Born, at Portland, Maine, 27 Feb. 1807. At school there. To Bowdoin Coll., 1822; B.A., 1825. Contrib. to various periodicals while at college. Elected Prof. of Mod. Languages, Bowdoin, 1825. Travelled in Europe, June 1826 to Aug. 1829. Began professional duties at Bowdoin, Sept. 1829. Contrib., to “North American Rev.,” April 1831 to Oct. 1840. Married (i.) Mary Storer Potter, Sept. 1831. Smith Prof. of Mod. Lan., Harvard Univ., Dec. 1834. Travelled in Europe, April 1835 to Dec. 1836; wife died, at Rotterdam, 29 Nov. 1835. Began professional duties at Harvard, Dec. 1836. Contrib. “The Psalm of Life” to “Knickerbocker Mag.,” June 1838. In Europe, for health, autumn of 1842. Married (ii.) Frances Elizabeth Appleton, 13 July 1843. Resigned Professorship, 1854. Active literary life. Contrib., to “Atlantic Monthly,” 1857–76. Wife burnt to death, 9 July 1861. Visit to Europe, May 1868 to 1869. Hon. LL.D., Camb., 16 June, 1868. Received by Queen at Windsor, July 1868. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 27 July 1869. Died, at Cambridge, Mass., 24 March 1882. Buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge. Works: “Syllabus de la Grammaire Italienne” (in French), 1832; “Outre-Mer” (2 vols.), 1835; “Hyperion” (2 vols.), 1839; “Voices of the Night,” 1839; “Ballads and other Poems,” 1841; “Poems on Slavery,” 1842; “The Spanish Student,” 1843; “The Belfry of Bruges,” 1846; “Evangeline,” 1847; “Kavanagh,” 1849; “The Seaside and the Fireside,” 1850; “The Golden Legend,” 1851; “The Song of Hiawatha,” 1855; “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” 1858; “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” 1863; “Flower-de-Luce,” 1867; “The New England Tragedies,” 1868; “The Divine Tragedy,” 1871; “Christus” (consisting of: “Divine Tragedy,” “Golden Legend,” and “New England Tragedies”), 1872; “Three Books of Song,” 1872; “Aftermath,” 1873; “The Hanging of the Crane,” 1874; “The Masque of Pandora,” 1875; “Poems of the ‘Old South’” (with Holmes, Whittier, and others), 1877; “The Skeleton in Armor,” 1877; “Kéramos,” 1878; “Ultima Thule,” 1880. Posthumous: “In the Harbour,” 1882; “Michael Angelo,” 1884. He translated: L’Homond’s “Elements of French Grammar,” 1830; J. Manrique’s “Coplas,” 1833; Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (3 vols.), 1867–70; and edited: “Manuel de Proverbes Dramatiques,” 1830; “Novelas Españolas,” 1830; “Cours de Langue Française,” 1832; “Saggi de’ Novellieri Italiani d’ogni Secola,” 1832; “The Waif,” 1845; “The Poets and Poetry of Europe,” 1845; “The Estray,” 1847; “Poems of Places” (31 vols.), 1876–79. Collected Works: in 11 vols., 1866. Life: “Life,” by his brother, Samuel Longfellow, 1886; “Final Memorials,” by same, 1887.

Personal

  Is a native of the State of Maine, and one of the Professors in Bowdoin College. He is now in Europe.

  I cannot forbear saying how much pleasure it gave me to see your few words about Longfellow. He cares not at all for politics or statistics, for the Syrian question, or the disasters of Afghanistan. But to him the magnificent world of literature and Nature is open; every beauty of sentiment and truth and language has for him a relish; and every heart that feels is sure of a response from him. I feel for his genius and worth the greatest reverence, as for him personally the warmest love.

	I need not praise the sweetness of his song,
	Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds
	Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong
	The new moon’s mirrored skiff, he slides along,
	Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.
	With loving breath of all the winds his name
	Is blown about the world, but to his friends
	A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
	And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim
	To murmur a God bless you! and there ends.

  I suppose you don’t remember Longfellow, though he remembers you in a black velvet frock very well. He is now white-haired and white-bearded, but remarkably handsome. He still lives in his old house, where his beautiful wife was burnt to death. I dined with him the other day, and could not get the terrific scene out of my imagination. She was in a blaze in an instant, rushed into his arms with a wild cry, and never spoke afterwards.

  In 1843 the stately mistress of the old house died, and Professor Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie, with eight acres of land, including the meadow, which sloped down to the pretty river. There have been very few prouder or happier moments in his life than that in which he first felt that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he must have missed the stately old lady who first had admitted him to a place in it, and whom he had grown to love as a dear friend. She seemed so thoroughly a part and parcel of the place, that he must have missed the rustle of her heavy silks along the wide and echoing halls, and have listened some time for the sound of her old-fashioned spinet in the huge drawing-room below, and, entering the room where she was wont to receive her guests, he must have missed her from the old window where she was accustomed to sit, with the open book in her lap, and her eyes fixed on the far-off sky, thinking, no doubt, of the days when in her royal beauty she moved a queen through the brilliant home of Andrew Craigie. A part of the veneration which he felt for the old house had settled upon its ancient mistress, and the poet doubtless felt that the completeness of the quaint old establishment was broken up when she passed away.

  You have sent me a Christmas greeting: more than that, a Christmas gift in the shape of a very perfect flower from your own spacious garden: wherefore I exult and stick it in my cap and defy my foes. I and wife and sons salute you and thank you and wish all happiness to you and yours here and hereafter.

  If asked to describe Longfellow’s appearance, I should compare him to the ideal representations of early Christian saints and prophets. There is a kind of a halo of goodness about him, a benignity in his expression, which one associates with St. John at Patmos saying to his followers and brethren, “Little children, love one another!”

	If this be dying, fair it is to die:
	Even as a garment weariness lays by,
	Thou layest down life to pass, as Time hath passed,
	From wintry rigors to a Springtime sky.
	Are there tears left to give thee at the last,
	Poet of spirits crushed and hearts down-cast,
	Loved of worn women who, when work is done,
	Weep o’er thy page in twilights fading fast?
	Oh, tender-toned and tender-hearted one,
	We give thee to the season new begun;
	Lay thy white head within the arms of Spring—
	Thy song had all her shower and her sun.
	Nay, let us not such sorrowful tribute bring,
	Now that thy lark-like soul hath taken wing:
	A grateful memory fills and more endears
	The silence when a bird hath ceased to sing.

  His natural dignity and grace, and the beautiful refinement of his countenance, together with his perfect taste in dress and the exquisite simplicity of his manners, made him the absolute ideal of what a poet should be. His voice, too, was soft, sweet, and musical, and, like his face, it had the innate charm of tranquility. His eyes were bluish gray, very bright and brave, changeable under the influence of emotion, (as, afterward, I often saw,) but mostly calm, grave, attentive, and gentle. The habitual expression of his face was not that of sadness; and yet it was sad. Perhaps it may be best described as that of serious and tender thoughtfulness.

  The last time he was in Europe I was there with him, and I was a witness to not a few of the honors which he received from high and low. I remember particularly that when we were coming away from the House of Lords together, where we had been hearing a fine speech from his friend the Duke of Argyll, a group of the common people gathered around our carriage, calling him by name, begging to touch his hand, and at least one of them reciting aloud one of his most familiar poems. No poet of our day has touched the common heart like Longfellow. The simplicity and purity of his style were a part of his own character. He had nothing of that irritability which is one of the proverbial elements of the poetic temperament, but was always genial, generous, lovely.

  To my boyish fancy, the name Longfellow had a strange, unfamiliar, foreign sound as that of some inhabitant of a distant sphere; but a sight of its owner dispelled any such whimsical vagarities. It was a clear-cut figure, of middle size, handsome, erect, the countenance cheerful, the step buoyant, the manner cordial, the voice mellow and musical; a melodious voice, educated, coming from the depths of the man, with character and cultivation in it,—the voice of a gentleman and a scholar. His conversation has a jocund flavor, as if he enjoyed his thoughts about books and the men who wrote them. It was pleasant; not deep, but hearty and appreciative; flowing in a full, easy stream along the channels of literature, making music as it flowed. The great masters of song he loved without respect to their nationality, their age, or their creed; taking them on their merits, and rendering heart honor to their genius, it mattering little to him whether they wrote in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. When the youth met, a few years later, at Harvard College, the professor of modern languages and literatures, he found the same delightful person. The ordinary lecture-rooms being occupied, Longfellow met his classes in a kind of parlor, carpeted and furnished with comfortable chairs. The comparative elegance was so completely in keeping with the teacher and his topics that the peculiarity was not noticed at the time, and for the hour seemed to be no peculiarity at all. The professor sat and read his lectures in a simple manner, showing an entire familiarity with whatever concerned the literature of the subject; never discussing the points of the philosophical difficulty, never diving into abysses of abstraction or rising to heights of speculation, but fully equipped for the task of translation and exposition, especially the former, in which he excelled. His style of writing was flowing, picturesque, abounding in literary illustration, exuberant in imagery; more than pleased the prosaic members of the class, but none too florid for the imaginative and enthusiastic.

  In his youth, and during middle age, our poet was noted for his remarkable taste in dress, and in the arrangement of his fine hair. Indeed, he gave to the last the impression of a perfectly dressed man. Later, when the hair whitened, it was allowed to grow and disport itself at pleasure; and it often made one think of the loosely piled crown of an ancient prophet. He was of middle height, certainly not more; but almost everyone who saw him for the first time thought him taller…. Rather too much emphasis is laid upon the expression of sadness. One saw in looking at Longfellow that he was a man of deep and tender feelings, but his habitual expression was far from sad. It was grave at times, but often lighted up with smiles; and the consideration for others, which always distinguishes noble natures, gave to his speech and manners an indescribable charm.

  His face, filled with rugged lines, presents a contour of great firmness and intelligence. The nose is Roman rather than Greek, with the very slightest aquiline tendency. His eyes are clear, straightforward, almost proud, yet re-assuring. They are rather deeply set, and shaded by overhanging brows. In moments of lofty and inspired speech they have an eagle-like look; the orbs deepen and scintillate and flash; like the great bird of prey, they seem to soar off into endless space, grasping in the talons of the mental vision things unattainable to less ambitious flight. With his moods they vary, and when calm nothing could exceed the quietness of their expression. If sad, an infinite tenderness reposes in their depths; and, if merry, they sparkle and bubble over with fun. In fact, before the poet speaks, these traitorous eyes have already betrayed his humor. I must not forget the greatest of all expressions, humility. To one whose soul and mind are given to divine thought, it is in the eye that this sentiment finds its natural outcome; and the world knows that Longfellow’s faith is the crowning gem in a diadem of virtues. His face is not a mask, but an open book,—a positive index to his character.

  The regret for his loss was universal; for no modern man was ever better loved or better deserved to be loved.

	Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines
	The ray serene that filled Evangeline’s.
	Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait
	Amid the noisy clamor of debate
	The looked-for moment when a peaceful word
	Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred.
	In every tone I mark his tender grace
	And all his poems hinted in his face;
	What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives!
	How could I think him dead? He lives! He lives!

  The same gentle and humane spirit which characterized his writings showed itself also in the manners of the man. He had the simplicity which belongs to strong and true natures. He never remembered, and his affability made you forget that you were in the presence of one of the most eminent of living men. His fine sympathy prompted him to meet people on their own ground of thought and interest, and to anticipate their wishes. His ways with children were delightful…. He was hospitable and helpful to other and younger writers. How many are indebted to him for words of encouragement and cheer! The last letter I ever received from him was written during his illness in the winter, when he took the trouble to send me an exceedingly kind word regarding something of mine he had just seen in a magazine, and which had chanced to please him. He was tolerant to the last degree of other people’s faults. I never heard him speak with anything like impatience of anybody, except a certain class of critics who injure reputations by sitting in judgment upon works they have not the heart to feel, or the sense to understand.

  He touched life at many points; and certainly he was no book-worm or dry-as-dust scholar shut up in a library. He kept the doors of his study always open, both literally and figuratively. But literature, as it was his earliest ambition, was always his most real interest; it was his constant point of view; it was his chosen refuge. His very profession was a literary one…. A man of letters who was a worker,—a faithful user of his powers; one who had too much respect for his art ever to permit any carelessness in the execution or unworthiness in the theme. His art he valued, not for its own sake, but as a vehicle for noble, gentle, beautiful thought and sentiment. If he spoke of things common, it was to invest them with that charm of saying, or show that poetic element in them, which should lift them above the commonplace.

	Erelong I paced those cloisteral aisles, erelong
	I moved where pale memorial shapes convene,
	Where poet, warrior, statesman, king or queen
	In one great elegy of sculpture throng,
	When suddenly, with heart-beats glad and strong,
	I saw the face of that lost friend serene
	Who robed Hiawatha and Evangeline
	In such benign simplicity of song!
	Then, swiftly as light mists on morning leas,
	All history, legend, England, backward drawn,
	Vanished like vision to incorporate air.
	And in one sweet colonial home o’er seas
	I saw the lamp shine out across the lawn,
	I heard the old clock ticking on the stair!

  Longfellow’s true life was that of a scholar and a dreamer; and everything besides was a duty, however pleasurable or beautiful the experience might become in his gentle acceptation. He was seldom stimulated to external expression by others. Such excitement as he could express again was always self-excitement; anything external rendered him at once a listener and an observer. For this reason it is peculiarly difficult to give any idea of his lovely presence and character to those who have not known him. He did not speak in epigrams. It could not be said of him:

	“His mouth he could not ope,
	But out there flew a trope.”

Yet there was an exquisite tenderness and effluence from his presence which was more humanizing and elevating than the eloquence of many others.

  We gained a great deal from Longfellow. He came to Cambridge in our first year. He was not so much older than we as to be distant, was always accessible, friendly, and sympathetic. All poor teachers let “the book” come between them and the pupil. Great teachers never do; Longfellow never did. When the government acted like fools, as governments do sometimes, he always smoothed us down, and, in general, kept us in good temper. We used to call him “the Head,” which meant, head of the Modern Language Department.

