Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/217

 EDMUND FLAGG. Edmund Flagg was born in the town of Wicasset, Maine, on the twenty-fourth day of November, 1815. He graduated at Bowdoin College, in the class of 1835, and immediately thereafter emigrated, with his mother and sister, to Louisville, Ken- tucky, where he taught the classics for a few months to a class of boys ; but having entered into an arrangement to contribute to the columns of the Louisville Journal, made a journey, through Illinois and Missouri, and wrote a series of letters, which were, in 1838, published in two volumes by Harper and Brothers, in New York, under the title of " The Far West." In 1837 and 1838, Mr. Flagg read law at St. Louis, with Hamilton Gamble, after- ward Judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri. "While readmg law, he was, for a short period, editor of the St. Louis Daily Commercial Bulletin. In the early part of the year 1839, he was associated with George D. Prentice in the management of the Louisville News Letter. On account of ill health, he abandoned the Neios Letter, and commenced the practice of law with Sargent S. Prentiss, at Vicksburg, Mississippi. But in the year 1842 he was again an editor, at Marietta, Ohio. While conducting the Gazette in that town, he wrote two novels, " Carrero, or the Prime Minister," and " Francis of Valois " — which were published in New York. Returning to St. Louis in 1844, Mr. Flagg became the editor of the Evening Gazette, and was for several years " Reporter of the Courts " of St. Louis county. He wrote at this period sev- eral dramas, which were successfully performed at Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and New Orleans. In 1848, Mr. Flagg was appointed Secretary to Edward A. Hannegan, Minister to Berlin. He spent nearly two years in Europe. On his return to the United States he resumed the practice of law at St. Louis, but in 1850 was selected by President Fillmore as Consul to the port of Venice. In that *' City of the Sea " he remained two years and then returned to St. Louis, where he completed a work begun in Europe — "Venice, the City of the Sea" — published in New York in 1853, in two illus- trated volumes. It comprises a history of that celebrated capital, from the invasion by Napoleon, in 1797, to its capitulation to Radetzsky, after the siege of 1848-9. In 1854, Mr. Flagg contributed sketches on the West to "The United States Illus- trated," a work published by A. Meyer, New York. He is now the chief clerk of a Commercial Bureau in the Department of State at Washington. Mr. Flagg is entitled to honorable rank among the authors of America, as a prose writer, and though not distinguished as a poet, has climbed high enough on the Par- nassian mount to be fairly entitled to respectful consideration among the Poets of the West. His metrical compositions were chiefly written for the Louisville Journal, and the Neivs Letter, while he was its editor. A prominent place is given him in a hand- some volume, entitled " The Native Poets of Maine " — edited by S. Herbert Lancey, and published at Bangor in 1854. ( 201 )