 failure of fancy, or a feeling of inadequacy to 
 the task, he deferred completing the poem. 
 Wherever he traveled the book went with him 
 and grew with slow additions. In St. Peters- 
 
POEMS AND PLATS. 227 
 
 burg, after the completion of " Hannah Thurs- 
 ton," he resumed the poem in earnest, and fin 
 ished it in 1865, in the same year with " The 
 Story of Kennett," in a fury of composition, 
 " utterly absorbed, distrait, and lost for the ma 
 terial aspects of life." He named it " The Pic 
 ture of St. John," and dedicated it to his artist 
 friends, Kensett, McEntee, Gifford, "Church, 
 Colman, Whittredge, and Eastman Johnson. 
 Of all that company only Eastman Johnson and 
 F. E. Church are now alive. An early love 
 of color and form, and a certain skill in draw 
 ing, Taylor had never entirely neglected. From 
 his rambles abroad he brought home with him 
 sketches in oil and in water colors, of the land 
 scapes and monuments that had impressed him. 
 In the Proem, " To the Artists," he wrote : 
 
 " Because the dream, thus cherished, gave my life 
 Its first faint sense of beauty, and became 
 Even when the growing 1 years to other strife 
 Led forth my feet, a shy, secluded flame : 
 And ye received me, when our pathways met, 
 As one long parted, but of kindred fate ; 
 And in one heaven our kindred stars are set ; 
 To you, my Brethren, this be dedicate ! " 
 
 Through the orderly and harmonic celebra 
 tion of the artist s life that follows, runs the sus 
 taining thought of the development of the artist s 
 power through his sympathy with the joy and 
 with the suffering of life. The latter is the 
 
228 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 common theme of song everywhere in literature, 
 the former is the rarer and higher spirit that in 
 spires " The Kime of the Ancient Mariner." 
 
 " I loved my work ; and therefore vowed to love 
 All subjects, finding Art in everything 1 , 
 The angel s plumage in the bird s plain wing, 
 Until such time as I might rise above 
 The conquered matter, to the power supreme 
 Whicn takes, rejects, adorns, a rightful king, 
 Whose hand completes the subtly-hinted scheme 
 And blends in equal truth the Fact and Dream I " 
 
 After the first great sorrow of his life the Ital 
 ian artist seeks a half forgetfulness in the cun 
 ning copying of Nature. He paints 
 
 " Each leaf and vein of meadow-blossoms pale, 
 The agate s streaks, the meal of mothy wings ! " 
 
 And when his soul is purged of the horrors 
 that possessed it, and his mind is cleansed of 
 " the unclean things that kept leets and law-days 
 there," he says : 
 
 " I wandered forth ; and lo ! the halcyon world 
 Of sleeping wave, and velvet-folded hill, 
 And stainless air and sunshine, lay so still ! 
 No mote of vapor on the mountains curled ; 
 But lucid, gem-like, blissful, as if sin 
 Or more than gentlest grief had never been, 
 Each lovely thing, of tint that shone impearled, 
 As dwelt some dim beatitude therein ! 
 
 " So God s benignant hand directing wrought, 
 And Man and Nature took me back to life. 
 My cry was hushed : the forms of child and wife 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 229 
 
 Smiled from a solemn, moonlit land of thought, 
 A realm of peaceful sadness. Sad, yet strong, 
 My soul stood up, threw off its robes of strife, 
 And quired anew the world-old human song, 
 Accepting patience and forgetting wrong ! " 
 
 The poem immediately gave Bayard Taylor 
 an assured place among the poets of America. 
 Longfellow called it " a great poem, noble, 
 sustained, and beautiful from beginning to 
 end ; " Lowell decided that no American poem 
 except "The Golden Legend" could match it in 
 finish and sustained power ; and Joseph Knight, 
 in the " Fortnightly Review " (March, 1867), 
 passing upon the genius of Taylor, said, " He 
 has not the earnestness of Longfellow, the wit 
 of Lowell, or the breadth of Holmes, but in deli 
 cacy of workmanship and wealth of suggestion 
 he transcends them all." 
 
 The stanza in which Taylor chose to cast this 
 romantic epic of three thousand one hundred 
 and seventy - six lines, was the ottava rima, 
 treated as in the " Oberon " of Wieland. Hook- 
 ham Frere in " The Monks and the Giants," 
 Byron in " Don Juan," Moultrie in " Godiva," 
 and the Etonians in general had, in their narra 
 tive verse, used the Italian stanza with the added 
 spice of humor to relieve its uniform sweetness. 
 Taylor secured a felicitous effect by capriciously 
 varying the order of the rhymes in the stanza, 
 introducing more than seventy variations, and so 
 
230 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 producing an arabesqueness of design that filled 
 the poem with surprises. The unrestrained 
 movement of the melody may be appreciated 
 from the following stanzas : 
 
 " I found a girl before San Marco s shrine 
 Kneeling in gilded gloom : her tawny hair 
 Rippled across voluptuous shoulders bare, 
 And something in the altar-taper s shine 
 Sparkled like falling tears. This girl shall be 
 My sorrowing Magdalen, as guilty-sweet, 
 I said, as when, pure Christ ! she knelt to thee, 
 And laid her blushing forehead on thy feet ! 
 
 " She sat before me. Like a sunny brook 
 Poured the unbraided ripples softly round 
 The balmy dells, but left one snowy mound 
 Bare in its beauty : then I met her look, 
 The conquering gaze of those bold eyes, which made, 
 Ah, God ! the unrepented sin more fair 
 Than Magdalen kneeling with her humbled hair, 
 Or Agatha beneath the quaestor s blade ! " 
 
 The chief defect of the poem is a certain im 
 maturity of conception and juvenility of phrase. 
 The "Proem," in which Taylor dubs his friends 
 Opal, Bloodstone, Topaz, and Jacinth, is in pre 
 cisely the vein which, in another, Taylor would 
 have been the first to censure for affectation. 
 
 " The Picture of St. John " marks the close 
 of the second stage of Bayard Taylor s develop 
 ment as a poet. He was soon absorbed in the 
 study of Goethe, and his mind was taking on 
 the cast of thought that was to determine his 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 231 
 
 future literary product, the first fruit of which 
 was "The Masque of the Gods" (1872). He 
 said of his studies at this time : " I read first of 
 all Goethe, then Montaigne, Burton, Mill, Buckle, 
 Matthew Arnold, and the old English poets ; of 
 the modern, chiefly Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
 Clough. Ruskin and Carlyle serve as entrees. 
 I abhor everything spasmodic and sensational, 
 and aim at the purest, simplest, quietest style in 
 whatever I write. My ideal is as far off as ever, 
 but it has at least taken a clear, definite shape. 
 Instead of mist I see form. I have lost some 
 thing of lyrical heat and passion, but gained in 
 feeling of proportion and construction." The 
 direction of his mind, as indicated by his read 
 ing, was evidently toward the religious and the 
 ethical. He was unusually familiar with the 
 Bible, and when the " Protestantenbibel " ap 
 peared, he studied it with keen interest. He 
 followed with close attention the researches of 
 Ebers and Lepsius in Egyptology, but found 
 little to sympathize with in Strauss, or in any 
 of the works of sheer negation. " I have been 
 reading," he writes to J. B. Phillips, March 23, 
 1871, u Ecce Homo and Darwin lately, and am 
 full of all sorts of prohibited doubts, for which 
 God be thanked ! since doubt is always the 
 first step towards knowledge. Theological ruts 
 are the worst pitfalls under our feet." 
 
232 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 Clearly the poems of his later years were to 
 partake more of his searchings of the infinite, 
 and his wrestlings with the problems of philoso 
 phy, than of the alert and light-hearted curiosity 
 with which he had hitherto looked about him in 
 the world, and blithely told his visions in lyric 
 song. The loss of youthful freshness and de 
 light was not to be compensated for by philo 
 sophical reflection ; and the admixture of meta 
 physics effectually precipitated the poetry in 
 "Prince Deukalion" and "The Prophet." 
 
 " The Masque of the Gods " was an inspira 
 tion. It was written at white heat in four days ; 
 and Taylor always regarded it as his best work. 
 "Masque" seems an unfortunate word to de 
 scribe a dramatic work so lofty in its intention, 
 whose theme is the evolution of the human con 
 ception of the Deity. Three dialogues in the 
 classical manner present, as Taylor defined the 
 meaning of the book, " First, a colossal reflec 
 tion of human powers and passions, mixed with 
 the dread inspired by the unknown forces of 
 nature; then, the idea of Law (Elohim), of 
 Order and Beauty and Achievement (Jove and 
 Apollo), and of the principles of Good and Evil 
 (Persian), and of the Divine Love (Christ). 
 But over all is the One supreme Spirit, yet un 
 named, and whom men only now begin to con 
 ceive of, the God of whom all previous gods 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 233 
 
 gave only faint and various reflections, to 
 whom Christ is still nearest, but who was also 
 felt, more or less dimly, in all creeds." 
 
 Christ, the revelation in man of the Divine 
 Love, and Apollo, the representative of Art and 
 Beauty, exist together in the poem, not in antag 
 onism, but in harmony ; indicating the corre 
 sponding nature of the beauty of holiness and 
 the holiness of beauty. 
 
 " One s face is fairer than the star of morning ; 
 One s voice is sweeter than the dew of Hermon 
 To flowers that wither : who is there beside them ? 
 And is there need of any one above him 
 Who brings his gifts of good and love and mercy ? 
 We climb to nobler knowledge, finer senses, 
 And every triumph brings diviner promise, 
 But Life is more : our souls for other waters 
 Were sore athirst, till He unlocked the fountain. 
 Now let us drink ; for as a hart that panteth, 
 Escaped from spears across the burning desert, 
 We think to drain the brook, yet still it floweth." 
 
 The lyrical interludes and chorus of spirits 
 are in the manner of Byron s " Manfred ; " but 
 Taylor s spirits talk better sense and poetry 
 than Byron s, however inferior the dramatic en 
 vironment of the " Masque " is to Byron s high 
 imagination. 
 
 Longfellow was delighted with the work, and 
 said to Taylor that he might now " safely write 
 under it, Fecit, fecit, the double mark of Titian." 
 
 Taylor often composed a poem before he 
 
234 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 wrote a line of it. His rapid dispatch of work 
 therefore was misleading. Poems were held in 
 suspension in his mi*. " -~til ready to be trans 
 ferred to paper. When he was meditating upon 
 the " Centennial Ode," a difficult and responsi 
 ble task, and some time before he actually began 
 to write, he said, using a singular figure, " the 
 string is in soak, and the thought is crystalliz 
 ing upon it." With him the rule was first inspi 
 ration, then drudgery. The thought of "The 
 Picture of St. John " he carried with him for 
 fifteen years. " The Masque of the Gods," 
 though written in four days, was long beforehand 
 complete in his memory. Wordsworth and Ten 
 nyson sometimes lost poems that they had devel 
 oped in thought : Taylor s memory never turned 
 traitor. After the first draft he frequently re 
 wrote his poems, often changing their metrical 
 form. Several times he recast " Orso s Ven 
 detta," "The Two Greetings," and "The Two 
 Homes." 
 
 He never realized his conception more com 
 pletely than in the idyllic narrative poem, 
 " Lars : A Pastoral of Norway," which, although 
 published in 1873, had been silently fixing itself 
 to form for six years. It is historical that a 
 community of Friends existed at Arendal in 
 Norway : Quaker quiet by the shoulder of Ber 
 serk rage. Taylor s thought was to link the an- 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 235 
 
 cient pagan fury of the fells and fjords with the 
 gentle speech and customs of the pastoral coun 
 try of Pennsylvania. So the story begins and 
 ends in Norway, but the intermediate events 
 occur at Mt. Cuba, at the end of the Hockessin 
 Valley, in the neighborhood of Kennett Square. 
 The poem is so severely simple, so perfectly 
 proportioned, and so well within the author s 
 powers, that it realized his ideal and won a place 
 in critical esteem beside " Evangeline," and the 
 best of Tennyson s corresponding verse. The 
 simple Norway name " Lars " becomes the sim 
 ple tale, though one learned Theban amended 
 what he thought to be Taylor s faulty Latinity 
 and made the title " Lares." 
 
 " A herdsman, woodman, hunter, Lars was strong 
 Yet silent from his life upon the hills. 
 Beneath dark lashes gleamed his darker eyes 
 Like mountain-tarns that take their changeless hue 
 From shadows of the pine : in all his ways 
 He showed that quiet of the upper world 
 A breath can turn to tempest, and the force 
 Of rooted firs that slowly split the stone. 
 But Per was gay with laughter of the seaa 
 Which were his home." 
 
 And both these loved Brita, who was " glossy 
 as a mating bird." 
 
 Their rivalry sets in bloody tragedy, and 
 Lars leads exiled steps in foreign lands. 
 
 " So Lars went onward, losing hope of good, 
 i To where, upon her hill, fair Wilmington 
 
236 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Looks to the river over marshy meads. 
 
 He saw the low brick church, with stunted tower, 
 
 The portal-arches ivied now and old, 
 
 And passed the gate : lo ! there, the ancient stones 
 
 Bore Norland names and dear, familiar words ! 
 
 " Led by a faith that rest could not be far, 
 Beyond the town, where deeper vales bring down 
 The winding brooks from Pennsylvanian hills, 
 He walked : the ordered farms were fair to see, 
 And fair the peaceful houses : old repose 
 Mellowed the lavish newness of the land, 
 And sober toil gave everywhere the right 
 To simple pleasures." 
 
 Again in this calm land, love for a pure and 
 gentle maiden, Ruth Mendenhall, springs up like 
 a fountain in him, and again the evil spirit in 
 his blood shrouds all his life in red anger, and 
 leads him to the edge of tragedy, when, with 
 murder in his heart and eye, he follows on fleet 
 foot his flying rival, Abner Cloud. And at the 
 last Lars wins peace and serenity of soul through 
 the love of Ruth, and on his native Norway soil 
 resists, like the Laird of Ury, the taunts and 
 challenges of the blood feud. 
 
 No poet ever returned with fonder recollection 
 to his humble birthplace, or sought with more 
 sincere devotion to lift its life and landscapes 
 into the clear air of art. In the best of his prose 
 works Taylor had made the name of Kennett 
 familiar to the readers of two continents. In six 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 237 
 
 pastorals and five ballads he interpreted the 
 spiritual meaning of the lives and scenery that 
 lay beyond the oaks and chestnuts of Cedarcroft. 
 The pastorals were written in hexameter verse, 
 which Taylor had studied in German literature 
 more than in English. His construction was 
 four feet dactylic, with occasional trochaic sub 
 stitutions, the fifth foot inevitably a dactyl, the 
 line ending with a trochee or, now and then, a 
 spondee. 
 
 " But since I am sated with visions, 
 
 Sated with all the siren Past and its rhythmical phantoms, 
 Here will I seek my songs in the quiet fields of my boyhood, 
 Here where the peaceful tent of home is pitched for a season. 
 High is the house and sunny the lawn : the capes of the wood 
 lands, 
 
 Bluff, and buttressed with many boughs, are gates to the dis 
 tance 
 
 Blue with hill over hill, that sink as the pausing of music. 
 Here the hawthorn blossoms, the breeze is blithe in the or 
 chards, 
 
 Winds from the Chesapeake dull the sharper edge of the win 
 ters, 
 
 Letting the cypress live, and the mounded box, and the holly ; 
 Here the chestnuts fall and the cheeks of peaches are crimson, 
 Ivy clings to the wall and sheltered fattens the fig-tree, 
 North and South are as one in the blended growth of the region, 
 One in the temper of man, and ancient, inherited habits." 
 
 The sentiments of the slow, conservative farm 
 ers ; the " nasal monotonous chorals, sung by the 
 sad congregation ; " the stern sense of duty, that 
 
 " Better it were to sleep with the owl, to house with the hornet, 
 Than to conflict with the satisfied moral sense of the people," 
 
238 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 find their expression in these " pastorals " of one 
 who was cradled among the people, who knew 
 them and loved them. The peaceful farms, too, 
 
 " The mossy roofs of the houses, 
 
 Gables gray of the neighboring barns, and gleams of the high 
 way 
 Climbing the ridges beyond to dip in the dream of a forest," 
 
 even the idle weeds that grow in the sustaining 
 corn, " the bitter-sweet, moon-seed, and riotous 
 fox-grape," are remembered, 
 
 Flaring St. John s wort, milk-weed and coarse, nnpoetical 
 mullein ; 
 
 Yet, were it not for the poets, say, is the asphodel fairer ? 
 
 Were not the mullein as dear, had Theocritus sung it, or Bion ? 
 
 Yea, but they did not ; and we, whose fancy s tenderest ten 
 drils 
 
 Shoot unsupported, and wither, for want of a Past we can 
 cling to, 
 
 We, so starved in the Present, so weary of singing the Fu 
 ture, 
 
 What is t to us if, haply, a score of centuries later, 
 
 Milk-weed inspires Patagonian tourists, and mulleins are 
 classic?" 
 
 Not Whittier nor Barton nor any other of 
 the Friends has written a poem so dramatically 
 true and so replete with Quaker expressions as 
 Taylor s ballad, "The Quaker Widow," fore 
 runner of " The Holly Tree," " John Reed," 
 "Jane Reed," and "The Old Pennsylvania 
 Farmer." 
 
 " Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics " (1875) 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 239 
 
 contains also some of Bayard Taylor s Odea 
 In his occasional poems made for public com 
 memorations he essayed the Pindaric measure, 
 never, save once, with popular success, but al 
 ways with some degree of mechanical skill. 
 
 The " Gettysburg Ode," read at the dedication 
 of the National Monument, July 1, 1869, as an 
 imposed task cost him much trouble. He could 
 not bend himself to poetry with the same prompt 
 fluency with which he performed the prose tasks 
 that were constantly set for him. 
 
 He took the text of the ode from Lincoln s 
 address at Gettysburg. 
 
 " From such a perfect text, shall song aspire 
 To light her faded fire, 
 And into wandering music turn 
 Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern ? 
 His voice all elegies anticipated ; 
 For, whatsoe er the strain, 
 We hear that one refrain : 
 We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated ! " 
 
 Less successful was " Shakespeare s Statue," 
 written for the unveiling of J. Q. A. Ward s 
 statue of Shakespeare in Central Park (May 
 23, 1872). Another occasional poem was com 
 posed for the Goethe Club, to celebrate their 
 presentation of a bust of Goethe to be placed 
 in Central Park upon Goethe s one hundred and 
 twenty-sixth birthday. Taylor s estimate of 
 Goethe, his admiration of his " cosinical ex 
 
240 SAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 perience " and symmetrical culture, finds its 
 amplest expression in the closing stanza : 
 
 " Dear is the Minstrel, yet the Man is more ; 
 
 But should I turn the pages of his brain, 
 
 The lighter muscle of ray verse would strain 
 And break beneath his lore. 
 
 How charge with music powers so vast and free, 
 
 Save one be great as he ? 
 Behold him, as ye jostle with the throng 
 Through narrow ways, that do your beings wrong, 
 
 Self-chosen lanes, wherein ye press 
 
 In louder Storm and Stress, 
 Passing the lesser bounty by 
 Because the greater seems too high, 
 
 And that sublimest joy forego, 
 
 To seek, aspire, and know ! 
 Behold in him, since our strong line began, 
 The first f ull-statured man ! 
 
 Dear is the Minstrel, even to hearts of prose ; 
 But he who sets all aspiration free 
 Is dearer to humanity. 
 
 Still through our age the shadowy Leader goes ; 
 Still whispers cheer, or waves his warning sign ; 
 
 The man who, most of men, 
 Heeded the parable from lips divine, 
 
 And made one talent ten ! " 
 
 General Hawley, the President of the United 
 States Centennial Commission, invited Bayard 
 Taylor to write the hymn for the opening day 
 of the Exhibition, and asked him to name some 
 one to compose the cantata. E. C. Stedman, 
 who was the choice of the commission, had gone 
 to Panama, and neither Theodore Thomas nor 
 

 POEMS AND PLAYS. 241 
 
 Dudley Buck, the composer, would await his re 
 turn. Taylor proposed the name of the South 
 ern poet, Sidney Lanier, whose acquaintance 
 he had made not many months before, and for 
 the fine qualities of whose richly imaginative 
 verse Taylor entertained the highest respect and 
 admiration. 
 