  His interests were chiefly domestic and social; his pursuits were the labors and the pleasures of a poet and a man of letters. His hospitality was large and gracious, cordial to old friends, and genial to new acquaintances. His constantly growing fame burdened him with a crowd of visitors and a multitude of letters from “entire strangers.” They broke in upon his time, and made a vast task upon his good nature. He was often wearied by the incessant demands, but he regarded them as largely a claim of humanity upon his charity, and his charity never failed. He had a kind word for all, and with ready sacrifice of himself he dispensed pleasure to thousands…. No poet was ever more beloved than he; none was ever more worthy of love. The expressions of the feeling toward him after death were deep, affecting, and innumerable. One of the most striking was the placing of his bust in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey in March, 1884. It was the first instance of such an honor being paid to an American poet. His bust stands near the tomb of Chaucer, between the memorials to Cowley and Dryden.

  Who was as dear to England as to his native land, and under whose bust, glimmering at the corner of the south transept of Westminster Abbey, thousands pause with a sigh of regret for the loss of a life stainless as that white marble.

  Longfellow was my friend for a great many years, and one of the most amiable men I have ever known. His home being near Boston, I saw him oftenest, and always when I was there, but for two summers he took a charming old-fashioned country house on the outskirts of the beautiful village of Pittsfield, six miles from my own summer residence in Lenox, and during those seasons I saw him and his wife very frequently, and was often in that house, on the staircase landing of which stood the famous clock whose hourly song, “Never—for ever; ever—never,” has long been familiar to all English speaking people. Fanny Longfellow, the charming Mary of the poet’s “Hyperion,” had a certain resemblance to myself, which on one occasion caused some amusement in our house, my father coming suddenly into the room and addressing her as “Fanny,” which rather surprised her, as, though it was her name, they were not sufficiently intimate to warrant his so calling her. She was seated, however, otherwise he could not have made the mistake, as besides being very much handsomer than I, she had the noble stature and bearing of “a daughter of the gods divinely tall.”

  The class of 1825 became distinguished in the annals of Bowdoin for those of its graduates of that year who ultimately attained high rank in literature, theology, and politics…. One of the youngest was Henry W. Longfellow, who entered college when only fourteen. He had decided personal beauty and most attractive manners. He was frank, courteous, and affable, while morally he was proof against the temptations that beset lads on first leaving the salutary restraints of home. He was diligent, conscientious, and most attentive to all his college duties, whether in the recitation-room, the lecture-hall, or the chapel. The word “student” best expresses his literary habit, and in his intercourse with all he was conspicuously the gentleman. His studious habits and attractive mien soon led the professors to receive him into their society almost as an equal, rather than as a pupil; but this did not prevent him from being most popular among the students. He had no enemy.

  I met Longfellow during his last visit to England at the house of Mr. Wynne-Finch. His large, leonine head, surmounted at that date by a nimbus of white hair, was very striking indeed. I saw him standing a few moments alone, and ventured to introduce myself as a friend of his friends, the Apthorps, of Boston, and when I gave my name he took both my hands and pressed them with delightful cordiality.

  The poet Longfellow was such a thoroughbred gentleman, that the most timid were at ease in his society, and the presumptuous were held in check. “All the vulgar and pretentious people in the world,” exclaimed a young man, fascinated by the elegant simplicity of the poet’s manners, “ought to be sent to see Mr. Longfellow, to learn how to behave!” The poet was gifted with rare insight into character, and always said the right word to the right person. On being introduced to the late Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, a quick-witted old gentleman, who dearly loved a joke, reference was made to the similarity of the first syllables of their names. “Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,” replied Mr. Longfellow, quoting Pope’s favorite line, and making one of the best repartees on record. Probably no American, unless it was the President of the United States, received so many visitors as the poet. They came from all parts of the world, were received—even the humblest—with gracious kindness, which said “The man who wishes to see me is the man I wish to see.”

  His endowment of personal culture was so generous as to give one in contact with it the keenest delight. He seemed to me a man cultivated almost to the capacity of his nature. It was inconceivable that he could, under any stress, slip into rudeness of view, or do the incomplete thing. He was finished well-nigh to elaboration. Yet, as I say, he stopped this side of gold-leaf. For he had retained his sincerity almost to the point of naïveté; he had preserved the spontaneity which a lesser man under his attrition with the world would have lost.

  If we judge from his diary, Longfellow was never subject to overmastering impulses, but always acted with foresight,—not from selfish calculations, but from a sane and temperate judgment. He was as trustworthy at nineteen as if years of experience had molded his character and settled his principles of conduct. In fact, he negatives the theory of original sin,—the flower of Puritanism disproves the cherished Puritan dogma. This quality of radical goodness of heart is reflected in his verse. The ardor of soul, the deep dejection and despair, the rebellion, of the revolutionary natures are entirely unknown to him. He is the poet of the well-disposed, the virtuous and intelligent New-Englander.

  A part of Mr. Longfellow’s charm was his way of listening; another charm was his beauty, which was remarkable. His kindness to young authors has passed into a proverb, and he was a natural-born gentleman.

  His adoration of his wife was fully justified, for rarely have I seen a woman in whom a Juno-like dignity and serenity were so wedded to personal beauty and to the fine culture of brain and heart, which commanded reverence from the most ordinary acquaintance, as in her. No one who had seen her at home could ever forget the splendid vision, and the last time I ever saw her, so far as I remember, was in the summer time, when she and her two daughters, all in white muslin, like creatures of another world, evanescent, translucent, stood in the doorway to say good-by to me. In the same costume, a little later, she met death. She was making impressions in sealing-wax, to amuse her daughters, when a flaming drop fell on the inflammable stuff, and in an instant she was in flames, burned to death before help could come. It was then that they found that Longfellow was not the cold man they had generally believed him. He never recovered from the bereavement, and shortly after he became a Spiritualist, and, until he in his glad turn passed the gates of death, he lived in what he knew to be the light of her presence. And certainly if such a thing as communion across that grim threshold can be, this was the occasion which made it possible. There was something angelic about them both, even in this life,—a natural innocence and large beneficence and equanimity which, in the chance and contradiction of life, could rarely be found in wedded state.

  I succeeded at my first sitting in getting what I thought to be a characteristic, if not a poetic, pose. I was struck by the great intentness, almost a stare, with which he looked at one in pauses of the conversation. His eyes were so brilliant that he really seemed to be looking one through. It was this gaze that I tried to get in my portrait.

  His place of residence was so accessible and so historic, his personal demeanor so kindly, his life so open and transparent, that everything really conspired to give him the highest accessible degree of contemporary fame. There was no literary laurel that was not his, and he resolutely declined all other laureal; he had wealth and ease, children and grand children, health and stainless conscience; he had also in a peculiar degree, the blessings that belong to Shakesphere’s estimate of old age,—honour, love, obedience, troops of friends. Except for two great domestic bereavements, his life would have been one of absolutely unbroken sunshine; in his whole career he never encountered any serious rebuff, while such were his personal modesty and kindliness that no one could long regard him with envy or antagonism. Among all the sons of song there has rarely been such an instance of unbroken and unstained success.

Outre-Mer, 1834

  His rich and poetical, and yet graphic description, and the true feeling with which he looks on nature and on social life, are the qualities which most attract us in his writings, because they are not precisely those in which travellers are most apt to abound.

  It could not flourish now, nor can it flourish hereafter, but it delighted a literate and sympathetic class of readers forty years ago to whom it was a pleasant revealment of Old World places, customs, stories and literatures. It was quietly humorous, it was prettily pathetic, and it was pensive and poetical.

  Of the work itself I need add but little to what has already been said in this chapter. It is, confessedly, not much more than a book of travels through France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Holland; though the last two countries named are barely noticed. Around his descriptions of scenery, and the various incidents which pleased his youthful fancy, the author throws a halo of imagination,—a sort of dreamy atmosphere which at times makes what is real seem quite the opposite. Poesy, art, romance, and life are beautifully intermingled; and the generous feeling and true philosophy evinced by the pilgrim of the Land beyond the Sea throws a mild, yet most attractive, coloring over all the objects encountered, and all the scenes passed through. Whether we walk with him through the valley of Loire, take passage by night in the stagecoach from Paris to Bordeaux, or partake of the somewhat doubtful welcome of the inn of old Castile, we feel that we are in the company of a person of talent and of cultivated taste.

Hyperion, 1839

  Its quiet, delicate, and beautiful pictures contrast with the terrific scenes of old romance, like a soft, autumnal scene, compared with the landscape swept by the tropical hurricane…. The sentimental and melancholy tone that pervades it will not be listened to by many, in the throng, and pressure, and stirring practical interests of the present age. The scenery and embellishments are remote as possible from the circle of American life; and the thoughts and feelings are too ethereal to be readily grasped by minds intent upon the exciting themes of the day. The impassioned part of the romance partakes of the same general character. It is a book for minds attuned to sentiments of tenderness; minds of an imaginative turn, and willing and ready to interest themselves in reveries as gorgeous as morning dreams, and in the delicate perceptions of art and poetry;—minds tried by suffering, and sensitively alive to the influence of the beautiful.

  You should read Longfellow’s “Hyperion,” which is an imitation of Jean Paul Richter, in the same degree, perhaps, that “Evangeline” is an imitation of Voss. It is extremely refined and pleasing. It is, however, a collection of miscellanea strung together on a thread of a Rhine tour, with very little of a story, only an event to begin with, and an event to end with.

  We shall never forget the circumstance of its first perusal. We took it, as our pocket companion, with us on our first walk down the Tweed, by Peebles, Inverleithen, Clovenford, Ashestiel, and Abbotsford. It was fine at any special bend of the stream, or any beautiful spot along its brink, taking it out and finding in it a conductor to our own surcharged emotions. In our solitude we felt, We are not alone, for these pages can sympathize with us! The course of Hyperion, indeed, is that of a river, winding at its own sweet will, now laughing and singing to itself in its sparkling progress, and now slumbering in still, deep pools; here laving cornfields and vineyards, and there lost in wooded and sounding glens. Interest it has much,—incident, little: its charm is partly in the “Excelsior” progress of the hero’s mind, partly in the sketches of the great German authors, and principally in the sparkling imagery and waving, billowy language of the book. Longfellow in this work is Jean Paul Richter without his grotesque extravagancies, or riotous humour, or turbulent force.

  Independently of its literary merits, which were highly considered, it had in it a personal element which awakened much discussion and interest. Prominent among the personages introduced was one whose traits suggested one of the most eminent young ladies of the time, while the care and feeling shown in the portraiture made it evident that the heart of the writer had entered deeply into his work. It was known that Mr. Longfellow had met Miss Appleton, the supposed prototype of Mary Ashburton, while travelling in Europe, and conjectures were not wanting as to the possible progress and dénouement of the real romance which seemed to underlie the graceful fiction. This romance indeed existed, and its hopes and aspirations were crowned in due time by a marriage which led to years of noble and serene companionship.

  A poetical account of his travels, had at the time of its publication an immense popularity, due mainly to its sentimental romanticism. At present few persons beyond their teens would care to read it through, so unnatural and stilted is its language, so thin its material, and so consciously meditated its sentiment. Nevertheless it has a certain historical importance, for two reasons—(1) because it marks that period in Longfellow’s career when, though he had left nature, he had not yet found art, and (2) because it opened the sluices through which the flood of German sentimental poetry flowed into the United States—a flood whose waters, after forty years, are not yet assuaged.

  The portrait, the feelings recorded in the story are undoubtedly true. The incidents are imaginary. Into this romance the author put the glow, the fervor, the fever of his heart. He wove into it some pages of his own travels, modified, and some pages of literary criticism, as has been said, from his lectures. This Romance has a perennial charm for those who read it in their youth, and to whom it seemed a revelation of the new world. Many a phrase and passage remain fixed in their memories. More than one of them, in afterwards visiting Europe, has taken pains to follow the very steps of Paul Flemming; has sought out the very inns where he dined or slept; the Star at Salzig, the White House at Bingen; has turned aside to rest a Sunday at St. Gilgen, and read with his own eyes the inscription on the tablet above the dead which had become a motto for his own life; has lingered with an inexplicable feeling, that seemed as if the memory of a previous existence, under the walnut-trees of Interlaken or the lindens that crown the Rent Tower of Heidelberg Castle,—looking “at all things as they are, but through a kind of glory,” the glory with which poetry and romance indue a place even beyond history.

  The autobiographical element in “Hyperion” is unmistakable, though not to be hunted into its fastnesses. We have in these pages the record of some of the foreign travels, experiences, and musings of a thoughtful mind, touched with the gentle but irresistible lessons of an old land of romance and tender passion. The view of life here presented is optimistic, yet overhung with a purple melancholy, and affected by that feeling of sadness, not akin to pain, of which Longfellow elsewhere sings in a well-known poem. We have in this world—the book seems to remind us—the lessons of the past, the wealth of the present, and the hope of the future. Life is a rich possession, in which joy and pathos are fitly blent, and in which pure love sanctifies manly duty.

  There is no doubt that under the sway of the simpler style now prevailing, much of the rhetoric of “Hyperion” seems turgid, some of its learning obtrusive, and a good deal of its emotion forced; it was, nevertheless, an epoch-making book.

The Skeleton in Armor, 1841

  A pure and perfect thesis artistically treated.

  This vigorous poem opens with a rare abruptness. The author, full of the Norseland, was inspirited by his novel theme, and threw off a ringing carol of the sea-rover’s training, love, adventure. The cadences and imagery belong together, and the measure, that of Drayton’s “Agincourt,” is better than any new one for its purpose.

  “Skeleton in Armor” rightfully takes a high place among the finest ballads in the language.

