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American Men of Letters.

Edited by

Charles Dudley Warner.


[Illustration: S. Lawrence, 1837. Illman & Sons.

N. P. Willis.]


American Men of Letters.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

by

HENRY A. BEERS.







[Illustration]

Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.
1890.

Copyright, 1885,
By Henry A. Beers.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.




PREFACE.


The materials for a life of Willis are rich enough to be embarrassing.
Most of his writings are, in a greater or less degree, autobiographical;
and it would be possible to make a very tolerable life of him, by
arranging passages from these in the right order, and linking them
together with a few paragraphs of cold facts. Then, he lived very much in
the world’s eye, and was constantly talked and written about, so that
there is abundant