found it difficult to account, we know; and there is not a really imaginative man within sound of our voice to-day, who, upon perusal of this little "Tree Toad," will not admit it to be one of the truest poems ever written by Brainard.-POE, EDGAR ALLAN, 1842, Graham's Magazine, Works, eds. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. VIII, P 271. Brainard lacked the mental discipline and strong self-command which alone confer true power. He never could have produced a great work. His poems were nearly all written during the six years in which he edited the Mirror, and they bear marks of haste and carelessness, though some of them are very beautiful. He failed only in his humorous pieces; in all the rest his language is appropriate and pure, his diction free and harmonious, and his sentiments natural and sincere. His serious poems are characterized by deep feeling and delicate fancy; and if we had no records of his history, they would show us that he was a man of great gentleness, simplicity, and purity.-Griswold, RUFUS W., 1842-46, The Poets and Poetry of America, p. 178. His genius lay in the amiable walks of the belles-lettres, where the delicacy of his temperament, the correspondence of the sensitive mind to the weak physical frame, found its appropriate home and nourishment. His country needed results of this kind more than it did law or politics; and in his short life Brainard honored his native land. His genius is a flower plucked from the banks of the river which he loved, and preserved for posterity. DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. AND GEORGE L., 1855-65-75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. I, p. 966. Another crude Connecticut poet, J. G. C. Brainard, was writing hasty lines similarly lacking in greatness but similarly marked by occasional genuineness. Now the seabird was his theme. . Again, he wrote of some local stream, or of the autumn woods he well knew. Less true and more bombastic was Brainard's once famous extemporization on Niagara, which he never saw. RICHARDSON, CHARLES F., 1888, American Literature, 1607-1885, vol. 11, pp. 31, 32. An early friend of Whittier, -died young, leaving a few pieces which show that his lyrical gift was spontaneous and genuine, but had received little cultivation.-BEERS, HENRY A., 1895, Initial Studies in American Letters, p. 182. Edward Coate Pinkney 1802-1828 Edward Coate Pinkney was born in London in October, 1802, while his father was there as United States Commissioner under the Jay treaty. He was educated at St. Mary's College, Baltimore, and entered the navy as a midshipman. But at the age of twenty-two he resigned his commission, and studied law. In 1826 he accepted a professorship in the University of Maryland, and in 1827 the editorship of the "Marylander," a political journal. Ill health soon compelled him to resign the latter, and he died on the 11th of April, 1828. His only volume was "Rodolph, and other Poems," published anonymously in Baltimore in 1825. It is included in Morris and Willis's "Mirror Library," with a biographical sketch by William Leggett.-JOHNSON, ROSSITER, 1875, Little Classics, Authors, p. 199. productions of a similar character in the English language.- LEGGETT, WILLIAM, 1827, The Mirror. "Rodolph" is his longest work. It was first published, anonymously, soon after he left the navy, and was probably written while he was in the Mediterranean. . . . There is no novelty in the story, and not much can be said for its morality. It has more faults than Pinkney's other works; in many passages it is obscure; its beauty is marred by the use of obsolete words; and the author seems to delight in drawing his comparisons from the least known portions of ancient literature. Some of his lighter pieces are very beautiful. "A Health," "The Picture-Song," and "A Serenade," have not often been equalled. Pinkney's is the first instance in this country in which we have to lament the prostitution of true poetical genius to unworthy purposes. Pervading much that he wrote. there is a selfish melancholy and sullen pride; dissatisfaction with the present, and doubts in regard to the future life.GRISWOLD, RUFUS W., 1842-46, The Poets and Poetry of America, pp. 231, 232. The poem just cited ["A Health"] is especially beautiful; but the poetic elevation which it induces we must refer chiefly to our sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the evident earnestness with which they are uttered. -POE, EDGAR ALLAN, 1850, The Poetic Principle, Works, vol. VI, p. 18. The small volume of poems, sufficiently large to preserve his memory with all generous appreciators of true poetry as a writer of exquisite taste and susceptibility, appeared in Baltimore in 1825. It contained "Rodolph, a Fragment," which had previously been printed anonymously for the author's friends. It is a powerful sketch of a broken life of passion and remorse, of a husband slain by the lover of his wife, of her early death in a convent, and of the paramour's wanderings and wild mental anticipations. Though a fragment, wanting in fulness of design and the last polish of execution, it is a poem of power and mark. There is an occasional inner music in the lines, demonstrative of the true poet. The imagery is happy and original, evidently derived from objects which the writer had seen in the impressible youth of his voyages in the navy. DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. AND GEORGE L., 1855-65-75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. II, p. 147. Trilled his airy love-lyrics like a descendant of some seventeenth-century cavalier.