 The commission had determined upon an 
 oration and an ode for the great day when the 
 centennial of the Declaration of Independence 
 was to be celebrated. Hon. William M. Evarts 
 was chosen to deliver the oration, but much 
 difficulty was experienced in finding any one to 
 accept the serious task of composing the ode. 
 Longfellow and Lowell declined on the score of 
 illness, Bryant because of age. Whittier and 
 Holmes preferred that Taylor should make the 
 attempt. When he assumed the new duty he 
 withdrew his hymn, and so it happened that 
 Bayard Taylor, representing Pennsylvania, pro 
 duced the national ode, Georgia furnished the 
 cantata, and Massachusetts sent the hymn from 
 the pen of Whittier, who was by nature, as Tay 
 lor said, the high priest among American writers. 
 
 It is not often given to a poet to read his own 
 verses to listening thousands and to kindle the 
 public throng with the lofty aspirations of pa 
 triotism. The effect of Taylor s reading was 
 electrical and wonderful. He was crowded upon 
 
242 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 by the spontaneous congratulation of the people, 
 and his ears were dinned with the applause of 
 the ten thousand who had heard and not heard 
 the strains that, without manuscript or notes, he 
 had repeated. He had elected to compose the 
 ode in the Pindaric measure, and, in follow 
 ing that lofty precedent, to measure himself by 
 the side of Lowell, and to invite comparison 
 with the " Commemoration Ode." His work 
 is nearly faultless from a technical point of 
 view, in rhyme and cadence the lines flow on in 
 smooth and harmonious succession ; but few of 
 the verses cling, like Lowell s, to the memory, 
 and with their high seriousness and grave 
 melody kindle ennobling emotions of pride and 
 patriotism. 
 
 Taylor s patriotism is exalted and inclusive. 
 He is the most cosmopolitan of American 
 authors. 
 
 " He met the men of many a land, 
 They gave their souls into his hand." 
 
 He was very comfortable in Germany, and he 
 did not hesitate to acknowledge it ; he found 
 much in America to reprove and to condemn, 
 and he did not spare his censure. But never 
 for an instant did he falter in his allegiance to 
 his country, and his reverence for the invisible 
 ideas upon which the progress of the nation is 
 borne. In the Odes, he has done justice to 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 243 
 
 patriotism, and in doing ample justice to the 
 heroic type of character he has not breathed a 
 syllable that could be construed into a glorifica 
 tion of war. Stopford Brooke has found fault 
 with Tennyson for celebrating the brutalities of 
 human struggle ; no later critic can discover the 
 sentiment in Taylor. 
 
 Poetry was a veritable priestcraft with Bay 
 ard Taylor, It was his religion, and was to be 
 approached only in serious mood. In his high 
 conception art became a redemptive addition 
 to human life. Although he was gifted with 
 the acutest sense of humor, sometimes flashing 
 into uproarious mirth, his conscientious consecra 
 tion to poetry forbade the intrusion of it into 
 his verse. He could no more disturb his verse 
 with humor than the priest at the altar could 
 pervert his sacred function. To the American 
 humorist there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither 
 bond nor free. Even Lowell is not free from 
 sin in this particular. A jarring note grates on 
 the reader of " The Cathedral " when its solemn 
 thought is interrupted by an unnecessary comic 
 digression. 
 
 For those who listened only to the tinkling 
 cymbal Taylor frequently expressed his con 
 tempt, 
 
 " The dainty souls that crave 
 Light stepping-stones across a shallow wave, 
 Shrink from the deeps of Goethe s soundless song." 
 
244 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 The only play of humorous verse that he per 
 mitted was the occasional indulgence of an un 
 usual genius for parody. Like Talleyrand he 
 found nonsense singularly refreshing. Upon his 
 Sunday evenings at home in New York he con 
 vulsed his guests with his volleys of puns and 
 parodies. At Fields and at Graham s he set 
 the table in a roar with his ridiculous improvisa 
 tions and his extraordinary quotations. His was 
 the famous etymology of restaurant, from res, a 
 thing, and taurus, a bull : " a bully thing." He 
 demanded to know of a scholar who persisted 
 in monopolizing the conversation with a disser 
 tation upon the sun myth, whether he knew 
 the etymology of Smith ; and, setting scornfully 
 aside the philological answer, asserted its deri 
 vation from " Sun-Myth " Sumyth, Smyth, 
 Smith. 
 
 His readiness was so remarkable that he could 
 improvise for a whole evening in either English 
 or German. Professor W. T. Hewett, writing 
 to me of Taylor s remarkable power of impro 
 visation, gives the following amusing illustra 
 tion : 
 
 " I recall well an evening spent with him and 
 a colleague at Mrs. P. s (Pennock s). Mr. Tay 
 lor was in fine spirits and full of droll sallies and 
 humorous stories. He turned to my colleague 
 and said: F., do you remember that poem 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 245 
 
 which you wrote for one of the first numbers 
 of the Atlantic I F. 4 No, I do not recall it 
 at the present time. - T. I remember it very 
 well. F. 4 Perhaps, as you remember it 
 better than I do, you will repeat it to the com 
 pany. T. Certainly, with pleasure. There 
 upon Mr. Taylor began a long recital of the most 
 desperate rhymes, the most astounding plati 
 tudes, and the most infamous verse which an 
 unanointed singer ever attempted. My clever 
 friend was without a retort. He had rashly chal 
 lenged the production of what he knew did not 
 exist, but when Mr. Taylor s marvelous memory 
 had brought forth from its recesses an apparent 
 poem of his own, the product of his unleavened 
 youth, he was discomfited as I have never seen 
 him since. I believe that the company of young 
 people accepted absolutely my friend F. as the 
 author. I do not quote this as a specimen of 
 improvisation, but I have no doubt that impro 
 visation entered into the marvelous product and 
 aided memory in numerous emergencies." 
 
 Years before Lewis Carroll had begun his ex 
 quisite imbecility of "portmanteau words," Tay 
 lor and Stoddard and O Brien, in their mid 
 night frolics with the eccentric muse, had 
 created verses that anticipated " The Lay of the 
 Jabberwock." Taylor cited as an example of 
 his own perverse imagination the lines : 
 
246 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " Smitten by harsh transcetic thuds of shame 
 My squelgence fades : I mogrif y my blame : 
 The lupkin world, that leaves me yole and blaut, 
 Denies my affligance with looks askant." 
 
 When Edward Lear s " Book of Nonsense " 
 was young, verses of like character were made 
 by the New York triumvirate after they wearied 
 of parody. American literature in the latter 
 sixties showed tendencies with which Taylor 
 had no sympathy. Dialect verse he despised 
 and Western slang he abhorred. When dialect 
 abounded and vulgarity did much more abound, 
 American literature showed herself in some 
 sections a poor and ill - favored thing, an 
 Audrey with raddled cheeks and kohl-smeared 
 eyes. Certain preposterous but popular poems 
 of farm life, in one of which the author makes 
 an American farmer say to his son, " Dowse the 
 glim ! " excited the mirth of Taylor, who said : 
 " One can only laugh over such phenomenon ; it 
 does n t pay to be angry, and the public, if let 
 alone, will soon weary of its golden calves." l 
 
 Partly to prick the pretensions of some of the 
 portified posturers whose dervish tricks were 
 attracting attention ; partly to gratify his keen 
 sense of humor, and "to interpose a little ease " 
 in the busy race of toil, he composed burlesque 
 
 1 Letter to J. B. Phillips, written at Kennett Square, Sep. 
 tember 11, 1871. 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 247 
 
 imitations of authors, living and dead, knit them 
 together by the subterfuge of imaginary charac 
 ters and a Broadway beer-cellar, and published 
 the series under the title " The Echo Club and 
 other Literary Diversions " (1872 and 1876). 
 
 It was not altogether parody, for there lurked 
 amid the fun much suggestive history and criti 
 cism of our literature from the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, a subject which Taylor had 
 it in his mind to write upon, but which circum 
 stances prevented him from essaying. 
 
 When the papers of "The Echo Club" were 
 written, we were entering in literature upon an 
 era of nervous impatience and meretricious 
 adornment. The bizarre and the superlative 
 were the objects of literary quest. Taylor, who 
 had been taught by Goethe, as Goethe had 
 learned from Oesir, that simplicity is the ideal 
 of beauty, admired quiet style and was parsimo 
 nious in epithet. His vexation at " the intense " 
 prompted such a critical aside as the following : 
 " I once discovered that with both the English 
 and German poets of a hundred years ago even 
 ing is always called brown and morning either 
 rosy or purple. Just now the fashion runs to 
 jewelry ; we have ruby lips, and topaz light, and 
 sapphire seas, and diamond air. Mrs. Brown 
 ing even says : 
 
 " Her cheek s pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark ! 
 
248 BAYARD TAYLOR, 
 
 What sort of a cheek must that be ? Then we 
 have such a wealth of gorgeous color as never 
 was seen before, no quiet half -tints, but pure 
 pigments, laid on with a palette-knife. Really, I 
 sometimes feel a distinct sense of fatigue at the 
 base of the optic nerve, after reading a magazine 
 story. The besetting sin of the popular not 
 the best authors is the intense." 
 
 " Angelo orders his Dinner " is the cleverest 
 of several clever parodies of Browning. An 
 "Ode on a Jar of Pickles " repeats Keats "Ode 
 to a Nightingale." " Nauvoo " is a parallel of 
 Longfellow ; but the original parody upon the 
 "Psalm of Life," which Bryant enjoyed and 
 which led Whitelaw Reid to suggest the mak 
 ing of a series of corresponding poems for the 
 " Tribune," Taylor declined to print lest there 
 should be offense in it. Swinburne and Em 
 erson, Barry Cornwall and Rossetti, Bryant 
 and Tennyson, Mrs. Sigourney and Mrs. Brown 
 ing, Boker and Read, Walt Whitman and Bret 
 Harte, and many more make up the ill-assorted 
 company of those whose literary secrets are dis 
 sected in the light of day. 
 
 Taylor had at some time read " Nacoochee, 
 the Beautiful Star," " Virginalia," and " Eonchs 
 of Ruby," .the crack-brained poems of Dr. 
 Thomas Holley Chivers of Georgia, whose imi 
 tations of Poe were the most grotesque of liter- 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 249 
 
 ary nightmares ; and he retained in his memory 
 the incongruous figures and extraordinary epi 
 thets of the poems. He had convulsed social 
 companies with his quotations from them, and 
 in the " Echo Club " he made Chivers the terri 
 ble example of a fashion in literature. Taylor s 
 irresistibly comic manner lent additional force 
 to such a stanza as the following from " Rosalie 
 Lee:"- 
 
 " Many mellow Cydonian suckets, 
 
 Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine, 
 From the ruby-rimmed beryl ine buckets, 
 
 Star gemmed, lily shaped, hyaline ; 
 Like the sweet golden goblet found growing 
 
 On the wild emerald cucumber-tree, 
 Rich, brilliant, like chrysoprase glowing, 
 
 Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee ! " 
 
 There remains but one department of Bayard 
 Taylor s poetic activity undescribed. Three 
 times he essayed the drama. " The Masque of 
 the Gods " has been noted ; the others are " The 
 Prophet," and " Prince Deukalion." 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich at one time contem 
 plated a dramatic poem to be called the " Seven 
 Mormon Wives." He had about determined to 
 abandon the project when he communicated it 
 to Bayard Taylor. It curiously happened that 
 at that time Taylor had already developed in his 
 mind a similar plot to that proposed by Aldrich. 
 In Gotha, in August, 1873, he began to write 
 
250 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 the play that had at intervals presented itself to 
 him during a period of six years. At Friedrich- 
 rode, Weimar, and Leipzig, while occupied with 
 his Goethe studies, he worked upon the drama, 
 and finished it just one year after the comple 
 tion of " Lars." It was called " The Prophet," 
 and was published in 1874. 
 
 It is not a study in Mormonism, although its 
 scene is laid among the Latter Day Saints, and 
 their history is the background to the poem. 
 The story instantly suggests Nauvoo, and the 
 critics guessed the Prophet to be Joseph Smith. 
 In David Starr, the protagonist of the play, 
 there is no attribute of the Mormon leader. 
 Starr is a fine idealist, not a vulgar sensualist. 
 He is a victim of religious ecstasy, misled by 
 false enthusiasm. When closely examined he is 
 seen to be indicative of the spiritual direction, 
 or the inner light, of the people of Taylor s own 
 county. The actual prototype of the charac 
 ter, Taylor said, was the Rev. Edward Irving, 
 although, apart from his belief in the bestowal 
 of miraculous powers upon devout Christians, 
 there is little to suggest the eloquent Scotch 
 enthusiast, or his Holy Catholic Apostolic 
 Church. 
 
 David Starr emigrates to the West, and es 
 tablishes the community of Zion, intending to 
 translate into practice the visions and raptures 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 251 
 
 of his life in New England. Polygamy is intro 
 duced into the plot, and the tragedy of the 
 Prophet s death concludes a story in which 
 unreasoning Orthodoxy is assailed at least as 
 roughly as Mormonism. 
 
 David Starr s vision in the wilderness is the 
 recollection of an actual experience that Taylor 
 had near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in 
 1849. The Prophet says : 
 
 " Came languid peace, then awe and shuddering 
 Without a cause, a frost in every vein, 
 And the heart hammered, as to burst mine ears. 
 Something slid past me, cold and serpent like : 
 The trees were filled with whispers ; and afar 
 Called voices not of man ; and then my soul 
 Went forth from me, and spread and grew aloft 
 Through darting lights, His arrows, here and there 
 Shot down on earth. But now my knowledge fades : 
 What followed, keener, mightier than a dream, 
 My hope interprets. Only this I know, 
 The dark invisible pillars of the sky 
 Breathed like deep organ-pipes of awful sound : 
 A myriad, myriad tongues the choral sang ; 
 And drowned in it, stunned with excess of power, 
 My soul sank down, and sleep my body touched." 
 
 The vision is the poetizing of a splendid 
 prose passage in " At Home and Abroad " 
 which recalls the strange dream-fugues of De 
 Quincey : 
 
 " I lay awake half an hour at a time, watch 
 ing the culmination of the stars on the meridian 
 line of a slender twig over my head. It was 
 
252 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 perhaps an hour past midnight, when, as I thus 
 lay with open eyes, gazing into the eternal 
 beauty of the night, I became conscious of a 
 deep, murmuring sound, like that of a rising 
 wind. ... A strange feeling of awe and expec 
 tancy took possession of me. Not a dead leaf 
 stirred on the boughs ; while the mighty sound, 
 
 a solemn choral, sung by ten thousand voices, 
 
 swept down from the hills, and rolled away 
 like retreating thunder over the plain. It was 
 no longer the roar of the wind. As in the 
 wandering prelude of an organ melody, note 
 trod upon note, with slow majestic footsteps, 
 until they gathered to a theme, and then came 
 the words, simultaneously chanted by an im 
 measurable host : 4 Vivant Terrestrice I The 
 air was filled with the tremendous sound, which 
 seemed to sweep near the surface of the earth in 
 powerful waves, without echo or reverberation." 
 
 It was Taylor s intention to publish " The 
 Prophet " anonymously, and to prelude it with 
 some verses by the unknown author, the 
 verses to be printed in " The Atlantic Monthly " 
 or some other magazine. The plan was relin 
 quished for various reasons, but the fact that 
 such a design was entertained is interesting as 
 illustrating the feeling that Taylor had for his 
 poetry. At the time that he was engaged upon 
 " The Prophet " he was much discouraged by 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 253 
 
 the little attention paid to his poetical writings. 
 His experience was precisely that of many lit 
 erary men, who, after attaining a certain posi 
 tion, get scant praise from the newspapers. The 
 good things of accredited authors are taken as 
 matters of course, and poems and stories, any 
 one of which would make the fortune of a new 
 writer, create no enthusiasm whatever. On the 
 eve of his departure for Cairo, and just after 
 leaving Florence, where, with Lowell and 
 Henry James, he declared he had made " quite 
 a Cambridge atmosphere in the very heart of 
 the old Tuscan city," he wrote to T. B. 
 Aldrich : " As regards 4 The Prophet I think 
 it can t make any serious difference. It could 
 not, as I conceived it, be anything but a dra 
 matic poem. A story would be very apt to be 
 tray me, and this will not. The manuscript will 
 be copied and forwarded in April, and you can 
 then judge. Meantime (as I have just written 
 to Osgood) I 11 study ways and means of mys 
 tery, provocations of curiosity, etc., and forward 
 whatever I can do in that line to you two, sub 
 ject to your good judgment. I know you will 
 like the work itself, for it is honest and earnest. 
 When you suggested to me the seven Mormon 
 wives, in the street, I had already my plan 
 nearly complete, and it cost me an effort not to 
 tell you so. I make the origin of the Mormon 
 
254 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 sect and the Joe Smith tragedy the historical 
 background of my poem, but the plot has the uni 
 versal human element. It stirs up more than one 
 question which disturbs the undercurrents of the 
 world, just now." (Rome, February 24, 1874.) 
 
 From Gotha, on his return from Egypt, Tay 
 lor wrote to Mr. Aldrich : " I have at last per 
 petrated three rather brief poems, which (to 
 me) read as if they might have been written by 
 some one else. The more I reflect upon the 
 whole plan of mystification, the more difficult 
 it seems to me. It is impossible to put forth 
 4 The Prophet as the work of a young poet, 
 because no young poet could have written it : 
 the mysterious author must be an older man, 
 and some reason must be given or indicated 
 why he has not before appeared in print." 
 (May 21, 1874.) 
 
 The three poems were " A Lover s Test," 
 " My Prologue," and " Gabriel," and they have 
 been published in the " Household " edition of 
 Taylor s poems. The reason why the unknown 
 author has not before appeared in print, to 
 which Taylor refers above in his letter to Mr. 
 Aldrich, is hinted at in " My Prologue : " 
 
 " If heat of youth, t is heat suppressed 
 
 That fills my breast : 
 The childhood of a voiceless lyre 
 Preserves my fire. 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 255 
 
 I chanted not while I was young ; 
 
 But ere age chill, I liberate my tongue ! 
 
 " Apart from stormy ways of men, 
 
 Maine s loneliest glen 
 Held me as banished, and unheard 
 
 I saved my word : 
 I would not know the bitter taste 
 Of the crude fame which falls to them that haste. 
 
 " On each impatient year I tossed 
 
 A holocaust 
 Of effort, ashes ere it burned, 
 
 And justly spurned. 
 If now I own maturer days, 
 I know not : dust to me is passing praise. 
 
 " But out of life arises song, 
 
 Clear, vital, strong, 
 The speech men pray for when they pine, 
 
 The speech divine 
 No other can interpret : grand 
 And permanent, for time and race and land. 
 
 " I dreamed I spake it : do I dream 
 
 The pride supreme, 
 Or, like late lovers, found the bride 
 
 Their youth denied, 
 Is this my stinted passion s flow ? 
 It well may be ; and they that read will know." 
 
 The poems are so Taylorian in every respect 
 that even had they been published as intended, 
 their authorship could not have been the mys 
 tery of an hour. 
 
 The ethical thought of " The Masque of the 
 
256 BAYAED fAYLOE. 
 
 Gods " matured and culminated in " Prince 
 Deukalion," Bayard Taylor s last play and last 
 book. His religious faith which had swung so 
 wide from its early moorings was definitely de 
 fined in this last testament. It was the audit of 
 his personal account : his conception of life and 
 of the universe. The great idea of immortality 
 that has held men through all the ages, and has 
 been the centre of so much of the world s grand 
 est literature, is the central fire burning in this 
 rhyme of the progress of humanity. 
 
 Early in life Taylor had a dream, the effect of 
 which was never lost. He dreamed that he had 
 been shot. The wound was mortal, and the ex 
 trication of the soul from the body and its sub 
 sequent independent life were so vivid as to be 
 accepted as a revelation. The strange vision 
 gave him an inexpugnable sense of personal im 
 mortality. Before going to Germany for the 
 last time, Taylor showed to the Rev. W. R. 
 Alger a drawing of the dead Goethe, and re 
 marking the sweetness of contentment that 
 rested upon the features, said that it was the sig 
 net of immortality left by the departing tenant 
 upon the mortal clay. 
 
