The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's 'The Spy,' Irving's 'Sketch Book' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' with various other significant volumes, including Channing's early essays and Daniel Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident that a native literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's productions now came into demand, and he had never liked the profession of law, he quitted it and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a living by his pen as "a literary adventurer." The adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not until after a long term of dark prospects and hard struggles.
Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite among his poems--although it is one of the least known--was 'Green River'; perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young manhood, when he was about entering the law, and contrasted the peacefulness of that stream with the life in which he would be
"Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud."
This might be applied to much of his experience in New York, where he edited the New York Review and became one of the editors, then a proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post. A great part of his energies now for many years was given to his journalistic function, and to the active outspoken discussion of important political questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh unpopularity. Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within the next quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had likewise maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced new poems from time to time in various editions.
From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his eighty-fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the enlarging literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a potent reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a strong influence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and tone, as well as the earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in popular questions and national affairs, without political ambition or office-holding, had established him as one of the most distinguished citizens of the metropolis, no less than its most renowned poet. His presence and co-operation were indispensable in all great public functions or humanitarian and intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday was celebrated at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875, again, the two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the compliment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of inviting him to a reception given to him in their official capacity. Another mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy man; yet his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His tastes were simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary and editorial industry unflagging.
Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of the Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as a result of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with various public addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear, calm, dignified, and denotes exact observation and a wide range of interests. So too his editorial articles in the Evening Post, some of which have been preserved in his collected writings, are couched in serene and forcible English, with nothing of the sensational or the colloquial about them. They were a fitting medium of expression for his firm conscientiousness and integrity as a journalist.
But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive compositions, that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remembrance. In the midst of the exacting business of his career as an editor, and many public or social demands upon his time, he found opportunity to familiarize himself with portions of German and Spanish poetry, which he translated, and to maintain in the quietude of his country home in Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with the Greek and Latin classics. From this continued study there resulted naturally in 1870 his elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished blank verse, won high praise from American critics, and even achieved a popular success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England. Among literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years across the literary field, was witness to many new developments in poetic writing, in both his own and other countries. But while he perceived the splendor and color and rich novelty of these, he held in his own work to the plain theory and practice which had guided him from the start. "The best poetry," he still believed--"that which takes the strongest hold of the general mind, not in one age only but in all ages--is that which is always simple and always luminous." He did not embody in impassioned forms the sufferings, emotions, or problems of the human kind, but was disposed to generalize them, as in 'The Journey of Life,' the 'Hymn of the City,' and 'The Song of the Sower,' it is characteristic that two of the longer poems, 'Sella' and 'The Little People of the Snow,' which are narratives, deal with legends of an individual human life merging itself with the inner life of nature, under the form of imaginary beings who dwell in the snow or in water. On the other hand, one of his eulogists observes that although some of his contemporaries went much beyond him in fullness of insight and nearness to the great conflicts of the age, "he has certainly not been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by any writer since Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that self-reliant simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song." In 'Our Country's Call,' however, one hears the ring of true martial enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in 'O Mother of a Mighty Race.' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the typical womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in 'The Conqueror's Grave,' reveals also great underlying warmth and sensitiveness of feeling. 'Robert of Lincoln,' and 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree' are both touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature, which supplies a contrast to his usual pensiveness.
Bryant's venerable aspect in old age--with erect form, white hair, and flowing snowy beard--gave him a resemblance to Homer; and there was something Homeric about his influence upon the literature of his country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic art and the poet's relation to the people.
[All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and Company.]