FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

_A TRAGEDY_

Francesca, i tuoi martiri a lagrimar
mi fanno triato e pio.--DANTE.

_Inferno, v. 75 seq._




[Illustration: GEORGE HENRY BOKER]




GEORGE HENRY BOKER

(1823-1890)


The name of George Henry Boker suggests a coterie of friendships--a
group of men pledged to the pursuit of letters, and worshippers at the
shrine of poetry. These men, in the pages of whose published letters
and impressions are embedded many pleasing aspects of Boker's
temperament and character, were Bayard Taylor, Richard Henry Stoddard,
and Charles Godfrey Leland, the latter known familiarly in American
literature as "Hans Breitmann." These four, in different periods of
their lives, might have been called "the inseparables"--so closely did