BRYANT, 1794-1878

Biographical Outline.--William Cullen Bryant, born November 3, 1794, in Cummington, Mass. ; father a skilful physician and surgeon, of fine literary and musical taste and some knowledge of Greek, Latin, and French, who was for several years a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts; mother a woman of remarkably sensitive moral judgment; Bryant is precocious as a child, but nervous, puny, and delicate; in 1797 the family remove to Plainfield, a village near Cummington, but return in 1798 to a farm near Cummington owned by Bryant's maternal grandfather; owing to the absence of schools in the vicinity, Bryant, with his six brothers and sisters, receives his early education mainly from his parents, who provided for their children such books as the works of Hume, Plutarch, Shakespeare, and nearly all the acknowledged classic English writers of that day; Pope, Cowper, Spenser, and Wordsworth seem to have been Bryant's early favorites; he once told Parke Godwin that, while yet a boy, he had read "The Faerie Queene" many times through; the children of the family were subjected to severe Puritan discipline, and corporal punishment was common; Bryant worked with his brothers on the grandfather's farm during the summer; there was little society, and all communication with the outside world was made on horseback; while living at Cummington Bryant attends a district school, where he masters the common branches, and is faithfully drilled in the catechism; he is also taught the rudiments of Latin and French by his father; Bryant begins to make verses in his eighth year, and, at ten, delivers before his school an address written

in heroic couplets, which is published in the county paper and is used as a stock piece for recitation in other schools; he is asked by his grandfather to versify the first chapter of Job, and continues till he has versified the whole narrative; Bryant's early poetic efforts are ridiculed by his father, but he continues, and his account in verse of the eclipses of 1806 is still preserved; later he wins his father's favor by an apostrophe in verse to Jefferson, severely satirizing that statesman, who was intensely disliked by the Federalist physician; this satire of over five hundred lines was published in Boston in 1808 by Bryant's father in pamphlet form under the title "The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times; a Satire by a Youth of Thirteen ; the first edition was exhausted in a year, and in 1809 appeared "a second edition, corrected and enlarged, together with the Spanish Revolution and Other Poems. By William Cullen Bryant; about this time Bryant

also writes a creditable metrical version of David's lament over Saul and Jonathan, his first effort in blank verse.

In November, 1808, he goes to reside with his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Snell, at Brookfield, Mass., and there begins preparation for college; he soon develops ability to read difficult Latin, and, at his father's request, renders parts of the "Eneid" into English verse; he begins Mrs. Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest," but is dissuaded by his uncle, who tells him that such works have "an unwholesome influence; he has Amasa Walker as a fellow-student under Dr. Snell's instruction; in eight months Bryant reads all of the "Æneid," the "Eclogues," the "Georgics," and Cicero's "Orations; " he spends the summer of 1809 working in the hayfield on his grandfather's farm, and is reproved for resting from his work to "make varses; " in August, 1809, Bryant goes to the Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, Mass., to learn Greek, and pays one dollar a week for board and tuition; he makes such rapid progress that, as he says, "At the end of two calendar months I knew the Greek New Testament from

end to end almost as if it had been English; "' he returns to Cummington late in October, 1809, and there continues his college preparatory studies during the winter without a tutor; in the spring of 1810 he returns for a time to Plainfield, where he is instructed in mathematics by Hallock; in September, 1810, Bryant attends, with his father, the Commencement exercises at Williams College, and easily passes examinations admitting him as a Sophomore.

