ery in the
land; Charles Fenno Hoffman, a novelist of reputation in his time, but
now remembered only as the author of the song, _Sparkling and Bright_,
and the patriotic ballad of _Monterey_; Robert H. Messinger, a native
of Boston, but long resident in New York, where he was a familiar
figure in fashionable society, who wrote _Give Me the Old_, a fine ode
with a choice Horatian flavor; and William Allen Butler, a lawyer and
occasional writer, whose capital satire of _Nothing to Wear_ was
published anonymously and had a great run. Of younger poets, like
Stoddard and Aldrich, who formerly wrote for the _Mirror_ and who are
still living and working in the maturity of their powers, it is not
within the limits and design of this sketch to speak. But one of their
contemporaries, Bayard Taylor, who died, American Minister at Berlin,
in 1878, though a Pennsylvanian by birth and rearing, may be reckoned
among the "literati of New York." A farmer lad from Chester County,
who had learned the printer's trade and printed a little volume of his
juvenile verses in 1844, he came to New York shortly after with
credentials from Dr. Griswold, the editor of _Graham's_, and obtaining
encouragement and aid {539} from Willis, Horace Greeley and others, he
set out to make the tour of Europe, walking from town to town in
Germany and getting employment now and then at his trade to help pay
the expenses of the trip. The story of these _Wanderjahre_ he told in
his _Views Afoot_, 1846. This was the first of eleven books of travel
written during the course of his life. He was an inveterate nomad, and
his journeyings carried him to the remotest regions--to California,
India, China, Japan and the isles of the sea, to Central Africa and the
Soudan, Palestine, Egypt, Iceland and the "by-ways of Europe." His
head-quarters at home were in New York, where he did literary work for
the _Tribune_. He was a rapid and incessant worker, throwing off many
volumes of verse and prose, fiction, essays, sketches, translations and
criticism, mainly contributed in the first instance to the magazines.
His versatility was very marked, and his poetry ranged from _Rhymes of
Travel_, 1848, and _Poems of the Orient_, 1854, to idyls and home
ballads of Pennsylvania life, like the _Quaker Widow_ and the _Old
Pennsylvania Farmer_, and, on the other side, to ambitious and somewhat
mystical poems, like the _Masque of the Gods_, 1872--written in four
days--and dramatic ex