Bryant brought to his editorship a culture such as American journalism had not seen before, and has not since seen surpassed. A writer in Fraser’s Magazine in 1855 made sport of the ignorance of American newspapers. He cited the Herald’s statement, in a criticism of Racine’s “Phedre,” that “the language is written in what we call blank verse”; and its translation of a tag from Virgil: “Adsum qui feci; he or me must perish.” His sweeping criticism was unjust to a profession which already enlisted men like Richard Hildreth, Richard Grant White, and George Ripley, but Bryant, with his international reputation, was the most shining exception to it. His readers thought nothing of seeing an editorial on the United States Bank begin with an allusion to the episode of Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil, some story drawn from the legal lore he had mastered at the bar, or an apt quotation from the wide range of English poetry. His allusions and illustrations were always deft. “Like the misshapen dwarf in the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’” he said of the anti-Jacksonians in 1833, “they wave their lean arms on high and run to and fro crying, ‘Lost! Lost! Lost!’” When Cass objected to any “temporary” measures regarding slavery in the territories, Bryant simply retold the story of Swift’s servant, who did not clean his master’s shoes because they would soon be dirty again; whereupon the Dean punished him by making him go without breakfast, because he would soon be hungry again.
The editor read assiduously. His wide acquaintance with the most intellectual men of New York kept him conversant with the latest ideas in every field. Above all, at a time when few journalists went abroad, his many trips to Europe supplied him with a constant fund of suggestions for civic and other improvements. These ranged from penny postage to street cleaning machines, from apartment houses to police uniforms, and from Central Park to the nickel five-cent piece, which, in imitation of a German coin, he was one of the first to advocate.
Bryant’s insistence upon purity of diction was such that John Bigelow believed that in all his writings for the Post fewer blemishes could be found than in the first ten numbers of the Spectator. His sensitiveness as to literary form was fully developed when he joined the paper. On May 11, 1827, he published in it a paragraph on affectations of expression, condemning such barbarisms in current newspapers as “consolate.” The most famous evidence of his love of precision was his index expurgatorius. This was less extensive than it was sometimes represented to be, containing but eighty-six words or phrases; and as Bryant told George Cary Eggleston, it was for the guidance only of immature staff writers, and might sometimes be overstepped. It includes inflated words like inaugurate for begin, misemployed words like mutual for common, and along with some terms now used without hesitation, others universally condemned:
Above and over (for more than); Artiste (for artist); Aspirant; Authoress; Beat (for defeat); Bagging (for capturing); Balance (for remainder); Banquet (for dinner or supper); Bogus; Casket (for coffin); Claimed (for asserted); Commence (for begin); Collided; Compete; Cortege (for procession); Cotemporary (for contemporary); Couple (for two); Darkey (for negro); Day before yesterday (for the day before yesterday); Début; Decease; Democracy (applied to a political party); Develop (for expose); Devouring element (for fire); Donate; Employee; Enacted (for acted); Endorse (for approve); En Route; “Esq.”; Graduate (for is graduated); Gents (for gentlemen); Hon. House (for House of Representatives); Humbug; Inaugurate (for begin); In our midst; Item (for particle, extract, or paragraph); Is being done, and all passives of this form; Jeopardise; Jubilant (for rejoicing); Juvenile (for boy); Lady (for wife); Last (for latest); Lengthy (for long); Leniency (for lenity); Loafer; Loan or loaned (for lend or lent); Located; Majority (relating to places or circumstances, for most); Mrs. President, Mrs. Governor, Mrs. General, and all similar titles; Mutual (for common); Official (for officer); Ovation; On yesterday; Over his signature; Pants (for pantaloons); Parties (for persons); Partially (for partly); Past two weeks (for last two weeks, and all similar expressions relating to a definite time); Poetess; Portion (for part); Posted (for informed); Progress (for advance); Quite (prefixed to good, large, etc.); Raid (for attack); Realized (for obtained); Reliable (for trustworthy); Rendition (for performance); Repudiate (for reject); Retire (as an active verb); Rev. (for the Rev.); Role (for part); Roughs; Rowdies; Secesh; Sensation (for noteworthy event); Standpoint (for point of view); Start (in the sense of setting out); State (for say); Talent (for talents or ability); Talented; Tapis; The deceased; War (for dispute).
