adorned by touches faithfully reproducing minute study of nature in all her aspects, the answer comes readily enough to the question how Stedman, so far as his own nature and gifts consciously guided him, became a poet.

Science, in our day, however, casting changed light on all old wisdom, turns the venerable saying that the poet is born, not made, into a new reading, and adds a note of doubt. It bids us judge genius by the rule that individual qualities and character are of slight account compared with the influences transmitted by a mingled ancestry, and the modifications impressed by circumstances. The time may come, in the approach of the race towards perfection, when the nascent sciences of biology and sociology shall pass from speculation to application. It may be that their exact formulas will some day define the precise quantity, and assign the distinct origin, of each component of every man's mind. They may even go farther, and legislate for wise conjunction of kinds, breeding philosophers or poets as the demand directs. While such a science of eugenesis is forming, instances enough may be cited to support its theories, and Stedman is among them. One of his direct ancestors, the Reverend Aaron Cleveland, was known as a poet in a prosaic time, and among influences that made such a distinction rare. Under a milder creed, and in more propitious days, his cousin, the Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe, has shown, as Keble has done in England, how nobly religion may inspire the muse. His mother is enviably distinguished in letters, as a correspondent quick in observing and apt in describing the striking features of Italian life, and as a writer of very feeling and tender verse. So that hereditary tendency may quite fairly be accounted one of the influences that inclined him toward the cultivation of the poetic art.

We are careless of provoking the wrath of the Quarterly New Englander in affirming that the atmosphere of the region in which Stedman was born, and in which the earlier years of his life were spent, was not one that breathed kindly over the growth of the delicate blossom of poesy. We do not mean to say that of versification, as of the other arts commonly thought more useful, the machinery has not been assiduously plied in Connecticut. But the product recalls the workshop oftener than the shrine. Neither the weighty argument of

Barlow's "Columbiad," nor the more stirring plea of his "Hasty Pudding," disturbs our position. Brainard's quiet fancies are few and slight, while Percival's trivial elaborations and Sigourney's washy dilutions are many and formidable. Halleck, born in that State, lived and gained his fame elsewhere, returning to silence in his native air. It may well be supposed that Stedman's great-uncle, James Stedman, took good care that those indigenous bards should serve for warnings rather than models, while his pupil was pursuing his studies in the picturesque region about Norwich, to which place he was sent two years after his birth at Hartford in 1833. Indeed Stedman's English proves, by the purity of its selection, and the neatness and conciseness of its turn, that if the literature of his mother tongue made any part of his training, as it probably did, under the direction of his uncle, who was a scholar and a jurist,-he was guided to the fountains, and not to the manufacturer's rills. And everywhere throughout his verse we catch the traces of early familiarity with nature, the lovely reflections of her subtle secrets of effect in rock and woodland, cloud and water, which are won and treasured only by those fortunate in living far from towns in their youth, while the senses are fresh, and the wonder of the world ever new.

Stedman entered Yale College in 1849, at the too early age of sixteen. A stripling at that point in life, particularly if so delicately organized, both mentally and physically, as he was, is unfairly matched in the race of study against the maturer strength of those even only a few years his seniors. If sympathetic and quick-witted, he is almost certain to become the popular pet instead of the serious rival. He was among the foremost, as might have been expected, both in Greek and in English composition. The Greek training of that date, if the standard of reading was not quite so dicult as at present, was still thorough, under the direction of the accomplished Woolsey, and it is high praise for Stedman that he should have achieved the unusual union of proficiency in that study and distinction as a writer. But there were two things more important for his college standing than either of these. They were mathematics and discipline. The former his quick intellect might easily have managed, unsuited though the study was to his men

tal constitution. As to the latter, the system of control at Yale twenty-five years ago was in a state of transition from the old rule, more police-like than paternal, to the present liberal plan of confiding in students as men and gentlemen.

Young Stedman fell under its censure, for no very grave error, and quitted college without taking his degree. But Yale has never regarded her errant sons with a step-mother's glance. When honorable toil in a literary career had brought the fulfillment of his earlier promise, the University gladly claimed Stedman again, and enrolled him among its alumni of the year 1853, with the degree of Master of Arts.

Still urged by his precocity and ardor of disposition to press early into the battle of life, Stedman put his talent to practical use by undertaking the management of a newspaper at Norwich, at the age of nineteen. A year later, while the law yet declined to regard him as his own master, he married one of the daughters of his native State-and whatever opinions may be held of its poets, there are no better wives than those of Connecticut-and became the owner of the Winsted Herald, published in Litchfield County. The time was more stimulating to editorial energy and originality than the place. The last of the hollow pacts between freedom and slavery had lately been signed, and most of the independent editors of the north, following the lead of the great New York anti-slavery journal, were busy in vociferously railing the seal off the bond. The politics of the paper were Whig, but its manager belonged to the coming race of journalists, and did not understand Conservatism to imply the defense of wrong. The spirit and ingenuity with which Stedman conducted his journal, and the novelty of the correct literary tone which he took pains to impart to it, earned him a high reputation throughout the State. But an intellect so clear and a taste so refined as his could not long be contented with the crookedness and wrangles of journalism. The crambe recocta of its matter must have disgusted a palate naturally delicate, and skilled already in rare flavors. The pursuit was so exacting and irksome as to give little leisure for higher cultivation. He hesitated to sink the man of letters in the man of a paper, conscious that the two careers are utterly distinct, and can only be brought into one through some rarely

