learned that letters were foregone, not only inter arma, but for a long
while afterward. Those were the days when English went untaught, and
when publishers were more afraid of poetry than they now are of verse.
Yet here is one who was able to live through it all, and now sees a
changed condition, to the evolution of which he contributed his full
share. But he is no more a child of the past than of the present, nor
need he repine like Cato, as one who has to account for himself to a new
generation. He is with us and of us, and in the working ranks, as ever.

For all this he began long enough ago to have his early poetry refused
by Poe, because it was too good to be the work of an obscure stripling,
and to have had Hawthorne for his sponsor and friend. His youth showed
again how much more inborn tendency has to do with one's life than any
external forces--such as guardianship, means, and what we call
education. The thrush takes to the bough, wheresoever hatched and
fledged. Many waters cannot quench genius, neither can the floods drown
it. The story of Dickens's boyhood, as told by himself, is not more
pathetic--nor is its outcome more beautiful--than what we know of our
guest's experiences--his orphanage, his few years' meagre schooling, his
work as a boy in all sorts of shifting occupations, the attempt to make
a learned blacksmith of him, his final apprenticeship to iron-moulding,
at which he worked on the East Side from his eighteenth to his
twenty-first year. As Dr. Griswold put it, he began to mould his
thoughts into the symmetry of verse while he moulded the molten metal
into shapes of grace. Mr. Stoddard, however, says that a knowledge of
foundries was not one of the learned Doctor's strong points. Yet the
young artisan somehow got hold of books, and not only made poetry, but
succeeded in showing it to such magnates as Park Benjamin and Willis.
The kindly Willis said that he had brains enough to make a reputation,
but that "writing was hard work to do, and ill paid when done." But the
youth was bound to take the road to Arcady. He asked for nothing better
than this ill-paid craft. His passion for it, doubtless was strengthened
by his physical toil and uncongenial surroundings. For one I am not
surprised that much of his early verse, which is still retained in his
works, breathes the spirit of Keats, though where and how this strayed
singer came to study that most perfect and delicate of masters none but
himself c