The story of the poet’s life has been told so often, and in volumes so readily accessible to all (the best account is to be found in “Poets’ Homes,” Boston, D. Lothrop Co.), that I do not need to rehearse it in detail. Like the lives of most poets, especially the poets of America, it has not been an eventful one, if by eventful we imply those marvelous achievements or startling changes of fortune that dazzle the world. Yet what more marvelous than that the delicate flower of poetry should be planted in a soil formed by the fusion of such rugged elements as a New England sailing-master and the daughter of a “horse-swapping” deacon? Or that, once planted there, it should have not only survived, but grown and thriven amid the rigors of such an early experience as Stoddard’s? These surely _are_ marvels, but marvels to which mankind was passably accustomed even before Shelley told us that the poet teaches in song only what he has learned in suffering. Mr. Stoddard was born July 2, 1825, at Hingham, Mass., the home of his ancestors since 1638. The Stoddards were seafaring folk; the poet’s father being one of those hardy New England captains whose bones now whiten the mid-sea sands. It was a step-father that brought Richard and his mother to New York; and here the boy had his only schooling and an unpromising practical experience of life. The reading and writing of poetry kept his soul alive during these dark days, and his achievements did not fail of appreciation. Poe paid him the back-handed compliment of pronouncing a poem he had written too good to be original; while N. P. Willis more directly encouraged him to write. So also did Park Benjamin, Lewis Gaylord Clarke, and Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland. But the first friendship formed with a writer of his own age resulted from a call on Bayard Taylor--already the author of “Views Afoot” and one of the editors of the _Tribune_,--who had accepted some verses of the poet’s, and who was, later on, the means of making him acquainted with another young poet and critic--the third member of a famous literary trio. This was Edmund Clarence Stedman, a younger man than the other two by eight years or so; then (in 1859) but twenty-six years old, though he had already made himself conspicuous by “The Diamond Wedding” and “How Old Brown took Harper’s Ferry.” With Taylor Mr. Stoddard’s intimacy continued till the death of that distinguished traveler, journalist, poet, translator and Minister to Germany; with Stedman his friendship is still unbroken. He has had many friends, and many are left to him, but none have stood closer than these in the little circle in which he is known as “Dick.”