136 WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER. [1830-40. echo, or become a rare sound in the homes where it was once "familiar as a house- hold word." But, though studiously declining all proffers of engagements in the spe- cial department of literature mentioned, Mr. Gallagher has not turned his face from the deep fountains and the babbling brooks of Song. He has been dividing such leisure as he could find amid his other pursuits, between a deliberate and severe revision of what he has already written, and the completion of "Miami Woods" — a poem of considerable compass, in which his poetical fame, whatever it may be, will probably culminate. This work of revision and completion, we understand, is now ended: but when we are to look for the "forthcoming volume," which has been par- tially promised every year for the last five, we have not the faintest idea. "Miami Woods" was begun in 1839, and finished in 1857. Any thing more than this, except that it measures the heart-beats of the author through the intervening years, and sings "A solitary sorrow, antheming A lonely grief," has not been made known of it. From the introductory part, an extract was printed in the " Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West." This has been often republished, in different shapes, as one of the most characteristic specimens of the author's writings. The present may be a proper time and place to correct an eiTor that has crept into most of the "Collections" and "Cyclopedias" that have set forth the achievements of American writers. Mr. Gallagher is represented to have published a collection of his poems in the year 1846. This is a mistake, founded perhaps on one of his unredeemed promises. As an editor, Mr. Gallagher was distinguished for zeal in the encouragement of local literary talent, and for earnest advocacy of the cause of popular education, and of the temperance and other moral reforms, as well as for vigorous labors designed to pre- serve the fading records of the early history of the Ohio Valley, and to make known its capacities and the opportunities it afforded immigrants. His earlier poems are memorable for a graphic power, by which the rivers and valleys of the West, the perils of the pioneers and the trials of the early settlers are described ; his later ones are pervaded with an earnest humanitary spirit, which has won for several of them as wide a circulation as the American periodical press can give, and has secured their publication in nearly all the common school readers that have been published during the last ten years. Mr. Gallagher was married to Miss Adamson of Cincinnati, in 1831, and is the father of nine children, of whom one boy and four girls are living. The poem, hereafter quoted, entitled "My Fiftieth Year," was contributed in manuscript for this volume. It shows that the spirit and expression of poetry, which won its author warm admirers thirty years ago, matured and richly cultivated, are at his command now.
