Read at the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 10, 1879.
I am not able to attend the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple on the
10th instant, but my heart responds to any testimonial appreciative of
the intellectual achievements and the noble and manly life of Bayard
Taylor. More than thirty years have intervened between my first meeting
him in the fresh bloom of his youth and hope and honorable ambition, and
my last parting with him under the elms of Boston Common, after our visit
to Richard H. Dana, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of that
honored father of American poetry, still living to lament the death of
his younger disciple and friend. How much he has accomplished in these
years! The most industrious of men, slowly, patiently, under many
disadvantages, he built up his splendid reputation. Traveller, editor,
novelist, translator, diplomatist, and through all and above all poet,
what he was he owed wholly to himself. His native honesty was satisfied
with no half tasks. He finished as he went, and always said and did his
best.
It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature.
His picturesque books of travel, his Oriental lyrics, his Pennsylvanian
idyls, his Centennial ode, the pastoral beauty and Christian sweetness of
Lars, and the high argument and rhythmic marvel of Deukalion are sureties
of the permanence of his reputation. But at this moment my thoughts
dwell rather upon the man than the author. The calamity of his death,
felt in both hemispheres, is to me and to all who intimately knew and
loved him a heavy personal loss. Under the shadow of this bereavement,
in the inner circle of mourning, we sorrow most of all that we shall see
his face no more, and long for "the touch of a vanished hand, and the
sound of a voice that is still."