When canvas whitened all the plain, E'er deluged earth with such a flood; If thou, whom all the nations greet Were ever friendlier with the masses, Churl, knight, and senator, man and woman All gorging at a table common! Nay, if it be not too audacious To name the thing,-our sovereign gracious Thrice welcome to the boundless cheer; Curious, to stand aloof, and see But now the folk of puny stature, All bossed and bowed, the sport of nature, And then a mutual onslaught make For beauty or for art renowned. The players' pompous lines are drowned Of Syrian and Spanish girls, While one there is outvies the dancer,— The seats are cleared, the chase begins, His bulging sinus clear displays. Ascends from countless throats uproarious! Hath taken eve's cerulean hue; When blazes on the startled view A flaming orb the arena over, Our further pranks, who will may note! Prevails. I prophesy however The day I've sung will live forever; While stand the Latian mountains fast. While Tiber flows, till Rome shall fall And the regenerate Capitol. Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature by Harriet Waters Preston * Cretan: the constellation of "Ariadne's Crown.» EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN (1833-) HE subtle alchemy of Time, which by imperceptible degrees transmutes youth into age, takes us often unawares, and startles us by the completion of the process which we deemed had hardly been begun. Only a few years ago, one thought of our American poets as forming two groups: that of the old men, with Whittier and Holmes as leaders of the chorus, and that of the young singers, with Mr. Stoddard, Mr. Stedman, and Mr. Aldrich in the foremost rank. Now the old poets are no more, and we realize with a sort of surprise that the young singers have in their turn become the elders. If England must now look upon Mr. Swinburne as an undoubted veteran, America has a still stronger reason for viewing Mr. Stedman in the same light; for he is nearly four years the senior of his English contemporary. E. C. STEDMAN Edmund Clarence Stedman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on the 8th of October, 1833. He entered Yale in 1849, but did not remain with his class to the end. In 1852 he took up the profession of journalism, and followed it with varying fortunes, first in the country, afterwards in New York, for twelve years. During the first period of the Civil War, he acted as a newspaper correspondent from Washington and the Army of the Potomac. In 1864 he obtained a seat in the New York Stock Exchange, and has since that time doubled the pursuit of literature with the life of a man of active affairs. His home was in the city of New York until 1896, when he removed his household gods to the quiet suburb of Bronxville, where he now resides. Mr. Stedman's first published volume was the 'Poems, Lyric, and Idyllic' of 1860. This was followed by 'Alice of Monmouth and Other Poems (1864), 'The Blameless Prince and Other Poems' (1869), and 'Hawthorne and Other Poems (1877). The contents of these four volumes were brought together in a 'Household Edition,' published in 1884 in a single volume. Meanwhile, he had been devoting a XXIV-867 growing amount of attention to critical work, which bore fruit in two important volumes,-'The Victorian Poets' (1875), and 'The Poets of America (1886). In 1892, a third volume was added to this section of his works in the shape of the course of lectures on The Nature and Elements of Poetry' with which he had, in the year preceding, inaugurated the Percy Turnbull memorial lectureship at the Johns Hopkins University. In the present year (1897) he has published as 'Poems Now First Collected' the verse that has accumulated since the appearance of the 'Household Edition.' A few words about his activity as an editor and commentator will complete this account of his more important work, although a number of minor publications have been left unmentioned. From 1888 to 1890 he was engaged, in collaboration with Miss Ellen M. Hutchinson, in preparing 'A Library of American Literature' in eleven volumes; a work so thoroughly and so conscientiously done, it may be said in passing, that it is not likely to have a rival. In 1895 he brought out, in connection with Professor G. E. Woodberry, the much-needed complete edition of Poe, supplying careful notes and extensive critical essays. In that year also he published his judiciously chosen Victorian Anthology,' which will be followed before long by an 'American Anthology' upon a similar plan. As a poet, Mr. Stedman occupies a very high place in our literature. His earlier work had suggestions of the things he most loved, - of the Tennysonian idyl, the Landorian cameo, the delicate trifling and the "occasional" felicity of Holmes or Mr. Dobson; but it soon became evident that his essential utterance was to be his own, and the expression of a strong alert individuality. Some of his poems such as 'How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry,' 'Pan in Wall Street,' and 'Wanted-A Man'—are among the most familiar productions of American authorship. During the dark days of the war he devoted many a well-remembered and fervently patriotic strain to the cause of the Union. And since then, upon many a celebration of civic or social interest, he has expressed the dominant ideas and emotions of the occasion in rarely felicitous numbers. His voice has been raised in behalf of many a noble cause; and we find him thirty years ago pleading for both Crete and Cuba, then as now struggling to be free. The quality of his genius is mainly lyrical, and his poetical utterance that of an eager clear-sighted spirit, responsive to both natural impressions and the appeal of culture, and finely attuned to all the complex life of the modern world. As a critic, he is in the highest degree suggestive and helpful. His sense of the beautiful in literature is almost unerring, and he stimulates the reader to share in his own raptures. His three volumes of criticism constitute the most important body of opinion that has yet been produced by any one |