Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825 - December 19, 1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, travel author, and diplomat. At the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to a printer in West Chester. The influential critic and editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold encouraged him to write poetry. The volume that resulted, Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems, was published in 1844 and dedicated to Griswold. Using the money from...