IV Sitting in Judgment 1825-1827 (LETIERS 128 TO 194) SooN AFTER SETTLING DOWN in May 1825 as co-editor with Columbia professor Henry Anderson of the New-York Review and Atheneum Magazine, Bryant wrote Richard Dana, "The business of sitting in judgment upon books as they come out is not the literary employment the most to my taste nor that for which I am best fitted." But, he added, "It affords me for the present a certain compensation-which is a matter of some consequence to a poor devil like myself." Bryant's later characterization of himself in 1825 as an "unknown literary adventurer" is hardly accurate. Though he had published fewer than fifty poems between the appearance of "Thanatopsis" in 1817 and his removal to New York eight years later, this modest production had steadily enhanced his reputation. His poetry had been received enthusiastically in England as well as at home, and even to some extent in France. During the same period he had written half a dozen prose articles which proved his to be one of the ablest pens in American literary criticism. The many book reviews and notices Bryant wrote during thirty months as an editor of the New-York Review and its successor, the United States Re­ view, though often produced simply to fill space the harried editor would have preferred to allot to others, constitute a considerable portion of the writing now recognized as the "beginning of a more discriminating criticism in Amer­ ica." But the most influential of his critical judgments were contained in four Lectures on Poetry he read to the New York Athenaeum in March and April of 1826. Here he urged members of this popular lyceum to turn their atten­ tion from neo-classicists such as Dryden and Pope to the romanticism of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, whom he placed more directly in the great English tradition of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Bryant's lectures were paired with those given by Samuel F. B. Morse on the history of painting. His poems had drawn praise from William H. Prescott in the North American Review for their "eloquent pictures of American scen­ ery." A student since boyhood of drawing and sketching, Bryant quite nat­ urally emphasized in his lectures the close affinity between the poet and the painter. Bryant had been elected the preceding November to Fenimore Cooper's Bread and Cheese Lunch Club, an informal grouping of writers, artists, and business and professional men interested in the arts. Here he formed friend­ ships with writers Fitz-Greene Halleck, Gulian Verplanck, and Robert Sands, and with artists Morse, Asher Durand, Henry Inman, Robert Weir, and Thomas Cole. His warm sympathy with the artists led him to support their attempt to improve the training and increase the patronage of young painters and sculp- 182 LETTERS OF \VrLLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT tors which resulted in their formation in May 1826 of the National Academy of Design, under the aggressive leadership of Morse. He printed notices of the Academy's exhibitions in his Review, and, after he joined its staff in the summer of 1826, in the Evening Post. He opened the Post's columns to Morse and his associates to reply to attacks on their growing institution by friends of the moribund American Academy of the Fine Arts, which it was replacing in public esteem. Early in 1828, Bryant addressed to the National Academy, as its "professor," a series of five lectures on Mythology which he repeated an­ nually for some years thereafter. Bryant's first venture as editor of a literary journal ended in June 1826, when publication of the New-York Review was suspended. The next month he made what he thought at first would be only a temporary connection with the New York Evening Post, when its editor William Coleman, the paper's founder, suffered a serious accident. But by the end of 1827 Bryant was its responsible editor, guiding the policies of a journal which he soon made the leading organ of radical Democracy, and which would be identified with his name for more than half a century. Like its predecessor the New-York Review, the United States Review, launched in October 1862, lasted for only one year. Issued simultaneously at New York and Boston, with Bryant and Charles Folsom joint editors, it was an interesting experiment, undertaking as it did to overcome the critical hegemony of Boston and Cambridge, exerted through the North American Review, by offering readers a national monthly literary journal. Bryant took responsibility for all poetry, and for reviewing books published at New York and cities farther south, while Folsom and his reviewers cared for works ap­ pearing "to the Eastward." But Bryant became increasingly uncomfortable with his associate's tendency to introduce conservative political views into what he insisted must remain a literary journal. Thus he was almost relieved at the failure of the United States Review to survive beyond its first anniversary, for this freed him for consideration of the political and social questions now absorbing much of his time. To Dana's accusation that he 'was wasting his talents on a "vile blackguard squabble," he replied, "Politics and a bellyfull are better than poetry and starvation." Just as his review failed, Bryant found a more congenial outlet for his literary energies. In August 1827 Robert Sands won the backing of bookseller Elam Bliss for a project which would join Bryant, Gulian Verplanck, and him­ self with Cole, Durand, and other artists in preparing for Christmas publica­ tion an illustrated gift-book of fiction, poetry, humor, legend, and criticism in the manner of the then popular German literary almanacs. Bryant happily seized this opportunity for literary fellowship as an antidote to the serious and solitary business of political journalism. The publication of the first Talisman in December 1827 began a collaboration which subsequently exerted, through the Sketch Club, the American Art Union, and the Century Association, a profound influence on the artistic growth of America's metropolis. Sitting in Judgment IS!J 128. To Richard H. Dana New York May 25, 1825. My dear Sir. On coming to New York about a week since I found two letters from you which seemed from their dates to have been waiting for me some time. In one of them I was very glad to find a contribution in verse for my magazine.1 I am surprized after reading it to hear you say that you never wrote thirty lines before in any measure. You have come into your poetical existence in full strength, like the first man. Not that I was sur­ prized to find the conceptions beautiful-that I was prepared for, as a matter of course-but you write quite like a practised poet. The printer has got it and you shall see your first born in print next week- It will be admired without doubt. The only fault I find with it is that you give rather too many magnificent titles to a bird the popular associations con­ nected with which, are not generally of the dignified kind you mention. I can speak also of his character from my own experience, having once kept a tame crow and found him little better than a knave a thief and a coward. As for the trochees &c. &c. never fash yourself about them. They are well enough-! would not alter them even if it could be done without injuring the beauty of the expression. I hope to receive more favours of the same kind from you. Choose a subject worthy of your genius, and you will do well enough. In the mean time if you have any prose that you can spare I should be very glad to publish it in my journal. We pay $1.00 a page, and I am sorry that we cannot give any thing that can be called a compensation for poetry. You mention an Essay which you enclosed me in a note. I have not received it though I have enquired at all the places where I thought it could be left for me. If it is a good one as I have no doubt it is from your recommendation I am sorry that it has not come to my hands-more especially as I suspect that in the course of the work we shall be sorely perplexed to get matter for our magazine or mis­ cellaneous department. A talent for such articles is quite rare in this country and particularly in this city. There are many who can give grave sensible discussions on subjects of general utility-but few who can write an interesting or diverting article for a miscellany. If your friend does these things well I should be glad to have him write for us-though I hope he will not be too sensitive upon the subject of altering his contribu­ tions. When an Editor is responsible for the several articles inserted in his journal, and pays for them, it is hard that he should not be permit­ ted to make them what he thinks they ought to be- l believe you are right about the $6.00 but it is the fault of the pub­ lishers.2 Wells & Lilly will not be the agents for the journal-though I do not know whom the publishers will appoint. I do not know how long my connection with this work will con- 184 LETTERS OF VVILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT tinue- My $1,000.00 is no great sum to be sure but it is twice what I got by my practice in the country.