To secure the independence and detachment that would enable him to judge measures fairly, Bryant avoided intercourse with public men, kept away from Washington, took no office, and was otherwise singular. In this way he at least secured a free pen. As to the tone of the comments on men in public life, Bryant approved the theory of a brother editor who maintained that nothing should be said which would make it impossible for him who wrote and him who was written about to meet at the same dinner-table the next day. It is not pretended, however, that he was uniformly controlled by this theory. What was the prevailing idea of his journalistic manner may be known from Felton’s review of _The Fountain_, in which he marvels that these beautiful poems can be the work of one ‘who deals with wrath, and dips his pen daily in bitterness and hate....’ Since 1821 no collection of Bryant’s verse had been made. Then after ten years he gathered together eighty-nine pieces, including the eight which had appeared in the pamphlet of 1821, and issued them as _Poems_, 1832. Through the friendly offices of Irving the book was reprinted in England with a dedicatory letter to Samuel Rogers. Notwithstanding favorable notices, both English and American, Bryant was despondent. ‘Poetic wares,’ he said, ‘are not for the market of the present day ... mankind are occupied with politics, railroads, and steamboats.’ But he found it necessary to reprint the volume in 1834 (with additional poems), and again in 1836. His work in prose and verse after 1839 includes _The Fountain and Other Poems_, 1842; _The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems_, 1844; _Poems_, 1847; _Letters of a Traveller_, 1850; _Poems_, 1854; _Letters from Spain_, 1859; _Thirty Poems_, 1864; _Letters from the East_, 1869; _The Iliad of Homer, translated into English blank verse_, 1870; _The Odyssey_, 1871–72; _Orations and Addresses_, 1873; _The Flood of Tears_, 1878. The introduction to the _Library of Poetry and Song_ is from Bryant’s pen, as is also the preface to E. A. Duyckinck’s (still unpublished) edition of Shakespeare. His name appears as one of the authors of _A Popular History of the United States_ (1876), together with that of Sydney Howard Gay, on whom fell the burden of the actual writing. It is unfortunate that no adequate reprint of Bryant’s political leaders has been made. As much ought to be done for him as Sedgwick did for Leggett.