GEORGE HERBERT SASS

("Barton Grey")

[1845-1908]

JOHN BENNETT

AMONG the many partisan poems which appeared during the

war for Southern independence was a group of verses widely known for beauty and dramatic force, which, while filled with the fire of passionate adversity, were notable for their peculiar maturity, significance, and sureness of technique, qualities for which the writer was singled out as one among the younger song-writers of the time who gave signs of lasting strength.

During the critical period immediately following the end of the Confederacy, and at intervals from 1869 to 1890, in magazines which were standard, and in the sanguine, ephemeral journals whose outburst characterized the hopes of the day-The Nineteenth Century, New Eclectic, Southern Magazine, Southern Field and Fireside, The Rural Carolinian, The Galaxy, Appleton's Journal (old series), The Independent, Lippincott's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, etc.appeared, under a varying signature, many ballads and lyrics, distinguished by unaffected romantic sentiment, intimacy, simple pathosthe frank expression of a heart moved by sensuous impression and enraptured by beauty, yet, in a period notable for its moral decadence, as ideally pure and chaste as we ask the heart of a woman to be.

Many of these poems won wide circulation, persistently reappearing in fugitive form through three decades, during which the identity of the writer remained concealed behind the pseudonym of "Barton Grey."

Over that signature, or, negligently, as anonymous, the verses were included in collections and printed in anthologies, at home and abroad, until, in 1904, a selection from the scattered lyrics was printed by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, under the title 'The Heart's Quest, a Book of Verses, by Barton Grey,' in which authorship was acknowledged by George Herbert Sass, Barrister, Masterin-Equity, of the Common Pleas Court of Charleston County, South Carolina.

The poems in this collection have been much quoted through the South, won critical appreciation in the North, and a cordial reception from British reviewers. But the slender volume, while containing much of the writer's characteristic poesy, omits much more

which must be considered in any satisfactory estimate of his life and work.

George Herbert Sass ("Barton Grey") was born in Charleston, South Carolina, December 24, 1845; and died in Charleston, February 19, 1908. It was justly said he spent his life in and for Charleston. His father, Jacob Keith Sass, a contemporary, and in St. Michael's Church, Charleston, a colleague of James L. Petigru, William J. Grayson, and others whose names are household words in South Carolina, was Charleston-born, of German parentage; a man of integrity and acumen, he early entered the Bank of Charleston, attained its presidency through superlative mastery of banksystem and an accurate judgment of men, and held that honorable position until his death.

His mother, Octavia Murden, a woman of culture and piety, of Welsh descent, with a Welsh gift of inspiring thought, died when her son was only seventeen, but her influence upon him was deep and lasting. Through her he inherited the penchant for versification, his grandmother, Mrs. Eliza Murden, a contemporary of Penina Moïse, the Jewess, being a voluminous writer, of whose verse but little survives.

The son was educated at the school of Miles, Searle and Sachtleben, Charleston, and in the College of Charleston, whence he was graduated with first honors, in 1867, his father's death, in 1865, having left him doubly orphaned. In recognition of subsequent distinction, the College, in 1902, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws.

He studied law in the office of the late Charles Richardson Miles, whose notable advocacy in criminal and civil law was equaled by his ability in equity, and whose taste in literature was as marked as his proficiency was great. Two years later Mr. Sass was admitted to the Bar of South Carolina in the last class of students examined by the old Court of Appeals.

For several years he practiced law with increasing repute. At the beginning of his legal career he was sought out to act as referee in cases where the clearest and most unbiased judgment was desired, it being then the custom, before the State's creation of the office of master-in-equity, to submit points in legal dispute to a referee whose demonstrated ability was indisputable, and whose equable temperament was mutually acknowledged. In 1883 he was appointed, by the Governor of the State, Master-in-Equity for the Courts of Charleston County, an appointment confirmed, through varying administrations and by the vote of his people in election, for a quarter of a century.

For twenty-five years he discharged the duties of his office with

unfaltering assiduity, without rest, save for short recesses, ever returning, impelled by an extraordinary sense of duty, to his engagements. His health, impaired by incessant application, and by the increasing burden of involved responsibility, gave way during a season of protracted heat in 1907, and he succumbed, during an attack of grippe, to the result of overwork, February 19, 1908.

