WILLSON. When "The Old Sergeant" was first published, the attention of Mr. John James Piatt, who had met the poet three years before, was directed to the poem by a prominent Union member of Congress, who, "prefacing his confession with familiar Kentucky emphasis," said, "I cried when I read that." Mr. Piatt continues: "I took the paper home and read the poem aloud,—or tried to read it aloud, and after the bluff old Kentuckian's confession, I did not think it shameful weakness to have cried too." Mr. Piatt at once attributed the authorship of the poem to Willson, and in answer to a note of inquiry, the latter responded, not openly admitting the fact, but saying, "You speak of a production, 'The Old Sergeant,' assuming it to be mine, and say - wept over it. So did I." In a note to Prof. Lewis, Dr. O. W. Holmes says: "I read one or two of his poems, which led me to make his acquaintance. He was a tall, striking looking man, rather shy, I should say, but pleasant when one had gained his confidence. reader and admirer of Thoreau, and, I think, of Emerson. A Spiritualist, who was, as he thought, in near relations with disembodied beings,-his deceased father and wife. The latter would float in the air before him. One day a feather fell in his path. He looked upon this as a mystic event-a token of some kind, not an ordinary occurrence, and wrote a poem about it, of which he gave me a manuscript copy. . . . I do not think many persons made his acquaintance, except Longfellow, Lowell and myself, but I do not know. I went to see him first, and afterwards he visited me repeatedly." A great GRIFFITH. "Among the lofty mountains and elevated valleys of Switzerland, the Alpine horn has another use besides that of sounding the farfamed Ranz des Vaches, or Cow Song, and this is of a very solemn and impressive nature. When the sun has set in the valley, and the snowy sum mits of the mountains gleam with golden light, the herdsman, who dwells upon the highest habitable spot, takes his horn and pronounces clearly and loudly through it, as through a speaking-trumpet, 'Praise the Lord God!' As soon as the sound is heard by the neighboring huntsmen, they issue from their huts, take their Alpine horns and repeat the same words. This frequently lasts a quarter of an hour, and the call resounds from all the mountains and rocky cliffs around. Silence at length settles over the scene. All the huntsmen kneel and pray with uncovered heads. Meantime, it has become quite dark. 'Good-night!' at last calls the highest herdsman through his horn. 'Good-night!' again resounds from all the mountains, the horns of the huntsmen, and the rocky cliffs. The mountaineers then retire to their dwellings and to rest." MEYNELL. Mrs. Meynell, notwithstanding that she has only published one slight volume of verse, is generally acknowledged to be one of the sweetest singers among living poets. With the exception of "Renouncement" her sonnets are to be found in her volume, "Preludes," illustrated by her sister, Lady Butler (Elizabeth Thompson). Several of them show a very marked affinity to the love sonnets of Mrs. Browning. In this class I know no nobler or more beautiful sonnet than "Renouncement," and I have so considered it ever since that day I first heard it, when Rossetti (who knew it by heart), repeating it to me, added that it was one of the three finest sonnets ever written by woman. W. S. MCKINNIE. Mr. McKinnie's poem on "Sherman and Porter" was written for and read at a memorial mass-meeting held at the Auditorium, Chicago, Sunday, March 1, 1891, to an audience of 7,000 people. Nearly 2,000 persons were turned away from the doors, being unable to gain admittance. KERR. On December 17, 1856, in King Street Church, Kilmarnock, the author of these verses on Louis Kossuth had the honor of presenting a public testimonial to the Ex-Governor of Hungary, and of crowning him with a Kilmarnock bonnet, in presence of a large and enthusiastic audience. DICKINSON. Mr. Dickinson's most famous poem, "The Children," was published in THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY for April, 1889. Vol. I, No. 2, page 240. HOWE. Among the women who made themselves well known throughout the country for their interest in the condition and welfare of the troops was Mrs. Howe, who, together with her brother, rendered important service to the Northern Army. In 1861 Mrs. Howe, in company with her husband, visited Washington. It was there that she heard the chorus from a regiment of soldiers. Among the songs which were given with true musical ring was the familiar one known as "John Brown." This was at the time used by college boys as a setting for various of their nonsensical improvisations. The episode which introduced "John Brown" and his career suggested to the author a further use for the simple tune. It was a good marching air, was easily harmonized, and readily learned. During the five years from the beginning to the end of the war there was no song which was more popular, and as one of our veterans says: "There never was a song to whose strains our men would march, fight, or die more bravely." Mrs Howe, as she says, thought that in consequence of the popularity of the music there should be more inspiring words, and it was this idea that gave birth to the hymn. In 1862, more than a year after Mrs. Howe had written the words, they were given to the public through the medium of the Atlantic Monthly. She had written them during a restless night in Washington after she had seen a skirmish by the troops and had listened to a sermon by the chaplain of a regiment. Her whole mind, she says, was filled with the importance of the struggle, and with the belief that it was the guidance of an all-wise Providence toward the emancipation of human creatures whose cries for release had reached heaven. As everyone knows, through the medium of her writing, Mrs. Howe was deeply interested in the condition of the slaves. Whatever had been the views of politicians respecting the ultimate object of the war, many Christians firmly believed that it was purely for the eradication of slavery. This will account for the religious tone of the poem. SEARS. In reply to a note from the editor, Rev. James S. Draper, of Wayland, Mass., says: "During the seventeen years that Mr. Sears occupied the Unitarian pulpit here, he was my nearest neighbor, and our families were as one, and I had ample opportunity to observe his characteristics. From others I have learned that in early youth he was noted for writing poetry and sermons; that his mental faculties matured early; that as a scholar he readily grasped the problems presented to his mind, and easily maintained the first standing in schools and college. While here in the ministry his studies absorbed his attention entirely for the time being; almost as much so, in appearance, as though in a trance condition at times. He read extensively the works of Swedenborg, and some of his views in psychological matters seem to have been drawn from that source. What Mrs. Sears has written about his writing under some form or degree of "inspiration" seems to me to have been true. The hymn in question was written, off-hand, as it were, just before meeting on the Christmas evening referred to, which I have good reason to believe was December 25, 1854, although my data are not positive. He did not cultivate his poetical talents, and while many times called upon to prepare poetic pieces for special occasions, he rarely complied, saying: 'I can promise nothing. If anything comes to me, it will be in season, and I will inform you.' I think he liked the hymn quite as well as 'Calm on the Listening Ear of Night,' written while in the Divinity School at Cambridge." Mrs. Sears writes Mr. Draper concerning the hymn as follows: "Your note received this evening. I have not the least objection to Mr. Moulton's publishing the hymn, 'It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.' But what is there to be said, except that it came to Mr. Sears from the inspiration of a parish gathering at our house in Wayland one Christmas evening, and was sung that same evening by the friends who met with us (you may have the date, I have not). I think you selected the tune, did you not? If you think of any other item connected with it, please add it, for your memory of those old times is better than mine, though no one enjoyed them more than I did. Mr. Sears never wrote a hymn unless he felt inspired to do so. He always said he could tell at once on reading a hymn whether it was written to order." Edmund Hamilton Sears was born April 7, 1810, at Sandisfield, a quaint old town nestled among the Berkshire hills in Western Massachusetts. With little aid from his family, and larger self-denial on his own part, he entered Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., where he was graduated at the age of twenty-four. Three years afterwards, in 1837, he was graduated at Cambridge Divinity School. With most decided taste for a literary career, his deep religious sentiment impelled him, from early boyhood, to the Christian ministry. He enjoyed this service amidst the quiet towns of Lancaster, Wayland, and Weston, in Massachusetts, where he also found time to engage in those literary pursuits and studies which were so congenial to his taste, and for which, because of physical limitations, he finally withdrew from pastoral labors. He died in -Weston, among his former parishioners, beloved and honored, January 16, 1876. DOWLING. "Revelry in India.” These lines are said to have been sung by a company of British officers stationed at a frontier post in India during a pestilence. It is also said that the author of them was the next victim. They have been persistently attributed to Alfred Domett; but in a letter to Rossiter Johnson, dated February 6, 1879, he says: “I did not write that poem, and was never in India in my life. I am as ignorant of the authorship as you can be; indeed, I never heard of the poem until I saw it attributed to myself in an article in the Chicago Times, in the year 1872, I think. . . The poem has splendid talent, and even more spirit, which makes me the more anxious to disclaim it, as I do not wish to take any credit that properly belongs to another man." SHERIDAN. These gay and flowing verses, perhaps the most popular of their class in the language, are evidently modeled on the following song in Suckling's play of the "Goblins": A health to the nut-brown lass She that has good eyes, etc. Let it pass-let it pass. As much to the lively gray, 'Tis as good in the night as the day, She that has good eyes, etc. Drink away-drink away. I pledge, I pledge, what, ho! some wine, The colors are divine; But oh! the black, the black, Give us as much again, and let 't be sack; This song was appropriated by S. Sheppard, in a comedy called the "Committee-man Curried," 1647. Sheppard was a notorious plagiarist, and had the audacity to publish the lines without any acknowledgment of the source from whence he stole them. CLEVELAND. "No Sect in Heaven." The author of this poem is the wife of a New England clergyman and daughter of Mr. Jocelyn, an eminent engraver of New York. The lines first appeared in the Berkshire Courier, August, 1860, under her name. They were also sent in manuscript to the Congregationalist, and were published in that paper with the signature, but not without several alterations. The poem, since then, has had an extensive circulation in religious and secular papers, and as a tract, on both sides of the Atlantic. MORRIS. "Woodman Spare That Tree" was founded on the fact that on one occasion a friend took him into the woods not far from Bloomingdale, N. Y. and pointed out an old elm under which he had played in his youth. While they were examining the tree a man approached and was about to cut it down when Morris's friend offered the workman ten dollars to spare it. The three men went into the woodman's cottage, and Morris drew up a bond to the effect that the tree should be preserved dur ing his friend's lifetime. So strong was the impression that the incident made on Morris's mind that he commemorated it in a verse. A compliment that greatly delighted the author was paid this poem by a member of the British House of Commons, who concluded a long speech in favor of protection by quoting it, the tree, according to the speaker, being the constitution, and Sir Robert Peel the woodman about to cut it down. See "Bryant and his Friend," by James Grant Wilson (New York, 1886). WOLFE. This famous ode, "The Burial of Sir John Moore," is here printed exactly as it stands in "Wolfe's Remains," where it is copied from the original manuscript. The Rev. Samuel O'Sullivan, writing under date of April 22, 1841, says: "I think it was about the summer of 1814 or 1815 ( I cannot say for a certainty which), I was sitting in my college rooms (in Dublin), and reading in the 'Edinburgh Annual Register,' in which a very striking and beautiful account is given of the burial of Sir John Moore. Wolfe came in, and I made him listen to me as I read the passage, which he heard with deep and sensible emotion. We were both loud and ardent in our commendation of it, and after some little time I proposed to our friend to take a walk into the country. He consented, and we bent our way to Simpson's nursery, about half way between Dublin and the Rock. During our stroll Wolfe was unusually meditative and silent, and I remember having been provoked a little by meeting with no response or sympathy to my frequent bursts of admiration about the country and the scenery, in which, on other occasions, he used so cordially to join. But he atoned for his apparent dullness and insensibility upon his return, when he repeated for me the first and last verses of his beautiful ode, in the composition of which he had been absorbed during our little perambulation. . These were the only verses which our dear friend at first contemplated; but moved, as he said, by my approbation, his mind worked upon the subject after he left me, and in the morning he came over to me with the verses by which it was completed." Wolfe (born in Dublin December 14, 1791, died February 21, 1823), neither published this poem nor took pains to claim it. Manuscript copies were taken down from recitation, and it was finally printed, with the initials 'C. W.' in the Newry, Ireland, Telegraph, from which it was speedily copied far and wide. An interesting discussion of its merits by Byron and Shelley is given in Medwin's Conversations of Byron." MASON. This remarkable sonnet by Miss Mason was inadvertently omitted from the study of her poetry in the January number of this magazine. BENTON. "Midsummer Invitation" was first published some twenty years ago. In its present form it was revived for publication in THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY. For a study of Mr. Benton's poetry see Vol. II, No. 3. ANDREWS. This sonnet on Matthew Arnold appeared in The Century for July, 1888. MARSTON. Philip Bourke Marston was a great admirer of Hayne, and without doubt the feeling was reciprocated. This sonnet first appeared in the New York Independent of October 21, 1886. EDMONDS. "When June Shall Come Again," a sonnet on the death of Emily Pfeiffer, was first published in the Women's Penny Paper of London. "Under the Aspens," is the name of one of Mrs. Pfeiffer's works, and it was in a hammock under the aspens of Mayfield that she wrote during the summer months. GOODALE. Miss Goodale's tribute to Walt Whitman was published in Lippincott's Magazine, April, 1886. WILSON. This excellent sonnet on Stevenson was originally published in The Critic, and republished in Crandall's "Representative Sonnets by American Poets." TENNYSON. The text of "A Song" is taken from a cablegram to the New York. World. For the three stanzas the Review is said to have paid the Laureate more than $10 per word. DELETOMBE. This poem was inspired by reading Mr. Allen's poem in the October (1890) number of THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY. THE EDITOR'S TABLE. FOR engravings in this number of THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY the Publisher wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of Jacob Leonard & Son, Albany, N. Y.; Matthews, Northrup & Co., Buffalo, N. Y.; The Globe Lithographing and Printing Co., Chicago, Ill.; The Art Alliance, Buffalo, N. Y., and Funk & Wagnalls, New York, N. Y. FOR Copyright poems and other selections the Publisher returns thanks to Roberts Brothers; Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; Charles Scribner's Sons; Estes & Lauriat; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Funk & Wagnalls; Charles Wells Moulton; Lucian Hervey Kent; William Burt Harlow; Cassell & Co.; Harper & Brothers, and J. B. Lippincott Co. FRANCIS SALTUS SALTUS. A STUDY OF HIS POETRY. I. N the 25th of June, 1889, at the age of thirty strangely gifted souls, whose story becomes the wonder of succeeding generations, though the people among whom they live, and from whose presence they go out to the land of shadows, give little heed to their existence, or to their work. Francis Saltus Saltus, dying in the flush of manhood, with the best working years of life unlived, left behind him a mass of literary and musical performance, that simply because of its extent, is wonderful. But it is not the amount alone that makes it worthy of note. In the variety of matter, in the originality of thought, in the curious and vivid imagination that it evinces, the work of Francis Saltus will stand out as an evidence that our literature has produced a phenomenon. The variety of his work is as astonishing as its vastness; covering poetry, both serious and comic, biography, musical composition and literature, romance, literary and general criticism, correspondence and other journalistic work, humorous articles and books on all subjects. He was not content to use one language, but luxuriated in many, and was proficient in each. To fully understand the man, and to reach a proper conception of the motives which actuated his work, would require that daily intercourse which Boswell held with Johnson, and this no man outside of his own family had; but some idea of his gifts, and his methods, and his achievements may be won from a glance along his life. He began writing at an early date, winning school honors with a readiness that made competition with him useless, and when under sixteen years of age, turned a Spanish legend of mingled beauty and disgust, into poetry that made its revolting and lovely features more pronounced and striking than they are in the original tongue. Sent abroad to finish his education, he became a linguist of rare excellence, speaking and writing the leading languages of Europe and the East, and acquiring a knowledge of many of the patois that cling to these; remnants of a speech that exists only in remote mountain hamlets and unsought places. The ease with which he mastered the learned languages, and the equal facility with which he gathered a knowledge of the tongue of the semi-civilized peoples of western Asia and northern Africa, was marvelous, and these were not useful for travel alone, but in his hands became vehicles for thought and literary effort. The rapidity with which he worked, and his varied linguistic attainments, can be best shown in telling of his "Life of Donizetti." This book, certainly the most complete musical biography extant, and a work of love and loyalty such as usually measures the accomplishment of a life, was composed in English, and translated into French, Italian and German by the author. When it is considered that the manuscript will make seven hundred printed pages, the labor this caused is, to say the least, amazing, and the