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ments, or in the even flow and bright radiance of his narrative. He was not only happy in his mastery of his subject, he was most happy in his mastery of himself. Parkman's life is a reproach to the man who, working amid normal conditions of health and fortune, permits himself to complain that there are difficulties in his way.

Bayard Taylor

Bayard Taylor

HIS LIFE

AYARD TAYLOR in 1841, when he was sixteen, contributed to the Philadelphia 'Saturday 'Evening Post' the verses entitled 'Soliloquy of 'a Young Poet.' In 1878, the year of his death, he was still planning new literary enterprises, and in so far as declining health permitted, carrying them out. If unwearied devotion through nearly forty years to the literary life, great fecundity in production, much taste, no little scholarship, and unquestioned sincerity in the exercise of his art entitle one to be called by the honorable name of man of letters, who is more deserving than the author of The Masque of the Gods? To be sure, only a few of his many books are read. But Taylor is in no worse case than many men who tower giant-fashion above him. They likewise have written forty volumes and are known and measured by two or three.

Marie Hansen-Taylor and H. E. Scudder: Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, 1884.

A. H. Smyth: Bayard Taylor, American Men of Letters ' [1896].

Taylor was partly of German, partly of English Quaker stock, and could boast an ancestor (Robert Taylor) who had come to America with William Penn. The fourth of the ten children of Joseph and Rebecca (Way) Taylor, he was born at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on January 11, 1825. His education was got at the neighboring academies of Westchester and Unionville. He was a rhymester at the age of seven, and had become an industrious writer by the time he was twelve.

Having no inclination towards school-teaching and still less towards his father's vocation, farming, Taylor was apprenticed to a printer. He was presently seized with a passion for travel, and in 1844, with one hundred and forty dollars in his pocket, payment in advance for certain letters he was to write for Philadelphia journals, he set out on a pedestrian tour of Europe. He had a few remittances from home. Greeley promised to print some of his letters provided they were not descriptive' and that before writing them the young traveller made sure that he had been in Europe 'long enough to 'know something.' Seventeen of Taylor's letters appeared in the 'Tribune.'

By rigid economy Taylor managed to get on. But one must have youth to endure the hardships of such a journey. Especially must one have youth if he proposes, as Taylor did, to walk from Mar

seilles to Paris in the cold winter rains. The his

tory of these two years of wandering is recounted

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