150 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS grandeur of this young American. There are moments in the life of man when he stands face to face with nature, and sees her as she is, and himself as he is, and the relation of everything in the universe. Such a moment is fixed for all time in "Thanatopsis." It would be interesting to know what authors the youthful student read with most avidity and attention. The influence of Pope is visible in " The Em- bargo," as the influence of Wordsworth is visible in "Thanatopsis." But be- tween the writing of these poems a space of four or five years other poets than those named must have stimulated his thoughts and colored his style. Cowper, we imagine, was one, and Akenside, perhaps, another. He may have read Scott, and Southey, and Coleridge, although there are no traces of either in anything that he has written. That Wordsworth was more to him at this period than any other English poet, we have the testimony of the elder Dana. " I shall never forget," he writes, " with what feeling my friend Bryant, some years ago, described to me the effect upon him of his meeting for the first time with Wordsworth's ballads. He lived, when quite young, where but few works of poetry were to be had ; at a period, too, when Pope was still the great idol of the Temple of Art. He said that, upon opening Wordsworth, a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in his heart, and the face of nature, of a sud- den, to change into a strange freshness and life." Wordsworth may have been the master of Bryant, but it was only as Ramsay was the master of Burns, and Chaucer of Keats, and Keats himself of Tennyson. That is to say, the disciple found in the master a kindred spirit. The eyes with which Bryant looked on nature were his own. Wordsworth never imparted to him " the vision and the faculty divine." It should be observed, also, that he was favorably situated in his youth ; not like so many poets, in the heart of a great city, but in the quiet of the country, amid green fields and woods, in sight of rivers and mountains, and beneath a sky which was nowhere obstructed by man. The scenery around Cummington is said to be beautiful, and, immediately around the Bryant home- stead, of a rich pastoral character. It haunted him like a passion from the be- ginning, and appeared again and again in his poetry, always with a fresh and added charm. After leaving Williams College, Mr. Bryant studied law, first with Judge Howe, of Washington, and afterward with Mr. William Baylies, of Bridgewater. Admitted to the bar at Plymouth in 1815, he practised one year at Plainfield, and then removed to Great Barrington, where, in 182 1, he married Miss Frances Fairchild. Of this lady, who survived until within a few years, there are several graceful and touching memorials in the poetry of her husband. She was the ideal celebrated in the poem beginning, "Oh, fairest of the rural maids;" and it is to her that "The Future Life" and "The Life that Is" are addressed. Whether Mr. Bryant was a successful lawyer, we are not told ; but, as he lived at Great Barrington nine years in the practice of law, it is to be supposed that he was. However this may be, he still cultivated his poetry, which was now bringing him into notice. "Thanatopsis" was published in 18 16 in the North
