It was in 1870 that Mr. Stoddard lost his position in the Custom House. Shortly afterwards he became a clerk in the New York Dock Department, under Gen. McClellan; and, in 1877, Librarian of the City Library--an anomalous position, better suited to his tastes and capabilities in title than in fact, since the Library is a library only in name, its shelves being burdened with books that would have come under Lamb’s most cordial ban. The librarianship naturally came to an end in not more than two years. Since then, or about that date, Mr. Stoddard has been the literary editor of _The Mail and Express_--a position in which he has found it hard to do his best work, perhaps, but in which he has at least given a literary tone to the paper not common to our dailies. He has also been an occasional contributor to _The Critic_ since its foundation; until recently he was a leading review-writer for the _Tribune_; and he is still to be found now and then in the poets’ corner of _The Independent_. Of the books he has written or edited it is unnecessary to give the list; it can be found in almost any biographical dictionary. The volume on which his fame will rest is his “Poetical Works,” published by the Scribners. It contains some of the most beautiful lyrics and blank-verse ever written in America--some of the most beautiful written anywhere during the poet’s life-time. His verse is copious in amount, rich in thought, feeling, and imagination, simple and sensuous in expression. The taste of readers and lovers of English poetry must undergo a radical change indeed, if such poems as the stately Horatian ode on Lincoln, the Keats and Lincoln sonnets, the “Hymn to the Beautiful,” “The Flight of Youth,” “Irreparable,” “Sorrow and Joy,” “The Flower of Love Lies Bleeding,” or the pathetic poems grouped in the collective edition of the poet’s verses under the general title of “In Memoriam,” are ever to be forgotten or misprized. In prose, too--the medium he found it so difficult to teach himself to use,--he has put forth (often anonymously) innumerable essays and sketches betraying a ripe knowledge of literature and literary history together with the keenest critical acumen, and flashing and glowing with alternate wit and humor. Long practice has given him the mastery of a style as individual as it is pleasing: once familiar with it, one needs no signature to tell whether he is the author of a given article.