fortunate concurrence of circumstances. His ambition, acting upon the conviction that his powers were devoted to unsuitable work, wasted in a narrow circle, drew him at length to New York. The best social connections, such as those which Stedman enjoyed, unserviceable enough to a young man at the outset in any hard-working profession, can give no aid whatever to the beginner in a literary career. Until he has shown what he is, readers care nothing at all who he is. The field was crowded with aspirants like himself, many of them of more practical ability and larger experience in the ways of town life. His finer qualities were quite as likely at first to tell against him as in his favor in the competition. He was to go through the hard discipline of poverty and hope deferred, that steels the character if strong, and widens the sympathies, if true. How strong and how true these were in his case the result has clearly testified. There are two of his poems, written about this time that are filled with the memory and the feeling of his early struggles. One of these describes, with a fanciful grace and careless dash that yet betray in some touches defiant reaction from bitter sorrow, "the pride and pain that dwell so low in valleys of Bohemia." For that fairy kingdom did once upon a time descend into our very streets, and hold here a brief historic existence. A few of the noble and generous spirits owed allegiance to it—some of their shadowy figures are discernible in the poem-of whom a part carried only its light and grace into the real world where they have made a name, and others went down through folly and evil into early ruin. It could be at best but a pale copy of that joyous Parisian abandon which served as an excuse for the loosest recklessness of life. The free, roving, loving, homelessness of the Provençal minstrel-the "dance and song and sunburnt mirth" of that first genuine Bohemian, are hardly reconcilable even in Paris with debts and duns, and the decent restraints of modern ways. When absinthe and the Quartier Latin were represented by lager in the Bowery, and flaneur got translated loafer, the glamour soon faded. But whatever of romance youth, and heart, and wit could cast over such heedless days, lives again at its best in this little poem of Stedman's. The other poem, "Flood-tide," bearing the date of 1857, opens with a fine lyric burst, catching something of the lift of

press of J. R. Osgood & Co., does not include the "Hebrew Pastorals," a series of ten careful idyllic studies upon biblical | subjects, from Abraham to Ruth, written in blank verse. To these he has devoted his maturest powers, and those specimens of them which have been already published, give us reason to believe that they will add to the reputation he has already gained.

A fine instinct for unity and proportion limits Stedman to a range of simple themes, and dictates a careful and systematic treatment of them. His accurate construction of plan and faithful finish of detail are equally admirable. He never oversteps the modesty of nature through the morbid choice of a subject, or by strained effects in his manner of dealing with it. His poetic conception has borne no monsters, his contemplation of life avoids its distortions, and he leaves to coarser fancies the congenial work of peopling its dark places with shapes of sensuality and misery. It is not that his men and women are pale ideals, that fail of truth to humanity in doing and suffering. But it is by lifting them above the ordinary lot of man, through some attribute of force or goodness, not lowering them beneath it, that he makes them more interesting than the people we meet in the streets. He will not drag us back to the groveling instincts and blind violence that betray our lower origin, if modern theories are to be accepted, so long as the aspirations they cannot stifle may be caught and transfigured to prophetic images of light and purity. Nor does he lose the richest poetic material by thus shutting out the vague region from the chaos of which the half-human half-diabolic specters that haunt the chambers of the brain for so many modern poets are evoked. The natural sunshine and cloud suffice for his pencil, under which man now rejoices or sorrows, without descending to borrow either gleams or gloom from that formless kingdom out of which he may have emerged. Some quiet nook of scenery, or idyllic passage, or grave historic incident, or tender emotion attracts him, serving as the point from which the grace and harmony of life rather than its discord and wretchedness may be displayed. Stedman's technical execution has the firmness and precision which his true sense of relation would lead us to expect. The frame of his two larger pieces is carefully constructed, the interest in their gradually evolving char

