though he had all the opportunity afforded him in the office of his friend,
the Hon. J. L. Petigru, the great jurist. Leaving the bar,
he thenceforward devoted himself to literature and to his art.

Charleston to Timrod was home, and he always returned with kindling spirit
to the city of his love. There were all his happiest associations
and the delight of purest friendships, -- W. Gilmore Simms and Paul Hayne,
and the rest of the literary coterie that presided over "Russell's Magazine",
and Judge Bryan and Dr. Bruns (to whom Hayne dedicated
his edition of Timrod's poems), and others were of this glad fellowship,
and his social hours were bright in their intercourse and in
the cordial appreciation of his genius and the tender love they bore him.
These he never forgot, and returning after the ravage of war
to his impoverished and suffering city, he writes, in the last year
of his young life, "My eyes were blind to everything and everybody
but a few old friends."

Suited by endowment and prepared by special study for a professorship,
still all his efforts for the academic chair failed,
and, finally, he was compelled to become a private teacher,
an office the sacredness of which he profoundly realized.
In his leisure hours he now gave himself up to deeper study of nature,
literature, and man. It was in these few years of quiet retreat
that he wrote the poems contained in the first edition of his works, 1859-60,
which, laden with all the poet's longing to be heard, were little heeded
in the first great shock of war. Indeed, in such a storm, what shelter
could a poet find? An ardent Carolinian, devoted to his native State
with an allegiance as to his country, he left his books and study,
and threw himself into the struggle, a volunteer in the army.
In the first years of the war he was in and near Charleston, and wrote