the poet who was torn between loyalty to poetic indirectness, and
necessity for direct dialogue. On January 12, 1853, he writes to
Stoddard:

Theatricals are in a fine state in this country; every
inducement is offered to me to burn my plays as fast as I
write them. Yet, what can I do? If I print my plays, the
actors take them up, butcher, alter and play them, without
giving me so much as a hand in my own damnation. This is
something beyond even heavenly rigour; and so I proceed to
my own destruction, with the proud consciousness that, at all
events, it is my own act. _À propos_, have you ever read the
English acting copy of my "Calaynos"? A viler thing was never
concocted from like materials.

Whether or not the play, "The Bankrupt," preceded or followed
the writing of "Francesca da Rimini" in 1853, we have no way of
determining; but it would seem that it progressed no further in its
stage career than in manuscript form, it being the only play on a
modern theme attempted by Boker. Then, it seems, he was hot on the
trail of the Francesca love story told in Dante, and used by so many
writers in drama and poetry. It is this play, conceded to be his
best, which is included in the present collection, and which calls for
analysis and history by itself.

Taylor's collection of "Poems at Home and Abroad," dedicated to Boker
in 1855, suggests that the two must have continually talked over the
possibilities of gathering their best effusions in book form. Did not
Taylor write, as early as June 30, 1850, "You must come out in the
Fall with a volume of poems. Stoddard will, and so, I think, will I.