BAYARD TAYLOR (1825-1878)

Of the writers of the younger group which began to come into prominence by the middle of the century by far the most promising was Bayard Taylor. During the two decades before his death he laid hold strongly upon the imagination of America, and it was everywhere felt that he was ultimately to rank with Longfellow and Whittier and Lowell. He had come from humble surroundings in Pennsylvania, had been schooled largely in a rural printing office, and at nineteen had issued a volume of poems and then almost without funds, started upon a picturesque journey through Europe. Views Afoot, 1846, tells the story of it. Upon his return to America he secured a position on the New York Tribune, was sent to California to report the gold excitement of 1849, made a second journey to Europe in 1851, extending it into Africa and to India and China, and returning, published among other things his Poems of the Orient, 1854. During the rest of his life he was a picturesque figure, the great American traveler,' greatly sought after by lyceum lecture courses all over America. He made other trips abroad, was secretary of legation to Russia, and in 1878 was appointed United States Minister to Germany, but died shortly after reaching his post.

The literary productiveness of Taylor was marvelous. His books aggregate nearly fifty titles, some twelve of them records of travel, three of them novels, several of them translations and studies in German literature, some of them essays and boys' books, the rest of them poetry, and in addition to all this was a great mass of newspaper and magazine work and lectures. His literary ambition, however, centered upon poetry. More and more during his later period he put forth his best efforts to produce what should make him remembered in later years. He wrote dramas-The Masque of the Gods, 1872, The Prophet, A Tragedy, 1874, Prince Deukalion, 1878; he came before the nation on two great occasions with The Gettysburg Ode, 1869, and The Centennial Ode, 1876; and he added to our literature what undoubtedly is the best translation in English of Goethe's Faust, but it is realized now that he failed in his ambition. He was not a poet of high rank. He had facility, but not large creative power or originality. His brilliant parodies in his book The Echo Club show the strength and the weakness of the man. He was not a plagiarist, yet it may be said that the greater part of what he wrote would never have been written had earlier poets not written. To realize this one needs but to compare Shelley's Indian Serenade' with the ‘Bedouin Song.' Taylor's phenomenal memory was stocked with the poetry of all the world and he wrote, unconsciously doubtless, always from a recollection of this store-house rather than from a driving creative impulse that sent him into fields new and strange.