nd
himself as he is, and the relation of everything in the universe. Such
a moment is fixed for all time in "Thanatopsis."

It would be interesting to know what authors the youthful student read
with most avidity and attention. The influence of Pope is visible in
"The Embargo," as the influence of Wordsworth is visible in
"Thanatopsis." But between the writing of these poems--a space of four
or five years--other poets than those named must have stimulated his
thoughts and colored his style. Cowper, we imagine, was one, and
Akenside, perhaps, another. He may have read Scott, and Southey, and
Coleridge, although there are no traces of either in anything that he
has written. That Wordsworth was more to him at this period than any
other English poet, we have the testimony of the elder Dana. "I shall
never forget," he writes, "with what feeling my friend Bryant, some
years ago, described to me the effect upon him of his meeting for the
first time with Wordsworth's ballads. He lived, when quite young,
where but few works of poetry were to be had; at a period, too, when
Pope was still the great idol of the Temple of Art. He said that, upon
opening Wordsworth, a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in
his heart, and the face of nature, of a sudden, to change into a
strange freshness and life." Wordsworth may have been the master of
Bryant, but it was only as Ramsay was the master of Burns, and Chaucer
of Keats, and Keats himself of Tennyson. That is to say, the disciple
found in the master a kindred spirit. The eyes with which Bryant
looked on nature were his own. Wordsworth never imparted to him "the
vision and the faculty divine." It should be observed, also, that he
was favorably situated in his youth; not like so many poets, in the
heart of a great city, but in the quiet of the country, amid green
fields and woods, in sight of rivers and mountains, and beneath a sky
which was nowhere obstructed by man. The scenery around Cummington is
said to be beautiful, and, immediately around the Bryant homestead, of
a rich pastoral character. It haunted him like a passion from the
beginning, and appeared again and again in his poetry, always with a
fresh and added charm.

After leaving Williams College, Mr. Bryant studied law, first with
Judge Howe, of Washington, and afterward with Mr. William Baylies, of
Bridgewater. Admitted to the bar at Plymouth in 1815, he practised one
year at Plainfield, and then removed to Great Barrin