 Immortality was to him a profound and un 
 disturbed conviction, and he bore witness to it 
 when all about him materialism was shaking to 
 destruction the established dogmas of the world. 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 257 
 
 He read little in metaphysics, but he meditated 
 much upon Goethe s " Pandora " and upon the 
 second part of " Faust." He was in the habit 
 of introspectively taking and giving account of 
 himself. When he believed himself to have ar 
 rived at a final Weltanschauung, to use a Ger 
 man word which he might have used and for 
 which there is no exact equivalent in English, 
 he attempted to give it literary expression, be 
 lieving with Dr. Hedge that even metaphysics 
 might be sung if first melted in the poetic mood ; 
 hence in " Prince Deukalion " the grasping at 
 the whole of human history, and the projec 
 tion of the poet s imagination into the time to 
 come. The symbolism of the drama has con 
 demned it to be read by a very few, but popu 
 larity is no test of real merit. The barest com 
 monplace, if enveloping a sentiment that touches 
 the common heart of man, is treasured up to 
 a life beyond life, while the great reaches of 
 thought and imagination are shared and trans 
 mitted by an elect few of mankind. Sydney 
 Smith, when he delivered his lectures on moral 
 philosophy at the Royal Institution, began with : 
 " There is a word of dire sound and horrible 
 import which I would fain have kept concealed 
 if I possibly could. It is that very tremendous 
 one of METAPHYSICS, which in a lecture on 
 Moral Philosophy seems likely to produce as 
 
. 258 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 much alarm as the cry of fire in a crowded play 
 house, when Belvidera is left to weep by herself 
 and every one saves himself in the best manner 
 he can." Probably not many of those who es 
 sayed " Prince Deukalion " held on to the close of 
 the first act, and of those who read further there 
 was likely but a handful who found the Eoman 
 Catholic Church in the symbolism of the Medusa, 
 or who in the fourth act realized the scope of 
 Taylor s hope and imagination for the future 
 and the giant things to come at large. 
 
 From savagery to refined civility, from the 
 stone age to the golden age, the long and de 
 vious journey of humanity is recorded in this 
 lyrical drama. To Buddha preaching the gos 
 pel of renunciation, Agathon replies, expressing 
 Taylor s whole philosophy of life : 
 
 " But I accept, even all this conscious life 
 Gives in its fullest measure, gladness, health, 
 Clean appetite, and wholeness of my claim 
 To knowledge, beauty, aspiration, power! 
 Joy follows action, here ; and action bliss, 
 Hereafter ! While, God-lulled, thy children sleep, 
 Mine, God-aroused, shall wake to wander on 
 Through spheres thy slumbrous essence never dreamed. 
 Thy highest is my lowest ! " 
 
 The metrical variety of the work makes it 
 one of the notable poems of America. The 
 structural five stress verse undulates into light 
 and sparkle. The lyrical interludes and choral 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 259 
 
 passages shift into protean shapes, and the 
 reminiscences of German and English literature 
 lend a faint perfume even to lines that other 
 wise are dull or languid. 
 
 A melancholy interest attaches to "Prince 
 Deukalion." The manuscript book was com 
 pleted October 7, 1877. In November of the 
 following year it was published. Only one copy 
 of the work did Bayard Taylor see. It was 
 his " swan-song." Within a month he was dead. 
 
 In gathering up all the strands of Bayard 
 Taylor s poetic genius, lyric, epic, ode, idyl, 
 romance, pastoral, and drama, and knitting 
 them into one brave pattern, that by their 
 united lustre his work as a whole may be ac 
 counted for, and his place in literature deter 
 mined, it is immediately evident that his charac 
 ter adequately and justly expressed itself in his 
 poetry. His buoyancy of spirit, his gentle dis 
 position, his stainless morals, and his loyalty to 
 the best in himself and in his friends, in a word 
 all the predominating traits of his life, are also 
 the chief accents of his verse. 
 
 Whittier " so loved the man ; " Longfellow 
 compared him to his own ideal Prince, 
 
 " Thou hast sung with organ tone 
 In Deukalion s life thine own ; " 
 
 Powers spoke of him as almost an angel ; " in 
 soul and stature larger than thy kind," said 
 
260 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Lanier. The manly and magnanimous nature 
 that stole away the hearts of men and made 
 them his, informed his poetry, into which no 
 discordant note of envy or of malice enters. 
 His worst he kept, his best he gave. 
 
 He has sensuous passion, but it is clean and 
 pure. He stretches wide arms to grasp the joy 
 of earth, but he always holds himself in a re 
 straining grasp. Upon new acquaintances he 
 made an impression of innocence. His conduct 
 and his conversation did not betray the wide 
 knowledge of men and of the world that he 
 really possessed. He took literature seriously 
 and his life was simple. He was neither a 
 churchman, nor a man of the world ; he was 
 consecrated to poetry, and he was a member of 
 the universal church invisible. 
 
 He began his career singing his simple delight 
 in the kindly earth, with Bryant for the master 
 of his youth. The elemental feeling that he 
 caught from his master is illustrated in " The 
 Bath," a poem that might have been written 
 by Walt Whitman, could he by some strange 
 miracle have been converted to art. " Run 
 Wild " illustrates with equal force Taylor s 
 feeling for natural scenery. 
 
 He outgrew the " elemental " and the lyrical, 
 and entered upon the ethnical and secular. 
 Historic and prophetic visions, the infinite 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 261 
 
 cavalcade of nations and races, and the pro 
 cession of the ages, superseded the " desert s 
 utmost rim," and the "land of Dreams and 
 Sleep." An alert perception of external things 
 was in his verse as in his prose. A fine sense of 
 form and color distinguished the oriental images 
 and " The Picture of St. John." He was far 
 from affectation. " Proportion " was his word 
 for art. His instinct was against obscurity and 
 odd expression, an admirable and enviable in 
 stinct in these days when, as George Eliot has 
 said, " Clear messages are rare," and when a 
 Browning gives us, as it were, Anglo-Saxon 
 drawings, when he might as easily render his 
 subject in correct anatomy. 
 
 Taylor has splendid rhetoric. His verse is 
 strikingly sonorous, and he was always seeking 
 what he called " resonance." There is a roll to 
 some of the lines of his " Faust " that suggests 
 a far-sounding march. He was fond of broad, 
 bright vowels and rich consonantal effects, and 
 was skillful in the disposition of them. His 
 alliteration was voluminous yet subtle. The 
 opening of " The National Ode " is full of these 
 qualities. 
 
 " Sun of the stately Day, 
 
 Let Asia into the shadow drift, 
 
 Let Europe bask in thy ripened ray, 
 
 And over the severing ocean lift 
 
262 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 A brow of broader splendor ! 
 
 Give light to the eager eyes 
 Of the Land that waits to behold thee rise ; 
 
 The gladness of morning lend her, 
 
 With the triumph of noon attend her, 
 And the peace of the vesper skies ! " 
 
 The glittering march of the stanzas of " The 
 Lost Crown," 
 
 " A throne of gold the wheels uphold, 
 Each spoke a ray of jeweled fire : 
 The crimson banners float unrolled 
 Or falter when the winds expire," 
 
 and the lofty diction of " Canopus," 
 
 " And, past those halls which for itself the mind 
 
 Builds, permanent as marble, and as cold, 
 In warm surprises of the blood we find 
 The sumptuous dream unfold ! " 
 
 display a mastery of rhetoric and harmony un 
 surpassed in American poetry. 
 
 He was accompanied by the melodies of other 
 poets. They haunted him, and so shaped his 
 own work that they conveyed to the critical ear 
 familiar sounds and created the impression that 
 Taylor was only a copier of others. Yet he was 
 always trying metrical experiments, and he was 
 proud of his sure-footed verse. His poem " The 
 Waves " (1850), conceived while walking on 
 the Battery in New York, was an attempt to 
 suggest " the rapid rolling to shore of the waves 
 under a fresh breeze." 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 263 
 
 In " Wind and Sea " a striking effect is pro 
 duced by the opposition of the two elements in 
 movement. These poems and " Iris " show how 
 Taylor was charged with Shelley, an influence 
 that yielded later to the spirit of Tennyson, who 
 is felt in the delicate fancy of the improvisa 
 tion : 
 
 " A grass-blade is my warlike lance, 
 
 A rose-leaf is ray shield ; 
 Beams of the sun are, every one, 
 My chargers for the field. 
 
 " The morning gives me golden steeds, 
 
 The moon gives silver- white ; 
 The stars drop down, my helm to crown, 
 When I go forth to fight. 
 
 " Against me ride in iron mail 
 The squadrons of the foe : 
 The bucklers flash, the maces crash, 
 The haughty trumpets blow. 
 
 u One touch, and all, with armor cleft, 
 
 Before me turn and yield. 
 Straight on I ride ; the world is wide, 
 A rose-leaf is my shield ! 
 
 " Then dances o er the waterfall 
 
 The rainbow, in its glee ; 
 The daisy sings, the lily rings 
 Her bells of victory. 
 
 " So am I armed where er I go, 
 And mounted night or day : 
 Who shall oppose the conquering rose, 
 And who the sunbeam slay ? " 
 
264 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 An English critic says that " the main draw 
 back to the widespread acceptance of Bayard 
 Taylor s poetry as a whole is its perpetual dif- 
 fuseness. His most ambitious productions are 
 marred by a ceaseless effort to overstrain his 
 powers." There is a truth in this acute though 
 curt criticism that was the keenest disappoint 
 ment of Taylor s life. Exhausting and multi 
 form labors perpetually forbade him to refine 
 his subtle sense of poetry, and to overtake the 
 splendid ideal that he pursued. The permanent 
 works of the human spirit seem to require soli 
 tude and repose for their creation. The great 
 German declares, 
 
 " Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 Doch ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt." 
 
 In his eager quest after " cosmical experi 
 ence," and in his hungry ambition "to dwell 
 enlarged in alien modes of thought," Taylor lost 
 the opportunity and ability to overtake the one 
 thing that he really reverenced and for which he 
 lived. " If I were to write about myself for six 
 hours," he wrote to E. C. Stedman, " it would 
 all come to this : that life is, for me, the establish 
 ing of my own Entelecheia, the making of all 
 that is possible out of such powers as I may have, 
 without violently forcing or distorting them." 
 
 Fierce competition and a life of hurry were 
 the conditions under which Taylor labored. 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 265 
 
 He had a generous scheme of living, and he 
 had a severely high ideal ; with splendid health 
 and courage he struggled to win the one, and to 
 realize the other. The swiftest runner could 
 hardly hope to win in such a race. Taylor 
 sank exhausted when almost at the goal. When 
 with failing breath he panted, " I want that 
 stuff of life " - almost the last words that 
 passed his lips, it was the pathetic, even 
 tragic, cry of a strong man whose work still lay 
 before him, and upon whose dying brow the 
 light of an ideal that could never be attained 
 still lingered. When under the German spell, 
 and when his spiritual nature was spongy to the 
 imagination and melody of Goethe and Schiller, 
 his verse led on into richer and more various 
 measures that indicated what might have been, 
 had the tyranny of his surroundings been more 
 merciful, and had time been vouchsafed him for 
 the successful and solitary pursuit of his serene 
 ideal. 
 
 His emancipation from the " cabin d, cribb d, 
 confined " life in Pennsylvania, and later from 
 the retarding influences of an insufficient society 
 in New York, was slow and uncertain. The 
 men of New England were content with plain 
 homes and simple living, and were satisfied with 
 the small incomes of professional life. Taylor 
 had other aims. He was ambitious for himself 
 
266 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 and thoughtful for his friends. Involved in the 
 expenses of Cedarcroft he never knew the enor 
 mous value of freedom. He was always draw 
 ing on the strength of to-morrow to do the work 
 of to-day ; as machinists say, he was running on 
 his gudgeons. Where so much was done, and 
 work was so profuse and so constant, it is still a 
 matter of surprise that the average was so fine. 
 Uhland says : 
 
 " Fehlt das aussre f rie Wesen 
 Leicht erkrankt auch das Gedicht." l 
 
 And unconsciously Taylor was, in himself, a 
 fresh illustration of the truth of the saying. 
 His failure was more admirable than many suc 
 cesses. " Not failure but low aim is crime," 
 says Robert Browning, who preaches the gospel 
 of lofty endeavor in " Eabbi Ben Ezra," " The 
 Grammarian s Funeral," and a score of other 
 poems. Taylor s ambition could scarcely have 
 been fully realized even in a long life strictly 
 dedicated, as Prospero on the enchanted island 
 says, " to closeness, and the bettering of his mind 
 with that which but by being so retired, o er- 
 prized all popular rate." Amid his many dis 
 tractions, and under his weary load, it was im 
 possible. 
 
 The discontent and the longing are in " Im- 
 plora Pace : " 
 
 1 Varw&rt, 1st edition, 1815. 
 
POEMS AND PLATS. 267 
 
 " And still some cheaper service claims 
 
 The will that leaps to loftier call : 
 Some cloud is cast on splendid aims, 
 
 On power achieved some common thrall. 
 
 " To spoil each beckoning victory, 
 
 A thousand pygmy hands are thrust ; 
 And, round each height attained, we see 
 Our ether dim with lower dust. 
 
 " Ah, could we breathe some peaceful air, 
 
 And all save purpose there forget, 
 Till eager courage learn to bear 
 
 The gadfly s sting, the pebble s fret ! 
 
 " Let higher goal and harsher way, 
 
 To test our virtue, then combine I 
 T is not for idle ease we pray, 
 But freedom for our task divine." 
 
 No one ever felt more intensely than Bayard 
 Taylor " the torment and the ecstasy " of verse. 
 His friend, Richard Henry Stoddard, says : 
 " Taylor s nature was so ardent, so full-blooded, 
 that slight and common sensations intoxicated 
 him, and he estimated their effect, and his power 
 to transmit it to others, beyond the true value." 
 The poetic temperament sees the beauty of the 
 world as the unanointed eye cannot. The radi 
 ance in flood and field, the transfiguring light 
 upon the landscape Taylor thought he had com 
 pletely captured, in words which to him were a 
 wilderness of blooms and scents, but which were 
 commonplace to other eyes. 
 
268 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 There are several poems in which he celebrates 
 his own genius, and the glory of his poetic effort 
 and achievement. It is not egotism that prompts 
 such creations as " Porphyrogenitus," and " The 
 Lost Crown." In them he speaks for men of 
 his type, and through them to universal humanity. 
 In all his literary work he availed himself of his 
 experience and of his moods. His soul in the 
 poetic celebrations of himself takes reflex posses 
 sion of its own glory. 
 
 Taylor s chief defect seems to me to be a lack 
 of spontaneity. His poetry is all intended. It 
 is carefully built up by the intellect. The reader 
 searches in vain for an escape from the intellec 
 tual ; Taylor never gives the rein to the spirit. 
 The reader is surprised by no sudden glories of 
 imagination, for Taylor never seems to look forth 
 from those " magic casements, opening on the 
 foam of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn ! " 
 
 In the " Bedouin Song," in " The Song of the 
 Camp," with its athletic stanzas, 
 
 " They lay along- the battery s side, 
 
 Below the smoking cannon : 
 Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde, 
 And from the banks of Shannon," 
 
 and in the exquisite melody and tender pathos 
 of " Euphorion," Bayard Taylor rises very near 
 the heaven of highest song. Of the longer, sus 
 tained poems, " Lars " only seems to contain the 
 principle of life. 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 269 
 
 A Taylor cult exists in America. Among the 
 younger poets his verse is carefully studied. 
 Clubs exist in schools and colleges, at least in 
 New York and Pennsylvania, for the reading 
 of his works. Charles Henry Liiders in " The 
 Dead Nymph," and Frank Dempster Sherman 
 in a " Greeting for Spring," l have essayed the 
 style of " Peach-Blossom," and in many another 
 poem have followed the music of Taylor. Clin 
 ton Scollard, who has been an enthusiastic col 
 lector and interpreter of Taylor s poetry, has 
 been inspired by its lyrical spirit to the making 
 of some of his strongest and most vital verse. 
 
 Three months before his death, Bayard Tay 
 lor wrote his last poem, " Epicedium. William 
 Cullen Bryant." He was desperately ill and 
 exhausted, and he knew that the verses were 
 sluggish and forced. The closing lines, the last 
 that Taylor ever penned, are as true of their 
 author as of Bryant. 
 
 " His last word, as his first, was Liberty ! 
 His last word, as his first, for Truth 
 Struck to the heart of age and youth : 
 
 He sought her everywhere, 
 In the loud city, forest, sea, and air : 
 He bowed to wisdom other than his own, 
 
 To wisdom and to law, 
 
 Concealed or dimly shown 
 In all he knew not, all he knew and saw, 
 Trusting the Present, tolerant of the Past, 
 1 Published in Lyrics for a Lute. 
 
270 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 Firm-faithed in what shall come 
 When the vain noises of these days are dumb ; 
 And his first word was noble as his last ! " 
 
 On the road from Gotha to Friedrichroda is a 
 stork s nest upon the gable of a peasant s house 
 in the little village of Wahlwinkel. After one 
 of the drives from Gotha, Bayard Taylor wrote 
 " The Village Stork," a poem which is the im 
 mediate precursor of " Epicedium." Reading 
 between the lines it is not difficult to catch an 
 undertone of sadness and personal meaning. It 
 contains his wanderings, his long struggle for 
 recognition and opportunity, and his still uncer 
 tain place in poetry. 
 
 The Stork is made to say : 
 
 " Beneath a sky forever fair, 
 
 And with a summer sod, 
 The land I come from smiles and there 
 
 My brother was a god ! 
 My nest upon a temple stands 
 
 And sees the shine of desert lands ; 
 And the palm and the tamarisk cool my wings, 
 When the blazing beam of the noonday stings, 
 
 And I drink from the holy river ! 
 
 " There I am sacred, even as here ; 
 
 Yet dare I not be lost, 
 When meads are bright, hearts full of cheer, 
 
 At blithesome Pentecost. 
 Then from mine obelisk I depart, 
 
 And sweep in a line over Libyan sands 
 
 To the blossoming olives of Grecian lands, 
 And rest on the Cretan Ida ! 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS. 271 
 
 " Parnassus sees me as I sail ; 
 
 I cross the Adrian brine ; 
 The distant summits fade and fail, 
 
 Dalmatian, Apennine ; 
 The Alpine snows beneath me gleam, 
 I see the yellow Danube stream ; 
 
 But I hasten on till my spent wings fall 
 
 Where I bring a blessing to each and all, 
 And babes to the wives of Wahlwinkel 1 
 
 " She drooped her head and spake no more ; 
 
 The birds on either hand 
 Sang louder, lustier than before, 
 
 They could not understand. 
 Thus mused the stork, with snap of beak : 
 4 Better be silent, than so speak ! 
 
 Highest being can never be taught ! 
 
 They have their voices, I my thought j 
 And they were never in Egypt ! 
 
 When the extraordinary range of his interests 
 and efforts is considered, and his variety and 
 cosmopolitanism weighed, it appears that other 
 poets of America have surpassed him in parts 
 but that no one has equaled him in all. Long 
 fellow has culture and goodness, Taylor has 
 also passion ; Whittier is ethical, Taylor is also 
 philosophical. Emerson has more of mystic 
 originality, greater elan of inspiration, and ex 
 cels in transcendental audacity ; Longfellow 
 preserves a more equal flight and has greater 
 average fittedness to popular appreciation ; Low 
 ell surpasses him in scholastic refinement, and 
 wit, and satire, and in height of imagination. 
 
272 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Bayard Taylor s themes are noble ; his material 
 deep, rich, and weighty ; his diction flexible, 
 precise, concise, and musical ; and his poetic 
 form filed and finished in the spirit of artistic 
 unity. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 
 
 1874-1878. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL says of Masson s 
 vast life of John Milton that Milton occasionally 
 enters the biography, and, like Paul Pry, hopes 
 he does not intrude. The merry comparison 
 would not hold in Bayard Taylor s relations to 
 American literature. Consider the work he 
 did in the fifty-four years of his life : his far 
 travels, his wide experience in all departments 
 of journalism, his services as a diplomatist in 
 Russia and in Germany, the variety of his lit 
 erature, essays, descriptive and critical, his 
 tory and biography, novels and short stories, 
 translations, odes, idyls, ballads, lyrics, pas 
 torals, dramatic romances, and lyrical dramas, 
 and it is clear that his career comprehends the 
 orbit of contemporary American life and letters. 
 He was not our highest and most influential 
 writer ; he was rather a meister - singer, a 
 guild-singer, a man of talent, and master of 
 the mechanics of his craft. But on all sides he 
 
274 , BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 touched the life of his time. He was one of the 
 most widely known American authors. Art had 
 graven him in romantic garb upon the public 
 mind. Astonishing memory and prodigious in 
 dustry in him had taken the place of genius, and 
 they had won a signal triumph. 
 
