during his diplomatic years, but which he threw over for the stronger
pull of poetry, whose Muse he could court without the necessity of
driving it hard for support. Yet he was concerned about literature
as a paying profession for others. On April 26, 1851, he wrote to
Stoddard: "Alas! alas! Dick, is it not sad that an American author
cannot live by magazine writing? And this is wholly owing to the
want of our international copyright law. Of course it is little to me
whether magazine writers get paid or not; but it is so much to you,
and to a thousand others." The time, until 1847, was spent in foreign
travel, but it is interesting to note, as indication of no mean
literary attainment in the interim, that Princeton, during this
period, bestowed on him the degree of M.A., for merit in letters.

1848 was a red-letter year for Boker. It witnessed the publication of
his first volume of verse, "The Lessons of Life, and other Poems,"
and it introduced him to Bayard Taylor and to R.H. Stoddard. Of the
occasion, Taylor writes on October 13, to Mary Agnew:

Young Boker, author of the tragedy, "Calaynos," a most
remarkable work, is here on a visit, and spent several
hours to-night with me. He is another hero,--a most notable,
glorious mortal! He is one of our band, and is, I think,
destined to high renown as an author. He is nearly my own age,
perhaps a year or two older, and he has lived through the same
sensations, fought the same fight, and now stands up with the
same defiant spirit.

This friendship was one of excellent spiritual sympathy and remarkable
external similarities and contrasts. One authority has written of
their late years: