officer serving in Virginia, is regarded as autobiographical. He wrote also a "Life of General Robert E. Lee," and a "History of Virginia," in the American Commonwealth series.

221. Boston of the South." The other principal literary centre of the South was Charleston. It has often been called the Boston of the South." Legaré's wit and scholarship," to use the words of Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, “brightened its social circle; Calhoun's deep shadow loomed over it from his plantation at Fort Hill; Gilmore Simms's genial culture broadened its sympathies. The latter was the Mæcenas to a band of brilliant youths who used to meet for literary suppers at his beautiful home." Among these brilliant youths were Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod, two of the best poets the South has produced.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

222. Simms.- William Gilmore Simms was a man of rare versatility. of genius. He made up for his lack of collegiate training by private study and wide experience. He early gave up law for literature, and during his long and tireless literary career was editor, poet, dramatist, historian,

and novelist. He has been styled "the Cooper of the South"; but it is hardly too much to say that in versatility, culture, and literary productiveness he surpassed his great Northern contemporary.

223. A Poet.

Simms was a poet before he became a novelist. Before he was twenty-five he had published three

HOME OF SIMMS, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

or more volumes of verse. In 1832 his imaginative poem, Atalantis, a Story of the Sea," was brought out by the Harpers, and it introduced him at once to the favorable notice of what Poe called the "Literati" of New York. His subsequent volumes of poetry, among which "Areytos, or Songs and Ballads of the South," is to be noted, were devoted chiefly to a description of Southern scenes and incidents.

224. Poetic Style.

The verse of Simms is characterized

by facile vigor rather than by fine poetic quality. The following lines are not without a lesson for to-day:

"This the true sign of ruin to a race

It undertakes no march, and day by day
Drowses in camp, or, with the laggard's pace,
Walks sentry o'er possessions that decay;
Destined, with sensible waste, to fleet away;
For the first secret of continued power
all our sway

Is the continued conquest;

Hath surety in the uses of the hour;

If that we waste, in vain walled town and lofty tower."

225. His Novels. Among the best of Simms's novels is a series devoted to the Revolution. The characters and

incidents of that conflict in South Carolina are graphi

cally portrayed. "The Partisan," the first of this historic series, was published in 1835. "The Yemassee" is an Indian story, in which the character of the red man is less idealized than in Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales." In "The Damsel of Darien," the hero is Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific.

226. Paul H. Hayne. Paul Hamilton Hayne has

been called "the poet laureate of the South." This proud distinction is due him for the range and excellence of his work,

as well as for its quality. He rises highest above the commonplace, and by the exquisite finish of his poetry displays a fine artistic genius. Other American poets have shown greater originality and have treated of weightier or more popular themes; but it may be fairly doubted whether any other has had a more exquisite delicacy of touch. In fineness of poetic fibre he is akin to Tennyson.

227. Devotion to Poetry. The poetic impulse, to which he surrendered his life with rare singleness of purpose, manifested itself early. His first volume of poems appeared in 1855, his second in 1857, and his third in 1860. These volumes reveal the spirit and workmanship of a true poet. In "The Will and the Wing" he exhibits a loyal consecration to his art:

"Yet would I rather in the outward state

Of Song's immortal temple lay me down,

A beggar basking by that radiant gate,

Than bend beneath the haughtiest empire's crown.

"For sometimes, through the bars, my ravished eyes
Have caught bright glimpses of a life divine,
And seen a far, mysterious rapture rise

Beyond the veil that guards the inmost shrine."

228. Love of Nature. Nature in all its shapes and moods had for him a perpetual charm. The glorious dawns of the Southland, the monarch of the woods, the mellowing fields touched by evening's glow, the songs of happy-throated birds, the lapse of silvery streamlets through the hills, are all depicted with almost matchless delicacy and truth. But it was not alone the outward beauty of earth and sky that appealed to him. Like Wordsworth, he was conscious of an immanent Presence that imparted a deep spiritual meaning to the objects about him :

"The universe of God is still, not dumb,

For many voices in sweet undertone

To reverent listeners come."

229. War Poetry. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hayne was placed on Governor Pickens's staff; but after a brief term of service he was forced, by failing health, to resign. His war poetry attains a rare elevation of thought

and diction. Without hate or vindictiveness, he celebrates heroes and deeds of heroism - the chivalry that "wrought grandly and died smiling."

230. Copse Hill. The war left him in poverty. The bombardment of Charleston had destroyed his beautiful home and the family silver and other treasures, which had been removed to Columbia for safe-keeping, were lost in Sherman's "march to the sea." His manly courage,