 After his return to America in September, 
 1874, work crowded upon him. He had become 
 a noted man ; the public exacted services from 
 him ; his correspondence became enormous and 
 he neglected none of it, writing scores of letters 
 in a day. He found a great demand for his 
 lectures, and he accepted all engagements in 
 order to rid himself of debt and to obtain free 
 dom to pursue the biography of Goethe and 
 Schiller. In the first six months after landing 
 he lectured one hundred and thirty times, and 
 traveled fifteen thousand miles. Eleven thou 
 sand dollars he cleared by this labor, and so 
 made himself easy for a year to come. At the 
 same time he repeated his lectures at Cornell 
 University, described the Bunker Hill Centen 
 nial for the " Tribune," and revised his trans 
 lation of "Faust" for the "Kennett edition," 
 which was published in the autumn of 1875. 
 The summer he spent at Mattapoisett upon Buz- 
 zard s Bay, sketching, and writing "Along 
 shore" letters to the "Tribune." "Ion of 
 Iceland" appeared in "St. Nicholas," and many 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 275 
 
 book reviews were furnished to the " Tribune " 
 and the " International Review." When the 
 year closed he was living in comfortable quar 
 ters in New York, in the Stuyvesant Building, 
 142 East Eighteenth Street. He was unutter 
 ably weary of being bumped about the country 
 in railway trains, sleeping in shabby hotels, and 
 racking his voice in draughty halls, where the 
 wild winds flew round sobbing in their dismay. 
 Any employment seemed preferable to a con 
 tinuance of lecturing. He resolved to go back 
 to his newspaper desk, and bend his head be 
 neath the midnight gas. He agreed to edit 
 " Picturesque Europe " for the Appletons, and 
 entered upon daily work in the " Tribune " 
 office. He did not spare himself. For twenty 
 years he had been free from the newspaper 
 routine ; now he trod it patiently and conscien 
 tiously, though at his age and with his reputa 
 tion he should have been rid of it entirely. 
 
 During 1876 he carried forward this new 
 burden of affairs. George Ripley was head of 
 the literary department of the " Tribune," and 
 under him Taylor prepared book reviews, and 
 wrote such leading articles as " In re Walt 
 Whitman," " Authorship in America," " George 
 Sand," and "Antonelli." The leaders upon 
 European politics in the majority of cases were 
 written by him, and a large amount of miscella- 
 
276 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 neous work was also done. To show how cruelly 
 he overworked himself I have counted his contri 
 butions to the " Tribune " and find that in 1876 
 he gave that paper two hundred and thirteen 
 articles of every description, letters, reviews, 
 and editorials. In 1877 he printed one hundred 
 and eighty-five articles, and in the first seven 
 weeks of 1878 thirty-three more appeared. 
 
 He occasionally lectured, and he delivered 
 his Cornell lectures before the Peabody Institute 
 in Baltimore. The " Centennial Ode " was 
 written and read, and his last prose work was 
 published. It was a children s classic : " Boys 
 of Other Countries, Stories for American Boys." 
 
 He began, at the suggestion of Mr. Whitelaw 
 Reid, a series of papers upon " Life and Habits 
 Abroad," which, when completed in the " Weekly 
 Tribune," would have made another volume. 
 But two of these articles appeared : " Ways 
 of Living in Italy" ("Tribune," January 12, 
 1878), which shows Taylor s minute observation 
 and prodigious memory, he even notes the 
 fact that in Italy " a small farmer," or one who 
 farms seven or eight acres, will use, with his 
 family, two barrels of oil, and eight barrels of 
 wine in a year, and " Common Life in Spain " 
 (".Tribune," February 13, 1878). 
 
 His hands were full of tasks. He was cut to 
 the heart that his poetry, and the " Life of 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 277 
 
 Goethe " his darling project had to be post 
 poned. Hurried and fagged as he was, his health 
 began to fail. He lost the alacrity of mind and 
 cheer of manner that had characterized him. 
 He no longer took delight in social recreation, 
 but became grave and abstracted. As his vitality 
 waned, his absent-mindedness increased. Un 
 like his old intense self, he seemed not to hear 
 things that were said to him, although he an 
 swered mechanically. 
 
 He writes to Sidney Lanier (March 12, 1877) : 
 "Drudgery, drudgery, drudgery! What else 
 can I say? Does not that explain all? Two 
 courses of twelve lectures on German Litera 
 ture, here and in Brooklyn, daily work on the 
 Tribune, magazine articles (one dismally de 
 layed), interruptions of all sorts, and just as 
 much conscience as you may imagine pressing 
 upon me to write to you and other friends ! 
 The fact is I am so weary, fagged, with sore 
 spots under the collar-bone, and all sorts of 
 indescribable symptoms which betoken lessened 
 vitality, that I must piteously beg you to grant 
 me much allowance." 
 
 Again he writes to Lanier : " I am ground to 
 the dust with work and worry. I live from day 
 to day, on the verge of physical prostration. 
 Nothing saves me but eight to ten hours of death 
 like sleep, every night. Of course everything 
 
278 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 must wait, my Life of Goethe, my lyrical 
 drama, everything that is solely and dearly 
 mine." 
 
 In 1877 a few additional lecture tours were 
 undertaken, and he exposed himself to hardship 
 and fatigue. The work of art criticism was 
 added to his other " Tribune " duties ; he re 
 peated his lectures at Cornell University, and 
 spent some restful days with Professor Willard 
 Fiske. In June, he wrote " Soldiers of Peace," 
 a poem for the Grand Army of the Potomac, a 
 task which in the previous year he had trans 
 ferred to William Winter. The month of July 
 he spent at White Sulphur Springs in the hope 
 of recovering from the dropsical symptoms that 
 were appearing. The remainder of the summer 
 at Newport and Mattapoisett so far " wound up 
 the slackened strings of his lute " that, with the 
 return of the poetic faculty, he resumed work 
 upon " Prince Deukalion," and completed it on 
 the third of October, when he immediately took 
 up Schiller s " Don Carlos " with the intention 
 of translating and adapting it for Lawrence 
 Barrett. His letters to the " Cincinnati Com 
 mercial " were continued, frequent articles were 
 contributed to the magazines, and his Cornell 
 lectures were re-delivered at the Lowell Institute. 
 
 It was rumored in 1877 that Bayard Taylor 
 was to be appointed to a foreign mission. The 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 279 
 
 hope of completing the double biography of 
 Goethe and Schiller made Taylor wish that he 
 might be fortunate enough to secure the German 
 ministry. He was too poor to accept an ap 
 pointment to any other foreign court. Berlin 
 he knew well enough to know that he could live 
 there upon his salary; and then the splendid 
 opportunity for literary and scholastic work ! 
 Private collections and public archives that 
 would otherwise be inaccessible would open to 
 him as ambassador. 
 
 After his return to Kennett Square from the 
 Springs in Virginia, he wrote (August 7, 1877) 
 to Professor J. Morgan Hart : " My biography 
 of Goethe is my sole absorbing interest, and that 
 alone impels me, now, to await the pleasure of 
 the government, which may either give or take 
 away my chance of completing the great design 
 within the next two or three years. ... I cling 
 to my plan with such tenacity that I surely must 
 be allowed to accomplish it before I die." 
 
 The government moved slowly in its appoint 
 ments. Taylor made no personal application, 
 and in conversation with the President made 
 no reference to the rumors flying through the 
 press. At last, on the fifteenth of February, 
 1878, President Hayes sent Bayard Taylor s 
 name to the Senate as Minister to Germany. 
 Among the many admirable appointments made 
 
280 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 by the President none was more creditable to 
 him or more acceptable to the country. Taylor 
 made no effort to conceal his supreme delight. 
 At last his time had come. With some leisure, 
 with much prestige, the way was open for him 
 to the realization of his cherished hopes. From 
 all sections of the country poured in congratu 
 lations and good wishes. " I felt as if buried 
 under a huge warm wave of congratulation," he 
 wrote to Lanier. 
 
 A letter to William D. Howells expresses his 
 delight, and his hope for the future. 
 
 142 EAST 18ra ST., NEW YORK, February 20, 1878. 
 
 MY DEAR HOWELLS, My wife joins her 
 thanks to mine for your kind congratulation, 
 which came just between Whittier s " God bless 
 thee ! " and a lusty shout from Whipple. You 
 may guess from what I said under your roof, 
 that the appointment was a great surprise ; but 
 a greater surprise and a better honor came to 
 me in the universal generosity of the response 
 to it. Of course I am glad, for now nothing 
 stands between me and the life of Goethe. 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Until April 11, when he sailed, Taylor was 
 the pet of the people ; receptions and dinners 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 281 
 
 filled the period. He was amazed and over 
 whelmed. The Union League of Philadelphia, 
 the Goethe Club of New York, the German 
 Minister in Washington, the Deutsche Gesellig- 
 Wissenschaftliche Verein of New York enter 
 tained him. The two demonstrations that were 
 most precious to him were in West Chester and 
 at the Century Club. The banquet at the for 
 mer place is still a famous memory in Chester 
 County. At the latter the most eminent men 
 of the country pressed upon him with sponta 
 neous recognition and congratulation. George 
 William Curtis in an Easy-Chair paper writes 
 of the latter demonstration : " The good-fellow 
 ship of the Century is famous and traditional, 
 and the breakfast to Mr. Taylor assembled some 
 sixty Centurions, with Mr. Bryant at their 
 head, to congratulate Brother Bayard on the 
 honors which had naturally fallen upon an asso 
 ciate. There were, besides Mr. Bryant, three or 
 four of the original members, the patriarchs, the 
 fathers, the founders of the Century, who had 
 been members of the old Sketch Club, from 
 which it grew, and whose presence gives the 
 Century the true royal flavor, like the lump 
 of ambergris in the Sultan s cup." 
 
 Champagne, and flowers, and smiles, and 
 blessings followed him to the pier at Jersey 
 City. A tug bearing the German flag accom- 
 
BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 panied the Holsatia down the bay. When the 
 last bottle had been opened, and the last fare 
 wells had been spoken, and the vessel stood forth 
 to sea, Bayard Taylor, exhausted and overcome, 
 sought his stateroom. 
 
 Mr. William D. Howells, in his account of 
 his first visit to New England, has described 
 " the tremendous adieux " which were paid Bay 
 ard Taylor in New York : " Some of us who 
 were near of friendship went down to see him 
 off when he sailed, as the dismal and futile 
 wont of friends is ; and I recall the kind, great 
 fellow standing in the cabin, amid those funereal 
 flowers that heaped the tables, saying good-by 
 to one after another, and smiling fondly, smil 
 ing wearily, upon all. There was champagne, 
 of course, and an odious hilarity without mean 
 ing and without remission, till the warning bell 
 chased us ashore, and our brave poet escaped 
 with what was left of his life." (" Harper s 
 Magazine," May, 1894.) 
 
 Three days of opiates quieted the dangerous 
 excitement that had brought on insomnia and 
 had threatened brain fever ; then the ocean seda 
 tive calmed the fierce blood. In England he met 
 Max Miiller and Thomas Carlyle. He went to 
 Paris to be present at the opening of the Exposi 
 tion. There he had "a queer midnight supper" 
 with Victor Hugo, and attended MacMahon s 
 grand reception at his palace. 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 283 
 
 His reception in Germany was sincerely cor 
 dial. The Crown Prince waived the customary 
 formalities of presentation, saying that Bay 
 ard Taylor needed no introduction in Germany. 
 With Bismarck he had two interesting inter 
 views. In one day he saw and conversed with 
 Bismarck, Gortchakoff, Beaconsfield, Andrassy, 
 Waddington, Mehemet Ali Pasha, Curtius, 
 Mommsen, Lepsius, and Helmholtz. The busi 
 ness of the embassy called for close attention 
 and nice management. The cases of naturalized 
 German citizens who had returned to Germany 
 and fallen into difficulties caused him consider 
 able trouble. He wrote to the Department of 
 State, " The experience of the legation includes 
 so many instances of ignorant and overweening 
 assumption of rights, that a certain amount of 
 indiscretion, to use no stronger term, may be 
 reasonably inferred in at least half the cases 
 where an appeal is made for official interven 
 tion." (August 7, 1878.) Because he did not 
 immediately espouse the cause of German-Amer 
 icans in all their unreasonable quarrels and 
 pretensions he was abused in newspapers and 
 anarchistic addresses. One German- American, 
 who had been living for several years at Lii- 
 beck, demanded to be exempted from the sani 
 tary law requiring the vaccination of his child, 
 another requested the legation to divorce him 
 
284 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 from his wife, and still another who had ac 
 quired American citizenship in order to avoid 
 military duty, and who never intended to re 
 turn to the United States, forwarded a gross 
 attack upon the legation, which he had him 
 self written, the day before he called for assist 
 ance. 
 
 The Princess Marie of Weimar once said to 
 Bayard Taylor : " I have just read De Tocque- 
 ville s Democracy in America ; is it a correct 
 account of your institutions ? " Being assured 
 that it was, she said, " But I am told by Ameri 
 cans that it is quite false, that everything has 
 in reality changed and degenerated." " Were 
 they native-born Americans or German-Ameri 
 cans that told you this?" asked Taylor, and 
 learned in reply, as he suspected, that they 
 belonged to the latter class. " This class of 
 German - Americans," Taylor frequently said, 
 " has done us positive harm in Europe, where 
 their expressions are welcome in reactionary 
 circles." 
 
 Mr. H. Sidney Everett, the first secretary of 
 the German legation, has very kindly written for 
 me his recollections of Bayard Taylor as minis 
 ter, and his report leaves nothing to be desired 
 as a revelation of the admirable traits of char 
 acter that showed bravely in the last desperate 
 struggle for life. 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 285 
 
 * When the news of the appointment of Mr. 
 Taylor as Minister to Berlin reached me through 
 the newspapers, which is the courteous way the 
 Department of State adopts to inform its diplo 
 matic and consular officers of any change, I had 
 been ill charge of the legation there for some 
 months, and in a constant state of anxiety as to 
 what kind of a chief I was destined to have. 
 Several names of possible plenipotentiaries, each 
 less reassuring than the last, had reached me, 
 and the question had assumed an importance 
 which no one who has not, like myself, had five 
 different ministers to work under can appreciate. 
 But when the time of meeting at the train ar 
 rived, and my fate stood before me, all doubts 
 and fears vanished, and I knew by a glance at 
 that genial face, and after that cordial greeting, 
 that Mr. Taylor and I would pull together and 
 be warm friends, nor had I any occasion for a 
 moment to modify that impression. 
 
 " I had previously known Mr. Taylor only as 
 the author of 4 Views Afoot, which had stag 
 gered me with its secrets of traveling on twenty- 
 five cents a day to more purpose than I had 
 been able to do on the same sum per hour. 
 Per contra, I may state that this same Views 
 Afoot was the innocent cause of my spending 
 various sums on indigent would-be travelers, 
 whose imagination had been fired by reading 
 
286 . BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 those charming pages, and who, in endeavoring 
 to repeat the experiment, had forgotten that 
 they had not Mr. Taylor s brains. 
 
 " When Mr. Taylor reached Berlin, the warm 
 weather was approaching and the diplomats 
 were scattering to mountain and seaside resorts. 
 My own family left for the Isle of Wight, and, 
 as the legation offices, after the foreign custom, 
 were then in my own residence, I moved into 
 bachelor quarters, and gave up my apartment 
 to Mr. Taylor and his family. Soon afterwards 
 the ladies of his family went to the Thuringian 
 Forest for the summer, where Mr. Taylor fol 
 lowed them when the legation duties permitted. 
 Mr. Taylor s health, from the moment of his 
 arrival, seemed to me far from what it ought 
 to be for a man of his. large and robust build ; 
 but I hoped that the benefit of a sea voyage, 
 with the change of climate and food in a country 
 so familiar and congenial to him as Germany, 
 would soon be apparent, especially as his physi 
 cian apparently treated his troubles lightly and 
 encouragingly. But such was not to be the case, 
 and it was painful to watch the steady change 
 in his condition for the worse, culminating in 
 his decease within the year. How far he him 
 self realized his condition, I was never able to 
 ascertain, as he, to the last, replied to all in 
 quiries that he should soon be quite well, and 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 287 
 
 appeared to rely confidently on his splendid con 
 stitution and family longevity. 
 
 " In his official relations with his subordinates 
 Mr. Taylor was as charming as in his private 
 intercourse. While excelling in his own share 
 of the work, and astonishing one with the ability 
 and correctness with which he would grasp the 
 true aspect of a question, and the fluency with 
 which he would put it into good, clear English 
 in his own model handwriting, without a rough 
 draft, pause, alteration, or erasure, he never 
 omitted an opportunity of allowing his secretaries 
 to do themselves credit, and to assist him. He 
 was never unreasonable or exacting. His thor 
 ough knowledge of the language, literature, and 
 history of Germany enabled him to meet its rulers 
 and people in a spirit that, while it conciliated 
 them, obtained for our government better results 
 than the aggressive spread-eagleism so often mis 
 taken for diplomacy by our representatives. It 
 was no wonder that every German heart was 
 prepared to welcome the best translator of 
 Goethe s Faust, and the diplomatic corps cor 
 dially responded to a colleague who could address 
 each of them in his own language, even to the 
 representative of the Celestial Empire, who was 
 then the latest addition to the diplomatic circle. 
 
 " Mr. Taylor s constant cheerfulness and deep 
 sense of humor lightened the most arduous work, 
 
288 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 and after office hours a delightful drive by his 
 side in his comfortable landau, listening to a 
 steady flow of anecdote, poetical recitation, and 
 traveler s experiences, was a perfect rest and 
 treat for any one. It had been the rule in the 
 legation, handed down from the incumbency of 
 Mr. Davis, the bitterest foe to tobacco in all 
 its forms, that there should be no smoking in 
 the legation during office hours. In this Mr. 
 Taylor, though an inveterate smoker, cheerfully 
 acquiesced and never transgressed it, but as the 
 hands of the clock pointed to the hour of closing, 
 he would sit with a cigar in one hand and a 
 match in the other, and at the first stroke would 
 say, Now may I light it ? On the morning 
 after his departure to the mountains I found a 
 box of cigars on the office table with Mr. Tay 
 lor s kind regards, and a line to say that his 
 carriage was at my service. Such attentions are 
 seldom experienced and never forgotten. 
 
 " Mr. Taylor s trip to the mountains was greatly 
 shortened, and its benefits neutralized, by the 
 advent of General Grant, and the meeting of the 
 Berlin Congress, which necessitated his presence 
 in the city at the hottest period of the year, and 
 much fatigue and late hours. This was followed 
 by the annoyance of furnishing and moving into 
 his new residence and legation, which was the 
 same *!?ne occupied both by his predecessor, Mr. 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 289 
 
 Davis, and his successor, Mr. White. The family 
 were in the new quarters by November, and it 
 was soon apparent that the hope of Mr. Taylor s 
 recovery was a very faint one, and that all the 
 best medical skill of Berlin could do for him 
 was in vain. . But to the last he was patient 
 and cheerful, kept an eye on the official work, 
 received his friends, wrote and read a little, 
 painted a little, and finally dropped off quietly to 
 his last sleep while sitting in his armchair in his 
 library. One of his last pleasures was receiving 
 the presentation copies of his new poem, 4 Deu- 
 kalion, from his New York publishers. His 
 last words to me were to ask if there was any 
 official business requiring his attention, and be 
 fore night he passed away with his devoted wife 
 and daughter by his side. 
 
 "Could any consolation for his family have 
 been possible, it would have been from the nu 
 merous and sincere expressions of respect and 
 sympathy , from the imperial family, officials, 
 and friends, and from the press of both coun 
 tries, which immediately poured in. Of the 
 touching funeral ceremonies in the darkened 
 banquet hall and the mournful procession to the 
 tomb I have only a confused recollection, but 
 when I turned from the cemetery on my home 
 ward way I felt that I had lost a true friend, 
 and that I could never have such another chief." 
 
290 BAYAED TAYLOR. 
 
 The round of dinners and the excitement at 
 tendant upon Taylor s departure from America 
 had told disastrously upon him. He suffered 
 intense pain, which his physicians were unable 
 or unwilling to explain. At first they located 
 the seat of the trouble in the colon, which led 
 Taylor to groan, " Oh, that this trouble with the 
 colon would come to a period." 
 
 His intention to visit Carlsbad was defeated 
 by the pressing business of the Berlin Congress, 
 and by the presence of General Grant, to whom 
 he was obliged to show social attentions. Work 
 and worry had broken down the full power of 
 his physical structure. That his vital forces 
 were overburdened was first shown in the stoop 
 ing shoulders and the drawn face, and later be 
 came terribly evident. He was, by nature, at 
 all points splendidly endowed ; he had magnifi 
 cent appetite and digestion, he could eat and 
 drink freely and go at once to his desk and to 
 work. Sickness was a positive humiliation to 
 him as it was to Goethe. 
 
 There is a cruel and inscrutable irony at 
 times in human destiny. Taylor at last had 
 reached the solid ground upon which he could 
 build his fame. His work lay easily before 
 him, when in an instant it was snatched from 
 his hand. It is the cry of Paracelsus again : 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 291 
 
 " Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprile ! 
 We get so near so very, very near ! 
 T is an old tale : Jove strikes the Titans down, 
 Not when they set about their mountain-piling, 
 But when another rock would crown the work." 
 
