UC-NRLF 
 
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"(Breat Writers; 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE PUNJAB, LAHORE. 
 
 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
LIFE 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTI-I LONGFELLOW 
 
 BY 
 
 ERIC S. ROBERTSON 
 
 
 LONDON 
 WALTER SCOTT 
 
 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1887 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 TO 
 
 "GREAT WRITERS." 
 
 THIS series of little monographs has been designed 
 to furnish the public with interesting and accurate 
 accounts of the men and women notable in Modern 
 Literature. Each monthly volume of " Great Writers " 
 will be the work of an experienced biographer. It will 
 be a chronicle of the chief events in a famous author s 
 life ; it will give a critical history of that author s works ; 
 it will also contain a full bibliography of these works ; 
 and it will be prefaced by an analytical Table of Contents, 
 that will summarize the biography on a new plan. 
 
 The Publisher ventures to express his opinion that 
 original and valuable works such as these have never 
 before been produced in any part of the world at a 
 price so low as a shilling a volume. 
 
CONTENTS; 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 Puritans land at Cape Cod ; John Alden and Priscilla 
 Mullens ; their descendants ; General Peleg Wadsworth ; 
 his daughter Zilpah who married Stephen Longfellow, and 
 became mother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; William 
 Longfellow, founder of the American Longfellow family ; 
 Longfellow genealogy ; the city of Portland ; Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow born at Portland, February 27, 
 1807; early days described in "My Lost Youth "; school 
 boy times ; first efforts in verse ; " The Battle of Lovell s 
 Pond" II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Longfellow goes to Bowdoin College (1822); fellow students; 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne ; Longfellow graduates (1825), and 
 delivers the " English Oration " ; becomes Professor Elect 
 of Modern Languages at Bowdoin ; proceeds to Europe 
 (1826) ; has already contributed to American Monthly 
 Magazine^ and United States Literary Gazette; home 
 letters ; best early poems ; influence of Wordsworth and 
 Bryant 24 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Historical retrospect ; beginnings of literature in America ; the 
 Virginian colonists ; the Puritans ; list of prominent early 
 American writers ; opportunity for a national poet ; Long 
 fellow perceives this opportunity 34 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. PAGE 
 
 Longfellow s arrival in France (1826) ; impressions of Paris; 
 visit to Jules Janin ; excursions in France ; goes to Spain 
 (1827) ; meets Washington Irving at Madrid ; tour in Italy, 
 and illness at Rome (1827) ; tour in Germany ; returns to 
 Bowdoin as Professor of Modern Languages (1829) ; edits 
 text books ; his style of teaching ; begins connection with 
 North American Revieiv (1831) ; marries Mary Storer 
 Potter, of Portland (1831) ; appointed Smith Professor of 
 Modern Languages at Harvard University (1834) ; first 
 book, a translation of " Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique" 
 (1833); "Outre-Mer" (1833-35) 45 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Longfellow takes his wife to Europe (1835) ; London society; 
 Sweden and Denmark ; death of Mrs. Longfellow in 
 Holland (1835) ; Longfellow visits Rhineland and Switzer 
 land ; meets Mr. Appleton and Miss Frances Appleton 
 (afterwards his second wife) ; takes up duties at Harvard 
 (1836) ; becomes associate of "The Five of Clubs " ; rather 
 a dandy ; begins residence at Craigie House, Cambridge ; 
 his system of lectures ; letter from Hawthorne ; gradually 
 realizes his vocation to poetry; "A Psalm of Life"; 
 Knickerbocker Magazine ; collection of Poems "Voices 
 of the Night" (1839) 64 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Hyperion " begun (1838) ; published (1839) ; its bearing on 
 his wooing of Miss Appleton ; its literary qualities ; com 
 parison between "Hyperion," "Twice-Told Tales," and 
 " Sketch Book " ; " Wreck of the Hesperus " (1840), and 
 other ballads; "Ballads and Other Poems" (1841), con 
 taining " Excelsior " 83 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The American Transcendentalists; the Slavery Question ; Long 
 fellow s third visit to Europe (1842) ; Letter from Dickens ; 
 Longfellow s letter written from Dickens s London house ; 
 goes to Marienberg, in Germany ; returns home ; " Poems 
 
CONTENTS. 9 
 
 PAGE 
 
 on Slavery" (1842) ; marries Frances Elizabeth Appleton 
 (1843); "The Spanish Student" (1843); "Poets and 
 Poetry of Europe" (1845); "The Waif" (1845), and 
 "The Estray " (1847) ; "The Belfry of Bruges and Other 
 Poems" (1846) 99 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "Evangeline" (1847); account of the Acadian eviction; Haw 
 thorne and a friend of his give Longfellow the germ of the 
 poem " Evangeline " ; the poet decides to write the poem 
 in English hexameters ; analysis of the poem . . . 115 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Longfellow and family go to visit Pittsfield (1848); "Kavanagh" 
 written there, and published in 1849 ; analysis of " Kava 
 nagh " ; " The Seaside and the Fireside " (1850), contain 
 ing " The Building of the Ship " ; " The Golden Legend " 
 (1851) ; analysis of " The Golden Legend " ; Longfellow 
 loses his daughter Fanny (1848), his father (1849), and 
 his mother (1851) i; 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Margaret Fuller s criticisms of Longfellow in " The D al " ; 
 origin of " Hiawatha" (1855) ; its metre taken from the 
 Finnish "Kalevala"; analysis of "Hiawatha"; The 
 Atlantic Monthly started (1857) ; Longfellow s contribu 
 tions to this periodical; "The Courtship of Miles 
 Standish" (1858) 140 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Longfellow s social and literary prosperity ; penalties of success ; 
 his summer quarters at Nahant ; his second wife burnt to 
 death (i 86 1 ) ; Tales of a Wayside Inn " (1863) ; "Three 
 Books of Song" (1872), and "Aftermath" (1873), con 
 taining more " Tales " , .... 156 
 
10 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne dies (1864) ; " Flower-de-Luce " (1867) ; 
 "The New England Tragedies" (1868); " The Divine 
 Tragedy" (1872); " Christus " (1872) ; Longfellow visits 
 Europe again ( 1868) ; honours accorded to him in England ; 
 interview with the Queen ; return to America (1869) ; 
 translation of Dante s "Divine Comedy" (1867-70); 
 "Hanging of the Crane" (1874); "The Masque of 
 Pandora" (1875); "Poems of Places" (1876-79); 
 "Keramos" (1878); "Birds of Passage" (published at 
 various times) ; " Ultima Thule " (1880) ; death of Long 
 fellow at Cambridge (March 24, 1882) ; Posthumous 
 volumes 163 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Bryant, Emerson, Poe, Whittier, Whitman ; Longfellow com 
 pared with these American poets ; his defects as a poet ; 
 the causes of his success as a poet . . . . .171 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 r 
 
 QHAKESPEARE had lain in his grave four years, 
 O and John Milton was a schoolboy of twelve, when 
 Mary Chilton tremblingly leapt from the Mayflowers 
 pinnace at Cape Cod, and fluttered on to America s 
 rocks like a dove from a new ark. Among the sturdy 
 bigots who had rowed her to the shore, and allowed 
 her to be first of the Puritans to land in the New World, 
 was John Alden : of the company there was also a 
 Yorkshire lass named Priscilla Mullens, whom John 
 Alden coveted for a wife ; and he got her. It was this 
 same Priscilla Mullens who really uttered the artless 
 rejoinder, " Why don t you speak for yourself, John ? " that 
 is used with such effect in the story of "Miles Standish." 
 In the latter half of the eighteenth century a descendant 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Alden figured in Portland, Maine, as 
 General Peleg Wadsworth, upright, bustling, big-built, 
 one who had been among the first to rise in revolution, 
 when "was fired the shot heard round the world," and 
 one who in old age could show wounds and tell many 
 stories brought from the earliest of American battle-fields. 
 General Peleg Wadsworth had eleven children, and 
 
12 LJFJS Of 
 
 his eldest daughter, Zilpah, became the mother of Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet. 
 
 Fifty or sixty years after the Puritans disembarked 
 from the Mayflower, an emigrant from England called 
 William Longfellow settled at Newbury, Massachusetts, 
 and there married and begat six children. Like Pris- 
 cilla Mullens, he came from Yorkshire, and such slight 
 record of his youth and career as is left to us proves 
 him to have been industrious and successful as a colonist. 
 But his end was premature; for in 1690 he joined the 
 Newbury Company s Expedition against Quebec, and in 
 one of that ill-starred association s vessels was wrecked 
 and drowned off the shore of Anticosti. The house that 
 this progenitor of the American Longfellows built at 
 Byfield, Newbury, was still standing, but in ruins, in 1882. 
 Pictures represent it as a substantial building of wood, 
 with a crooked elm in front; and William Longfellow 
 may have half-fancied, on a summer evening, that he 
 could hear the caw of the Yorkshire rooks amid the 
 branches of this tree. One of William s sons, Stephen, 
 became a blacksmith at Newbury ; the blacksmith also 
 begat a son, christened Stephen, who was rewarded 
 for signs of precocious talent by being sent to Har 
 vard College, and then developed into a schoolmaster. 
 Although he began active life as a schoolmaster, 
 this Stephen Longfellow ended as a man of some pro 
 perty, and town clerk of Gorham, Maine. He kept 
 the records of his town in a handwriting of which 
 the beautiful character has been faithfully copied by 
 most of his descendants. Now the town clerk, after the 
 manner of his father, in turn called one of his boys 
 
LONGFELLOW. 18 
 
 Stephen : and this Stephen held many offices in his time, 
 beginning as a surveyor, and finally driving in a square- 
 topped chaise as judge of the Court of Common Pleas at 
 Portland. As all the Longfellows who were christened 
 Stephen seemed to prosper, the judge gave this name to 
 his second-born. And here so far as our genealogy 
 need go the Stephens end. This last Stephen was al 
 together an exemplary man. He graduated at Harvard 
 along with Judge Story and Dr. Channing, joined the 
 Bar in 1801, and three years later married the Zilpah 
 Wadsworth already mentioned. 
 
 This couple had a family of eight, and the poet was 
 their second son. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, then, 
 was born at Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February, 
 1807. The birth took place in a house standing at the 
 corner of Fore Street and Hancock Street, near the shore. 
 This was the abode of friends with whom the Long- 
 fellows happened to be living for a few weeks, ere re 
 moving to the mansion which General Peleg about this 
 time made over to them. Those who hold with Mr. 
 Marcus Clarke that poetry is evolved from tainted blood, 
 and to call a man a genius is physiologically to insult 
 the mother that bore him, might be puzzled to account 
 for the development of Henry Longfellow s powers. He 
 was descended from two families in each of which 
 Yorkshire muscle and pluck had been healthily deve 
 loped for several generations on the western shores of 
 the Atlantic. The father s side of the house showed 
 an exceptionally good record, so far as clear skins and 
 fine limbs went. The Longfellows had been as a tribe 
 a trifle dull perhaps ; no one of them had given signs of 
 
14 LIFE OF 
 
 any creative fancy ; they were all of the kind to turn 
 neither to the right nor to the left, but do with their 
 strength whatsoever their hands found to do. As might 
 be expected, the last of the Stephens showed by his 
 refinement the results of education amid comparative 
 affluence. Channing has said of him, " I never knew a 
 man more free from everything offensive to good taste. 
 He seemed to breathe an atmosphere of purity as his 
 natural element, while his bright intelligence, buoyant 
 spirits, and social warmth, diffused a sunshine of joy 
 that made his presence always gladsome." This was the 
 mild-mannered, God-fearing lawyer who carefully bred 
 his children to cultivate respect towards their seniors, 
 to love duty, and scorn debt above all things. /Over 
 Henry s education he watched with a sort of prescience 
 that recalls the solicitude of the elder Goethe about 
 Wolfgang s studies^ As for Zilpah, the mother, it was 
 from her gentle features that Henry took his cast of 
 countenance. There is something of the woman in the 
 face of every man of genius, as Coleridge remarked. Mrs. 
 Longfellow was a great lover of nature, and was wont to 
 enjoy the splendours of every thunderstorm that visited 
 Portland. The Bible was her library ; the Psalms were 
 her chosen reading. She shared the secrets of all her 
 children ; her neighbours and the poor at large loved her. j 
 
 Portland, "the Forest City," is beautiful in these days 
 of ours, and will always be beautiful, with its great gulf 
 of rolling blue, Cape Elizabeth at one horn, and at the 
 other the miniature archipelago called Casco Bay, the 
 low hills of Munjoy and Bramhall piled up behind the 
 houses, backed again by stretches of the noblest woodland. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 15 
 
 Every street has its trees. In the days of Longfellow s 
 childhood, however, Portland was in some respects more 
 beautiful still, because smaller, and more natural espe 
 cially in its unappropriated shore-line. ( In these days it 
 maintained trade with the West Indies, its merchants 
 fetching thence sugar and rum, and sending lumber and 
 dried fish in return. Whenever a vessel arrived, the town 
 was in excitement, and the little boys had high times." 
 The wharf was enlivened all day and all night with the 
 songs of the negro teams, who hauled the hogsheads from 
 the hold with block and tackle. Long lines of board- 
 teams creaked along the quays. to Portland Pier; sleds 
 groaned by their side ; surveyors ran about like madmen, 
 measuring, shouting, expediting, stopping ; cattle steamed 
 in a rime of frost, while their nostrils were hung with 
 icicles ; the taverns were lighted up at almost every hour 
 of darkness throughout the night, ready to serve drams 
 of hot rum. 
 
 /r The houses and shops were mostly of wood. There 
 was no theatre, but churches and spirit-stores abounded. 
 " The Freemasons Arms " was then managed by the 
 grandfather of John Lothrop Motley. Few families kept 
 carriages, and public vehicles there were none to speak 
 of. Nearly every house had its barn, and a cow that was 
 driven home through the streets at night from Munjoy 
 Hill. The American stove had not yet been erected 
 like a monument over the ashes of the open fireside 
 so dear to us in England. Of course there were 
 no matches ; flint and steel and tinder served. > Among 
 the men, cocked hats and bush wigs and knee- 
 breeches were going out ; the fashion was pantaloons ; 
 
16 LIFE OF 
 
 the h"~ could sffil be ffr^ in c*Ms on tiM? 
 polls, tte Portiamd Gazette and Tie Eastern Argms 
 each appeared once a week. The money in circulation 
 
 ^ _ . _ ._ ^ . . - ^ ^. _-_.._-_. 
 
 xr --T - 
 
 ( When Henry Longfellow was five years old, defensive 
 works were garrisoned on Portland shore to repel the 
 
 AA, .:A-. A : A_i :::.: :. jj .er.iii s = .i 
 
 ;::A.--- :;:.,: . :" M:. r.e A/., I ::::,>. :: , A./..-. 
 
 SL Blythe, was captured by the American brig Enterprise^ 
 
 Lieutenant W. Burrows. [ The victorious vessel towed 
 
 its prize into Portland harbour, and the commanders, 
 
 who had both been killed in die fight were buried side 
 
 by f .:.. :.: -.:.. :": :: ::" Mu.".;:y HA. 
 
 Such were the sights and sounds that made up so 
 
 I much of the boy Longfellow s experience. Had he 
 
 died at twenty-five, no one, would have been aware that 
 
 T. ir themselves into the substance of 
 
 poetry in his mind. But in middle age he gave us the 
 
 scenes back again in simple lines of which the subtle 
 
 :-":.--: _:..- ~ :.: .".: :. :;-. 
 
 MY LOST YOUTH. 
 
 : :--: IN : 
 
 . -i: .: f--:ri :v : :., --.:. : 
 : :.- :- -A: _->.: -; _T -rA A - 
 7 . ;.---: =::=; -.3 A :.: A- :A :. . 
 
 And a Terse of a Laptmd 
 
 A ...; , -. ..; .., 
 
 - - : -.:-: A: = A:s A v;-; 
 
LONGFELLOW. 17 
 
 I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 
 
 And catch, in sudden gleams, 
 The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, 
 And islands that were the Hesperides 
 Of all my boyish dreams. 
 And the burden of that old song, 
 It murmurs and whispers still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
 
 And the sea-tides tossing free ; 
 And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 And the magic of the sea. 
 
 And the voice of that wayward song 
 Is singing and saying still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the bulwarks by the shore, ^ 
 
 And the fort upon the hill ; 
 The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, 
 The drum-beat repeated o er and o er, 
 And the bugle wild and shrill. 
 And the music of that old song 
 Throbs in my memory still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the sea-fight far away, 
 How it thundered o er the tide ! 
 And the dead captains, as they lay 
 In their graves o erlooking the tranquil bay, 
 
 Where they in battle died. 
 And the sound of that mournful song 
 
 Goes through me with a thrill : 
 "A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 
 the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 2 
 
18 LIFE OF 
 
 I can see the breezy dome of groves, 
 The shadows of Deering s Woods ; 
 And the friendships old and the early loves 
 Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves 
 In quiet neighbourhoods. 
 And the verse of that sweet old song, 
 It flutters and murmurs still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the gleams and glooms that dart 
 
 Across the schoolboy s brain ; 
 The song and the silence in the heart, 
 That in part are prophecies, and in part 
 Are longings wild and vain. 
 
 And the voice of that fitful song 
 Sings on, and is never still : 
 "A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 There are things of which I may not speak ; 
 
 There are dreams that cannot die ; 
 There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, 
 And bring a pallor into the cheek, 
 And a mist before the eye. 
 
 And the words of that fatal song 
 Come over me like a chill : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 Strange to me now are the forms I meet 
 
 When I visit the dear old town ; 
 But the native air is pure and sweet, 
 And the trees that o ershadow each well-known street, 
 As they balance up and down, 
 Are singing the beautiful song, 
 Are sighing and whispering still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," 
 
LONGFELLOW. 19 
 
 And Deering s Woods are fresh and fair, 
 
 And with joy that is almost pain 
 My heart goes back to wander there, 
 And among the dreams of the days that were, 
 I find my lost youth again. 
 
 And the strange and beautiful song, 
 The groves are repeating it still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. " 
 
 In " The Ropewalk " and " Keramos " we have further 
 sketches from boyhood s days, v The school in which 
 he had his " gleams and glooms " was a dame s school, 
 kept by Ma am Fellows, whose only recorded maxim was 
 that " One should never smile in school hours." Poor, 
 grim, little schoolmistress ! she must have come from 
 Salem. (^ After he had learnt to spell at the knees of this 
 instructress, the boy attended no fewer than three other 
 schools, the last being the Portland Academy, wherein 
 Jacob Abbott, author of " The Young Christian," was 
 then an usher. 
 
 During his schoolboy days Longfellow was ever 
 studious, butjdioHy .averse from sports and any exercise 
 save walking. True, when he was a very little fellow, he 
 rose in arms like a true-born patriot. ( His aunt wrote thus 
 after the outbreak of the war in 1812: "Canada must 
 be subdued, or the opportunity will be lost. Our little 
 Henry is ready to march ; he had his gun prepared and 
 his head powdered a week ago." And two years later he 
 writes to his father : "I wish you to buy me a drum." 
 But there is a family tradition of his having begged a 
 servant on a glorious Fourth of July to put cotton in his 
 ears to deaden the sound of the cannon. His childish 
 
20 LIFE OF 
 
 C nerves shrank from noise, and even in late life he closed 
 the shutters of his room during any thunderstorm. One 
 of his book-plates bore for motto, "Non clamor, sed 
 amor." Once, in school days, his elder brother took 
 him to the woods with a gun, but he soon returned with 
 tears in his eyes. He had shot a robin, and that was the 
 last time he ever pulled a trigger. j 
 
 At home he enjoyed music, and there were many 
 fine books. He pored over CowperVPoems and " Lalla 
 Rookh," declaimed from Ossian, and procured unending 
 delight from the " Arabian Nights " and " Don Quixote." 
 But the volume of volumes to him was Washington 
 Irving s "Sketch Book."^ " Every reader has his first 
 book : I mean to say, one book among many others 
 w r hich in early youth first fascinates his imagination, and 
 at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To 
 me this first book was the c Sketch Book of Washington 
 Irving. I was a schoolboy when it was published, and 
 read each succeeding number with ever-increasing wonder 
 and delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humour, its 
 melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of reverie nay, 
 even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of its 
 titles, and the fine, clean type, which seemed an outward 
 symbol of its style. The old fascination remains about 
 it, and whenever I open its pages, I open also that 
 mysterious door which leads back into the haunted 
 
 ^chambers of youth." 
 
 / / Henry went twice every Sunday to the Unitarian Church, 
 carrying in winter his mother s foot-stove, in summer her 
 nosegay. His first attempt at verse-writing was under- 
 
 taken "to order" at school, when" he was but nine years old. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 21 
 
 " You can write words, can you not ? " said his teacher. ^ 
 " Yes." " You can put them together ? " " Yes." " Then ] 
 take your slate, go out behind the school-house, look 
 about you, and write me something about what you see. 
 That will be a composition." So Henry went forth, and 
 he spied a fine turnip growing by the side of a barn. He 
 had been allowed only half an hour for the execution of 
 his task, therefore he made speed to study the turnip, 
 and within the prescribed number of minutes took to the 
 master a few verses wherein he had set forth his ideas on 
 the vegetable that had arrested his attention. Thus early^J 
 some of his detractors might say, did he manifest his^ 
 genius for the commonplace. /At thirteen he wrote in\ 
 Portland Academy a song called " Venice," and as the 
 lines were preserved, with his signature attached in full, 
 they were produced in America some time ago as the 
 earliest extant offspring of his muse. However, a critic 
 pointed out that the piece was merely an extract from the 
 poetical works of Rogers, and most probably it had been 
 copied out as a task. 
 
 And now we come to the first published verses really 
 written by the poet. Not far from Hiram, in Maine, 
 there is a pretty little lake with a sandy beach, called 
 Lovewell s (or Lovell s) Pond, and this was the scene of 
 a somewhat heroic encounter between white settlers and 
 Indians during the Franco-Indian War. " Lovell s 
 Fight," as history has named this encounter, laid hold 
 of young Longfellow s imagination. He worked up 
 the story into a set of verses, and one night dropped 
 his manuscript into the letter-box of The Argus. \ 
 The deed was watched by an encouraging group of 
 
22 LIFE OF 
 
 schoolfellows. But expectation was baulked ; week 
 after week passed, and the newspaper columns were 
 scanned in vain. Then the young author sought the 
 editor boldly, and asked for the return of the manuscript 
 a favour that was at once granted. The editor of 
 Portland s rival paper The Gazette was now treated 
 with, and this gentleman was less difficult to please. He 
 printed the_pde*-.in^his issue of Novgnib^r 1 7>J*&3> and 
 thus acquired the honour ot being the first to help the 
 young man towards recognition from the public. On the 
 evening of November i6th, the poor lad stood for an 
 hour at the door of the printing-office in Exchange 
 Street, shivering with cold, but listening to the jarring 
 sound of the ink-balls and the presses that were thudding 
 as regularly as his own beating heart. Was it his poem 
 they were thus labouring to multiply ? 
 
 T In the morning, how slowly his father unfolded the 
 damp sheet, and how carefully he dried it at the fire ere 
 beginning to read it ! And how much foreign news there 
 seemed to be in it ! At last Henry and a sympathetic 
 sister who shared his secret obtained a peep over their 
 parent s shoulder and the poem was there ! They 
 spent most of the day reading it. In the evening they 
 went to play with a son of Judge Mellen, and while the 
 Judge was sitting by the fire in the twilight, with the 
 young folk and a few elder neighbours around him, he 
 said : " Did you see the piece in to-day s paper ? Very 
 stiff; remarkably stiff! Moreover, it is all borrowed, 
 every word of it." 
 
 This was the first criticism Longfellow received from 
 his public, and it caused him to wet his pillow with tears 
 
LONGFELLOW. 23 
 
 that night.) In reality, the verses must have been rather 
 above the average of " Poets Corner " literature in Port 
 land, and as the work of a boy still at school, they are 
 even remarkable for a certain melodious sweep of rhythm 
 that betrays little stiffness, except in the concluding 
 quatrain. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOVELL S POND. 
 
 COLD, cold is the north wind and rude is the blast 
 That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast, 
 As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and drear, 
 Sighs a requiem sad o er the warrior s bier. 
 
 The war-whoop is still, and the savage s yell 
 Has sunk into silence along the wild dell j 
 The din of the battle, the tumult, is o er, 
 And the war-clarion s voice is now heard no more. 
 
 The warriors that fought for their country and bled, 
 Have sunk to their rest ; the damp earth is their bed j 
 No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, 
 Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. 
 
 They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, 
 And Victory s loud trump their death did proclaim ; 
 They are dead ; but they live in each Patriot s breast, 
 And their names are engraven 011 honour s bright crest. 
 
 HENRY. 
 
 By and by The Gazette printed other verses from the 
 same pen, and it became known among the boy-author s 
 friends, that the signature of " Henry " was his. 
 
i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 STEPHEN LONGFELLOW had graduated at 
 Harvard, as we have seen. The State of Maine, 
 however, now boasted a College of its own Bowdoin 
 College, at Brunswick. Stephen Longfellow was a trustee 
 of this still struggling seminary, and he thought it his 
 
 luty to support it in every way within his power. Accord 
 ingly his sons Stephen and Henry were shipped thither 
 in a smack, when Portland Academy had taught them all 
 [it knew, and the tall, slender, blue-eyed, brown-haired, 
 ruddy-cheeked poet-in-embryo took up his abode at 
 Brunswick in the September of 1822. As we might 
 
 ixpect, Henry carried to Bowdoin his studious habits, 
 and a shyness of which only one of his contemporaries 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne gave equal token. Besides 
 Hawthorne, there were many young students at Bow 
 doin destined to shine in later life ; indeed, the class 
 to which these two young men belonged is reckoned 
 to have contained more students of remarkable promise 
 than any since held within the walls of the building. " I 
 see in my pupils," said Luther, " future burgomasters of 
 the city ; therefore is it that I doff my hat to them when 
 I enter the class-room." Could the Bowdoin Professors 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 25 
 
 have foretold the history of Longfellow and his class 
 mates, they would have imbonneted to them daily, no 
 doubt. Thence came John S. C. Abbott, the historian ; 
 J. W. Bradbury, Pierce, Josiah Little, and Jonathan 
 Cilley, all politicians of more or less note ; George B. 
 Cheever, preacher and author, besides the two authors 
 who are the Castor and Pollux of American literature. 
 Hawthorne (his name, by the way, was then spelt 
 Hathorne) thus describes Bowdoin students in "Fan- 
 shawe," a tale which he produced at Boston about 1828 :* 
 
 "From the exterior of the collegians, an accurate 
 observer might pretty safely judge how long they had 
 been inmates of those classic walls. The brown cheeks 
 and the rustic dress of some would inform him that they 
 had but recently left the plough to labour in a not less 
 toilsome field. The grave look, and the intermingling of 
 garments of a more classic cut, would distinguish those 
 who had begun to acquire the polish of their new resi 
 dence ; and the air of superiority, the paler cheek, the 
 less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress in 
 general of threadbare black, would designate the highest 
 class, who were understood to have acquired nearly all 
 the science their Alma Mater could bestow, and to be on 
 the point of assuming their stations in the world. There 
 were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. 
 A few young men had found their way hither from the 
 distant seaports ; and these were the models of fashion 
 to their rustic companions, over whom they asserted a 
 superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the fresh, 
 1 Suppressed by the author as soon as published. 
 
2G LIFE OF 
 
 though unpolished, intellect of the sons of the forest 
 denied them in their literary competitions. A third class, 
 differing widely from both the former, consisted of a few 
 young descendants of the aborigines, to whom an im 
 practicable philanthropy was endeavouring to impart the 
 benefits of civilization. 
 
