Chapter II: His Character

Ambition was a ruling motive in Taylor’s life. Yet there has seldom been an ambition which, albeit as consuming as fire, was at the same time so free from selfish and ignoble elements.

Taylor aspired to fame through cultivation of the art of poesy. This was the real object of his life. To gain this object he toiled unceasingly and made innumerable sacrifices. Baffled in the attempt to reach his ideal, he was a little comforted when he could persuade himself that he had not fallen completely short of it. And there was exceeding great reward in the knowledge that if wide recognition as a poet was denied him, his friends, Whittier, Longfellow, Stoddard, Boker, and Aldrich, knew for what he was striving and commended him in no uncertain tones.

Whittier described Taylor as one who loved ‘old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood’s dreams in sight.’ Life was intensely interesting to Taylor. Although the zest of travel disappeared and his large experience of the ways of men had had its customary disillusioning effect, he never really lost his youthful enthusiasm. And it is touching to find in his private correspondence the repeated proofs of how inexhaustible was his fund of hope and of courage, and how quick he was to recover after real or fancied defeat.

Notwithstanding his successes, and he had his share of the good things of life,--contemporary reputation, money of his own earning, and friends,--Bayard Taylor remains, with all his manly qualities, a somewhat pathetic figure in American letters. He led a restless and turbulent mental existence, and died the victim of ambition and overwork.