VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

Henry Cuyler Bunner
Gottfried August Buerger
Frances Burney
Sir Richard F. Burton
Robert Burton
John Burroughs
Horace Bushnell
Samuel Butler
George W. Cable
Thomas Henry Hall Caine

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER

(1855-1896)

The position which Henry Cuyler Bunner has come to occupy in the
literary annals of our time strengthens as the days pass. If the stream
of his genius flowed in gentle rivulets, it traveled as far and spread
its fruitful influence as wide as many a statelier river. He was above
all things a poet. In his prose as in his verse he has revealed the
essential qualities of a poet's nature: he dealt with the life which he
saw about him in a spirit of broad humanity and with genial sympathy.
When he fashioned the tender triolet on the pitcher of mignonette, or
sang of the little red box at Vesey Street, he wrote of what he knew;
and his stories, even when embroidered with quaint fancies, tread firmly
the American soil of the nineteenth century. But Bunner's realism never
concerned itself with the record of trivialities for their own sake.
When he portrayed the lower phases of city life, it was the humor of
that life he caught, and not its sordidness; its kindliness, and not its
brutality. His mind was healthy, and since it was a poet's mind, the
point upon which it was so nicely balanced was love: love of the trees
and flowers, love of his little brothers in wood and field, love of his
country home, love of the vast city in its innumerable aspects; above
all, love of his wife, his family, and his friends; and all these
outgoings of his heart have found touching expression in his verse.
Indeed, this attitude of affectionate kinship with the world has colored
all his work; it has made his satire sweet-tempered, given his tales
their winning grace, and lent to his poetry its abiding power.

[Illustration: HENRY C. BUNNER]

The work upon which Bunner's fame must rest was all produced within a
period of less than fifteen years. He was born in 1855 at Oswego, New
York. He came to the city of New York when very young, and received his
education there. A brief experience of business life sufficed to make
his true vocation clear, and at the age of eighteen he began his
literary apprenticeship on the Arcadian. When that periodical passed
away, Puck was just struggling into existence, and for the English
edition, which was started in 1877,