 " If this institution did not offer all the advantages of 
 elder and prouder seminaries, its deficiencies were com 
 pensated to its students by the inculcation of regular 
 " habits, and of a deep and awful sense of religion, which 
 seldom deserted them in their course through life. The 
 mild and gentle rule was more destructive to vice than a 
 sterner sway; and, though youth is never without its 
 follies, they have seldom been more harmless than they 
 were here. The students, indeed, ignorant of their own 
 bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of their 
 entrance on the business of life ; but they found, in 
 after-years, that many of their happiest remembrances, 
 many of the scenes which they would with least reluctance 
 live over again, referred to the seat of their early studies." 
 
 ft/ Such was the modest life that Longfellow tranquilly 
 
 jpassed for three years, maintaining high rank for scholar- 
 
 liness, rather slow of speech, absent-minded at times 
 
 | even during class recitations, but ever observant of duty 
 
 \J;owards his instructors, and true to his few chosen 
 
 associates. Hawtf^ojcne was confessedly the laggard and 
 
 scapegrace of the class, only making good appearances 
 
 when matters of English composition were on hand; 
 
 but Longfellow was a model of propriety to the verge 
 
 of pardonable priggishness. He graduated at nineteen 
 
LONGFELLOW. 27 
 
 (1825), and was assigned the delivery of one of the three 
 "English Orations," usually given to the most distin 
 guished degree-men. He chose as his theme "Native 
 Writers," and no doubt did the best he could with 
 the subject under the limitations put upon him. 
 Authority decreed that each " Oration " should last 
 seven minutes ! This " Oration " of seven minutes 
 length on " Native Writers " serves to remind us that 
 Bowdoin was a young college in a young country. / 
 
 The same fact is noticeable in connection with the 
 next point of Longfellow s career. One of the College 
 Trustees, Mr. Benjamin Orr, had been so much 
 charmed with a translation from Horace made by the 
 young man at the Senior Examination, that on the 
 strength of this performance he recommended him for 
 a proposed Chair of Modern Languages ! Let not the 
 English academic mind, nevertheless, amuse itself too 
 much over this curious proposal. Our own Cambridge has 
 known such things. Did not Watson, the once celebrated 
 Dr. Watson, obtain the Chair of Chemistry at Cambridge 
 ere ever he had conducted a chemical experiment ? And 
 did he not, before becoming Bishop of Llandaff, obtain 
 the Professorship of Divinity at the same University, 
 being at the time of the appointment in secular ignor 
 ance of the very Articles, and promising to acquaint 
 himself with the business of his Chair after election? 
 (Mr. Orr s kindly proposal with regard to this promising 
 young scholar was provisionally approved by the Board, j 
 and Longfellow was directed to proceed to Europe at j >; 
 his father s expense and there acquire the additional ( 
 learning necessary to a Professor of Modern Languages.. 
 
28 LIFE OF 
 
 Accordingly he packed up his things and went home 
 joyful to Portland. Then the autumn of 1825 and the 
 spring of 1826 were spent in rest a little reading in 
 Blackstone at his father s office not counting for much. 
 In May he left home for New York, and on the i5th 
 of the same month he embarked in a packet that set 
 sail for Havre-de-Grace. 
 
 ^Probably there was not a single member of his circle 
 of acquaintances who up to this point in his career dis 
 covered reason for regarding Longfellow as a young man 
 destined to make a world-wide reputation. He had 
 given no sign of unmistakable originality in word or deed. } 
 His literary performances, however, had already marked 
 him out as highly distinguished among the few whom 
 America at the time could claim as workers in letters, 
 and some twenty contributions to The American Monthly 
 Magazine and The United States Literary Gazette the 
 earliest native magazines of respectable calibre had 
 sufficed, by their purity and grace of diction, and by 
 pleasant although far from startling displays of fancy, to 
 put the Professor-elect next to Bryant as an American 
 poet. Bryant s precocious genius had asserted itself in 
 tones of power when he was only nineteen ; for at that 
 age he produced " Thanatopsis," a work of solemn 
 grandeur, of which any country s literature might well 
 be proud, and a poem which, in range of vision and 
 intuitive apprehension of some of the deepest problems 
 of human history, not only surprised the world as com 
 ing from a trans-Atlantic lad, but marked the highest 
 point to which Bryant s thought ever attained. l/Long- 
 fellow was much longer in reaching a knowledge of 
 
LONGFELLOW. 29 
 
 his own capabilities in poetry. V Indeed, we might be 
 justified in saying that hardly ever has any poet destined 
 to win the ear of the world betrayed in his youth less 
 promise and less of imagination s " divine hunger " than 
 Longfellow. \ An eminently sane youth, he refrained 
 from attempting to make himself or his friends believe 
 that he was possessed by any particular afflatus ;/ and it 
 is quite possible that if Mr. Orr had not taken notice 
 of the lucky Horatian ode, the young graduate of 
 Bowdoin would have subsided into honourable enough 
 toil in his father s office, might perhaps have gone to the 
 Bar, and spent his maturity on the Bench, remembering 
 little of the manuscripts that every man of more than 
 average talents preserves somewhere about his desk in 
 token .of boyish ambitions. ^Most men have been helped 
 to write useful prose by the composition of youthful 
 verse, and, as Thoreau once said, " Having gotten 
 together the materials to build a bridge to the moon, con 
 clude to build a woodshed with them." v That Long 
 fellow s father, at any rate, had no thought of setting him 
 up as a poet, is made clear enough by a letter from his 
 son, written as late as April 30, 1824 ; and here we find 
 that the student was rather inclined to elect for himself 
 the healthy occupation of a farmer. 
 
 " Your letter of the 2ist was particularly acceptable to 
 me, as it was the only one I have received from you for 
 a great many weeks, and I shall keep the cypress from 
 the tomb of Washington as a sacred relic. But in 
 thinking to make a lawyer of me, I think you thought 
 more partially than justly. I do not, for my own 
 
SO LIFE OF 
 
 part, imagine that such a coat would suit me. I hardly 
 think Nature designed me for the bar, or the pulpit, or 
 the dissecting-room. I am altogether in favour of the 
 farmer s life. Do keep the farmer s boots for me ! " 
 
 By the following December, however, Henry Long 
 fellow had changed his mind, evidently after a good 
 deal of calculation. The following letter was penned 
 not long before the proposal about the Chair of Modern 
 Languages was brought forward : 
 
 " I take this early opportunity to write to you, because 
 I wish to know fully your inclination with regard to the 
 profession I am to pursue when I leave college. 
 
 " For my part, I have already hinted to you what would 
 best please me. I want to spend one year at Cambridge 
 for the purpose of reading history, and of becoming 
 familiar with the best authors in polite literature ; whilst 
 at the same time I can be acquiring a knowledge of the 
 Italian language, without an acquaintance with which 
 I shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful 
 departments of letters. The French I mean to under 
 stand pretty thoroughly before I leave college. Aftet 
 leaving Cambridge, I would attach myself to some 
 literary periodical publication, by which I could maintain 
 myself and still enjoy the advantages of reading. Now, 
 I do not think that there is anything visionary or 
 chimerical in my plan thus far. The fact is and I will 
 not disguise it in the least, for I think I ought not 
 the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence 
 in liferature ; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, 
 
LONGFELLOW. 31 
 
 and every earthly thought centres in it. There may be 
 something visionary in this, but I flatter myself that I 
 have prudence enough to keep my enthusiasm from 
 defeating its own object by too great haste. Surely, 
 there never was a better opportunity offered for the 
 exertion of literary talent in our own country than is now 
 offered. To be sure, most of our literary men thus far 
 have not been professedly so, until they have studied 
 and entered the practice of Theology, Law, or Medicine. 
 But this is evidently lost time. I do believe that we 
 ought to pay more attention to the opinion of philosophers, 
 that nothing but Nature can qualify a man for know 
 ledge. 
 
 " Whether Nature has given me any capacity for know 
 ledge or not, she has at any rate given me a very strong 
 predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confi 
 dent in believing, that, if I can ever rise in the world, it 
 must be by the exercise of my talent in the wide field 
 of literature. With such a belief, I must say that I am 
 unwilling to engage in the study of the law. 
 
 " Here, then, seems to be the starting-point : and I 
 think it best for me to float out into the world upon that 
 tide and in that channel which will the soonest bring me 
 to my destined port, and not to struggle against both 
 wind and tide, and by attempting what is impossible lose 
 everything." 
 
 The tone of this letter, as of all the letters addressed by 
 the son to the father, shows the excellent understanding 
 that subsisted between the two. A fortnight later, Henry 
 still proved his dutifulness by writing : "Of divinity, 
 
32 LIFE OF 
 
 medicine, and law, I should choose the last. Whatever 
 I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul 
 for I will be eminent in something." Within a few weeks 
 of the time at which these words were put on paper, the 
 acclivity to this desirable eminence was revealed, and 
 from that moment to the end of a long life, the poet s 
 career was singularly free from stumbling-blocks. 
 
 While a Bowdoin student, Longfellow contributed in all 
 seventeen pieces of verse to The Literary Gazette. From 
 these he afterwards chose five as worthy of preservation ; 
 they are " An April Day," " Sunrise on the Hills," " Woods 
 in Winter," " Autumn," and the " Hymn of the Moravian 
 Nuns." Of the five, the Hymn is the most effective and 
 certainly the most popular ; but it was founded on a 
 curious mistake. Reading one day a number of The 
 North American Review^ the young poet came across 
 the following suggestive sentence : " The standard of 
 Count Casimir Pulaski s legion was formed of a piece 
 of silk, embroidered by the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem 
 in Pennsylvania." The word " nuns " here was a slip 
 of the pen, and should have been "sisters." The 
 Moravians of Pennsylvania of course had the plainest 
 of churches, and led the simplest of Protestant lives; 
 and when Pulaski was recruiting soldiers in their 
 district, he employed a few of the sisters, who eked out 
 a living by embroidery, to make him a small flag to attach 
 to a lance. The poet, however, found his whole motive 
 in the word " nuns," and hence spring the glimmering 
 tapers, cowled heads, burning censers, mysterious aisle, 
 vesper-chant, and blood-red banner that was big enough 
 to become "his martial cloak and shroud." 
 
LONGFELLOW. 83 
 
 \Sunrise on the Hills " concludes in a manner that is 
 worth noticing, as affording an indication that the author 
 recognized with Wordsworth the solace of nature ; and 
 indeed the American s poem forms a close parallel to one 
 of Wordsworth s most famous passages. Every student 
 of the Lake poet remembers the verses of which these 
 seem an echo : 
 
 " If thou art worn and hard beset 
 With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget ; 
 If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep 
 Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, 
 Go to the woods and hills ! No tears 
 Dim the sweet look that Nature wears." 
 
 Wordsworth s influences, nevertheless, had not reached 
 the young American directly ; they had been passed 
 through the medium of Bryant s nature-studies. 
 
 Those who are curious to read the twelve early poems 
 which Longfellow himself wished to be forgotten, will 
 find them reprinted in a little volume brought out in 
 London by Mr. Shepherd, in 1878. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE attentive reader may have been struck with this 
 sentence in a letter of Longfellow s which we have 
 quoted : " Surely, there never was a better opportunity 
 for the exertion of literary talent in our own country 
 than is now afforded." The words are worth stopping to 
 examine. 
 
 From a new country we can as little expect literature as 
 we can expect to find, in the clearing of a wheat-growing 
 Western farmer, timber for the building of great ships. 
 The English settlers in America had far more to do, for 
 several generations, than sit down and study style. Their 
 circumstances developed hardihood, honesty, helpfulness 
 firing their eyes with resolve, and a shining hope that 
 still gleams in every young American face giving them a 
 wholesome trust in Providence and pluck, and surrounding 
 them with a certain rude romance. (In short, they realized 
 that in laying the foundations of a nation, men need all 
 their time for the manufacture of facts, and must leave 
 dreams alone during daylight, although the same facts 
 often enough, instead of being moulded into poetry, mould 
 their creators into rough human poems.A 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 35 
 
 In the two centuries during which the English settlers 
 found themselves thrown up like a belt of seaweed all 
 along the coast a mere handful of beings at each point, 
 with the bare Atlantic on one side of them, and on the 
 other a whole uncultivated continent, tenanted only by 
 unfriendly savages and wild beasts, their gospel of 
 getting-on was pretty much that which Emerson was 
 afterwards to put into an aphorism : " Facts are in the 
 saddle, and ride mankind;" and all the imagination 
 they found time to develop, became intensified super 
 stition. Thus must a tree thrust itself about in the earth, 
 and lay hold of the rocks and stones ere it can grow 
 towards the ether of the birds. 
 
 Think what the early colonists were in Elizabeth s 
 days ! Freebooters all, possessed with a sort of mad, 
 cut-throat knight-errantry, ready to do or die any day, in 
 the endeavour to assert themselves over any creatures of 
 God who were not Englishmen. In the veins of some 
 flowed noble blood, but that was no whit the less daring 
 and aggressive. 
 
 After many years, the descendants of these fire-eaters 
 became tamer ; but they were still beset with daily 
 perils, and every man of them might be said to be a 
 private in a standing militia. Then to this great incur 
 sion which we may liken to the Danish invasion of 
 Britain succeeded the Puritan incursion, with Miles 
 Standish at its head, like Hengist and his Saxons, save 
 that the Puritans were soldiers not only of the sword 
 but of the spirit zealots determined to conquer for 
 Jehovah, and kill and burn in His name, if need be. 
 Never in the history of the world were men in such awful 
 
86 LIFE Ot 
 
 earnest as these Puritans in America. While Herrick 
 was making his confectioneries of verse, and Henry 
 More developing Neoplatonism, the Britishers in Massa 
 chusetts were delving and stockading, felling trees, 
 and shooting natives. While the "golden-mouthed 
 Jeremy Taylor was adorning tolerant doctrine with a 
 scholar s learning and a poet s eloquence, Endicott and 
 Standish were striking down the maypole of Merry 
 Mount, christening the spot " Dagon ; " a maidservant 
 who smiled in church at New Plymouth was threatened 
 with expulsion from the colony ; a woman who blamed 
 an elder had a cleft stick put on her tongue ; one saint s 
 prayers were so vehement that he bled at the nose through 
 the agony with which he laboured at them ; and Edward 
 Johnson, one of Winthrop s lieutenants, in a book called 
 "The Wonder-Working Providence," thus piously de 
 scribed the relations of the Puritan colonists to the 
 aborigines : " The Lord, in mercy toward His poor 
 churches, having thus destroyed these bloody barbarian 
 Indians, He returns His people in safety to their vessels, 
 where they take account of their prisoners. The squaws 
 and some youths they brought home with them; and 
 finding the men to be deeply guilty of the crimes they 
 undertook the war for, they brought away only their 
 heads." These were times out of which the cruelties of 
 bigotry grew at Salem, to dimly reflect the fires of the 
 Spanish Inquisition. And such a spirit dominated abso 
 lutely the New England settlement for so long a period, 
 that, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, the 
 priest-ridden people were kept crushed in spirit by all- 
 powerful preachers like Jonathan Edwards, who could 
 
LONGFELLOW. 37 
 
 harangue an audience thus : " The God that holds you \ 
 over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or j 
 some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is/ 
 dreadfully provoked ; He looks upon you as worthy of 
 nothing else but to be cast into the fire. . . . You are 
 ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than 
 the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You hang 
 by a slender thread, with the flames of Divine wrath 
 flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe and 
 burn it asunder. If you cry to God to pity you, He will 
 be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing 
 you the least regard or favour, that instead of that, He 
 will only tread you under foot, and though He will know 
 that you cannot bear the weight of Omnipotence treading 
 upon you, He will not regard that, but He will crush you 
 under His feet without mercy ; He will crush out your 
 blood and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on His 
 garments, so as to stain all His raiment." 
 
 Could men of gentle letters ever come from a stock of \ 
 fanatics like this ? Yes. After the zeal of Puritanism in I 
 England, came the reactionary license of the Restoration ; / 
 but after the religious fever had left the body-politic in 
 America, no such extreme revulsion occurred ; for men 
 there were living in circumstances of hardy life that kept 
 them sane ; and before very long to the world was given 
 the purest-souled band of writers that ever sprang from 
 a single nation in the same age Bryant, Longfellow, 
 Hawthorne, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell everyone of them 
 directly descended from the Puritans. The chastity of ^_ 
 these writers is no less marked than their catholic charity. 
 This is a curious phenomenon in the history of a people s 
 
38 LIFE OF 
 
 thinkers ; to ponder it is to watch a beautiful precipita 
 tion in a process of spiritual chemistry. 
 
 But let us see what the rough old days of the settle 
 ments did afford us. The very beginnings of modern 
 America are dealt with in one of its earliest and most 
 interesting books, " The True Relation of Virginia," by 
 the first Governor of that colony, Captain John Smith. 
 This book has been lately republished in London as 
 a handy volume, and it well deserves to be brought 
 before the public again ; for its story is full of inci 
 dents that no novelist could make more romantic. 
 " The True Relation " was first published in England 
 in the year 1608 ; and therefore, speaking roughly, we 
 may say that American Literature and John Milton were 
 born in the same year. In 1610 appeared William 
 Strachey s " Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas 
 Gates," the book that is supposed to have suggested 
 to Shakespeare the scenery in "The Tempest" Six 
 teen or seventeen years after this, Sandys finished his 
 translation of Ovid s " Metamorphoses " on the banks 
 of the James River, and Vaughan the Silurist wrote his 
 " Golden Fleece " in Newfoundland. The Puritans of 
 Massachusetts had several early chroniclers, like William 
 Bradford (born 1588); and Increase Mather s "Illustrious 
 Providences" (1684) will always be remembered for its 
 strange stories of implicitly-believed Divine interpositions, 
 like those handed down from Scottish Covenanting times 
 in some of the Wodrow Society s volumes. The noble 
 tolerance of Roger Williams must be remembered in 
 connection with his oddly-named volume, "The Bloody 
 
LONGFELLOW. 39 
 
 Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience" (1644). 
 Cotton Mather s account of New England s ecclesias 
 tical history " Magnalia Christi " (1702) contains much 
 curious reading, mystified by absurdities of language. 
 Jonathan Edwards s treatise on "The Freedom of the 
 Will" (1754) is still a siege-gun among the Calvinists, 
 and a crux for all philosophers. 
 
 The earliest book of verse published in America was 
 "The Bay Psalm Book" (1640), now reckoned the most 
 uncouth rendering of the psalms of David in the world. 
 It was revised by President Dunster, " with special eye 
 both to the gravity of the phrase of sacred writ and sweet 
 ness of the verse ; " and yet, even in this version, we 
 find stanzas like the following : 
 
 " The rivers on of Babilon 
 
 There when we did sit down, 
 Yea, even then, we mourned when 
 We remembered Sion." 
 
 Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (born 1612) was reckoned a power 
 in her time, and versifiers called Norton and Rogers eulo 
 gized her in terms that recall Cowley s lines to Katherine 
 Philips. Michael Wigglesworth s Day of Doom " (i 7 1 1), 
 the most prodigious poetical success of its century 
 eighteen hundred copies being sold in one year is 
 described by Professor Coit Tyler as "a sulphurous 
 poem, which attributes to the Divine Being a character 
 the most execrable and loathsome to be met with, perhaps, 
 in any literature, Christian or Pagan." In its days of 
 power, children were made to learn it along with their 
 Catechism ; and one of the Mathers predicted that it would 
 continue to be read in New England until the crack 
 
40 LIFE OF 
 
 of doom a statement that reminds us of a wise saying 
 of George Eliot s : " Among all forms of mistake, pro 
 phecy is the most gratuitous." 
 
 About the period of the Revolution, Benjamin Frank 
 lin s honest writings leavened the thoughts of his fellow- 
 countrymen. In his " Autobiography " Americans and 
 all the world still read with delight the prose epic of a 
 life that, from the humblest beginnings, became a huge 
 success by the exercise of indomitable perseverance. His 
 "Poor Richard s Almanack" ranked him in Western minds 
 with Confucius, as a proverb-maker. Whether it was that 
 Franklin (born 1706) had in boyhood read the "Day oi 
 Doom," with a few other native poems, and thereafter 
 foresworn all acquaintance with poets, we know not; 
 but this was his estimate of their genius : 
 
 " What are the poets, take them as they fall, 
 Good, bad, rich, poor, much read, not read at all ? 
 Them and their works in the same class you ll find ; 
 They are the mere waste-paper of mankind." 
 
 Franklin was born only three years later than Jonathan 
 Edwards ; and the two thinkers form a curious contrast 
 the elder absorbed in contemplation of heaven and 
 hell; the other most completely yet healthily of the 
 earth earthly. It is worth noticing that to Franklin s 
 enlightened enterprise America owed its first literary 
 periodical The General Magazine and Historical 
 Chronicle, started at Philadelphia in 1741. 
 
 The orators of the Revolutionary period can scarcely 
 be claimed as literary men, otherwise it would be agree- . 
 able to reproduce some of the really splendid examples of 
 rhetoric that stud the recorded speeches of Alexander 
 
LONGFELLOW. 41 
 
 Hamilton, Joseph Warren, John Hancock, James Wilson, 
 Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and Fisher Ames. 
 
 Among religious writers of this epoch are John Wool- 
 man, with his realistic " Journal," and Mather Byles of 
 Boston. In the way of poetry, Judge Brackenridge wrote 
 vigorous, unpolished verses about Bunker s Hill ; Joel 
 Barlow produced an epic called " The Columbiad," 
 which is reckoned to throw such a serpent-like spell on 
 the reader who approaches its endless coils, that he 
 is mesmerised by the first dozen lines. It is said that 
 the Ballads of the Revolution attracted Lord Chatham. 
 "Bold Hawthorne," "Jack Bray," "The Fate of Burgoyne," 
 " Wyoming Massacre," " Free America," " Yankee 
 Doodle," sing patriotism in various keys. John Trum- 
 bull s satires, "The Progress of Dulness" and "Mac 
 Fingal," and Timothy Dwight s " Conquest of Canaan " 
 and " Greenfield Hill," are poems that still have admirers. 
 " Mac Fingal," indeed, is worth reading ; it was a power 
 in its times, stirring up ridicule against the Tories often 
 in pithy lines which Butler might have been content to 
 pass as his own. And Philip Freneau (born 1752) was 
 a lyric writer who probably possessed more real poetical 
 talent than any predecessor of Byrant. Our poet Camp 
 bell did him the honour to paraphrase in "O Connor s 
 Child" the following stanza from a telling dirge, "The 
 Dying Indian." 
 
 " By midnight moons o er moistening dews, 
 
 In vestments for the chase arrayed, 
 The hunter still the deer pursues, 
 The hunter and the deer or shade." 
 
 Two prose writers who preceded Longfellow have still 
 
42 LIFE OF 
 
 to be mentioned ; one is Charles Brockden Brown (born 
 1771), the other, as any reader will guess, must be 
 Washington Irving. Brown was America s earliest novel 
 ist of any power ; and great power he certainly did show 
 fitfully, in weird passages of "Wieland," "Ormond," 
 "Arthur Mervyn," and "Edgar Huntley." Professor 
 Nichol quotes from Brown s brief description of yellow 
 fever, horrors that are as circumstantial as anything in 
 Defoe, and as truly dramatic as anything in Dickens. 
 This novelist seems, like Charles Whitehead, to have 
 missed high fame only by careless misdirection of his 
 powers. Washington Irving (born 1783), the darling 
 author of all hoary-headed Americans, added to humorous 
 powers of observation and opportunities for travel and 
 research, a style charmingly adapted from Addison. 
 Although his popularity with the world at large has 
 waned during the last thirty years, it is only because his 
 choice of subjects did not admit of that universal style 
 of treatment which makes the essays of Addison and 
 Goldsmith perennial. The inimitable fun of his 
 "Knickerbocker Papers," and the gentle beauty of his 
 "Bracebridge Hall," are still within the knowledge of 
 every real student of literature. And the influence of 
 the "Sketch Book" has been to thousands what it was 
 to Longfellow. 
 
 V The sum of any inquiry into the merits of America s 
 early writers might be best expressed in the words of a 
 biographer of Hawthorne " It takes a great deal of 
 history to make a little literature.-* 2 -^ 
 
 Until Washington Irving wrote, no American had pro 
 duced a book that Europe cared to lay on the shelf for a 
 
LONGFELLOW, 4b 
 
 second reading, and even Irving could not pretend to be 
 a writer adequately representative of his race and times, 
 No wonder, then, that Henry Longfellow, in the year 
 that completed the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 
 felt that there was room for an ambitious American man 
 of letters. , Many young fellows were just then thinking 
 the same thing, and biding their chance. James 
 Fenimore Cooper, it is true, had brought out his "Spy " 
 in 1821 ; but Poe had not yet published a single poem ; 
 Motley was a schoolboy at Dorchester; Prescott was 
 unknown; Whittier was working on his father s farm, 
 and had got no further in literature than the corner 
 of a newspaper; Emerson was a fledgeling parson; 
 Holmes was entering Harvard; Hawthorne s cloudy 
 genius had not yet caught the sun. Already the 
 Bowdoin student of Horace had begun to formulate 
 the canons of taste by which an aspirant for the place of 
 an American poet of the age should guide himself. He 
 felt that songs in the best English style about sky 
 larks, and other objects unknown to natives in his country, 
 would never do. And probably he was already equally 
 sure that, as Niebuhr once said, " Not to know what men 
 did before you were born, is to be always a child." Long 
 afterwards, at any rate, he thus expressed his theory 
 to Walt Whitman : | " Ere the New World can be 
 worthily original, and announce herself and her own 
 heroes, she must be well saturated with the originality 
 of others, and respectfully consider the heroes that lived 
 before Agamemnorw" To steep himself in the culture 
 of Europe he went forth from his own vast and lovely 
 land, the noblest loan that it had yet made to the elder 
 
44 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
 ; "rations, for he was a type of America s best-educated 
 ^outh, and he was chivalrous and pure, and he carried with 
 him, modestly and almost unconsciously, the impression 
 able mind of a true poet. He was to return and lift up a 
 clear voice in song, as Schiller lifted up his voice after his 
 country had lain for scores of years ungladdened by the 
 melodies of any national singer he was to be the first 
 to bring the scholarship of Europe to the New World 
 and make it live there, as Petrarch had centuries before 
 rescued and revived for Europe itself the treasures 
 of the Classic tongues ; with his commingled learning, 
 gentle charity, joy in life, and zeal for the beautiful, he 
 was to become the father of America s humanisti. 7 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WHEN Longfellow arrived in France, after a 
 pleasant thirty days sail from New York, he began 
 to stare about him and laugh at everything, a perfect boy. 
 (In the streets of the Normandy towns he shouted with 
 glee as he met the fierce gendarmerie with their great 
 curling beards, and girls with wooden shoes " full of feet 
 and straw," men in paper hats and tight pantaloons, and 
 the market dames in tall pyramidal caps of muslin two 
 feet high. Such sights as these fill his early home letters. 
 Then in Paris, after eulogizing the boarding-house of 
 Madame Potet at No. 49, Rue Monsieur le Prince, he 
 begins to show signs of nostalgia, as every good lad 
 should, when first away from his family. Madame 
 Potet s kindness, too, is found to be as evanescent as it is 
 effervescing, and in her house are too many Americans 
 and other English-speaking boarders; so he makes a 
 curious change, and establishes himself in a maison de 
 santi at Auteuil, where he endeavours to pick up the 
 French tongue from a houseful of hypochondriacs, and 
 consequently writes to his father, " I had no idea of the 
 difficulties attending my situation, no idea that it was 
 indeed so difficult to learn a language." From Auteuil 
 
46 LIFE OF 
 
 he goes off for a re-inspiriting pedestrian expedition along 
 the banks of the Cher and the romantic Loire ; and then 
 he settles down again in the metropolis, en garfvn, at 
 Rue Racine, No. 5, picking up the language along with 
 his meals, at crowded restaurants. The letters in which 
 he describes his Paris life are really very dull affairs, 
 and it is quite apparent from them that the poor lad 
 was oppressed by conscientious desires to live on six 
 francs a day and do his duty by foreign tongues. Italian 
 lessons he added to his studies in French. The hubble- 
 bubble of Parisian life took his breath away at first, and 
 he scarcely recovered it during his stay. Once he called 
 to see Jules Janin, bearing an introduction, and climbing 
 up five flights of stairs in the Quartier Latin to reach the 
 critic, who was found seated at his writing-table in the 
 centre of a study, or salon, or what you will he had but 
 one reception room. The little Frenchman started up 
 with such hospitable effusion that the fresh ink spurted 
 from his pen into the visitor s face. He called out 
 loudly for some one. A young lady entered, and was 
 introduced Madame Janin. And now that Madame 
 was come, Monsieur Janin said they would have dinner 
 forthwith. Where ? The host with the zest of a hungry 
 man of letters getting rid of his toil, swept everything off 
 his writing-table into a corner of the room ; instanter a 
 little maid-servant entered with cloth and soup-tureen, 
 and the banquet commenced. How gay was the critic ! 
 and how Madame laughed ! and how the guest blushed 
 sometimes ! The laughter lasted, and the blushes came 
 and went, till dessert was placed on the table, and then Janin 
 deviated into sense, and not only discussed literary affairs 
 
LONGFELLOW. 47 
 
 in a way that delighted the student, but gave him some 
 useful hints about making the most of his sojourn in the 
 city. The chat lasted till the lamps were lighted in the 
 streets, when Janin took his new acquaintance for a 
 walk along the guais, and the pair spent three charming 
 hours by the Seine. The sentimental biographer might 
 make a fine thing out of this tableau the moon (for 
 there was moonlight) silvering the pavement under the 
 feet of these two notable human creatures, one in all the 
 maturity of the small-raced Parisian industrious, witty, 
 versatile, unscrupulous, pleasure-loving, dissolute, a man 
 who would make himself remarkable in any circum 
 stances for talent and insouciance ; the other taller and 
 rather gaunt, grave in his very smiles, still seeming to 
 have in his ears a dim resonance of preachers voices in 
 New England meeting-houses frank in his glances, and 
 hopeful in his talk, religiously possessed, above all, with 
 the need to live simply and think much. After the 
 manner of good Saxon-blooded youths, he astonished 
 such as Jules Janin by his ignorance regarding many 
 social problems. Yet, phlegmatic as he then seems to 
 have been (how we do long for some moving, sigh of 
 ambition or love in this stalwart New Englander !), 
 Longfellow s was the pure mind that would look back 
 on its history as Wordsworth looked back on his own : 
 
 " Not in vain 
 
 By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn 
 Of Childhood didst thou intertwine for me 
 The passions that build up our human soul ; 
 Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, 
 But with high objects, with enduring things, 
 
48 LIFE Of 
 
 With life and nature ; purifying thus 
 The elements of feeling and of thought, 
 And sanctifying by such discipline 
 Both pain and fear until we recognize 
 A grandeur in the beatings of our hearts." 
 