As Master-in-Equity but two others may be named as eminent in local office as he: Edward R. Laurens and James Tupper, men preeminent in their time. His findings were rarely reversed and were often quoted; his opinions were widely sought, and frequently consulted by the leaders of an unusually distinguished legal community; his name was a synonym for justice. For a quarter-century he added to the peace and dignity of the community by just interpretation of its laws.

In 1883 he married Anna Eliza Ravenel, daughter of Dr. St. Julien Ravenel-a scientist whose name is indissolubly connected with the discovery of the phosphate beds of Carolina-and of Harriott Horry Ravenel, author of 'The Life of Eliza Pinckney,' 'Life and Times of William Lowndes,' 'Charleston, the Place and the People.' From this union sprang two children, a son and daughter.

Early showing a predilection for literature, George Herbert Sass first became known, in 1862, as a writer of partisan verses; he bore off a prize offered by Southern Field and Fireside for the most striking poem on the war. Several of these early songs were widely bruited about; but the partisan poem which gave him greatest note was "A Prayer for Peace: Hath God Forgot?" It is dramatic, and, written at the age of seventeen, in its polished style is strangely mature; it was published while the writer was in the Confederate service.

The end of the war silenced the partisan note, but multiplied channels of publication; during several years he produced uninterruptedly a stream of more than acceptable ballad and song, his unhackneyed verses being characterized as among the first to relieve the poesy of the South from the constant and reiterated criticism of the Northern press. "The Quest of Father Boniface" "met a flattering reception as an earnest of the future," said Charles E. Chichester, at whose suggestion the author assumed the pseudonym under which thereafter his identity remained concealed.

For ten years, in constantly increasing austerity, the poet's work gave every token of realizing its early promise. But, with the appointment as master-in-equity, the song-writer's opening career almost abruptly closed; after that date he wrote little verse, and the critic has his instance: where the two opposing faculties, creative and critical, are combined, the development of reason, in

the interpretation of arbitrary law, foils the growth of inspiration. His life is an example of analytical power perfected at the expense of imagination; for, as he himself says: "The truth is, not all men can write Hamlet's soliloquy and his advice to the players also." Contemplating the promise of his youth, and the quality of his best, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that what a community gained in just interpretation of the law was a distinct loss to Southern literature.

The mass of a poet's product matters little; at last he is ranked by his best. "Barton Grey's" best, as most characteristic work, is comprised in a small group of poems which deserve wider recognition than they have yet received, bearing the form of genuine inspiration and of an art which seems sure to be approved in time.

Of the slender collection, published criticism can be but comparative; no chronological order is observed, and it is difficult at times to place the poems; his early work is mature in style, and his later work is of undiminished freshness; his thoughts deepened; he gained discretion; yet reserve was notable first and last. As a thinker, he concords with Arthur Hugh Clough in protestant conscience, a growing sense of ultimate justice, and in unflinching constancy; youth's uneasy, questioning fire closes in grave acceptance of life's cost and in fine appreciation of its compensations of chastity and beauty. He was no altruist, but was without a misanthropic touch; Byron, Poe, and Shelley little appealed to him; renunciation produced in him no lassitude; common sense restrained him from being fantastical; justice prevented him from being extreme. Yet his is preeminently the poetry of disillusionment; the notes of longing, of deference, of wistfulness, of loss, and of deep, earthly discouragement, sound persistent; often, by a poet's device, a peculiar pathos emphasizes the text, by a catch or a break in the versification. And the wistful, lost illusion ends in philosophy, of which one-half is ethics, one-half patient faith.

The monologues are, at best, metrical experiments; the narratives are, on the whole, less convincing than the lyrics; the best, "The Quest of Father Boniface" and "The Guest of Mary," are poetical fantasies, of charm rising from careful and dextrous construction, a rich vocabulary, decorative beauty in suggestive phrase, and fluency, rather than inspirational flight; in flow and facile rhyme they recall the "Ingoldsby Legends." The lyrics are of genuine tenderness and simplicity, characterized by convincing, half-bewildered pathos.

Yet, however deep the emotion, it is always in control, even in the most intimate confession of passion; the attitude is that of musing upon pain rather than of uncontrollable suffering; from which springs a peculiar aloofness, which reaches its highest development