SOURCE: "Richard Henry Dana," in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. LVIII, No. 347, April, 1879, pp. 769-76.

In the following excerpt Stoddard provides a critical overview of Dana's literary career, noting especially the influence of Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" on "The Buccaneer."

To rightly understand an author, and the place he occupies in the literature of his country, we must not only understand the events of his life and the order in which his works were written, we must also understand the literary conditions under which they were produced, and which conspired to make them what they were. To judge the authors of the last century by the standards of the present century is to judge them uncritically and unjustly: they wrote according to their light, and whether it was greater or lesser, it was certainly other than our light. They belonged to their day and generation, as...