Freneau's best lyrics were so few
that they had attracted little attention, but Bryant's 1821 volume of verse
furnished a new standard of excellence, below which poets who aspired to
the first rank could not fall. During the five years after its publication,
the sales of this volume netted him a profit of only $14.92, but a Boston
editor soon offered him two hundred dollars a year for an average of one
hundred lines of verse a month. Bryant accepted the offer, and wrote poetry
in connection with the practice of law.
Unlike Irving and Charles Brockden Brown, Bryant attended to his legal work
doggedly and conscientiously for nine years, but he never liked the law,
and he longed to be a professional author. In 1825 he abandoned the law and
went to New York City. Here he managed to secure a livelihood for awhile on
the editorial force of short-lived periodicals. In 1827, however, he became
assistant editor, and in 1829 editor-in-chief, of _The New York Evening
Post_--a position which he held for nearly fifty years, until his death.
The rest of his life is more political and journalistic than literary. He
made _The Evening Post_ a power in the development of the nation, but his
work as editor interfered with his poetry, although he occasionally wrote
verse to the end of his life.
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