 Ten years after the little dinner in the Quartier Latin, 
 the American found himself once more in Paris, and met 
 Jules Janin on the Boulevard des Italiens. He was 
 asked to dinner again. The host was as kind as ever ; 
 the house was large, and furnished in sumptuous disorder. 
 Madame Janin of course made her appearance. 
 
 " How changed ! " whispered Longfellow, by and by, 
 to the host ; " I should not have recognized her." 
 
 " How ? " cried Janin, eagerly. " When did you meet 
 her ? " 
 
 " Why, it must have been ten years ago." 
 
 " Great heavens ! Are you serious ? " said the French 
 man, with a queer look. And then after a pause he added, 
 " Who can count the Mesdames Janin since then ? " 
 
 " And this one " said Longfellow, coldly. 
 
 " Ah, bah ! This time, mon cher, I have been caught 
 myself, and the real Madame Janin stands before you ; 
 
 but " and here the voice seemed different from the 
 
 voice that cracked the jokes in the Quartier Latin 
 " nothing before her about that little dinner, you know, 
 or that menage ! " 
 
 To the story Longfellow was accustomed to add this 
 sentence : " Janin thought it a fine joke, but I see no 
 beauty or decency in such an irregular life, although he 
 had many a laugh at what he called my puritanical 
 innocence." 
 
LONGFELLOW. 49 
 
 This innocence was as essential in Longfellow s nature _ 
 as oil in the feathers of a bird ^eviljxmred away from 
 hirnjike_water off % duck s bjicj^ Naturally his good 
 mother fondly worried herself about him, but hinted her 
 anxieties in the encouraging form of trustful expressions. 
 " It is true, Henry," she writes, " your parents have 
 great confidence in your uprightness, and in that purity 
 of mind which will instantly take alarm on coming in 
 contact with anything vicious or unworthy. We have 
 confidence ; but you must be careful and watchful. But 
 enough. I do not mistrust you." Henry writes back in 
 such a way as to lay all his parents fears at rest. At 
 length, on the igth of February, 1827, he rather joyfully 
 announces his departure for Spain : 
 
 " It is now exactly eight months since my arrival in 
 Paris. And setting all boasting aside, I must say that I 
 am well satisfied with the knowledge I have acquired of 
 the French language. My friends all tell me that I have 
 a good pronunciation, and although I do not pretend to 
 anything like perfection, yet I am confident that I have 
 done well. I cannot imagine who told you that six 
 months was enough for the French. I shall leave Paris 
 for Spain on Wednesday, day after to-morrow. My 
 health continues excellent." 
 
 Among all these letters there is but one at all remark 
 able for any descriptive power, and this was afterwards 
 expanded into a paper which shall be quoted from 
 " Outre-Mer," by and by. He makes no reflections of 
 value on French life; the notes he jots down do not 
 suggest much that is picturesque or characteristic; and 
 
 4 
 
50 LIFE OF 
 
 even the Louvre, with its boundless wealth of ancient 
 and modern art, is dismissed with this irritatingly raw 
 remark : "In the Louvre there is a painting of Venus 
 
 which is an exact portrait of Miss K ." Here it 
 
 may be noticed that, although he developed a considerable 
 taste for sculpture, Longfellow all through life exhibited 
 indifference to the works of the great painters. 
 
 It is well known that scenes and incidents which make 
 little impression upon us during our childhood may recur 
 in our memory with power; and the poem quoted in 
 our first chapter is only one of many instances proving 
 that this process often occurred in Longfellow s mind with 
 the happiest results. The reproductive workings of his 
 mental nature went further, however, than they do in 
 1 most men ; and both in prose and poetry he often, after 
 \ the lapse of years, manufactured into verse facts of 
 mature experience that in a less retentive memory would 
 have been allowed to pass out of consciousness for ever. 
 Thus it was that, although the notes he made during his 
 first continental travels were devoid of general interest, 
 he was enabled, on returning to America, to recogitate 
 his Eastern experiences, and faithfully reproduce their 
 details in really graphic style. 
 
 After a prolonged tour in Spain, 1 during which the 
 language of the country was studied daily, the professor- 
 elect started from Marseilles for Italy on December 15, 
 1827, travelling by way of the Riviera. This last journey 
 was made in the company of George Washington 
 
 1 At Madrid, he had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted 
 with Washington Irving, then in his fortieth year, and engaged on 
 his "Life of Christopher Columbus." 
 
LONGFELLOW. 51 
 
 Greene, a young fellow-countryman who remained one 
 of Longfellow s closest friends till death severed the 
 two men in their old age. Staying far into the summer 
 at Rome, young Longfellow caught the malarial fever, 
 and was only rescued by skilful nursing from the 
 consequences of his imprudence. From Italy his letters 
 were frequent, as they were a year thereafter, when he 
 wrote from Germany. Still, we find little in the letters, 
 or in the journals kept up contemporaneously. We 
 might be apt to think from them that the writer was 
 destined to be a cultivated Portland lawyer after all, or 
 a conscientious teacher of languages, and nothing more. 
 At length the traveller returned to his native land, 
 and in September, 1829, Bowdoin was able to confer 
 the full dignity of Professor of Modern Languages on 
 one of the youngest scholars, probably the most ac 
 complished scholar, in America. Longfellow went 
 into residence at Brunswick almost immediately. He 
 was now twenty-two, handsome, well-mannered, and 
 altogether remarkably lovable and full of promise. At 
 once he set to work with his classes in earnest, and, find 
 ing no French grammar that pleased him, he translated 
 one L Homond s and also brought out a selection of 
 " Proverbes Dramatiques," and a Spanish Reader. He 
 had assistants to teach the elements of the languages, but 
 made it a point to watch his pupils at every stage of their 
 studies, and tradition tells that there never was a more 
 gentlemanly, a more industrious, or more beloved pro 
 fessor at Bowdoin than the first Professor of Modem 
 Languages. He rose at six in the morning, and as soon 
 as dressed, heard French recitation by the " sophomores." 
 
52 LIFE OF 
 
 At seven he breakfasted, and then he was his own master 
 till eleven, when he gave a lesson in Spanish to the 
 juniors. Then came lunch, with half an hour in the 
 library amid his pupils. At five he had another French 
 class ; at six he took coffee ; then he walked and visited 
 till nine ; studied and corrected exercises till twelve ; 
 and so to bed. This was his daily routine, in which 
 he found time to write out systematic courses of 
 lectures on the French, Spanish, and Italian literatures. 
 His work was really all-absorbing, and it never reached 
 a higher rate of remuneration than the salary of a 
 thousand dollars per annum. 
 
 In April of 1831 the Professor began a connection 
 with The North American Review, and in the following 
 September he married a beautiful girl, Mary Storer 
 Potter, daughter of his father s neighbour at Portland. 
 And now he was to relish four perfect years years of 
 scholarly labour in a congenial position, carried forward 
 in a happy home, with a refined and affectionate wife 
 always watching beside him. One entry in his diary, 
 redolent of enjoyment, pictures him sitting at his table by 
 the window through which come soft morning breezes 
 that make him dream of Spain. The tesselated shadow 
 of honeysuckle lies motionless on the study floor, as if it 
 were a figure on the carpet; and the fragrance of the 
 wild brier and the mock-orange pervades the room. 
 Unseen birds sing in the trees, and their shadows betray 
 them as they flit above the window. The grateful mur 
 mur of bees, the cooing of doves on the roof, and the 
 whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the 
 honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to meet the rising 
 
LONGFELLOW. 53 
 
 sun. Ah ! this kind of life is better than Jules Janin s 
 in the Quartier Latin. And probably if Jules Janin s 
 diary has been preserved, and was truthfully posted up, 
 it would not read like this : 
 
 "November 29, 1832. Five o clock in the morning. 
 Commence the preparatory reading for an essay on the 
 History of the Spanish Language ; beginning with the 
 Origines de la Lengua Espanola . . . por Don Gregorio 
 Mayans y Siscar. Finished the first volume. In the 
 evening read four chapters of the first book of Livy. 
 
 " 3oth. Rose at half-past five. Ran over the second 
 volume of Mayans ; commenced the second book of 
 Aldrete s Origen y Principle de la Lengua Castellana. 
 Read five chapters in Livy, and the fourth and fifth acts 
 of Ben Jonson s Alchemist ; a fine comedy, though too 
 broad, the better suited to the prurient taste of his age, 
 of which his noble genius should have been the castigator, 
 not the pander. 
 
 " December i. Commenced a new introduction to my 
 Phi Beta Kappa poem, to be delivered in Cambridge in 
 August next. I am flattered that the committee of the 
 Society should have thought of me as Poet. Finished 
 Aldrete. He is altogether too diffuse for my taste. His 
 work wants perspective ; all objects seem of equal size, 
 and he devotes as much time to points of minor con 
 sideration as to the most important. Cortes read to me 
 chapters xv.-xvii. of Don Quixote. It is a pleasure to 
 hear it read by a Spaniard. One might believe that the 
 Knight of the Rueful Countenance and his Squire were 
 talking with us. 
 
54 LIFE OF 
 
 " 2d. Sunday. A bright sunshine after yesterday s 
 snowstorm. Read Massillon s sermon, Sur les Tentations 
 des Grands ; one of Wieland s Psalms ; Livy, three 
 chapters. 
 
 "3d. Revised and corrected a paper for The School 
 master, entitled, Saturday Afternoon. Read Moratin s 
 Comedy, El Si de las Ninas, one of the best pieces of 
 the modern theatre. In the evening, four chapters of 
 Livy ; among them chapter xxix. of Book first, containing 
 the beautiful description of the destruction of Alba. 
 
 " 4th. Ran over a Dissertation on the best method of 
 studying the languages of the Bible, translated from the 
 German by Professor Stuart. Livy, four chapters. 
 
 "nth. Wrote an apostrophe to Truth, part of my 
 Phi Beta Kappa poem. Ran through the Glosa Famosa 
 sobre las Coplas de Don yorge Manrique, by Luis Perez ; 
 stupid enough, though in some parts ingenious." 
 
 It may be supposed that these tranquil studies were 
 their own reward : but on December i, 1834, the 
 authorities at Harvard University offered him the posi 
 tion of Smith Professor of Modern Languages, as suc 
 cessor to Mr. Ticknor, suggesting that he might take a 
 year in Europe, if he liked, on assuming these duties. 
 Ticknor and Longfellow had been friends for some time, 
 and this proposition from Harvard was all of the elder 
 scholar s arranging. The salary was to be fifteen hundred 
 dollars per annum. 
 
 Longfellow gratefully accepted this chance. Meanwhile 
 he had in 1833 published his first book "Coplas de Don 
 Jorge Manrique, translated from the Spanish, with 
 
LONGFELLOW. 55 
 
 an Introductory Essay." This is a volume of some 
 ninety pages. In 1833, also, appeared a thin pamphlet 
 called " Outre-Mer ; a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea: 
 Part I." This was brought out with marbled covers, in 
 large type. It was as like the parts of the " Sketch Book" 
 as possible. Now the first attempt Longfellow made to 
 describe his European travels in print had been in five 
 papers contributed to The New England Magazine 
 (principally in 1832), under the title of "The School 
 master." These might be termed the first sketches for a 
 book of travels. The part of " Outre-Mer " that appeared 
 in 1833 went over much the same ground as "The School 
 master;" and Part II. followed in 1834. But here the 
 proposed brochures stopped, so far as the serial form 
 was concerned. The various chapters of "Outre-Mer" 
 eventually saw the light in 1835, contained in two 
 volumes ; and the work attained popularity rapidly. It 
 has never been widely read in this country, however, 
 and is now almost a dead letter with us. Avowedly 
 an imitation of Washington Irving s methods of descrip 
 tion, " Outre-Mer " may be pronounced equal in literary 
 merit to the average of work in the " Sketch Book." 
 Irving s lighter touches are absent, for Longfellow never 
 developed any considerable fund of humour. But in 
 addition to uniform grace of style, " Outre-Mer " had the 
 advantage of going over much ground never before 
 described by an American : some of it, indeed, almost 
 new to British literature. The Italian portions inevitably 
 suggest comparison with Goethe s " Italianische Reise," 
 and of course suffer by the comparison. Goethe s de 
 scent into Italy had nearly as much influence upon 
 
56 LIFE OF 
 
 European literature as the invasion of the Goths. He 
 was the true king of the Goths, and swept down so con- 
 queringly upon that sunny land that he rifled its dearest 
 treasures, carrying back to Germany in his mind more 
 classic riches than any twenty minds in Italy itself con 
 tained. In the " Italianische Reise " although the 
 literary workmanship is far from being Goethe s best 
 we constantly feel this attack ; Goethe applies his thought 
 to what he sees, as a solvent, like Hannibal (in the myth) 
 melting the rocks of the Alps with vinegar. No sense of 
 power such as this comes to readers of Longfellow s 
 " Outre-Mer." He sets forth upon his journeys in the 
 spirit of a pilgrim, rather than in that of a spoiler. The 
 student curious in etymologies may remember that our 
 word " saunter " is said to be derived from the phrase of the 
 Middle Ages, which referred to those leisurely travellers 
 who took years to journey through Europe a la Saint e 
 Terre. Using the word, then, nearly in its primary 
 sense, we may say that in " Outre-Mer " Longfellow 
 saunters through many lands, with eyes and ears well 
 open for all the gentler experiences of beauty that may be 
 encountered therein. 
 
 It is in this pleasant book that Longfellow atones 
 for the want of literary merit displayed in his early 
 European letters and journals. Every page is a slightly 
 coloured transcript from his actual experiences, and to 
 show how much material he had to draw upon, and how 
 interestingly he could utilize it, we may quote two 
 passages from " Outre-Mer." In the first, a description 
 of French rustic life, we find the young Professor imitating 
 Goldsmith : 
 
LONGFELLOW. 57 
 
 " I was one m6. v ning called to my window by the sound 
 of rustic music. I looked out, and beheld a procession 
 of villagers advancing along the road, attired in gay dresses, 
 and marching merrily on in the direction of the church. I 
 soon perceived that it was a marriage-festival. The pro 
 cession was led by a long orang-outang of a man, in a straw 
 hat and a white dimity bob-coat, playing on an asthmatic 
 clarionet, from which he contrived to blow unearthly 
 sounds, ever and anon squeaking off at right angles from 
 his tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the 
 guttural notes. Behind him, led by his little boy, came 
 the blind fiddler, his honest features glowing with all the 
 hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as he stumbled along, 
 sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again. 
 Then came the happy bridegroom, dressed in his Sunday 
 suit of blue, with a large nosegay in his button-hole ; 
 and close beside him his blushing bride, with downcast 
 eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing a 
 wreath of white roses in her hair. The friends and 
 relatives brought up the procession ; and a troop of 
 village urchins came shouting along in the rear, scramb 
 ling among themselves for the largesse of sous and sugar 
 plums that now and then issued in large handfuls from 
 the pockets of a lean man in black, who seemed to 
 officiate as master of ceremonies on the occasion. I 
 gazed on the procession till it was out of sight; and 
 when the last wheeze of the clarionet died upon my ear, 
 I could not help thinking how happy were they who were 
 thus to dwell together in the peaceful bosom of their 
 native village, far from the gilded misery and the pesti 
 lential vices of the town. 
 
58 LIFE OF 
 
 " On the evening of the same day, I was sitting by the 
 window, enjoying the freshness of the air and the beauty 
 and stillness of the hour, when I heard the distant and 
 solemn hymn of the Catholic burial-service, at first so 
 faint and indistinct that it seemed an illusion. It rose 
 mournfully on the hush of evening, died gradually 
 away, then ceased. Then it rose again, nearer and more 
 distinct, and soon after a funeral procession appeared, and 
 passed directly beneath my window. It was led by a 
 priest, bearing the banner of the church, and followed by 
 two boys, holding long flambeaux in their hands. Next 
 came a double file of priests in their surplices, each with 
 a missal in one hand, and a lighted wax taper in the other, 
 chanting the funeral dirge at intervals, now pausing, and 
 then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamenta 
 tion, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind 
 of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then fol 
 lowed various symbols of the church, and the bier borne 
 on the shoulders of four men. The coffin was covered with 
 a velvet pall, and a chaplet of white flowers lay upon it, 
 indicating that the deceased was unmarried. A few of 
 the villagers came behind, clad in mourning robes, and 
 bearing lighted tapers. The procession passed slowly 
 along the same street that in the morning had been 
 thronged by the gay bridal company. A melancholy 
 train of thought forced itself home upon my mind. The 
 joys and sorrows of this world are so strikingly mingled ! 
 Our mirth and grief are brought so mournfully in contact ! 
 We laugh while others weep, and others rejoice when 
 we are sad ! The light heart and the heavy walk side by 
 side and go about together ! Beneath the same roof are 
 
LONGFELLOW. 59 
 
 spread the wedding-feast and the funeral-pall ! The 
 bridal-song mingles with the burial-hymn ! One goes to 
 the marriage-bed, another to the grave ; and all is mu 
 table, uncertain, and transitory." 
 
 The next passage comes from the chapter entitled 
 " Rome in Midsummer." The unsanitary, but beautiful 
 aquatic, sport described as going on in the Piazza 
 Navona is no longer to be observed at Rome : 
 
 "My mornings are spent in visiting the wonders of 
 Rome, in studying the miracles of ancient and modern 
 art, or in reading at the public libraries. We breakfast at 
 noon, and dine at eight in the evening. After dinner 
 comes the conversazione, enlivened with music, and the 
 meeting of travellers, artists, and literary men from every 
 quarter of the globe. At midnight, when the crowd is 
 gone, I retire to my chamber, and, poring over the gloomy 
 pages of Dante, or Bandello s laughing tale, protract 
 my nightly vigil till the morning star is in the sky. 
 
 " Our windows look out upon the square, which cir 
 cumstance is a source of infinite enjoyment to me. 
 Directly in front, with its fantastic belfries and swelling 
 dome, rises the church of St. Agnes ; and sitting by the 
 open window, I note the busy scene below, enjoy the cool 
 air of morning and evening, and even feel the freshness 
 of the fountain, as its waters leap in mimic cascades 
 down the sides of the rock. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 "The Piazza Navona is the chief market-place of 
 Rome, and on market-days is filled with a noisy crowd of 
 
60 LIFE OF 
 
 the Roman populace, and the peasantry from the neigh 
 bouring villages of Albano and Frascati. At such times 
 the square presents an animated and curious scene. The 
 gaily decked stalls, the piles of fruits and vegetables, 
 the pyramids of flowers, the various costumes of the 
 peasantry, the constant movements of the vast, fluctuat 
 ing crowd, and the deafening clamour of their discordant 
 voices, that rise louder than the roar of the loud ocean, 
 all this is better than a play to me, and gives me amuse 
 ments when naught else has power to amuse. 
 
 "Every Saturday afternoon in the sultry month of 
 August, this spacious square is converted into a lake, by 
 stopping the conduit-pipes which carry off the water of 
 the fountains. Vehicles of every description, axle-deep, 
 drive to and fro across the mimic lake ; a dense crowd 
 gathers around its margin, and a thousand tricks excite 
 the loud laughter of the idle populace. Here is a fellow 
 groping with a stick after his seafaring hat ; there another 
 splashing in the water in pursuit of a mischievous spaniel, 
 who is swimming away with his shoe ; while from a 
 neighbouring balcony a noisy burst of military music fills 
 the air, and gives fresh animation to the scene of mirth. 
 This is one of the popular festivals of midsummer in 
 Rome, and the merriest of them all. It is a kind of 
 carnival unmasked ; and many a popular bard, many a 
 poeta di dozzina, invokes this day the plebeian Muse of 
 the market-place to sing in high-sounding rhyme, // 
 Lago di Piazza Navona? 
 
 " I have before me one of these sublime effusions. It 
 describes the square, the crowd, the rattling carriages, 
 the lake, the fountain, raised by the superhuman 
 
LONGFELLOW, 61 
 
 genius of Bernini, the lion, the sea-horse, and the 
 triton grasping the dolphin s tail. Half the grand square, 
 thus sings the poet, where Rome with food is satiate, 
 was changed into a lake, around whose margin stood the 
 Roman people, pleased with soft idleness and merry holy- 
 day, like birds upon the margin of a limpid brook. Up 
 and down drove car and chariot ; and the women trembled 
 for fear of the deep water ; though merry were the young, 
 and well, I ween, had they been borne away to unknown 
 shores by the bull that bore away Europa, they would 
 neither have wept nor screamed ! 
 
 # # # * # 
 
 " On the eastern slope of the Janiculum, now called, 
 from its yellow sands, Montorio, or the Golden Moun 
 tain, stands the fountain of Acqua Paola, the largest and 
 most abundant of the Roman fountains. It is a small 
 Ionic temple, with six columns of reddish granite in front, 
 a spacious hall and chambers within, and a garden with a 
 terrace in the rear. Beneath the pavement, a torrent of 
 water from the ancient aqueducts of Trajan, and from 
 the lakes of Bracciano and Martignano, leaps forth in 
 three beautiful cascades, and from the overflowing basin 
 rushes down the hill-side to turn the busy wheels of a 
 dozen mills. 
 
 "The key of this little fairy palace is in our hands, 
 and as often as once a week we pass the day there, amid 
 the odour of its flowers, the rushing sound of its waters, 
 and the enchantments of poetry and music. How 
 pleasantly the sultry hours steal by ! Cool comes the 
 summer wind from the Tiber s mouth at Ostia. Above 
 us is a sky without a cloud ; beneath us, the magnificent 
 
62 LIFE OF 
 
 panorama of Rome and the Campagna, bounded by the 
 Abruzzi and the sea. Glorious scene ! one glance at thee 
 would move the dullest soul, one glance can melt the 
 painter and the poet into tears ! 
 
 "In the immediate neighbourhood of the fountain are 
 many objects worthy of the stranger s notice. A bow-shot 
 down the hill-side towards the city stands the convent of 
 San Pietro in Montorio ; and in the cloister of this 
 convent is a small, round, Doric temple, built upon the 
 spot which an ancient tradition points out as the scene 
 of St. Peter s martyrdom. In the opposite direction the 
 road leads you over the shoulder of the hill, and out 
 through the city-gate to gardens and villas beyond. Pass 
 ing beneath a lofty arch of Trajan s aqueduct, an orna 
 mented gateway on the left admits you to the Villa 
 Pamnli-Doria, built on the western declivity of the hill. 
 This is the largest and most magnificent of the numerous 
 villas that crowd the immediate environs of Rome. Its 
 spacious terraces, its marble statues, its woodlands and 
 green alleys, its lake, and waterfalls, and fountains, give 
 it an air of courtly splendour and of rural beauty, which 
 realizes the beau-ideal of a suburban villa. 
 
 " This is our favourite resort when we have passed the 
 day at the fountain, and the afternoon shadows begin to 
 fall. There we sit on the broad marble steps of the 
 terrace, gaze upon the varied landscape stretching to the 
 misty sea, or i amble beneath the leafy dome of the wood 
 land and along the margin of the lake 
 
 And drop a pebble to see it sink 
 Down in those depths so calm and cool. 
 
 " O, did we but know when we were happy ! Could 
 
LONGFELLOW. 63 
 
 the restless, feverish, ambitious heart be still, but for a 
 moment still, and yield itself, without one further-aspir 
 ing throb, to its enjoyment, then were I happy, yea, 
 thrice happy ! But no ; this fluttering, struggling, and 
 imprisoned spirit beats the bars of its golden cage, 
 disdains the silken fetter; it will not close its eye and 
 fold its wings : as if time were not swift enough, its 
 swifter thoughts outstrip his rapid flight, and onward, 
 onward do they wing their way to the distant mountains, 
 to the fleeting clouds of the future ; and yet I know, that 
 ere long, weary, and wayworn, and disappointed, they 
 shall return to nestle in the bosom of the past ! 
 
 " This day,.also, I have passed at Acqua Paola. From 
 the garden terrace I watched the setting sun, as, wrapt 
 in golden vapour, he passed to other climes. A friend 
 from my native land was with me ; and, as we spake of 
 home, a liquid star stood trembling like a tear upon the 
 closing eyelid of the day." 
 
 Here we end with one of the similes with which Long 
 fellow sinned against taste occasionally. It is, at least, a 
 doubtful simile, although not so distinctly bad as the 
 metaphor about the stars being "forget-me-nots of the 
 angels." It is worth noticing, however, that Longfellow 
 had hardly yet recognized his vocation to poetry, and did 
 not seek imagery so persistently as he afterwards did. 
 For this reason the style of " Outre-Mer " is really much 
 better than that of " Hyperion s " overladen periods. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT was not easy for any man to succeed Ticknor as 
 a Professor of Languages : for that gentleman, 
 although his literary performances have shown more 
 industry than originality, was certainly one of the best- 
 informed students of European tongues and literature in 
 his time. In order that he might enter on his duties at 
 Harvard with confidence, it was necessary for Longfellow 
 to make himself still more intimately acquainted with 
 German thought and books, and his desire was to add 
 to this knowledge a mastery of Scandinavian languages. 
 Accordingly he proceeded to Europe with his wife in 
 April of 1835. 
 
 First of all, on arrival in the East, Longfellow gave 
 himself a pleasant holiday of three weeks in London, to 
 which city he had already paid a flying visit ere concluding 
 his former European tour. As became a man now of some 
 note, furnished with good introductions, he went into the 
 best society in London ; and his days and nights in the 
 English metropolis were full of intellectual gaiety. He 
 breakfasted with Sir John Bowring; dined with the 
 Lockharts ; at Babbage s met Jane Porter, Lady Morgan, 
 Abraham Hayward, and the sister beauties Mrs. Black- 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 65 
 
 wood and Lady Seymour. At Lady Dudley Stuart s he 
 listened to the singing of Rubini and Grisi; and one 
 day Carlyle came to talk delightfully to the poet and his 
 wife for half-an-hour. Carlyle had them home to tea, and 
 took them to visit Chantrey s studio. On the whole, the 
 Longfellows were most struck with Mrs. Carlyle, whom they 
 described as " a lovely woman, with simple and pleasing 
 manners," and as accomplished as modest. During this 
 London sojourn Mr. Bentley arranged for an English 
 edition of " Outre-Mer," and when this appeared, The 
 Spectator was not long in declaring that "either the 
 author of the Sketch Book has received a warning, or 
 there are two Richmonds in the field." 
 
 In June, the American Professor found himself a 
 wakeful inhabitant of cities far north, on which the sun 
 hardly set. Sweden altogether satisfied his mind. At 
 Lydkoping he read books in the public squares towards 
 midnight, waiting to see the watchman stretch himself 
 towards the four quarters of heaven, on the church-tower, 
 crying : " Ho, watchman, ho ! Twelve the clock has 
 stricken. God keep our town from firebrand, and the 
 enemy s hand." As he journeyed through the land, he 
 never tired of the recurrent groves of pine and drooping 
 fir-trees with rose-coloured cones; the little crowds of 
 white-haired boys and girls about the school doors ; the 
 wooden houses all painted red, and the calm paleness of 
 the night, "which like a silver clasp, united the day 
 with yesterday." The peasantry, however, struck him as 
 peculiarly cloddish ; and he wondered at the clergymen 
 smoking in the streets, drinking punch in the public- 
 houses, and playing cards on Sundays. 
 
 5 
 
C6 LIFE OF 
 
 The Swedish tongue Longfellow studied at Stock 
 holm, with Professor Lignel of Upsala. He found the 
 language easy to read, and soft and musical like the 
 lowland Scotch, but difficult to speak grammatically. 
 Finnish he acquired from a poet-parson named Mellin ; 
 and afterwards at Copenhagen he read Danish with Mr. 
 Boiling, librarian of that city. 
 
