_Saxe_, _Melville_, _Alice and Phoebe Cary.--_After Bryant it is convenient to speak of a few poets, very different from him, and for the most part from each other, whose contemporaneous presence in New York is almost the only thing that connects them. John G. Saxe (1816-87), a native of Vermont, in his time was counted a leader among satirists. He staggers now under the accusation of extreme superficiality; none the less is he lively and readable. He consciously imitated Hood; he could scarcely avoid imitating Wendell Holmes. Of himself he had a remarkable turn for epigram and for punning in rhyme. His burlesque adaptations of Ovid are smart and amusing. On the whole it may be said that Saxe was at his best in “The Proud Miss MacBride,” where he girds at an upstart aristocracy: Of all the notable things on earth, The queerest one is pride of birth, Among our “fierce Democracie.” Herman Melville (1819-91), who wrote a fascinating account (“Typee,” 1846) of his stay among the aborigines of the Marquesas, also published “Battle-Pieces” (1866) and other poems. His verse is less objective and sincere than his prose. Alice Cary (1820-71) and her sister, Phoebe (1824-71), were born in Ohio, where they were locally appreciated. Removing first to Philadelphia, then to New York, they supported themselves by their pens. The talents of Alice Cary were manifestly superior; yet for a time, yielding to her admiration of Poe, she allowed the element of harmonious sound in her poetry to overbalance that of meaning. Her hymns, one of which is almost a classic, are noble in their purity of sentiment. _Dana_, _Sprague_, _Hillhouse, etc._--Although his life and activity were centred elsewhere, Bryant, as we have seen, was a product of western Massachusetts. From him and the city of his adoption we naturally turn to a number of writers whose careers are to be more closely identified with New England. Many of these, like Richard Henry Dana senior (1787-1879), of Boston, were poets only secondarily. Dana was a journalist and politician--an admirer of Wordsworth and a lecturer on Shakespeare. An edition of his prose and verse in 1833 contained a poem, “The Buccaneer,” inspired by Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” His shorter poems are moral-- Oh, listen, man! A voice within us speaks the startling word, “Man, thou shalt never die”--