Year: 1878

-
called on Mrs. Grant.


Bryant.


lHarper's Magazine for August.1


There is probably no eminent man in
the country upon whose life and genius
and career the verdict of his fellow
citizens would be more immediate and
unanimous. His character and life
had simplicity and austerity of out
line that had become universally
familiar, like a neighboring mountain
of the sea. His convictions were very
strong, and his temper uncompromisipg
he wasindependent beyond most Ameri-
cans. He was an editor and partisan
but he held politics and all other things
subordinate to the truth and the COM
mon welfare, and his earnestness and
sincerity and freedom from selfish ends
took the sting of personality from his
opposition, and constantly placated all
who, like him, sought lofty and virtuous
objects. Those who watched the char
acter of his influence 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
Rome," in which the grave figure of the
older Roman stands softly contemplate
ing the riotous license and luxury of a
later day. Bryant carried with him the
mien and 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 a 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-
pie was firm. Indeed, he was SO much
a natural republican that he would have
been the last to doubt. This same bent
of nature showed itself in the character
of his verse. His poetry is intensely
and distinctively American. He was a
man of scholarly accomplishments,
familiar with other languages and litera-
ture. But there is no tone or taste of
any thing not peculiarly American in
his poetry. 1t is as characteristic as the
wine of the Catawba grape, and could
have been written only in America by
an American naturally sensitive to
whatever is most distinctively American.


As DR.. Bellows said at his funeral,
Bryant's was a 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 unswerving fidelity of his life.
Bryant's fame as poet was made half
a century before he died, and the ad-
ditions to his earlier verse, while they
did not lessen, did not materially in
crease, his reputation. But the mark so
early made was never effaced, either by
himself or others. Younger men grew
by his side into great and just fame.
But what Shelley says of love is as true
Of renown:


'True love differs from gold and clay,


That to divide is not to take away"
The tone of Bryant remained, and re-
mained distinct, individual, and unmis.
taxable. Nature, as he said in "Thana.
topsis," speaks I" a various language" to
her lovers. But what she said to him
was plainly spoken and clearly heard
and perfectly repeated. His art was
absolutely unsuspected, but it served its
truest purpose, for it removed every OBJ
structiOn to full and complete delivery
of his message.


He was reserved in manner. and in NJ
sense magnetic or responsive. Lowell
in the Fable for Critics." gayly put!
into sparkling rhyme the general i'm
preston of the man and his character
and DR.. Bellows comedies " the snow
that seemed to invest him. There wal
something in his manner of the New
England hills among which he was bor1
"a little stern and bleak and dry, al
though suffused with the tender an(
scentless splendor of the white laurel
solemn with primeval pines, and musi
cal with the organ soughs of the winC
through their branches. But this re
serve was not forbidding, and there wa
always kindness with all the dryness o
his manner. Indeed, his manner wa
only expressive of that independence
which largely made him what he was
He stood quietly and firmly on his owl
feet. His opinions were his own conclu
sions, and he made no compromises t
save his reputation for consistency. o
to secure immunity from criticism, o
to retain the sympathy of associates
He, too, was one of the men who ar
able to go alone, and who can say no.
The cobwebs of sophistry which tn
spiders of fear and ambition in a thor
sand forms spin around the plain pat
of duty, to conceal or to deter, he so III
consciously and surely brushed ava
that at last it came to be understoo
that his course would be not what h
party expected or what miscalled col
sistency required, but simply VIII,
seemed to him to be the right course.