xt7qjq0stw34_3753 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection Alfred Billings Street pamphlet by Francis Woodworth Hoyt, with a print of Street text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. Alfred Billings Street pamphlet by Francis Woodworth Hoyt, with a print of Street 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_37/Folder_6/Multipage12881.pdf undated section false xt7qjq0stw34_3753 xt7qjq0stw34  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ALFRED BILLINGS STREET.

MERICANS have always been desirous that their country
should attain literary distinction. For decades the sar-
castic query, “ Who reads an American book P " rankled in the
public mind. It is, therefore, almost inexplicable that an
American poet, whose claims to high distinction have been
freely and generously recognized by critical readers of the Old
World, should be comparatively forgotten in his own land.
Yet such has been the fate of Alfred B. Street. No anthology
of American poetry, worthy of the name, omits from its pages
such masterpieces as “The Gray Forest Eagle,” “The Lost
Hunter" or “The First Settler,” but of the man himself and
of the mass of his poetry the reading public of to-day is pro-
foundly ignorant.

Alfred Billings Street was born in Poughkeepsie, December
18, 1811, and died in Albany, June 2, 1881'. He came of dis-
tinguished Revolutionary stock. His father was General Ran-
dall S. Street, and on the paternal side he traced his ancestry
through a number of learned scholars and eminent divines of
Connecticut back to one of the most ancient families in Eng-
land. The original seat of the family was in Sussex, where
there still stands the old, gray, weather-beaten “Street Church,"
mentioned in the Domesday Survey. One of the poet’s ances-
tors was Sir Thomas Street, Baron of the Exchequer and Jus-
tice of the Common Pleas in the reign of Charles II. His
maternal grandfather was Major Andrew Billings, who married
a daughter of James Livingston. Thus the poet was connected
with two families prominent in Colonial history. Mr. Street’s
life was uneventful. He was a poet, a man of books, a lover
of nature, and the record of days, apart from his poems, can
be put into brief span. His youth was spent in Monticello,
N. Y. The wild and sylvan solitudes of Sullivan county fos—
tered that minute intimacy with natural phenomena that marks
everything from his pen. Henry T. Tuckerman, in “The
Democratic Review,” brings out this side of the poet's work.
“Street is a true Flemish painter," he says, “seizing upon
objects in all their verisimilitude. As we read him, wild flow—
ers peer up from among brown leaves; the drum of the part-
ridge, the ripple of waters, the flickering of autumn light, the

 

 sting of sleety snow, the cry of the panther, the roar of the
wind, the melody of birds, and the odor of crushed pine—boughs,
are present to our senses."

Mr. Street was admitted to the bar, but law had little attrac-
tion for him. In 1848 he was made State Librarian, and there-
after until his death he held this congenial association with
books. He published a number of volumes of poetry, most of
them pictures of forest and field, mountain and stream. But
there were also strong and vigorous narrative poems, like “ ’ ‘he
Burning of Schenectady,” ant “Frontenac.” He almost in-
stantly won flattering recognition, both at home and abroad.
Benjamin Disraeli paid tribute to his “originality and poetic
fire,” and even thecynical and dyspeptic Poe admitted in his
“Marginalia " that “as a descriptive poet, Mr. Street is to be
highly commended.” Charles T. Hoffman, recurring to Tuck-
erman’s figure, says that “Mr. Street is the Teniers of Ameri—
can poets,” and S. A. Allibone attempts to fix his place on
Parnassus as follows: “Perhaps it would be correct to say
that his rank among American poets is the same as that gener—
ally assigned to Dryden among English poets—one of the
first of the second class.”

Surely America is not so rich in literary genius that it can
afford to neglect so rarely endowed a poet as this.
FRANCIS WOODWORTH HOYT.