The Spanish Student, 1843

  Upon the whole, we regret that Professor Longfellow has written this work, and feel especially vexed that he has committed himself by its republication. Only when regarded as a mere poem can it be said to have merit of any kind. For, in fact, it is only when we separate the poem from the drama that the passages we have commended as beautiful can be understood to have beauty…. Its thesis is unoriginal; its incidents are antique; its plot is no plot; its characters have no character; in short, it is little better than a play upon words to style it “A Play” at all.

  As a dramatist he has signally failed. He lacks nerve and condensation. The story is very prettily told by the actors, but beyond the dialogue form it has no pretensions to be called a Drama.

  Of Longfellow’s more extensive works his so-called dramas are failures. The Puritan plays in particular are commonplace in matter and bald in versification. The “Spanish Student,” more graceful than impressive, is made musical by the songs, and disfigured by an absurd close.

  I could not hold out long against the witchery of his verse. “The Spanish Student” became one of my passions; a minor passion, not a grand one, like Don Quixote and the “Conquest of Granada,” but still a passion, and I should dread a little to read the piece now, less I should disturb my old ideal of its beauty. The hero’s rogue servant, Chispa, seemed to me, then and long afterward, so fine a bit of Spanish character that I chose his name for my first pseudonym when I began to write for the newspapers, and signed my legislative correspondence for a Cincinnati paper with it. I was in love with the heroine, the lovely dancer whose cachucha turned my head, along with that of the cardinal, but whose name even I have forgotten, and I went about with the thought of her burning in my heart, as if she had been a real person.

Evangeline, 1847

  By this work of his maturity he has placed himself on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach of envy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than this poem of “Evangeline.”

  As it is the longest, so it is the most complete, the most artistically finished, of all your poems. I know nothing better in the language, than all the landscape painting. The Southwestern pictures are strikingly vigorous and new. The story is well handled and the interest well sustained. Some of the images are as well conceived and as statuesquely elaborated as anything you have ever turned out of your atelier,—which is saying a great deal. You must permit me, however, to regret that you have chosen hexameters,—for which I suppose you will think me a blockhead. Although yours are as good as, and probably a great deal better than, any English hexameters (of which I have, however, but small experience), yet they will not make music to my ear, nor can I carry them in my memory. There are half a dozen particular passages in which the imagery is chiselled like an intaglio, which would make a permanent impression on my memory if it were not for the length of the metre; as it is, I only remember the thought without the diction,—which is losing a great deal.

  I did not, I am sure, make any such comparison of Longfellow’s “Evangeline” with other American poems as you have ascribed to me. What I said was, that it had given me altogether more pleasure in the reading than any poem which had lately appeared—than any poem which had been published within several years. And this is true. I have never made any attempt to analyze the sources of this pleasure. The poem interested and affected me strangely. Whatever may be said of the parts, they are all harmonized by a poetic feeling of great sweetness and gentleness which belongs to the author. My ear admits, nay, delights in, the melody of the hexameter as he managed it. I no doubt expressed my satisfaction with the poem in warm terms, but the idea of bringing its poetic merits into comparison with whatever had been written in America never entered into my head.

  I have just been reading a poem by Mr. Longfellow which appears to be more replete with genuine beauties of American growth than any other production of your poets which I have seen. The story refers to Acadie, and one of the incidents is the deportation of a whole village of peaceful inhabitants (the village is called Grand Pré) by the soldiers and sailors of “King George.” I am afraid that Mr. Longfellow had some historical ground for this event…. Will you have the kindness to tell me—no one can do it so well—what this history is, and where I shall find it? No doubt many incidents in our treatment of our colonies have left deep memories on your side of the Atlantic which we know little about.

  Is full of the beautiful, and is most deeply pathetic, as much so as the story of Margaret in the “Excursion.”… “Evangeline” seems to be, in some sort, an imitation of Voss’s “Luise,” The opening, especially, would remind any one who had read the “Luise,” of that remarkable idyl. It is far inferior to that, I think, both in the general conception and in the execution. Voss’s hexameters are perfect. The German language admits of that metre, the English hardly does so. Some of Longfellow’s lines are but quasi-metre, so utterly inharmonious and so prosaic in regard to the diction.

	Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek,
	I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line
	In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.
	That’s not ancient nor modern, its place is apart
	Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art,
	’Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth’s hubbub and strife
	As quiet and chaste as the author’s own life.

  Is this natural poetry? Does the narrative require these “dying falls?” We answer, no; the measure jars upon us; it is as though we were reading intense prose before a slowly nodding China mandarin. The face falls at the end of every line. Where was the necessity for choosing such a form? It cannot be that the idea of its appropriateness rose up spontaneously in the author’s mind on his first conceiving the piece, and that he used it because he felt it to be the best; at least it is to be hoped it did not…. But it may be urged, “Evangeline” is in a walk of art to which strictness of criticism should not be applied. It is not attempted to make the characters natural, but only to make them in harmony with each other. It is raised very high into the poetic region; and the mind which approaches it must for the nonce lay aside commonsense and put on spectacles which turn all things to gold. To appreciate such constancy as Evangeline’s, one must be very refined indeed. The whole work, in short, is so fine that it required these awkward inclined planes of lines, that perpetually carry the reader down—and down—and down-a—in order to make it sufficiently remote and strange…. Now to this we must answer, and this conducts us to the general style of the piece, the clothing is not to our taste. It is not really fine, but tawdry; not neat, but gaudy. It pains the eye for want of harmony, and for ostentatious showiness in the coloring. To read the whole book cloys the fancy. The figures and comparisons seldom come in naturally, but are the offspring of conscious choice. The poet has always left him a “conceit, a miserable conceit.”

  In “Evangeline,” Mr. Longfellow has managed the hexameter with wonderful skill. The homely features of Acadian life are painted with Homeric simplicity, while the luxuriance of a Southern climate is magnificently described with equal fidelity and minuteness of finish. The subject is eminently fitted for this treatment; and Mr. Longfellow’s extraordinary command over the rhymatical resources of language has enabled him to handle it certainly with as perfect a mastery of the dactylic hexameter as any one has ever acquired in our language. Of the other beauties of the poem we have scarcely left ourselves space to say a word; but we cannot help calling our readers’ attention to the exquisite character of Evangeline herself. As her virtues are unfolded by the patience and religious trust with which she passes through her pilgrimage of toil and disappointment she becomes invested with a beauty as of angels. Her last years are made to harmonize the discords of a life of sorrow and endurance. The closing scenes, though informed with the deepest pathos, inspire us with sadness, it is true, but at the same time leave behind a calm feeling that the highest aim of her existence has been attained.

  Next to “Excelsior” and the “Psalm of Life” we are disposed to rank “Evangeline.” Indeed, as a work of art, it is superior to both, and to all that Longfellow has written in verse…. Nothing can be more truly conceived or more tenderly expressed than the picture of that primitive Nova Scotia and its warm-hearted, hospitable, happy and pious inhabitants. We feel the air of the fore-world around us. The light of the Golden Age—itself joy, music, and poetry—is shining above. There are evenings of summer or autumn-tide so exquisitely beautiful, so complete in their own charms, that the entrance of the moon is felt almost as a painful and superflous addition: it is like a candle dispelling the weird darkness of a twilight room. So we feel at first as if Evangeline, when introduced, were an excess of loveliness,—an amiable eclipser of the surrounding beauties. But even as the moon by-and-by vindicates her intrusion and creates her own “holier day” so with the delicate and lovely heroine of this simple story: she becomes the centre of the entire scene.

  It is somewhat unfortunate for Mr. Longfellow that he has thrown by far the greatest part of his poetical treasure into the most thankless of all forms, the hexameter. A long acquaintance justifies us in the assertion, that there are few American poems where so much fine thought and tender feeling are hid as in “Evangeline.”… The opening sketch of the tranquil lives of the French Acadians, on the Gulf of Minas, is truly idyllic; but the peculiarity of the measure—to which the English language is so little adapted—renders it very difficult to do justice in it even to the finest poetry. The hexameter is the grave of poetry. It is the crowning monotony of writing. A sort of stale prose. An author like Mr. Longfellow should not deprive himself of so much fame, by pushing to the utmost a peculiarity by which he had attained, in so many quarters, a somewhat undeserved reputation…. The Beautiful is his idol; his commonest thought is an anthem to her praise; and, like a true disciple, he insensibly adopts the manner of the priest he has confessed to, till he himself becomes one of the elect…. Into “Evangeline” Mr. Longfellow has thrown more of his own individual poetry than into any other production.

  “Evangeline” is a romance, written in hexameter verse and in English upon a subject historical and French, and adorned with romantic and metaphysical colors by an American of the United States. It is the end and the beginning of two literatures; the cradle and decline of two poetries; a faint new dawn above an ancient ruin.

  He must not follow the model offered by Mr. Longfellow in his pleasing and popular poem of “Evangeline;” for the merit of the manner and movement of “Evangeline,” when they are at their best, is to be tenderly elegant; and their fault, when they are at their worst, is to be lumbering.

  One cannot read this delightful poem without feeling that the heart of the writer is in it, not less than in the “Psalm of Life.” While in the delineation of natural scenery, and of the simplicity of rural life and manners, it is minutely faithful and distinct; while its characters are so well conceived, and so graphically drawn, that in the progress of the piece they become to one as familiar friends; the highest power of the story results from the fact that the author was so possessed by his theme that he wrote almost as if narrating a personal experience. Every line throbs with vitality, and the whole is suffused with a glow of genuine feeling. The result is originality, fascination, pathos. Evangeline has become as much a real person to the reading world as Joan of Arc; and the incidents of her history hold the attention, and are believed in, like those of Robinson Crusoe.

  It is impossible to give an idea of the genius of Longfellow without insisting on the joy with which he revels among imaginary beauties of nature. It is to him a nature of his own, not requiring the sustenance of an outside world before his eyes, as was to Hawthorne the weird mysticism of a world which was only present to him in his fancy. There was nothing special in Hawthorne’s personal experiences to have produced such dread ideas; and, though Longfellow has traveled in the course of an enjoyable life through scenes of much European beauty, not to that is to be attributed the luxuriance of the charm of description by which the readers of “Evangeline” are delighted. It is not necessary to produce such description that with the poet’s fancy should be combined a reality of poetic scenery. Without the fancy, the scenery would be nothing. All the Alps with all their glory do not create for us a great Swiss poet. But, without the Alps or any of their glory, the classical but not particularly beautiful town of Cambridge, and the somewhat sterile region of Massachusetts, suffice, when the man comes to whom God has given the genius of Longfellow.

  It is what the critic had been so long demanding and clamoring for—an American poem—and it is narrated with commendable simplicity, and a fluency which is not so commendable. Poetry, as poetry merely, is kept in the background; the descriptions, even when they appear redundant, are subordinated to the main purpose of the poem, out of which they rise naturally; the characters, if not clearly drawn, are distinctly indicated, and the landscapes through which they move are perfectly characteristic of the New World.

  This work did more to establish Longfellow’s reputation than any of his previous ones, and if, as has been said by one of the profoundest of critics, poems are to be judged by the state of mind in which they leave the reader, the high place which “Evangeline” occupies in popular esteem is justly awarded to it; for its chaste style and homely imagery, with its sympathetic and occasionally dramatic story, produce a refined and elevated impression, and present a beautiful and invigorating picture of “affection that hopes and endures, and is patient,” of the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion.

  A beautiful, pathetic tradition of American history, remote enough to gather a poetic halo, and yet fresh with sweet humanities; tinged with provincial color which he knew and loved, and in its course taking on the changing atmospheres of his own land; pastoral at first, then broken into action, and afterward the record of shifting scenes that made life a pilgrimage and dream. There are few dramatic episodes; there is but one figure whom we follow,—that one of the most touching of all, the betrothed Evangeline searching for her lover, through weary years and over half an unknown world. There are chance pictures of Acadian fields, New World rivers, prairies, bayous, forests, by moonlight and starlight and midday; glimpses, too, of picturesque figures, artisans, farmers, soldiery, trappers, boatmen, emigrants and priests. But the poem already is a little classic, and will remain one, just as surely as “The Vicar of Wakefield,” the “Deserted Village,” or any other sweet and pious idyl of our English tongue; yet we find its counterpart more nearly, I think, in some faultless miniature of the purest French school.

  “Evangeline” is as interesting as a novel. Try it on those acute, unbiased critics, the children. It fascinates them, for there is just description enough to make a background, and then the incidents follow naturally, and cumulate—each succeeding picture adding to the effect, brought in at just the right time and dwelt on just long enough, with fine, unconscious art.

  “Evangeline,” in which he sweeps on broad cæsural, hexameter pinions, from the fir-fretted valleys of Acadia to the lazy, languorous tides, which surge silently through the bayous of Louisiana. There was an outcry at first—that this poem showed classic affectation; but the beauty and the pathos carried the heroine and the metre into all hearts and homes in all English-speaking lands.

  The instant popularity of “Evangeline” demonstrated that the form commended itself to the masses as well as to the cultured few, and that previous failures were due to unskilfulness in use rather than to any inherent obstacles in the form itself. In the hands of an unskilful versifier nothing can be more wretched. When controlled by a master, nothing can be more melodious. It is the rhythm of passion, emotion, and delicate fancy, and therefore, in this instance, best adapted to the poet’s conception of his theme…. “Evangeline” was published October 30, 1847, one of the decisive dates in the history of American literature. It was the first narrative poem of considerable length by an American showing genuine creative power. Its purity of diction and elevated style, its beauties of description, its tenderness, pathos, and simplicity, its similes and metaphors at once true, poetic, and apt, its frequent passages betokening imaginative power, all embodied in a form unconventional yet peculiarly appropriate, stamped it as a new and individual creation. It was the highest inspiration in idyllic poetry produced in America. The impression left by a perusal of the poem is like that attributed to the passing of its heroine. It “seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.” American literature had proved its right to recognition, and in at least this one instance the world at large has not been slow to bear tribute of admiration.

