hilarity, without meaning and without remission, till the warning bell
chased us ashore, and our brave poet escaped with what was left of his
life.




IV

I have followed him far from the moment of our first meeting; but even on
my way to venerate those New England luminaries, which chiefly drew my
eyes, I could not pay a less devoir to an author who, if Curtis was not,
was chief of the New York group of authors in that day. I distinguished
between the New-Englanders and the New-Yorkers, and I suppose there is no
question but our literary centre was then in Boston, wherever it is, or
is not, at present. But I thought Taylor then, and I think him now, one
of the first in our whole American province of the republic of letters,
in a day when it was in a recognizably flourishing state, whether we
regard quantity or quality in the names that gave it lustre. Lowell was
then in perfect command of those varied forces which will long, if not
lastingly, keep him in memory as first among our literary men, and master
in more kinds than any other American. Longfellow was in the fulness of
his world-wide fame, and in the ripeness of the beautiful genius which
was not to know decay while life endured. Emerson had emerged from the
popular darkness which had so long held him a hopeless mystic, and was
shining a lambent star of poesy and prophecy at the zenith. Hawthorne,
the exquisite artist, the unrivalled dreamer, whom we still always liken
this one and that one to, whenever this one or that one promises greatly
to please us, and still leave without a rival, without a companion, had
lately returned from his long sojourn abroad, and had given us the last