He lived twenty-five years after that self-question at sixty, and after
eighty he continued to prove that threescore was not the limit of a man’s
intellectual activity or literary charm. During all that time the work
he did in mere quantity was the work that a man in the prime of life
might well have been vain of doing, and it was of a quality not less
surprising. If I asked him with any sort of fair notice I could rely
upon him always for something for the January number, and throughout the
year I could count upon him for those occasional pieces in which he so
easily excelled all former writers of occasional verse, and which he
liked to keep from the newspapers for the magazine. He had a pride in
his promptness with copy, and you could always trust his promise. The
printer’s toe never galled the author’s kibe in his case; he wished to
have an early proof, which he corrected fastidiously, but not overmuch,
and he did not keep it long. He had really done all his work in the
manuscript, which came print-perfect and beautifully clear from his pen,
in that flowing, graceful hand which to the last kept a suggestion of the
pleasure he must have had in it. Like all wise contributors, he was not
only patient, but very glad of all the queries and challenges that
proof-reader and editor could accumulate on the margin of his proofs, and
when they were both altogether wrong he was still grateful. In one of
his poems there was some Latin-Quarter French, which our collective
purism questioned, and I remember how tender of us he was in maintaining
that in his Parisian time, at least, some ladies beyond the Seine said
“Eh, b’en,” instead of “Eh, bien.” He knew that we must be always on the
lookout for such little matters, and he would not wound our ignorance. I
do not think any one enjoyed praise more than he. Of course he would not
provoke it, but if it came of itself, he would not deny himself the
pleasure, as long as a relish of it remained. He used humorously to
recognize his delight in it, and to say of the lecture audiences which in
earlier times hesitated applause, “Why don’t they give me three times
three? I can stand it!” He himself gave in the generous fulness he
desired. He did not praise foolishly or dishonestly, though he would
spare an open dislike; but when a thing pleased him he knew how to say so
cordially and skilfully, so that it might help as well as delight. I
suppose no great author has tried more sincerely and faithfully to
befriend the beginner than he; and from time to time he would commend
something to me that he thought worth looking at, but never insistently.
In certain cases, where he had simply to ease a burden, from his own to
the editorial shoulders, he would ask that the aspirant might be
delicately treated. There might be personal reasons for this, but
usually his kindness of heart moved him. His tastes had their
geographical limit, but his sympathies were boundless, and the hopeless
creature for whom he interceded was oftener remote from Boston and New
England than otherwise.
It seems to me that he had a nature singularly affectionate, and that it
was this which was at fault if he gave somewhat too much of himself to
the celebration of the Class of ‘29, and all the multitude of Boston
occasions, large and little, embalmed in the clear amber of his verse,
somewhat to the disadvantage of the amber. If he were asked he could not
deny the many friendships and fellowships which united in the asking; the
immediate reclame from these things was sweet to him; but he loved to
comply as much as he loved to be praised. In the pleasure he got he
could feel himself a prophet in his own country, but the country which
owned him prophet began perhaps to feel rather too much as if it owned
him, and did not prize his vaticinations at all their worth. Some polite
Bostonians knew him chiefly on this side, and judged him to their own
detriment from it.