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 44 Later Poets published his first volume, Footprints, of which he tells us one copy was sold before the edition was given to the flames. Leav- ing the foundry, he supported himself, like Aldrich and Taylor, as a journalist, becoming in time literary editor of the World and Mail and Express. Meanwhile he had married Elizabeth Barstow, of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, "one of those irre- pressible girls," says her husband, "who are sometimes bom in staid Puritan families," who later attained some distinction as novelist and poetess (' ' for she became, ' ' says Stoddard, ' ' the best writer of blank verse of any woman in America"), and had secured a clerkship in the New York Custom House which he held till 1870. He lived in New York through many of its varied decades till 1903, a prominent figure in the literary life, a close friend of Taylor, Stedman, and the others. In his some- what austere devotion to beauty he was far removed from the Bohemians; he states specifically with regard to Pfafl's "I never went inside the place." His life lacked the advantages — and disadvantages — of much travel, though, like his friends, he poetized the magical Orient (in The Book of the East). His personality was that of a somewhat angular individualist, out- spoken, vigorous, inflexible in his support of the right. He was a product of Puritan New England as well as a disciple of Keats. New England didacticism, however, is all but absent from his poetry. Here and there is a trace, now and then a whole poem, such as On the Town, a harlot's plea for justice, which has also, it is true, a modemly realistic aspect; but otherwise the world of sin that Hawthorne loved to brood over and the New England poets sought to improve, is far away. He began his career as a palpable imitator of Keats's sensuousness, magi- cal epithet, and praise of beauty. His Autumn is little more than a frank copy of the ode by Keats. Other early poems are full of echoes of Milton and Wordsworth. Though he soon passed into his own manner, which was never highly individu- alized, one can discern his masters everywhere. Some of his best narrative poetry, such as Leonatus and Imogen, is agree- ably reminiscent of Keats. His blank verse, as in the tribute to Bryant, TJie Dead Master, often has power and accomplished variety, but it is not individual. Indeed, it may not be unfair to say that Stoddard was mainly a passionate lover of poetry.