Distinguished as he was by the lofty qualities of his verse, William
Cullen Bryant held a place almost unique in American literature, by the
union of his activity as a poet with his eminence as a citizen and an
influential journalist, throughout an uncommonly long career. Two traits
still further define the peculiarity of his position--his precocious
development, and the evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work
from the beginning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of
eight; at ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette,
and produced a finished and effective rhymed address, read at his school
examination, which became popular for recitation; and in his thirteenth
year, during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, he composed a political
satire, 'The Embargo.' This, being published, was at first supposed by
many to be the work of a man, attracted much attention and praise, and
passed into a second edition with other shorter pieces.
But these, while well wrought in the formal eighteenth-century fashion,
showed no special originality. It was with 'Thanatopsis,' written in
1811, when he was only seventeen, that his career as a poet of original
and assured strength began. 'Thanatopsis' was an inspiration of the
primeval woods of America, of the scenes that surrounded the writer in
youth. At the same time it expressed with striking independence and
power a fresh conception of "the universality of Death in the natural
order." As has been well said, "it takes the idea of death out of its
theological aspects and restores it to its proper place in the vast
scheme of things. This in itself was a mark of genius in a youth of his
time and place." Another American poet, Stoddard, calls it the greatest
poem ever written by so young a man. The author's son-in-law and
biographer, Parke Godwin, remarks upon it aptly, "For the first time on
this continent a poem was written destined to general admiration and
enduring fame;" and this indeed is a very significant point, that it
began the history of true poetry in the United States,--a fact which
further secured to Bryant his exceptional place. The poem remains a
classic of the English language, and the author himself never surpassed
the high mark attained in it; although the balanced and lasting nature
of his faculty is shown in a pendant to this poem, which he created in
his old age and entitled 'The Flood of Years.' The last is equal to the
first in dignity and finish, but is less original, and has never gained
a similar fame.
Another consideration regarding Bryant is, that representing a modern
development of poetry under American inspiration, he was also a
descendant of the early Massachusetts colonists, being connected with
the Pilgrim Fathers through three ancestral lines. Born at Cummington,
Massachusetts, November 3d, 1794, the son of a stalwart but studious
country physician of literary tastes, he inherited the strong religious
feeling of this ancestry, which was united in him with a deep and
sensitive love of nature. This led him to reflect in his poems the
strength and beauty of American landscape, vividly as it had never
before been mirrored; and the blending of serious thought and innate
piety with the sentiment for nature so reflected gave a new and
impressive result.
Like many other long-lived men, Bryant suffered from delicate health in
the earlier third of his life: there was a tendency to consumption in
his otherwise vigorous family stock. He read much, and was much
interested in Greek literature and somewhat influenced by it. But he
also lived a great deal in the open air, rejoiced in the boisterous
games and excursions in the woods with his brothers and sisters, and
took long rambles alone among the hills and wild groves; being then, as
always afterwards, an untiring walker. After a stay of only seven months
at Williams College, he studied law, which he practiced for some eight
years in Plainfield and Great Barrington. In the last-named village he
was elected a tithingman, charged with the duty of keeping order in the
churches and enforcing the observance of Sunday. Chosen town clerk soon
afterwards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records of
the town with his own hand for five years, and also served as justice of
the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court. These biographical
items are of value, as showing his close relation to the self-government
of the people in its simpler forms, and his early practical familiarity
with the duties of a trusted citizen.
Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821 read
before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem, 'The Ages,' a
kind of composition more in favor at that period than in later days,
being a general review of the progress of man in knowledge and virtue.
With the passage of time it has not held its own as against some of his
other poems, although it long enjoyed a high reputation; but its success
on its original hearing was the cause of his bringing together his first
volume of poems, hardly more than a pamphlet, in the same year. It made
him famous with the reading public of the United States, and won some
recognition in England. In this little book were contained, besides 'The
Ages' and 'Thanatopsis,' several pieces which have kept their hold upon
popular taste; such as the well-known lines 'To a Waterfowl' and the
'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.'
