Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/71

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS stirring life and many writings of its author, it seems strange that such ordinary stanzas should be the production by which he is known, and here mentioned as his single poem. Payne was a New Yorker, born in 1792, and, by an odd coincidence, his first essays were contributed to a juvenile paper called The Fly, published by Samuel Woodworth at the Boston office, where the latter learned his trade. The former was only seventeen years old when he made a famous sensation at the Park, as Young Norval, following it up with the enactment of all sorts of parts at many American theatres, and soon playing as second to George Frederick Cooke. He had taken to the stage for the support of a widowed mother, breaking off a collegiate course at Union. In 1813 he went to England and came out at Drury Lane; then turned author again, and made his first literary success in the tragedy of "Brutus," which he wrote for Edmund Kean, and which still holds "the stage." He also wrote "Virginius" and "Therese," and I don't know what, but the facts about "Home, Sweet Home" may bear telling again. For years Payne was an available playwright and craftsman in the London dramatic world. When Charles Kemble became manager of Covent Garden, he purchased a batch of our author's manuscripts for the gross sum of £230; and a play was fished out from the mess, changed by Payne into an opera, and produced as "Clari, the Maid of Milan." Miss Tree, the elder sister of Mrs. Charles Kean, was in the first cast, and sang "Home, Sweet Home," one of the "gems" of this piece. It made an astounding [57]