Kavanagh, 1847

  All who love purity of tone, tenderness, and picturesque simplicity, have incurred a new obligation to the author of “Kavanagh.”… In “Kavanagh” as in “Evangeline,” we conceive it to be a peculiar merit that the story is kept down with so rigid a self-denial. The brass of the orchestra is not allowed an undue prominence…. “Kavanagh” is, as far as it goes, an exact daguerreotype of New England life. We say daguerreotype, because we are conscious of a certain absence of motion and color, which detracts somewhat from the vivacity, though not from the truth, of the representation. From Mr. Pendexter with his horse and chaise, to Miss Manchester painting the front of her house, the figures are faithfully after nature.

  Those who expected a novel which would illustrate New England character and life have not been gratified. “Kavanagh” is a sketch, and not properly a rounded and completed story. The characters are outlined rather than painted, and the main interest of the book lies in its transparent moral. It teaches two things: the value to an artist of spiritual insight into common life, and the necessity of promptness and decision if we would realize our aspirations…. There is no tinge of unnaturalness in the incidents of the narrative. It is not toned above the key of ordinary experience. But only those who have read it, or who have vivid recollections of the author’s “Hyperion,” can understand the peculiar charm which the purity of style, the sweet, mellow rhythm of the sentences, affluence of fancy, felicitous exhibition of curious learning, and delicacy and healthiness of sentiment combine to throw over every page.

  It fell rather flat, and has never been talked about in America with any enthusiasm. As the Americans found less to move them in the poet’s studies of slavery than we find, so it seems to be the case that the pictures he draws in “Kavanagh” of everyday life in the rural part of Massachusetts as it was about half a century ago, appeal to us here with more freshness and beauty than they do to those who are more or less familiar with the scenes and incidents he described.

  The brief story is pleasing throughout; its rural pictures have a mild idyllic grace, and its gentle humour approves itself to the reader, who heartily accepts its lesson: that purpose should be transmuted into action.

  A rather slight and pallid novelette, generously characterized by Emerson as “the best sketch we have seen in the direction of the American Novel.”

The Building of the Ship, 1850

  Admiralty, July 20.—I should have been so pleased to meet, and pay my profound respects to, the author of the finest poem on ship-building that ever was, or probably ever will be, written,—a poem which I often read with the truest pleasure.

  One of the most powerful productions of its distinguished author.

  A noble piece of work, boldly handled, passing from scene to scene, and from phase to phase of reflection, in a most impassioned style. As a poem for recitation, this is probably as affective as anything Longfellow wrote. Yet in reading “The Building of the Ship,” we are constantly reminded that there is no border-line between prose and poetry. Not only does the unfettered play of rhythms in the poem cause the ear to forget the distinction at times, but the general style of thought belongs almost more to oratory than to the methods of fastidious poesy. The ending of the piece has raised thousands of American audiences to frenzies of patriotic enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm does credit both to Longfellow and to the audiences; yet is not this mere oratory fitted out in rhyme?… Mere oratory! Yes, it is; but finer than the finest of Webster’s or Sumner’s. Criticising “The Building of the Ship” as a poem, we must not forget that its form is obviously borrowed from Schiller’s “Lay of the Bell.”

  “The Building of the Ship,” with its magnificent ending, is without a parallel, in its line, in English Literature.

The Golden Legend, 1851

  Longfellow, in the “Golden Legend,” has entered more closely into the temper of the Monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life’s labor to the analysis.

  No more exquisitely finished and harmonious poetical work has been written in this country than the “Golden Legend.”

  “The Golden Legend,” however, should be judged by itself, and is an enchanting romance of the Middle Age cast in the dramatic mould. Brought out years before the “Tragedies,” it finally was merged in the “Christus” by way of toning up the whole, the poet well knowing that this was his choicest distillation of Gothic mysticism and its legendary. It is composite rather than inventive; the correspondences between this work and Goethe’s masterpiece, not to speak of productions earlier than either, are interesting. There is decided originality in its general effect, and in the taste wherewith the author, like a modern maker of stained glass, arranged the prismatic materials which he knew precisely where to collect.

  It contains some of his best work, but its merit is rather poetic than dramatic, although Ruskin praised it for the closeness with which it entered into the temper of the monk.

  “Christus,” with its Golden Legend, will always be valued for its scholarly ranges and for its pleasantly recurring poetic savors. It hardly seemed up to the full score of his purpose or of his ambitions; monkish ways are laid down tenderly, as they wended through mediæval wastes; and so are Christ-ways of later and lightsomer times: but there is no careering blast of Divine wind sweeping through the highways all, and clearing them of putrescent dusts.

  Compared with the lofty ideals exemplified in Longfellow’s best work, his dramatic writings seem almost puerile. It is in these that his weakest points are most conspicuous. His culture, which stands him in such good stead in his ordinary narratives, here becomes a positive hindrance. His imaginative faculties and his constructive power seem paralyzed. Properly speaking, these are not dramas at all. The strange part of it all was that the poet sincerely hoped that his trilogy of “Christus” would be the work which would carry his name through the ages. Nothing could be more majestic than the theme, nothing more disappointing than its treatment. While the poet was so absorbed with his subject, he was, as his diary shows, not without grave misgivings as to the result. The second part, “The Golden Legend,” relieves the series from the imputation of literary failure.

The Song of Hiawatha, 1855

  I find this Indian poem very wholesome; sweet and wholesome as maize; very proper and pertinent for us to read, and showing a kind of manly sense of duty in the poet to write. The dangers of the Indians are, that they are really savage, have poor, small, sterile heads,—no thoughts; and you must deal very roundly with them, and find them in brains. And I blamed your tenderness now and then, as I read, in accepting a legend or song, when they had so little to give. I should hold you to your creative function on such occasions. But the costume and machinery, on the whole, is sweet and melancholy, and agrees with the American landscape. And you have the distinction of opening your own road. You may well call it an “Indian Edda.”

  I like “Hiawatha;” and I think it is liked here generally, and none the worse for being Indian.

  Permit me to dedicate to you this volume of Indian myths and legends, derived from the story-telling circle of the native wigwams. That they indicate the possession, by the Vesperic tribes, of mental resources of a very characteristic kind,—furnishing, in fact, a new point from which to judge the race and to excite intellectual sympathies,—you have most felicitiously shown in your poem of “Hiawatha.” Not only so, but you have demonstrated, by this pleasing series of pictures of Indian life, sentiment, and invention, that the use of the native lore reveals one of the true sources of our literary independence. Greece and Rome, England and Italy, have so long furnished, if they have not exhausted, the field of poetic culture, that it is at least refreshing to find, both in theme and metre, something new.

  Longfellow has enriched universal literature by a truely indigenous American epic, the “Song of Hiawatha.” This “Indian Edda,” as the poem has been rightly called, is undoubtedly the most important poetical work that has been accomplished by an American.

  “Hiawatha,” besides any number of translations into modern languages, has been turned into Latin by Professor F. W. Newman (published in 1862); it was also made the subject of musical treatment at Covent Garden in 1861.

  The story of Nature has never been told with so much liquid gaiety and melancholy,—so much of the frolic of the childlike races, and so much of their sudden awe and dejection,—as in “Hiawatha” which I, at least, have never taken up without new delight in the singular simplicity and grace, the artless art and ingenuous vivacity, of that rendering of the traditions of a vanishing race.

  No meritorious work was ever more severely judged than “Hiawatha” when it first appeared. But the sales were large. It quickly became the most popular of all his works, and the reviewers who had censured it joined in the later chorus of its praise.

  It is hard to believe that “Hiawatha” will not live in the admiration of posterity as long as any poem of this age. In its time it has been often abused, and parodied as often. Abuse and parody have now ceased; and when the redskins themselves have died from off the face of the American continent, there will always be men and women ready to follow the poet into the primeval forests, see him make for himself a woodland flute, piping to the poor painted braves and making them dance, weeping with the weeping squaws, attuning his laughter to the soft babble of their streams, and giving himself, like them, such a companionship with birds and beasts and fishes, prairie, mountains, and trees, as is not likely to find similar utterance in any future century on this globe of ever-increasing populousness. It is true that in “Hiawatha’s” pleasant numbers the Red Indian, with his narrow skull and small brain, is not presented to us with less enbellishment than he gains in Cooper’s romances; but the fact does not diminish Longfellow’s credit as a poet. After this Indian Edda had passed through the first burst of criticism, Mr. Schoolcraft brought out a book called “The Myth of Hiawatha, and other Oral Legends of the North American Indians;” and the student who consults this compilation will be astonished at the wholly unimaginative character of the material thus diligently accumulated by a competent scholar. Yet it was from this material that Longfellow produced his masterpiece.

  To me “Hiawatha” seems by far the best of his longer efforts; it is quite full of sympathy with men and women, nature, beasts, birds, weather, and wind and snow. Everything lives with a human breath, as everything should live in a poem concerned with these wild folk, to whom all the world, and all in it, is personal as themselves.

  Exhales the very fragrance of the broad prairie and illimitable forest, and is steeped in an atmosphere peculiarly and perfectly its own.

  Has been called America’s first contribution to world literature. In this poem, Longfellow, having perceived the poetic capabilities of the Indian legends, welded them into a whole, the life of which is quickened by invention of his own. A breath of nature passes over the pages, and the public attention hitherto paid to the mechanism and commonplace narratives of the poem may well be turned to the higher flights of fancy and imagination.

  This again called out the shrill salute of a great many of those critics who “shy” at any divergence from the conventionalities by which their schools are governed, and who took captious exceptions to a metre that was strange; but the laughing waters of Minnehaha and the pretty legendary texture of this Indian poem have carried its galloping trochaic measure into all cultivated American households. “Hiawatha” did not appear, however, (1855), until its author had given over his labors as a teacher, and was resting upon the laurels which had grown all round that Cambridge home. The pretty tale of “Kavanagh,” of earlier date, ranked fairly with his other ventures in the field of prose fiction—all of them wearing the air of poems gone astray—bereft of their rhymatic robes, and showing a lack of the brawn and virility which we ordinarily associate with the homely trousers of prose.

  Parodies and criticisms have long since been forgotten, but the poem itself, as the nearest approach to an American epic, continues to be a favorite with learned and unlearned alike.

  Ladies: We loved your father. The memory of our people will never die as long as your father’s song lives, and that will live forever. Will you and your husbands and Miss Longfellow come and see us and stay in our Royal wigwams on an island in Hiawatha’s play-ground, in the land of the Ojibways? We want you to see us live over again the life of Hiawatha in his own country.

	KABAOOSA.
	WABUNOSA.

Boston, Onahoaunegises,
The Month of crusts on the snow.

  A few days before the end of the visit, the Indians were very busy building a small platform on the island, and decorating it with green boughs, doing everything with much secrecy. After sunset, when the fire was lighted on the rocks nearby, the Indians assembled together, and Kabaoosa as the spokesman announced that they wished to have the pleasure of taking some of the party into the tribes as members. First came the ladies, as their father had turned the Ojibway legends into verse. They were led in turn before Kabaoosa, who took one of their hands in his, and made a spirited discourse in Ojibway. Then striking them three times on the shoulder, he called aloud the Indian name of adoption, and all the bystanders repeated it together. Then the new member of the tribe was led around the circle, and each Indian came forward, grasping the stranger by the hand, and calling aloud the new name. The names, which were valued names in the tribe, were all chosen with care, and given as proofs of high regard; the men of the party were honored as well as the women. Odenewasenoquay, The first flash of the lightning (Miss Longfellow); Osahgahgushkodawaquay, The lady of the open plains (Mrs. J. G. Thorp); Daguagonay, The man whom people like to camp near (J. G. Thorp, Esq.), and the names of the old chiefs Singwauk, or Sagagewayosay (Richard Henry Dana), and Bukwujjinini (Henry W. L. Dana).

The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858

  We are by no means solicitous to determine the merit of this as compared with Mr. Longfellow’s other poems. We have enjoyed it, and thank him for it. It contains some descriptive passages of unparalleled beauty; and, if portions of it are woven from the common fabric of every-day life, the more true are they to the massive and resolute, yet quite prosaic characters of the Pilgrim Fathers and their daughters. Miles Standish was not a paladin, nor was John Alden a knight-errant, and Priscilla Mullins was a plain, outspoken girl, without a particle of romance about her; and, while we might not have chosen them for Mr. Longfellow’s heroes and heroine, we are glad that he has chosen them, and has given us so life-like pictures of them. The critics who find an anachronism in the treadle of the spinning-wheel are the best vouchers for the general verisimilitude of the story; for they show that they have applied the micrometer to ever part of it.

  “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” of which his publishers sold twenty-five thousand copies in a month from its publication. But it is in hexameter verse, and, though popular for the time from its novelty, it can never obtain a permanent hold of the hearts of the people.

  In this poem, as in many others, we discern that Mr. Longfellow’s weakness lies not far from his strength; that he felicitously expresses the feelings and thoughts common to all, but does not possess that passion by which supreme lyrists depict the high tides of emotion. He never sings under the irrepressible impulse of some burning affection, some impassioned preference.

  “The Courtship of Miles Standish” was an advance upon “Evangeline,” so far as concerns structure and the distinct characterization of personages. A merit of the tale is the frolicsome humor here and there, lighting up the gloom that blends with our conception of the Pilgrim inclosure, and we see that comic and poetic elements are not at odds in the scheme of a bright imagination. The verse, though stronger, is more labored than that of “Evangeline;” some of the lines are prosaic, almost inadmissible.

  Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth, is a character always dear to the American heart. The little, big-hearted, choleric, generous man stands out from the grim crowd of Puritans, a very human being among the saints, able to jerk out a good round oath now and then, to love and to hate too, like other men. How much of the popular conception of the character was the real Miles Standish, and how much is Longfellow’s Miles Standish, were an interesting question, did one have time and place for its discussion. Perhaps more interesting than profitable; at any rate, Longfellow’s little captain has the fibre of reality about him so sturdy that it is he whom we see always when we read the history of the Puritans.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, 1867–70

  There can be, I think, no doubt that you have done something astonishing. I should not have thought it possible beforehand, and do not altogether comprehend it now how you have accomplished it. I was led on, canto by canto, wondering all the time whether you would give out or stumble; but you never did, so far as I could observe, and I meant to be watchful. The movement of your verse—its cadence and rhythm, I mean—explain, perhaps, a good deal of your power, or rather conceal it; although I confess I do not, after some consideration, understand how you make us feel a sort of presence of the teriza rima, in a measure so different.

