I would that in the verse she loved some word
Not all unfit I to her praise might frame:
Some word wherein the memory of her name
Should through long years its incense still afford.
But no; her spirit smote with its own sword;
Herself has lit the fire whose blood-red flame
Shall not be quenched;-this is her living fame
Who struck so well the sonnet's subtle chord.
—GILDER, RICHARD WATSON, 1885,"H. H.,"
The Critic, Aug. 29.

The verse of the brilliant and devoted "H. H." (the sense of whose loss is fresh upon us) is more carefully finished, though perhaps it sings the less for its union of intellectuality with a subtile feeling whose intenseness is realized only by degrees. Her pieces, mostly in a single key, and that grave and earnest, have won the just encomiums of select critics, but certainly lack the variety of mood which betokens an inborn and always dominant poetic faculty. -STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE, 1885, Poets of America, p. 445.

Mrs. Jackson had the characteristics of the "Dial" group at its best; deep and sincere thought, uttered for its own sake in verse not untinged by the poetic inspiration and touch. In her poems the influence of the mind is felt before that of the heart; they are reflective and suggestive, sometimes concisely argumentative. Certain

phases and senses of spirit, brain, and nature lay long in the poet's thought, and at length found deliberate and apt expression in word and metre. The character of H. H.'s product is explained by the frequency with which she chose single words-often abstract nouns-as titles. It is meditative not lyrical; it lacks spontaneity and outbursts; the utter joyance of the poetry of nature and humanity, that will sing itself, is seldom present, even when nature and man are the themes. Large creative impulse is also absent. It is therefore poetry that never rises above the second class, but its place in that class is high.-RICHARDSON, CHARLES F., 1888, American Literature, 1607-1885, vol. II, p. 238.

"H. H." were long while familiar and welcome initials with the Transatlantic reading public, and both as a woman and a writer Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson exercised a widespread and beneficent influence. Her "Freedom" is an especially noble sonnet, though its rhythmic strength unfor

The greatest charm of her work, both in prose and verse, is her keen sense of colour. For flowers she had what could not be called other than a passion, and her friends have delighted in recalling her eagerness and joy over every bloom and blossom in the neighbourhood of her home, near Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado. In personality she was the most poetic of poets, and in her love of physical beauty more "Greek than the Greeks." It is probable that no woman of her time exercised such a sway over the admiration and sympathies of the younger American writers. Her "Ramona" is a prose idyl which deserves a place among the memorable works of imaginative fiction. Much of Mrs. Jackson's poetry, however, is void of its subtlest charm to those who never met her; it has the common fault of Transatlantic verse, a too nervous facility, a diffuseness which palls rather than attracts. When, a few years hence, some sympathetic but sternly critical hand shall give us a selection of all that is best in the writings of "H. H.," her name will rest on a surer basis.-SHARP, WILLIAM, 1889, ed., American Sonnets, Introductory Note, p. xliii.

Nature was bountiful to her. She was what is called a natural poet, human in sympathies, and with a fine lyric touch.

The broad human heart shows itself from one end of her writing to the other. She is essentially human, and she has eminently the faculty of creating an interest for she chooses bright, picturesque metres, and uses picturesque expressions. It was said of Longfellow that no one will deny that the world is better for his having been born. This is true also of "H. H." was a sort of feminine Longfellow, inferior to him, as one would expect a woman to be, in scholarship and learning,- like him in striking the keynote of home.-SLADEN, DOUGLAS, 1891, ed., Younger American Poets, To the Reader, p. 28.

She

As a poet Mrs. Jackson's range was not a wide one, but within her limits she sang surpassingly well. She was not a creator; she simply read her own heart. The awfulness of her affliction cut her off for a time from the world, and like a great storm it cleared the atmosphere about her so that she looked far into the mysteries that encompass mortal life. It was her raptness, her mysticism, that appealed so strongly

PERSONAL

A very tall young man, with a strong and not markedly handsome face, known as Richard Grant White. He talked well, [1840] and had a marked tendency to allude to the writings of one Shakespeare, of whom he appeared to be a "Scholar." He had also some very pronounced ideas connected with philology, giving promise that some day he might be heard from with reference to spellings, derivations, the morals of literature, etc.-MORFORD, HENRY, 1880, John Keese, His Intimates, Morford's Magazine, June.

His life was retired, and his intimates were not numerous. At concerts and at the opera his tall, erect, and striking figure (he was six feet and three inches), resembling that of an English guardsman, was very familiar to habitués. He was a man of many accomplishments and achievements, but almost exclusively devoted to literary and artistic pursuits.-WILSON, JAMES GRANT, 1885, Bryant and His Friends, p. 427.

There was a certain whimsicality in his temperament, as there was in the temperament of Mr. Charles Astor Bristed, which amused his friends and enraged his enemies. A ripe scholar, he was contemptuous toward the crass ignorance (for it could be nothing less) which questioned his dicta, either in regard to music, of which he was a student and a proficient; or language, in which he was acute rather than learned; or art, of which he was a skilful connoisseur; or, worse than all, the niceties of Elizabethan erudition. Courtly and polished in his personal address, his pen was apt to run away with him when once he put it on paper. composure was exasperating,-exasperating to his equals, and maddening to his inferiors, which most of his assailants assuredly were. If he could have shut his eyes to some of the foibles of his countrymen, as the best of his countrymen shut their eyes to some of his foibles, he would have had a pleasanter time of it; and he liked a pleasant time. But he was like Iago -"nothing if not critical.

...

