POEMS BY S. G. GOODRICH[8]
For the last twenty years the name of Mr. Goodrich has been very constantly associated with American literature. He commenced as a publisher, in Boston, and was among the first to encourage by liberal copyrights, and to make attractive by elegant editions, the works of American authors. One of his earliest undertakings was a collection of the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, with a memoir of that author, by his widow, with whom he shared the profits. In 1828 he began "The Token," an annual literary souvenir, which he edited and published fourteen years. In this appeared the first fruits of the genius of Cheney, who has long been acknowledged the master of American engravers; and the first poems and prose writings of Longfellow, Willis, Mellen, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Sigourney, and other eminent authors. In "The Token" also were printed his own earlier lyrical pieces. The work was of the first rank in its class, and in England as well as in this country it was uniformly praised.
In 1831 an anonymous romance was published by Marsh & Capen, of Boston. It was attributed by some to Willis, and by others to Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis. It illustrated a fine and peculiar genius, but was soon forgotten. Mr. Goodrich appreciated its merits, and applied to the publishers for the name of the author, that he might engage him as a contributor to "The Token." They declined to disclose his secret, but offered to forward a letter to him. Mr. Goodrich wrote one, and received an answer signed by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many of whose best productions, as "Sights from a Steeple," "Sketches under an Umbrella," "The Prophetic Pictures," "Canterbury Pilgrims," &c., appeared in this annual. In 1839, Mr. Goodrich suggested to Mr. Hawthorne the publication of a collection of his tales, surrendering his copyrights to several of them for this purpose; but so little were the extraordinary qualities of this admirable author then understood, that the publishers would not venture upon such an experiment without an assurance against loss, which Mr. Goodrich, as his friend, therefore gave. The public judgment will be entitled to little respect, if the copyright of the works of Hawthorne be not hereafter a most ample fortune.
Mr. Goodrich soon abandoned the business of publishing, and, though still editing "The Token," devoted his attention chiefly to the writing of that series of educational works, known as Peter Parley's, which has spread his fame over the world. The whole number of these volumes is about sixty. Among them are treatises upon a great variety of subjects, and they are remarkable for simplicity of style and felicity of illustration. Mr. Goodrich has accomplished a complete and important revolution in juvenile reading, substituting truth and nature for grotesque fiction in the materials and processes of instruction, and his method has been largely imitated, at home and abroad. In England many authors and publishers have disgraced the literary profession by works under the name of "Parley," with which he has had nothing to do, and which have none of his wise and genial spirit.
Besides his writings under this pseudonym, Mr. Goodrich has produced several works of a more ambitious character, which have been eminently popular. Among them is a series entitled "The Cabinet Library," embracing histories, biographies, and essays in science; "Universal Geography," in an octavo volume of one thousand pages; and a "History of all Nations," in two large octavos, in which he has displayed such research, analysis, and generalization, as should insure for him an honorable rank among historians. We cannot better illustrate his popularity than by stating the fact, that more than four hundred thousand volumes of his various productions are now annually sold in this country and Europe. No living writer is, therefore, as much read, and in the United States hardly a citizen now makes his first appearance at the polls, or a bride at the altar, to whose education he has not in a large degree contributed. For twenty years he has preserved the confidence of parents and teachers of every variety of condition and opinion, by the indefectible morality and strong practical sense, which are universally understood and approved.
Like many other eminent persons, Mr. Goodrich lets sought occasional relaxation from the main pursuits of his life in poetry, and the volume before us contains some forty illustrations of his abilities, as a worshipper of the muse whose temples are most thronged, but who is most coy and most chary of her inspiration. They have for the most part been previously printed in "The Token," or in literary journals, but a few are now published the first time. In typographical and pictorial elegance the book is unique. It is an exhibition of the success of the first attempt to rival the London and Paris publishers in woodcut embellishment and general beauty of execution.
That Mr. Goodrich possesses the poetical faculty in an eminent degree, no one has doubted who has read his fine lines "To Lake Superior:"
Father of Lakes! thy waters bend,
Beyond the eagle's utmost view,
When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send
Back to the sky its world of blue.