 So passed nearly six months, until the time came for 
 
 . descending to Holland for the Dutch. The tour was 
 made by Amsterdam, the Hague and Delft : but in 
 
 .V Rotterdam, Longfellow s wife fell ill, and on the 2pth of 
 November she died there, peacefully, but after long 
 suffering. This bereavement was one of the two great 
 shocks which made ravages in the poet s inner happiness, 
 and the extent of which he concealed, even from his 
 closest friends, by a resolute reticence. We all know, 
 however, how beautiful a sigh escaped him, when he 
 
 I endeared the memory of Mary his wife to all the world, 
 
 ^ in " Footsteps of Angels." 
 
 " Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, 
 
 All my fears are laid aside, 
 If I but remember only, 
 
 Such as these have lived and died." 
 
 It was in Heidelberg chiefly, that the widower sought 
 distraction from his lonely thoughts. On the way thither 
 he had stopped to spend a day at Bonn with August 
 Wilhelm Schlegel, whose pomposity seems on this 
 occasion to have thawed several degrees. At Heidelberg 
 the traveller established himself in the house of Frau 
 Himmelhahn, near the end of the Hauptstrasse, towards 
 he Karls Thor. From his window he could look over 
 
LONGFELLOW. 67 
 
 the brown windings of the Neckar, as he afterwards 
 looked from his cosy study at Cambridge over the sweep of 
 the clearer river Charles. Mittermaier, the lawyer, leader 
 of the Liberals, was very kind to him at Heidelberg; 
 there also he formed friendships with Gervinus, the 
 Shakespearean scholar; Schlosser, the Professor of Modern 
 History and butt of De Quincey s ridicule; Reichlin- 
 Meldegg, who was lecturing on Schiller; Thibaut, who 
 discoursed on the Pandects ; and that Pope of the 
 rationalist clergymen, Dr. Paulus. Furthermore, it was 
 at Heidelberg that Longfellow first met his great country- \ 
 man, Bryant ; and Mr. Samuel Ward, of New York, 
 became a most valuable acquaintance. With the Bryants 
 and Mr. Ward, or with a Russian, Baron von Ramm, he 
 daily walked about the pleasant environs of the old town, 
 and to Handschuhsheim, to the mill at Rohrbach, to the 
 tower of Konigsstuhl, or to the heights of the Wolfs- 
 brunnen. The loveliness of the place, and the quiet 
 strength of German thought, he was absorbing every 
 moment ; but each day furnished him with settled hours 
 of dogged study, in which Goethe, Herder, Tieck, Hoff 
 man, and Richter were the spirits whom he conjured. 
 
 Next July, Longfellow was in the Tyrol, where the 
 pines, and timber houses, and fences, and bridges, and 
 fields of Indian corn, all reminded him of New England ; 
 and from the Tyrol he passed to the Alps of Switzerland. 
 It was at Interlaken, in Switzerland, that Longfellow met 
 Mr. Appleton, a cheery and rich fellow-countryman, with 
 whom were his wife and family. The Appletons felt 
 drawn to their slender and courtly-mannered Harvard 
 Professor, and he went about with them a great 
 
68 LIFE OF 
 
 deal, quietly investigating the mental characteristics of 
 Mr. Appleton s fair daughter. Thoughts of her were 
 to flit about him in dreaming and in working hours 
 for the next few years ; but at this time they parted as 
 ordinary friends. In December, 1836, Longfellow had 
 returned to America, and entered upon his professorship. 
 Harvard is of course the intellectual glory of the States. 
 In 1636 the nucleus of the College was created, and 
 two years later, John Harvard, an English Noncon 
 formist clergyman, bequeathed to the institution a 
 library of 300 books, and .800 in cash. In 1873, 
 the chartered University of Harvard, beside its building, 
 grounds, and extensive library, possessed about three- 
 quarters of a million sterling in vested funds, twelve 
 hundred students, and one hundred and ten professors of 
 all grades. When Longfellow began to lecture here, the 
 college in Harvard Square was the only structure of note 
 in the place, Cambridge being but a village, to which most 
 of the students walked along a three-mile road from 
 "town," which was Boston. The college had just cele 
 brated its two-hundredth anniversary. Josiah Quincy was 
 its revered President ; E. T. Channing was Professor of 
 English Literature; Charles Beck, of Katin; Felton, of 
 Greek ; Henry Ware, of Divinity and Charles Sumner, 
 Lecturer in the Law School. Not far off, lived Washing 
 ton Allston, then the best painter his country had 
 produced and a little of a poet also. Longfellow con 
 sorted chiefly with the Greek Professor Cornelius Conway 
 Felton, a warm-hearted, jovial scholar and three other 
 young and rising men joined themselves to him ; the 
 three being Sumner, George Stillman Hillard, and Henry 
 
LONGFELLOW. 69 
 
 R. Cleveland. These friends, all of an age, resolved 
 themselves into an association for the promotion of 
 nice dinners and good digestive talk, calling themselves 
 the "Five of Clubs." As they grew more powerful in 
 literature they helped each other in the reviews, and 
 a man who read Felton s paper on " Evangeline," 
 in The North American Review, pencilled under Long 
 fellow s name, "Insured in the Mutual." 
 
 These were days when some of our British authors 
 were great dandies. Bulwer Lytton did not assort his 
 paragraphs more carefully than he studied the pattern of 
 his waistcoats; and Disraeli, who dressed in London 
 like a creation of Count D Orsay s pictorial imagination, 
 fascinated Europe during his first tour with an armoury of 
 dress walking-sticks. We need not feel much surprise, 
 then, to learn that Longfellow figured at Harvard as a sort 
 of fashion-plate for the youth of the place to admire. 
 He makes the Baron say to Paul Flemming (that is, 
 Longfellow) in " Hyperion " : " The ladies already begin 
 to call you Wilhelm Meister, and they say that your 
 gloves are a shade too light for a strictly virtuous young 
 man." This is not the kind of smart saying that 
 Longfellow s mind could invent, and almost certainly 
 was a real remark of the Russian, Von Ramm. Ward 
 writes to him, after he had left Europe, " I have for you 
 an Endymion waistcoat better suited to your style than 
 mine," and a Mrs. Craigie at Cambridge, of whom we are 
 to hear immediately, vaguely distrusted him because he 
 looked too gay. He himself wrote to Sumner, when 
 Sumner was abroad, " If you have any tendency to curl 
 your hair and wear gloves, like Edgar in Lear, do it 
 
70 LIFE OF 
 
 before your return." Now this liking to be well-dressed 
 was in truth not so much an affectation in Longfellow, 
 as a sign that he lacked affectation. His was a mind 
 that was neat in all its workings, and even exquisite ; it 
 required its external circumstances to be neat also, for 
 comfort, and he was not the man to go about with his 
 shoes untied, his hose ungartered, and all about him 
 betokening a careless desolation, as if by these means 
 to gain more credit for concealed beauties of a vast 
 mind. Poete oit pas poete, faime du linge propre. 
 Caesar tramped along by his men on foot in preference 
 to riding luxuriously; but he always carried with him 
 the little lozenges of ivory, wherewith the tesselated floor 
 of his tent could be put together; and his toilet was 
 exquisite. There was not a man in America who worked 
 harder than the Harvard Professor of Modern Languages ; 
 but this was no reason why he should allow any man 
 to be better dressed. To the end of his life he was 
 punctilious about his appearance. After he had been 
 staying with Dickens, that ever-whimsical brother-in- 
 letters wrote to him : " McDowall the bootmaker, Beale 
 the hosier, Laffin the trowsers-maker, and Blackmore the 
 coat-cutter, have all been at the point of death ; but have 
 slowly recovered. The medical gentlemen agreed that 
 it was exhaustion occasioned by early rising to wait 
 upon you at those unholy hours ! " 
 
 At first Professor Longfellow occupied rooms in 
 Professors Row at Cambridge now called Kirkland 
 Street ; but ere long he found a better home in Craigie 
 House. Craigie House will be revered in Cambridge 
 while its wooden walls can be held together ; for it has 
 
LONGFELLOW. 71 
 
 been the abode of George Washington as well as of 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was built about 1760 
 by a wealthy Colonel Vassall, and was confiscated by 
 the State when its owner joined the King s side during 
 the Revolution. After the Battle of Bunker s Hill, 
 Washington fixed upon it for his head-quarters, and here 
 he remained nine months till the evacuation of Boston 
 by the British troops. Then the house passed through 
 several hands, until a retired "Apothecary-General," 
 called Andrew Craigie, made it the scene of lavish 
 hospitalities, which were accepted by guests so dis 
 tinguished as Talleyrand and the Duke of Kent. When 
 Mr. Craigie died, he left an eccentric widow well-nigh 
 penniless; and the lady was forced to eke out her 
 income by letting her house in apartments. Thus was 
 Longfellow enabled to cherish the notion of taking up 
 quarters in rooms hallowed by memories of his country s 
 father. When he made his first application to Mrs. 
 Craigie, she would have nothing to do with him, thinking 
 that so fashionable a young gentleman would not be 
 likely to prove a quiet lodger. However he told her 
 who he was, and then her manner changed, for Harvard 
 College was to her a sort of Shechinah, and moreover, 
 she had read " Outre-Mer." But still she was inclined 
 to stickle a little. As each suite of rooms was shown 
 to the visitor, and he became more and more impressed 
 with the respectable solidity of the old-fashioned mansion, 
 with its wood-carvings, and lofty ceilings, and deep 
 windows, the proprietor said : " But you cannot have 
 this set." At last Longfellow was ushered into a room 
 in the front of the house, overlooking goodly meadows 
 
72 LIFE OF 
 
 and the river Charles. It was a summer s day and the 
 cool shadows that lay about the room made it appear all 
 the larger, while not a sound without broke the peace 
 of the place, and even the branches of elms that shaded 
 the windows looked as still as if they were painted on 
 the glass. "This is a room you can have," said the old 
 turbaned lady called Mrs. Craigie. The visitor at once 
 expressed his pleasure at receiving the offer, but his 
 gratification must have been doubled as she added to 
 her offer the comment that "This was General Wash 
 ington s Chamber." And in General Washington s 
 chamber he set up his book-cases, and abode. 
 
 Longfellow s duties at the University did not tax him 
 as much as he had been taxed at Bowdoin. He had to 
 deliver one lecture each week all through the year ; to 
 lecture twice a week besides in summer, on Belles Lettres ; 
 and to superintend the instructors in languages, person 
 ally examining each student once a month. This was 
 full employment to a professor who looked at his work 
 conscientiously, as Longfellow did ; and from the 
 following sketch of his first year s weekly lectures we 
 can see that he did not shrink from making his students 
 travel over much ground. 
 
 1. Introduction. History of the French Language. 
 
 2. The other Languages of the South of Europe. 
 
 3. History of the Northern, or Gothic, Languages. 
 
 4. Anglo-Saxon Literature. 
 
 5 and 6. Swedish Literature. 
 
 7. Sketch of German Literature. 
 
 8, 9, 10. Life and Writings of Goethe. 
 
 II and 12. Life and Writings of Jean Paul Richter. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 73 
 
 About this time Hawthorne pleasantly renewed touch 
 with his classmate in this interesting note 
 
 / 
 "SALEM, March 7, 1837. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, The agent of the American Stationers 
 Company will send you a copy of a book entitled Twice- 
 Told Tales, of which, as a classmate, I venture to request 
 your acceptance. We were not, it is true, so well ac 
 quainted at college that I can plead an absolute right to 
 inflict my twice-told tediousness upon you ; but I have 
 often regretted that we were not better known to each 
 other, and have been glad of your success in literature 
 and in more important matters. I know not whether you 
 are aware that I have made a great many idle attempts in 
 the way of Magazine and Annual scribbling. The present 
 volumes contain such articles as seemed best worth offer 
 ing to the public a second time ; and I should like to flat 
 ter myself that they would repay you some part of the 
 pleasure which I have derived from your own Outre-Mer. 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "NATH. HAWTHORNE." 
 
 The response to this was a kindly article in The North 
 American Review^ and ever after, the intercourse between 
 the two men was marked by respect and generous help 
 fulness, although circumstances did not allow them to 
 enter on very close communion. They once formed a 
 plan of -writing together a. book of Fairy Tales, but the 
 notion was never realized. 
 
 The Rev. E. E. Hale has given us a sketch of the 
 way in which Longfellow and his students used to work 
 together : 
 
74 LIFE OF 
 
 "As it happened, the regular recitation-rooms of the 
 college were all in use, and we met him in a sort of 
 parlour, carpeted, hung with pictures, and otherwise 
 handsomely furnished, which was, I believe, called the 
 Corporation Room. We sat round a mahogany table, 
 which was reported to be meant for the dinners of the 
 Fellows ; and the whole affair had the aspect of a friendly 
 gathering in a private house, in which the study of German 
 was the amusement of the occasion. He began with 
 familiar ballads read them to us, and made us read them 
 to him. Of course, we soon committed them to memory 
 without meaning to, and I think this was probably part 
 of his theory. At the same time we were learning the 
 paradigms by rote. His regular duty was the oversight 
 of four or more instructors who were teaching French, 
 German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese to two or three 
 hundred undergraduates. We never knew when he 
 might look in on a recitation and virtually conduct it. 
 We were delighted to have him come. We all knew he 
 was a poet, and were proud to have him in the college, 
 but at the same time we respected him as a man of 
 affairs." 
 
 And here we come upon the truth that was lighting up 
 the man s life. Having worked hard and having sorrowed, 
 having loved and lost, and now being in the hale maturity 
 of his intellectual being, he felt himself destined for some 
 thing even beyond the exploration of literature s riches. 
 His students had found out the secret. Seated in his 
 cozy study, at the table between the eastern and southern 
 windows, he watched the flow of the Charles, shadowed 
 among woodlands, and " the generous giver " murmured 
 
LONGFELLOW. 75 
 
 songs into his ear. All nature, seen from these windows, 
 was laid under contribution by his nascent poetic 
 faculties, so that even to the placid meadows he could 
 say as Emerson did 
 
 "A second crop thine acres yield, 
 Which I gather in a song." 
 
 At night he could see from this vantage point " the red 
 planet Mars ; " and while Emerson in such contemplation 
 would have told us sadly 
 
 " Stars help us with a mystery, 
 That we could never spell," 
 
 Longfellow turned to his desk and wrote 
 
 o 
 
 "Within my breast there is no light 
 
 But the cold light of stars ; , 
 
 I give the first watch of the night / 
 
 To the red planet Mars. / 
 
 The star of the unconquered will, / 
 
 He rises in my breast, 
 Serene and resolute and still, 
 
 And calm and self-possessed." 
 
 This is hardly yet in the poet s most fanciful style, but 
 the mind that expressed it was strong, and turned joy 
 fully towards the future. 
 
 In the afternoons Felton and Sumner, or either of the two 
 remaining members of the " Five of Clubs," would come 
 to dinner in Washington s room, and thereafter Longfellow 
 would take from his desk such verses as these, and they 
 would be much discussed. From the first he exhibited 
 freedom from irritation at adverse criticism, and this was 
 given often enough throughout many succeeding years. 
 
I 
 
 76 LIFE OF 
 
 Could an earthly being enjoy life more than Longfellow 
 must then have enjoyed it? Healthy in body, braced 
 by years of mental discipline, honoured by every 
 one who knew him, placed beyond the pressure of 
 anxiety about money, cozily housed, visited constantly by 
 a few men as noble-hearted as they were clever, and 
 thrilling every now and again, in the quiet of his study, 
 with ambitions of becoming the great singer of his 
 country, and with intuitions as to his growing powers of 
 song ! This surely was happiness. One thing his nature 
 lacked, as the sighing conclusion of a letter to George 
 Greene shows : 
 
 "And now rises up before me a picture of heaven upon 
 earth, which I met with a few days ago in Jean Paul 
 Richter, the most magnificent of the German prose 
 writers. Listen to his words ! A look into a pure, 
 loving eye ; a word without falseness to a bride without 
 falseness; and then a soft-breathing breast in which 
 there-is nothing but Paradise, a sermon, and an evening 
 prayer. " 
 
 Whether or not we can make out for Longfellow a 
 claim to genius of the first order, it is not to be denied 
 that as a man of flesh and blood he was so eminently 
 human, that throughout the whole range of social pleasure 
 he valued and needed stimulus. He was a good eater, and 
 a judge of wines. Once, when asked what he had most 
 admired in England, he replied " Bass s ale." He 
 liked the opera and the play and dances all forms 
 of social diversion, and had he never attained poetic fame, 
 
LONGFELLOW. 77 
 
 he could have been happy enough. Yet in the early 
 years of the Craigie House life, we see what was amiss. 
 The voice of a woman never spoke to him lovingly. 
 
 The first poem privately put before Longfellow s friends 
 and critics at Craigie House was " Flowers." 
 
 " Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, 
 
 One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine ; 
 When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, 
 Stars, that in earth s firmament did shine." 
 
 He who thus spake so well was Carove*, in his " Story 
 without an End." The next of Longfellow s poems was 
 the "Psalm of Life," dated July 26, 1838. Both these 
 poems show the German influence that was potently 
 working in the author s mind ; but the " Psalm of Life " 
 was still original in evading the sadness that tinges nearly 
 all the German poetry of the kind then in vogue. It 
 bursts away from poetic melancholy with an effort, and 
 proclaims the gladness of living well to be the best of 
 poetry. It is not the best of poetry, but it makes the 
 best theme for a preacher; and the gladness of living well 
 is a blessed and undeniable truth. This was the voice of 
 hopeful, healthy young America, raised in protest through 
 the man who had but a few years ago translated, for his 
 own sad solace, that paean of the grave, Salis s " Song of 
 the Silent Land." Now his eye was brighter, and his spirit 
 was renewed and full of energy. It is true that 
 
 /r>*~ * 
 "Our hearts, though stout and tre, 
 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave." 
 
78 LIFE OF 
 
 That is true, and yet so is this : 
 
 " Lives of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 Footprints in the sands of time : 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 
 Sailing o er life s solemn main, 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 
 Seeing, shall take heart again." 
 
 Here we have the cry of a man who is passing away 
 from a crisis in his own life. His heart is in his words ; 
 he wrote them for himself, from himself. 1 They are full 
 of a vast hope, too, and few modern poets have given 
 utterance to so comprehensive a faith. They are in the 
 main intelligible to anybody, and applicable to the 
 life of a cow-boy or to the life of a king. And they 
 contain at least one image of the greatest originality and 
 force. It has been said that Longfellow found his simile 
 about " muffled drums " in a poem by Henry King, 
 Bishop of Chichester. Longfellow denied that he had 
 ever read the Bishop s lines, and he is to be believed. 
 His image was his own conception, and it is as perfect 
 in its solemn significance as any simile to be found 
 throughout the poetry of the world. The other striking 
 image of the poem, that of the footprints, is not nearly 
 so admirable, for it does not bear thinking about. The 
 "Psalm of Life," great poem or not, went straight to 
 the hearts of the people, and found an echoing shout in 
 their midst. From the American pulpits, right and left, 
 
 1 The lines were composed at an open window in full view of the 
 morning sun. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 79 
 
 preachers talked to the people about it, and it came to be 
 sung as a hymn in churches. How brave is the world 
 after all ! Its toiling multitudes gladly take for their own 
 a song that promises no rest, but only cheers^them on to 
 be up and doing, with a heart for any fate. 
 
 The " Psalm " was first published but anonymously 
 in The Knickerbocker Magazine, in the autumn of 1838. 
 The astonishing degree to which it was copied and 
 circulated everywhere at last caused Mr. Owen, a book 
 seller in Cambridge, to ask the writer whether he was 
 not afraid that his claim to be the author might be 
 challenged. Longfellow was perhaps little afraid of this ; 
 but at any rate he promised to republish the poem, 
 together with a few other pieces, as his own ; and this 
 little collection appeared in 1839, with the title of 
 "Voices of the Night." In addition to some trans 
 lations and the " Early Poems " mentioned already in 
 another chapter, "Voices of the Night" included 
 the " Prelude," " Hymn to the Night," " A Psalm of 
 Life," " The Reaper and the Flowers," " The Light of 
 Stars," "Footsteps of Angels," "Flowers," "The 
 Beleaguered City," and " Midnight Mass for the Dying 
 Year." Most of these pieces had originally appeared in 
 The Knickerbocker Magazine. The " Prelude " was new. 
 Here there is just a hint of Keatsian melody, though 
 Keats s rich and subtle harmonies are wanting. 
 
 " Beneath some patriarchal tree 
 
 I lay upon the ground ; 
 His hoary arms uplifted he, 
 And all the broad leaves over me 
 Clapped their little hands in glee, 
 With one continuous sound ; 
 
80 LIFE OF 
 
 A slumberous sound, a sound that brings 
 The feelings of a dream, 
 
 As of innumerable wings ; 
 
 As, when a bell no longer swings, 
 
 Faint the hollow murmur rings 
 O er meadow, lake, and stream. 
 
 The green trees whispered low and mild ; 
 
 It was a sound of joy 1 
 They were my playmates when a child, 
 And rocked me in their arms so wild I 
 Still they looked at me and smiled, 
 
 As if I were a boy ; 
 
 And ever whispered, mild and low, 
 * Come, be a child once more ! 
 
 And waved their long arms to and fro, 
 
 And beckoned solemnly and slow ; 
 
 Oh, I could not choose but go 
 Into the woodlands hoar ; 
 
 ^ Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be, 
 
 Not mountains capped with snow, 
 Nor forests sounding like the sea, 
 Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly, 
 Where the woodlands bend to see 
 The bending heavens below. 
 
 # * * # 
 
 Look, then, into thine heart, and write ! 
 
 Yes, into Life s deep stream 1 
 All forms of sorrow and delight, 
 All solemn Voices of the Night, 
 That can soothe thee, or affright- 
 Be these henceforth thy theme. " 
 
 This was a plain declaration of the mission to which 
 
LONGFELLOW. 81 
 
 the poet thought himself called. "The Hymn to the 
 Night" is remarkable, not only for the effective alterna 
 tion of pentameter and trimeter lines, but for these 
 memorable verses : 
 
 " From the cool cisterns of the midnight air 
 
 My spirit drinks repose ; " 
 And 
 
 " Thou layest thy ringer on the lips of Care, 
 
 And they complain no more." 
 
 " Footsteps of Angels " is probably the most successful 
 domestic poem ever penned. Simple enough, each line ; 
 short enough it is, in all. Yet it hints at a day s labour 
 ended, at the consequent emergence of the inner self, at 
 the comforts of a very homely home, at thoughts of those 
 long departed from share in our joys, at marriage, at 
 sudden bereavement, at the lessons of comfort that even 
 death brings. Each of these skilfully-touched themes has 
 enough interest in it to make a poem, for all are sub 
 jects on which every human being has sacred and tender 
 and hidden comments to make within his or her heart. 
 By the exhibition of such intuitive sympathies was it 
 that Longfellow at once leapt into popular affection. 
 "The Beleaguered City" throughout its first portion 
 reads just like a ballad of Uhland s. Its second portion 
 evolves its moral too completely ; with the first verse the 
 mind gathers it all, and the subsequent verses conse 
 quently lose effect. It must be confessed that only a 
 strong stomach for sentimentality can stand " The 
 Reaper and the Flowers," for the metaphor is danger 
 ously hazy. " L Envoi " has no particular merit, and 
 
 6 
 
82 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
 the " Midnight Mass for the Dying Year " cannot be 
 termed original, saving in its minor imaginative touches. 
 Of these it has several that are truly excellent : 
 
 " The hooded clouds, like friars, 
 
 Tell their beads like drops of rain " 
 
 The sense of a pun in the next line perhaps destroys its 
 effect : 
 
 " And patter their doleful prayers." 
 
 " Howl ! howl ! and from the forest 
 
 Sweep the red leaves away ! 
 Would the sins that thou abhorrest, 
 O Soul ! could thus decay, 
 And be swept away ! " 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WHILE these poems were being thrown off for The 
 Knickerbocker Magazine^ a more solid literary 
 labour had also been advancing. Throughout the winter 
 of 1838-39 the various chapters of "Hyperion" had 
 been growing under Longfellow s pen, and they served 
 three functions ; they were the means by which 
 their author made a careful bid for the position of 
 America s best writer of prose, but they also drew from 
 his mind many of his sorrows, causing them to die in 
 expression, and they hinted a great hope that lay in 
 his heart without having anything to do directly with 
 his intellectual aspirations. 
 
 " I have written a Romance during this past year. 
 The feelings of the book are true; the events of the 
 story mostly fictitious. The heroine, of course, bears a 
 resemblance to the lady, without being an exact portrait. 
 There is no betrayal of confidence, no real scene de 
 scribed. * Hyperion is the name of the book, not of 
 the hero. It merely indicates that here is the life of one 
 who in his feelings and purposes is a son of Heaven and 
 Earth, and who, though obscured by clouds, yet moves 
 on high. Further than this the name has nothing to do 
 
84 LIFE OF 
 
 with the book, and in fact is mentioned only once in the 
 course of it. I expect to be mightily abused. People 
 will say that I am the hero of my own romance, and 
 compare myself to the sun, to Hyperion Apollo. This 
 is not so. I wish only to embody certain feelings which 
 are mine, not to magnify myself. I do not care for 
 abuse, if it is real, manly, hearty abuse. All that I fear 
 is the laudatur et alget, the damnation of faint praise ; 
 that I hope to avoid, this time." 
 
 So wrote Longfellow to his friend Greene. The book 
 appeared two or three months before " Voices of the 
 Night," but it really inaugurated so completely an epoch 
 in his life, that it is fit to consider it at the beginning 
 of a new chapter. The first thing to notice regarding the 
 book is that, despite the author s assurances to Greene, 
 there never was another work of the kind in which the 
 matter was so plainly autobiographical. Paul Flemming, 
 the hero, is Longfellow the widower, in thought, word, and 
 deed. Mary Ashburton, the heroine, is Frances Apple- 
 ton, and a faithful portrait of that lady, as every friend of 
 subject and limner has testified. Here a candid critic 
 must feel compelled to remark that the secret purpose of 
 " Hyperion " the wooing of Miss Appleton was gone 
 about thus publicly with some appearance of indelicacy. 
 We have seen that Longfellow parted from Miss Apple- 
 ton in Switzerland, without any word of formal courtship 
 having passed between them. At Boston they had met 
 subsequently; but still the poet had feared to "put 
 it to the touch." In " Hyperion " he heaped up the 
 treasures of his mind before this fair fellow-traveller; 
 in a thousand suggestive ways he dealt with scenes and 
 
LONGFELLOW. 65 
 
 incidents through which they had passed together (these 
 scenes and incidents form the core of the book), and 
 then brought the story to an end by displaying the en 
 deavours of Paul Flemming to forget a woman whom he 
 reverenced as a saint, and loved more than a saint, 
 while she appeared to pass away from him free in her 
 maiden meditations. Who among the friends with any 
 knowledge of Longfellow s travels and fellow-travellers 
 in Switzerland could fail to read between the lines ? 
 Had the experiment thus made with a singular boldness 
 failed, " Hyperion " would have been the source of 
 life-long embarrassment to two persons at least. 
 
 So much as this needs to be said about the main thread 
 of interest in the book. Of course there is a great deal of 
 colour distributed throughout it that comes entirely from 
 Longfellow s imagination, and in particular the translations 
 of German songs, the criticisms on Jean Paul Richter and 
 other German authors in the Rhenish part of the travel- 
 story were not only beautiful in themselves, but abso 
 lutely a new kind of literature to America. At once 
 " Hyperion " set hundreds of readers a-dreaming of plea 
 sant wanderings by the song-haunted German rivers, or 
 in the "Valley of Fountains," where Mary s eyes used 
 sometimes to dim with repressed tears, while Paul Flem 
 ming read to her. Every summer, " Hyperion " becomes 
 a Bible to tourists of many nations. Its pictures of the 
 old home of Gothic chivalry, its spiritual sentimentality 
 Jean Paul clarified and diluted these made a new birth 
 in America ; Romance was in the air for the first time. 
 
 The prose of these chapters, as prose, is faulty. Its 
 gush is fuller and sublimer than that of Lytton s " Pilgrims 
 
86 LIFE OF 
 
 of the Rhine," but with all its learning it is curiously 
 young. The book s aim was to do in America for Central 
 Europe what Washington Irving had done for England 
 and for Italy. This it did and more, for its sympathies 
 with lofty thinkers were deeper than living s could have 
 been. But Irving s "Sketch Book" gave birth to a style ; 
 Longfellow s prose style has never been copied by any 
 considerable writer. Its redundant imagery is, for one 
 thing, as far from the achievement of poor writers as it 
 is likely to be avoided by writers who are purists in 
 style. But apart from this imagery, the book repels 
 robust minds by constantly verging on mawkishness. 
 Had Longfellow written only "Hyperion," we should 
 have suspected him of being a man with a tendency 
 to paw his friends; a man who lacked fist and grip. 
 