achievement one to be wondered at. That such a work, whose composition involved much travel, a large expenditure of money, and a correspondence that became gigantic in its proportions, should remain unpublished in the native land of its author, is not a gratifying mark of American literary enterprise. Unfortunately, in the fire that consumed a great warehouse in New York, the French, German and Italian translations were destroyed, otherwise the Italian and German editions would be in print, as propositions looking to this result were under consideration by the author at the time of his death. He did not live to complete the new translations, but so thoroughly were the Italians convinced of the strength and usefulness of his work, that he received from them the freedom of the city of Bergamo, and was enrolled a member of the society that commemorates the life and glorious achievements of the great composer whose biography he wrote. Fortunately, a type copy of the English version of this work had been made, and was not stored with the translations and original, so that this monument of American scholarship still exists. But while giving much time to musical biography and studies, as this "Life of Donizetti" and monographs on Rossini, Bellini, “The Kings of Song,” and humorous articles concerning the plots of operas, and the lives of famous composers, and much musical criticism, shows Saltus was not idle in poetry. It has been related that he began writing poetry at an early age. His first volume, "Honey and Gall," was published in 1873, and was the result of work done before he was twenty. Fugitive, serious and humorous poems from his pen were common from that time till his death, but save a pamphlet of humorous sonnets on the plots of famous operas, published under his pen name of "Cupid Jones,” no other collection of his verse was published. Since his death, two volumes, "Shadows and Ideals," and "The Witch of En-dor, and Other Poems," have appeared. There still remains unpublished two volumes of miscellaneous poetry, one volume of sonnets, two volumes of French poems, one volume of poems in other foreign languages, a volume of children's poetry, and two volumes of humorous and comic verse, and a large number of poems written on events and occasions of passing interest. Beside these, there was destroyed in the fire mentioned, a poem entitled "Nijni Novgorod," giving a graphic picture of the great fair in that city, interspersed with many Russian and Oriental legends clinging to this vast gathering, enough to make a large volume, and miscellaneous poems sufficient to make a book equal in size to those published since his death. Francis Saltus was early a contributor of European correspondence to several papers, and his letters were widely quoted. He has contributed general articles, criticisms and editorials to many journals, and his work in this direction would make several respectable-sized books. In connection with this branch of his literary achievement, though different, and showing the versatility of his mind, may be mentioned his humorous writings. He was prolific in those witty and humorous dialogues that brighten our daily and weekly press, often writing from fifty to one hundred in a day. More than ten thousand of these were published, and a large number still remain in manuscript. Besides these, he wrote crazy histories of the United States, France, Rome, England and Germany, a comic Robinson Crusoe, a comic cook book and a comic Bible, with numerous witty and humorous sketches on people, incidents and events. Here Saltus was also a writer of short stories of much power, in the same vein as those of Theophile Gautier and Edgar Allan Poe, but differing from them in thought and manner of treatment. his originality and imagination revel, and his study in Paris, and his intimate acquaintance with the best French literature, has given his stories the verve and finish of those models of concise romance. There are enough of these sketches and stories to fill several books, and it is keeping within bounds to say that his literary work, if carefully collected, would make more than fifty printed volumes. And this was not all of his work. He was a musical composer of great force and beauty, and was equally prolific in this branch of art. Two grand operas, one on "Marie Stuart," the other on "Joan-of-Arc," are among his remains in this line, and he composed both librettos and music. He also composed several short and comic operas, and more than two thousand fugitive pieces, all of which have merit, some being veritable gems of melody. Several of his fugitive pieces, composed during his residence in Paris, became very popular there, and were claimed by people whose genius was unequal to such work. In improvisation Saltus was unrivaled. He could sit down to the piano and compose and play melodies that would move the soul with their strange harmony and power, and this without pre |