 Hegel is nearing the completion of his great 
 work when he is stricken with cholera. Fichte 
 kisses his dying wife, and the poison communi 
 cates itself to him, and the great philosophy is 
 left unfinished. 
 
 Taylor possessed a kind of fatalism in regard 
 to his destiny, and his belief that man was im 
 mortal until his work was done no doubt sus 
 tained him with hope in his last hours. Pro 
 fessor Waterman T. Hewett has told me that 
 during Bayard Taylor s last visit to Ithaca, in 
 the spring and early summer of 1877, he spoke 
 with freedom and clearness concerning his 
 plans. " He told me," says Professor Hewett, 
 " that it was then his purpose to lecture for two 
 years more, the proceeds of which would enable 
 him to devote himself uninterruptedly to work 
 upon his Life of Goethe. He estimated that 
 it would take about two years to write it after 
 the preliminary studies had been made and the 
 composition actually begun. I said to him that 
 if this were my work I could not rest until it 
 was accomplished ; it would be impossible for 
 me to contemplate the work from a distance, 
 without entering upon it. * I should fear that 
 
292 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 it would never be completed, that it would drop 
 from my hands before it was finished. On 
 the contrary, said Mr. Taylor, to have some 
 thing before one to look forward to is the best 
 guarantee of life. When I was a young man 
 there was a certain work which I wished to 
 achieve before I was thirty, and I could see no 
 thing in my life beyond that date. I believed 
 that my life would come to an end at that time. 
 But as the time approached I gradually con 
 ceived the plan of translating " Faust." This I 
 thought would occupy me until I was forty and 
 I could see nothing before me after that time. 
 But during the progress of this work I formed 
 the purpose of writing the Life of Goethe, and 
 now I believe that my life will be spared until 
 it is accomplished. To have something before 
 one to accomplish is the best assurance of life. " 
 His great pain he bore patiently and without 
 complaint. On the 17th of December the final 
 change came. On the 19th his mind wandered 
 and he was restless. He slept fitfully. At one 
 instant he looked up with a look of surprise, 
 and in a semi-whisper said, " I must be away." 
 They were the last words of the Pilgrim of 
 Eternity. Directly after he fell asleep, and at 
 four o clock in the afternoon he died, seated in 
 the armchair in his library, which was also the 
 office of the legation. 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 293 
 
 The funeral ceremonies were conducted by 
 the Rev. J. P. Thompson. Berthold Auerbach 
 spoke as though to the released spirit of his 
 friend and fellow writer: "Thou wast born in 
 the fatherland of Benjamin Franklin ; and, like 
 him, thou didst work thy way upward from a 
 condition of lowly labor to be an apostle of the 
 spirit of purity and freedom, and a represen 
 tative of thy people among a foreign people. 
 No, not among a foreign people : thou art as 
 one of ourselves ; thou hast died in the country 
 of Goethe, to whose lofty spirit thou didst ever 
 turn with devotion ; thou hast erected a monu 
 ment to him before thy people, and wouldst 
 erect before all peoples another, which, alas ! is 
 lost with thee. But thou thyself wast and art 
 one of those whom he foretold, a disciple of a 
 universal literature, in which, high above all 
 bounds of nationality, in the free, limitless ether, 
 the purely human soars on daring pinions sun 
 wards in ever new poetic forms. . . . Born 
 in the New World, ripened in the Old, and 
 alas ! severed so early from the tree of life ! 
 thou didst teach thy people the history of 
 the German people, that they, being brothers, 
 should know one another ; we bear that in our 
 memories. Thou didst put into words of song 
 thy people s outburst of joy at their centennial 
 festival; when it returns again, and our own 
 
294 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 mortal frames lie motionless like thine here 
 before us, then from millions of lips yet un 
 born will resound again the name of BAYARD 
 TAYLOR. Thy memory shall be blessed ! " 
 
 The remains were brought to America, March 
 13, 1879. At the New York City Hall, where 
 the body lay in state, a dirge was sung by the 
 German societies, and an oration was delivered 
 by the Hon. Algernon S. Sullivan. Escorted by 
 a guard of honor from the Koltes Post, Grand 
 Army of the Republic, the remains were taken 
 to the railway station and removed to Cedar- 
 croft. There addresses were made by the Rev. 
 Wm. H. Furness and Dr. Franklyn Taylor. 
 The German and American flags were draped 
 at the Unicorn in Kennett. 
 
 The funeral procession proceeded for three 
 miles through the beautiful land that he had 
 celebrated in the " Pennsylvania Pastorals " to 
 the Quaker burial ground at Longwood. 
 
 " Here Lowell came, in radiant youth, 
 
 A soul of fixed endeavor, 
 Here Parker spake with lips of truth 
 That soon were closed forever." 
 
 At the grave the Rev. Dr. H. N. Powers read 
 the funeral service, and a few words were said 
 by the Rev. Dr. Furness and Mr. E. C. Stedman. 
 A burial ode was sung by a Kennett chorus. 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 295 
 
 His grave is marked by a Greek altar, bear 
 ing the words, " He being dead yet speaketh." 
 The bronze medallion on the tomb, surmounted 
 by a wreath of oak leaves and bay, is by Launt 
 Thompson. Upon the reverse of the circular 
 stone are the lines from "Prince Deukalion:" 
 
 " For life whose source not here began 
 Must fill the utmost sphere of man, 
 And, so expanding-, lifted be 
 Along- the line of God s decree, 
 To find in endless growth all good, 
 In endless toil, beatitude." 
 
 All the poets he had loved paid tributes of 
 affection to his memory. Longfellow, referring 
 to the scene in the library of Taylor s Berlin 
 home, wrote : 
 
 " Dead he lay among his books ! 
 The peace of God was in his looks. 
 
 " As the statues in the gloom 
 Watch o er Maximilian s tomb, 
 
 " So those volumes from their shelves 
 Watched him, silent as themselves. 
 
 " Ah ! his hand will nevermore 
 Turn their storied pages o er ; 
 
 " Nevermore his lips repeat 
 Songs of theirs, however sweet. 
 
 " Let the lifeless body rest ! 
 He is gone, who was its guest ; 
 
296 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " Gone, as travelers haste to leave 
 An inn, nor tarry until eve. 
 
 " Traveler ! in what realms afar, 
 In what planet, in what star, 
 
 " In what vast, aerial space, 
 Shines the light upon thy face ? 
 
 " In what gardens of delight 
 Rest thy weary feet to-night ? 
 
 " Poet ! thou, whose latest verse 
 Was a garland on thy hearse ; 
 
 " Thou hast sung, with organ tone, 
 In Deukalion s life, thine own ; 
 
 " On the ruins of the Past 
 Blooms the perfect flower at last. 
 
 " Friend ! but yesterday the bells 
 Rang for thee their loud farewells ; 
 
 " And to-day they toll for thee, 
 Lying dead beyond the sea ; 
 
 " Lying dead among thy books, 
 The peace of God in all thy looks ! " 
 
 E. C. Stedman, R. H. Stoddard, George H. 
 Calvert, and George H. Boker wrote their " In 
 Memoriam " verses for a knightly comrade who 
 was without fear and without reproach. Chris 
 topher P. Cranch, in his sonnet, recognizes Bay 
 ard Taylor s purity of character and loftiness of 
 ambition : 
 
LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 297 
 
 " Can one so strong 1 in hope, so rich in bloom 
 That promised fruit of nobler worth than all 
 He yet had given, drop thus with sudden fall ? 
 The busy brain no more its work resume ? 
 Can death for life so versatile find room ? 
 Still must we fancy thou canst hear our call 
 Across the sea with no dividing 1 wall 
 More dense than space to interpose its doom. 
 Ah then farewell, young-hearted genial friend ! 
 Farewell, true poet, who didst grow and build 
 From thought to thought still upward and still new. 
 Farewell, unsullied toiler in a guild 
 Where some defile their hands and where so few 
 With aims as pure strive faithful to the end." 
 
 I have reserved to the last Thomas Bailey Al- 
 drich s exquisite monody, whose faultless lines 
 speak for us the benediction and the praise with 
 which we take leave of one of the bravest and 
 gentlest of those who by desert in service have 
 won high and secure places in the history of 
 literature. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 In other years lost youth s enchanted years, 
 Seen now, and evermore, through blinding tears 
 And empty longing for what may not be 
 The Desert gave him back to us ; the Sea 
 Yielded him up ; the icy Norland strand 
 Lured him not long, nor that soft German air 
 He loved could keep him. Ever his own land 
 Fettered his heart and brought him back again. 
 What sounds are these of farewell and despair 
 Borne on the winds across the wintry main ! 
 
298 BAYARD TAYLOE. 
 
 What unknown way is this that he is gone, 
 
 Our Bayard, in such silence and alone ? 
 
 What new strange quest has tempted him once more 
 
 To leave us ? Vainly, standing by the shore, 
 
 We strain our eyes. But patience ! when the soft 
 
 Spring gales are blowing over Cedarcroft, 
 
 Whitening the hawthorn ; when the violets bloom 
 
 Along the Brandywine, and overhead 
 
 The sky is blue as Italy s, he will come . . . 
 
 In the wind s whisper, in the swaying pine, 
 
 In song of bird and blossoming of vine, 
 
 And all fair things he loved ere he was dead! 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems. 
 
 Philadelphia, Herman Hooker. 1844. 12mo. 
 
 [This volume was suppressed afterwards by its author.] 
 Views Afoot ; or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff. With 
 
 a preface by N. P. Willis. In two parts. New York, 
 
 Wiley & Putnam. 1846. 12mo. 
 Rhymes of Travel, Ballads and Poems. New York, Geo. P. 
 
 Putnam. 1849. 
 
 [Really published in December, 1848.] 
 Eldorado, or, Adventures in the Path of Empire. With 
 
 illustrations by the author. In two volumes. New York, 
 
 Geo. P. Putnam. [May] 1850. London, Richard Bentley. 
 
 1850. 12mo. 
 A Book of Romances, Lyrics and Songs. Boston, Ticknor, 
 
 Reed and Fields. 1851. 16mo. 
 A Journey to Central Africa, or Life and Landscapes from 
 
 Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile. With 
 
 a map and illustrations by the author. New York, G. P. 
 
 Putnam & Co. [August] 1854. 12mo. 
 The Lands of the Saracen ; or Pictures of Palestine, Asia 
 
 Minor, Sicily and Spain. New York, G. P. Putnam & Co. ; 
 
 London, Sampson Low, Son & Co. [October] 1854. 12mo. 
 Poems of the Orient. Boston, Ticknor and Fields. [Octo 
 ber 27] 1854. 16mo. 
 A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853. New 
 
 York, G. P. Putnam & Co. ; London, Sampson Low, Son & 
 
 Co. [September] 1855. 12mo. 
 
300 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Poems of Home and Travel. Boston, Ticknor and Fields. 
 
 [November] 1855. 16mo. 
 Views Afoot. Revised edition with a new preface. New 
 
 York. [November] 1855. 12mo. 
 Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel. Cincinnati, Moore, Willstach, 
 
 Keys & Co. 1856. 8vo. 
 Northern Travel : Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, 
 
 Denmark, and Lapland. New York, G. P. Putnam ; Lon 
 don, Sampson Low, Son & Co. 1857. 12mo. 
 Travels in Greece and Russia, with an Excursion to Crete. 
 
 New York, G. P. Putnam ; London, Sampson Low, Son & 
 
 Co. 1859. 12mo. 
 At Home and Abroad : A Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery and 
 
 Men. New York, G. P. Putnam ; London, Sampson Low, 
 
 Son & Co. [November] 1859. 12mo. 
 Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel. Cincinnati. 1860. Revised 
 
 and enlarged edition, 2 vols. 
 At Home and Abroad, II. Series. New York, G. P. Putnam. 
 
 1862. 12mo. 
 
 The Poet s Journal. Boston, Ticknor and Fields ; London, 
 Sampson Low & Co. [December] 1862. 12mo. 
 
 Hannah Thurston, A Story of American Life. New York, 
 G. P. Putnam ; London, Sampson Low & Co. [November] 
 
 1863. 12mo. 
 
 The Poems of Bayard Taylor. [Blue and Gold edition.] 
 Boston, Ticknor and Fields. [October] 1864. 12mo. 
 
 John Godfrey s Fortunes : Related by Himself. A Story of 
 American Life. New York, G. P. Putnam ; London, Samp 
 son Low, Son & Co. [November] 1864. 12mo. 
 
 Poems. Cabinet edition. 1865. 
 
 The Story of Kennett. New York, G. P. Putnam ; London, 
 Sampson Low, Son & Co. [March] 1866. 12mo. 
 
 The Picture of St. John. Boston, Fields, Osgood & Co. 
 [October] 1866. 12mo. 
 
 Colorado: A Summer Trip. New York, G. P. Putnam & 
 Son. [January] 1867. 12mo. 
 
 The Golden Wedding. A Masque. Privately printed. Phila 
 delphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1868. 16mo. 
 
APPENDIX. 301 
 
 By-Ways of Europe. New York, G. P. Putnam & Son. 1869. 
 
 Views Afoot. New edition. Revised by the author, for 
 Low s copyright, cheap editions of American Books. Lon 
 don, Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. 1869. 12mo. 
 
 Joseph and His Friend. New York, G. P. Putnam. [Novem 
 ber 24] 1870. 12mo. 
 
 Faust, A Tragedy, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Part I. 
 Translated in the Original Metres, by Bayard Taylor. Bos 
 ton, Fields, Osgood & Co. [December] 1870. 
 
 Translation of Faust, Part II. Boston, James R. Osgood & 
 Co. [March 25] 1871. Q. 
 
 Faust, Parts I. and IL London, Strahan & Co. [July] 1871. 
 8vo. 
 
 Faust, Part I. Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus. [November or 
 December] 1871. 8vo. 
 
 The Masque of the Gods. Boston, James R. Osgood & Co. 
 [April 10] 1872. 12mo. 
 
 Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home. New York, G. P. 
 Putnam & Sons. [April 9] 1872. 12mo. 
 
 Lars : a Pastoral of Norway. Boston, James R. Osgood & Co. 
 [March 1, 1873. London, Strahan & Co. (March 8) 1873]. 
 12mo. 
 
 The Prophet. A Tragedy. Boston, James R. Osgood & Co. 
 [September 13] 1874. 12mo. 
 
 Egypt and Iceland in the Year 1874. New York, G. P. Put 
 nam s Sons. [October] 1874. 12mo. 
 
 A School History of Germany : from the Earliest Period to 
 the Establishment of the German Empire in 1871. With 
 one hundred and twelve illustrations and six historical maps. 
 New York, D. Appleton & Co. 1874. 8vo. 
 
 Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics. Boston, James R. Os 
 good & Co. [October] 1875. 12mo. 
 
 Faust. Kennett edition. Boston, J. R. Osgood & Co. 1875. 
 
 The Eeho^Club and other Literary Diversions. Boston, J. R. 
 Osgood & Co. [July] 1876. 16mo. 
 
 Boys of Other Countries ; Stories for American Boys. New 
 York, G. P. Putnam s Sons. 1876. 8vo. 
 
302 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 The National Ode, in facsimile. Boston, J. R. Osgood & Co. 
 
 1876. 8vo, 
 
 Faust, Part II. Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus. 1876. 8vo. 
 Prince Deukalion, A Lyrical Drama. Boston, Houghton, Os- 
 
 good & Co. ; London, Triibner & Co. [November] 1878. 8vo. 
 Studies in German Literature, with an Introduction by George 
 
 H. Boker. New York. 1879. 12mo. 
 
 Critical Essays, and Literary Notes. New York, G. P. Put 
 nam s Sons. 1880. 12mo. 
 The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor. Household Edition. 
 
 Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Co. 1880. 12mo. 
 The Dramatic Works of Bayard Taylor, with notes by Marie 
 
 Hansen-Taylor. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1880. 
 
 12mo. 
 A History of Germany from the earliest times to the present 
 
 day, with an additional chapter by Marie Hansen-Taylor. 
 
 New York, D. Appleton & Co. 1894. 8vo. 
 
 II. CHRONOLOGY OF THE "POEMS OF THE 
 ORIENT." 
 
 (From the dates given by Bayard Taylor in the manuscript book 
 in the possession of Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard.) 
 
 Smyrna. October, 1851. 
 
 To a Persian Boy. October, 1851. (Written at Smyrna.) 
 
 The Nilotic Drinking Song. January 9, 1852. (Written on 
 
 the Nile, in Ethiopia.) 
 
 Kilimandjaro. January, 1852. (White Nile.) 
 The Orient. July, 1852. (Constantinople.) 
 Mimosa Blooms. November, 1852. (Cadiz.) 
 The Garden of Irem. November, 1852. (Granada.) 
 The Poet in the East. February, 1853. 
 Aurum Potabile. February, 1853. 
 The Arab Warrior. March, 1853, 
 On the Sea. March, 1853. 
 Arab to the Palm. July, 1853. 
 The Goblet. August, 1853. 
 
APPENDIX. 303 
 
 Khalil. August, 1853. 
 
 Arab Prayer. September, 1853. 
 
 Requiem in the South. September, 1853. 
 
 Nubia. September, 1853. 
 
 Birth of the Horse. September, 1853. 
 
 Charmian. September, 1853. 
 
 Hymn to Air. October, 1853. 
 
 Angel of Patevin. October 15, 1853. 
 
 Desert Hymn to the Sun. October 16, 1853. 
 
 Voyage of a Dream. October 22, 1853. 
 
 Saturday Night at Sea. October 23, 1853. 
 
 Gulistan. October 24, 1853. 
 
 Ural Winter. October 24, 1853. 
 
 Bedouin Song. October 29, 1853. 
 
 Shekh. October 30, 1853. 
 
 Amran s Wooing. November 4, 1853. (Written off the 
 
 Cape of Good Hope.) 
 
 Birth of the Prophet. November 29, 1853. 
 Morning at Tyre. December 7, 1853. 
 A Picture. December 15, 1853, 
 Jerusalem. December 16, 1853. 
 Lament. October 12, 1854. 
 
 III. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WRITINGS. 
 
 A Visit to the Battle-ground of Brandywine. (Published in 
 the " Register," West Chester.) 1840. 
 
 Soliloquy of a Young Poet. Published in "Saturday Evening 
 Post," Philadelphia. (Nine poems written, three published.) 
 1841. 
 
 Eleven poems written, two of them published in his first vol 
 ume. Rosalie (Ximena) in progress. The Artist of Raven 
 na, and other prose written for a Bucks County paper. 1842. 
 
 About seventeen poems written and Rosalie completed. 1843. 
 
 Twenty-six poems, some translated from the German. Let 
 ters of Travel to Philadelphia, " Saturday Evening Post," 
 and " United States Gazette." 1844. 
 
304 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Ximena. 1844. 
 
 Thirty-two poems ; some translations ; letters of travel. 1845. 
 
 Letters for " Saturday Evening Post " and " Tribune." About 
 twenty poems. Views Afoot. 1846. 
 
 Eight poems. The Demon of the Mirror, and editorials and 
 reviews for the " Phoenixville Pioneer." 1847. 
 
 Twenty-four poems : among them the first California Ballads, 
 published anonymously in the " Literary World," The Ode 
 to Shelley and The Continents. Letters from New York 
 to " Pioneer " and " Saturday Evening Post." Reviews 
 for " Graham s Magazine." A tale, La Fioraja. (" Union 
 Magazine.") Sketches for " The Opal." Rhymes of Travel. 
 1848. 
 
 Ten poems. Ariel, Kubleh, Odalisque, Storm Lines, Taurus, 
 I plucked for Thee, Pine Forest of Monterey. Letters of 
 Travel for " Tribune." Translation of " Raphael." 1849. 
 
 Twenty poems, among them Manuela, Hylas, From the Bo 
 som of Ocean. Lecture, " The Animal Man." Eldorado. 
 1850. 
 
 Eleven poems. Letters of Travel in " Tribune." Cyclopaedia 
 of Literature and Art. Book of Romances. 1851. 
 
 Nine poems. Letters of Travel to " Tribune." 1852. 
 
 Thirty-three poems. " Tribune " letters. 1853. 
 
 Fourteen poems. Three lectures. Journey to Central Africa. 
 Lands of the Saracen. Poems of the Orient. 1854. 
 
 Twelve poems. " Tribune " letters. Visit to India, China, 
 and Japan. Poems- of Home and Travel. 1855. 
 
 Four poems. " Tribune " letters. Cyclopaedia of Travel. 
 1856. 
 
 " Tribune " letters. Northern Travel. 1857. 
 
 Three poems. "Tribune" letters. Lecture on "Moscow." 
 1858. 
 
