[56]
These poems show that Dana was going through a period of mental activity and development in which every faculty was cultivated to the highest degree by study, reflection, and composition.
Surely and steadily the idealist and dreamer was laying down his illusions and taking up the methods of a practical business-man.
He was then, and remained throughout his life, devoted to idealism, poetry, and romance, but never after that time did he allow either to lead him away from the practical duties of the hour.
It is worthy of passing notice that Dana for a part of this period also kept a book of quotations which abounds in extracts from Coleridge, Longfellow, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Motherwell, Cousin, Considerant, Fourier, Schiller, Goethe, Spinoza, Heine, Herman, Kepler, Bruno, Novalis, Bohme, Swedenborg, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Thucydides, Euripides, and Sallust.
It is still more worthy of notice that they were made always in the script and language in which they were written, whether it was English, German,
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Harper and Brothers, New York and London, 1907.
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