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acters continuous, and the incidents leading to their natural catastrophe well conceived and fitly linked together. Two or three fresh pictures of landscape in the "Blameless Prince" and all the highly finished stanzas in studied variety of measure marking points of rest between the passages of action in "Alice," are very charming. The skillful observance of relation between the parts and the whole is even more true to perfect form, if less evident on the surface, in the arrangement of the more elaborate ones among his minor poems. In Summer Rain," for instance, and in the "Feast of Harvest," "The Songster," and the Dartmouth Ode, the subject is first firmly sketched, then expanded with ample and congruous illustrations through a wide range of associated thoughts, held still close with the guiding idea, and concluded with a fullness of tone that leaves on the ear as in the mind, a satisfied sense of symmetry. The fruit of deep critical study appears in the selection of language, in strict keeping with the course of his theme-bold and rich where it rises, simple and clear in the level. movements. Epithets are sparingly and aptly used, and no redundancy or mere swell of periods disfigures the even fullness, crisp with delicate descriptive ripples. He has the secret too of pathetic tones, hushed to a passing sigh or a tender regret, without wasteful vehemence. Yet these can break into passionate lament, as in the last scenes of the "Prince.' There is one group of his minor poems in which Stedman displays a very peculiar power, blending pathos with solemnity, and quickening the vivid mental image with a spiritual thrill, which creates an effect of somber grandeur, breathing through such stanzas as "Spoken at Sea," "The Duke's Exequy,” "The Assault by Night," "The Old Admiral," with the sound of a mysterious voice from afar. In these, as in most of his later poems, particularly, the studied effect of measure deserves attention. Stedman's naturally correct ear rarely fails in suggesting the adjustment of the metrical movement of his lines to the burthen of their thought. His various experiments in the musical forms that minister to his art indicate patient research and practice. These have been carried to a still higher point by some among those of his contemporaries we have named, and similar labor should be less neglected than it has been by their younger imitators.

The restrained elegance cultivated by Stedman in the treatment of his carefully selected subjects has brought upon him the charge of a want of humor. A poet may dispense with humor. One of the purest, Wordsworth, wholly wanted its sense, and one of the subtlest, Shelley, rarely originated it, though his translations from the Greek reek with it. But there is sham humor and there is real humor; and those who miss the first in Stedman's poetry overlook his free and skillful use of the last. We grant he is not found setting the village-wag's paragraphs a-jingling. He never puffs a character out of shape to raise a laugh. Yet of the true humor, akin to pathos, which pervades the feelings and mellows sympathy, he has ready con

trol.

And all our classic humorists, from Irving and Cozzens to Warner and Harte, who understand the temperate use of that power, and employ it as tint in a picture or tone in a harmony, not exaggerating it as the sole element for daubs and chuckles of style, would recognize Stedman's moderation as true art. The crowd of hilarious jackpuddings who have of late diffused printed buffoonery far beyond its permitted range of the comic almanac seem to feel no distinction between the ludicrous and the humorous. Their faculty grows out of a sense of disproportion, and extorts a grin by the shock of incongruity and contradiction. Their conception of the fair harmonious visage of humanity is that of a face reflected in a tablespoon. They are whimseyists, not humorists. Stedman has learned a better lesson from the masters. Even Falstaff's moral nature, though gross as a mountain, is symmetrically enormous; and Rabelais' colossal fun is wreaked on the whole proportioned man, not in caricature of a part.

Stedman has been criticised too from another point for the limited order of his subjects, and his fastidious delicacy in managing them. He is said to have no broad sympathy with humanity. They are careless readers of " Alice of Monmouth who suggest the censure. There is a view of humanity, broad in a certain sense, which he has never introduced into his

into verse Of recent American life especially there are some aspects that have been painted by two prose writers at least, with a realism that yields in nothing to Defoe's, and shown by the lightest, firmest touches to be but another face worn under new disguises by our common nature. But the poets who have ventured into this field have fared worse. They have dwelt on circumstance and accident only. The trick of language, the local color, yield all the material they work with, to a trivial result. These versifiers have found their subjects in the mere accessories of prairie and mine, not in the men who chance to be hunters or gold diggers. They have stopped short with describing that strange population as if its only interesting point were to have instruments of cruelty in its tents, and to be clothed with cursing as with a garment. If Stedman had followed them in this direction, it can only be said he would have done no less than they have done, and would have done it far otherwise. There has been heard besides of late the hoarse note of a yet lower and broader chant, extolling sheer physical manhood, in a mode to which Stedman's pure poetic conscience would never permit him to stoop. He has left to one notorious swan of the sewers the task of rivaling the auctioneer's pomp of diction in celebrating the pugilist's thews. There are few who will reproach him for declining to sing the instincts of a beast. He can paint boldly and firmly the bare figure of humanity yielding to evil passion. But Greek study from nude life is a different thing from such voluntary exposure as the law punishes.

That severe taste which lends the charm of purity to Stedman's poetic performance has also guided his preference and shaped his method in prose writing. His natural justness of perception making him intellectually impartial, joined with kindliness of heart that recognizes the effort and seeks for the merit in all serious work, qualifies him for a critical arbiter. He has been too rigorous with himself to fail in understanding and encouraging the processes of others' minds. Stedman is a born critic, and all his study and practice have tended to sharpen and refine his judicial faculty. His college instruction was not wasted, for it formed his mind while plastic to the conviction, rarely intelligible in its full force to self-made men. that there are standards of comparison in literary