Robert Pollok, a Scottish poet of some note. Born at Muirhouse, Renfrewshire, 1798; died near Southampton, September, 1827.
Oh, who can tell what days, what nights, he spent,
Of tideless, waveless, sailless, shoreless woe!
And who can tell how many glorious once,
To him, of brilliant promise full—wasted,
And pined, and vanished from the earth!
UNWEPT, UNHONORED, AND UNSUNG.
W. F. Poole, LL. D., Librarian of the Newberry Library, Chicago. From "Christopher Columbus," in The Dial for April, 1892. Published by The Dial Company, Chicago.
It had been well for the reputation of Columbus if he had died in 1493, when he returned from his first voyage. He had found a pathway to a land beyond the western ocean; and although he had no conception of what he had discovered, it was the most important event in the history of the fifteenth century. There was nothing left for him to do to increase his renown. A coat-of-arms had been assigned him, and he rode on horseback through the streets of Barcelona, with the King on one side of him and Prince Juan on the other. His enormous claims for honors and emoluments had been granted. His first letter of February, 1493, printed in several languages, had been read in the courts of Europe with wonder and amazement. "What delicious food for an ingenious mind!" wrote Peter Martyr. In England, it was termed "a thing more divine than human." No other man ever rose to such a pinnacle of fame so suddenly; and no other man from such a height ever dropped out of sight so quickly. His three later voyages were miserable failures; a pitiful record of misfortunes, blunders, cruelties, moral delinquencies, quarrels, and impotent complainings. They added nothing to the fund of human knowledge, or to his own. On the fourth voyage he was groping about to find the River Ganges, the great Khan of China, and the earthly paradise. His two subsequent years of disappointment and sickness and poverty were wretchedness personified. Other and more competent men took up the work of discovery, and in thirteen years after the finding of a western route to India had been announced, the name and personality of Columbus had almost passed from the memory of men. He died at Valladolid, May 20, 1506; and outside of a small circle of relatives, his body was committed to the earth with as little notice and ceremony as that of an unknown beggar on its way to the potter's field. Yet the Spanish court was in the town at the time. Peter Martyr was there, writing long letters of news and gossip; and in five that are still extant there is no mention of the sickness and death of Columbus. Four weeks later an official document had the brief mention that "the Admiral is dead." Two Italian authors, making, one and two years later, some corrections pertaining to his early voyages, had not heard of his death.
NEW STAMPS FOR WORLD'S FAIR YEAR.
From the New York Commercial Advertiser.
Third Assistant Postmaster-General Hazen is preparing the designs for a set of "Jubilee" stamps, to be issued by the Postoffice Department in honor of the quadri-centennial. That is, he is getting together material which will suggest to him the most appropriate subjects to be illustrated on these stamps. He has called on the Bureau of American Republics for some of the Columbian pictures with which it is overflowing, and he recently took a big portfolio of them down into the country to examine at his leisure.
One of the scenes to be illustrated, undoubtedly, will be the landing of Columbus. The Convent of La Rábida, where Columbus is supposed to have been housed just before his departure from Spain on his voyage of discovery, will probably be the chief figure of another. The head of Columbus will decorate one of the stamps—probably the popular 2-cent stamp. Gen. Hazen resents the suggestion that the 5-cent, or foreign, stamp be made the most ornate in the collection. He thinks that the American public is entitled to the exclusive enjoyment of the most beautiful of the new stamps.
Besides, the stamps will be of chief value to the Exposition, as they advertise it among the people of America. The Jubilee stamps will be one of the best advertisements the World's Fair will have. It would not be unfair if the Postoffice Department should demand that the managers of the World's Fair pay the additional expense of getting out the new issue. But the stamp collectors will save the department the necessity of doing that.