 " Hyperion " lends itself peculiarly to illustration by 
 extracts ; in this process the cloying effect of reading 
 chapter after chapter is not felt. Here we have the 
 sketch of Paul Flemming : 
 
 " The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the 
 sun. The brightness of our life is gone. Shadows of 
 evening fall around us, and the world seems but a dim 
 reflection, itself a broader shadow. We look forward 
 into the coming lonely night. The soul withdraws into 
 itself. Then stars arise, and the night is holy. 
 
 "Paul Flemming had experienced this, though still 
 young. The friend of his youth was dead. The bough 
 had broken under the burden of the unripe fruit. And 
 when, after a season, he looked up again from the blind 
 ness of his sorrow, all things seemed unreal. Like the 
 
LONGFELLOW. 87 
 
 man whose sight had been restored by miracle, he 
 beheld men, as trees, walking. His household gods 
 were broken. He had no home. His sympathies cried 
 aloud from his desolate soul, and there came no answer 
 from the busy, turbulent world around him. He did not 
 willingly give way to grief. He struggled to be cheerful, 
 to be strong. But he could no longer look into the 
 familiar faces of his friends. He could no longer live 
 alone where he had lived with her. He went abroad, that 
 the sea might be between him and the grave. Alas ! 
 betweenjhim and his sorrow there could be no sea but 
 that of time." 
 
 Mr. Appleton is drawn as Mr. Berkley : 
 
 " Mr. Berkley was an Englishman of fortune ; a good- 
 humoured, humane old bachelor ; remarkable alike for 
 his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, 
 the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, 
 trodden down and smoothed by education ; but this level 
 groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a 
 dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. 
 His ruling passion was cold-bathing ; and he usually ate 
 his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a 
 newspaper. He kissed every child he met ; and to every 
 old man said, in passing, God bless you ! with such an 
 expression of voice and countenance, that no one could 
 doubt his sincerity. He reminded one of Roger Bon- 
 temps, or the Little Man in Gray, though with a 
 difference." 
 
 Then ccmes the softly radiant heroine : 
 
88 LIFE OF 
 
 " Presently a female figure, clothed in black, entered 
 the room and sat down by the window. She rather 
 listened to the conversation than joined in it ; but the few 
 words she said were spoken in a voice so musical and full 
 of soul, that it moved the soul of Flemming, like a whis 
 per from heaven. 
 
 " Oh, how wonderful is the human voice ! It is indeed 
 the organ of the soul ! The intellect of man sits enthroned 
 visibly upon his forehead and in his eye ; and the heart 
 of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul 
 reveals itself in the voice only ; as God revealed Himself 
 to the prophet of old in the still, small voice, and in a 
 voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, 
 not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the 
 eternal fountain, invisible to man ! 
 
 " Flemming would fain have sat and listened for hours 
 to the sound of that unknown voice. He felt sure, in his 
 secret heart, that the being from whom it came was beau 
 tiful. His imagination filled up the faint outline which 
 the eye beheld in the fading twilight, and the figure stood 
 already in his mind like Raphael s beautiful Madonna in 
 the Dresden Gallery. He was never more mistaken in his 
 life. The voice belonged to a beautiful being, it is true > 
 but her beauty was different from that of any Madonna 
 which Raphael ever painted j as he would have seen, had 
 he waited till the lamps were lighted. But in the midst 
 of his reverie and saint-painting, the landlord came in, and 
 told him he had found a chamber, which he begged him 
 to go and look at. 
 
 * * # * * # 
 
 " Mary Ashburton was in her twentieth summer. Like 
 
LONGFELLOW. 89 
 
 the fair maiden Amoret, she was sitting in the lap of 
 womanhood. They did her wrong who said she was not 
 beautiful ; and yet 
 
 1 She was not fair, 
 Nor beautiful ; those words express her not. 
 But, oh, her looks had something excellent, 
 That wants a name ! 
 
 \\ , /* -*> 
 
 " Her face had a wonderful fascination in it. It was 
 such a calm, quiet face, with the light of the rising soul 
 shining so peacefully through it. At times it wore an 
 expression of seriousness of sorrow even: and then 
 seemed to make the very air bright with what the Italian 
 poets so beautifully call the lampeggiar dell 1 angelica riso 
 the lightning of the angelic smile. 
 
 "And, oh, those eyes those deep unutterable eyes, 
 with down-falling eyelids, full of dreams and slumber, 
 and within them a cold, living light, as in mountain lakes 
 at evening, or in the river of Paradise, for ever gliding, 
 
 With a brown, brown current, 
 Under the shade perpetual, that never 
 Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon. 
 
 " I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only 
 are beautiful, which, like the planets, have a steady lam 
 bent light are luminous but not sparkling. Such eyes 
 the Greek poets give to the Immortals. 
 
 " The lady s figure was striking. Every step, every atti 
 tude was graceful and yet lofty, as if inspired by the soul 
 within. Angels in the old poetic philosophy have such 
 forms ; it was the soul itself imprinted on the air. And 
 what a soul was hers ! A temple dedicated to Heaven, 
 
90 LIFE OF 
 
 and, like the Pantheon at Rome, lighted only from above. 
 And earthly passions in the form of gods were no longer 
 there, but the sweet and thoughtful faces of Christ, and 
 the Virgin Mary and the Saints. Thus there was not one 
 discordant thing in her; but a perfect harmony of figure, 
 and face, and soul in a word, of the whole being. And 
 he who had a soul to comprehend hers must of necessity 
 love her, and having once loved her, could love no other 
 woman for evermore. 
 
 " No wonder, then, that Flemming felt his heart drawn 
 towards her, as, in her morning walk, she passed him, 
 sitting alone under the great walnut-trees near the cloister, 
 and thinking of heaven, but not of her. She, too, was 
 alone. Her cheek was no longer pale ; but glowing and 
 bright, with the inspiration of the summer air. Flemming 
 gazed after her till she disappeared, even as a vision of his 
 dreams, he knew not whither. He was not yet in love, 
 but very near it ; for he thanked God that He had made 
 such beautiful beings to walk the earth." 
 
 As specimens of the many happily-sententious paragraphs 
 that are strewed through the book, we may quote the 
 following, the first of which was probably meant for 
 Emerson 1 : 
 
 1 Emerson and Longfellow always admired each other ; but, I 
 suspect, only half-heartedly, although with every outward sign of cour 
 teous regard. An entry in Longfellow s diary runs as follows : 
 
 " March 8th, 1838. This evening Emerson lectured on the 
 Affections ; a good lecture. He mistakes his power somewhat, and 
 at times speaks in oracles, darkly. He is vastly more of a poet 
 than a philosopher. He has a brilliant mind, and develops and 
 expands an idea very beautifully, and with abundant similitudes and 
 
LONGFELLOW. 91 
 
 " There are many speculations in literature, philosophy, 
 and religion, which, though pleasant to walk in, and lying 
 under the shadow of great names, yet lead to no impor 
 tant result. They resemble rather those roads in the 
 Western forests of my native land, which, though broad 
 and pleasant at first, and lying beneath the shadow of 
 great branches, finally dwindle to a squirrel track, and 
 run up a tree ! 
 
 " Remember that the secret studies of an author are 
 the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his 
 fame, spanning the dark waters of Oblivion. They are 
 out of sight ; but without them no superstructure can 
 stand secure ! " 
 
 So much for "Hyperion" a work of. prose fiction 
 that presents a curious contrast to Foe s minutely- 
 constructed, Defoe-like story then a year old "The 
 Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym." It also contrasts 
 forcibly with Nathaniel Hawthorne s first series of 
 "Twice-Told Tales." The "Twice-Told Tales" are, of 
 course, as objective in their treatment as " Hyperion " 
 is subjective : for Hawthorne always worked objectively. 
 In learning and many-sidedness of human sympathy, 
 Hawthorne was no match for Longfellow ; to the glitter 
 and the " sickness of verbal melody," that crept into the 
 poet s prose, the more professed teller of tales opposed an 
 imagination that expressed itself in simple sentences where 
 every word was husbanded for its direct effect in organi- 
 
 illustrations. Jeremiah Mason said a sharp thing the other day, 
 when asked whether he could understand Mr. Emerson. His 
 answer was, No, /can t, but my daughters can. " 
 
92 LIFE Of 
 
 cally developing the central idea of each romance. The 
 pleasantries of Irving s prose, and the half-matured enthu 
 siasm of Longfellow s, will fade away long before Haw 
 thorne s beautifully-structured writings have suffered any 
 decay. Dunce at Bowdoin College Hawthorne may have 
 been, as Walter Scott was called dunce at the High School 
 of Edinburgh ; but judged, not as a motive power for gooc 
 or evil in the common world judged, purely as an art- 
 creation, by the few who care only to regard works of 
 literature as works of art "The Scarlet Letter" must 
 be held above all other achievements whatsoever in the 
 history of American prose and poetry. 
 
 In this same year of 1839, we find still other work 
 coming from Longfellow s active brain. On May 24th, 
 his diary entry is as follows : " Told Felton of my plan 
 of a heroic poem on the Discovery of America by the 
 Northmen, in which the Round Tower at Newport and 
 the Skeleton in Armour have a part to play. The more 
 I think of it, the more I like it." This entry seems to 
 indicate his contemplation of an epic ; but a good ballad 
 was what came of the idea. It is worth mention that 
 this Round Tower at Newport is a curious building, 
 called by many generations of settlers the Old Windmill 
 (it certainly does not look like a windmill), but now 
 declared by some archaeologists to be the work of the 
 early Danes ! 
 
 Again we find in the diary : 
 
 11 1 have broken ground in a new field ; namely, 
 ballads ; beginning with the Wreck of the Schooner 
 Hesperus? on the reef of Norman s Woe, in the great 
 
LONGFELLOW. 93 
 
 storm of a fortnight ago. I shall send it to some news 
 paper. I think I shall write more. The national ballad 
 is a virgin soil here in New England ; and there are great 
 materials. Besides, I have a great notion of working 
 upon the people s feelings. I am going to have it printed 
 on a sheet, with a coarse picture on it. I desire a new 
 sensation and a new set of critics. Nat. Hawthorne is 
 tickled with the idea. Felton laughs and says, I 
 wouldn t. " 
 
 This rough edition of the famous ballad was not put 
 in hand. Norman s Woe is a forbidding mass of rock, 
 standing out in the sea not far from Gloucester. On this 
 rock, towards the close of the year as Longfellow read 
 in the newspapers a schooner called the Hesperus went 
 to pieces. Not long after the event, the poet conceived 
 the notion of writing a ballad on the subject, and rising 
 from the fireside, he began and completed the poem the 
 same night. It was printed in The New World, January, 
 1840 ; and the author received twenty-five dollars for it. 
 
 There is one form of poetry with regard to which the 
 popular taste is unerring, and that is the ballad. A man 
 who writes a ballad writes it for a nation, and if his 
 nation will not adopt it, it is not a good ballad, though it 
 may still possess poetical merit. Many a so-called ballad 
 is so loaded with poetic work, and evolves a theme so 
 subtle, that it does not catch the rough imagination of the 
 public; but a real ballad, written for the people, about 
 deeds prompted by simple, strong motives, may be as 
 bald as the author pleases ; provided it has the sap of 
 human nature in it, it will succeed. Longfellow felt all 
 
94 LIFE OF 
 
 this thoroughly when he commenced making his ballads, 
 and therefore he succeeded gloriously. Rossetti, in 
 England here, and in our own day, was an example 
 of a poet trying earnestly to attain the strength of the 
 antique ballad, not only in the swing and occasional jolt 
 of the metre, but in the hewing of flinty phrases that 
 strike sparks. But, with all his genius, he missed the 
 adequately simple and strong motives ; and his beautiful 
 " Stratton Water " will satisfy the lusty multitude as little 
 as most of Longfellow s sonnets satisfy those whose ears 
 are attuned to the earnest harmonies of the great sonnet- 
 writers like Rossetti himself. The poet who is to 
 make the people s ballads must forget to be subtle ; he 
 must come out of his study and stand with Sir Philip 
 Sidney in the crowded street, and there compose those 
 songs that sound like a trumpet. This reliance on 
 universal sympathies was unerring in Longfellow. He 
 adopted the ding-dong manner deliberately, and it 
 achieved its purpose. It is scarcely necessary to remark 
 that in addition to meeting the demand for strong 
 motive and swift action, Longfellow s best ballads are 
 adorned by felicities of descriptive and other imaginative 
 diction that by themselves are poetry. Take this in 
 " The Wreck of the Hesperus " : 
 
 " Colder and louder blew the wind, 
 
 A gale from the north-east ; 
 The snow fell hissing in the brine, 
 And the billows frothed like yeast. 
 
 Down came the storm, and smote amain 
 
 The vessel in its strength ; 
 She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, 
 
 Then leaped her cable s length." 
 
LONGFELLOW. 95 
 
 What poet of the age could have described a ship in a 
 storm better than this ? Or has any writer of any age 
 described the subject better ? 
 Scarcely less perfect is the verse : 
 
 " The breakers were right beneath her bows, *\ 
 
 She drifted a dreary wreck, 
 And a whooping billow swept the crew 
 Like icicles from her deck." 
 
 We are conscious of but one disturbing fault of art 
 in this splendid ballad the similes are too frequent ; 
 the word " like " becomes wearisome. Edgar Allan Poe 
 was possibly right, also, in objecting to the freezing of 
 salt tears in the girl s eyes. 
 
 "The Wreck of the Hesperus" was republished in 
 1841, along with some other poems of the same kind, 
 collected under the title of " Ballads and Other Poems," 
 and this volume contained " Excelsior." It is idle to 
 point out faults in this poem : the world has adopted it, 
 faults notwithstanding. If I may express my thoughts on 
 the matter plainly, I must say that I grudge the piece its 
 success, and wish it had never been written. The opinion 
 has been advanced that the public are the best judges 
 of a ballad ; but " Excelsior " is not a ballad. A ballad 
 deals with doings or sufferings of real men, women, or 
 children or supernatural beings worked by human 
 passions and about such doings and sufferings, if these 
 are fit for a ballad, and appeal to elementary emotions, 
 the common people are competent to judge. But in 
 " Excelsior " we have for hero a cranky lad who is not 
 flesh, fish, fowl, or spirit. Were he of human flesh, his 
 
96 LIFE OF 
 
 madcap notion of scaling a mountain with the purpose of 
 getting to the sky would be simply drivelling lunacy, and 
 if he did undertake his Alpine climb, it would be difficult 
 for him to select any peak, on the slopes of which he 
 would be likely to encounter so much good company. 
 De Quincey somewhere relates that a young genius once 
 climbed to the summit of Skiddaw, and there lay down 
 with his face to the sky, and expired, by mere act of 
 will. This was a demented boy who at least knew 
 what he was about to do ; but Longfellow s boy would 
 be fairly brought to a standstill on the summit. It 
 would be absurd to suppose him a spirit instead of flesh 
 and blood, for no spirit would be so silly as climb a 
 snowy mountain for nothing. This kind of criticism may 
 seem puerile ; but it is the fundamental conception of 
 the figure in " Excelsior " that is really a puerility ; and 
 save in the second-last line of the poem, there is not 
 throughout the piece a touch of Longfellow s higher ima 
 gination. To speak of the oft-condemned Latinity of " Ex 
 celsior " for "Excelsius " is superfluous ; but few are aware 
 that Longfellow s classical scholarship was so weak as to 
 admit of his trying to justify what might have passed for 
 a slip ; and therefore this curious passage may be cited 
 from a letter to Mr. H. T. Tuckerman : " You will per 
 ceive that c Excelsior, an adjective of the comparative 
 degree, is used adverbially a use justified by the best 
 Latin writers." By and by, finding that this statement 
 probably taken upon hearsay from insufficient authority 
 could not be defended, the poet reverted to the more 
 scholarly but far-fetched explanation, that an ellipsis might 
 be supposed, the full phrase being "Scopus meus Excelsior 
 
LONGFELLOW. 9? 
 
 ?/.* The history of the poem is the best explanation, 
 however. The poet one night, after a party, took up 
 a New York newspaper bearing the seal of the New 
 York State a shield, with a rising sun, and the motto 
 " Excelsior." At once he conceived the idea of his 
 poem, and adopting the motto with no regard for any 
 thing but its suggestiveness, jotted a draft of his lines 
 on the back of a letter from Charles Sumner. Once the 
 objectionable word had got into the public s mouth, the 
 author did not consider it worth while to try and change 
 it. And so, imperfect as it is, the poem has circulated 
 round the world, and will probably so circulate in future 
 ages, a hymn of aspiration, as " Footsteps of Angels " 
 is a hymn of patience. There are not wanting men of 
 critical culture who admire it. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 declares " Excelsior " to be Longfellow s greatest poem. 
 It would be wrong not to mention specially that 
 "The Village Blacksmith," that glad full-voiced song 
 of brawny arm and honest toil, first saw the light in 
 "Ballads and Other Poems." The "village smithy" 
 stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge. There came a time 
 when the chestnut tree that shaded it was cut down, 
 and then the children of the place put their pence together 
 and had a chair made for the poet from its wood. The 
 " Other Poems " included " Maidenhood," a study of 
 life that developes subtle suggestions we might have 
 looked for from Wordsworth rather than from Longfellow, 
 although the mere phraseology is not like that of him 
 who sang of the Maid of Dove. A clergyman in 
 the States once preached a sermon from this poem, 
 and told of a strange student of " Maidenhood." 
 
 7 
 
98 LIFE OF LONGFELLO W. 
 
 This was a poor lone woman, dwelling in a hut that 
 stood in a bare tract of the North-West. From an 
 illustrated paper she had cut a picture of a young 
 girl and pasted it on her wall. Longfellow s poem was 
 printed below it. There day by day, as she stood at 
 her bread-making or her washing, she gazed at the 
 young face, pondering the words of the poet until both 
 face and poem worked themselves into her nature. 
 When the clergyman happened to call at her cabin, and 
 noticed the humble attempt at decoration, the old 
 woman was able to talk of "Maidenhood," and draw 
 from it such meanings as astonished the visitor ami sent 
 him home with keener views into life s beauties. This 
 story typifies the relation of Longfellow to humble 
 
 \ readers all over the world, and such a relation is his chief 
 
 \glory. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ABOUT the time when " Ballads and Other Poems " 
 appeared, the transcendental movement of the 
 Practical Christians was stirring men s minds in America. 
 The Brook Farm community was the result of this odd 
 revival, and although Emerson and Alcott and Margaret 
 duller did not join Brook Farm, they had been answer- 
 ible for much of the spirit which prompted this experi 
 ment in Christian socialism. Longfellow, however, once 
 nore exhibited his thorough caution and sagacity by 
 molding absolutely aloof from the movement, and while 
 nost men talked for or against the transcendentalists 
 vith curiosity and vigour, he was as little affected by trans. 
 :endentalism as Keats was by the inchoate Hegelian ism 
 vhich Coleridge introduced to England from Germany. 
 
 The Slave Question, likewise, arose about this period of 
 he poet s life ; and it is not improbable that, if left to his 
 i\vn judgment, the poet would have avoided utterance on 
 his subject also. He was generous and upright, with / 
 he quickest sympathies for good ; but his temperament / 
 ras not heroic. He could never have gone to the 
 latform with Lloyd Garrison and Channing to speak in 
 le face of prejudiced multitudes because he must. The 
 
100 LIFE OF 
 
 voices of friends implored him to use his powerful 
 pen and plead for human brotherhood as a poet should, 
 and he took the matter into his thoughts. Meanwhile, 
 he was ordered away to Europe to undergo a cure for 
 nothing more serious than nervous exhaustion at the 
 baths of Marienberg, and after a pleasant, healthful rest 
 in Germany, he crossed the English Channel, to visit 
 Dickens. The following letter tells its own story : 
 
 BROADSTAIRS, KENT, September 28, 1842. 
 
 " MY DEAR LONGFELLOW, How stands it about your 
 visit, do you say ? Thus : your bed is waiting to be 
 slept in ; the door is gaping hospitably to receive you. I 
 am ready to spring towards it with open arms at the 
 first indication of a Longfellow knock or ring. And the 
 door, the bed, I, and everybody else who is in the secret, 
 have been expecting you for the last month. 
 
 " The states of mind that I have undergone and all 
 along of you since I have been down here, a term of 
 nine weeks ! The imaginings I have had of the possi 
 bility of your knocking at my door in London without 
 notice, and finding nobody there but an old woman ; the 
 misgivings that have come across me of your being, suc 
 cessively, in every foreign steamer that has passed these 
 windows homeward bound, since the first of the month 
 the hideous train of fancies from which your letter has 
 relieved me, baffle description. 
 
 " The forged letter of which Felton speaks was pub 
 lished in the New York papers, with a statement that I 
 had addressed it to the editor of the London Morning 
 Chronicle, who had published it in his columns, In this 
 
LONGFELLOW. 101 
 
 production I disparaged America very much, and girded 
 at my own reception. You know what the American 
 press is ; and will be, I dare say, as little surprised at 
 this outrage as I was. Still, it exasperated me I am of 
 rather a fierce turn at times very much ; and I walked 
 about for a week or two with a vague desire to take 
 somebody by the throat and shake him, which was 
 rather feverish. 
 
 "I have decided, perhaps you know, to publish my 
 American Visit. By the time you come to me I hope 
 I shall have finished writing it. I have spoken very 
 honestly and fairly ; and I know that those in America 
 for whom I care will like me better for the book. A 
 great many people will like me infinitely the worse, and 
 make a devil of me straightway. 
 
 "Rogers is staying here, and begs me to commend 
 him to you, and to say that he has made me pledge 
 myself, on pain of non-forgiveness ever afterward, to carry 
 you to see him without loss of time when you come. 
 " Faithfully your friend, 
 
 "CHARLES DICKENS." 
 
 From Dickens s London home of English hospitality, 
 Tavistock House, the poet sent an account of himself to 
 his friend Sumner 
 
 "October 16, 1842. 
 
 "I write this from Dickens s study, the focus from 
 which so many luminous things have radiated. The 
 raven croaks from the garden, and the ceaseless roar of 
 London fills my ears. Of course, I have no time for a 
 letter, as I must run up in a few minutes to dress for 
 
102 LIFE OF 
 
 dinner. I can only tell you that I shall return in the 
 Great Western. As soon as you get this, therefore, start 
 for New York to meet me. If you cannot, send Hillard 
 or Felton or Cleveland ; or Howe, for I think he must 
 have more business with the Bible Society about this 
 time ! Somebody must come. The Great Western sails 
 from Bristol on the 22nd. Dickens goes with me to 
 Bath to dine with Landor. Mr. Rogers has just been 
 here sitting a half-hour with me. He arrived in town 
 last night. We breakfast with him on Tuesday and dine 
 with him on Wednesday. 
 
 " I am so excited about starting for home that I can 
 hardly hold this pen. I have had a most delightful visit 
 here in London. But, alas, the town is quite empty, and 
 I shall miss seeing persons whom I desire to look upon. 
 
 " I have so many, many things to say to you that I am 
 dumb. And let it go at that. I will only add, that 
 delighted as I am with London, my desire to be at home 
 again overwhelms every other. I come back with tre 
 mendous momentum ! 
 
 " I had read Dickens s book [ American Notes ]. It 
 is jovial and good-natured, and at times very severe. 
 You will read it with delight and, for the most part, 
 approbation. He has a grand chapter on Slavery. 
 Spitting and Politics at Washington are the other topics 
 of censure. Both you and I would censure them with 
 equal severity, to say the least. He gives due laud to 
 the New York oysters for thy dear sake, heartiest of 
 Greek professors ; and says of Howe, There are 
 not many persons, I hope and believe, who after reading 
 these pages can ever hear that name with indifference. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 103 
 
 "Don t fail, one or two of you. to come to New 
 Fork." 
 
 It was on the voyage homeward from England that 
 Longfellow composed his carefully polished " Poems on 
 Slavery," and these were published in 1842. Fine as 
 they are, something more powerful had been expected by 
 his friends. They lack the argumentative earnestness 
 of Whittier s slave poems, and, compared with young 
 Lowell s rapier-like wit, they were but as tin swords against 
 the South. We still read with a sickening feeling of 
 horror that description in "The Quadroon Girl" of the 
 old man selling his own flesh and blood to wealthy Lust ; 
 but Abolitionist orators had been dinning this kind of 
 incident into the people s ears right and left, and after 
 their perfervid accounts, bristling with circumstances 
 and names, the poem seemed almost a commonplace. 
 The very fact, however, that Longfellow treated his 
 subject with a touch of this artistic coolness, enabled him 
 to omit from his " Poems of Slavery " the accidentals 
 that will tend, in generations that have their own 
 problems of social oppression to study, to obscure the 
 merits of both Whittier s and Lowell s poetry. 
 
 So perhaps the most enduringly touching picture of 
 slavery the literature of the time bequeaths to posterity 
 will be found in the lines wherein the slave lies, over 
 come with fatigue, amid the ungathered rice, and dreams 
 of happiness in youth, until his spirit is freed and the 
 lifeless body lies 
 
 " A worn-out fetter, that the soul 
 Had broken and thrown away ! " 
 
104 LIFE OF 
 
 After the War, a number of literary men were one day 
 discussing matters of their craft. " Who is the greatest 
 poet of America ? " said one of them. " Whittier," cried 
 Horace Greeley ; and the others all assented. So much 
 had the Burns of New England quickened the already 
 fevered pulse of the North at that time. Longfellow, on 
 the whole, had lost an opportunity. 
 
 But now the poet found the real cure for his nerves. 
 His mental malady had been love, and on landing again 
 in America he sat down and wrote these words : " Of 
 late my heart has quite turned my head out of doors." 
 From the time that he had seen at Interlaken that fresh 
 American girl of nineteen whom he afterwards described 
 as Mary Ashburton, he had growingly felt again the truth 
 that is put into lines of "Hiawatha," that are twice 
 beautiful in being appropriately Indian in imagery 
 
 " As unto the bow the cord is, 
 So unto the man is woman, 
 Though she bends him, she obeys him, 
 Though she draws him, yet she follows, 
 Useless each without the other." 
 
 In fine, Longfellow felt that he must try and win 
 Frances Elizabeth Appleton for his wife; and after a 
 formal engagement, as short as their vague courtship had 
 been long, he made her his wife in the July of 1843. It 
 was not enough for this earthly-happy poet that he should 
 have had in his youth a helpmate of noticeable beauty 
 and sweetness of character ; in his maturity fortune gave 
 him a nobly-planned woman, whose qualities of mind 
 and temper were far above those of most women, rising 
 
LONGFELLOW. 105 
 
 towards the nature of her husband like flame to flame, while 
 her beauty, if we may judge from written record and the 
 testimony of existing portraits, was truly splendid, in its 
 smooth calm face of a full oval, set with those "deep, 
 unutterable eyes," of which Longfellow has sung. 
 " Hyperion " had seriously offended Miss Appleton at 
 first, and well it might have offended her ; but the com 
 bined attractions of the frank, handsome poet prevailed 
 with her at length, and he shared a perfect happiness 
 with her to the end of her life. Mr. Nathan Appleton 
 did not suffer his lovely daughter to pass from him 
 undowered, and bought for the newly married pair the 
 whole of Craigie House and estate, to be their home. 
 It is not often that nature tries to spoil men of genius 
 with material luxury; so let us enjoy the spectacle of 
 this poet of thirty-six years in the bloom of hearty 
 manhood, full of the lighter graces of learning, esteemed 
 most by those who knew him best, blessed with a wife 
 for whom to work was a pride, and honoured at every 
 fireside in the land, for poems that were household words. 
 These felicities he enjoyed save one to the day of 
 his death, in a mansion surrounded with natural beauty, 
 and replete with comforts, while after his second union 
 all care about money fell away from him for ever. It 
 seemed in that year 1843 as if the blessings he had 
 spread among the homes of his people had returned 
 upon his own abode with the fulness of peace and 
 comfort. 
 
 In the year of his second marriage, Longfellow pub 
 lished a dramatic poem on which he had long been 
 engaged" The Spanish Student." The theme of this 
 
106 LIFE OF 
 
 play was taken from " La Gitanella," of Cervantes, 
 and was brought into his mind by the furore Fanny 
 Elssler was creating in America by her dancing that 
 Fanny Elssler whom Mrs. Grote endeavoured to tame 
 into respectability. Preciosa, the Spanish Gipsy, is the 
 daughter of a don, from whom she is stolen in infancy 
 by the Romany folk. One of these people, Cruzado, 
 educates her as a dancer, and destines her to marry 
 another Gipsy, called Bartolome. Preciosa, however, is 
 not very old before she meets and loves Victorian, a 
 student, who at the time of the play s opening is a 
 student of Alcala, and betrothed by his father to an 
 heiress in Madrid. Victorian loves Preciosa madly, and 
 one night after she has danced at the theatre, goes to her 
 home to talk with her, but there finds the Count de Lara, 
 a rascally noble, who has made his way in by shameful 
 strategy. A duel takes place as the result of this dis 
 covery, and Victorian spares the Count his life when it is 
 at his mercy. The Count now pretends frank friendship, 
 tells Victorian of favours he has received from Preciosa, 
 and produces a ring as a gift from the dancer. Victorian 
 recognizes it, he thinks, as a keepsake he himself had 
 given Preciosa, although in reality it is a duplicate of it. 
 Shortly afterwards, Bartolome kills the Count, when this 
 worthy is again forcing the apartment of the dancer at 
 night ; and then Victorian, who has gone away on dis 
 consolate wanderings, hears by letter that he was deceived 
 by the Count, and that Preciosa has left the stage and is 
 wandering again with the Gipsies. He searches for her, 
 and, finding her, observes the ring still on her finger, as 
 it ever had been. He would buy it, but nothing will 
 
LONGFELLOW. 107 
 
 tempt her to part with it, and a court messenger then 
 comes on the scene to announce the real parentage of 
 Preciosa, and invite her to visit her father at Madrid. 
 Towards Madrid she joyfully returns with her lover, and 
 on the way Bartolome jealously fires his gun at the girl, 
 and is killed by a return shot from the student. 
 
