Richard Watson Gilder was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1844. He studied there in Bellevue Seminary, founded by his father, intending to practice law. He was in brief active service during the war when Pennsylvania was invaded. On his father's death he entered journalistic work, first with two Newark newspapers and then with _Hours at Home_ in New York. From its founding in 1870 he was associate editor of the old _Scribner's Monthly_ (since 1881 _The Century_) and from 1881 was its editor in chief. He became increasingly important in New York as contributor to civic welfare, and at the same time held his own as editor and poet. Thus he was first president of the Kindergarten Association of New York and a founder of the Authors' Club. He was identified with the leading agencies for cultural and humanitarian ends, was in demand as laureate on special occasions, and was recipient of many honorary degrees. Gilder was almost exclusively a lyric poet. His units are very brief,--there are more than five hundred in the one-volume "Complete" edition,--very few extending to the one hundred lines ordained by Poe. Even among lyrics, moreover, he set distinct boundaries to his field. Among his metropolitan fellows--Taylor, Stoddard, Aldrich, Stedman, and the others--he was notable in not writing imitative and reminiscent poetry. These men must have been rather definitely in the back of his mind when he wrote: Some from books resound their rhymes-- Set them ringing with a faint, Sorrowful, and sweet, and quaint Memory of the olden times, Like the sound of evening chimes. And too many of his contemporaries did not follow as well as he the admonition, Tell to the wind Thy private woes, but not to human ear. There was still a world of beauty left for him, first of all in songs of love. It is a chaste and disembodied passion that he celebrated in frequent groups of song. The lady is a delight to the eye, modest, timid, and yet all-generous; the lover eager, gentle, adoring, and inspired to nobility. What Gilder recorded in one of the earliest of these lyrics seems in large measure to hold true of them all. After an enumeration of the lady's charms and the charm she bestowed upon earth and sky, he continued: I love her doubting and anguish; I love the love she withholds; I love my love that loveth her And anew her being molds. A poet of so rarefied a sentiment as this hangs on the brink of sentimentalism, but Gilder seldom fell over, for his nicety of feeling could not easily be led into mawkishness.