Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[263] readers of to-day, unknown. His Beautiful story reached a sale of nearly three hundred thousand copies in two years; his Living world and The story of man were sold to the number of nearly two hundred and fifty thousand each, and were endorsed by Gladstone and Bismarck. This was only fifteen years ago, for in 1888 he received for copyright $33,000 and in 1889 $50,000; yet one rarely finds any book of reference or library catalogue that contains his name. Is it not better to be unknown in one's lifetime, and yet live forever by one poem, like Blanco White with his sonnet called Life and light, or by one saying, like Fletcher of Saltoun, with his “I care not who makes the laws of a people, so I can make its ballads,” than to achieve such evanescent splendors as this?

One thing the larger public is likely to do. It is a fortunate fact that popular judgment, even at the time, is apt to fix upon some one poem by each poet, for instance, and connect the author with that poem inseparably thenceforward. Fate appears to assign to each some one boat, however small, on which his fame may float down towards immortality, even if it never attains it. This is the case,