ements of expression. In his threescore books there are
delicious poignant moments where the spirit of life itself flutters like
a wild creature, half-caught, half-escaping. It is for the beauty and
thrill of these moments that the pages of Henry James will continue to
be cherished by a few thousand readers scattered throughout the Republic
to which he was ever an alien.

No poet of the new era has won the national recognition enjoyed by
the veterans. It will be recalled that Bryant survived until 1878,
Longfellow and Emerson until 1882, Lowell until 1891, Whittier and
Whitman until 1892, and Holmes until 1894. Compared with these men the
younger writers of verse seemed overmatched. The "National Ode" for the
Centennial celebration in 1876 was intrusted to Bayard Taylor, a hearty
person, author of capital books of travel, plentiful verse, and a
skilful translation of "Faust." But an adequate "National Ode" was not
in him. Sidney Lanier, who was writing in that year his "Psalm of the
West" and was soon to compose "The Marshes of Glynn," had far more of
the divine fire. He was a bookish Georgia youth who had served with the
Confederate army, and afterward, with broken health and in dire poverty,
gave his brief life to music and poetry. He had rich capacities for
both arts, but suffered in both from the lack of discipline and from
an impetuous, restless imagination which drove him on to over-ambitious
designs. Whatever the flaws in his affluent verse, it has grown
constantly in popular favor, and he is, after Poe, the best known
poet of the South. The late Edmund Clarence Stedman, whose "American
Anthology" and critical articles upon American poets did so much to
enhance the reputation of other men, was himself a maker of ringing
lyrics and spirited narrative verse. His later days were given
increasingly to criticism, and his "Life and Letters" is a storehouse of
material bearing upon the growth of New York as a literary market-place
during half a century. Richard Watson Gilder was another admirably
fine figure, poet, editor, and leader of public opinion in many a noble
cause. His "Letters," likewise, give an intimate picture of literary
New York from the seventies to the present. Through his editorship of
"Scribner's Monthly" and "The Century Magazine" his sound influence made
itself felt upon writers in every section. His own lyric vein had an
opaline intensity of fire, but in spite of its glow his verse sometimes
refuse