should be so distinguished to a people who knew and
valued his scholarship and the service he had done
German letters. He was as happy in it, apparently,
as a man could be in anything here below, and he enjoyed
to the last drop the many cups of kindness pressed
to his lips in parting; though I believe these farewells,
at a time when he was already fagged with work and
excitement, were notably harmful to him, and helped
to hasten his end. 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 sad flowers that heaped the tables, saying
good-by to one after another, and smiling fondly, smiling
wearily, upon all. There was champagne, of course,
and an odious hilarity, without meaning and without
remission, till the warning bell chased us ashore,
and our brave poet escaped with what was left of his
life.
I have followed him far from the moment of our first
meeting; but even on my way to venerate those New
England luminaries, which chiefly drew my eyes, I
could not pay a less devoir to an author who, if Curtis
was not, was chief of the New York group of authors
in that day. I distinguished between the New-Englanders
and the New-Yorkers, and I suppose there is no question
but our literary centre was then in Boston, wherever
it is, or is not, at present. But I thought Taylor
then, and I think him now, one of the first in our
whole American province of the republic of letters,
in a day when it was in a recognizably flourishing
state, whether we regard quantity or quality in the
names that gave it lustre. Lowell was then in
perfect command of those varied forces which will long,
if not lastingly, keep him in memory as first among
our literary men, and master in more kinds than any
other American. Longfellow was in the fulness
of his world-wide fame, and in the ripeness of the
beautiful genius which was not to know decay while
life endured. Emerson had emerged from the popular
darkness which had so long held him a hopeless mystic,
and was shining a lambent star of poesy and prophecy
at the zenith. Hawthorne, the exquisite artist,
the unrivalled dreamer, whom we still always liken
this one and that one to, whenever this one or that
one promises greatly to please us, and still leave
without a rival, without a companion, had lately returned
from his long sojourn abroad, and had given us the
last of the incomparable romances which the world
was to have perfect from his hand. Doctor Holmes
had surpassed all expectations in those who most admired
his brilliant humor and charming poetry by the invention
of a new attitude if not a new sort in literature.
The turn that civic affairs had taken was favorable
to the widest recognition of Whittier’s splendid
lyrical gift; and that heart of fire, doubly snow-bound
by Quaker tradition and Puritan environment; was penetrating
every generous breast with its flamy impulses, and
fusing all wills in its noble purpose. Mrs. Stowe,
who far outfamed the rest as the author of the most
renowned novel ever written, was proving it no accident
or miracle by the fiction she was still writing.
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