The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard TaylorConwell, Russell H.
General
The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Conwell, Russell H.
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, who so heartily welcomed the young
pedestrian to Florence, Italy, and who through the years which followed,
showed a most kindly spirit, making Taylor his guest and confidant,
passed away from the contemplation of beautiful earthly forms to figures
angelic, in 1873.
Mrs. Kirkland, on whose magazine, in 1848, he began to regain the
literary prestige which the failure of the “Phœnixville Pioneer” took
from him, and who, with Halleck, so kindly opened the way for him to
teach a school in New York, to repair his shattered fortunes, was gone,
together with a large number of their mutual acquaintances in the
literary circles of New York.
Although the ranks were so sadly depleted, there are still living a most
brilliant company of his early literary friends.
John G. Whittier, who still resides in Amesbury, his patriotism unabated,
his Quaker simplicity unchanged, and his fame as a poet increasing, as
civilization and freedom extend. To him Mr. Taylor dedicated his poem of
“Lars,” and in it thus mentioned his first meeting with Whittier:—
“Though many years my heart goes back,
Through checkered years of loss and gain,
To the fair landmark on its track,
When first, upon the Merrimack,
Upon the cottage roof I heard the autumn rain.
A hand that welcomed and that cheered,
To one unknown didst thou extend;
Thou gavest hope to song that feared;
But now by Time and Faith endeared,
I claim the right to call the Poet, Friend!”
Thus did a Quaker write of a Quaker in dedicating a Quaker poem.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lives and sings as in those days when Taylor
read the story of “Hyperion” and the poetry of “Voices of the Night,” and
resolved to visit Boppart and to be a poet. Mr. Longfellow had a name
to be envied in the annals of literature, when the man of whom we write
was a rollicking, mischievious boy. Yet Taylor has appeared on the stage
of life, has enacted a very important part, and is gone. His friend and
benefactor remains, loved and honored in the old Washington mansion at
Cambridge.
That marvellously versatile and skilful man, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
though born long before Taylor, still walks the halls of learning,
and, while enjoying the deserved rewards of “The Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table,” “Old Ironsides,” and the numerous other publications in
the shape of essays, poems, and medical text-books, was not ashamed to be
called the friend of Mr. Taylor, and recalls his association with him in
the most affectionate terms.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet and essayist, who, like Mr. Holmes, enjoys
a world-wide reputation as a man of letters and thoughts, moves among men
as of yore, while his younger acquaintance has passed on before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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