 The plot is not in itself strong, and Longfellow s was 
 not the genius to strengthen it in the working of it out. 
 A story, of which the central figure is a beautiful Spanish 
 stage-dancer, with all the rich disreputables at her feet, 
 but giddily enamoured of a student, should abound in 
 passion. But there was no passion in Longfellow s 
 nature. He made the whole thing not an acting play at 
 all, not a study of deep emotions, but a pretty drawing- 
 room piece, with nice descriptions and a song or two. 
 To run over the mere names of the dramatis personce is 
 to see how little grit the poet was able to put into this 
 kind of writing : Victorian, Hypolito, the Count of Lara, 
 Don Carlos, the Archbishop of Toledo, a Cardinal, 
 Beltran Cruzado, Bartolome Roman, the Padre Cura of 
 Guadarrama, Pedro Crespo, Pancho, Francisco, Chispa, 
 Baltasar, Preciosa, Angelica, Martina, Dolores. The 
 women are the weakest of all. Oh, for a good scowling 
 name among all these ! Any one who has read the slight 
 summary of the story just given, will understand that the 
 most delicate point to manage is the procuring of the 
 counterfeit ring. How does Longfellow s dramatic in 
 genuity serve him here ? We are to suppose the servant of 
 the Count of Lara, Francisco, just entered to his master 
 
 "Well, Francisco, 
 What speed with Preciosa ? 
 
108 LIFE OF 
 
 Fran. None, my lord. 
 
 She sends your jewels back, and bids me tell you 
 She is not to be purchased by your gold. 
 
 Lara. Then I will try some other way to win her. 
 Pray, dost thou know Victorian ? 
 
 Fran. Yes, my lord, 
 
 I saw him at the jeweller s to-day. 
 
 Lara. What was he doing there ? 
 
 Fran. I saw him buy 
 
 A golden ring that had a ruby in it. 
 
 Lara. Was there another like it ? 
 
 Fran. One so like it 
 
 I could not choose between them. 
 
 Lara. It is well. 
 
 To-morrow morning bring that ring to me. 
 Do not forget. Now light me to my bed," 
 
 How little ingenious is this cheap and obvious artifice ! 
 Yet it must be confessed that at the close of the play 
 Bartolome is got rid of in a rather skilful manner 
 
 [A pause. Then enter BARTOLOME wildly, as if in pursuit, with a carbine in 
 his hand.] 
 
 Bart. They pass this way ! I hear their horses hoofs 1 
 Yonder I see them ! Come, sweet caramillo, 
 This serenade shall be the Gipsy s last ! 
 
 [Fires down the pass.] 
 
 Ha ! ha ! Well whistled, my sweet caramillo ! 
 Well whistled ! I have missed her ! O my God ! 
 
 [The shot is returned. BARTOLOME falls.] 
 
 Chispa is far the most natural character in the play. He 
 is Victorian s servant, a laughing, lazy, good fellow, with 
 a little of Touchstone about him. He is so perfect in 
 contrast to the other figures of the play, in point of being 
 
LONGFELLOW. 109 
 
 life-like, and Longfellow s bent lay so little in the 
 humorous direction, that one suspects his prototype to 
 exist in some Spanish play. Even if Lope or Calderon 
 did not father him, he is certainly cousin to a far finer 
 fellow Sancho Panza. Preciosa is a modest little minx, 
 but we have to take all her charms for granted. She 
 says nothing remarkable. Victorian is too sententious for 
 a lover. Is this the kind of thing he should climb up to 
 a balcony at midnight for the purpose of whispering to a 
 pretty girl ? 
 
 " Our feelings and our thoughts 
 Tend ever on, and rest not in the Present. 
 As drops of rain fall into some dark well, 
 And from below comes a scarce audible sound, 
 So fall our thoughts into the dark Hereafter, 
 And their mysterious echo reaches us," 
 
 This is not good love-making, although it is fine thought ; 
 and here we may point to the passage as one of many in 
 which Longfellow tends to dwell on futurity, at points 
 where Henry Vaughan and Wordsworth would have taken 
 up their parable about the dim past. The contrast 
 between America s poet and our English poets in this 
 particular is best noted in " To a Child." 
 
 Reverting to " The Spanish Student," we may halt for 
 a moment at a passage in which Victorian talks with a 
 fellow-student 
 
 "Hyp. . . . Hast thou e er reflected 
 How much lies hidden in that one word, now ? 
 
 Viet. Yes, all the awful mystery of Life ! 
 I oft have thought, my dear Hypolito, 
 
110 LIFE OF 
 
 That could we, by some spell of magic, change 
 
 The world and its inhabitants to stone, 
 
 In the same attitudes they now are in, 
 
 What fearful glances downward might we cast 
 
 Into the hollow chasms of human life ! 
 
 What groups should we behold about the death-bed, 
 
 Putting to shame the group of Niobe ! 
 
 What joyful welcomes, and what sad farewells ! 
 
 What stony tears in those congealed eyes ! 
 
 What visible joy or anguish in those cheeks ! 
 
 What bridal pomps, and what funereal shows ! 
 
 What foes, like gladiators, fierce and struggling ! 
 
 What lovers with their marble lips together ! " 
 
 This is a speech that comes within measurable distance 
 of being very great. A magnificent idea occurs to the 
 poet, and the method by which he thinks to wprk it out 
 is striking ; but the execution is faltering, and the result 
 a disappointment. What a theme for Shakespeare ! 
 Shakespeare would not have been content with that poor 
 phrase " the group of Niobe " j nor would he have 
 put stony tears in congealed eyes ; nor have repeated 
 ideas towards the close, although the final line of the 
 passage is one he might have written with pride. 
 
 " The Spanish Student " contains a pretty lyrical 
 nothing, beginning " Stars of the Summer Night." This 
 has been perhaps the most popular of all serenades, 
 among composers of music. There are some capital bits 
 of description strewed through the "play;" but we 
 must agree with Poe in declaring that "The Spanish 
 Student " is not a play at all. In this instance, as in 
 every case in which Longfellow attempted the construc 
 tion of a plot in acts, he continually loses control of 
 the dramatic action by lapsing into mere narrative. 
 
LONGFELLOW. Ill 
 
 The first work of importance undertaken by Longfellow 
 after his marriage had been a commission from Messrs. 
 Carey and Hart, the Philadelphia publishers, to arrange a 
 book on "The Poets and Poetry of Europe." This 
 work consists of about four hundred translations, by many 
 hands, 1 from Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, 
 German, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. 
 Some "critical introductions" were written for the col 
 lection by Longfellow, but the short biographical notice 
 prefixed to the translations from each author, was invariably 
 done by Professor Felton. Longfellow s eyesight had tem 
 porarily failed him, but the threatening trouble passed away 
 after a few weeks, during which Mrs. Longfellow discharged 
 the duties of amanuensis to her husband. " The Poets 
 and Poetry of Europe " appeared in 1845. I n November 
 of the same year we find the diary entries as full as 
 ever, and indicating almost daily activity in poetic com 
 position. 
 
 " Nov. 1 2th. Began a poem on a clock, with the words, 
 1 Forever, never as the burden ; suggested by the words 
 of Bridaine, the old French missionary, who said of 
 eternity, * C esf une pendule dont le balander dit et redit 
 sans cesse ces deux mots settlement dans le silence des tombeaux 
 Toujours, jamais ! Jamais, toujours ! Et pendant ces 
 effroyabks revolutions^ un reprouve s eerie , " Quelle heure 
 est il ? " et la voix dhm autre miserable lui rcpond, 
 
 "2 8th. Set about Gabrielle, my idyl in hexameters, 
 
 1 The greater number were drawn from the works of Bowring, 
 Herbert, Costello, Taylor, Jamison, Brooks, Adamson, Thc-rpe, 
 and Longfellow himself. 
 
112 LIFE of 
 
 in earnest. I do not mean to let a day go by without 
 adding something to it, if it be but a single line. F. and 
 Sumner are both doubtful of the measure. To me it 
 seems the only one for such a poem." 
 
 In the first of these entries we have the beginning of 
 " The Old Clock on the Stairs," a poem that describes a 
 clock on the staircase of a house in Pittsfield that 
 belonged to relatives of Mrs. Longfellow. " Gabrielle " 
 was the name first selected for the idyl ultimately 
 christened " Evangeline." 
 
 In this same year of 1845 was published " The Waif: A 
 Collection of Poems " by various writers, edited by Long 
 fellow, and prefaced by his lines now known as "The 
 Day is Done." Poe, who was furiously jealous of Long 
 fellow from first to last, accused the book of having a 
 "moral taint; . . . there does appear in the little volume 
 very careful avoidance of all American poets who may be 
 supposed especially to interfere with the claims of Mr. 
 Longfellow." Poe was not represented in the collection ; 
 and this was his new way of hinting an old charge, 
 namely, that Longfellow stole ideas from him. The 
 charge was never substantiated. Two years after " The 
 Waif," another book of a similar sort, " The Estray," 
 was compiled by our poet. 
 
 In 1846 Longfellow produced "The Belfry of Bruges 
 and Other Poems," a volume which included " The 
 Old Clock on the Stairs," as well as favourites like 
 "The Arsenal at Springfield," "Drinking Song," and 
 "The Arrow and the Song." The treatment of "The 
 Arsenal at Springfield" was suggested by Charles 
 Sumner s fine speech on "The True Grandeur of 
 
LONGFELLOW. 118 
 
 Nations." The poem owes something, also, to Mrs. 
 Longfellow, who walked round the arsenal with her 
 husband when they were on their wedding tour, and 
 startled him by remarking that the gun-barrels ranged 
 pon the walls looked like an organ for death to play. 
 
 " Ah ! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 
 When the death-angel touches those swift keys ! 
 What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
 Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! " 
 
 Ve must not forget that this solemn strain was full of 
 rophecy. 
 
 " The Arrow and the Song " is short, simple, perfect. 
 Another poet, in developing its idea, might have drawn 
 pon a larger vocabulary; but here nothing but the 
 mplest words are necessary. I think that no poet 
 ould find in this little song anything at which to 
 avil. The mingling of lyric with epigram somewhat 
 ecalls the happiest efforts of Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 THE ARROW AND THE SONG. 
 
 I SHOT an arrow into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
 Could not follow it in its flight. 
 
 I breathed a song into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where, 
 For who has sight so s keen and strong 
 That it can follow the flight of song ? 
 
 Long, long afterward, in an oak 
 I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
 And the song, from beginning to end, 
 I found again in the heart of a friend. 
 
 8 
 

 114 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
 These lines were composed while Longfellow was strolling 
 through " Norton s Woods " at Cambridge. 
 
 " To a Child," the first of the poet s studies of infancy, 
 contains oft-quoted words about Washington : 
 
 " Once, ah, once, within these walls, 
 One whom memory oft recalls, 
 The Father of his Country, dwelt. 
 And yonder meadows, broad and damp, 
 The fires of the besieging camp 
 Encircled with a burning belt. 
 Up and down those echoing stairs, 
 Heavy with the weight of cares, 
 Sounded his majestic tread ; 
 Yes, within this very room 
 Sat he in those hours of gloom, 
 Weary both in heart and head." 
 
 In "Rain in Summer" an eye that dilates less in 
 excitement than Walt Whitman s, nevertheless looks upon 
 nature, for once, after the manner of that earth-intoxicated 
 rhapsodist. Yet the passage least like Whitman is the 
 best 
 
 " These, and far more than these, 
 The Poet sees ! 
 He can behold 
 Aquarius old 
 
 Walking the fenceless fields of air, 
 And from each ample fold 
 Of the clouds about him rolled 
 Scattering everywhere 
 The showery rain, 
 As the farmer scatters his grain." 
 
 This is not Whitman, but Wordsworth. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHAT should it be called? "Gabrielle," or 
 " Celestine," or " Evangeline " ? The new tale 
 that Longfellow had been putting into hexameters 
 eventually appeared in 1847, w ^h tne ^ e f "Evan 
 geline ; a Tale of Acadie." 
 
 In 1755 Nova Scotia or Acadia which for more than 
 thirty years had been nominally a British province, was 
 inhabited by some thousands of French colonists, who 
 were exempt from military service under France, and 
 were termed " French Neutrals." Their real sympathies 
 lay with the land of their birth, not with the Govern 
 ment under whose half-contemptuous protection they 
 lived. In Europe, commissioners had for some time 
 been trying to settle a satisfactory boundary between 
 1 New France and Nova Scotia, when matters were 
 : brought to a crisis by the French in America, who 
 i erected two forts on a neck of land at the head of the 
 i)Bay of Fundy. Massachusetts this was before the 
 Revolution, be it remembered sent out three thousand 
 men to capture these forts, and the thing was done. 
 In the garrisons were found three hundred of the 
 Neutrals, and therefore the Acadians were held con- 
 
 
116 LIFE OF 
 
 demned as rebels against the English Crown. What was 
 to be done with them ? The Governor of Nova Scotia, 
 the Chief Justice of the province, and two British 
 Admirals, met in council in July, and resolved that the 
 entire population must be cleared out of that part of 
 the country, and this deportation was to be carried out 
 in such a way as to disperse the captives among the 
 English of the other provinces. Of course it was not 
 easy to execute an edict like this upon a widely-scattered 
 population; but stratagem prevailed with these simple 
 people, who had lived peacefully for two hundred years 
 in this land, feeding sheep and tilling the soil rudely. 
 Governor Lawrence issued a proclamation ordering all 
 the males of the colony, " both old and young men, 
 as well as all the lads of ten years of age," to assemble 
 at the church of Grand-Pre on a certain Friday, to 
 learn His Majesty s pleasure, " on pain of forfeiting 
 goods and chattels in default of real estate." On the 
 Friday appointed, September 5, 1755, four hundred 
 and eighteen unarmed men met within the church. 
 The doors were closed upon them, and guarded by 
 soldiers ; and then this mandate was read to the snared 
 farmers : " It is His Majesty s orders, and they are per 
 emptory, that the whole French inhabitants of these 
 districts be removed. Your lands and tenements, cattle 
 of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to 
 the Crown, with all your other effects, saving your money 
 and household goods; and you yourselves are to be 
 removed from this province. I shall do everything in 
 my power that your goods be secured to you, and that 
 you are not molested in carrying them off; also, tha{ 
 
LONGFELLOW. 117 
 
 whole families shall go in the same vessel, arid that this 
 removal be made as easy as His Majesty s service will 
 admit. And I hope that, in whatever part of the world 
 you may fall, you may be faithful subjects, a peaceful 
 and happy people. Meanwhile you are the king s 
 prisoners, and will remain in security under the inspec 
 tion and direction of the troops I have the honour to 
 command." 
 
 Unbroken silence greeted this cruel edict, until after 
 the lapse of a few minutes a moan broke from the 
 stunned Acadians, and their cry of grief was echoed in 
 bewilderment by the anxious women waiting with their 
 children outside. On the loth of September the in 
 habitants of Grand-Prd nineteen hundred and twenty 
 in number were marched to the water s side at the 
 point of the bayonet, and embarked in Government 
 ships. In spite of some show of care on the part of the 
 authorities many parents were separated from their 
 families and driven into different vessels ; husbands and 
 wives lost each other, and maidens parted from their 
 lovers for ever. The vessels were not able to accom 
 modate all the emigrants, so some of these remained 
 till fresh transports carried them away from their homes 
 in cheerless December, and then Acadia was left deso 
 late, and the Acadians never gathered together again. 
 Small knots of the wanderers settled, and have left 
 descendants, at Clare, at Minudie, in parts of Prince 
 Edward s Island, and on the north coast of New 
 Brunswick. In these days, we English hear much of 
 the Crofter question ; but we never spoiled humble folk of 
 land as we did in 1755, by the help of Massachusetts guns. 
 
118 LIFE OF 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (how pleasant it always is to 
 come upon these two great American men of letters 
 together ! ) one day dined at Craigie House, and brought 
 with him a clergyman. The clergyman happened to 
 remark that he had been vainly endeavouring to in 
 terest Hawthorne in a subject that he himself thought 
 would do admirably for a story. He then related the 
 history of a young Acadian girl who had been turned away 
 with her people in that dire "55," thereafter became 
 separated from her lover, wandered for many years in 
 search of him, and finally found him in a hospital, dying. 
 And Hawthorne saw nothing in this ! That Longfellow 
 at once took to the lovely legend is not so striking a 
 fact as that Hawthorne, true to the strange taste of his 
 "miasmatic conscience," felt the want of a sin to study 
 in the story, and so would have none of it. " Let me 
 have it for a poem, then," said Longfellow, and he had 
 the leave at once. He raked up historical material 
 from Haliburton s " Nova Scotia " and other books, and 
 soon was steadily building up that idyl that is his true 
 Golden Legend. After he had wormed his way through 
 the chronicles of that doomed land, he wrote to Haw 
 thorne and suggested that the romancer should take 
 up as a theme the early history and later wanderings of 
 these Acadians; but with Acadia Hawthorne would 
 have nothing to do on any terms. 
 
 Beyond consulting records, Longfellow put together 
 the materials of " Evangeline " entirely "out of his 
 head j " that is to say, he did not think it necessary to 
 visit Acadia and pick up local colour. When a boy, he 
 had rambled about the old Wadsworth home at Hiram, 
 
LONGFELLOW. 119 
 
 climbing often to a balcony on the roof, and thence 
 looking over great stretches of wood and hill pine- 
 woods, and hills down which log-laden cataracts tumbled 
 resoundingly. From recollections of such a scene, it 
 was comparatively easy for him to imagine "the forest 
 primeval ; " and these same recollections of early days 
 must have furnished many portraits of farming folk not 
 unlike the Acadians, save that they were not so sunny 
 and meek of temper, coming of stern Protestant stock, 
 instead of from a light-hearted people whose very 
 superstitions were all tinged with poetry. 
 
 The selection of hexameter lines for " Evangeline " 
 was of course a bold experiment one that was being 
 tried almost in the same year by Arthur Clough, whose 
 " Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich : a Long-Vacation Pastoral," 
 is scholarly and brilliant in metre and phraseology. 
 Although dough s lines much more resemble classic 
 models than do Longfellow s, they cannot pretend to 
 their sustained charm ; we do not read the " Bothie of 
 Tober-na-Vuolich " for its music ; and here Bowdoin 
 completely out-distanced Oxford. The great precedent 
 Longfellow had in his mind when he resolved to try 
 hexameters was Goethe s "Hermann and Dorothea;" 
 and this was enough to justify his attempt to com 
 promise between the exactions of classic scansion and the 
 rhythmical licence of English metres. His success was 
 as wonderful as the attempt was bold. By employing a 
 style of metre that carries the ear back to times in the 
 world s history when grand simplicities were sung, the 
 poet naturally was able to enhance the epic qualities of his 
 work, and remove Acadia and its people to the neces- 
 
120 LIFE OF 
 
 sary extent from touch with a part of the world in 
 which human history s developments were raw and 
 unattractive. And once persuaded that it was possible 
 to avoid " sing-song " monotony in English hexameters, 
 Longfellow was right in thinking that the rhythm he 
 chose was well suited for the telling of a long story into 
 which nothing abruptly dramatic was to enter, but 
 which was to derive its chief interest from broadly-worked 
 pictures. Probably no other poem gave Longfellow so 
 much trouble in writing. He has said almost as much : 
 " Evangeline is so easy for you to read, because it was 
 so hard for me to write." The necessity for varying the 
 place of the caesura, and the dearth of spondees in our 
 language, were the two chief metrical difficulties with 
 which he had to contend. Occasionally the reader un 
 acquainted with conventionalities of classic prosody will 
 find that where he is inclined at first to read a dactyl, the 
 accent must rest on the first syllable, which with the 
 next makes a spondee. This hint will be found specially 
 serviceable regarding the initial feet of lines like the 
 following, which must be read as commencing with the 
 accent not on the third syllable, but on the first 
 
 "On the morrow to meet in the church, when his Majesty s 
 
 mandate," &c. 
 " Bring these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvest in 
 
 England," &c. 
 "And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music," &c, 
 
 The following line has been pointed out as a very 
 perfect hexameter 
 
 " Chanting the Hundredth Psalm that grand old Puritan anthem." 
 
LONGFELLOW. 121 
 
 And this is probably the worst line a hopeless one 
 
 " Children s children sat on his knee, and heard his great watch 
 tick ." 
 
 In this instance the onomatopoetic sympathy with which 
 Longfellow describes the children listening to the regular 
 ticking of a watch has made him forget the rules of metre 
 absolutely. 
 
 Much nonsense has been talked about the general 
 principle of English hexameters, by critics whose ears 
 are attuned to the quantitative music of Greek and Latin 
 verse. It is true that where, as in Charles Kingsley s 
 " Andromeda," the poet clearly raises comparison with 
 classic forerunners by reason of his subject and his 
 method of treating that subject, it must be unpleasant 
 for the ears of some scholars to have the looser English 
 rhythms imposed upon them instead of the ancient 
 spondees and dactyls arranged in a manner almost con 
 trapuntal. On the other hand, when Longfellow chooses 
 a subject wholly removed from classic association, why 
 should he not experiment in any measure he pleases, 
 and select, if it suits him, a system of lines in each of 
 which there will be a sufficient number of words to fall 
 by a more or less natural rhythm into six beats, or 
 pulses ? Call such lines English hexameters, or call 
 them anything else : they can be written to read musically, 
 and what more is required ? That there are six English 
 feet in each of these lines is as indisputable as that there 
 are five in each line of Pope s " Rape of the Lock." The 
 term " English hexameters," therefore, seems applicable 
 enough ; and in using it, a poet need not be thought to 
 
i 22 LIFE OF 
 
 imply that he is seeking to translate the hexameters of 
 the Iliad or the ^Eneid. Mr. Matthew Arnold has some 
 where hinted that it might be possible, in translating 
 Homer into English, to carry literary artifice so far as to 
 put together English hexameters capable of scansion by 
 long and short syllables. This idea has even been 
 carried out, but only in brief experiments : it could not 
 be sustained through any lengthy translation that aimed 
 at either literal accuracy or poetic spirit. Longfellow 
 himself cherished through life the project of translating 
 Homer ; but in such an undertaking English hexameters, 
 had he chosen them as his vehicle, would have been as 
 false in taste as they were justifiable in the construction 
 of " Evangeline." Yet even in the case of a hexametrical 
 rendering of Homer, the classical scholar only could be 
 offended. To the unlearned reader, the measure of 
 " Evangeline " would probably be as acceptable as the 
 rhymed pentameter of Pope or the blank verse of 
 Cowper. Of course we do not say that any translation 
 in hexameters would prove acceptable ; for Herschel s 
 was a failure. The truth is that this measure, within its 
 proper use, should be regarded, not as a bastard classicism, 
 i but as a wholly modern invention. Impassioned speech 
 more often breaks into pentameter and hexameter than 
 into any other measure; this is of course a truism. 
 Longfellow himself has pointed to the splendid hexa 
 meters that abound in our Bible " Husbands, love your 
 wives, and be not bitter against them;" "God is gone 
 up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet;" 
 " He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all 
 perfection." Would Mr. Swinburne, simply because these 
 
LONGFELLOW. 123 
 
 cadences might be called English hexameters, deny their 
 lofty beauty ? This form of verse will never, in all pro 
 bability, become a favourite vehicle for poets thoughts ; 
 but by a singular tour de force Longfellow succeeded in 
 getting rid of the popular prejudice against it ; and what 
 ever the classicists may say, he put more varied melody 
 into his lines than Clough, Hawtrey, Kingsley, Ho wells, 
 or Bayard Taylor, attained in similar experiments. 
 
 What passages are we to select, when the whole poem 
 is so carefully compacted of beautiful thoughts ? 
 
 " This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hem 
 locks, 
 Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the 
 
 twilight, 
 
 Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, 
 Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. 
 Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighbouring- ocean 
 Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. 
 
 This is the forest primeval ; but where are the hearts that 
 
 beneath it 
 Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of 
 
 the huntsman ? 
 
 Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, 
 Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, 
 Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven ? 
 Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers for ever departed, 
 Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October 
 Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far over the 
 
 ocean. 
 Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand- 
 
 Tre. 
 
124 LIFE OF 
 
 Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is 
 
 patient, 
 
 Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman s devotion, 
 List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ; 
 List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy." 
 
 What metrical effort in English ever before gave us this 
 sense of dignified serenity, of peaceful sonorousness like 
 that of a priest s voice, when he raises his hands over a 
 congregation to bless it ? 
 
 " Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas, 
 Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Fre, 
 Dwelt on his goodly acres ; and with him, directing his household, 
 Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village. 
 Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters ; 
 Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes ; 
 White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the 
 
 oak-leaves. 
 
 Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers. 
 Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the 
 
 wayside, 
 Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of 
 
 her tresses ! 
 
 Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows. 
 When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide 
 Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah ! fair in sooth was the maiden. 
 Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its 
 
 turret 
 
 Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop 
 Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them, 
 Down the long street she passed with her chaplet of beads and 
 
 her missal, 
 
 Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the ear 
 rings, 
 
 Brought in the olden times from France, and since, as an heirloom, 
 Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 125 
 
 Bat a celestial brightness a. more ethereal beauty 
 
 Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, 
 
 Homeward serenely she walked with. God s benediction upon 
 
 her. 
 When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite 
 
 music." 
 
 There is a line that last than which Spenser never 
 wrote a tenderer or Tennyson a more perfectly worded. 
 In Spence s " Anecdotes," we learn that Pope once read 
 a canto of Spenser to an old lady, who said he had been 
 showing her a gallery of pictures. That is just what 
 " Evangeline " is a gallery of pictures ; the landscapes 
 softly laid out in a mellow radiance that constantly 
 suggests Cuyp, and his interiors comparable with those 
 of no painter, for painters of interiors have never yet 
 approached the combined fulness of such a scene as this, 
 without losing repose. It is the poet s privilege to secure 
 both detail and general restfulness of effect. 
 
 " In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the farmer 
 Sat in his elbow chair, and watched how the flames and the 
 
 smoke -wreaths 
 
 Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him, 
 Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic, 
 Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness. 
 Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair 
 Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the 
 
 dresser 
 
 Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine. 
 Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas, 
 Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him 
 Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards. 
 Close at her father s side was the gentle Evangeline seated, 
 Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind her. 
 
126 LIFE OF 
 
 Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, 
 While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a 
 
 bagpipe, 
 
 Followed the old man s song, and united the fragments together. 
 As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, 
 Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar, 
 So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the clock 
 
 clicked. 31 
 
 But we must add four lines, for the sake of the fourth 
 line, the subtle charm of which is worth long pondering : 
 
 " Thus, as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted, 
 Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges. 
 Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith, 
 And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with him." 
 
 No wonder Lowell believes that Theocritus would hardly 
 have wished a word changed in writing like this ! 
 
 The lovers are betrothed formally before the notary ; 
 and on the evening of the plighting, Evangeline had 
 strange " dreamings " as she gazed out of her window 
 into the dark, until by and by 
 
 " She saw serenely the mcon pass 
 
 Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her footsteps, 
 As out of Abraham s tent young Ishmael wandered with Hagar ! " 
 
 The church-going of the Acadians on a Sunday is lovingly 
 described, and the edict of the king is given forth, while 
 the people sob in the sacred building with their pastor. 
 With the embarkation of the emigrants the First Part of 
 the poem comes to an end. 
 