 Nine poems. Short papers for New York " Mercury." In 
 troduction to Stoddard s Life of Humboldt. Travels in 
 Greece and Russia. At Home and Abroad. 1859. 
 
 Thirty-five poems (?). Papers about California in New 
 York "Mercury." Confessions of a Medium. ("Atlantic 
 
APPENDIX. 305 
 
 Monthly," vol. 6 : 699.) Papers for "Independent." An 
 Interview with Martin Luther, in "Harper s Magazine," 
 January, 1861. 1860. 
 
 Seven poems. The Haunted Shanty. (" Atlantic Monthly," 
 vol. 8: 57.) The Experiences of the A. C. ("Atlantic 
 Monthly," vol. 9 : 170.) The German Burns. A German 
 Shooting Match. A Walk through the Franconian Swit 
 zerland. A Home in the Thuringian Forest. The Chirop 
 odist. ("Harper s Magazine," March, 1862.) One of My 
 Predecessors. Ernst II. of Saxe Coburg-Gotha. (Published 
 in " Harper s Magazine," November, 1861.) 1861. 
 
 Friend Eli s Daughter. (" Atlantic Monthly," vol. 10 : 99 ; 
 " Eng. Dom. Monthly," vol. 21 : 17, 74. " Sharpe," vol. 37 : 
 244.) 
 
 A Cruise on Lake Ladoga. At Home and Abroad, II. Series. 
 The Poet s Journal. 1862. 
 
 A Poem : The Neva. Hannah Thurston. Lecture : Russia 
 and her People. 1863. 
 
 Six poems. John Godfrey s Fortunes. Thackeray. (" At 
 lantic," vol. 13: 371.) Between Europe and Asia. Lecture, 
 Ourselves and our Relations. Poems. " Blue and Gold " 
 edition. 1864. 
 
 Eleven poems. (Seven sonnets.) Winter Life in St. Peters 
 burg. The Author of "Saul." Beauty and the Beast 
 (written). 1865. 
 
 Four poems. The Little Post Boy. The Pasha s Son. The 
 Two Herd Boys. Friedrich Riickert. (" Atlantic," vol. 18 : 
 33.) A Distinguished Character. Letters to the " Trib 
 une " from Colorado. Lecture, " American Life." Intro 
 duction to Frith jof s Saga. The Strange Friend. (" Atlan 
 tic," vol. 19 : 54.) Review of Swinburne. (" North Amer 
 ican Review," 104: 287.) The Story of Kennett. The 
 Picture of St. John. 1866. 
 
 Two poems. Travel in the United States. The Little Land 
 of Appenzell. (" Atlantic," 20 : 213.) From Perpignan to 
 Montserrat. A Visit to the Balearic Islands. ("Atlantic," 
 20: 680; 21 : 73.) Catalonian Bridle Roads. The Repub- 
 
306 BAYABD TAYLOE. 
 
 lie of the Pyrenees. The Grande Chartreuse. The Kyff- 
 hauser and its Legends. Twenty letters to the " Tribune." 
 Colorado : A Summer Trip. 1867. 
 
 Nine poems, including the German dedication, An Goethe. 
 Faust, Part I., completed. Letters for the "Tribune." A 
 Week on Capri. (" Atlantic," vol. 21 : 740.) A Trip to 
 Ischia. (" Atlantic," vol. 22 : 155.) The Island of Mad- 
 dalena. (" Atlantic," vol. 22 : 326.) The Land of Paoli. 
 (" Atlantic," vol. 22 : 611.) The Teutoburger Forest. The 
 Swabian Alb. Mural Paintings of Pompeii. (" Putnam," 
 vol. 12 : 1.) Can a Life Hide Itself ? ("Atlantic," vol. 23 : 
 605.) Mrs. Strongitharm s Report. ("Galaxy," vol. 8: 
 811.) Contributions to " Hearth and Home." The Golden 
 Wedding, a Masque. 1868. 
 
 Eleven poems, including the Gettysburg Ode, and the August 
 Pastoral, " Literature, Art, and Science " for " Putnam s 
 Magazine." Preface, To the English Reader, in Views 
 Afoot. Introduction to the English translation of Auer- 
 bach s " Villa on the Rhine." Jacob Flint s Journey. Lec 
 ture on " Reform and Art." Address at the Dedication of 
 the Halleck Monument. Reviews for the " Tribune." By- 
 Ways of Europe. 1869. 
 
 Five poems, among them the German "Ju bellied." The 
 "Rhine-Guard," translated. Notes for "Faust." "Lit 
 erature, Art, and Science," for "Putnam s." Joseph and 
 His Friend. Lectures on German Literature. Reviews for 
 "Tribune." Letters for "Tribune." "Faust," Part I., 
 published. 1870. 
 
 Five poems. Twin-Love. ("Atlantic," vol. 28 : 257.) Paper 
 on Humboldt. ("Harper s Weekly.") Lectures on Ger 
 man Literature. Down the Eastern Shore. (" Harper s 
 Weekly.") The Northwest Letters. ("Tribune.") Sights 
 in and around Yedo. (" Scribner s," vol. 13 : 132.) The 
 Heart of Arabia. ("Scribner s," vol. 3: 545.) Editorial 
 work on Library of Travel, for "Scribner s." "Faust," 
 Part II., published. Introduction and Dialogues of the 
 Echo Club. 1871. 
 
APPENDIX. 307 
 
 Eighteen poems. Amerikanische Dichter und Dichtkunst. 
 The Masque of the Gods. Beauty and the Beast. Lars 
 (written). 1872. 
 
 Eight poems. Twelve letters for the " Tribune." Two arti 
 cles for " Tribune." An article in " Neue Freie Presse " of 
 Vienna. School History of Germany (written). Who was 
 She ? (" Atlantic," vol. 34 : 257.) Lars (published). 1873. 
 
 Six poems. Ancient Troy (hi " Tribune ") Egypt Revis 
 ited. (Eleven letters in " Tribune.") African Exploration. 
 (Two articles for " Tribune.") The Fayoom. Letters from 
 Iceland (for "Tribune"). Ancient Egypt. (A Lecture.) 
 The Prophet, A Tragedy. Egypt and Iceland. School 
 History of Germany (published). 1874. 
 
 About six poems, and Prince Deukalion begun. Lecture 
 on Jean Paul Richter. Letters about the Bunker Hill 
 Celebration for " Tribune." Alongshore. (Six letters for 
 the " Tribune.") Lecture, Literature as an Art. Ion of 
 Iceland. (" St. Nicholas.") Reviews of Books for the " In 
 ternational Review," and "Tribune." Article on Schiller 
 for Johnson s Cyclopaedia. Edits " Picturesque Europe " 
 (D. Apple ton). Home Pastorals. 1875. 
 
 Ten poems. The Young Serf. (" St. Nicholas Magazine.") 
 June Days at Weimar. ("Atlantic," vol. 39 : 61.) An 
 Impossible Story. (" Scribner s," vol. 16:131.) Letters 
 for " Cincinnati Commercial." The Echo Club. Boys of 
 Other Countries. 1876. 
 
 Five poems. Translation of Schiller s "Don Carlos." Al 
 fred Tennyson. (" International Review," vol. 4 : 397.) His 
 torical Introduction to " Bismarck " by Geo. Hezekiel. 
 Letters for " Cincinnati Commercial." The Halleck Statue. 
 (" North American Review," vol. 125 : 60.) Ephesus, Cy 
 prus, Mycenae. (" North American Review," vol. 126 : 111.) 
 Letters from White Sulphur Springs. ("Tribune.") Susan 
 Lane s Christmas. (" Weekly Tribune.") Studies of Ani 
 mal Nature. (" Atlantic Monthly," vol. 39 : 135.) 1877. 
 
 Four poems. Contributions to " Tribune." Life and Habits 
 Abroad. (" Semi- Weekly Tribune.") Prince Deukalion, 
 1878. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 No references are made to the Appendix 
 
 ABBOTSFOBD, Scott s home at, 121. 
 
 Abolition, a passionate interest in 
 Chester County, 123, 124. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 37. 
 
 Agatha, St., festival of, 91. 
 
 Agnew, Mary, first acquaintance 
 with Taylor, 58 ; Grace Green 
 wood s account of, 58 ; letters to, 
 62, 67 ; illness of, 78-81, 83 ; mar 
 riage and death of, 84 ; 111 note. 
 
 Aitken, Robert, prints the first Eng 
 lish Bible in America, 3. 
 
 "Albion, The, "137, 139. 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, friend of 
 Taylor, 73 ; visits Cedarcroft, 133 ; 
 edits the "Saturday Press," 136, 
 137 ; congratulates Taylor on his 
 translation of " Faust," 193 ; sug 
 gests the theme of " The Prophet," 
 249, 253 ; monody on death of Tay 
 lor, 297, 298. 
 
 Aldridge, Ira, his performance of 
 Macbeth, 147. 
 
 Alfleri, how he learned Greek, 114. 
 
 Alger, Rev. W. R., 256. 
 
 Allen, George, student of Coleridge, 
 9 note. 
 
 Alison, Sir A., 39. 
 
 Allston, Washington, 19. 
 
 " Alongshore " letters to " Tri 
 bune," 124, 274. 
 
 American Academy (Boston), 2. 
 
 44 American Legend, The," 79. 
 
 14 Amran s Wooing," 219. 
 
 14 Analectic Magazine, The," 4. 
 
 Andersen, Hans Christian, 110. 
 
 Andorra, Republic of, 188. 
 
 Andrassy, 283. 
 
 Andre"e, Dr., 107 
 
 Antonelli, Cardinal, 275. 
 
 Appenzell, little land of, 187. 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, 98. 
 
 44 Ariel in the Cloven Pine-Tree," 70. 
 
 Aristology, 124. 
 
 Arnold, George, 137, 138. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 215, 231. 
 
 Astor House, dinners at the, 142. 
 
 Astor Place riots, 75. 
 
 Athens, residence in, 113. 
 
 " At Home and Abroad," 115, 116. 
 
 " Atlantic Monthly," beginning of 
 
 the, 136, 137 ; contributions to, 
 
 146, 147, 187, 189, 209, 221, 252 ; 
 
 Taylor feels at home in the, 205, 
 
 206. 
 Auerbach, Berthold, his address at 
 
 Taylor s funeral, 49, 107, 293. 
 Ayr, the Burns festival at, 39. 
 
 Baird, Alexander, 208. 
 
 Baltimore, Taylor lectures in, 102. 
 
 Bancroft, George, distributes the 
 translation of 44 Faust" in Ger 
 many, 193. 
 
 " Barclay of Ury," 207. 
 
 Barclay, William, 207. 
 
 Barnum, P. T. offers a prize for an 
 original song for Jenny Lind, 82. 
 
 Barrett, Lawrence, 278. 
 
 Earth, Dr., commends Taylor s 
 books of travel, 98. 
 
 Barton, Bernard, 7, 238 ; first meet 
 ing with Taylor, 47; commends 
 44 Views Afoot, "51. 
 
 Bartram, John, 14, 28. 
 
 Bayard, James A., 15. 
 
 Beaconsfield, Earl of, 283. 
 
 Beaconsfield, the home of Burke 
 121. 
 
 44 Beauty and the Beast," 166. 
 
 44 Bedouin Song," 220, 221, 268. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 141. 
 
 Bell, Robert, prints the first Aineri. 
 can edition of Milton, 3. 
 
 Benares, 92. 
 
 Benedict, Jules, 83. 
 
 Benjamin, Park, 31, slanders Taylor, 
 
 Berlin, 107, 193 ; Congress at, 288, 
 
 290. 
 
 Bierstadt, 190. 
 Bigelow, John, 142. 
 Bismarck, his criticism of " Joseph 
 
 and His Friend," 177 ; interested i 
 
310 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 the translation of " Faust," 193 ; 
 
 Taylor s acquaintance with, 283. 
 Black, Mrs., "the Maid of Athens," 
 
 115. 
 
 Bohemianism in New York, 135-140. 
 Boker, George Henry, 10 ; origin of 
 
 his friendship for Taylor, 71, 72 ; 
 
 letters to, 83, 85, 93; guest at 
 
 Cedarcroft, 133, 191 ; estimate of 
 
 Taylor, 212 ; parody of, 248; "In 
 
 Memoriam " verses for Taylor, 
 
 297. 
 
 Bolraar s Academy, 19. 
 "Book of Romances, Lyrics, and 
 
 Songs, A," 86, 217. 
 Botta, Mrs., her salon, 65,66. 
 " Boys of Other Countries," 276. 
 Brackenridge, H. H., writes the first 
 
 satirical novel, 6. 
 Brainard, J. G. C., 217. 
 Braisted, Taylor s companion in 
 
 northern travel, 107. 
 Brandywine, The battlefield of, 23 ; 
 
 Read s verses on, 33. 
 Bremen, 109. 
 Breneman, Melchior, 12. 
 Brinton, D. G., 28. 
 Brooke, Stopford A., 243. 
 Brooklyn, society in, 65; Taylor s 
 
 family living in, 11(5. 
 Brougham, John, founds " The Lan 
 tern,"^?. 
 Brousa, 89. 
 
 Brown, Charles Brockden, 3, 61. 
 Browne, C. F. (Artemus Ward), 137. 
 Browne, Ross, 221. 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 189- 
 
 190, 214, 247. 
 Browning, Robert, 86, 87, 189, 215, 
 
 248, 261, 266. 
 
 Bruce, D., Scotch-Irish poet, 6. 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 9, 20, 32, 
 
 59, 63, 141, 192, 241, 248, 260, 281 ; 
 
 Taylor s poem on the death of, 
 
 269. 
 Bucher, Christian and Ann, relatives 
 
 of Bayard Taylor, 12. 
 Buck, Dudley, 241. 
 Bufleb, August, Taylor s companion 
 
 upon the Nile, 91, 110, 111 ; visits 
 
 Cedarcroft, 143, 144. 
 Bull, Ole, plants a colony of Danes 
 
 in Pennsylvania, 4 note. 
 Burke, Edmund, 121. 
 Burns festival, the, 39. 
 Burton, Robert, 231. 
 Burton, William E., sells" The Gen 
 tleman s Magazine," 30. 
 Butler, Judge William, 30. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 16, 18, 33, 112, 115, 229, 
 
 233. 
 " By- Ways of Europe," % ; quoted, 
 
 147 ; published, 192. 
 
 Cairo, 206, 253. 
 
 Calhoun, John C., 37. 
 
 " Caliban, the Witch s Whelp," 70. 
 
 California, the country in 1849, 75- 
 77, 84 ; second visit to, 196. 
 
 California, poem " On leaving," 117. 
 
 " Californian Ballads," 69. 
 
 Calvert, George H., 296. 
 
 " Camadeva," 222, 223. 
 
 Cameron, Simon, minister to Russia, 
 146, 148, 153. 
 
 Camoens, writes "The Lusiad " at 
 Macao, 93. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 2, 8, 16, 65. 
 
 Canandaigua, 102. 
 
 Canizares, teaches Taylor Spanish, 
 30. 
 
 " Canopus," 262. 
 
 Caprera, a distant view of, 191. 
 
 Capri, a week on, 190. 
 
 "Captain Riley s Narrative," 16. 
 
 Carl August, 201. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 231, 282. 
 
 Carroll, Lewis, 245. 
 
 Cary, Alice and Phoebe, 31. 
 
 Cascade Ravine, bridge over the, 75. 
 
 Catalonia, 188. 
 
 Catania, 91. 
 
 " Cathedral, The," 243. 
 
 Cedarcroft occupied by Bayard Tay 
 lor, 118 ; description of, 119-123, 
 130-134; 143, 145, 157, 170, 182, 
 187, 191, 197-199, 209, 224, 225, 
 237, 266, 294. 
 
 "Cedarcroft, To the Mistress of," 
 226. 
 
 Century Association, how it was 
 formed, 141 ; 146 ; banquette Tay 
 lor at, 281. 
 
 " Centennial Ode." See National 
 Ode." 
 
 Chambers, Ruth Anne, 17. 
 
 Chandler, Joseph R., 36. 
 
 Channing, W. E., death of, 21. 
 
 Charlecote, oaks of, 120. 
 
 Chester County, population of, 6 ; 
 Taylor born in, 12 ; his father sher 
 iff of, 19 ; 23, 56 ; Taylor s attec- 
 tion for, 116, 121, 124; peculiari 
 ties of, 123-125, 169 ; 167, 210, 281. 
 
 Chivers, Dr. Thomas Holley, 248, 
 249. 
 
 " Choate, Adeliza," character in 
 " John Godfrey s Fortunes," 66. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 311 
 
 Choate, Rufus, 136. 
 
 " Christian Inquirer, The," 68. 
 
 Church, F. E., 227. 
 
 " Cincinnati Commercial," 278. 
 
 Civil War, its effect upon writers, 
 143. 
 
 Clapp, Henry, Jr., founds " The Sat 
 urday Press," 136,138. 
 
 Clark, Lewis Gaylord, 75. 
 
 Clay, Cassius M., succeeds Simon 
 Cameron as minister to Russia, 
 148, 152. 
 
 Cliffton, William, 2, 9. 
 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 231. 
 
 Coburg, 107. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1, 9, 194. 
 
 Collins, Mortimer (on " Aristolo- 
 
 gy,"), 124. 
 
 Colman, Samuel, 227. 
 
 " Colorado : A Summer Trip," 178 
 note. 
 
 Column Club, 141. 
 
 " Commemoration Ode," 242. 
 
 Congdon, Charles T., 142. 
 
 Constantinople, changes in, 115. 
 
 " Continents, The," 71, 216. 
 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, 9, 30, 64, 
 125. 
 
 Cope, E. D., 28. 
 
 Corfu, a visit to, 112. 
 
 Corinth, 114. 
 
 Cornell University, lectures at, 195, 
 196, 274, 278. 
 
 Cornwall, Barry, 248. 
 
 Corsica, 190. 
 
 Cox, Henry Hamilton, the original 
 of Henry Donnelly, 167. 
 
 Cranch, C. P., 296. 
 
 Crete, an excursion to, 113, 114. 
 
 Curtis, George William, as a lec 
 turer, 101 ; visitor at Cedarcroft, 
 133 ; intimacy with Taylor, 142 ; 
 mobbed in Philadelphia, 144 ; re 
 semblance to Matthew Arnold, 
 215 ; account of the banquet at 
 Century Club, 281. 
 
 Curtius, Professor Ernst, 283. 
 
 " Cyclopaedia of Literature and the 
 Fine Arts," 85. 
 
 " Cyclopaedia of Travel," 104, 143. 
 
 Dana, Charles A., 141, 142. 
 
 Dana, R. H., lectures on old English 
 
 Literature, 73 ; anecdote of " The 
 
 Buccaneer," 74 ; 79. 
 Dante, translated by Longfellow, 
 
 192. 
 Darlington, a Cheater County name, 
 
 Darlington, Hannah, assists Taylor 
 in writing "Views Afoot," 51. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 231. 
 
 "Daughter of Egypt, veil Thine 
 Eyes, * 222, 223. 
 
 Davis, Bancroft, minister to Ger 
 many, 288, 289. 
 
 Dawes, Rufus. 217. 
 
 Deane, Martha, 22, 170. 
 
 Dehra, 92, 
 
 Delaware County, 6, 14. 
 
 Delaware, State of, 15. 
 
 Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, 
 210. 
 
 " Democratic Review, The," 53. 
 
 Dennett, J. K., 65. 
 
 Dennie, Joseph, 3, 61. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, 136. 
 
 De Witt, Simeon, 156. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 24. 
 
 Dickinson, Anna, 124. 
 
 Dickinson, John, his "Farmer s 
 Letters," 2. 
 
 Dixon, George W., 62 note. 
 
 Dresden, Taylor s literary acquaint 
 ances in, 107. 
 
 Duganne, A. J. H., 61, 62. 
 
 Durand, A. B., 141. 
 
 Duyckinck s "Cyclopaedia," 1. 
 
 Duyckinck brothers, the, 65. 
 
 "Earth-Life," 126. 
 
 Ebers, Georg, 231. 
 
 " Ecce Homo," 231. 
 
 " Echo Club," 185 ; described. 247- 
 249. 
 
 Edgewood, home of D. G. Mitchell, 
 122. 
 
 " Egypt and Iceland," 209. 
 
 Egypt, travels in, 86 ; letters from, 
 206, 231, 254. 
 
 " Eldorado," described, 76-78 ; 100. 
 
 Eliot, George, 261. 
 
 Elizabeth, shipwreck of the, 79, 80. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., his opinion of lec 
 turing, 103 ; guest at Cedarcroft, 
 133 ; parodied in the " Echo Club," 
 248. 
 