[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]
The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's 'The
Spy,' Irving's 'Sketch Book' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' with various other
significant volumes, including Channing's early essays and Daniel
Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident that a native
literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's productions now came
into demand, and he had never liked the profession of law, he quitted it
and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a living by his pen as "a
literary adventurer." The adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not
until after a long term of dark prospects and hard struggles.
Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite among
his poems--although it is one of the least known--was 'Green River';
perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young manhood, when he was
about entering the law, and contrasted the peacefulness of that stream
with the life in which he would be
"Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud."
This might be applied to much of his experience in New York, where he
edited the New York Review and became one of the editors, then a
proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post. A great part
of his energies now for many years was given to his journalistic
function, and to the active outspoken discussion of important political
questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh unpopularity.
Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within the next
quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had likewise
maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced new
poems from time to time in various editions.
From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his
eighty-fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the
enlarging literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a potent
reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a strong
influence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and tone, as well as
the earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in popular questions and
national affairs, without political ambition or office-holding, had
established him as one of the most distinguished citizens of the
metropolis, no less than its most renowned poet. His presence and
co-operation were indispensable in all great public functions or
humanitarian and intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday
was celebrated at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875,
again, the two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the
compliment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of
inviting him to a reception given to him in their official capacity.
Another mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his
fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver
vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy man; yet
his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His tastes were
simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary and editorial
industry unflagging.
Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of the
Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as a result
of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with various public
addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear, calm, dignified, and
denotes exact observation and a wide range of interests. So too his
editorial articles in the Evening Post, some of which have been
preserved in his collected writings, are couched in serene and forcible
English, with nothing of the sensational or the colloquial about them.
They were a fitting medium of expression for his firm conscientiousness
and integrity as a journalist.
But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive compositions,
that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remembrance. In the
midst of the exacting business of his career as an editor, and many
public or social demands upon his time, he found opportunity to
familiarize himself with portions of German and Spanish poetry, which he
translated, and to maintain in the quietude of his country home in
Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with the Greek and Latin
classics. From this continued study there resulted naturally in 1870 his
elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of
the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished
blank verse, won high praise from American critics, and even achieved a
popular success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England.
Among literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of
their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years across
the literary field, was witness to many new developments in poetic
writing, in both his own and other countries. But while he perceived the
splendor and color and rich novelty of these, he held in his own work to
the plain theory and practice which had guided him from the start. "The
best poetry," he still believed--"that which takes the strongest hold of
the general mind, not in one age only but in all ages--is that which is
always simple and always luminous." He did not embody in impassioned
forms the sufferings, emotions, or problems of the human kind, but was
disposed to generalize them, as in 'The Journey of Life,' the 'Hymn of
the City,' and 'The Song of the Sower,' it is characteristic that two of
the longer poems, 'Sella' and 'The Little People of the Snow,' which are
narratives, deal with legends of an individual human life merging itself
with the inner life of nature, under the form of imaginary beings who
dwell in the snow or in water. On the other hand, one of his eulogists
observes that although some of his contemporaries went much beyond him
in fullness of insight and nearness to the great conflicts of the age,
"he has certainly not been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by
any writer since Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that
self-reliant simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song."
In 'Our Country's Call,' however, one hears the ring of true martial
enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in 'O Mother of a
Mighty Race.' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the typical
womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in 'The Conqueror's Grave,'
reveals also great underlying warmth and sensitiveness of feeling.
'Robert of Lincoln,' and 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree' are both
touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature, which supplies a contrast
to his usual pensiveness.
Bryant's venerable aspect in old age--with erect form, white hair, and
flowing snowy beard--gave him a resemblance to Homer; and there was
something Homeric about his influence upon the literature of his
country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic art and the
poet's relation to the people.
[Illustration: Signature: George Parsons Lathrop]
[All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and
Company.]