Bryant was frequently called upon to decide nice questions of English, which he did with care; during the Civil War he took time, in answer to a query regarding the superlative, to dig up ancient instances like Milton’s “virtuousest, discreetest, best.” He has recorded his judgment that from newspaper writing a man’s style gains in clearness and fluency, but is likely to become loose, diffuse, and stuffed with bad diction. He always insisted upon simplicity as the sole foundation of a fine style. Once the Post received a letter from a servant girl so clear and precise that Bryant had her sought out to learn how she could write so well. She explained that she used no expression of whose meaning she was not certain; that if at first she did so, she later struck it out and substituted a simpler word or phrase. Bryant held this procedure to be a model for reporters.
Parke Godwin, writing Charles A. Dana in 1845 that the best all-round editor in America was Greeley, added that Bryant “is by all odds the most varied and beautiful writer.” He here touched one of Bryant’s most distinctive merits as an editor. Bryant could not argue with more force than Greeley, or with the incisiveness and point of E. L. Godkin; but when moved by a great event, he wrote with an eloquence which no other editor ever attempted. The springs that fed his poetry fed this mastery of elevated prose. Any one who will study the fine rhetorical effects of his first great poem, “Thanatopsis,” or of one of his last, “The Flood of Years,” will understand what effects he sometimes wrought in the editorial columns of the Evening Post. Opening soberly though on a high plane, his more impassioned editorials would rise to a splendid climax. He did not use his grand style too frequently, but during the Civil War he employed it again and again. Thus he wrote July 6, 1863, upon the “three glorious days” at Vicksburg and Gettysburg:
Many a gallant spirit lies silent forever on the bloody field; many peaceful homes are instantly made desolate; our hearts go forth in sorrow to the fallen and in condolence to the bereaved; but this is the eternal glory of those who have perished, as of those who mourn their deaths, that they have given their lives in the noblest cause in which man was ever called to suffer. They have died for a country which is worthy of the blood of its citizens; for the integrity and honor of a government in which the dearest rights of millions are involved; and for the great principles of human freedom and human justice, in which the world and ages to come are deeply interested. Nowhere else could they have earned a more glorious renown, for nowhere else could they have contributed a better service to humanity.
Again, we find him hailing the doom of the Confederacy (Dec. 5, 1864):
In the tone of that pristine rebel whom the great poet makes to exclaim, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” these proud and insolent spirits disdained to brook their fate, and flew to revolt. A new slave empire, a new semi-tropical nation, a grand aristocracy of white masters, was to be built around the Gulf of Mexico, our western Mediterranean, but alas for these dreams of ambition, the throne of Maximilian casts its shadow over one end of their prospective dominion, and the tread of Sherman’s soldiers shakes the other into dust.
But the foundation of Bryant’s power as an editor lay simply in his soundness of judgment, and his unwavering courage in maintaining it. The greatest peril of the profession, he wrote in 1851, “is the strong temptation which it sets before men, to betray the cause of truth to public opinion, and to fall in with what are supposed to be the views held by a contemporaneous majority, which are sometimes perfectly right and sometimes grossly wrong.” That peril was greater in Bryant’s day than now, for the comparative smallness and homogeneity of the reading public made it more dangerous to incur the general displeasure. He never yielded in the slightest degree to it; and the number of instances in which his view of public questions became the view taken by history is remarkable. The Evening Post’s defense of trade unions, and of the abolitionists’ right to free use of the mails and to free speech, are memorable illustrations. Just before the Civil War began Bryant ran over in the Post a list of its measures, at first opposed by the majority, but later accepted as sound. It was for many years the only powerful journal north of the Potomac which pleaded for a low tariff. It resisted the internal improvement system, advocated the sub-treasury system, and defended the right of petition. It successfully opposed the assumption of State debts by the national government. It was one of the earliest and most earnest advocates of cheaper postage rates, already partly realized. When the Fugitive Slave law had been proposed, it had denounced it as an infringement of the rights of the States, though most Northerners regarded it with indifference or approbation. As for the great slavery question in general, Bryant had already written just after Lincoln’s election: