Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/201

 r 1830-40.] FREDERICK W. THOMAS. 18,5 About the time he became one of the editors of the Post, Mr. Thomas had finished " CKnton Bradshaw," a novel, which was published by Cai-ey, Lea and Blanchard, in Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1835. The next year he wrote "East and West;" and in 1837 "Howard Pinckney." These novels were also published in Philadelphia by the firm which brought out " Clinton Bradshaw," but neither of them was as pop- ular as that work, which was received with marked favor, on account of its admirable delineations of peculiar characters. It was republished at Cincinnati, by Robinson and Jones, in 1848. Between 1835 and 1840, Mr. Thomas wrote, for the Cincinnati Mirror, for the Weekly Chronicle, and for the Hesperian, numerous poems and sketches. Several of those sketches are included in a volume entitled " John Randolph of Roanoke, and other Public Characters," a duodecimo volume, published in Philadelphia in 1853. In 1840, Mr. Thomas "took the stump" in Ohio for William Henry Harrison, as a candidate for the Presidency, and won friends as a popular orator. Since that time he has lectured extensively with much success on "Eloquence," on "Early struggles of Eminent Men," and other popular topics. In 1841, Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the United States Treasury, appointed Mr. Thomas to select a library for that department of Government, which duty he discharged with credit to himself and the department. He resided in Washington till 1850, when he returned to Cincinnati, and was, for a brief period, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was aftervyard Pro- fessor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the Alabama University, but having determined to resume the practice of his legal profession, settled at Cambridge, Mary- land, in 1858. In the eai*ly part of 1860 he was induced, however, to put on again the editorial harness, and now conducts the literary department of the Richmond (Virginia) Enquirer. Perhaps the secret of the irregular pursuit of the profession chosen in his youth, which our sketch of Mr. Thomas's career exhibits, was given by him in a stanza of the "Emigrant:" " Soon must I mingle in the wordy war Where knavery takes, in vice, her sly degrees, As slip away, not guilty, from the bar. Counsel or client, as their Honors please, To breathe, in crowded courts, a pois'nous breath — To jjlead for life — to justify a death — To wrangle, jar, to twist, to twirl, to toil — This is the lawyer's life — a heart-consuming moil." A collection of Mr. Thomas's poems has never been made. In 1844, Harper and Brothers, New York, published a volume entitled " The Beechen Tree, a Tale in Rhyme." With the " Emigrant," several well known songs, and a few satirical poems and epigrams, it would constitute an acceptable book, which we hope Mr. Thomas will compile. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, in the " Poets of America," said of Mr. Thomas : " lie has a nice discrimination of the peculiarities of character, which give light and shade to the surface of society, and a hearty relish for that peculiar humor which abounds in that portion of our country which undoubtedly embraces most that is