His

I can

hardly say that I knew this accomplished man-of-letters, though I was acquainted with him for a quarter of a century and upwards. . . . The world is said to be a very

small place, we meet the same people so often; but I have not found it so. The last time I met Mr. White was at the Authors' Club a year and a half ago. We lived within hailing distance of each other, only two streets apart, he with a southern exposure in his rooms, I with a northern one in mine. There was no reason why we should not have met often, or only the reason that the world is very, very large,-in a busy crowded city like this.-STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1885, Richard Grant White, The Critic, vol. 6, pp. 181, 182.

The whole life of Richard Grant White was passed in New York. He was born there and he died there, and in all the intervening years his absences from the town were few and brief. . . . His knowledge of his own country from personal observation was also unusually limited for an American of any condition. Yet, long as he lived in New York, he never conceived any real affection for the great commercial capital. He was a stranger in a strange city. . . . From first to last he had no intimates among the writers of his day. Until the establishment of the Authors' Club, a short time before his death, he belonged to none of the associations of his craft. . . . He lived wholly apart from the ways and the sympathies of the literary class around him. He went to them neither for applause nor for intellectual stimulus. . . . He was keenly sensitive about the dignity of his profession and the conduct becoming a gentleman. He prided himself on never having been an applicant for any place or favor. He would not elbow his way to a superior seat; for, of all God's creatures, the being now described as a "hustler" was most odious in his eyes.. Mr. White was looked upon, by the younger writers more especially, as an arrogant and conventional man, starched, affected, and supercilious, incapable of other emotion than self-admiration,-vain, conceited, and a coxcomb. This impression was strengthened by the formality of his manners, the precision of his speech, and the suggestion in the cut of his garments and the character of his utterance that he was an Anglomaniac, who felt himself above his calling and his colleagues. As he was two inches

upward of six feet in height, and carried himself with remarkable erectness, he did overtop them physically. . . . He was incapable of malice himself,-as incapable as he was of jealousy,-and though he had a keen sense of humor, as he demonstrated very conspicuously, he never resorted to its use as a cloak for envy and malignity. He could not accuse himself of any lack of courtesy to those with whom he came in contact, for he was always courteous and considerate to the last degree. If he never permitted obtrusive familiarity, neither did he himself fail in showing due regard for others.-CHURCH, FRANCIS P., 1891, Richard Grant White, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 67.

GENERAL

He has, for years, been recognized as a thinker and scholar of singular independence of character. He has shown, in treating every object he has discussed, so confident a mastery of the subject matter relating to it, and has been so bold in rigidly following out to their logical conclusions the novel, and occasionally somewhat eccentric, trains of thought he has started, that he has become a constantly questioned although still a palpable force in our literature. Perhaps he is most eagerly read by those who most vehemently disagree with him in opinion. On the whole, it may be said that no other American man of letters has had his great merits more grudgingly allowed, and his minor defects more assiduously magnified. . . . What most attracts us in his career as a professional American man of letters is the courage with which he has expressed his opinions, whether popular or unpopular; the patience with which he has investigated the materials of literary and social history on which just opinions regarding such matters are founded; and the acuteness, independence, force, and fertility of thought he has brought to the discussion of every debatable question which has attracted his attention as a critic and a scholar. We might clamorously demur to many of his most confident judgments, but the spirit which animates him as a thinker and seeker after truth appears to us pure, wise, and unselfish.-WHIPPLE, EDWIN PERCY, 1882, Richard Grant White, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 49, pp. 214, 222.

The death of Mr. White has left a blank in American letters which only one writer, Mr. Horace Howard Furness, can be said to

fll.

He was our foremost Shakespearean scholar, and was recognised as such by all competent judges abroad, even by those who dissented from many of his conclusions. . . . If I am any judge of English prose, the prose of Mr. White, when at its best, is frank, lucid, direct, and manly.STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1885, Richard Grant White, The Critic, vol. 6, p. 181.

The satirical power which the late Richard Grant White possessed was little known to the public, because he studiously avoided the presentation of his claims on that score. ... By his scholarly attitude and work, as well as by his frequent anonymous contributions to press criticisms of books, he rendered good service to the cause of American letters.-LATHROP, GEORGE PARSONS, 1886, The Literary Movement in New York, Harper's Magazine, vol. 73, p. 814.

White's faults as a critic were a severity sometimes amounting to ill-nature; an egotistic self-assertion that was unjust to his opponents; an inability to state fairly the other side of a question; a fondness for petty discussions; and an occasional prolixity. As a writer on Shakespeare and an editor of his works, he dwelt with increasing and one-sided force upon the defects of Shakespeare's personality, until the puzzled

reader wondered how Hamlet or Juliet could be evoked from the brain of so mean a

man.

But White exposed and shamed many pretentious ignoramuses, Shakespearean and other; he ridiculed and routed the wretched crew of annotators, "conjectural" readers, and forgers of text; and he made very clear (especially in "The Life and Genius of Shakespeare," vol. I, of the twelve-volume edition) the true and the false in the Shakespeare life-legend. Not a philologist himself, he promoted the study of the forms and uses of words; and in general he performed a sound service to American criticism by his very cynicism and coldness. Here was a writer who could

sharply challenge sentimentality and halfknowledge, within his particular field. His notes on England are much inferior to Hawthorne's or Emerson's both in description and in analysis; and his one novel, portentously called "The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys; with the Episode of Mr. Washington Adams in England, and an Apology," is a laughable failure.-RICHARDSON, CHARLES F., 1887, American Literature, 1607-1885, vol. I, p. 442.