444 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



upon Christmas Day. I imagine that if Shaler had seen the whole thing in 

 proof, and revised it himself, certain little verbal and versical roughnesses 

 would have been smoothed out, but they make no difference in the grand effect. 

 It is a most moving and grasping work, with a great epic wind of sadness 

 blowing all through it in spite of so many lively individual touches. These 

 all seem to me cut on a vast background of landscape, and human multitudes 

 fulfilling what was fated, that dim twilight in which the memories of those 

 early 60's lie now in so many of our minds. There are " anecdotes " in plenty, 

 but they all swim in that atmosphere of landscape and historic fate, and moral 

 sadness in the life of man. It is very striking that Shaler, who had so many 

 notes in his mind, should have struck this note so strongly and (it seems 

 to me) so exclusively in these poems. They are entirely unique, copying no 

 special model, and their emotional atmosphere is unique too it shows 

 how strongly he was subject to those sentiments of vastness. The mixture 

 of breadth of effect, of dignity and grandeur of tone, with vulgar realism 

 in much of the detail is very extraordinary. And of course the note of mag- 

 nanimity and humanity everywhere, so characteristic of him! I am sure that 

 the six volumes of poems will outlast in fame all his scientific prose espe- 

 cially this last one. 



Affectionately yours, WM. JAMES. 



A month earlier Charles Eliot Norton had written: 



You have given to me a very precious gift in sending to me a copy of 

 "From Old Fields." These poems would have extraordinary interest even 

 if one knew nothing of their author. But to us who knew and loved Mr. 

 Shaler they make a quite exceptional appeal. He lives in them. I see and 

 hear him as I read them. His heroic spirit, his tender heart, his quick 

 and generous sympathies, his nature full of reverence for nobility in 

 man and woman and quick to discern it under whatever disguise, his sim- 

 plicity and readiness to feel and express emotion provided only it became 

 a man, and his uncompromising resolution to see things as they really 

 are, all this and much more is manifest in these poems. It is the work of 

 most poets that chiefly interests us, but here it is the poet and not his poems : 

 as fine as they are, he is finer. Hereafter, when I am asked, "What manner 

 of man was Shaler?" I shall reply, "You may know him by these poems." 



This volume can draw no more fitly to its close than with a 

 paragraph from a letter from Professor George Herbert Palmer, 

 Mr. Shaler's neighbor and intimate friend for many years. In 

 it there is the phrase "the great powerful creature/' which, with 



