The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-02-15
SATURDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY Is
Gossip about Authors.

A Boston author can chase his hat on a
windy dav in thirteen different languages,
Hon. Alexander Il. Stephens is said to be
the best whist-plsyer now in Congress, and the
author of the article on that game in Johnson'5
Encyclopedia.
Mr.. Howells'5 story of the "Lady of the Aroo-
stock" will be finished In the next number of
the Atlantic, and Mark Twain will have q pa
per on the unifcaton of Pitoairn's Island.
With George Eliot at work on a Positive
Philosophy and Tennyson constructing another
dramatic poem, we have two of the literary
lights of the world pretty thoroughly shaded
fJr the present.
At Leipsic, Germany, memorial service has
been held in honor of the late Biyard Taylor,
under the auspices of the Cosmopolitan Club.
The American consul presided over the meet
ing. The exercises consisted mainly in appro-
pirate singing by the Topographic" musical
society composed of typographers. and memo
rial address in German, BY Mr.. Ernst Hsynel,
secretary OF the club. An appreciative sonnet
by the celebrated German poet Muller Won der
Werra was read, and a consolatory address
sent to Mrs. Taylor at Berlin.
The London Saturday Review, in noticing
new translation of the Second Part of ''Fsust,"
says: 'Mr. Bayard Taylor, 10 whose
premature death literature has just suffered
loss, has rendered the whole poem in English
wonderfully close and wonderfully free from
strain and harshuess. Line for line, and
metre for metre he followed Ge.he's way
otherwise than victorious; labor SO great
that no man could have hoped for success who
had not in himself enough of the poetic spirit
to undertake it as labor of love. Bayard
Of the most remarkable feats of translation
achieved In any modern languages"
Longfelow did not get $4,000 $3.50 per lipe)
for the "HangiDg of the Crane" He got
$1,000 1t was originally offered to the Atlantic
Monthly and accepted, at a compensation of
$3.50. Then Bonner made the author an offer
of $1,000 for poem of this length for the Ladg-
er, the publishers of the Atlantic appreciating
the circumstances, released it to the author
He received $500 in addition for the use of it
for public reading purposes before it appeared
10 print. Some of the best of Longfellow's
earlier poems were sold to Grabam's Magazine
for small sums. Except the Kuickerbocker,
which did not pay much, and for which Long
fellow did not write, there were then no other
periodicals that paid for poetry.
Among the many shrewd hits made by
Lowell in his "Fable for Critics" thirty years
ago, few are more apt whether considered as
ard Henry Dana, whose poetic power be al
lowed and the limit of whose performance he
recognized. As rule the judgments ic this
''Fsble" are wonderfully just:
Here comes Dana abstractedly lettering along,
Involved in a paulo-post-future OF song
Who'll be going to write what'll never be written
Till the Muse ere he thinks oft, gives him the nit
ten
Who is so well aware how things should be done
That his own works dspease him before they're be-
gun
Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows,
That the best OF his poems Is written in prose;
All saddled and bridled stood Pegasas waiting,
He was booted and spurrei but he loitered de-
batting;
In a very grave question his soul was immersed
Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first;
And, while this point aud that he judcially dwelt
on,
He, somehow or other, had written Paul FELTON,,
Whose beauties faults whatsoever you see there
You'll allow only genius could hit upon either.
That he was the Idle Man none will deplore,
But fear he will never be anything more:
The ocean Of song heaves and gliLters before him.
The depth and the vastness and longing sweep DER
him;
He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart,
He has the Coast Pilot and SO on by heart,
Yet he spends his whole life, like the maa in the
fable,
In learning to swim on his library table.