He enters Williams October 8, 1810; at that time the college Faculty consisted of the president, one professor, and two tutors; Bryant says in his "Autobiography:" "I mastered the daily lesson given out to my class, and found much time for miscellaneous reading, for disputations [in a literary society], and for literary composition in prose and verse;" in the summer of 1811, before the close of his first year at Williams, Bryant, influenced by the example of his room-mate, John Avery, decides to enter Yale, obtains from Williams an honorable dismissal, and returns, in May, 1811, to his home at Cummington, where he studies to prepare himself for entering the Junior Class at Yale; however, for financial reasons, his father finds it impossible to send the son to Yale, and so Bryant's college career is comprised in the part of a year at Williams, which he afterward regretted leaving; while studying at home at this period he becomes interested in his father's medical books, and acquires from them a considerable knowledge of chemistry and botany-" meantime I read all the poetry that came in my way; "' while at Williams he had rendered Anacreon's "Ode on Spring" with such merit that his college-mates mistook it for Moore's, with which they compared it, both being unsigned; he continues his Greek studies after leaving college, making translations in prose from Lucian and in verse from Anacreon, Mimnernus, Colophon, Bion, and Sophocles; Bryant also now renews his long rambles in field and forest, and, inspired by Kirk White's "Melodies of Death," he writes "Thanatopsis," beginning

the first sketch with the line, "Yet a few days," etc.; "Thanatopsis" was written in October, 1811, but the manuscript was carefully hidden in Bryant's father's desk, without being subjected to criticism or inspection.

Bryant was originally intended for the practice of medicine. -the profession of his ancestors for three generations-but later his father decided to make him a lawyer, and in December, 1811, the son enters the law office of one Mr. Howe, of Worthington, Mass.; he studies with fair diligence, but continues to versify and botanize; he is strongly inspired by reading Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads," but his legal preceptor warns him against such reading as a "sad waste of time;" during 1812-13 Bryant writes but one poem, a Fourth of July ode, written at the request of a Boston society, made through Bryant's father; while at Worthington, Pryant is fascinated by the daughter of a distinguished friend of his father's, and writes fragments of love-verses (never published), but the relationship is soon broken off; in June, 1814, he removes to the law office of Mr. William Baylies, of Bridgewater, Mass., a much larger town than Worthington; he is most eager to finish his legal course in Boston, but his father's financial circumstances will not permit it; Bryant devotes himself closely to study at Bridgewater, determining, as he wrote to a friend," to tune the rural lay no more,

but leave the race of bards to scribble, starve, and freeze; he writes another Fourth of July ode in 1814, deploring our war with England and denouncing Napoleon; he is entrusted with the business of the office during the absence of his preceptor in Congress; he passes the preliminary test for admission to the bar August 9, 1814; in correspondence with his preceptor at this time, Bryant manifests a warm interest in public affairs; he even proposes to enter the army, but an attack of pulmonary disease compels him to go home and spend the month of November at Cummington; during the intense political struggle of the day Bryant becomes a rabid

Federalist, and speaks of President Madison as "his imbecility;" he proposes to join the State militia, "being ashamed to stay at home when everybody besides was gone," and foreseeing, he thinks, a civil war; he is appointed an adjutant in the Massachusetts militia in July, 1816, but the Peace of Ghent causes his services to be uncalled for.

He passes his final legal examination and is admitted to the Court of Common Pleas August 15, 1815; at this time he again devotes himself to a minute study of nature, and sketches several nature poems; he writes "The Yellow Violet" just before his admission to the bar, and the “ Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood" about the same time; in December, 1815, on his way to Plainfield, Mass., where he proposed to settle as a lawyer, he sees a wild duck flying homeward and, while walking, composes the lines "To a Waterfowl;" after remaining eight months at Plainfield, he removes to Great Barrington, Mass., where he becomes a partner of one G. H. Ives; soon afterward he suffers a second attack of pulmonary disease; he is urged by his father to contribute in prose or verse to the North American Review, then recently established in Boston and edited by Phillips, a friend of Bryant's father; but Bryant does not respond, having apparently resolved to abandon the muses; meanwhile the father discovers the manuscript of "Thanatopsis" and himself carries it to Phillips; R. H. Dana, then one of the owners of the Review, declares the manuscript an imposture and says, "No one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses;

Thanatopsis" was first published in the North American Review for September, 1817, and was then prefixed with four stanzas on death, found by Bryant's father with the manuscript, but having no connection with the poem and not intended by Bryant for publication; this forbidding introduction prevented "Thanatopsis" from attracting much attention at first except from the critics, who still supposed it to have been written by Bryant's father; in July, 1818, Bryant publishes