He is said to be a full-blooded Negro, the son of slave-parents, and his best work is in the dialect of his race.

A volume of his poems is soon to be published by Dodd, Mead & Co.

and in an introduction to it Mr.Howells writes as follows: "What struck me in reading Mr.Dunbar's poetry was what had already struck his friends in Ohio and Indiana, in Kentucky and Illinois.

They had felt as I felt, that however gifted his race had proven itself in music, in oratory, in several other arts, here was the first instance of an American Negro who had evinced innate literature.

In my criticism of his book I had alleged Dumas in France, and had forgotten to allege the far greater Pushkin in Russia; but these were both mulattoes who might have been supposed to derive their qualities from white blood vastly more artistic than ours, and who were the creatures of an environment more favorable to their literary development.