 The Second Part deals with the wanderings of the 
 lovers, who once actually pass each other in the dark on 
 
LONGFELLOW. 127 
 
 the Mississippi. At last, all but her hope in God withered, 
 the once fresh-cheeked Evangeline becomes a Sister of 
 Mercy in Philadelphia, and there she devotes herself, 
 during a plague, to the care of the stricken in an alms- 
 house. This almshouse, by the way, Longfellow sketched 
 from Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. Ah ! one 
 day, in this refuge of the dying, 
 
 " Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder, 
 Still she stood, with her colourless lips apart, while a shudder 
 Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from 
 
 her ringers, 
 
 And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning. 
 Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, 
 That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows. 
 On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man. 
 Long, and thin, and grey were the locks that shaded his temples ; 
 But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment 
 Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood ; 
 So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying. 
 Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever, 
 As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals, 
 That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. 
 Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted 
 Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the dark 
 ness, 
 
 Darkness of slumber and death, for ever sinking and sinking. 
 Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations, 
 Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded 
 Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like, 
 1 Gabriel 1 O my beloved ! and died away into silence. 
 Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood ; 
 Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them, 
 Village, and mountain, and woodlands ; and, walking under their 
 
 shadow, 
 
 As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. 
 Tears came into his eyes ; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, 
 
128 LIFE OF 
 
 Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside. 
 
 Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered 
 
 Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would 
 have spoken. 
 
 Vainly he strove to rise ; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, 
 
 Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. 
 
 Sweet was the light of his eyes ; but it suddenly sank into dark 
 ness, 
 
 As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. 
 
 \ 
 
 All was ended now, the hope> and the fear, and the sorrow, 
 All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing, 
 All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience ! 
 And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom, 
 Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, * Father, I thank 
 thee ! 
 
 Still stands the forest primeval ; but far away from its shadow, 
 Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. 
 Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, 
 In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed. 
 Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them, 
 Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and for 
 
 ever, 
 
 Thousands of aching brains, where theirs are no longer busy, 
 Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their 
 
 labours, 
 Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their 
 
 journey ! 
 
 Still stands the forest primeval ; but under the shade of its 
 
 branches 
 
 Dwells another race, with other customs and language. 
 Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic 
 Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile 
 Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. 
 In the fisherman s cot the wheel and the loom are still busy j 
 
LONGFELLOW. 129 
 
 Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of home 
 spun, 
 
 And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline s story, 
 While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighbouring ocean 
 Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest." 
 
 Mark the beautiful transition from one picture to 
 another that begins with "Then he beheld." 
 
 So ends " Evangeline " a poem which should confer 
 on Longfellow the title of " Golden-mouthed," that was 
 given once to Bishop Jeremy Taylor. Hawthorne never 
 tired of it, and had it read to him shortly before he died. 
 Thus he came to admire the theme after all. The 
 success of the poem was so immediate and prodigious 
 that thirty-seven thousand copies were sold in ten years. 
 The French Canadians reverence Longfellow for 
 "Evangeline" beyond all their national poets. Every 
 family among them has it by heart in Le May s transla 
 tion, and scores of them have learned English expressly to 
 enjoy the tale more fully in the original. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TO Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Longfellow and his 
 family went to spend the summer of 1848. Their 
 abode in Pittsfield was an old mansion named Melville 
 House, near Oliver Wendell Holmes s house, and here 
 Longfellow quietly sketched out and completed 
 "Kavanagh," a story that was published in 1849. It fell 
 rather flat, and has never been talked of 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 e very-day life in the rural parts 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. Of plot " Kavanagh " can 
 hardly boast ; it consists of a series of impressions drawn 
 from the humdrum life of country folk, among whom the 
 only learned and only completely discontented person is a 
 village schoolmaster, Mr. Churchill. Mr. Churchill felt 
 that he had been created to be a poet, and the smallness 
 of his means and leisure and opportunity for the study 
 of life chafed him daily. This was a nature of some 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 131 
 
 complexity, then, set in an environment the very simpli 
 city of which at once afforded a contrast to it, and 
 sharpened, or should have sharpened, its longing for 
 stimulus. The schoolmaster was exactly the kind of 
 subject Hawthorne might have dropped upon; and in 
 Hawthorne s hands his life would have become thoroughly 
 dramatic with quiet intensity. Probably we should be 
 right in thinking that Hawthorne s methods in fiction had 
 a good deal of influence in making Longfellow conceive 
 " Kavanagh." But another influence seems to be still 
 more evident, and that is Jean Paul Richter s. Again 
 and again the short story told by the American poet 
 reminds us of the German author who drew the poor 
 student, Quintus Fixlein ; and oftener still the school 
 master exhibits the moods of Siebenkaes, while his poor 
 little commonplace wife recalls to our minds the pig 
 headed Lenette, who had a good heart, but not the least 
 capacity for understanding her eccentric spouse. Look 
 at this brief scene : 
 
 " Good-night, Alfred ! 
 
 " His father looked fondly after him as he went upstairs 
 holding Lucy by one hand, and with the other rubbing 
 the sleep out of his eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! these children, these children ! said Mr. 
 Churchill, as he sat down at the tea-table ; ( we ought 
 to love them very much now, for we shall not have them 
 long with us ! 
 
 " Good heavens ! exclaimed his wife, what do you 
 mean? Does anything ail them? Are they going to 
 die? 
 
132 LIFE Of 
 
 " I hope not. But they are going to grow up, and be 
 no longer children. 
 
 " O, you foolish man ! You gave me such a fright ! 
 
 " And yet it seems impossible that they should ever 
 grow to be men, and drag the heavy artillery along the 
 dusty roads of life. 
 
 " And I hope they never will. That is the last thing I 
 want either of them to do. 
 
 " O, I do not mean literally, only figuratively. By the 
 way, speaking of growing up and growing old, I sa\V 
 Mr. Pendexter this evening, as I came home. 
 
 " And what had he to say ? 
 
 " He told me he should preach his farewell sermoL 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " Poor old man ! I really pity him. 
 
 " So do I. But it must be confessed he is a dull 
 preacher ; and I dare say it is as dull work for him as 
 for his hearers. 
 
 " Why are they going to send him away ? 
 
 " O, there are a great many reasons. He does not 
 give time and attention enough to his sermons and to his 
 parish. He is always at work on his farm ; always wants 
 his salary raised; and insists upon his right to pasture 
 his horse in the parish fields. 
 
 " Hark ! cried his wife, lifting up her face in a listen 
 ing attitude. 
 
 " What is the matter ? 
 
 " * I thought I heard the baby ! 
 
 "There was a short silence. Then Mr. Churchill 
 said 
 
 " * It was only the cat in the cellar. " 
 
LONGFELLOW. 133 
 
 True, Lenette never had a baby while married to 
 Siebenkaes, but this does not so greatly matter to our 
 argument. Here is a Massachusetts Siebenkaes grinding 
 away at his small domestic mill, with the thought 
 eternally rankling in his breast that the world does not 
 understand or recompense him as he deserves, that even 
 his wife is a goose, after all, and never will understand 
 him, and that, if he only had six months in a year to 
 himself, he could make himself a great man in literature, 
 and satisfy himself with fame and probably with riches too. 
 So he dreams and talks about a forthcoming book it 
 is to be a romance, and his wife claps her hands when 
 he alludes to it, thinking that his little trumpet will 
 shatter the walls of time itself; and at the end of 
 the history he is still dreaming nothing done, nothing 
 likely to be done, his momentary inspirations setting 
 a-going nothing but fretful conscience. The lesson of 
 "Kavanagh" is "stay the good angel until he bless thee ; " 
 a great lesson, the value of which is imparted to us 
 without much direct moralizing. 
 
 The book likewise contains the excellently life-like 
 figure of Mr. Pendexter, a dutiful old clergyman, without 
 a touch of suavity about him. Mr. Churchill inclines 
 just a little towards him, because the world they live 
 in has rejected him too ; he is not popular, and in 
 fact has to take himself off in his dusty pony chaise, 
 making room for a strapping young minister, Kavanagh. 
 The two pretty gentilities of the neighbourhood, Alice 
 Archer and Cecilia Vaughan, of course are equally in 
 love with the young man ; and the way in which some of 
 their love secrets are mixed up and betrayed by the 
 
134 LIFE OF 
 
 erratic flight of a messenger-pigeon, on one occasion, is 
 exquisitely contrived. Miss Vaughan has a comic lover, 
 too, the leading tradesman of the village, really the most 
 humorous character that Longfellow depicted. And a 
 certain old maid, Miss Manchester for a village would 
 not be a village worth describing unless it had an old 
 maid to look after everybody in it is equally well hit 
 off. Every figure in " Kavanagh " is extremely well 
 sketched. The materials of a masterpiece of fiction are 
 all here ; but it almost seems as if Longfellow was draw 
 ing a real village and real folk, and feared to disturb 
 them while he watched them. Sometimes, on a spring 
 forenoon, when the mists have scarcely risen from the 
 meadows, and the poultry have not settled down to their 
 siesta, you may enter an English hamlet, at one end 
 passing the schoolhouse in which the children drone 
 like bees : you find the draper at his shop-door, with his 
 hands under his coat-tails, watching a smartly dressed 
 young miss who is buying eggs up the street, and may or 
 may not come to procure tape and needles from him : 
 the clergyman s trap crunches the gravel among the trees 
 of the vicarage at the other end of the village, and you 
 see his blue spectacles approach the gate by and by, for 
 he is off to negotiate an exchange for next Sunday with a 
 brother clergyman miles away ; you meet three or four 
 dogs ; you come upon a prim old lady cleaning her windows 
 from the outside and then you have taken in all there is 
 to see till evening sets the children and the field-labourers 
 loose in the streets, and the schoolmaster walks out with 
 the draper, and blushes for pleasure when he gets the 
 chance of raising his hat to the smartly-dressed young 
 
LONGFELLOW. 135 
 
 lady who comes out again from the " big house," flutter 
 ing her bonnet - strings in the evening breeze. Then 
 all sounds die quickly away, and the little life of the village 
 is rounded with a sleep. After a day or two about the 
 place you grow to recognize every human face and almost 
 every fowl, so much does the leisurely calm intensify your 
 seeing and hearing faculties ; and you find the morning 
 and the noon and the evening make the street of red- 
 roofed cottages into delightful little tableaux. The tran 
 quil zest which the visitor thus finds in village existence 
 is the feeling that Longfellow had in his mind when he 
 wrote " Kavanagh," and although as a story it would 
 hardly stir the pulse of a school-girl, it is to be preferred to 
 "Hyperion" ten times over, in point of literary taste. 
 
 In the year following that in which "Kavanagh" 
 appeared, the poet atoned to the public for the partial 
 failure of the prose idyl, by producing a new book of 
 poems, " The Seaside and the Fireside." Its best items 
 were the picturesque " Fire of Driftwood," " Resignation" 
 (already mentioned), and the joy of all Americans, "The 
 Building of the Ship." This last poem is indeed 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 effective as anything Longfellow wrote. 
 Yet in reading " The Building of the Ship," we are 
 constantly reminded that there is no real 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 
 
136 LIFE 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 ? 
 
 "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! 
 Sail on, O UNION, strong and great ! 
 Humanity, with all its fears, 
 With all the hopes of future years, 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
 We know what Master laid thy keel, 
 What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
 Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
 Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
 "Tis of the wave and not the rock ; 
 Tis but the flapping of the sail, 
 And not a rent made by the gale ! 
 In spite of rock and tempest s roar, 
 In spite of false lights on the shore, 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
 Our faith triumphant o er our fears, 
 Are all with thee, are all with thee ! " 
 
 Mere oratory ! Yes, it is ; but finer than the finest of 
 Webster s or Simmer 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." 
 
 Again a year, and then "The Golden Legend" was 
 published (1851). Its time is the thirteenth century; its 
 
LONGFELLOW. 187 
 
 scenes are laid in many lands ; its hero is a mawkish 
 Prince Henry of Vautsberg on the Rhine ; its heroine is 
 a young peasant girl called Elsie. Prince Henry, bewail 
 ing his fate in having to endure a strange disease that 
 puzzles all physicians, is tempted by Lucifer, who comes 
 to him in the disguise of a travelling doctor. The devil s 
 blandishments succeed, of course, and Prince Henry, 
 after swallowing the strange doctor s " Catholicon," is 
 found out by the Church, excommunicated, and sent on 
 a long course of expiatory wanderings. These wander 
 ings take him to a cottage in the Odenwald, where he 
 is hospitably entertained by the occupants, and the eldest 
 daughter of the house learns that the young noble cannot 
 find cure and peace, 
 
 "Unless 
 
 Some maiden, of her own accord, , 
 Offers her life for that of her lord, 
 And is willing to die in his stead." 
 
 She resolves to sacrifice herself, and eventually sets out 
 for the South of Italy with Prince Henry. This is rather 
 a singular proceeding, and on the journey the pair have 
 decidedly dangerous talks in the moonlight, on hotel 
 balconies and places of the kind. However, it appears 
 that the only place fit for the young maid s sacrifice is 
 Salerno ; so to Salerno they must go, and when they 
 arrive there, Lucifer takes the form of a priest, and urges 
 the immolation of Elsie. Almost at the last moment 
 the Prince saves the girl : then he marries her, finds 
 himself cured, and starts homewards with his bride in 
 thoroughly good spirits. Elsie s is a character beautifully 
 
138 LIFE OF 
 
 thought out, and as an exemplification of the purer and 
 more mystical elements of human love, is really original. 
 The hypochondriac craze of Prince Henry is just such an 
 affliction as these gloomy times produced in the cases of 
 minds diseased by religion or by the possession of excessive 
 power, or by both ; but the Prince is quite a detestable 
 young gentleman, with whom no reader could have sym 
 pathy. He certainly was not worth so much of Elsie s 
 blood as a needle s prick could draw. Lucifer is the mildest- 
 mannered devil that ever showed a hoof. The various 
 scenes scarcely pretend to hang together by any natural 
 sequence, and as a play, " The Golden Legend " is devoid 
 of any dramatic interest save the religious devotion of the 
 heroine. But the poem has another side. Longfellow 
 designed it as a vehicle for illustrations of us people and 
 customs of the Middle Ages ; the medievalism is cer 
 tainly kept up at every point, and its note is sounded 
 with prodigious effect in the very first scene, where we 
 have a storm around Strasburg Cathedral spire, from 
 which Lucifer and his devils try to tear the cross in fight 
 with a band of angels, while to the clangorous bells is 
 given Latin speech, and the choir within the church ends 
 all with its vigil-chant 
 
 " Nocte surgentes 
 Vigilemus omnes 1 " 
 
 It is strange, by the by, that Longfellow makes his bells 
 talk Latin in the singular person 
 
 " Defunctos ploro ! 
 Pestem fugo ! " etc. 
 
LONGFELLOW. 139 
 
 A miracle play and a friar s sermon are introduced, and 
 many of the places visited by the pilgrims are described 
 with fulness and force. Scraps of Latin hymns are in 
 troduced throughout, but they are not remarkable ; and 
 they serve to suggest the question how it is Longfellow 
 died without giving the world a real hymn in English, 
 designed for use in worship. 
 
 This " Golden Legend " was framed from the theme of 
 " Der Arme Heinrich," a metrical tale by the minnesinger 
 Hartmann von der Aue. The draft of it was written 
 in a month, and it took six months to correct and cut 
 this down. It will interest some to know that the monk s 
 sermon is in part adapted from a fulminating discourse 
 by Fra Gabriella Barletta, an Italian of the fifteenth 
 century. The Miracle Play is based upon the Apocryphal 
 Gospels of James and the Infancy of Christ. 
 
 Turning to the poet s private life, we have to note that 
 shortly after he had returned home from Pittsfield, with 
 " Kavanagh " finished, he had the sorrow of losing his 
 little daughter Fanny, who died in September, 1848. 
 In August of 1849 ms father passed away, in his seventy- 
 fourth year full of honour as of years. Within two 
 years the poet s mother died also, quite suddenly. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HT^HERE was a time in the earlier part of Longfellow s 
 J. career when Margaret Fuller criticised him frankly 
 in "The Dial," told him that he was not going the right 
 way about making himself a national poet, and called his 
 poems exotic flowers, with no smell of American soil 
 about them. Longfellow did not take these sayings 
 kindly, but he profited by them nevertheless. Probably 
 but for Margaret Fuller we should never have had 
 " Evangeline," or " Kavanagh," or "Hiawatha." The 
 construction of " Evangeline " was a courageous effort, 
 but the experiment of " Hiawatha " was actually daring. 
 The red-skinned natives of the States these bloody 
 barbarian Indians whom Mr. Edward Johnson and his 
 coadjutors tried to clear out of the land left among their 
 descendants a body of rude traditions tinged with poetry. 
 Longfellow raised for himself the question whether these 
 traditions, or any one tradition among them, would 
 furnish sufficient material for a monumental poem, in 
 which should be preserved some record of the nobler 
 qualities of the savage aborigines. Inquiry proved that 
 although a considerable mass of tales had been collected 
 from the original inhabitants of New England, these tales 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 141 
 
 Were garnished by little fancy of a high kind. The red 
 man, in truth, had never been the rhapsodical, sentimental 
 being that ignorance had imagined him ; and beyond a 
 few stock metaphors about mountains and thunders, 
 sunsets, buffaloes, waterfalls, hatchets, tobacco-pipes, and 
 council-fires, his sense of beauty in thought or nature was 
 not betrayed by traditions of any sort. Nevertheless, the 
 more Longfellow pored over this new subject, the more 
 he felt that he had an opportunity for doing an original 
 thing in literature. It is said that the first suggestion for 
 " Hiawatha " was derived from some Indian tales recited 
 to him by a Harvard pupil. There may be noted also in 
 Longfellow s diary several references to an Ojibway chief 
 called Kah-ge-ga-gah -bowh, an educated and loquacious 
 Red-skin, whom he had to tea of an evening, and whom 
 he possibly questioned a good deal about the legends of 
 his people. But most of the poet s preliminary notes 
 were made from Schoolcraft s " Algic Researches," and 
 "Indian Tribes of the United States." There he hit 
 upon a rude hero named Manabozho, and by this name 
 he first thought of calling his Indian Edda. Some of 
 the incidents of Indian life preserved in the "Algic 
 Researches" reminded the well-read poet of Finnish 
 legends, and turning to the great epic of Finland the 
 " Kalevala " he at once found a solution of the problem, 
 how to adapt his language and metres to subjects so 
 primitive as these Indian myths. The "Kalevala" is 
 composed, like all the older Finnish poems, in unrhymed 
 trochaic dimeter, with two forms of elaboration to satisfy 
 the ear in place of rhyme alliteration similar to that of 
 Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon sagas and what has come to 
 
142 LIFE OF 
 
 be called "parallelism," that is, reduplication of a line, 
 or part of a line, in slightly varied form. These charac 
 teristics, and especially the peculiarity of parallelism, may 
 be found fully developed in the Finnish collection of 
 ballads called the " Kanteletar ; " and in this collection, 
 moreover, we find the prevailing note to be just the 
 tender melancholy that makes the faint diapason of 
 "Hiawatha." Selecting a specimen from the older 
 " Kalevala " (this specimen is from a translation, without 
 attempt at alliteration, by William Howitt), we can see 
 how much Longfellow was indebted to the Finns for thi 
 structure of " Hiawatha s " verse 
 
 "And there lives not such a hero, 
 Not a man so firm of purpose, 
 Not a man, much less a woman, 
 By his tears who is unmoved. 
 Weep the young and weep the aged ; 
 Weep the middle-aged not less so ; 
 Weep the men who are unmarried, 
 Weep the married men as fully ; 
 Weep the bachelors and maidens ; 
 Weeps the girl, half-child, half-woman, 
 When is heard that moving sound. 
 
 So his tears drop in the waters, 
 Tears of ancient Wainamb inen ; 
 To the blue sea they flow onward, 
 Onward from the wild strand flowing ; 
 Deep beneath the crystal waters 
 Spreading o er the sandy bottom, 
 Here they wondrously are changed- 
 Changed into precious jewels, 
 To adorn fair, queenly bosoms, 
 And to gladden loftiest minds." 
 
LONGFELLOW. 143 
 
 This is part of a passage relating to songs sung by the 
 demigod Wainamoinen in praise of the ancestral hero 
 Kalevar. Of course the lines suffer by translation, not 
 only in music, but probably to some extent in sense. 
 We can see enough in them, however, to show that they 
 inspired Longfellow with the idea that this limpid, brook- 
 like, eddying metre was just the thing to adapt to wild 
 Indian tales of forest, and snows, and wigwam. He 
 adopted, then, the unrhymed trochaics and the feature of 
 parallelism. 
 
 When "Hiawatha" appeared (1855), some were eager 
 to find the model of the verse-construction in the un- 
 rhyrned trochaic dimeter of the old Romance ballads a 
 metre often used later by Calderon and Lope de Vega. 
 D. F. McCarthy had introduced this metre into English 
 in 1845, in a translation of Calderon s Dramas, and 
 Dr. Kenealy (he was not " Dr." then) about the same 
 time made use of it in " Goethe : a New Pantomime." 
 But all such examples of metre are beside the mark. 
 They certainly did not in any adequate way reproduce 
 the old form of the Spanish ballads, which displayed 
 assonance in place of the northern alliteration. And 
 although an equivalent of the form used by Calderon, 
 the metre used by Kenealy and McCarthy lacked the 
 distinguishing feature of Finnish poetry that mark of 
 which Longfellow made such excellent use, the mark, 
 namely, of parallelism. The real forerunner of Long 
 fellow was that mighty assimilator of ideas, Goethe. 
 In Goethe s short poem called "Finnisches Lied," we 
 find the old Finnish metre and the old Finnish parallel 
 ism, just as we find it in Longfellow ; and, like Long- 
 
144 LIFE OF 
 
 fellow, the German poet disregarded alliteration in this, 
 his only experiment in the reproduction of Finnish literary 
 modes. 
 
 The variety of metrical effects to be found in Long 
 fellow s poetry is not more remarkable than the sense of 
 fitness that he well-nigh invariably displayed, when he 
 abandoned common forms. Here, in " Hiawatha," he has 
 to tell us of the doings of an agile people, who live in the 
 forests as alert as squirrels, and talk rapidly with a small 
 vocabulary and scant stock of ideas. To get hold of a 
 metrical form as new to the general public as his theme 
 a form moreover that is at once mobile and simple, 
 like the Redskin s is the winning of half his battle. He 
 is now able to produce for us fresh effects comparable 
 with the results produced by a Chopin or a Schumann, 
 when the musician symphonizes from the limited tonic 
 scale of a primitive race. 
 
 Picking out from the " Algic Researches " as many 
 scenes and incidents as he required, Longfellow resolved 
 to sing them in the new-found metre, not in a completely 
 epical way, but as a series of hymns, descriptive of broken 
 passages in the life of a semi-mythical Indian brave. 
 The scene is laid among the Ojibways, on the southern 
 shore of Lake Superior, in the tract lying between the 
 Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable. Hiawatha, known 
 among other tribes as Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozho, 
 or Tarenyawagon, is a creation of miraculous birth, 
 sent among the Red people to clear their rivers, forests, 
 and fishing-grounds, and to teach them peaceful arts. 
 
 In the Introduction we hear of Nawadaha, the sweet 
 singer, who told the poet the tales that are to follow, 
 having found them 
 
LONGFELLOW. 145 
 
 " In the birds -nests of the forest, 
 In the lodges of the beaver, 
 In the hoof-prints of the bison, 
 In the eyrie of the eagle ! " 
 
 And in preparing to re-tell the stories of Nawadaha, the 
 poet, on this occasion only, ventures from the depth of 
 the Indian forest to address pale faces like ourselves, 
 in words that, although introduced in a rather inartistic 
 manner, are yet in themselves fine : 
 
 " Ye who love the haunts of Nature, 
 Love the sunshine of the meadow, 
 Love the shadow of the forest, 
 Love the wind among the branches, 
 And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, 
 And the rushing of great rivers 
 Through their palisades of pine-trees, 
 And the thunder in the mountains, 
 Whose innumerable echoes 
 Flap like eagles in their eyries ; 
 Listen to these wild traditions, 
 To this Song of Hiawatha ! 
 
 Ye who love a nation s legends, 
 Love the ballads of a people, 
 That like voices from afar off 
 Call to us to pause and listen, 
 Speak in tones so plain and childlike, 
 Scarcely can the ear distinguish 
 Whether they are sung or spoken ; 
 Listen to this Indian legend, 
 To this Song of Hiawatha ! 
 
 Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 
 Who have faith in God and Nature, 
 Who believe, that in all ages 
 Every human heart is human, 
 That in even savage bosoms 
 10 
 
146 LIFE OF 
 
 There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
 For the good they comprehend not, 
 That the feeble hands and helpless, 
 Groping blindly in the darkness, 
 Touch God s right hand in that darkness, 
 And are lifted up and strengthened : 
 Listen to this simple story, 
 To this Song of Hiawatha ! 
 
 Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles 
 Through the green lanes of the country, 
 Where the tangled barberry-bushes 
 Hang their tufts of crimson berries 
 Over stone walls grey with mosses, 
 Pause by some neglected graveyard 
 For a while to muse, and ponder 
 On a half-effaced inscription, 
 Written with little skill of song-craft, 
 Homely phrases, but each letter 
 Full of hope and yet of heart-break, 
 Full of all the tender pathos 
 Of the Here and the Hereafter ; 
 Stay and read this rude inscription ! 
 Read this Song of Hiawatha ! " 
 
 Then are we told the short cycle of Hiawatha s 
 missionary adventures. We learn about his annunciation 
 in "The Peace-Pipe;" of his mysterious birth by No- 
 komis in " Hiawatha s Childhood ; " then of his Fasting, 
 of his Friends, of his Sailing, of his Fishing, of his Wooing, 
 and other phases of his princely life among the sons of 
 men, till the boaster lagoo prophesies that a great canoe 
 is coming to them over the waters, bearing men with 
 faces painted white. 
 
 " Kaw ! they said, what lies you tell us ! 
 Do not think that we believe them 1 
 Only Hiawatha laughed not, 
 
LONGFELLOW. 147 
 
 But he gravely spake and answered 
 To their jeering and their jesting : 
 True is all lagoo tells us ; 
 I have seen it in a vision, 
 Seen the great canoe with pinions, 
 Seen the people with white faces, 
 Seen the coming of this bearded 
 People of the wooden vessel 
 From the regions of the morning, 
 From the shining land of Wabun. 
 
 Gitche Manito, the Mighty, 
 The Great Spirit, the Creator, 
 Sends them hither on his errand, 
 Sends them to us with his message. 
 Wheresoe er they move, before them 
 Swarms the stinging-fly, the Ahmo, 
 Swarms the bee, the honey-maker ; 
 Wheresoe er they tread, beneath them 
 Springs a flower unknown among us, 
 Springs the White Man s Foot in blossom. 
 
 Let us welcome, then, the strangers, 
 Hail them as our friends and brothers, 
 And the heart s right hand of friendship 
 Give them when they come to see us. 
 Gitche Manito, the Mighty, 
 Said this to me in my vision. 
 
 I beheld, too, in that vision 
 All the secrets of the future, 
 Of the distant days that shall be. 
 I beheld the westward marches 
 Of the unknown, crowded nations. 
 All the land was full of people, 
 Restless, struggling, toiling, striving, 
 Speaking many tongues, yet feeling 
 But one heart-beat in their bosoms. 
 In the woodlands rang their axes, 
 Smoked their towns in all the valleys. 
 Over all the lakes and rivers 
 Rushed their great canoes of thunder, 
 
143 LIFE OF 
 
 Then a darker, drearier vision 
 Passed before me, vague and cloudlike. 
 I beheld our nations scattered, 
 All forgetful of my counsels, 
 Weakened, warring with each other ; 
 Saw the remnants of our people 
 Sweeping westward, wild and woeful, 
 Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, 
 Like the withered leaves of Autumn ! " 
 
 And in the final flight of song, Hiawatha welcomes the 
 Black Robe chief of the Pale-faces, with the cross on his 
 bosom ; and then, bidding his adopted nation farewell, 
 he sets forth on a last lone journey "to the portals of 
 the sunset," and thus fades out of the world. The two 
 passages that have been quoted are chosen rather to tell 
 the story than to exemplify the best workmanship in 
 " Hiawatha." The charms of the work are many. The 
 music is deftly managed ; now at the end of a line we 
 find an extra syllable that carries us, as it were, over a 
 little rapid in the rushing metre, and at the end of 
 another may come a slight pause, " a click," as one critic 
 has said, " like the sound of an organ stop." The great 
 point about the metrical effect is that the ear does not 
 tire of the short-breathed lines ; and it may be said, with 
 little fear of contradiction, that no poet but Longfellow 
 could have come out of the difficult experiment thus 
 triumphantly; his sometimes over-melodious ear saved 
 him in this instance, and made water-music from begin 
 ning to end of the poem. The poet has adorned the 
 naked legends of Schoolcraft with all sorts of enrich 
 ments ; but these are in keeping ; if not historical, they 
 are not anachronistic; and the imagery and scenery 
 
LONGFELLOW. 149 
 
 are purely Indian. Hiawatha s character, albeit designed 
 to show the refinement of manly vigour by temperance of 
 mind, touches the sublime ; it is highly improbable that 
 the poor Red Indian will ever again receive an apothe 
 osis so beautiful as this at the hands of any poet. The son 
 of Nokomis has two friends who are likewise drawn skil 
 fully, one, the nimble-footed Pau-Puk-Keewis, with a few 
 firm touches, and the other, the gentle singer, Chibiabos, 
 as if the artist had lingered over him to limn him very 
 tenderly with a pencil of silver. In Chibiabos America 
 grew to recognize their poet himself; and when Long 
 fellow was carried to the grave, his requiem was chanted 
 in his own words : 
 
 " He is dead, the sweet musician ! 
 He has gone from us for ever ! 
 He has moved a little nearer 
 To the Master of all music, 
 To the Master of all singing J 
 O, my brother, Chibiabos ! " 
 
 Minnehaha (" Laughing Waters "), the young wife of 
 Hiawatha, is a figure scarcely so much described as 
 hinted at ; her character is not to be analyzed, it is subtle 
 as the perfume of woodland flowers ; and like a perfume 
 her life exhales, and Hiawatha passes through the sorrows 
 of a widower. But the strange thing is that the joys and 
 sorrows of these faun-like Redskins do not move us 
 as we read ; even at funeral obsequies it is only of 
 their exquisite pose that we think; and what we relish 
 most is the dancing and gambling of Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
 the fishing for the mighty sturgeon, the talks with the 
 
150 LIFE OF 
 
 wise beaver, the story-telling at the wedding, the fight of 
 Mudjekeewis -with the Great Bear, and the woodland 
 smell all-pervading. This was a poem that did smell of 
 American soil; it was national; and Longfellow could 
 say with David, " The Lord hath put a new song into 
 my mouth." 
 