  Mr. Longfellow, in rendering the substance of Dante’s poem, has succeeded in giving, also—so far as art and genius could give it—the spirit of Dante’s poetry…. It is a lasting addition to the choicest treasures of our literature…. The notes and illustrations which Mr. Longfellow has appended to his translation form a comment upon the poem such as is not elsewhere to be found. The notes are full of pleasant learning, set forth with that grace and beauty of style which are characteristic of Mr. Longfellow’s prose; and the long extracts which he gives from Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin, and other eminent writers, make his comment a thesaurus of the best judgments that exist in English concerning the poet and his poems.

  The review does not change my opinion of Mr. Longfellow’s translation—not as the best possible, by any means, but as the best probable. The fault I should find with the criticism is one whereof the author seems to be conscious himself—at least in some measure. It is laid out on too large a scale. His portico is as much too large as that of our Boston Court-House. It seems rather an attempt to show how much the critic knows (and I am heartily glad to find an American who knows so much) than to demonstrate the defects of the translation.

  Mr. Longfellow has translated Dante as a great poet should be translated. After this version, no other will be attempted until the present form of the English language shall have become obsolete, for, whether we regard fidelity to the sense, aptness in the form of expression, or the skilful transfusion of the poetic spirit of the original into the phrases of another language, we can look for nothing more perfect.

  Here at last that much suffering reader will find Dante’s greatness manifest, and not his greatness only, but his grace, his simplicity, and his affection. Here he will find strength matched with wonderful sweetness, and dignity with quaintness—Dante of the thirteenth century and Dante of eternity. There has been no attempt to add to or to take from this lofty presence. Opening the book we stand face to face with the poet, and when his voice ceases we may well marvel if he has not sung to us in his own Tuscan.

  It is not to Mr. Longfellow’s reputation only that these volumes will add, but to that of American literature. It is no little thing to be able to say, that, in a field in which some of England’s great poets have signally failed, an American poet has signally succeeded; and what the scholars of the Old World asserted to be impossible, a scholar of the New World has accomplished; and that the first to tread in this new path has impressed his footprints so deeply therein, that, however numerous his followers may be, they will all unite in hailing him with Dante’s own words,—

	“Tu Duca, tu Signore e tu Maestro,”—
	Thou Leader and thou Lord and Master thou.

  By the resolution to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his poetic hands. The first effect of his self binding is, to oblige him to use often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words, that is, words that in most cases lend themselve less readily to poetic expression…. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr. Longfellow forfeits much of his freedom. He is too intent on the words; he sacrifices the spirit of the letter; he overlays the poetry with a verbal literalness; he deprives himself of scope to give a billowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice passages. The rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity, this lineal servility, is increased by a frequent looseness in the endings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some pages, have—contrary to all good usage—the superfluous eleventh syllable.

  Of late I am entirely devoted to Italian history and memoirs of the early part of this century…. For serious reading I have a canto of Dante every morning before my bath and tea. Longfellow’s translation amuses me very much. You cannot possibly understand it unless you have read the original. I dare say that at first it was very good, but that little Dante Club sat on it every week, until they quite squashed all the poetry, and even the verse out of it.

  The crown of Longfellow’s achievements as a translator was a great version of Dante’s “Divina Commedia.”… It is a severely literal, almost a line for line, rendering. The meter is preserved, but the rhythm sacrificed. If not the best English poem constructed from Dante, it is at all events the most faithful and scholarly paraphrase. The sonnets which accompanied it are among Longfellow’s best work. He seems to have been raised by daily communion with the great Tuscan into a habit of deeper and more subtle thought than is elsewhere common in his poetry.

  His translation of Dante may be regarded as simply the work of a competent and cultured scholar. He aims to reproduce the terseness of the original rather than its form. Perhaps this is all that a sustained translation of a great poem can do; for poetic work lies in the relation between the group of words and the idea, and even individual poetic words—much more, groups of them—have no foreign equivalents. But Longfellow’s version is one of the few great translations of literature.

  Longfellow’s own temperament was of the gracious and conciliatory type, by no means of the domineering quality; and it is certainly a noticeable outcome of all this joint effort at constructing a version of this great world-poem, that one of the two original delegates, Professor Norton, should ultimately have published a prose translation of his own. It is also to be observed that Professor Norton, in the original preface of his version, while praising several other translators, does not so much as mention the name of Longfellow; and in his list of “Aids to the study of the ‘Divine Comedy’” speaks only of Longfellow’s notes and illustrations, which he praises as “admirable.” Even Lowell, the other original member of the conference, while in his “Dante” essay he ranks Longfellow’s as “the best” of the complete translations, applies the word “admirable” only to those fragmentary early versions, made for Longfellow’s college classes twenty years before,—versions which the completed work was apparently intended to supersede. Far be it from me to imply that any disloyalty was shown on the part of these gentlemen either towards their eminent associate or toward the work on which they had shared his labors; it is only that they surprise us a little by what they do not say. It may be that they do not praise the Longfellow version because they confessedly had a share in it, yet this reason does not quite satisfy. Nothing has been more noticeable in the popular reception of the completed work than the general preference of unsophisticated readers for those earlier translations thus heartily praised by Lowell. There has been a general complaint that the later work does not possess for the English-speaking the charm exerted by the original over all who can read Italian, while those earlier and fragmentary specimens had certainly possessed something of that charm.

The Divine Tragedy, 1871

  Since it will be a satisfaction to me to express my delight in the success of your poem, you cannot well deny me the privilege. When I heard the first announcement of it as forthcoming, I said, “Well, it is the grandest of all subjects; why has it never been attempted?” And yet I said inwardly in the next breath: “What mortal power is equal to the handling of it?” The greater and the more delightful is my surprise at the result. You have managed the theme with really wonderful address. The episodes, and the hard characters, and the partly imaginary characters, you had your liberty in: and you have used them well to suffuse and flavor and poetize the story. And yet, I know not how it is, but the part which finds me most perfectly, and is, in fact, the most poetic poetry of all, is the prose-poem,—the nearly rhymatic transcription of the simple narrative matter of the gospels.

  A large portion of this drama is a deftly arranged mosaic of passages from the Evangelists, and the reader is at first quite as much struck with the rhythmical character of the King James version, which permits the words to fall so easily into the metrical order, as he is with the poet’s skill in the selection and adjustment. Probably the indifference shown by people in general to this drama is due in part to the feeling that nothing very novel was offered…. He approached this dramatic representation of the Christ somewhat as a painter might propose a Crucifixion as a votive offering, only that while the painter, in a great period of religious art, would be working in a perfectly well understood and accepted mode, this poet was artistically alone, and was not merely not helped, but actually hindered, by the prevalent religious temper.

  It would seem that for some reason the poem did not, like its predecessors, find its way to the popular heart. When one considers the enthusiasm which greeted Willis’ scriptural poems in earlier days, or that which has in later days been attracted by semi-scriptural prose fictions, such as “The Prince of the House of David” and “Ben Hur,” the latter appearing, moreover, in a dramatic form, there certainly seems no reason why Longfellow’s attempt to grapple with the great theme should be so little successful. The book is not, like “The New England Tragedies” which completed the circle of “Christus,” dull in itself. It is, on the contrary, varied and readable; not merely poetic and tender, which was a matter of course in Longfellow’s hands, but strikingly varied, its composition skillful, the scripture types well handled, and the additional figures, Helen of Tyre, Simon Magus, and Menahem the Essenian, skillfully introduced and effectively managed. Yet one rarely sees the book quoted; it has not been widely read, and in all the vast list of Longfellow translations into foreign languages, there appears no version of any part of it except the comparatively modern and mediæval “Golden Legend.” It has simply afforded one of the most remarkable instances in literary history of the utter ignoring of the supposed high water-mark of a favorite author.

Sonnets

  “Longfellow wrote few weak sonnets, but I think his strongest are those which embody portraitures of characterizations of illustrious men, or which revive associations connected with them…. Among them are many that are signally notable for the superlative beauty of the thoughts they enshrine, the transparent clearness of their language, and the liquid melody of their versification—if they have any defect, it is their excess of sweetness, which sometimes cloyes upon the palate.”

  In the “Book of Sonnets” are some of the finest things he ever wrote, especially the five sonnets entitled “Three Friends Mine.” These “Three Friends” were Cornelius Felton, Louis Agassiz, and Charles Sumner.

  The sonnet was a form of poetical expression well suited to Longfellow’s genius. So far as his muse bore him he was accustomed to think clearly; he had great power of imagination, and an accurate aim in literary matters. Besides these he was possessed of a characteristic which is perhaps the one most conspicuous by its absence from the school of poetry prevalent at the present day, viz., a constant self-control. A dithryamb would have been impossible to him; he never lost sight of the artistic quality of the work he had in hand, and the freest of his songs exhibits a complete subordination of the parts.

  In artistic finish, the numerous sonnets produced in the last twenty years of his life not only equalled anything he had previously written but easily put him at the head of all American sonneteers.

  Foremost among American sonneteers stands Longfellow, the only member of the supreme group who uses this form with ease and dignity. Some score of examples—including the beautiful “Divina Commedia” series—might be selected from his works and compared with twenty by any modern English poet, save Wordsworth, nor lose thereby for nobility of sentiment and graciousness of diction. Wordsworth himself might have been proud to include “Nature,” for instance, among his finest sonnets.

General

  Most of Mr. Longfellow’s poetry—indeed, we believe nearly all that has been published—appeared during his college life in the United States Literary Gazette. It displays a very refined taste, and a very pure vein of poetical feeling. It possesses what has been a rare quality in the American poets—simplicity of expression, without any attempt to startle the reader, or to produce an effect by far-sought epithets. There is much sweetness in his imagery and language; and sometimes he is hardly excelled by any one for the quiet accuracy exhibited in his pictures of natural objects. His poetry will not easily be forgotten; some of it will be remembered with that of Dana and Bryant.

  We cannot say that he imitates the author of the “Sketch-Book;” he has a spirit of his own. But it seems to us that his mind is much of the same description. He is sprightly, and witty, and graphic; he has seen much of the world and used his opportunities well. There is an elegant ease in his style—finished but not finical; just the thing, as we say of a private gentleman whose manners and dress excite no other remark, while they satisfy all who observe them. And withal he has the genial bonhomie of Irving. He sees the pleasant side of things. He likes that his reader should be innocently pleased, and is content if he be so. If Longfellow, in a word, had come before Irving his fame would be that of a founder of a school (so far as America is concerned) rather than one of the scholars. As it is he may be popular, but not famous, and will hardly have credit even for what he is worth.

  I read your poems over and over, and over again, and continue to read them at all my leisure hours; and they grow upon me at every re-perusal. Nothing equal to some of them was ever written in this world,—this western world, I mean; and it would not hurt my conscience much to include the other hemisphere.

  In your disposition to avoid monotony, you roughen a line occasionally, after a fashion that frets me…. I say this just to prove my impartiality. Not being blinded altogether to such things only proves that I must have a better eye for the beauties. So I have. Some of the later poems are admirable. The earlier ones I don’t like. And why? Partly because they cannot be found fault with, and partly because they are just a piece with all the respectable poetry of their day. Your last are of a newer and much deeper spirit; sanctified and sanctifying.

  Henry W. Longfellow … is entitled to the first place among the poets of America—certainly to the first place among those who have put themselves prominently forth as poets. His good qualities are all of the highest order, while his sins are chiefly those of affectation and imitation—an imitation sometimes verging upon downright theft.

  No translations from the continental languages into the English surpass those of Longfellow, and it is questionable whether some of his versions from the Spanish, German, and Swedish, have been equalled. The rendition of “The Children of The Lord’s Supper” was the most difficult task he could have undertaken, as spondaic words, so necessary in the construction of hexameters, and so common in the Greek, Latin, and Swedish, are so rare in the English language…. Longfellow’s works are eminently picturesque, and are distinguished for nicety of epithet, and elaborate, scholarly finish. He has feeling, a rich imagination, and a cultured taste. He is one of the very small number of American poets who have “written for posterity.”

  Longfellow’s book contains some of the most beautiful gems of American poetry,—I would almost say, some of the most beautiful in English poetry. The description of the wreck in the ballad of the “Hesperus” is one of the finest things in English ballad literature. “Excelsior” is a noble poem, which cannot die; and which, as long as it lives, will fill with new energy those who read it, besides exciting the highest admiration for the writer. “Endymion” is a most poetical thought, beautifully wrought. “It is not always May” is a truly melodious composition. “The Rainy Day” is a little pearl. “Maidenhood” is a delicate, delicious, soft, hazy composition. “God’s-Acre” is a very striking thought. Then, the hexameters. I do not like this measure in English. Our language has too many little words to bear this dactylic and spondaic yoke; but Longfellow has written the best that have been written in the language.

  Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. His artistic skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong; and this we shall prove at some future day, to our own satisfaction, at least. His didactics are all out of place. He has written brilliant poems, by accident; that is to say, when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional habit of thinking, a habit deduced from German study.

  Especially happy are we to be able to count one of Mr. Longfellow’s genius and celebrity among those friends of universal liberty, who are willing to speak their word in its behalf. In this little book of poems he has spoken with feeling, with truth, and eminent poetic beauty.

  Longfellow has a perfect command of that expression which results from restraining rather than cultivating fluency; and his manner is adapted to his theme. He rarely, if ever, mistakes “emotions for conceptions.” His words are often pictures of his thought. He selects with great delicacy and precision the exact phrase which best expresses or suggests his idea. He colors his style with the skill of a painter. The warm flush and bright tints, as well as the most evanescent hues, of language, he uses with admirable discretion.

