To what extent the poet was indebted to the Pike balladry that had preceded his first work, at least so far as wide publication in Northern magazines was concerned, is not easily determined. It seems extremely probable that he had seen it. Lanier, as has been shown, had published negro dialect poetry in _Scribner's_ nearly a year before Russell, but whoever was pioneer, the author of "Christmas-night in the Quarters" was the one who first caught the attention of the reading public and exerted the greatest influence upon the period. He undoubtedly was the leading pioneer. Page and Gordon dedicated their _Befo' de War_ "To Irwin Russell, who awoke the first echo," and Joel Chandler Harris, manifestly an authority, declared that "Irwin Russell was among the first--if not the very first--of Southern writers to appreciate the literary possibilities of the negro character, and of the unique relations existing between the two races before the war, and was among the first to develop them."[130] In the last year of his life Russell, encouraged by the reception of his magazine poems, went to New York to make literature his profession. Bunner, the editor of _Puck_, and Gilder and Robert Underwood Johnson of the _Century_ staff, and others, recognized his ability, and gave him every encouragement possible. One of the most prominent of the poets of the older school, it may be remarked, also became interested in him and urged him to drop the ephemeral type of verse to which he had addicted himself and devote his talents to really serious work. For a brief period he obeyed, with what success one may judge from the poems at the end of his volume. Success came too late. His friends were powerless to control his wayward genius. His frail constitution gave way. From a bed of fever he arose still half delirious, staggered to the docks, engaged to work his way on a New Orleans boat as a coal-heaver, and in New Orleans secured a position on the _Times_. But the end was near. To a member of the _Times_ staff he opened his heart in words that might have come from Poe: It has been the romance of a weak young man threaded in with the pure love of a mother, a beautiful girl who hoped to be my wife, and friends who believed in my future. I have watched them lose heart, lose faith, and again and again I have been so stung and startled that I have resolved to save myself in spite of myself.... I never shall.[131] He died a few weeks later. VIII The value of Russell's work depends not so much upon the poetic quality of it as upon the faithfulness and the skill with which he has portrayed the negro. Within this narrow field he has had no superior. Harris has summed it up thus: