Immediately upon his return from China, he entered again the traces for hard and long literary work. He had written poems, and snatches of poems, verses, and couplets in his spare hours as a traveller, and his note-book and guide-books were full of such impulsive productions, written on the margin and on the fly-leaves. Those scattered compositions he desired to reduce to satisfactory and convenient shape for publication. Some of them had been written on the seas, some on the Nile, one in Spain, one in Constantinople, one in Jerusalem, two in Gotha, and several in railways and steamboats. The thought of publishing them in the form of a book, was suggested to him by one of his intimate friends in New York,—either Mr. Stoddard or Mr. Ripley,—his intention having been to publish them from time to time in some periodical, in much the same manner as he had contributed to the “Union Magazine,” some eight years before. But he had sufficient appreciation of his own genius to act promptly on such a suggestion of his friends, and the first few weeks after his return were occupied with that work, in addition to the work of arranging and correcting his unpublished letters to the “Tribune.” When he had completed the “Poems of the Orient,” it was published by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, as a companion volume to the “Rhymes of Travel,” and “Book of Romances,” both of which were united in one volume, in 1856, under the title of “Poems of Home and Travel.” In the preparation of these poems, he was greatly assisted by the kindly and discreet criticism of his friend Stoddard, which he not only acknowledged in the remarkable dedication “From Mount Tmolus,” but mentioned it to his relatives with expressions of thankfulness. The public owe a debt to Mr. Stoddard for his generosity and hospitality to Mr. Taylor, as well as for the beautiful poems and truthful biographies which he has written. A true man is a friendly critic, if a critic at all. Such was Richard H. Stoddard.