But newspaper humor usually perishes with the flimsy leaves upon which it is recorded. Not until Field had written "Little Boy Blue" in 1887 did he become at all known to the reading public. The publication of the popular editions of A Little Book of Profitable Tales and A Little Book of Western Verse in 1890, only five years before his death, marks, perhaps, the time of his general acceptation as a writer. Hardly had the public learned to know him before they were called upon to mourn his early death. Indeed, the work by which he is now best known was done almost all of it in the last six or seven years of his life. It was only in this brief later period that he was a "bibliomaniac" or a lover of Horace or a student of the old English ballads.
One must classify Eugene Field first of all as a humorist, one of the leading figures in that nondescript school of newspaper comedians that has played such a part in the history of the period. To a personality as high spirited and as whimsical as Artemus Ward's he added the brilliancy of a Locker-Lampson and the improvidence of a Goldsmith as well as the kindly heart. Seriousness seemed foreign to his nature: his life was a perpetual series of hoaxes and practical jokes and hilarious sallies. No one has surpassed him in the making of parodies, of rollicking paraphrases and adaptations, in skilful blendings of modern and antique, in clever minglings of seriousness and humor. He was a maker of brilliant trifles and sparkling non sequiturs. His irreverence is really startling at times. He can make the Odes of Horace seem fit material for the funny column of a Chicago daily newspaper:
Boy, I detest the Persian pomp;
I hate those linden-bark devices;
And as for roses, holy Moses!
They can't be got at living prices!
Myrtle is good enough for us,—
For you, as bearer of my flagon;
For me, supine beneath this vine,
Doing my best to get a jag on!
He is boon companion of the old Sabine poet. He slaps him on the back and invites him to all kinds of costly revelry, assuring him that Mæcenas will pay the freight. And Horace by no means takes offense. He is a congenial soul.
I might discourse
Till I was hoarse
Upon the cruelties of Venus;
'T were waste of time
As well as rime,
For you've been there yourself, Mæcenas!
In the presence of such an incorrigible joker the reader feels always that he must be on his guard. One is never safe. Leafing the pages of the large collected edition of the poems, glancing over the Bret Harte echoes like "Casey's Table D'Hôte," smiling at such outrageous nonsense as "The Little Peach" and "The Onion Tart," one suddenly draws a sharp breath. At last the heart of Eugene Field:
Upon a mountain height, far from the sea,
I found a shell,
And to my listening ear the lonely thing
Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,
Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.
* * * * *
Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep,
One song it sang,—
Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide,—
Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.