  In this great crowd of translations [“Poets and Poetry of Europe”] by different hands, certainly very few appear equal to Professor Longfellow’s in point of fidelity, elegance, and finish. The work is an honourable memorial of his great attainments as a linguist, in which character, rather than as a poet, his fame will be sustained and advanced by this publication.

  I have been looking over the collection of your poems recently published by Carey and Hart with Huntington’s illustrations. They appear to me more beautiful than on former readings, much as I then admired them. The exquisite music of your verse dwells more than ever on my ear; and more than ever am I affected by their depth of feeling and spirituality, and the creative power with which they set before us passages from the great drama of life. I have been reading aloud to my wife some of the poems that pleased me most, and she would not be content till I had written to express to you something of the admiration which I could not help manifesting as I read them. I am not one of those who believe that a true poet is insensible to the excellence of his writings, and know that you can well afford to dispense with such slight corroboration as the general judgment in your favor could derive from any opinion of mine. You must allow me, however, to add my voice to the many which make up the voice of poetic fame.

  Longfellow is artificial and imitative. He borrows incessantly, and mixes what he borrows, so that it does not appear to the best advantage. He is very faulty in using broken or mixed metaphors. The ethical part of his writing has a hollow, second-hand sound. He has, however, elegance, a love of the beautiful, and a fancy for what is large and manly, if not a full sympathy with it. His verse breathes at times much sweetness; and, if not allowed to supersede what is better may promote a taste for good poetry. Though imitative, he is not mechanical.

  I do not know a more enviable reputation than Professor Longfellow has won for himself in this country—won too with a rapidity seldom experienced by our own native poets. The terseness of diction and force of thought delight the old; the grace and melody enchant the young; the unaffected and all-pervading piety satisfy the serious; and a certain slight touch of mysticism carries the imaginative reader fairly off his feet. For my own part, I confess, not only to the being captivated by all these qualities (mysticism excepted), but to the farther fact of yielding to the charm of certain lines, I can not very well tell why, and walking about the house repeating to myself such fragments as this:

	“I give the first watch of the night
	To the red planet Mars,”

as if I were still eighteen. I am not sure that this is not as great a proof of the power of the poet as can be given.

  The modern Scandinavian genius seems to have exercised great influence over his thought. Severe intellectual beauty, a peculiar sweetness of expression and rhythm distinguishes his verse, especially the “Voices of the Night.” He is a “moonlight” poet, say the Americans, and attracts the soul by his sad, sweet grandeur. The effect of his verse is often strange, and the colors are so transparent that sentimental romance would willingly claim the merit of them. No one among the Anglo-Americans has soared higher into the middle air of Poesy than Longfellow, whose most touching poem we will shortly analyze. Little passion, and great calm, approaching to majesty; a sensibility stirred in its very deeps are exhibited in moderated vibration and rhythm; only the Swedish poems of Tegner can give an idea of the gentle melody and thoughtful emotion. Longfellow appears to us to occupy the first rank among the poets of his country; a distinct savor characterizes him; as you read him you seem to feel the permanent mournfulness of the mighty sounds and shadows of the endless prairie and the woods which have no history.

  Trained as a verbal artist by the discipline of a poetic translator, he acquired a tact and facility in the use of words, which great natural fluency and extreme fastidiousness enabled him to use to the utmost advantage. His poems are chiefly meditative, and have that legendary significance peculiar to the German ballad. They also often embody and illustrate a moral truth. There is little or no evidence of inspiration in his verse, as that term is used to suggest the power of an overmastering passion; but there is a thoughtful, subdued feeling that seems to overflow in quiet beauty. It is, however, the manner in which this sentiment is expressed, the appropriateness of the figures, the harmony of the numbers, and the inimitable choice of words, that gives effect to the composition. He often reminds us of an excellent mosaic worker, with his smooth table of polished marble indented to receive the precious stones that are lying at hand, which he calmly, patiently, and with exquisite art, inserts in the shape of flowers and fruit.

  Our hemisphere cannot claim the honor of having brought him forth; but still he belongs to us, for his works have become as household words wherever the English language is spoken. Whether we are charmed by his imagery, or soothed by his melodious versification, or elevated by the high moral teachings of his pure muse, or follow with sympathizing hearts the wanderings of Evangeline, I am sure that all who hear my voice will join with me in the tribute I desire to pay to the genius of Longfellow.

  Thus have we seen the poet’s praise chanted alike by stern reviewer and gentle lady, by lowly critic and lordly prelate.

  Longfellow’s hexameters generally “read themselves” easily enough, and that it is to be over-critical to complain of them in this respect; still, I don’t think they are a good type of hexameter.

  I have been reading the “Wayside Inn” with the heartiest admiration. The introduction is masterly—so simple, clear, and strong. Let ’em put in all their ifs and buts; I don’t wonder the public are hungrier and thirstier for his verse than for that of all the rest of us put together.

  Mr. Longfellow’s fair-mindedness and kindness make the reader also fair and kind. We are sorry for the oppressor as for the oppressed; for we see among the motives mixed in the thought of each the wish to do what is right, darkened by want of knowledge that seemed to be knowledge, and by fanaticism that seemed to be religion. He who reads “John Endicott,” in the spirit in which that story is told, will be gladder for the troubled Governor at his escape by death from the bitter warfare of heart and mind than at the escape of the Quakers from merely bodily pain by the ending of the persecution.

  We might conceive of a Longfellow Gallery, better known and more fondly cherished than the picture galleries of kings. There, in the place of honor hangs Evangeline, sweetest of rustic heroines, turning her sad face away from the desolate Grand Pré. Opposite is the Puritan damsel, Priscilla, with her bashful, clerical lover, and the fiery little captain. In the next panel is the half-frozen sound, over which skims the bold Norseman. There, under the chestnut tree, stands the swart blacksmith, all the love of a father brimming in his eyes. There leans the vast glacier, gleaming in fatal beauty, along whose verge toils upwards the youth with “Excelsior” on his banner. There the airy Preciosa is dancing away the scruples of the archbishop. Here is pictured the Belfry of Bruges, and the groups of people listening to the heavenly chime of its bells. There, shivering in a wintry sea, is the Hesperus, a helpless wreck, driving upon Norman’s Woe. Yonder stands Albrecht Dürer, in a street of his beloved, quaint old Nuremberg. There, on the sculptored stairway, is the Clock, ticking its eternal Forever! never! Never! forever! There saunters the dreamy-eyed Sicilian, his dainty mustaches spread like a swallow’s wings. Behold the busy throngs about that huge hulk, and see the proud master waving his hand as the signal for the launch! By that empty cradle sits the mother thinking of the dead lamb of her flock. Yonder looms up Strasburg spire, while spirits of the air circle round its pinnacles, and the miracle play goes on below. That is Paul Revere, galloping in the gray of the morning along the road to Concord. In that green spot, with the limitless prairie beyond, stands Hiawatha, looking gloomily westward, whither his path leads him. Lastly, we see a broad frame, on which we read in golden letters the legend, “The Divine Tragedy.” Let us not lightly raise the veil.

  The average Englishman knows hardly anything of any American poet but Longfellow, who receives, I venture to think, a far more wholesale and enthusiastic admiration in England than in his own country.

  Tennyson undoubtedly stands at the head of all living singers, and his name might well serve as the high-water mark of modern verse; but as our volume gives a liberal space to American authorship, I have ventured to let the name of the author of “Evangeline” represent, as it well may, the present poetic culture of our English-speaking people at home and abroad.

  He is now beyond question the most popular of the American poets, and has also a wide circle of admirers in Europe. If none of his larger poems can be considered great, his smaller pieces are finished with taste, and all breathe a healthy moral feeling and fine tone of humanity.

  Perhaps no other poet of this century has written so many things which have become the companion-pictures of scholars and unlettered people alike. Mr. Longfellow is not only the most popular poet of America, but perhaps in a more marked degree, undoubtedly in as high a degree, the most popular poet in Great Britain.

	Or give me him who called the armèd dead—
	The Skeleton—from out his narrow bed
	By Newport Tower; with him the blasts I’ll brave,
	And tell mad stories of the Norland wave
	In the King’s hall, and there, to test my truth,
	Hold up in Alfred’s face the Walrus Tooth!
	I’ll seek, with Hiawatha, the bright West,
	The infinite Green Prairies of the Blest,
	I’ll wander by Atlantic’s coast, and see
	The lovely meadows of sweet Acadie;
	In the warm forge with Gabriel blithely sing,
	The bellows blow, and make the anvil ring,
	See fair Evangeline in coif and tassel,
	And smoke a pipe with Benedict and Basil!

  Longfellow’s was a sweet and characteristic note, but, except in a heightened enjoyment of the antique—a ruined Rhine Castle, a goblet from which dead knights had drunk, a suit of armour, or anything frankly mediæval—except in this, Longfellow is one of ourselves—an European. “Evangeline “is an European Idyl of American Life, Hermann and Dorothea having emigrated to Acadie. “Hiawatha” might have been dreamed in Kensington by a London man of letters who possessed a graceful idealizing turn of imagination, and who had studied with clear-minded and gracious sympathy the better side of Indian character and manners. Longfellow could amiably quiz, from a point of view of superior and contented refinement, his countrymen who went about blatant and blustering for a national art and literature which should correspond with the large proportion and freedom of the republic.

  He is in a high sense a literary man; and next, a literary artist; and thirdly, a literary artist in the domain of poetry. It would not be true to say that his art is of the intensest kind or most magical potency; but it is art, and imbues whatever he performs. In so far as a literary artist in poetry is a poet, Longfellow is a poet, and should (to the silencing of all debates and demurs) be freely confessed and handsomely installed as such. How far he is a poet in a further sense than this remains to be determined.

  I do not see that the poetry of Mr. Longfellow has changed much in the last twenty years, except that it has become graver in its tone and more serious in its purpose. Its technical excellence has steadily increased. He has more than held his own against all English-writing poets, and in no walk of poetry so positively as that of telling a story. In an age of story-tellers he stands at their head, not only in the narrative poems I have mentioned, but in the lesser stories included in his “Tales of a Wayside Inn” for which he has laid all the literatures of the world under contribution.

  Of all living poets (Tennyson not excepted), Longfellow the American has made for himself the widest social popularity. As Dr. Whewell, the famous master of Trinity College, Cambridge, once said in my hearing, “The sweet and homely melodies of Longfellow have touched a thousand hearts that have been unmoved by the deeper and sometimes abstruse harmonies of Tennyson.” But it is Longfellow’s fresh, genuine, and tender insight into the religious thoughts and feelings of ordinary human beings, which has made him the minister of hope and stay of faith in this artificial and doubt-tossed age.

  Unlike some poets of the most recent school in verse, Longfellow rarely tries to convey an idea which is not clear and intelligible to his own mind. He is as honest as Shakspeare, Milton, or Burns in this respect…. It is in his shorter lyrical pieces, his ballads, and his fine descriptive touches that Longfellow’s powers are brought out to most advantage; for it is in these that he oftenest combines the neatness and skill of the consummate artist with the curious felicity and perfect simplicity of the genuine poet.

  He has never received all the praise due to him, but he has thus escaped invidious remark. He had crept up to our hearts before we had learned to think that he was mastering our judgment. In this way he has escaped all hardships of criticism, and he certainly will not receive a heavy measure of it from me.

  There cannot, I imagine, be any doubt that Professor Longfellow is in England the most widely read of living poets. Messrs. Routledge and Sons, who are his authorized publishers in this country, have on sale at the present moment eight different editions of his works, varying in price from one shilling to one guinea; while at least a dozen other houses—profiting by the absence of an international copyright law—publish unauthorized editions adapted in the like manner to the tastes and purses of all classes. Thus it is that our English versions, answering to the demand created by an unbounded popularity, are as the leaves on the trees, or the pebbles on the shore. Thus it is that at every bookseller’s shop in town or country, “Longfellow’s Poems” are a staple of trade. As a prize-book for schools, as a gift-book as a drawing-room table book, as a pocket-volume for the woods and fields, our familiar and beloved friend of something like forty years meets us at every turn. Of new copies alone, it is calculated that not less than 30,000 are annually sold in the United Kingdom; and who shall estimate the average sale of copies in the second-hand market? That it should repay its English publishers, in the face of unlimited competition, to purchase a few weeks’ precedence of the high rate paid by Messrs. Routledge for Professor Longfellow’s early sheets, is evidence enough of the eagerness with which we welcome every line that falls from his pen. For advance proofs of the “New England Tragedies”—perhaps the poet’s least successful volume—those eminent publishers gave no less a sum than one thousand pounds sterling.

  Mr. Longfellow’s humanity is so broad, his sympathies are so just and true, the spirit of his poetry is so penetrating and catholic, that it would be singular indeed if he failed to exert an influence on the Canadian people as intense and real as in his own country. The esteem in which his writings are everywhere held throughout the dominion is naturally enough very high and cordial…. For a variety of reasons Longfellow’s verse has always maintained a strong hold on the Canadian public, and to-day his writings have a larger circulation in Canada than those of any four living poets combined, and the list may comprehend Tennyson and Robert Browning…. But while Longfellow’s writings influence much of the thought which finds an outcome in the poetic efforts of what may be locally called Canadian literature, it must be conceded that his power more keenly asserts itself in the every-day lives of the people themselves, the readers of good books and the lovers of true poetry.

  It was a beautiful life. It was felicitous beyond ordinary lot, and yet not so far beyond. The birds sang in its branches. The pleasant streams ran through it. The sun shone and the April showers fell softly down upon it. The winds hushed it to sleep. And, while now he falls asleep, let us read his verse anew; and through the lines let us read him, and draw into our lives something of these serenities and upliftings. So for ourselves and one another, remembering this Sunday afternoon, remembering the poet’s life, living hereafter with the poet’s hymns in our ears, may we, like him, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time; may our sadness resemble sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain; may we know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong; may we wake the better soul that slumbered to a holy, calm delight; may we never mistake heaven’s distant lamps for sad funereal tapers; and may we ever hear the voice from the sky like a falling star,—Excelsior!

