Poems (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Poems

Innes Randolph was one of those personalities, not, perhaps, very often met with, in whom was combined so many clearly defined and varied tal ents as to prevent the complete development of one. It is, however, not easy to say what his career might have been had his birth and early training been different. Born and brought up in Virginia at a time when the old-fashioned, narrow ideas concerning the pursuits proper for a gentleman held full sway, he was not permitted to turn his attention to music, paint ing, sculpture or literature, in any one of which, with proper training, he might have accomplished great things. It is also possible that even these early obsta cles might have been overcome had not the Civil War broken out at the critical moment of his life and robbed him of four of its best years. After serving in the Confederate Army throughout the whole of the great struggle, he found himself at its close, in com mon with so many of his brothers of the South, con fronted not with questions of artistic or literary development, but the more immediate problem ofbread and butter. After three or four years spent in Richmond, Va., years mainly devoted to an uphill fight to provide for himself and family the ordinary necessi ties of life, he determined to remove to Baltimore, and there undertake seriously the practice of law, in which he had graduated before the beginning of hos tilities. With so clear and brilliant a mind as his, and so unusual a command of language, he must perforce have made in this an enduring and substantial success, had his heart been thoroughly in the work; but the law, like many another calling, is an exacting mis tress, and requires from her devotees an unmixed allegiance. More especially does she frown upon any dalliance with the arts, and it was simply not in him to blot out of his life that which so deeply appealed to him, be the worldly reward what it might. It was during the early period of his residence in Baltimore that he found himself most strongly drawn to sculp ture, and among the various evidences which remain to attest his skill in this direction may be mentioned several life-size busts of prominent men, among them one of Judge Wm. Pinkney, a marble copy of which now occupies a niche in the concert hall of the Pea body Institute. He also found time to take up the study of the Violoncello, upon which instrument he finally came to play with considerably more than the ordinary ability of the amateur. But it was in music, which was, after all, his ruling passion, that he felt most keenly the lack of early technical training, so that no lasting mark remains to tell the world of thisgift. It was, perhaps, not unnatural that, finding him self lured hither and thither by such varied attractions, he should finally have drifted into journalism, for it is in this field that a wider range of knowledge and ac complishments is called into play than in any other. But the newspapers of today are like huge furnaces in which men's brains are used as fuel, giving out heat and light, it is true, while the consumption lasts, but leaving no enduring memory - merely a pinch of ashes, which is finally scattered to the winds. During the many years in which my father was a regular con tributor to the various daily and weekly papers of Bal timore, his musical and dramatic criticisms, literary reviews and miscellaneous editorials commanded the admiration and respect of all readers; but of them all, no trace now remains save in the dusty files of back numbers.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com