The daily gazette., 1878-12-21
From the N. Y. Sun.
The Death of Bayard Taylor.

|
| Minister to Germany, who died in Berlin
Thursday, in the fifty-third year of his
IRE. His career was in many respects
interesting md remarkable. In his youth
he was printers boy, with rhyming ten
denotes, In his native Stat@, Pennsylva-
| MIA; and when less than 20 he started out
with slender purse for Europe, where
he made two years strolling tour, the
sketches of which he turned into the
book that first brought him into notice
Returning TO New York, he procured
employment as writer, reporter and
correspondent for the Tribune, that then
| belonged to Horace Greeley; and his re-
lations with that paper, though some.
times rather slender, and in later tunes
not agreeable, were kept up all through
the years of his hfe. The appetite for
travel, not as an explorer, discoverer, or
scientific observer, but as a rover and be-
holder of passing strange scenes and
| things, had taken hold of him during his
early European adventures. He went To
| California with the gold hunters of l649
and made book of his letters about it,
Two years afterward he went to Egypt
! and up the Nile, from which came a vol.
ume OF his wanderings in those parts OF
| Africa. In another year he made his
way to India, China, and JAPAN, and
| these countries furnished another series
| of sketches. Subsequently, and In more
recent years, he took other tours through
various parts of Europe, and off among
/ the Rocky Mountains of this country.
1t is as traveller that Mr.. Taylor be-
came best known to his generation. We
| must believe that he had what In the lack
| of filter terms we may call an innate bent
| for gong up and down the earth for he
began his journeyings more than thirty
years ago, when but a boy--when "knap-
sapk a nd SfaffD Inv
whole outfit-and it seems but a few
months ago that we heard of him now
IN Egypt, now in Iceland. THIS 'flust of
the eye" the greed of seeing, of observ
ing cities and men and manners, was in
his bloodi and temperament and the best
years of his life were a realization of the
exclamation which Tennyson puts into
the mouth Of that Oldest of travellers,
Ulysses
cannot rest from travel: will drink
Life TO the lees.
The greater part of Mr.. Tayler's writ
Dgs consists of reports of what he saw In
his numerous journeyings in many and
widely separated lands. And when we
say Mr.. Taylor was repOrter-by which
we mean specifically a newspaper report
er-we both define the nature of his
work and suggest the test by which that
work should be tried. For there are
travellers and travellers, aud Goethe in
structs us that "the eye sees only that
which brings with it the power of seeing u
A Humboldt travels, and his cosmlc eye
sees everywhere the subtle play and
| mighty complex of terrestrial and celes-
| tial forces. A Taine travels, going no
| further than across the Straits of Dover
and II yeals to us for the first time a
| wbolel new English psychology. A
Schliemann travels, with Homer in his
brain, asSd he gives us back buried Ilium
and the plains ofwindy Troy.
| NJ 1slySbr was not a great traveller rs
| these, fGf example, were great travellers
He was in no special sense equipped for
| discovery or observation. He was not a
| scientist; he was not psychologist
he was not an archaologist. And fur
thermore, he had no such charm of style
as;glows In the pages of "Eothen," and
ofttimes makes up for matter by delight
| someness of manner. But he had what
was filter for his purpose-the faculty of
| seeing what the ordinary reader mainly
cares to hear about, and the gift of ex-
pressing what he saw in intelhgib BILE and
agreeable form. A wicked mot, put into
the mouth of Alexander Won Hum boldt,
| was some years ago current, to the effect
| that "Bayard Taylor had travelled more
and seen less than any man alive" Hum
boldt never said this, aud it would not
have been true had he said it. Taylor, in
fact, had the outfit of knowledge suited
to his purpose and, as writer for the
average reader he was rendered the more
instructive byl being the less profound
Could the matter be ascertained,i it would
probably be found that in the case of
three-fourths of the American people
| their stock of knowledge of foreign
lands Is in the main derived from his
pen pictures. The educational effect of
his geographical observation has been
remarkably widespread, and is, on the
whole, serviceable.
Besides his books of travel, Bayard
Taylor wrote several poor novels and
other light works but, as he himself la
mented not long ago, neither these nor
his other efforts as an author brought
much to his pecuniary account and lat
terlY were entirely profitless to him.
As a poet, Bayard Raylor covered a
long time and many themes. There
were thirty-four years between the ap-
pearance of his first book of verses and
his volume of "Prince Deukalion," just
now from the pres. Thirty years ago he
was writing ballads and other light
pieces then he turned out his Oriental
poems next his poems of travel; and
then other, and still other poems of one
kind and another. He went into the
business of translation, giving to the
publishers Frithiof's 'Saga," and subse-
quently QS7O) producing an excellent
Eugish verson of Goethe's Faust" All
through his career, his Pegasus was often
used for job work and whether the &C.
casion were the American Centennial,
the Goethe commemoratiOn. or the death
of Br, ant, he was sure to be up to it.
Within the last few years he has been
doug poetical work ofa more ambitious
XII nd than he had previously attempted
and his desire to win a place in the
ranks far above him, and to deal with
themes that only genius should approach,
is seen in "The Masque of ths Gods"
"The Prophet" and "Prince DeukaliOn"
the last MS latest work, an attempt to
record the voice of the ages respecting
the development and destiny of man on
earth.
His grand ambition for some years
past was to write the life of Goethe, aud
he had collected large amount of ma
terial to serve the purpose but he was
about the last man in the world for that
hard job.
In February last Bayard Taylor was
nominated by Hayes as MinIsier to Ger
many, and he reached Berlin In that
capacity in April. The duties of the of
fee are of very slight account; but he
coveted it for literary reasons. Dropsy
was in his system, and has ended his life.
1t looks Ike long career though he
Af mid nar nf