	No puissant singer he, whose silence grieves
	To-day the great West’s tender heart and strong;
	No singer vast of voice: yet one who leaves
	His native air the sweeter for his song.

  You remember that Bryant first won fame by a hymn to death; and so, I think, the first fame of Longfellow which won recognition for him was that translation of those sounding Spanish lines which exalt the majesty of death and sing the shortness of human life. But the first song of his own which won the recognition of the world was not a song of death, it was a “psalm of life.” That little volume, the “Voices of the Night,” formed an epoch in our literary history. It breathed his whole spirit,—his energy, his courage, his tenderness, his faith; it formed the prelude of all which should come after; and henceforth we find his whole life imaged in his verse. I do not mean that he tore open the secrets of the heart or the home; but all is there,—transfigured, enlarged, made universal, made the common property of all. We wander with him through foreign lands; he takes us with him into his studies, and in his translations he gives us their fairest fruits. We hear with him the greetings of the new-born child; we are taken into the sacred joy of home; the merry notes of the children’s hour ring upon our ears; we feel the pains of sorrow and of loss; we hear the prayer of elevated trust. And when age draws near at last, when the shadows begin to fall, then we share with him the solemnity and sublimity of the gathering darkness.

  Was it a small thing that the dead poet should have diffused so widely the influence of his genius, helping to shape character in other lands, to ennoble the heart, to inspire just sentiments of life, and encourage the inexperienced or the afflicted with songs of hope and cheer? With the ever-increasing advance of foreign influences and education in the East it may be safely predicted that the poems of Longfellow are destined to be more widely read and appreciated there for many years to come.

  He took the saddest of our New England tragedies, and the sweetest of its rural home scenes, the wayside inn, the alarum of war, the Indian legend, and the hanging of the crane in the modest household, and his genius has invested them with enduring charms and morals. Wise and gentle was the heart which could thus find melodies for the harp, lyre, and the plectrum in our fields and wildernesses, wreathing them as nature does the thickets and stumps of the forest with flowers and mosses. While all his utterances came from a pure, a tender and a devout heart, addressing themselves to what is of like in other hearts, there is not in them a line of morbidness, of depression or melancholy, but only that which quickens and cheers with robust resolve and courage, with peace and aspiring trust. He has, indeed, used freely the poet’s license in playful freedom with dates and facts. But the scenes and incidents and personages which most need a softening and refining touch, receive it from him without prejudice to the service of sober history.

  Until the silence fell upon us we did not entirely appreciate how largely his voice was repeated in the echoes of our own heart. The affluence of his production so accustomed us to look for a poem from him at short intervals that we could hardly feel how precious that was which was so abundant. Not, of course, that every single poem reached the standard of the highest among them all. That could not be in Homer’s time, and mortals must occasionally nod now as then. But the hand of the artist shows itself unmistakably in everything which left his desk. The O of Giotto could not help being a perfect round, and the verse of Longfellow is always perfect in construction. He worked in that simple and natural way which characterizes the master.

  The office of the poet is, indeed, a holy one. Sometimes he is both poet and prophet in one. Such a one Longfellow was not. But always he is both poet and priest in one: priest at the sacred shrine of the feelings…. He was a white-robed priest—a priest clad in purity. Whatever his clean eyes saw became clean under his gaze; whatever his fine hands seized, became fine under his touch.

  Longfellow, in the foreign estimation, holds the highest place among all the names of our literature. He was one of the first to catch the attention of English critics, and they have clung to him as to a sheet anchor in the overwhelming rush of American writers since. They are fond of calling him “America’s greatest Literary Son,” because such an attribution would restrict our literature to a certain level of excellence which without doubt has been far exceeded by others of our authors. This has occasioned a perceptible reaction among home critics, and perhaps caused them to depreciate the real merit of Longfellow. It would be agreed that he is not a poet of the first, or even of the second, order. He can not rank with Emerson, or with Tennyson or Browning. Not the exalted treasure of celestial thought, not the dramatic power of intense passions, not the mystic subtlety of refined ideals, is his. But the chords of daily human experience, the level beauty of common life, the sense of content and grief, the imaginative picturing of legend and allegory—these he knew well. He was never false in a word or form of words. His lyre sang true every note, whether in major or minor keys. All humanity responds to its music, and that music is exquisite. There is a great variety in his work, yet he has not written anything without the charm that indicates poetry. He has never been a sloven in his verse; while at the same time he has never wandered in search of mechanical elaboration, as the fashion has been since Swinburne scared the whole guild of English writers by his exhaustive gymnastics with the entire resources of the language. Without any fantastic devices of rhythm and metre, he never failed in fitting his form to his thought, and is justly to be called a master in the mechanism of poesy.

	His heart was pure, his purpose high,
	His thoughts serene, his patience vast;
	He put all strifes of passion by,
	And lived to God, from first to last.
	His song was like the pine-tree’s sigh,
	At midnight o’er a poet’s grave,
	Or like the sea-bird’s distant cry,
	Borne far across the twilight wave.
	There is no flower of meek delight,
	There is no star of heavenly pride,
	That shines not fairer and more bright
	Because he lived, loved, sang, and died.

	And the musical soul of his burden
	Was the Voice of the Night in his ear
	That banished the truculent babel
	With the whispering word, “Be of cheer.”
	And stalwart and stately and hearty,
	As his patriarch farmer of Pré,
	Was the singer of seventy winters
	Who chanted the jubilant lay.

  Child of New England, and trained by her best influences; of a temperament singularly sweet and serene, and with the sturdy rectitude of his race; refined and softened by wide contact with other lands and many men; born in prosperity, accomplished in all literatures, and himself a literary artist of consummate elegance, he was the fine flower of the Puritan stock under its changed modern conditions. Out of strength had come forth sweetness. The grim iconoclast, “humming a surly hymn,” had issued in the Christian gentleman. Captain Miles Standish had risen into Sir Philip Sidney. The austere morality that relentlessly ruled the elder New England reappeared in the genius of this singer in the most gracious and captivating form…. Longfellow’s genius was not a great creative force. It burst into no tempest of mighty passion. It did not wrestle with the haughtily veiled problems of fate and free-will absolute. It had no dramatic movement and variety, no eccentricity and grotesqueness and unexpectedness. It was not Lear, nor Faust, nor Manfred, nor Romeo. A carnation is not a passion-flower. Indeed, no poet of so universal and sincere popularity ever sang so little of love as a passion…. His poems are apples of gold in pictures of silver…. The literary decoration of his style, the aroma and color and richness, so to speak, which it derives from his ample accomplishment in literature, are incomparable.

  His works are not only free from the special defects, but devoid of the peculiar merits, that mark the more strictly national literature of his country. His fancy recrosses the Atlantic for the inspiration which many derive from the past. Now and then he gives us glimpses of the hoar frost silvering his native pines, or, heaping the logs on the hearth, sits down to tell us a New England tale; but the majority of his minor poems are drawn from the same experiences and memories as his “Hyperion” and “Outre-Mer.” Like Irving in the variety of his culture, superior in genius, his imagination is rather Teutonic than English. Cut Germany out of his volume, and you cut out nearly half. He lingers in feudal towers or Flemish towns, and chooses for his emblem of life’s river, not the Ohio, or the Hudson, or the Assabeth, but “the Moldau’s rushing stream.” He has given us the best existing translations from Swedish, Danish, and Spanish, and among the best from Italian…. He cannot create, but he cannot touch without adorning. There is nothing in his works of the world-revealing insight of the deepest penetrative imagination; but from nature, man and books he constantly throws new illuminations on homely truths…. His favourite virtues are endurance, calm; his confidence, gentle hearts; his pet themes the praise and love of children…. Longfellow is limited in his range, because he is dowered with neither hate nor scorn.

  Longfellow, like all poets who had not any great originality of initiative, was singularly dependent on his subjects for his success; but when his subject suits him, he presents it with the simplicity of a really great classic, with all its points in relief, and with nothing of the self-conscious or artificial tone of one who wants to draw attention to the admirable insight with which he has grasped the situation. He can be very conventional, when the subject is conventional. When it is not, but is intrinsically poetical, no one gives us its poetry more free from the impertinences of subjective ecstasy than he. He was not a great poet, but he was a singularly restful, singularly simple-minded, and—whenever his subject suited him as in one very considerable and remarkable instance it certainly did—a singularly classical poet, who knew how to prune away every excrescence of irrelevant emotion.

  Longfellow is wonderful in these homely felicities. Reproach him as you please for excessive harmoniousness,—a swan overladen with song,—there is a spiritual sweetness that penetrates like the odor of aloe-wood, a richness as of ambergris, a reverence for things holy and absent that is not so much unction as awe. With all his comprehensive learning, he is as plain and pure as an ascetic; the dust of libraries has become an illumined dust, which flickers in his sunny fantasy, and moulds itself into all imaginable gracious forms. He exhales his poems as a flower does its perfume; he never writes good poetry and then spoils it by keeping it by him till old age, as Devenant said of Lord Brooke. The beauty of his youth is with us no less than the wisdom and pathos of his age,—a circle in which the two edges of the golden ring are but a span apart.

	Thou wast not robbed of wonder when youth fled,
	But still the bud had promise to thine eyes,
	And beauty was not sundered from surprise,
	And reverent, as reverend, was thy head.
	Thy life was music, and thou mad’st it ours.

  In the catalogue of Ditson & Co., lists of other authors’ poems that have been set to music are given. Longfellow heads the list with thirty-nine poems, next comes Tennyson with twenty-six, Byron has sixteen, Goethe eight, Holmes six, Whittier four, and Wordsworth one.

  The poems of Longfellow were in all households that made the smallest pretense to literary cultivation. Young people read them. Lovers took them into the woods. Old people had the volume in their hands as they sat musing by the firelight. The bereaved repeated them over and over, and thought more tenderly of their dead. The lonely, disappointed, tired, desponding knew them by heart. The longing, aspiring, struggling, repeated them with fervor. In hours of leisure, weariness, weakness, thoughtful men and women were soothed and uplifted by the melodious verse. It was poetry of the heart in its peaceful, not in its martial, moods, and it met those moods not lackadaisically, but hopefully, cheerily, bravely. It was customary then to say that his poetry was sentimental. So it was, but the sentiment was healthy, sweet, and true, such as the best, even the most high-souled and intellectual, know at times, or ought to know; such as the large majority of men and women rest in at their highest moments, the choice moments of their lives.

	“Not to be tuneless in old age!”
	Ah! surely blest his pilgrimage,
	Who, in his winter’s snow,
	Still sings with note as sweet and clear
	As in the morning of the year
	When the first violets blow!
	Blest!—but more blest, whom summer’s heat,
	Whom spring’s impulsive stir and beat,
	Have taught no feverish lure;
	Whose Muse, benignant and serene,
	Still keeps his autumn chaplet green
	Because his verse is pure!
	Lie calm, O white and laureate head!
	Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead
	Since from the voiceless grave,
	Thy voice shall speak to old and young
	While song yet speaks an English tongue
	By Charles’ or Thamis’ wave!

  Nature did not come to him as to a Pythia seated on a tripod, and fill him with passion expressible only in rhythmic prophecy; she did not even call him as a private secretary, and dictate to him her secret messages of love and tenderness, justice and watchfulness, freedom and immortality. He went to Nature, sometimes as the angel of the Annunciation, revealing to her that she was pregnant with divinity, sometimes as a priest pronouncing a benediction over her…. The subjects of Longfellow’s poetry are, for the most part, aspects of nature as influencing human feeling,—either directly or through historical association,—the tender or pathetic sides and incidents of life, or heroic deeds preserved in legend or history. He had a special fondness for records of human devotion and self-sacrifice, whether they were monkish legends, Indian tales, Norse drapas, or bits of American history.

  Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to me not only to be eminent in the style and forms of poetical expression that mark the present age (an idiosyncrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal melody), but to bring what is always dearest as poetry to the general human heart and taste, and probably must be so in the nature of things. He is certainly the kind of bard and counteractant most needed for our materialistic, self-assertive, money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races, and especially for the present age in America—an age tyrannically regulated with reference to the manufacturer, the merchant, the financier, the politician and the day workman—for whom and among whom he comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference—poet of the mellow twilight of the past in Italy, Germany, Spain, and in Northern Europe—poet of all sympathetic gentleness—and universal poet of women and young people. I should have to think long if I were asked to name the man who has done more, and in more valuable directions, for America. I doubt if there ever was before such a fine intuitive judge and selecter of poems. His translations of many German and Scandinavian pieces are said to be better than the vernaculars. He does not urge or lash. His influence is like good drink or air. He is not tepid either, but always vital, with flavor, motion, grace. He strikes a splendid average, and does not sing exceptional passions, or humanity’s jagged escapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new, does not deal hard blows. On the contrary his songs soothe and heal, or if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His very anger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in “the Quadroon Girl” and “the Witnesses”).

  In any estimate of his genius Longfellow deserves attention first for his prose, and all the more because it is probable that of five hundred persons who are fairly familiar with all his poetry, there is not more than one that has read his prose works…. Longfellow’s prose has four distinct characteristics: clearness and originality of style, remarkable erudition, humour, and an unbounded fertility of imagination. It is sufficient to mention the first two of these, but the second two have been generally overlooked, and they throw so much light upon Longfellow’s temperament and therefore upon his poetry, that they call for special notice. He has never received due credit for his humour, which has been pronounced indifferent by the critics, who were probably among the majority who have not read the poet’s prose…. Longfellow’s poetry is very varied in character, he has tried his wine in every kind of vessel, and, as has been said, it is very unequal in quality…. With all deference to the great popularity of many of his poems, and after due consideration of the subtleties of American eulogy, it seems clear enough that much of Longfellow’s poetry has little or no permanent value. An occasional nod may be forgiven even to Homer, but Longfellow nods too often.

