82 MEMOEIAL MEETING ; 



"Half Lamb, half Cowper," Mr. Silsbee has most happily 

 called our friend, and the thought is a picture of his 

 blended wit and simple goodness. 



Simplicity, and goodness itself were personified in his 

 gentle, unobtrusive life ; and as he lately read his tribute 

 to Mr. Story in your hall, many of us must have been 

 struck with the applicability of his poetic praise of Mr. 

 Story's worth to his own. His appearance, his manner 

 and matter on that occasion, must remain forever memor- 

 able to those who were fortunate enough to hear him. 



The man himself was always a delightful poem, of 

 which his fluent, tender verse hardly gives us a full report. 

 None the less he lived in an atmosphere of poetry which, 

 flowing spontaneously from his mind and pen, bright- 

 ened and uplifted many sorrowing hearts, and adorned 

 many a serious or gay assemblage. 



It seems to me his greatest success in literature, however, 

 was in his most difficult undertaking, the then untried ren- 

 dering of the German masterpiece into English, in its orig- 

 inal metres. Only those who have attempted that task, or 

 carefully compared the leading translations word by word 

 with the German text, can appreciate the difficulty of that 

 accomplishment, or the remarkable success with which our 

 poet has met it. However much the loudly-blown trumpet 

 of praise may exaggerate the merits of another version of 

 Goethe's Faust that owes a deep and yet unacknowledged 

 obligation to Mr. Brooks' work ; the fact remains that our 

 friend's work has never been equalled by any published 

 translation, in fidelity to the letter, or to the feeling of the 

 original a fact the leading journals have lately noticed, 

 and which was admirably stated some years since in a for- 

 mal article on the subject contributed to the "New Eng- 

 lander." 



But while it is our- duty to record here the debt under 



