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                                  THE

                            GOOD GRAY POET.

                             A VINDICATION.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                               NEW YORK:
                BUNCE & HUNTINGTON, 459, BROOME STREET.
                                 1866.




                          THE GOOD GRAY POET.

                             A VINDICATION.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                                 WASHINGTON, D. C., _September 2, 1865_.

Nine weeks have elapsed since the commission of an outrage, to which I
have not till now been able to give my attention, but which, in the
interest of the sacred cause of free letters, and in that alone, I never
meant should pass without its proper and enduring brand.

For years past, thousands of people in New York, in Brooklyn, in Boston,
in New Orleans, and latterly in Washington, have seen, even as I saw two
hours ago, tallying, one might say, the streets of our American cities,
and fit to have for his background and accessories, their streaming
populations and ample and rich façades, a man of striking masculine
beauty—a poet—powerful and venerable in appearance; large, calm,
superbly formed; oftenest clad in the careless, rough, and always
picturesque costume of the common people; resembling, and generally
taken by strangers for, some great mechanic, or stevedore, or seaman, or
grand laborer of one kind or another; and passing slowly in this guise,
with nonchalant and haughty step along the pavement, with the sunlight
and shadows falling around him. The dark sombrero he usually wears was,
when I saw him just now, the day being warm, held for the moment in his
hand; rich light an artist would have chosen, lay upon his uncovered
head, majestic, large, Homeric, and set upon his strong shoulders with
the grandeur of ancient sculpture; I marked the countenance, serene,
proud, cheerful, florid, grave; the brow seamed with noble wrinkles; the
features, massive and handsome, with firm blue eyes; the eyebrows and
eyelids especially showing that fullness of arch seldom seen save in the
antique busts; the flowing hair and fleecy beard, both very gray, and
tempering with a look of age the youthful aspect of one who is but
forty-five; the simplicity and purity of his dress, cheap and plain, but
spotless, from snowy falling collar to burnished boot, and exhaling
faint fragrance; the whole form surrounded with manliness, as with a
nimbus, and breathing, in its perfect health and vigor, the august charm
of the strong. We who have looked upon this figure, or listened to that
clear, cheerful, vibrating voice, might thrill to think, could we but
transcend our age, that we had been thus near to one of the greatest of
the sons of men. But Dante stirs no deep pulse, unless it be of hate, as
he walks the streets of Florence; that shabby, one-armed soldier, just
out of jail and hardly noticed, though he has amused Europe, is Michael
Cervantes; that son of a vine-dresser, whom Athens laughs at as an
eccentric genius, before it is thought worth while to roar him into
exile, is the century-shaking Æschylus; that phantom whom the wits of
the seventeenth century think not worth extraordinary notice, and the
wits of the eighteenth century, spluttering with laughter, call a
barbarian, is Shakespeare; that earth-soiled, vice-stained ploughman,
with the noble heart and sweet, bright eyes, whom the good abominate and
the gentry patronize—subject now of anniversary banquets by gentlemen
who, could they wander backward from those annual hiccups into Time,
would never help his life or keep his company—is Robert Burns; and this
man, whose grave, perhaps, the next century will cover with passionate
and splendid honors, goes regarded with careless curiosity or phlegmatic
composure by his own age. Yet, perhaps, in a few hearts he has waked
that deep thrill due to the passage of the sublime. I heard lately, with
sad pleasure, of the letter introducing a friend, filled with noble
courtesy, and dictated by the reverence for genius, which a
distinguished English nobleman, a stranger, sent to this American bard.
Nothing deepens my respect for the beautiful intellect of the scholar
Al