No American poet has wrought his stanzas with greater faithfulness to an exacting standard of craftsmanship than Mr. Aldrich, or has known better when to leave a line loosely cast, and when to reinforce it with correction or with a syllable that might seem, to an ear less true, redundant.  This gives to his most carefully chiseled productions an air of spontaneous ease, and has made him eminent as a sonneteer.  His sonnet on ‘Sleep’ is one of the finest in the language.  The conciseness and concentrated aptness of his expression also—­together with a faculty of bringing into conjunction subtly contrasted thoughts, images, or feelings—­has issued happily in short, concentrated pieces like ’An Untimely Thought,’ ‘Destiny,’ and ‘Identity,’ and in a number of pointed and effective quatrains.  Without overmastering purpose outside of art itself, his is the poetry of luxury rather than of deep passion or conviction; yet, with the freshness of bud and tint in springtime, it still always relates itself effectively to human experience.  The author’s specially American quality, also, though not dominant, comes out clearly in ‘Unguarded Gates,’ and with a differing tone in the plaintive Indian legend of ‘Miantowona.’

If we perceive in his verse a kinship with the dainty ideals of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset, this does not obscure his originality or his individual charm; and the same thing may be said with regard to his prose.  The first of his short fictions that made a decided mark was ‘Marjorie Daw.’  The fame which it gained, in its separate field, was as swift and widespread as that of Hawthorne’s ’The Gentle Boy’ or Bret Harte’s ‘Luck of Roaring Camp.’  It is a bright and half-pathetic little parody on human life and affection; or perhaps we should call it a parable symbolizing the power which imagination wields over real life, even in supposedly unimaginative people.  The covert smile which it involves, at the importance of human emotions, may be traced to a certain extent in some of Mr. Aldrich’s longer and more serious works of fiction:  his three novels, ‘Prudence Palfrey,’ ’The Queen of Sheba,’ and ‘The Stillwater Tragedy.’  ‘The Story of a Bad Boy,’ frankly but quietly humorous in its record of the pranks and vicissitudes of a healthy average lad (with the scene of the story localized at old Portsmouth, under the name of Rivermouth), a less ambitious work, still holds a secure place in the affections of many mature as well as younger readers.  Besides these books, Mr. Aldrich has published a collection of short descriptive, reminiscent, and half-historic papers on Portsmouth,—­’An Old Town by the Sea’; with a second volume of short stories entitled ‘Two Bites at a Cherry.’  The character-drawing in his fiction is clear-cut and effective, often sympathetic, and nearly always suffused with an agreeable coloring of humor.  There are notes of pathos, too, in some of his tales; and it is the blending of these qualities, through the medium of a lucid and delightful style, that defines his pleasing quality in prose.