THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. By Ferris Greonslet. (A. Constable and Co. 128. ad. net.)—" Though I am not genuine Boston," Aldrich was wont to say, "I am Boston-plated." There is some- thing in the saying. Our ideas of American poetry, the quite ex- ceptional Edgar Allan Poo not being reckoned, are taken from the New Eugland school ; Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, are the names which naturally occur to us. T. B. Aldrich certainly enlarges the horizon for us. His earliest successes were won at New York. He had practically " arrived " when, not long before his thirtieth birthday, he went to Boston as editor of Messrs. Osgood and Fields' now venture, Every Saturday. And here we may remark on a peculiarity in American literature which is emphasised by this biography. The editorship of a great magazine is there a blue ribbon in the world of letters. When Aldrich was appointed to the chief command of the Atlantic Monthly there was little left for him to achieve. Another notable thing seems - to be the different position of poetry as a marketable ware. One might almost reckon on the fingers of one band, certainly on the fingers of two, the English writers of verse who have made a liveli- hood, or a substantial part of a livelihood, by it. (Of course we /put aside those whose verso actually satisfies a demand that aa not literary,—Pollok of "The Course of Time," for instance.) Aldrich never reached the first class of poets, though he stands high in the second, and much of his earlier work failed to satisfy his more mature taste, and yet he seems from quite early in his life to have got a fair pecuniary reward for his verse. When be Was but little over eighteen he published a volume of poems, not at his own expense. It was apparently a successful venture ; nevertheless, he did not think any of the pieces in it good enough to include in his "Collected Poems." Generally the biography is a most interesting study of one who was both a man of genius and a most attractive personality. On the whole, it was a singularly happy life. He started, indeed, with an uncongenial occupation. The University was considered impracticable, and he had to be content with a stool in a counting-house. But his employer was a kinsman, and not unkindly, though be thought little of the Muses ; and before he was nineteen Aldrich was free from the desk and earning his own livelihood. Ho had, we may say, no literary disappointments. His third volume of verse (1859) contained a poem, "Baby Bell," which took the whole country by storm. (There is a striking story of how it moved the hearts of an audience of the roughest kind in the West.) His successes came in regular and unbroken order. He had friends of the choicest. And he was happily married. The great sorrow of his life was the early death of one of his twin sons. It is impossible, even in the shortest notice, to say nothing of what was perhaps the very best thing that he ever wrote, "Marjorie Daw." If, perchance, any of our readers do not recognise the title, lot them find out its meaning for themselves. We will conclude With quoting a stanza of Aldrich's elegy on Longfellow, an elegy Which was road at his own funeral :— e. 0 gracious Poet and benign Beloved presence! now as then Thou standest by the hearths of men. Their fireside joys and griefs are thine; Thou speakedt to them of their dead, They lision-anct are comforted. They break the bread and pour the wine Of life with thee, as in those days Men saw thee passing on the street, Beneath the e1ms-0 reverend feet, That walk in far celestial ways."
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