WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
In a fragment of autobiography which Mr. Bryant left among his papers, he speaks thus of his childhood:—
"So my time passed in study, diversified with labor and recreation. In the long winter evenings and the stormy winter days I read with my brother books from my father's library,—not a large one, but well chosen. I remember well the delight with which we welcomed the translation of the Iliad by Pope when it was brought to the house. I had met with passages from it before, and thought them the finest verses ever written. My brother and myself, in emulation of ancient heroes, made for ourselves wooden shields, swords, and spears, and fashioned old hats in the shape of helmets, with plumes of tow; and in the barn, when nobody observed us, we fought the battles of the Greeks and Trojans over again.
"I was always, from my earliest years, a delighted observer of external nature,—the splendors of a winter daybreak over the wide wastes of snow seen from our windows; the glories of the autumnal woods; the gloomy approaches of the thunderstorm, and its departure amid sunshine and rainbows; the return of spring with its flowers; and the first snowfall of winter. I cannot say, as some do, that I found my boyhood the happiest part of my life. I had more frequent ailments than afterward; my hopes were more feverish and impatient, and my disappointments were more acute; the restraints on my liberty of action, although meant for my good, were irksome, and felt as fetters that galled my spirit and gave it pain. After-years, if their pleasures had not the same zest, were passed in more contentment, and the more freedom of choice I had, the better, on the whole, I enjoyed life."
Among the prayers of his childhood he mentions that he often prayed that he might be endowed with poetic genius, and write verses which should endure. And he began at a very early age to make attempts in this direction, which seem somewhat less crude than the mass of such productions. He was taught Latin by the Rev. Thomas Snell, his uncle, and Greek by the Rev. Moses Hallock, a neighboring minister, who boarded and instructed him for a dollar a week. He continued his studies at Williams College, although he never was graduated, being taken from college from motives of economy.
The town of Cummington, where he was born, is a little hamlet among the hills in Hampshire County in western Massachusetts. The country around is mountainous, and the valleys very beautiful. The poet was always much attached to the region, and when he had become an old man bought the old family home and fitted it up as a summer residence, where he used to gather together the remaining members of the family, and enjoy himself highly in exploring the country round about as he had done in the days of his boyhood. Many stories are told of his pedestrian feats, even after he was seventy-five years old; and he sometimes walked ten or twelve miles when in his eightieth year. He retained his boyish love for plants and flowers, and was as enthusiastic as in youth over a rare specimen or a beautiful bit of landscape. He further evinced his interest in the old home by presenting the town with a fine library of six thousand volumes, and building a suitable house for its accommodation upon a beautiful site which he purchased for that purpose.