"Dar's gwine to be a' oberflow," said Noah, lookin' solemn-- Fur Noah tuk the _Herald_, an' he read de ribber column-- An' so he sot his hands to wuk a-cl'arin' timber-patches, An' 'lowed he's gwine to build a boat to beat the steamah _Natchez_. All the characteristics of the negro are touched upon with the certainty of perfect knowledge: his superstitions, his ignorance of the world, his awe of legal terms, his humor, his simple trust in his religion, his childlike attitude toward nature, his habit of addressing sententious language to his beasts of burden as if they understood all he said, his conceit, and his firm belief in immortality. Russell was one of the pioneers of the new era which had as its most marked characteristic the use of American themes and backgrounds and absolute truth to American life. No section of the social era was too lowly or unknown for him to take as material for his art. He could even plan to write a negro novel with all of its characters negroes and write the first chapters. Little, however, that he planned ever came to completion. The thin volume of poems published after his death was but a fragment of what he might have written under happier conditions. As it is, he must, like Lanier, be treated as one of those brief excited lives that are found ever at the opening of new romantic eras--Novalis, Chatterton, Burns, Keats--poets who left behind only fragments of what might have been, but who influenced enormously the writers that were to be. BIBLIOGRAPHY PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE. (1830-1886.) _Poems_, Boston, 1855; _Sonnets and Other Poems_, 1857; _Avolio: A Legend of the Island of Cos_, 1860; _Legends and Lyrics_, Philadelphia, 1872; _The Mountain of the Lovers, with Poems of Nature and Tradition_, 1875; _Life of Robert Young Hayne_, 1878; _Life of Hugh Swinton Legare_, 1878; Complete edition of the Poems with a sketch by Margaret J. Preston, 1882. HENRY TIMROD. (1829-1867.) _Poems_, Boston, 1860; Complete edition of the Poems with biographical introduction of 60 pages by Paul Hamilton Hayne, 1872; Poems of Henry Timrod, 1901.