RICHARD HOVEY (1864-1900).

Richard Hovey was born in Normal, Illinois, but his life and his training were all of the East. He was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1885, and then studied at Union Theological Seminary, New York, with a view to entering the ministry. Art. however, had cast its spell over him. Leaving the seminary, he became journalist, dramatist, lecturer, actor, poet,excited, rhapsodic, impetuous. He went abroad and lived for a time with Maeterlinck the Belgian poet and dramatist, and. returning. published a translation of his works. Then he poured out volume after volume of poetry of his own,- no less than ten volumes in all in less than fourteen years: The Quest of Merlin, The Marriage of Guinevere. Songs from Vagabondia, and others. At length he was given a lectureship at Barnard College, New York City, and then, just as he was entering upon his new work, death claimed him at the Byronic age of thirty-six.

Undoubtedly Hovey was the most promising poet America produced after the Civil War. He gave, moreover, more than promise: his poetry is of distinctive quality, some of it of high distinction. In his later work he was beginning to break from the mannerism of his early period, from Bohemianism and Swinburnism, and was striking, as in Taliesin, deeper and more significant notes. He was a singer of men, of comradeship, and masculine joy. Few of the poets of America have been so bubbling with song, so spontaneous, and genuinely lyrical.