 English, Thomas Dunn, lectures 
 upon phrenology, 19, 20. 
 
 " Epicedium : William Cullen Bry 
 ant," 269, 270. 
 
 " Eric and Axel," 218. 
 
 Erie Canal, the, its opening in 1825, 
 9. 
 
 Etna, eruption of Mount, 91. 
 
 Etonians, the, how they employed 
 Ottava rima, 229. 
 
 " Euphorion " (quoted), 70, 268. 
 
312 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 41 Evangeline," 235. 
 
 Evans, Henry S., Taylor appren 
 ticed to, 28, 35. 
 
 Evarts, William M., 241. 
 
 Everett, H. S., account of Taylor as 
 minister to Germany, 284-289. 
 
 Falk, the daughter of, 201. 
 
 "Faust," translation of, 121, 128, 
 181-183, 186-188, 191-195, 197, 
 200, 213, 218, 257, 261, 274, 287. 
 
 Felton, C. C.,79. 
 
 Fichte, death of, 291. 
 
 Field, Cyrus, accompanies Taylor to 
 Iceland, 207. 
 
 Fields, James T., described in "The 
 Tent on the Beach," 55 ; meets 
 Taylor in Boston, 56 ; correspond 
 ence with Taylor, G8, 85, 89, 100, 
 102 ; experience in lecturing, 101 ; 
 entertains Taylor, 192, 244. 
 
 Finlay, the historian of Greece, 
 115; 
 
 Fiske, Willard, 196, 278. 
 
 Fitzpatrick, the highwayman, origi 
 nal of Sandy Flash in " The Story 
 of Kennett," 108-169. 
 
 Florence, Taylor s first visit to, 
 43-45; Taylor s illness in, 189; 
 203, 253. 
 
 Forester, Fanny," 31. 
 
 Foster, F. E., partner of Taylor in 
 the publication of the " Phceuix- 
 ville Gazette," 56. 
 
 Franconian Mountains, excursion to 
 the, 145. 
 
 Frankfurt, 37, 42, 202. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 1, 2. 
 
 Freiligrath, F., 44. 
 
 Frere, Hookham, his use of Ottava 
 rima, 229. 
 
 Freytag, Gustav, 143. 
 
 " Friend Eli s Daughter," 146. 
 
 Frommann, Fraulein, 201. 
 
 Fry, William H., 142. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, drowned in the 
 wreck of the Elizabeth, 79, 80. 
 
 Furness, Dr. Horace Howard, 128. 
 
 Furness, Dr. William H., assists 
 Taylor in his translation of 
 "Faust," 128; translates a Ger 
 man poem by Taylor, 130, 131 ; 
 delivers a funeral address at Ce- 
 darcroft, 294. 
 
 Futhey, John Smith, 23. 
 
 Gall, theories of, 19. 
 Gallatin, Albert, 1. 
 Gardette, Charles I., 137. 
 
 Garibaldi refuses to see Taylor, 191. 
 
 Garrison, W. L., 124, 144. 
 
 Gause, Jonathan, Taylor s teacher 
 at Unionville, 22, 23. 
 
 Gay, Sydney Howard, 142. 
 
 Geneva, 1. 
 
 " Gentleman s Magazine," 30. 
 
 German, Taylor s knowledge of, 
 183-187. 
 
 Germany, school history of, 203, 205, 
 206. 
 
 Gerstacker, F., 51. 
 
 Gerviuus, Georg, 40. 
 
 " Gettysburg Ode," 191, 239. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, 16. 
 
 Gifford, S. R., 227. 
 
 Gleichen-Russwurm, Baron von, 201. 
 
 Glyndon, Howard. See Redden, 
 Laura. 
 
 "Godey s Lady s Book," 4. 
 
 Godwin, Parke, 142. 
 
 Goethe, writes a poem on Pennsyl 
 vania, 5, 6 ; death in 1832, 16, 258 ; 
 read by Taylor in the East, 98 ; 
 allusions to "Faust," 188, 193, 
 257; Taylor s lecture on, 195; 
 Preller a protect* of, 201 ; last 
 birthday of, 200; biography of, 
 199, 200, 202, 205, 207, 209, 224, 
 230, 247, 250, 265, 274, 277-279, 
 291-293 ; poem to, 239, 240. 
 
 "Goethe, An," 186. 
 
 "Golden Legend, The," "Picture 
 of St. John " compared to, 229. 
 
 Gortchakoff, Prince, 146, 283; in 
 terview with Taylor concerning 
 the Civil War in America, 148- 
 152. 
 
 Gotha, 107, 109, 111, 112, 115, 145, 
 146, 152, 153, 187-189, 199, 200, 
 203, 249, 254, 270. 
 
 Gottingen, 40. 
 
 Grace, Robert, 2. 
 
 Graham, George R., 36, 62, 68. 
 
 Graham, James Lorimer, 146, 188, 
 244. 
 
 " Graham s Magazine," 4 ; Taylor s 
 first poem published in, 21 note; 
 how founded, 30 ; contributors to, 
 31 ; finances of, 68. 
 
 Grant, General, 64 ; his visit to Ber 
 lin, 290. 
 
 Greece, Taylor s visit to, 112-115. 
 
 Greek, Taylor s knowledge of, 113, 
 114, 182. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, patron of Taylor, 
 38, 52, 53 note; dissuades Taylor 
 from coming to New York, 59; 
 employs him on the "Tribune," 
 
INDEX. 
 
 313 
 
 67 ; assists Thoreau, 74 ; sells 
 Taylor a share in the " Tribune," 
 85, 142 ; visits Cedarcrott. 133 ; 
 death of, 199. 
 
 Green, Miss, her school of belles- 
 lettres, 59. 
 
 Greenwood, Grace, 31, 103. 
 
 Gregor, Pastor, 5, 11. 
 
 Griswold, R. W., 1, 30-32, 59, 75. 
 
 Gustav-Adolf Verein, 201. 
 
 Gutzkow, 107. 
 
 Hale, Mrs. S. J., 51. 
 
 Hatevy, opera " Le Val d Andorre," 
 188. 
 
 Hall, Mrs. S. C., 39. 
 
 Hall, Fitzedward, 92. 
 
 Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 63, 65, 191, 
 192. 
 
 Halstead, Murat, 207. 
 
 Hammer, Julius, translates " Stey- 
 ermark," 107. 
 
 "Hannah Thurston," 125; when 
 published, 155; description of, 
 155-162; how written, 1G3, 173, 
 227. 
 
 Hansen, Marie, Taylor s first ac 
 quaintance with, 111 ; marriage 
 to, 112. 
 
 Harbaugh, Henry, 5. 
 
 Harlan, Caleb, 6 note. 
 
 Harrison, Frederick, 194. 
 
 Hart, Professor James Morgan, Tay 
 lor s correspondence with, 63, 187, 
 200, 201, 279. 
 
 Harte, Bret, 248. 
 
 Hartman, Dr. W. D., 19, 20. 
 
 Harvard College, 79, 219. 
 
 Hasheesh debauch, a, 94. 
 
 " Hassan to his Mare," 218, 221. 
 
 "Haunted Shanty, The," a story, 
 145. 
 
 Hawks, F. L. 93. 
 
 Hawley, General, invites Taylor to 
 write the hymn for the Centennial 
 Exhibition, 240. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 4, 16, 31. 
 
 Hay, Col. John, 142. 
 
 Hayes, Dr. Isaac, 23, 207. 
 
 Hayes, President R. B., appoints 
 Taylor minister to Germany, 279. 
 
 Hazeldell Farm, 15. 
 
 " Hearth and Home," started by D. 
 G. Mitchell, 122. 
 
 Hebel, article on, 145. 
 
 Hedge, Dr., 257. 
 
 Jegel, death of, 291. 
 
 Heidelberg, 40. 
 
 Helmholtz, Professor, 283. 
 
 Hemans, Mrs., 33. 
 
 Herder, Taylor s studies in, 29, 196, 
 201. 
 
 Hewett, Professor W. T., 196, 244, 
 291. 
 
 " Hiawatha," origin of, 217. 
 
 Hicks s painting of Taylor, 88. 
 
 Himalayas, 91. 
 
 Hirzel, his Goethe library, 207. 
 
 Hoffman, Charles Fenno, 31, 59, 64, 
 65, 160. 
 
 " Holly Tree, The," 238. 
 
 Holmes, O. W., 1, 101, 136, 193, 241. 
 
 " Home Journal, The," 141. 
 
 " Home Pastorals," 72, 121 ; de 
 scribed, 238-239. 
 
 Hong Kong, 92, 93. 
 
 Hope Park, Taylor a guest at, 207. 
 
 Hopkinson, Francis, 2. 
 
 Hopkinson, Joseph, 3. 
 
 Hoppin, W. J., 141. 
 
 House, Edward H., 142. 
 
 Howells, William D., quoted, 113 ; 
 account of a visit to Pfaff s, 138, 
 139; congratulates Taylor upon 
 his " Faust," 193 ; letters to, 203- 
 206, 221, 280 ; account of Taylor s 
 departure to Germany, 282. 
 
 Howitt, Mary, 51, 91. 
 
 Howitt, William, 34. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, reviewed by Taylor, 
 163; Les Orientales, 221, 222; 
 midnight supper with, 283. 
 
 Humboldt, 95; praises Taylor, 97, 
 98 ; lecture upon, 195 ; essay upon, 
 197. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, Taylor calls upon, 109, 
 136. 
 
 "Hylas,"217. 
 
 " Hyperion," 34. 
 
 "Icarus," how it was composed, 
 
 163. 
 Iceland, millennial celebration, 207, 
 
 208 ; Taylor called " a skald," 211. 
 Idlewild, 64, 80. 
 Immortality, Taylor s belief in, 113, 
 
 256. 
 
 " Implora Pace," 266, 267. 
 Improvisation, Taylor s powers of, 
 
 244, 245. 
 
 " Independent" (N. Y.), 145, 197. 
 Ingram, Morris, 30. 
 " In My Vineyard," quoted, 126. 
 " International Review," 275. 
 " Ion of Iceland," 274. 
 " Iris," 263. 
 Irving, Rev. Edward, original of 
 
 "The Prophet, "250. 
 
314 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Irving, Washington, 4, 31, 63, 64, 
 116, 136, 141 ; his parentage, 208. 
 
 Ischia, a trip to, 190. 
 
 Italy, 43-45; ways of living in, 
 276. 
 
 Ithaca (Greece), 112. 
 
 Ithaca (N. Y.), 195. 
 
 Jackson, " Stonewall," 22. 
 
 James, G. P. R., 101. 
 
 James, Henry, Jr., 253. 
 
 " Jane Reed," 238. 
 
 Japan, Perry s Expedition to, 92. 
 
 Jochumssohn, Mathias, translates 
 Taylor s "America to Iceland," 
 208. 
 
 "John Godfrey s Fortunes," 24, 25, 
 65-67 ; when published, 162 ; de 
 scription of, 163-165 ; 180. 
 
 " John Reed," 27, 238. 
 
 Johnson, Andrew, Sonnet to, 154. 
 
 Johnson, Eastman, 227. 
 
 Johnson, Oliver, 67, 124. 
 
 "Joseph and His Friend," 20, 121, 
 177. 
 
 "Journey to Central Africa," pub 
 lished, 103, 104 ; dedicated to A. 
 Bufleb, 111. 
 
 "Jubel-lied eines Amerikaners," 
 183, 184. 
 
 Kalopothakes, Dr., Taylor enter 
 tained by, 114. 
 
 Kautokeino, 108. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, 147. 
 
 Keats, John, 70; his knowledge of 
 Greek, 113 ; parodied, 248. 
 
 Keene, Mr. (" H. G. K."), 92. 
 
 Kemble, Gouverneur, 141. 
 
 Kennett Square, 12, 15, 16, 21, 22, 
 35-37, 42, 62, 78, 80, 81, 84, 105 ; 
 116, 119, 123-125, 127, 168-170, 
 197, 198, 235, 236, 279, 294, 295. 
 
 Kensett, John F., 141, 227. 
 
 Kenyon, John, 86. 
 
 Keyser s "Religion of the North 
 men," 37. 
 
 Khartoum, 90. 
 
 King, Starr, 124. 
 
 Kirkland, Mrs., 67, 74. 
 
 Klopstock, 195, 212. 
 
 " Knickerbocker Magazine," 31, 64, 
 136. 
 
 Knickerbocker School, The, 61, 63- 
 65, 136. 
 
 Knight, Joseph, praises " Picture of 
 St. John," 229. 
 
 Kossuth, 141. 
 
 Kotzebue, 130 note, 183. 
 
 Koumiss, an experiment with. 147. 
 
 " Kubleh," 218. 
 Kyffhauser, 189. 
 
 Ladoga, A Cruise on Lake, 147. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 217. 
 
 Lancaster (county), 6, 12, 125. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 91, 217. 
 
 " Lands of the Saracen," 94 ; pub 
 lished, 103, 104. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, 241, 260, 277. 
 
 " Lantern, The," 137. 
 
 Lapland, Taylor makes a tour of, 
 107, 108. 
 
 " Lars," dedication of, 56 ; English 
 edition of, 206 ; scene of the inci 
 dents of, 210 ; description of, 234- 
 236 ; 218, 219, 268. 
 
 " Last Walk in Autumn, The " 
 (quoted), 55. 
 
 Latakia (tobacco) grown at Cedar- 
 croft, 123. 
 
 Lausanne, 107, 187, 188, 202, 203. 
 
 Lear, Edward (Book of Nonsense), 
 246. 
 
 Lectures, lyceum system of, 100- 
 103. 
 
 Leidy, Joseph, 28. 
 
 Leland, Charles Godfrey, 10. 
 
 Lenau, Nicolaus, 6 note. 
 
 Lepsius, 231, 283. 
 
 Leslie, Eliza, 51. 
 
 Leasing, 196. 
 
 Leucadia, 112. 
 
 Lewis, Anne Estelle, 165. 
 
 " Library of Travel," 197. 
 
 "Life and Letters of Bayard Tay 
 lor," 112. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, gratified at Tay 
 lor s course in Russia, 152, 153 ; 
 address at Gettysburg, 239. 
 
 Lind, Jenny, 83, 83. 
 
 Lindenshade, home of Dr. H. H. 
 Furness, 128-130. 
 
 Linnaeus, 14. 
 
 " Literary World," 65. 
 
 Little Leigh (Cheshire), 12. 
 
 Locke, Richard Adams, 45. 
 
 Lockhart, J. G., 47. 
 
 Logan, James, 2. 
 
 London, 39, 46, 47. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 21, 
 30, 126, 192, 193, 259, 271 ; Taylor 
 presents "Ximena" to, 32, 213; 
 his praise of " Views Afoot," 51 ; 
 Taylor presented to, 56 ; a night 
 with, 74 ; verses on the death of 
 Taylor, 87, 295 ; criticism of " Pic 
 ture of St. John," 229; criticism 
 
INDEX. 
 
 315 
 
 of the " Masque of the Gods," 233 ; 
 declines the National Ode, 241 ; 
 parodied by Taylor, 248. 
 
 Longwood, yearly meeting at, 124 : 
 Taylor s burial at, 295. 
 
 " Lost Crown, The," 262, 268. 
 
 " Love at a Hotel," a play at Cedar- 
 croft, 132. 
 
 Lowell Institute lectures, 278. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, editorial 
 writer on "Graham s Magazine," 
 4; Taylor s early admiration for, 
 21 ; " Ximena " presented to, 32 ; 
 an evening with, 74 ; takes Taylor 
 to see Whittier, 79 ; editor-in-chief 
 of " Atlantic Monthly," 136 ; ap 
 preciates " Picture of St. John," 
 229; his "Commemoration Ode," 
 242 ; " The Cathedral," 243 ; the 
 humor of, 243 ; in Florence with, 
 253 ; criticism of David Masson, 
 273 ; 193, 213, 223, 241, 271. 
 
 Liiders, Charles Henry, 269. 
 
 Ludlow, Fitz-Hugh, 137. 
 
 Luther, Martin, Freytag on. 143. 
 
 Lyons, 46. 
 
 Macao, Camoens writes "The Lu- 
 siad " at, 93. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 23; reading Vol 
 taire, 93 ; death of, 136. 
 
 Macdonald, George, 21. 
 
 Magnusson, Professor, 207, 208. 
 
 Mammoth Cave, a visit to the, 105. 
 
 Mariette Bey, 206. 
 
 Marseilles, 45. 
 
 Marshall, Humphrey, 28. 
 
 Martin, Samuel, a teacher of Bayard 
 Taylor, 18. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 144. 
 
 " Masque of the Gods, The," 231 ; 
 description of, 232, 233: ethical 
 thoughts of, 255. 
 
 Masson, David, 273. 
 
 Mattapoisett, 274, 278. 
 
 Maury, Lieutenant, 105. 
 
 Mavrocordatos, friend of Lord By 
 ron, 115. 
 
 Mazzini, 91. 
 
 McEntee, Jervis, 227. 
 
 Mehemet Ali Pasha, 283. 
 
 Mellen, Grenville, 217. 
 
 Mendelssohn, 44. 
 
 Mendenhall, the family of, 11, 14 ; 
 name in " Lars," 236. 
 
 Mennonites, The, 5, 12. 
 
 " Mercury, New York," 116. 
 
 Mesmer, 19. 
 
 Metaphysics, 257. 
 
 Midnight Sun, The, 110. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 231. 
 
 Milnes, Monckton, 221. 
 
 Milton, a lock of his hair, 109 ; Mas- 
 son s Life of, 273. 
 
 Miner, Charles, editor of " Village 
 Record," (West Chester), 29. 
 
 Missolonghi, 112, 115. 
 
 Mitchell, D. G., 122. 
 
 Mitford, Mary Russell, 91. 
 
 " Modern Chivalry," 6. 
 
 Mommsen, Theodor, 283. 
 
 Monaghan, Hon. R. E., 23. 
 
 " Mon-da-min," 217. 
 
 Montaigne, 231. 
 
 " Monterey," a favorite with Gen 
 eral Grant, 64. 
 
 Montserrat, a visit to, 188. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 33, 65, 219, 221, 
 224. 
 
 Mormonism, 250. 
 
 Morris, Gen. George P. , 62 note ; 
 his summer home, 64 ; connection 
 with " The Home Journal," 141. 
 
 Morse, S. F. B., 141. 
 
 Mott, Lucretia, 124. 
 
 Moultrie, John, 229. 
 
 Mount Cuba, scene of some of the 
 incidents in " Lars," 209, 235. 
 
 " Mrs. Grundy," published in New 
 York, 137. 
 
 Muhlenberg, Gotthilf, 28. 
 
 Miiller, Max, 282. 
 
 Miiller, Otfried, 115. 
 
 Murray, John, 45, 47. 
 
 Mycenae, 113. 
 
 " My Prologue," (quoted), 254, 255. 
 
 " Nameless Bard, The," 27. 
 
 Naples, 190. 
 
 Napoleon, Louis, 182. 
 
 " National Era, The," 53, 54. 
 
 National Ode, The, 234, described, 
 240-242 ; literary quality of, 261. 
 
 Newfoundland, laying the submarine 
 telegraph, 105, 111. 
 
 Newtown Square, 170. 
 
 New York, 4, 8, 9, 37, 38, 58, 59, 61- 
 68, 81, 84, 106, 184 ; Bohemianism 
 in, 135-140. 
 
 Nijni Novgorod, 123, 147. 
 
 Nile, The, 87. 
 
 " Nilotic Drinking Song " (quoted). 
 86. 
 
 " Norseman s Ride, The," 53. 
 
 North, William, 138. 
 
 "Northern Travel," when pub 
 lished, 108, 112 ; quoted, 109. 
 
 "Notus Ignoto," 182, 191. 
 
316 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Oberon," Wieland s poem of, 23, 
 
 229. 
 O Brien, Fitz-James, 136-140 ; 165, 
 
 245. 
 u Old Pennsylvania Farmer, The," 
 
 238. 
 
 " Orso s Vendetta," 234. 
 Osgood, Frances S., 31. 
 Osgood, James R., 193, 253. 
 Ossoli, Marquis D , 80. 
 Ottava rima, " Picture of St. John" 
 
 written in, 229. 
 Oxford (Pennsylvania), 22. 
 
 " Palm and the Pine, The " (quoted), 
 13. 
 
 "Parnassus in Pillory" (quoted), 
 62. 
 
 " Pastorals, Pennsylvania," 237, 238, 
 295. 
 
 Paulding, James K., 31, 64. 
 
 Peabody Institute, Taylor lectures 
 before the, 276. 
 
 Peabody, George, 91. 
 
