Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/57

Taylor 39 already obviously destined to be the literary centre of the future. Bayard Taylor is fairly representative of his State by virtue of his Quaker descent and his mixed English and German blood. Aside from the abounding life of nature in which he immersed himself as a boy, he found inhibitions on all sides : in his moral and religious life, in his practical life as a farmer's son, and in his intellectual life as a boy for whose education means were want- ing. Gifted with the impetus of genius, he broke away from these hindrances, and embarked upon that varied and adven- turous career of expansion that marks both his greatness and his littleness. He read all the books, especially poetry and travel, he could lay his hands on; he wrote verse from his seventh year onward; he drew and painted; he dreamed of foreign lands ; he aspired to the heights — envying the bird, the weathercock, the balloonist. He had the expansiveness that often accompanies vigorous health of mind and body — at seven- teen was six feet tall and enjoyed a magnetic power that fore- shadowed his friendships and his personal impressiveness. Two yearslater, in 1 844, having won theinterest of RufusW. Griswold, he was enabled to publish his first book, Ximena, in Philadelphia ; though in later years, recognizing the emptiness of the fifteen poems that made up the book, he repented of it. Already, in a sense, his poetry was subordinate to his travels ; Ximena was intended to supply the means necessary for the voyage abroad that he had long cherished for its own sake and for its educational value. At a time when American pilgrims were a curiosity, he wandered through Europe for two years, virtually without funds, enduring and enjoying every manner of hardship and adventure. Particularly in Germany, where he was subsequently to marry and to find the material for his most ardent literary studies, he felt more at home than in repressive Kennett. Views Afoot (1846) told the story of these years, and launched Taylor upon a career of travel and journalistic dis- tinction that made his fame international. Of all the lands that he lived in or roamed through, the countries of the Orient captivated this eager romanticist most completely. It needed not [says Stedman] Hicks's picture of the bronzed traveller, in his turban and Asiatic costume, smoking, cross-legged.