-PANCOAST, HENRY S., 1898, An Introduction to American Literature. p. 155. Thomas Young 1773-1829 Physicist, born of Quaker parentage at Milverton, Somerset, studied medicine at London, Edinburgh, Göttingen, and Cambridge, and started as doctor in London in 1800, but devoted himself to scientific research, and in 1801 became professor of Natural Philosophy to the Royal Institution. His "Lectures" (1807) expounded the doctrine of interference, which established the undulatory theory of light. He was secretary to the Royal Society, and did valuable work in insurance, hæmodynamics, and Egyptology.-PATRICK AND GROOME, eds., 1897, Chambers's Biographical Dictionary, p. 991. PERSONAL Dined at the Athenæum. Hudson Gurney asked me to dine with him. He was low spirited. His friend, Dr. Young, is dying. Gurney speaks of him as a very great man, the most learned physician and greatest mathematician of his age, and the first discoverer of the clue to the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Calling on him. a few days ago, Gurney found him busy about his Egyptian Dictionary, though very ill. He is aware of his state, but that makes him most anxious to finish his work. "I would not," he said to Gurney, "live a single idle day."-ROBINSON, HENRY CRABB, 1829, Diary, April 29. Dr. Young was a man, in all the relations of life, upright, kind-hearted, blameless. His domestic virtues were as exemplary as his talents were great. He was entirely free from either envy or jealousy, and the assistance which he gave to others engaged in the same lines of research with himself, was constant and unbounded. His morality through life had been pure, though unostentatious. His religious sentiments were by himself stated to be liberal, though orthodox. He had extensively studied the Scriptures, of which the precepts were deeply impressed upon his mind from his earliest years; and he evidenced the faith which he professed, in an unbending course of usefulness and rectitude. GURNEY, HUDSON, 1831, Memoir of the Life of Thomas Young. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS YOUNG, M. D., FELLOW AND FOREIGN SECRETARY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE: A MAN ALIKE EMINENT IN ALMOST EVERY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN LEARNING. PATIENT OF UNINTERMITTED LABOUR, ENDOWED WITH THE FACULTY OF INTUITIVE PERCEPTION, WHO, BRINGING AN EQUAL MASTERY AND FIRST PENETRATED THE OBSCURITY WHICH HAD VEILED FOR AGES THE HIEROGLYPHICS OF EGYPT. endeared to his friends by his domestic virtues, honoured by the world for his unrivalled acquirements, he died in the hopes of the resurrection of the just. Born at Milverton, in Somersetshire, Died in Park Square, London, May 10th, 1829, I have not dwelt too long on the task imposed on me, if I have brought out, as I wished to do, the importance and novelty of the admirable law of interferences. Young is now placed before your eyes as one of the most illustrious men of science in whom England may justly take pride. Your thoughts, anticipating my words, may perhaps receive already, in the recital of the just honours shown to the author of so beautiful a discovery, the peroration of this historical notice. These anticipations, I regret to say, will not be realized. The death of Young has in his own country created very little sensation. The doors of Westminster Abbey, so easily accessible to titled mediocrity, remained shut upon a man of genius, who was not even a baronet. It was in the village of Farnborough, in the modest tomb of the family of his wife, that the remains of Thomas Young were deposited. The indifference of the English nation for those scientific labours which ought to add so much to its glory, is a rare anomaly, of which it would be curious to trace the causes. I should be wanting in frankness, I should be the panegyrist, not the historian, if I did not avow, that in general Young did not sufficiently accommodate himself to the capacity of his readers; that the greater part of the writings for which the sciences are indebted to him, are justly chargeable with a certain obscurity.-ARAGO, FRANÇOIS, 1832, Thomas Young, Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men, vol. II, p. 340. Although Westminster Abbey does not hold his dust, Dean Buckland allowed Young's devoted widow to place within its famous walls a profile medallion of him executed by Chantrey, and beneath it a slab containing an inscription written by his life-long friend Hudson Gurney. When we consider the grandeur of his genius, the multifarious greatness of his works, the simplicity and sublimity of his character, we are amazed at the indifference of mankind, which has suffered his name to rest in comparative obscurity.MILBURN, WILLIAM HENRY, 1890, Thomas Young, Harper's Magazine, vol. 80, p. 679. GENERAL Such is the beautiful theory of Fresnel and Young; for we must not, in our regard for one great name, forget the jus are tice which is due to the other; and to separate them and assign to each his share would be as impracticable as invidious, so intimately they blended together throughout every part of this system,early, acute, and pregnant suggestion characterizing the one, and maturity of thought, fullness of systematic development and decisive experimental illustration equally distinguishing the other.HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN, 1827, Peacock's Life of Young, p. 397. At the mention of Dr. Young's name the historian must pause. None of our countrymen has approached more nearly the character of the celebrated Dr. Brook Taylor. Possessing the same ingenuity, extensive learning, varied accomplishments, and profound science, he combined likewise a concise, hard, and sometimes obscure, mode of stating his reasonings and calculations.-LESLIE, SIR JOHN, 1853, Fifth Preliminary Dissertation, Encyclopædia Britannica, Eighth ed. It may safely be affirmed that no philologer ever before made such a discovery |