  I give him very high rank among the poets of the century, placing him, perhaps, next to Wordsworth; while of the modern poets—those of to-day—assuredly he is as a Triton among the Minnows.

	He who, beside the Charles,
	Untouched of envy or hate,
	Tranced the world with his song.

  To sum up Poe’s strictures as urged here and in earlier and later writings, Longfellow was a plagiarist, a didactic poet, and a writer of hexameters. In this there is so much truth as is involved in the milder statement that he belonged to the poets of cultivation rather than of irresistible original genius, that he frequently wrote to illustrate or enforce morality, and that his ear was too little refined to be offended by the spondaic flatness of an English hexameter. That Poe was sincere in his opinions, though he enforced them rudely and with the malicious pleasure of an envious rival, there can be little question; that Longfellow never pilfered from Poe, and that in the unconscious adaptations natural to a poet of culture he never imitated him, there can be no doubt at all.

  In the few words of sympathetic criticism to which Mr. Lowell gave utterance at the Gray Memorial ceremony at Cambridge, he remarked, though in no disparaging way, on the extent to which the element of the “commonplace” in Gray’s most famous poem had contributed to its world-wide popularity. It is to the lack of this quality in Mr. Lowell’s own verse that it owes, one may suspect, its comparatively narrow circle of admirers. The American poet whom all Englishmen know, and than whom few Englishmen know other, was assuredly master of this, not “golden,” but plain, serviceable locksmith’s-metal key to the popular heart. It need not be said,—it would, indeed, be foolish to say it—in a sneering spirit, but the element of commonplace in Longfellow, the precepitate of salts insoluble in poetry which one finds at the bottom of that pellucid verse, is extraordinarily large; and the average reader who prizes his poetry, for the solid residuum it leaves behind it, after its purely poetic qualities have disappeared through the not very fine-meshed strainer of his imagination, appraises his Longfellow accordingly.

  In the history of English Literature Longfellow must stand as an American, for the reason that he is a personality. Imitation is one thing, absorbing and giving out, is another, though the ideas absorbed are reproduced in the product. Longfellow was essentially a man of culture, and literary culture in his day,—much more than it does in ours,—meant trans-Atlantic culture; but Longfellow always had a manner, not a very forcible nor pronounced manner, perhaps, in his early days, but still always a graceful, felicitous manner of his own,—part of the constitution of his mind. No one can travel in England without receiving many impressions which become part of his mental resources. Many consciously endeavor to reproduce peculiarities of logical movement, or of diction, or even of bearing which have struck them as admirable in our trans-Atlantic cousins, but the imitation is the result of effort, and will betray itself.

  The best-selling American poets in this country are in the order named—Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, and Poe; while their rank would be slightly reversed by the general judgment of the present time to the following order: Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, and Poe.

  Longfellow was content to be humanity’s city missionary, so long as the common people heard him gladly. Although he was not of heroic mould, he was at least twenty times a nobler man than Poe, with a fund of miscellaneous culture, and a knowledge of human nature that in the long run more than compensated for any inferiority his imagination presented in comparison with Poe’s brightest inspirations. He had not the keenness of Poe’s artistic sensibility, yet it can at least be said of him that he would have scorned the execrable, if rare, faults that so disfigure Poe’s writings in verse. The same width of learning in matters of general culture … gave Longfellow an appeal to far larger audiences than those that Whittier can attract; and by his gracious choice of subjects, and his treatment of these in almost every form of verse dear to the people, Longfellow has of course laid himself out—and successfully—to win a hearing where Whitman, with all his boasted feeling for democracy, is looked upon as an intellectual Coriolanus, contemptuous and uncouth.

  He was a consummate translator, because the vision and faculty divine which he possessed was directed toward the reflection of the facts of nature and society, rather than toward the facts themselves. He was like one who sees a landscape in a Claude Lorraine glass; by some subtle power of the mirror everything has been composed for him. Thus, when he came to use rich material of history, of poetry, and of other arts, Longfellow saw these in forms already existing, and his art was not so much a reconstruction out of crude material as a representation, a rearrangement, in his own exquisite language, of what he found and admired…. Thus it is that the lyrical translations which he made in his student days are really his own poems; he rendered the foreign form in a perfect English form; his work in this regard was that of an engraver, not that of a photographer.

  He is always careful and painstaking with his rhythm and with the cadence of his verse. It may be said with truth that Longfellow has taught more people to love poetry than any other English writer, however great.

  In a speedy development such as this, we should of course be surprised to find any literary production which is the result of tranquility. Thus, with the one illustrious exception of Longfellow, America has given us no poets who can enter the lists against even Byron or the Lake school.

  Equally at home with the savants and the children who thronged about him and never, in one instance, condescending, in any unworthy way, to compromise his high vocation as an author!

  Was, within his limitations, as true a poet as ever breathed. His skill in narrative was second only to that of Prior and of Lafontaine. His sonnets, the best of them, are among the most pleasing objective sonnets in the language. Although his early, and comparatively poor, work was exaggeratedly praised, his head was not turned, but, like a conscientious artist, he rose to better and better things, even at the risk of sacrificing his popularity.

  He experimented so successfully with two measures unfamiliar in English—unrhymed hexameter and unrhymed trochaic tetrameter—that in their use he has virtually had neither rivals nor successors. Furthermore, he has been deemed, by thousands, preëminently the poet of sympathy and sentiment, the laureate of the common human heart; yet none has been able to class him with the slender sentimentalists, or to deny to him the possession of artistic powers of somewhat unusual range and of unquestionable effectiveness. Longfellow has aroused affection on the one hand and stimulated criticism on the other; the personality has hardly been forgotten in the product, and yet the work has made no claims not intrinsic. Like Whittier, Longfellow is beloved; like Emerson, he is honored for his poetic evangel; and like Poe, he is studied as an artist in words and metrical effects.

  Has no superior among our modern poets.

  I have not read much in him for twenty years. I take him up to-day, and what a flood of memories his music brings with it! To me it is like a sad autumn wind blowing over the woods, blowing over the empty fields, bringing the scents of October, the song of a belated bird, and here and there a red leaf from the tree. There is that autumnal sense of things fair and far behind, in his poetry, or, if it is not there, his poetry stirs it in our forsaken lodges of the past. Yes, it comes to one out of one’s boyhood; it breathes of a world very vaguely realised—a world of imitative sentiments and forebodings of hours to come. Perhaps Longfellow first woke me to that later sense of what poetry means, which comes with early manhood.

  To Longfellow alone was it given to see that stately galley which Count Arnaldos saw; his only to hear the steersman singing that wild and wondrous song which none that hears it can resist, and none that has heard it may forget. Then did he learn the old monster’s secret—the word of his charm, the core of his mystery, the human note in his music, the quality of his influence upon the heart and the mind of man; and then did he win himself a place apart among sea poets.

  Longfellow has carefully marked out the frontiers of his domain, and within these he has moved with ease as undisputed lord. He is pre-eminently the poet of the household and the affections…. If any poet, not a hymnist, be found upon the cottage tables of our artisans, and in the humble homes of our peasantry, that poet is likelier to be Longfellow than any other; and there are probably thousands of persons, not habitual students of literature, though otherwise well-informed and intelligent, who scarcely know whether Longfellow was an Englishman or an American.

  Though Longfellow is the favorite poet of young girlhood, womanhood and the home, there is no sentimentality and no melancholy in his personality. His pastorals are full of picturesque figures of speech, and are imbued with a love of nature and a genial love of man. The poet has done much to create among his countrymen a love of European literature and to instill the beginnings of what may prove a mellowing culture, while, in his “Hiawatha” and “Evangeline,” he has given to the world two classics, distinctively American.

	The winds have talked with him confidingly;
	The trees have whispered to him; and the night
	Hath held him gently as a mother might,
	And taught him all sad tones of melody:
	The mountains have bowed to him; and the sea
	In clamorous waves, and murmurs exquisite,
	Hath told him all her sorrow and delight—
	Her legends fair—her darkest mystery.
	His verse blooms like a flower, night and day,
	Bees cluster round his rhymes; and twitterings
	Of lark and swallow, in an endless May,
	Are mingling with the tender songs he sings.—
	Nor shall he cease to sing—in every lay
	Of Nature’s voice he sings—and will alway.

  Longfellow was emphatically the poet of his native land. Though deeply imbued with the classic spirit, and reveling at his ease in all the treasures of English and European literature, the scenery and art of the old world, with its mighty monuments and ancient historic memories, his heart was yet in this New World—its wild scenes and its fresh life; and here he found a home for his muse, and he made that home illustrious.

  Mr. Longfellow was at the time of his death the most famous of Americans. For more than fifty years he had been sending forth his writings to a world that welcomed his slightest word. In both hemispheres his influence had been felt, giving a nobler cheer to the daily life, consecrating the home and sweetening the thoughts and the intercourse of men; and yet in all these years he said very little either about his own religion or that of other men I have said that there is, in the writings of Longfellow, very little of formal utterance on the subject of religion. I have also said that this reticence was far from indicating an absence of religious thinking and feeling. He was a Unitarian by training and conviction, and though he had “no religion to speak of,” he had a very definite and noble religion to live by.

  Longfellow is the most popular poet yet born in America; and if we can measure popular approval by the widespread sale of his successive volumes, he was probably the most popular poet of the English language in this century. Part of his popularity is due to his healthy mind, his calm spirit, his vigorous sympathy. His thought, though often deep, was never obscure. His lyrics had always a grace that took the ear with delight. They have a singing simplicity, caught, it may be, from the German lyrists, such as Uhland or Heine. This simplicity was the result of rare artistic repression; it was not due to any poverty of intellect. Like Victor Hugo in France, Longfellow in America was the poet of childhood. And as he understood the children, so he also sympathized with the poor, the toiling, the lowly—not looking down on them, but glorifying their labor, and declaring the necessity of it and the nobility of work. He could make the barest life seem radiant with beauty. He had acquired the culture of all lands, but he understood also the message of his own country. He thought that the best that Europe could bring was none too good for the plain people of America. He was a true American, not only in his stalwart patriotism in the hour of trial, but in his loving acceptance of the doctrine of human equality, and in his belief and trust in his fellow-man.

  The foreign flavor of Longfellow’s poetry sweetened the American air. This Harvard professor was unconsciously a great forerunner of university extension. He was becoming the poetic schoolmaster of the land, not only winning it to the love of song, but accustoming his Puritan-bred, utilitarian audience to the richer lights in which Europe views the human spectacle…. A professor in his library, among many books in many tongues, he was, nevertheless, a poet of stories and feelings, so simple that the little children love him. It may be true that his imagination was moderate, his fancy sometimes forced and artificial, his passion decorously pent within the meek New England limits of trust and resignation. Notwithstanding his far range of subject, critics have styled him the Poet of the Commonplace. It is no mean title. To lift the commonplace into the bright air of poetry is to confer one of the richest of boons on dull humanity. As Bryant sublimed our thought of nature, so Longfellow hallowed our human life itself.

	Not in the dawning of his golden prime
	His finest songs across the world he flung;
	But who could match the pathos of his rhyme,
	When that the eve of life around him hung?
	As darkness neared, rarer each touching lay;
	Then, through his lyre, we heard his rapt soul pour:
	As those charmed harps that but at night-time play
	Æolian strains on Pascagoula’s shore.

  One has merely to glance at any detailed catalogue of the translations from Longfellow’s works … to measure the vast extent of his fame. The list includes thirty-five versions of whole books or detached poems in German, twelve in Italian, nine each in French and Dutch, seven in Swedish, six in Danish, five in Polish, three in Portuguese, two each in Spanish, Russian, Hungarian, and Bohemian, with single translations in Latin, Hebrew, Chinese, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Judea-German—yielding one hundred versions altogether, extending into eighteen languages, apart from the original English. There is no evidence that any other English-speaking poet of the last century has been so widely appreciated. Especially is this relative superiority noticeable in that wonderful literary cyclopædia, the vast and many-volumed catalogue of the British Museum. There, under each authors name, is found not merely the record of his works in every successive edition, but every secondary or relative book, be it memoir, criticism, attack, parody, or translation; and it is always curious to consider the relative standing of American and English authors under this severe and inexorable test. The entries or items appearing in the interleaved catalogue under the name of Tennyson, for instance, up to September, 1901, were 487; under Longfellow 357; then follow, among English-writing poets, Browning (179), Emerson (158), Arnold (140), Holmes (135), Morris (117), Lowell (114), Whittier (104), Poe (103), Swinburne (99), Whitman (64).

  We get at times even an impression of excessive amiability and gentleness in Longfellow. We almost wish for one fiercer strain, to show him a good hater, if only of injustice or cruelty. But his art, at all events, if not his life, was unclouded in its serenity.

  He was always simple in thought and expression, always healthy, always sincere, always well bred. He uttered clearly and melodiously the old inherited wisdom, and if, as Colonel Higginson says “he will never be read for the profoundest stirring, or for the unlocking of the deepest mysteries, he will always be read for invigoration, for comfort, for content.” He had quiet humor, gentle pathos, the power of telling a story and of suggesting an atmosphere, and these may well suffice to maintain for him an audience that does not demand the originality and profundity of the great old masters, or the subtlety and complexity of the little new ones.

  The art of Longfellow is something too precious among our heritages from the past not to be valued at its full worth. It was the hardly saving grace which Hawthorne owned in the American literature of his time, and it is the art of Longfellow which takes from the American poetry of his generation the aspect of something fragmentary and fugitive. Whatever else it had from others, from Emerson, from Bryant, from Whittier, from Holmes, from Lowell, it had standing and presence and recognition among the world literatures from the art of Longfellow. We had other poets easily more American than he, but he was above all others the American poet, and he was not the less American because he accepted the sole conditions on which American poetry could then embody itself. As far as he ever came to critical consciousness in the matter he acted upon the belief, which he declared, that we could not be really American without being in the best sense European; that unless we brought to our New World life the literature of the Old World, we should not know or say ourselves aright.