1832 and visited Europe, where he met many eminent men and formed a life-long friendship with Carlyle. On his return in 1834 he settied at Concord and took up lecturing. He was regarded as the leader of the transcendentalists and was one of the chief contributors to their organ The Dial. In 1847 he paid a second visit to England and delivered a course of lectures in England and Scotland on "Representative Men" which he subsequently published. His works were collected in eleven volumes and include Essays (two series), Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, Natural History of Intellect, and Poems. He was a man of singular elevation and purity of character.

Born in

FABBRI, CORA RANDALL (1871-1892). New York City and died in San Remo, Italy. She was the daughter of Ernesto G. Fabbri, of Florence, and Sara Randall, of New York. The tender verses of this young girl, upon whom many fair hopes centered, are in a volume of Lyrics, published in 1892, just before her death.

FIELD, EUGENE (1850-1895). Born at St. Louis, Missouri. After a varied experience as a journalist in the Far West, he settled down to newspaper work in Chicago. By his poems and tales in the press of that city, especially those relating to children, he achieved national fame. He was also very happy in his translations and travesties of Horace.

Of him William Cranston Lawton says, in his Introduction to the Study of American Literature: "Field utters the very heart secrets of boyhood as not even Riley or Stevenson can do. Wynken, Blynken and Nod

became long ago a kindergarten classic. His echoes of Horace are not mere irreverent travesties, but seize the very essence of the thought, and render it in the most startlingly up-to-date English, spiced both with current slang and with Field's own invented idioms."

FIELDS, JAMES THOMAS (1816-1881). Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He became a publisher and editor, being one of the founders of the firm of Osgood, Ticknor, Fields and Company, and the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He published a number of volumes of biography and criticism, and of original verse, and edited, with Edwin P. Whipple, the critic, The Family Library of British Poetry.

FINCH, FRANCIS MILES (1827-1907). Born at Ithaca, New York. He was graduated with honors from Yale, where he had achieved a reputation as a writer of college songs. He promoted the establishment of Cornell University at Ithaca. His most noted poem is "The Blue and the Gray," published in 1867 in the Atlantic Monthly.

FOSS, SAM WALTER (1858). Born at Candia, New Hampshire. After his graduation from Brown University he became an editor and a contributor to magazines, chiefly of humorous verse, tinged with philosophy.

FOSTER,

STEPHEN COLLINS (1826-1864). Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Educated at Cannonsburg College, Pennsylvania. He taught himself

music and, at the age of seventeen, while in employ. ment at Louisville, Kentucky, began publishing songs, which speedily became popular all over the country. In 1854 he married, and removed to New York City, where, in rapid succession, he published the songs which made him world famous; such as, "Old Kentucky Home," "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground," and "Way Down upon the Swanee River." Altogether he wrote about one hundred and fifty songs, one-fourth of which were negro melodies. In 1861 he wrote his last song, "Old Black Joe."

FRENCH, L. VIRGINIA (SMITH) (1830-1881). Born in Frederick County, Virginia. She received an excellent education, and established a school in Memphis, Tennessee. Under the name of "L'Inconnue" [the unknown] she contributed articles to various magazines, which won for her a literary reputation. In 1852 she became associate editor of the Southern Ladies' Book of New Orleans. In 1856 Mrs. French published her poems under the title of Wind Whispers. She also wrote a series of metrical Legends of the South, and a tragedy. Later she became editor of The Crusader of Atlanta, Georgia.

at

GOLDSMITH, OLIVER (1728-1774). Born Pallasmore, Longford, Ireland. He received an excellent education, and he studied for several professions, but never followed any, being rejected as a clergyman, and failing as a physician. He led a rather wild and vagrant life, travelling extensively. In 1757, after a long trip abroad on the continent, he went to London, where he remained during the rest of his life. While

here he became associated with the famous circle of which Samuel Johnson was the dictator. Goldsmith has treated every field of literature, history, drama, fiction, essays, and verse. The four great works for which he is famous are She Stoops to Conquer, a comedy; The Vicar of Wakefield, a novel; and The Traveller and The Deserted Village, poems.

GRAY, THOMAS (1716-1771). Born in London. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, in which university he spent his life as a Fellow-Commoner and Professor, teaching history and the modern languages. He died at Cambridge, and was buried at Stoke-Pogis in the graveyard which has therefore been identified with the "Country Churchyard" of his famous elegy. General Wolfe, on the evening before the battle of Quebec, repeated the poem to his officers, and, as he concluded, said: "I would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow."

GREENE, ALBERT GORTON (1802-1868). Born in Providence, Rhode Island. Upon graduation from Brown University, he studied law. He took a great interest in literature, in particular making a collection of American poetry, which formed the nucleus of the great collection on that subject now in Brown University. His own poems, of which he wrote a number and which became popular selections for recitation, were never published in collected form.

GUINEY, LOUISE IMOGEN (1861). Born at Bos-
After receiving an excellent edu-

ton, Massachusetts.

cation, she began contributing to various magazines. She is the author of a number of volumes of verse and prose and the editor of several critical works. She resides in Oxford, England.

HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE (1790-1867). Born at Guilford, Connecticut. In collaboration with Joseph Rodman Drake he wrote The Crocker Papers (1819). A few years later he visited Europe, and the traces of this visit are discernible in his subsequent poems. Halleck's works were very popular during his lifetime, but with a few exceptions are now little read.

HARTE, FRANCIS BRET (1839-1902). Born at Albany, New York. While still a boy he went to California, where he had a rather checkered career as a teacher, miner, and journalist. Later he became a United States consul; first at Crefeld, Germany, and then at Glasgow, Scotland. In 1885 he went to London, and supported himself by his pen until his death. Harte is best known for his realistic and striking stories of Western life. His poems have enjoyed great popularity because of their rich vein of humor. Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his Poets of America, said of Harte's verse: "Like the rhyming of his master, Thackeray, it is the overflow of a rare genius, whose work must be counted among the treasures of the language. Mr. Harte may be termed the founder, and thus far has been the most brilliant exemplar, of our transcontinental school."

HAY, JOHN (1838-1905). Born at Salem, Indiana. Graduated from Brown University. Shortly after his