However, I do not imagine that it was a very
smiling time for any literary endeavorer at home in the life-and-death
civil war then waging. Some few young men arose who made themselves
heard amid the din of arms even as far as Venice, but most of these were
hushed long ago. I fancy Theodore Winthrop, who began to speak, as it
were, from his soldier's grave, so soon did his death follow the earliest
recognition by the public, and so many were his posthumous works, was
chief of these; but there were others whom the present readers must make
greater effort to remember. Forceythe Willson, who wrote The Old
Sergeant, became known for the rare quality of his poetry; and now and
then there came a poem from Aldrich, or Stedman, or Stoddard. The great
new series of the 'Biglow Papers' gathered volume with the force they had
from the beginning. The Autocrat was often in the pages of the Atlantic,
where one often found Whittier and Emerson, with many a fresh name now
faded. In Washington the Piatts were writing some of the most beautiful
verse of the war, and Brownell was sounding his battle lyrics like so
many trumpet blasts.
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