lowly to the number of his poems, publishing a new
collection in 1840, another in 1844, and _Thirty Poems_ in 1864. His
work at all ages was remarkably even. _Thanatopsis_ was as mature as
any thing that he wrote afterward, and among his later pieces the
_Planting of the Apple Tree_ and the _Flood of Years_ were as fresh as
any thing that he had written in the first flush of youth. Bryant's
poetic style was always pure and correct, without any tincture of
affectation or extravagance. His prose writings are not important,
consisting mainly of papers of the _Salmagundi_ variety contributed to
the _Talisman_, an annual published in 1827-30; some rather sketchy
stories, _Tales of the Glauber Spa_, 1832; and impressions of Europe,
entitled _Letters of a Traveler_, issued in two series, in 1849 and
1858. In 1869 and 1871 appeared his blank-verse translations of the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, a remarkable achievement for a man of his age,
and not excelled, upon the whole, by any recent metrical version of
Homer in the English tongue. Bryant's half-century of service as the
editor of a daily paper should not be overlooked. The _Evening Post_,
under his management, was always honest, gentlemanly, and courageous,
and did much to raise the tone of journalism in New York.

Another Massachusetts poet, who was outside the Boston coterie, like
Bryant, and, like him, tried his hand at journalism, was John Greenleaf
Whittier (1807- ). He was born in a solitary farm-house near
Haverhill, in the valley of the Merrimack, and his life has been passed
mostly at his native place and at the neighboring town of Amesbury.
The local color, which is very pronounced in his poetry, is that of the
Merrimack from the vicinity of Haverhill to its mouth at Newburyport, a
region of hill-side farms, opening out below into wide marshes--"the
low, green prairies of the sea," and the beaches of Hampton and
Salisbury. The scenery of the Merrimack is familiar to all readers of
Whittier: the cotton-spinning towns along its banks, with their
factories and dams, the sloping pastures and orchards of the back
country, the sands of Plum Island and the level reaches of water meadow
between which glide the broad-sailed "gundalows"--a local corruption of
gondola--laden with hay. Whittier was a farmer lad, and had only such
education as the district school could supply, supplemented by two
years at the Haverhill Academy. In his _School Days_ he gives a
picture o