TIMROD, Henry, poet, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 8 December, 1829; died in Columbia, South Carolina, 6 October, 1867 His grandfather was a German, who emigrated to this country before the Revolutionary war and settled in Charleston. His father, William (17921838), was a mechanic, but a man of very poetic temperament, who wrote some fine lyrics. He commanded a corps in the Seminole war, composed of Germans and men of German descent residing in Charleston, and from the exposure and hardships of the service contracted a disease that resulted finally in his death Henry was educated at the University of Georgia, but took no degree. He was of scholarly tastes, and was a writer of verses from his childhood. After leaving the university he studied law in the office of James L. Petigru, but his enthusiasm for literature interfered with his studies, and he finally abandoned them and fitted himself for a college professor. William Gilmore Simms, who was then in the height of his fame, was in the habit of gathering round him those of the young men of Charleston that had literary proclivities, and he did much to foster the genius of Timrod, Paul H. Hayne, and other young southern writers. Timrod's first volume of poems (Boston, 1860) con-rained such fine work that it was hailed as an earnest of great excellence. In 1861 he began to write that series of war lyrics which made his name popular throughout the South. In 1862 a project was formed for having a volume of Timrod's poems brought out in London: but the pressure of great events interrupted this scheme, and it was never put into execution. His delicate health forbade active service in the field, but his pen was never idle. He was at the battle of Shiloh as war-correspondent of the Charleston " Mercury." In 1864 he went to Columbia, the capital of the state, where he edited the " South Carolinian." He lost everything when the city of Columbia was burned in February, 1865. He said of himself that lie and his family were brought to beggary, starvation, and almost death--that they had eaten up all the family silver and nearly all their furniture, and were reduced to despair. He writes in 1865: "I would consign every line I have written to eternal oblivion, for one hundred dollars in hand." But the struggle against such fearful odds, with his failing health, proved too much for him; life perceptibly ebbed away, and early in October, 1867, he died. His brother-poet and life-long friend, Paul H. Hayne, afterward published a volume of his collected works, prefaced by a very pathetic sketch of his life (New York, 1873). The south has probably never produced a poet of more delicate imagination, of greater rhythmic sweetness, of purer sentiment, and more tender emotion than this young man, who passed away before he had time or opportunity to attain that high standard of excellence which his undoubted genius fitted him to reach. His best-known poem is a short ode written for Memorial-day, 1867.