 " Pencillings by the Way " (Willis), 
 34. 
 
 Penn, William, 3, 12, 14, 15. 
 
 Pennock, Barclay, 37. 
 
 Pennsylvania, literature in, 1-10 ; 
 nationalities in, 4-7 ; University 
 of, 19 ; how Taylor was treated by, 
 127. 
 
 Pennsylvania Dutch, 5. 
 
 " Pennsylvania Freeman, The," 4. 
 
 Penn Yan, Taylor lectures in, 102. 
 
 Pennypacker, Dr. I. A., 56. 
 
 Perry, Commodore, his expedition 
 to Japan, 92. 
 
 Persia, proposed mission to, 153. 
 
 Petermann, Dr., commends Taylor s 
 travels, 98. 
 
 " Peter Parley," 16. 
 
 Peterson, Henry, 68. 
 
 Pfaff s beer cellar, 138, 139, 141. 
 
 " Phantom, The," 224. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society, Taylor 
 elected an honorary member, 79. 
 
 Philadelphia, 19, 22, 35, 48, 63 ; the 
 capital of American literature, 
 1-4 ; libraries in, 2 ; press in, 3, 
 4 ; prestige of, 8, 9, 61 ; Central 
 High School of, 37 ; mob rule in, 
 144. 
 
 Phillips, J. B., correspondence with, 
 21, 35, 127, 174, 178, 231, 246. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 124. 
 
 Pl.oenixville, 53, 56-59, 61. 
 
 Piatti makes a bust of Bayard Tay 
 lor, 89. 
 
 "Picture of St. John, The," 18,21, 
 178, 216, 234, 261 ; description of, 
 226-230. 
 
 Pike, Albert, 31. 
 
 Pike, James S., 142. 
 
 " Pioneer" (Phoenixville), 56-59. 
 
 Pittsburgh, Taylor s favorite city 
 to lecture in, 104. 
 
 Placeutia, home of J. K. Paulding, 
 64. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, editorial writer 
 upon " Graham s Magazine," 4, 
 30 ; praises Taylor s poem," The 
 Continents," 71 ; names E. A. 
 Lewis "rival of Sappho," 165; 
 his criticism of Tennyson, 213 ; 
 approvingly criticises Taylor s 
 "Rhymes of Travel," 216; Dr. 
 Chivers s imitations of, 248. 
 
 " Poems of Home and Travel," pub 
 lication of, 106, 224. 
 
 " Poems of the Orient," 88, 99 ; pub 
 lication of the, 103 ; 180, 218, 219, 
 221. 
 
 " Porphyrogenitus," 268. 
 
 " Port Folio, The," 3, 8, 9, 61. 
 
 " Poet s Journal, The," written at 
 Cedarcroft, 121 ; description of, 
 225, 226. 
 
 Powers, Hiram, 45, 259. 
 
 Powers, Dr. H. N.,294. 
 
 Preller, a protege" of Goethe, 202. 
 
 Prescott, W. H., 136. 
 
 Press Club (N. Y.), its origin, 141, 
 142. 
 
 " Prince Deukalion," 219, 232, 249 ; 
 description of, 256-259 ; comple 
 tion of, 278 ; verses from, 295. 
 
 " Prince of Parthia, The," 3. 
 
 " Prophet, The," 203. 219, 232 ; de 
 scription of, 249-254. 
 
 " Protestantenbibel," 231. 
 
 "Ptolemy," the scene of " Hannah 
 Thurston," 155. 
 
 " Puritan and his Daughter, The," 
 64. 
 
 Pusey Farm, purchase of the, 105. 
 
 Putnam, George P., 47, 82, 116. 
 
 " Putnam s Magazine," 136. 
 
 Quaker ancestry, influence of, 179. 
 
 " Quaker Widow, The," 166, 238. 
 
 Quakers, the virtues of, 7 ; attitude 
 toward art, 8; Bayard Taylor 
 brought up in Quaker faith, 14 ; 
 the " inward light " of the, 19 ; 
 sentiments of the, 124 ; stagnation 
 of Quakerism, 127 ; Quaker com 
 munity in Norway, 234. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 317 
 
 Rafn, Professor, 110. 
 
 Raymond, Henry J., 142. 
 
 Read, T. Buchanan, birth of, 10 ; in 
 stinct for art, 19 ; his first novel, 
 33 note; friendship for Taylor, 
 72 ; introduces Taylor to Leigh 
 Hunt, 109 ; in Rome, 190 ; paro 
 died, 248. 
 
 Redden, Laura (Howard Glyndon), 
 a guest at Cedarcroft, 123. 
 
 Reed, Henry, 9 note. 
 
 Reid, Whitelaw, excursion to Lake 
 Winnipeg, 197; sends Taylor to 
 Iceland, 207 ; suggests the " Echo 
 Club" to Taylor, 248; suggests 
 " Life and Habits Abroad," 276. 
 
 Reikiavik, 208. 
 
 Reindeer travel, 108. 
 
 Restaurant, etymology of, 244. 
 
 * Return of the Goddess, The" 
 (quoted), 118. 
 
 Reuter, Fritz, 115. 
 
 " Rhymes of Travel," 85, "216, 
 
 Richardson, A. D., 142. 
 
 Richter, J. P., 195. 
 
 Ripley, George, 82, 142, 192, 275, 
 
 Roof of the World, The," 109, 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 248. 
 
 Royce, Josiah, 77 note. 
 
 Ruckert, read by Taylor in the 
 East, 98 ; Taylor s last visit to, 
 153 ; Oriental poems of, 222. 
 
 Russia, friendliness to the United 
 States 149-151, 153. 
 
 " Russia and her People," a lec 
 ture, 161. 
 
 Salis, Herr von, 201, 
 
 Sand, George, 275, 
 
 Sands, R. C., 217. 
 
 Sartain, John, 19. 
 
 " Saturday Evening Post, The." 20, 
 25, 30, 35, 50, 68. 
 
 41 Saturday Press, The," 136-138. 
 
 Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Duke of, 153. 
 
 Schiller, 195, 199-202, 207, 209, 2G5, 
 274, 278, 279. 
 
 Schlosser, Professor, 40. 
 
 Scholl, librarian at Weimar, 201. 
 
 Schoolcraft, 217. 
 
 Scollard, Clinton, 269. 
 
 Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, 6. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 2, 9, 16, 33, 121. 
 
 Seward, W. H., dispatch from St. 
 Petersburg to, 148-151, 152; in 
 trigues against Taylor, 153 ; son 
 net to, 154. 
 
 Shakespeare, 3, 65, 120; Ward s 
 statue of, 239. 
 
 Shanly, harles Dawson, 137, 138. 
 
 Shapinshay, home of Washington 
 Irving^s father, 208. 
 
 " Shekh Ahnaf s Letters from Bagh 
 dad," 221. 
 
 Shelley, P. B., 3, 70; translation 
 of " Faust," 193, 194; Taylor 
 charged with, 262. 
 
 "Shelley, Ode to," 70-72. 
 
 Shepherd, N. G., 137, 138. 
 
 Sherman, F, D., 269. 
 j Shftlooks, country of the, 87. 
 ! Sigourney, Lydia Huntley, 248. 
 , Silliman, Professor, 105. 
 
 " Sketch Club," the predecessor of 
 the -"Century," 141, 281. 
 
 Sladen, Douglas, 81. 
 
 Smalley, George W., 142. 
 
 Smith, etymology of, 244. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 196. 
 
 Smith, Mrs. Seba, 65. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 257. 
 
 " Soldier and the Pard, The," 218. 
 
 " Soliloquy of a Young Poet," 20. 
 
 " Song of the Camp, The," 268. 
 
 " Sordello" (quoted), 43. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 1, 8, 219, 221. 
 
 "Sparkling and Bright," 64; par 
 ody of, 160. 
 
 " Spectator," its review of " Han 
 nah Thurston," 161. 
 
 Spurzheim, 19. 
 
 Stedman, E. C., description of Tay 
 lor in 1851, 88 ; sonnet to, 133, 134 ; 
 contributor to " The Saturday 
 Press," 137 ; letters to, 188, 264; 
 chosen by the Centennial Com 
 mission to write the " Hymn," 
 240 ; speaks at Taylor s funeral, 
 294 ; writes a commemorative 
 poem, 296. 
 
 Stein, Baron von, 201. 
 
 Stephen, Fitz-James, 164. 
 
 Stichling, Staatsrath, 201. 
 
 Stoddard, R. H., origin of his ac 
 quaintance with Taylor, 69-71 ; 
 living in Brooklyn, 116; writes 
 a play for the Cedarcroft house- 
 warming, 132, 133 ; reminiscences 
 of Taylor, 140 ; writes a poem for 
 the golden wedding of Taylor s 
 parents, 191 ; receives the MS. 
 book of the " Poems of the 
 Orient," 219; makes nonsense 
 rhymes, 245 ; estimate of Taylor s 
 poetry, 267 ; writes a commemo 
 rative poem, 296; letter from 
 Taylor to, 102. 
 
 " Story of Kennett, The," 17, 18, 
 
318 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 22, 121 ; description of, 168-177 ; 
 178, 227. 
 
 " Strange Friend, The," 166. 
 
 Street, Alfred B., 31. 
 
 Sullivan, Hon. A. S., 294. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 80. 
 
 Sumner, Horace, 80. 
 
 " Sunday Courier, The," 75. 
 
 " Sunshine of the Gods, The," Swin 
 burne s criticism on, 215. 
 
 Susquehanna River, 2, 5, 6, 167. 
 
 Susquehanna, on board the, 92, 93. 
 
 Swinburne, A. C., 215, 248. 
 
 Symonds, W. L., 137. 
 
 Talleyrand, 244. 
 
 Tarrytown, 64. 
 
 Tasso, translated by Wiffin, 193. 
 
 TAYLOR, BAYARD : born at Kennett 
 Square, 12 ; German ancestry, 
 12, 13 ; Quaker faith, 14 ; school 
 ing, 17, 18 ; instinct for art, 19 ; 
 love of travel, 21; at school in 
 Unionville, 22 ; apprenticed to a 
 printer, 28 ; description of Taylor 
 at seventeen, 29; acquaintance 
 with Griswold, 30 ; publishes 
 " Ximena," 31-35 ; goes to Eu 
 rope, 37-39; life in Frankfurt, 
 40-42; distress in France and 
 England, 45-47 ; publishes tl Views 
 Afoot," 50, 51 ; acquaintance with 
 Whittier, 53-56; life at Phoenix- 
 ville, 56-58 ; removes to New 
 York, 59 ; Knickerbocker school, 
 63-65 ; employed by Greeley, 67 ; 
 acquaintance with R. H. Stod- 
 dard, 69 ; description of Taylor in 
 early manhood, 70; his friend 
 ships, 71-73 ; Astor Place riots, 
 75; goes to California, 75-79; 
 wreck of the Elizabeth, 79,80; 
 competes for a prize for a song for 
 Jenny Lind, 82 ; marriage, 84 ; 
 death of Mary Agnew, 84 ; visits 
 the East, 85-90; Stedman s de 
 scription of, 88 ; in India, 91, 92 ; 
 with Perry in Japan, 92, 93 ; books 
 of travel, 94, 96, 98 ; lyceum lec 
 tures, 100-103 ; purchase of prop 
 erty near Kennett Square, 105 ; 
 northern travel, 108, 109 ; married 
 to Marie Hansen, 111 ; visit to 
 Greece, 112; study of Greek, 
 113, 114; builds Cedarcroft, 116 ; 
 description of Cedarcroft, 120- 
 122 ; abolition and temperance the 
 two interests of Chester County, 
 124-127 ; visits Dr. Horace Howard 
 
 Furness, 128-131 ; a play at Cedar- 
 croft, 132; Bohemianism in New 
 York, 135-140 ; joins the Century 
 Association, 141 ; relations with 
 the "Tribune" set, 142; accom 
 panies Cameron to Russia, 146; 
 sends dispatch to W. H. Seward, 
 148-151 ; publishes his first novel, 
 155 ; " John Godfrey s Fortunes," 
 163 ; " The Story of Kennett," 
 167-177 ; translates " Faust," 
 181 ; scholarship of, 181, 182 ; his 
 knowledge of German, 183-186; 
 visits out-of-the-way places of 
 Europe, 188 ; illness in Florence, 
 189 ; Gettysburg Ode, 191 ; pub 
 lishes translation of " Faust," 
 193; leases Cedarcroft, 199; 
 studies in Goethe, 200; German 
 acquaintances, 201 ; financial em 
 barrassment, 203, 205 ; sources of 
 History of Germany, 206 ; letters 
 from Egypt, 207 ; reports the 
 millennial anniversary of Iceland 
 for the "Tribune," 207, 208; 
 visits Tennyson, 214, 215 ; Swin 
 burne s criticism of, 215 ; "Poems 
 of the Orient," 218-224 ; " Pic 
 ture of St. John," 227-230; his 
 reading, 231 ; Masque of the 
 Gods," 232, 233 ; "Lars," 234-236; 
 hexameter verse, 237, 238 ; Odes, 
 238-242 ; his patriotism, 242, 243 ; 
 genius for parody, 244, 248 ; im 
 provisation, 244, 245; "Echo 
 Club," 247; "The Prophet," 
 249-255; "Prince Deukalion," 
 258, 259 ; literary growth of, 260, 
 261 ; qualities of the poetry of, 
 261, 262, 267, 268 ; last poem of, 
 269, 270 ; compared with his con 
 temporaries, 271, 272 ; begins 
 daily work on "Tribune," 275, 
 276 ; failure of vitality, 277 ; ap 
 pointed minister to Germany, 279 ; 
 reception in Germany, 283 ; H. 8. 
 Everett s memories of, 264-289 ; 
 fatalism, 291 ; death, 293 ; funeral 
 ceremonies at Cedarcroft, 294 ; at 
 Longwood, 295; commemorative 
 poems, 295-298. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. Franklin, 37, 40, 294. 
 
 Tegn6r, 53. 
 
 Temperance, in Chester County, 
 123-126 ; satirized by Bayard Tay 
 lor, 159, 160. 
 
 Temptation of Hassan Ben Kha- 
 led," 219. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 16; induced by 
 
INDEX. 
 
 319 
 
 Taylor s " Northern Travel " to 
 visit Norway, 98 ; Thackeray intro 
 duces Bayard Taylor to, 109 ; au 
 tograph of, 122 ; his " Princess," 
 158, 161 ; Foe s criticism on, 213 ; 
 Taylor s visit to, 214; 231, 234, 
 235, 248 ; influence upon Bayard 
 Taylor, 263. 
 <( Tent on the Beach, The" (quoted), 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 64, 109, 122. 
 
 Thomas, Theodore, 240. 
 
 Thompson, Rev. J. P., 293. 
 
 Thompson, Launt, 295. 
 
 Thoreau, H. D., 74, 80. 
 
 Tiryns, 113. 
 
 Titian, the mark of, 233. 
 
 Toughkenamon, 18, 168; 
 
 "Travels in Greece and Russia," 
 116. 
 
 Treckshuyt, 40. 
 
 " Tribune " (N. Y.), Greeley en 
 gages Taylor to write for the, 38, 
 50 ; he reports Astor Place riots, 
 75; becomes a share-holder, 78, 
 85; George Ripley his fellow- 
 editor, 82 ; Taylor ordered to ac 
 company Perry to Japan, 92 ; pop 
 ularity of his letters, 100 ; repre 
 sentative of, 105 ; " Alongshore " 
 letters to, 124 ; Taylor s associates 
 on the, 142 ; war correspondent, 
 146; sketch of Louis Napoleon 
 for the, 182 ; reports the Vienna 
 Exposition for the, 183 ; building 
 enterprise, 199 ; Taylor reports the 
 millennial celebration at Iceland 
 for the, 207 ; " Echo Club " origi 
 nally intended for, 248; Taylor 
 describes the Bunker Hill celebra 
 tion for the, 274 ; number of Tay 
 lor s contributions to, 276; 104, 
 143, 145, 187, 192, 197, 203, 205, 
 206, 209, 275, 277, 278. 
 
 Trippel s bust of Goethe, 202. 
 
 Trollope, Mrs., 45. 
 
 Tuckerman, Henry T. , 141. 
 
 Tuesday Club, The, 3. 
 
 " Two Greetings, The," 234. 
 
 " Two Homes, The," 234. 
 
 Uhland, 266. 
 
 Underground Railway, The, 123, 
 124. 
 
 " Union League, The " (of Philadel 
 phia), banquet at, 281. 
 
 "Union Magazine, The," 67-74. 
 
 Unionville, 21-24, 27, 170, 171. 
 
 "United States Gazette," 36, 50. 
 
 University of Jena, three hundredth 
 
 anniversary of, 115. 
 University of Pennsylvania, 19. 
 "Urlsperger Nachrichten," 4. 
 
 " Vanity Fair," 137, 139. 
 
 Venus of Milo, 202. 
 
 Verplanck, G. C., 65, 141. 
 
 Vienna Exposition, reported by Bay 
 ard Taylor, 183, 203. 
 
 "Views Afoot," 29, 35, 50-52, 56, 
 62, revised, 106, 178, 192, 285. 
 
 " Village Record," 28, 29. 
 
 " Village Stork, The," 270, 271. 
 
 Virginia, University of, National 
 convention at the, 210. 
 
 " Visit to India, China, and Japan," 
 published, 106. 
 
 Voltaire, 93. 
 
 Wallingford, home of Dr. H. H. 
 Furaess, 128. 
 
 Ward, J. Q. A., statue of Shake 
 speare, 239. 
 
 Ward, Plumer, 169. 
 
 "Waring," Taylor compared to 
 Browning s, 100. 
 
 Warwickshire, 7. 
 
 " Waves, The," 262. 
 
 Way, Rebecca, mother of Bayard 
 Taylor, 13, 14. 
 
 Wayne, Anthony, 170 note. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 74. 
 
 Weimar, 200, 201, 202, 204, 209, 
 250. 
 
 Weltgemiithlichkeit, a word coined 
 by Bayard Taylor, 183. 
 
 West, Benjamin, 170. 
 
 West Chester (N. Y.), 124. 
 
 West Chester (Penn.), 19, 20, 28, 29, 
 32, 125, 281. 
 
 " West Chester Register, The," 23. 
 
 " Westostlicher Divan," 202. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., 56, 280. 
 
 White, Hon. A. D., 289. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 138, 248, 260, 275. 
 
 Whittier, J. G., edits " The Penn 
 sylvania Freeman," 4 ; his Quaker 
 sentiment, 8, 193 ; acquaintance 
 with Taylor, 53-56; 21, 74, 79, 
 207, 238, 241, 259, 271, 280. 
 
 Whittredge, Worthington, 227. 
 
 Wieland, 23, 195, 200, 201, 229. 
 
 Wiffln s translation of Tasso, 193. 
 
 Wilkins, E. G. P., 137, 138. 
 
 Willis, N. P., 31, 34, 58, 63, 65, 67, 
 75, 139, 141 ; Taylor s first meet 
 ing with, 37, 38 ; writes a preface 
 for " Views Afoot," 51 ; satirized 
 
320 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 by Duganne, 62 ; at Idlewild, 64, 
 
 80 ; his last book, 136. 
 Willis, R. S., 37, 40-42. 
 Wilson, Professor, 39. 
 Wiltshire, 11, 14. 
 "Wind and Sea, "263. 
 Winter, William, 122, 137, 141, 278. 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 200. 
 Wood, Frank, 137. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 9, 18, 73, 231, 
 
 234. 
 Wortley, Lady Stuart, 86. 
 
 " Ximena," 31-34 ; 216. 
 
 Young, William, editor of the " Al 
 bion," 137. 
 
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AMERICAN MEN OF 
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 Biographies of our most eminent American Authors, written by 
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 volume, with portrait, i6mo, gilt top. 
 
 The -writers of these biographies are themselves Americans, generally familiar 
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 a biographical history of American Literature. 
 
 The following, each, $1.2$ 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. By JOHN BIGELOW. 
 J. FENIMORE COOPER. By T. R. LOUNSBURY. 
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 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By JOHN BACH MCMASTER. 
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 EDGAR ALLAN POE. By GEORGE E. WOODBERRY. 
 GEORGE RIPLEY. By O. B. FROTHINGHAM. 
 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. By WILLIAM P. TRENT. 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. By ALBERT H. SMYTH. 
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 FRANCIS PARKMAN. By H. D. SEDGWICK. 
 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. By ROLLO OGDEN. 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. By GEO. R. CARPENTER. 
 The set, 19 volumes, $23.00 ; half polished morocco, $50.50. 
 
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 BRET HARTE. By HENRY C. MERWIN. 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. By S. M. CROTHERS. 
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