Three New York Poets

Aldrich's poetry is compared to Winter's: "Mr. Aldrich's dainty love-songs caught the popular ear before the sadder sighing of Mr. Winter's muse" (470).

Butler's poetry is compared to O'Brien's: "'The Sewing Bird' and 'The Finishing School' are, perhaps, echoes of William Allen Butler's now almost forgotten success, 'Nothing to Wear' or some earlier prototype" (471).

The writer refers to the "king of Bohemia" without directly referencing Clapp by name. The writer specifically mentions Clapp's tragic end, stating, "[t]he old king of Bohemia died a pauper, a half-dozen years ago, and some of his old subjects passed the hat around among the trim young journalists, who had never known him, and collected enough to put a head-stone over his grave" (469).

While the reviewer asserts that O'Brien was "one of the cleverest of all the Bohemians," he also draws attention to the uneven quality of O'Brien's work, reflecting that "[t]he startling cleverness of his work at its best, taken in connection with its commonplace feebleness at its worst, at first bewilders the reader, and then invites him to critical analysis" (471). The reviewer then suggests that O'Brien's best work was influenced by the works of others, stating that, "[i]t is not that O'Brien was in any way a plagiarist. He was not. But he had a strange power of absorption,–or rather of assimilation, to express an elusive idea in a slovenly manner. He saw what some earlier author had done; saw it was good; and at once set about doing better in the same line" (471).

The reviewer compares O'Brien to Poe, stating that, "[w]hen we read the opening pages of 'The Lost Room,' we say: Poe never had a weirder dream, nor told one in language so rich and graceful" (471).

Stedman's poetry is compared to Arnold's: "Mr. Stedman's 'Ballad of Larger Beer' was a better piece of work than Arnold's 'Beer'" (470).