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Francesca, i tuoi martiri a lagrimar mi fanno triato e pio.—DANTE.
Inferno, v. 75 seq.
[Illustration: GEORGE HENRY BOKER]
(1823-1890)
The name of George Henry Boker suggests a coterie of friendships—agroup of men pledged to the pursuit of letters, and worshippers at theshrine of poetry. These men, in the pages of whose published lettersand impressions are embedded many pleasing aspects of Boker'stemperament and character, were Bayard Taylor, Richard Henry Stoddard,and Charles Godfrey Leland, the latter known familiarly in Americanliterature as "Hans Breitmann." These four, in different periods oftheir lives, might have been called "the inseparables"—so closely didthey watch each other's development, so intently did they await eachother's literary output, and write poetry to each other, and meetat Boker's, now and again, for golden talks on Sundays. Poetry wasa passion with them, and even when two—Boker and Taylor—were sentabroad on diplomatic missions, they could never have been said todesert the Muse—their literary activity was merely arrested. One ofthe four—Stoddard—often felt, in the presence of Boker, a certainreticence due to lack of educational advantages; but in the face ofBoker's graciousness—a quality which comes with culture in its truestsense,—he soon found himself writing Boker on matters of style, onqualities of English diction, and on the status of American letters—astock topic of conversation those days.
Boker was a Philadelphian, born there on October 6, 1823,—the sonof Charles S. Boker, a wealthy banker, whose financial expertnessweathered the Girard National Bank through the panic years of 1838-40,and whose honour, impugned after his death, in 1857, was defendedmany years later by his son in "The Book of the Dead," reflective ofTennyson's "In Memoriam," and marked by a triteness of phrasewhich was always Boker's chief limitation, both as a poet and as adramatist.
He was brought up in an atmosphere of ease and refinement, receivinghis preparatory education in private schools, and entering Princetonin 1840. On the testimony of Leland, who, being related to Boker, wasthrown with him in their early years, and who avows that he alwaysshowed a love for the theatre, we learn that the young college studentbore that same distinction of manner which had marked him as a child,and was to cling to him as a diplomat. Together as boys, thesetwo would read their "Percy's Reliques," "Don Quixote," Byron andScott—and while they were both in Princeton, Boker's room possessedthe only carpet in the dormitory, and his walls boasted shelves of thehandsomest books in college.
"As a mere schoolboy," wrote Leland, "Boker's knowledge of poetry was remarkable. I can remember that he even at nine years of age manifested that wonderful gift that caused him many years after to be characterized by some great actor—I think it was Forrest—as the best reader in America…. While at college … Shakespeare and Byron were his favourites. He used to quiz me sometimes for my predilections for Wordsworth and Coleridge. We both loved Shelly passionately."
In fact, Leland claims that Boker was given to ridicule the "Lakers;"had he studied them instead, he would have added to hi