The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-07-26
Bryant.

There is probably no eminent man in
the country upon whose life and genius
aud career the verdict of his fellow
citizens would be more immediate and
unanimous. His character and life had
simplicity and austerity of outline that
had become universally familiar, like
neighboring mountain or the sea. His
convictions were very strong, and his
temper uncOmprOmising; he was in
dependent beyond most Americans. He
was an editor and partisan but he
held policies and all other things sub
ordinate to the truth and the common
welfare, and his earnestness and sim
cerity and freedom from selfish ends
took the sting of personality from his
opposition, and constantly placa'ed all
who, like him, sought lofty and virtuous
objects. Those who watched the char
acter of his inf fence upon Public af-
fairs, and who saw him daily moving
among us venerable citizen noiselessly
going his way, as they marked the hot
and bitter strife of politics, could not
but recall the picture by the French
painter Couture of the Decadence of
r me-" in which the grave figure of the
older Roman stands softly contemplate
ing the riotous license and luxury of q
later day. Bryant carried with him the
mien ard the atmosphere OF antique
public virtue. He seemed a living en-
bodiment of that simplicity and severity
and dignity which we associate with the
old republics. A wise stranger would
have called him q man nurtured in re-
publican air upon republican tradition.
We do not mean that he regarded his
country with the sorrowful despair of
the old Roman in the picture. His
faith in the Government and in the peo-
pc was firm. Indeed, he was SO much
natural republican t. at he would have
been the last to doubt. This same bent
OF nature showed itself in the char, cter
of his verse. His poetry is intensely
and distipctively American. He was a
man of scholarly accomplishments ia
miliar with other languages and htera-
ture. But there is no tone or taste of
anything not peculiarly American ia his
poetry. 1t is as characteristic as the
wine of the Catawba grape, and could
have been written only in Anne RIGA by
an American naturally SENSITIVE to what
ever is most distinctively American.
AS Dr. Bellows said at his funeral,
Bryant's was singularly fortunate and
complete life. Few men who are very
precocious live to old age, or live to be
old with constantly increasing fame.
And his fame grew not by the greater
popularity or charm of his work, but by
the answering fidelity of his life. Bry-
ants fame as poet was made half cent
ury before he died, and the additions to
his earlier verse, while they dill not les
sen, did not materially increase his repu-
tation. But the mark 80 easily made
was never effaced, either by himself or
others.
There was something in his manner
of the New England hills among which
he was born-a little stern and bleak
and dry, although suffused with the
tender and scentless splendor of the
white laurel, solemn with primeval pines,
and musical with the organ soughs of the
wind through their branches. But this
reserve was not forbiddinq, and there
was always kindness with all thu dryness
Of his manner. Indeed, his manner was
only expressive of that independence
which largely made him what he was.
He stood quietly and firmly on his own
feet. His op mons were his own conclu-
sions, and he made no compromises to
save his reputation for consistency, or
to secure immunity from criticism, or to
retail the sympathy of associates. He,
too, was one of the men who are able to
go alone, and who can say No. The cob
webs of sophistry which the spiders OF
fear and ambition in a thousand forms
spin around the plain path of duty, tc
conceal or to deter, he 80 un CONSCIOUSLY
and surely brushed away that at last il
came to be understood that his course
would be not what his party expected Oh
what miscalled consistency required
but simply what SEEM d to him to be the
right c,urse.-Harper's Magazine 70,
august.