 " Hiawatha " made an immediate success that proved 
 it to be the most popular literary triumph of the century. 
 Fully a hundred thousand copies of the poem were sold 
 in two years ; scholars and simple, old and young, found 
 it new and good. 
 
 Memory carries the writer back to days when Long 
 fellow s " Hiawatha " was eight years old, and in a class 
 of four ill-spelling Scottish boys, there was a prodigy of 
 childish learning. Although but seven years of age, he 
 could repeat from beginning to end both Scott s " Lady 
 of the Lake " and Longfellow s " Hiawatha," and many 
 an afternoon did he keep his fellows spellbound with this 
 song of the American forests. On these occasions they 
 gathered under an old piano in a disused room, and the 
 solemn-faced little oracle now he is in the cavalry ! 
 chanted forth Longfellow s trochaics unswervingly, while 
 the audience remained suspended between curiosity to 
 find him halt and awe at dimly-understood utterances 
 that seemed like fairy tales out of the Bible. When they 
 arrived at the passage where Kabibonokka, the North 
 Wind, "to the lodge came wailing," one little lad put 
 down the pedal of the ruined old square piano, while 
 another would strike his head, like a drumstick, against 
 its belly, and make it shudder and loudly sigh. This 
 was Kabibonokka, the North Wind. Could the poet 
 
LONGFELLOW. 151 
 
 have seen that oft-gathered group of children, not one of 
 whom no, not the reciter himself really understood 
 a line of the poem that entranced them, how he would 
 have enjoyed the picture ! 
 
 This slight reminiscence may serve in its way to ex 
 emplify the wonderful power that "Hiawatha" everywhere 
 exerts over the young, as well as over so many grown-up 
 readers. The secret of this spell is no doubt the fact that 
 the poem narrates the doings of a childlike people in a 
 land that is to us full of strange things. It is not probable 
 that within our time any other poet will attempt to become 
 the laureate of this wonderful land, where the author of/ 
 " Wyoming " adventured but poorly, the singer of 
 " Madoc " lost his way unattended, and only the native- 
 born genius found out the local secrets. 
 
 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 " Hiawa 
 tha s " pleasant numbers the Red Indian, with his narrow 
 
152 LIFE OF 
 
 skull and small brain, is not presented to us with less 
 embellishment 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 fierce 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. 
 
 During the years through which we have been watching 
 the creation of "The Golden Legend," " Evangeline," 
 and " Hiawatha," Longfellow had frequently contributed 
 to a number of American magazines, giving them the 
 first taste of pieces afterwards brought together in book 
 form. In 1857, The Atlantic Monthly was started in 
 Boston, by Messrs. Phillips, Sampson, and Co., pub 
 lishers, and James Russell Lowell was commissioned 
 to edit it on liberal principles, with a view to making 
 it a magazine of all the talents native talents. The 
 Atlantic was started at a dinner, and it became the 
 custom for editor and contributors to meet at a similar 
 symposium on the last Saturday of each month, just 
 as the early writers for The London Magazine used to 
 meet at the invitation of Taylor and Hessey. Lowell, there 
 fore, gathered around him, every four weeks, Agassiz, J. 
 Eliot Cabot, John S. Dwight, Felton, Emerson, Holmes, 
 E. R. Howe, Estes Howe, Charles E. Norton, Francis 
 H. Underwood, Edmund Quincy, and king among 
 
LONGFELLOW. 153 
 
 them Henry Longfellow. The singer of "Hiawatha" 
 was always good company at these gatherings full of 
 matter, wise, genial ; Emerson let off some of his best 
 philosophic crackers among them ; Lowell supplied the 
 prime motive power of enthusiasm, and his sarcasms 
 excellently sharpened the more delicate wit of the Auto 
 crat of the Breakfast Table. The dinners usually were 
 held at " Parker s ; " but once the party went to "Porter s," 
 in Cambridge, and there indulged in canvas-back ducks 
 and " mongrel goose," with a good deal of egg-flip after 
 wards all these creature comforts being specialities at 
 " Porter s." This was a famous Nox Ambrosiana : they 
 sat late, and marched home through snow, chanting a 
 chorus then popular under the name of " Puttyrum." 
 It must have been Lowell who started " Puttyrum," and 
 we need not find fault with him for allowing the voices 
 of these high-minded men of letters to be wafted to us 
 for once in tones of exceeding hilarity. 
 
 For years Longfellow sent his best detached poems to 
 The Atlantic, beginning in 1857 with "Santa Filomena," 
 and, between that year and 1876, writing for the periodical 
 over forty of his best poems. 
 
 In 1858, " The Courtship of Miles Standish " followed 
 up " Evangeline," as a further experiment in hexameters. 
 Its design was to picture the deeds and sufferings of the 
 primitive Plymouth Colony, and the sombre nature of 
 the subject is relieved by the maidenly graces of "Priscilla." 
 Miles Standish is a busy man, and, moreover, sheepish 
 with women, so he commissions John Alden to go and 
 woo Priscilla to become Mrs. Standish. Poor John 
 Alden is loath to do the job, for he himself loves the girl ; 
 
154 LIFE OF 
 
 but he blurts out the message as bravely as any man 
 could do aye, in spite of a snubbing. 
 
 " Still John Aklen went on, unheeding the words of Priscilla, 
 Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, persuading, expanding ; 
 Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all his battles in Flanders, 
 How with the people of God he had chosen to suffer affliction, 
 How, in return for his zeal, they had made him Captain of Ply 
 mouth ; 
 
 He was a gentleman born, could trace his pedigree plainly 
 Back to Hugh Standish of Duxbury Hall, in Lancashire, England, 
 Who was the son of Ralph, and the grandson of Thurston de 
 
 Standish ; 
 
 Heir unto vast estates, of which he was basely defrauded, 
 Still bore the family arms, and had for his crest a cock argent 
 Combed and wattled gules, and all the rest of the blazon. 
 He was a man of honour, of noble and generous nature ; 
 Though he was rough, he was kindly ; she knew how during the 
 
 winter 
 
 He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle as woman s ; 
 Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, and headstrong, 
 Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable always, 
 Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was little of 
 
 stature ; 
 
 For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, courageous, 
 Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman in England, 
 Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of Miles Standish ! 
 But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent lan 
 guage, 
 
 Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, 
 Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes overrunning with 
 
 laughter, 
 
 Said, in a tremulous voice, Why don t you speak for yourself, 
 John ? " 
 
 Priscilla knew all the while the true state of matters in 
 John Alden s heart, and she reciprocated its warm feel- 
 
LONGFELLOW. 155 
 
 ings. So, in the end, Miles had to stand aside, and 
 Priscilla wedded the more lovable of two uncommonly 
 bashful warriors. 
 
 For beauty of description or breadth of motive, " The 
 Courtship of Miles Standish " does not bear comparison 
 with " Evangeline," but it gives us glimpses of some 
 historic New England characters, and creditably renders 
 into some sort of poetry the dutiful, rigid, frigid kind of 
 lives that the men who founded the State of Massa 
 chusetts led, in the fear of the Lord. 
 
L 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ONGFELLOW was now on the pinnacle of pros 
 perity. His books sold in such quantities as to 
 guarantee him a large yearly income. Thus he had 
 felt warranted, in 1854, after about eighteen years of 
 academic work as a teacher, in resigning his Harvard 
 Professorship, to be free for purely literary pursuits. 
 He was indubitably the handsomest, wealthiest, kindliest, 
 best-mannered author in America; and he was also the 
 most popular author. He and his beautiful wife and 
 his five children filled the Craigie House, for the greater 
 part of every year, with the sunshine of a hospitable 
 and well-ordered family. All was managed in this home 
 in the frankest manner of America; its latch-string 
 was ever out, for the dwelling, like the dwellings of 
 the Acadians, was "open as day and the hearts of the 
 owners." Nevertheless, the poet was never disturbed 
 in it; when he chose to mingle with his family and 
 his friends, they welcomed him ; but, in the sanctuary 
 of his royally-furnished library, he found an anchorite s 
 quiet when he wished. Perhaps he felt the curiosity of 
 the public intrusive to a galling degree at times ; still he 
 encouraged it, and for hours of a morning he would 
 
LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 157 
 
 receive calls from the inquisitive, or sit at his table 
 writing scores of autographs for far-away strangers. Such 
 patience might spring in part from fondness for even 
 undiscriminating admiration ; but it arose still more from 
 unfailing benignity of nature. Why should people wish 
 to see him, or have his autograph, except to add a 
 pleasure to their lives? The pleasure was granted in 
 every case that was at all reasonable. "Yesterday" (so 
 runs the poet s diary for January 9, 1857), "I wrote, 
 sealed, and directed, seventy autographs." Thus many 
 of his working hours were filched away. But " here," 
 he records one day, "is a letter I shall not answer. 
 The writer, entirely unknown, says : Now I want you 
 to write me a few lines for a young lady s album, to be 
 written as an Acrostic to read My Dearest One. If you 
 will please imagine yourself a young man loving a beauti 
 ful young lady, who has promised to be his wife, and 
 then write as you would for yourself, you will much 
 oblige one who has been an ardent admirer of your 
 poems. " The postscript to this request was " Send bill." 
 And all sorts of rubbish like this were daily sifted by the 
 unmurmuring recipient. 
 
 Felton, the jocund scholar, Sumner, the man of action, 
 and the impulsive, helpful Charles Ward were still Long 
 fellow s close intimates ; and to these he had added the 
 great Swiss leader in science, Agassiz, who would resign 
 his beloved laboratory and museum at any call from 
 Longfellow, to spend an hour, or a whole evening, in the 
 Craigie House library, discussing " Hiawatha " or " Miles 
 Standish " as eagerly and acutely as if he had not been 
 born in Tell s country, nor had spent youth and man- 
 
158 LIFE OF 
 
 hood in absorbing studies that seldom are associated with 
 poetical tastes. 
 
 In the summers, Longfellow and his family quartered 
 themselves in a big wooden house at Nahant, a ver 
 durous seaside village, north-east of Boston. There he 
 wrote that poem on " Seaweed," full of lines that are as 
 sea waves, and that other poem of sea and sand, "The 
 Bells of Lynn " : 
 
 " And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous surges, 
 And clap their hands, and shout to you, O Bells of Lynn ! 
 
 Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incantations, 
 Ye summon up the spectral moon, O Bells of Lynn ! 
 
 And startled at the sight, like the weird woman of Endor, 
 Ye cry aloud, and then are still, O Bells of Lynn ! " 
 
 Here, while the poet found rest for his brain and body, 
 his eldest son Charles learned to be a sailor, and his 
 second son developed from a sketcher into a professional 
 artist ; and here, also, Richard Dana wooed his daughter 
 Edith. To the end of his life, his spirit, when weary, 
 always haunted Nahant. 
 
 We see that the wine of life was tremblingly full in the 
 cup of our poet, in and before his fifty-fourth year that 
 fatal year 1861 when his wife was burnt to death before 
 his eyes. To amuse her younger children, Mrs. Long 
 fellow had been making seals : a lighted drop of wax fell 
 into her lap, and her skirts of gauze at once enveloped 
 her in flames. Hearing his wife scream, the poet rushed 
 from his study in time to snatch a rug and throw it round 
 her ere she fell, mortally injured. She was buried on 
 
LONGFELLOW. 159 
 
 July 1 2th; and she never looked fairer than on that day 
 the anniversary of her marriage. Terribly as the fire 
 had burnt her, it had spared one side of her beautiful 
 head. 
 
 In the days when Miles Standish first strode about 
 New England, the graves of the English dead were hid 
 from the Indians by being covered with waving corn. 
 The grave that held his beloved in his heart, Longfellow 
 hid from his friends. Hardly once was he heard to 
 allude to his wife, after the first shock was over. His 
 diary remained for long after that terrible day a complete 
 blank ; it was noticed that from that same day he aged 
 rapidly : his heart was full of its secret full, but silent, 
 as a grave always is ; and above this grave the strong 
 man sowed his thoughts, and they ripened like the corn 
 in autumn. 
 
 The next published work of the poet was "Tales of 
 a Wayside Inn" (1863). ^ n stringing together these 
 Tales, the author lays hold of Chaucer s device of col 
 lecting a few contrasting figures to act as story-tellers. 
 We have a jolly Landlord, who is also a squire and a 
 justice of the peace ; a Student, learned in chivalry ; a 
 Spanish Jew from Alicante, altogether a figure of majestic 
 sombreness ; a sunny-minded Theologian ; a Norse 
 Musician ; a Sicilian ; and a Poet. These worthies meet 
 at the " wayside inn," of course, and the Tales are gene 
 rated in the course of their talks. 
 
 The scene and the characters thus used to introduce 
 the Tales, were all drawn from reality. In the town of 
 Sudbury, twenty miles from Cambridge, was an old inn, 
 Galled "The Red Horse Tavern" a large, irregular, low- 
 
160 LIFE OF 
 
 roofed hostelry, surrounded by fine trees. Here lived, 
 as landlord and squire of the parish, with a coat of arms, 
 a gentleman of good descent called Howe. To Howe s 
 bar-parlour Longfellow brought, in imagination, T. W. 
 Parsons, the translator of " Dante " ; Luigi Monti, a 
 Sicilian ; Professor Treadwell, of Harvard Theological 
 Faculty ; the scholar, Henry Ware Wales ; the violinist, 
 Ole Bull ; and a notable Jew, called Israel Edulei. 
 These became the Poet, Sicilian, Theologian, Student, 
 Musician, Spanish Jew. And the Landlord, who tells 
 the first and best tale, is old Howe himself. It is very 
 pleasant to know from Longfellow that we are warranted 
 in supposing these men to have been the original types 
 he selected. We recognize the ever-glad countenance 
 of Ole Bull in this character-sketch : 
 
 " Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe, 
 His figure tall and straight and lithe, 
 And every feature of his face 
 Revealing his Norwegian race : 
 A radiance, streaming from within, 
 Around his eyes and forehead beamed. 
 The Angel with the violin, 
 Painted by Raphael, he seemed." 
 
 And this seems an admirably-executed portrait of Monti, 
 a man whom Longfellow had at his house frequently : 
 
 " His face was like a summer night, 
 All flooded with a dusky light ; 
 His hands were small ; his teeth shone white 
 As sea-shells when he smiled or spoke ; 
 His sinews supple and strong as oak ; 
 Clean shaven was he as a priest, 
 
LONGFELLOW. 161 
 
 Who at the mass on Sunday sings, 
 
 Save that upon his upper lip 
 
 His beard, a good palm s length at least, 
 
 Level and pointed at the tip, 
 
 Shot sidewise, like a swallow s wings." 
 
 The "Prelude," whence these excerpts are taken, is 
 the best piece of work in the whole book ; probably 
 because, in writing it, Longfellow felt most keenly appre 
 hensive of comparison with Chaucer s pen-portraits. The 
 Landlord s Tale, which follows the " Prelude," is " Paul 
 Revere s Ride " that oft-recited poem about a midnight 
 gallop in the Revolution days. It of course suggests 
 points of similarity with " LIow They Brought the Good 
 News from Ghent ; " but whereas, in Browning s poem, 
 the interest centres in the gallant efforts of an overtaxed 
 steed, Longfellow rivets attention by description of the 
 sights through which his rider sweeps. The ride was 
 historic ; and it is probable that the poem will remain 
 history for centuries also, for it is as good as the work of 
 the English poet. It is a pity, however, that its fine 
 onomatopoetic lines : 
 
 " Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, 
 Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides," 
 
 are unmistakably reminiscent of Tennyson s : 
 
 " Low on the sand, and loud on the stone, 
 The last wheel echoes away." 
 
 Yet only the first of the two lines we quote from Long 
 
 ii 
 
162 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
 fellow is thus deprived of credit for originality ; and the 
 other is probably not to be surpassed in modern literature 
 for the imitative music with which the rough gallop of an 
 excited horse is rendered. 
 
 Of the other Tales in this volume, the long " Saga of 
 King Olaf," composed of as many as twenty-two legends, 
 is specially remarkable, although its interest scarcely 
 belongs to the highest heroism, and is frittered away 
 somewhat by a superabundance of episode. " Tor- 
 quemada " is the one Tale that we could wish omitted : 
 it is altogether painful. 
 
 It seems necessary to abandon the strict sequence of 
 events in the poet s life here, so far as to note that "Three 
 Books of Song" (1872) contained a second series of 
 these "Tales of a Wayside Inn;" and in the following 
 year still more were published in the volume entitled, 
 "Aftermath." The frame-work of the Tales has never 
 popularized itself; and the stories themselves have not 
 gained the full measure of acceptance that might have 
 been expected for them. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 TO see one s friends aging is sadder than to feel old. 
 In 1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne, "grey and grand," 
 fell out of the ranks of America s great men. Long 
 fellow s monody on Hawthorne s death appeared in the 
 volume called " Flower-de-Luce and Other Poems" (1867). 
 Felton was gone, too. One day Agassiz sat down in 
 Longfellow s study and wept like a child, because he 
 had lost his power to work : then he rallied for a space, 
 and died in harness. A few chilly entries in the diary 
 show how much the poet felt his increased loneliness ; 
 he was sitting out the fire. But, meanwhile, he did not 
 slacken in his literary efforts ; on the contrary, he busied 
 himself overmuch. 
 
 In 1868 his publishers brought out " The New England 
 Tragedies." The first of these tragedies, " John Endicott," 
 deals with the persecution of the Quakers, and the other, 
 " Giles Corey of the Salem Farms," was a study of the 
 witchcraft mania. Both poems, written in blank verse, 
 the intentionally plain style of which occasionally be 
 comes comically bald, contain passages of gloomy power, 
 but they fail in dramatic verve, and have no chance of 
 
164 LIFE OF 
 
 living. In truth, the subjects of these Tragedies were 
 too irredeemably gloomy for poetic treatment ; and Long 
 fellow did not try to recast the grim stories ; this work is 
 just a metrical version of the old colonial chronicles. 
 Years afterwards Longfellow composed a dramatic study of 
 the Gospels, and called it " The Divine Tragedy" (1872) ; 
 and then he arranged "The Divine Tragedy," "The 
 Golden Legend," and " The New England Tragedies," as 
 a trilogy called " Christus " ; but "The Golden Legend" is 
 the only section of the trilogy that can be called a success in 
 any sense. The idea of the trilogy was, of course, the repre 
 sentation of Christianity in three forms in its origin, in its 
 mediaeval power, and in its Western development through 
 Puritanism. The transition to this last stage is too 
 abrupt ; and it does not give us a sense of the blessed 
 fulness of the Gospel that the conclusion to a history of 
 the Divine idea should convey. It had once been Long 
 fellow s intention to make the third part consist of a poem 
 founded on the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem ; and 
 this would certainly have furnished a fitter sequel to the 
 other tragedies. "The Divine Tragedy" is as rigid in 
 method as possible, and into the mouth of the Sacred 
 Hero the poet put no words but those of Scripture. The 
 whole poem was a hazardous experiment. On the one 
 hand, many people hesitated to read any character-poem 
 founded on Christ s career ; on the other, critics felt 
 that the limits the author had imposed upon himself 
 made it impossible for him to claim imaginative merit of 
 a definite character. The action of the Tragedy is direct 
 and swift ; the best effort at characterization lies in some 
 of the passages that describe Pilate, of whom a view is 
 
LONGFELLOW. 165 
 
 taken far nobler than that expressed in Bacon s sneer. 
 In " Three Books of Song " there had appeared a tra 
 gedy in five acts called " Judas Maccabeus," but this 
 interested nobody. 
 
 In May of 1868, Longfellow sailed for Europe, and in 
 England he began an enjoyable tour that extended 
 through eighteen months. Cambridge University gladly 
 took occasion to bestow upon him the degree of LL.D. In 
 London he was pulled about by all the celebrated people, 
 and Mr. Gladstone proposed his health at a great dinner. 
 Returning from Italy, he obtained further academic recog 
 nition from our country this time in the Oxford degree 
 of D.C.L. 
 
 He was then a fine type of the American scholar, in 
 appearance. His long beard was blanched, like Priam s ; 
 his head was covered with milky locks ; his eyes were soft 
 and bright ; his complexion was pure, although the skin 
 was wrinkled, especially about the eyes. His finely- 
 shaped head, one may be pardoned for pointing out, 
 was thoroughly English in character. Spurzheim once 
 said that, "The general shape of your head shows your 
 capabilities : your face shows what you have done with 
 those capabilities." Any Oxford youth who had the 
 opportunity of looking into Longfellow s face as he 
 marched up erect and hale, to receive his degree, must 
 have noted how healthy and worthy a record lay in the 
 face of the new D.C.L. 
 
 The Queen sent for him, and the republican shook 
 Her Majesty simply by the hand, on being introduced. 
 At last, a little wearied of being made so much of, he 
 longingly hied back to his native land, paid his taxes as 
 
166 LIFE OF 
 
 soon as he reached Craigie House, and thus " felt at 
 home again." 
 
 For many years Longfellow had been labouring zest 
 fully at a translation of Dante s " Divine Comedy." This 
 rendering, which is in verse, caused the formation of a 
 Dante Club, at the meetings of which Lowell and Norton 
 carefully criticized every canto of their friend s work 
 whose reputation as a skilled translator was beyond all 
 question. The result is a wonderful rendering of the Flo 
 rentine s immortal song of Heaven and Hell. The version 
 lacks heat and light. Dante s mystic raptures, his apprehen 
 sion of the infinite possibilities of woe, his occasionally ex 
 quisite sympathy with errors of the human heart, his hate 
 that could search hell for an enemy s face like fierce light 
 ning, his whole range of extreme passions were far different 
 indeed from any moods of the gentle American bard. 
 But Longfellow luckily elected to attempt elegant literal- 
 ness, rather than reproduction of the impassioned spirit ; 
 and in this attempt he has succeeded so astonishingly 
 that it may well be doubted whether there is in the world 
 another metrical translation from any author, at once so 
 literal and so natural in diction. He adopts Dante s 
 arrangement of metres, but drops the rhymes. Day by 
 day, with a steady pulse, Longfellow s hand added half a 
 dozen or a dozen lines to his loved labour, before break 
 fast-time; and in this way the translation was metho 
 dically achieved. Any one beginning the study of Dante 
 in the original tongue could not do better than use Long 
 fellow s version for dictionary and " crib." Take these 
 lines, for instance, selected at random from the thirty-first 
 canto of the " Purgatory " : 
 
LONGFELLOW. 
 
 " Volgi, Beatrice, volgi gli occhi santi, 
 Era la sua canzone, al tuo fidele 
 Che, per vederti, ha mossi passi tanti. 
 
 Longfellow translates thus : 
 
 " * Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes, 
 
 Such was their song, unto thy faithful one, 
 Who has to see thee ta en so many steps. " 
 
 Literalness could hardly go further in a verse rendering. 
 The value of Longfellow s published version is greatly 
 enhanced by the body of notes which he appended to 
 each section. In February of 1865, the first volume of 
 advance sheets went to Italy, in commemoration of the 
 six hundredth anniversary of Dante s birth. The publi 
 cation of the translation was completed in 1870. 
 
 The New York Ledger paid Longfellow three thousand 
 dollars for the right to publish his " Hanging of the 
 Crane" a domestic idyl, which afterwards appeared as 
 an illustrated book, in 1874. There are about two 
 hundred lines in this poem, which, with its excellently 
 idealized description of a housewarming, proved that the 
 author of " Evangeline " still held the pen firmly in hand. 
 It is said that " The Hanging of the Crane " was written 
 in honour of Thomas Bailey Aldrich and his young wife. 
 In 1875 came "The Masque of Pandora and Other 
 Poems." "The Masque" was recast and put on the 
 stage at Boston in 1881, but utterly failed, by reason of 
 its inherent weakness. Among the " Other Poems " was 
 that song of the poet s noble old age, " Morituri Salu- 
 tamus." There, too, was printed the " Sonnet to 
 Sumner ; " for Sumner now was dead, and the " Five of 
 Clubs " belonged to the chronicles of old. 
 
163 LIFE OF 
 
 " Poems of Places," a collection of what may be 
 termed poetical topography, was brought out by Messrs. 
 Osgood and Co., in 1876-79, nominally under the editor 
 ship of Longfellow. In 1878 he returned to a scene he 
 loved when a boy, in " Keramos," a poem of the potter. 
 " Keramos" had originally appeared in Harper s Magazine. 
 In book form, it was accompanied by a last flight of 
 "Birds of Passage," including "The Herons of Elm- 
 wood," " The White Czar," and nineteen sonnets. The 
 first Flight of " Birds " had appeared with " Miles Stan- 
 dish," and included " The Churchyard at Cambridge " 
 and " The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz." The second 
 Flight appeared with " Tales of a Wayside Inn," and 
 included " The Children s Hour " and " The Cumber 
 land." The third Flight had appeared with the second 
 series of " Tales," and included " Travels by the Fire 
 side." The fourth Flight appeared with " The Masque 
 of Pandora," and contained nothing noticeable ; the fifth 
 Flight was that mentioned as accompanying " Keramos." 
 Among the nineteen sonnets printed with " Keramos " 
 were those on " The Three Silences " and " St. John s, 
 Cambridge." In an earlier chapter of this little book 
 it has been hinted that for the shell-bound harmonies of 
 the sonnet-form, Longfellow did not exhibit perfect 
 ear. Yet he is a far better sonnet-writer than Shelley, 
 or Byron, or Tennyson ; his sonnets on the " Divina 
 Commedia " are structurally good, and fine in thought ; 
 and still nearer perfection is the thought of " Nature." 
 
 Lastly came a thin book, made up of the best of the 
 poet s later work. It bore a boding name, "Ultima 
 Thule " (1880). In this book there were many farewells 
 

 LONGFELLOW. 169 
 
 the most touching being addressed to Bayard Taylor. 
 The lines that give the volume its title may find a fit 
 place on this page : 
 
 ULTIMA THULE. 
 
 TO GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE. 
 
 WITH favouring winds, o er sunlit seas, 
 We sailed for the Hesperides, 
 The land where golden apples grow j 
 But that, ah ! that was long ago. 
 
 How far since then the ocean streams 
 Have swept us from the land of dreams, 
 That land of fiction and of truth, 
 The lost Atlantis of our youth ! 
 
 Whither, ah, whither ? Are not these 
 The tempest-haunted Hebrides, 
 Where seagulls scream, and breakers roar, 
 And wreck and seaweed line the shore ? 
 
 Ultima Thule ! Utmost Isle ! 
 Here in thy harbours for awhile 
 We lower our sails ; awhile we rest 
 From the unending, endless quest. 
 
 It is impossible to help wishing that " unending " here 
 had been "unended." No one, surely, can read these 
 sad lines from an old man who had enjoyed much in life, 
 without being touched. 
 
 :In Harper s Magazine for March, 1882, the aged poet 
 read an account of a ruined convent in Mexico, and by 
 one passage about the convent bells was roused to write 
 his last song the song about " The Bells of San Bias." 
 
170 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. 
 
 These lines conclude the poem, and ended his singing 
 for ever : 
 
 " Out of the shadow of night 
 The world rolls into light ; 
 It is daybreak everywhere ! " 
 
 That was the last grand line of a whole-hearted poet, 
 who had never lost faith in his God, and still hoped, like 
 Goethe, for "more light ! " 
 
 On Friday, March 24, 1882, Henry Longfellow sank 
 peacefully in death, aged seventy-five. Peritonitis had 
 hastened the natural decay. Amid gently falling snow he 
 was buried in the cemetery of Mount Auburn, near 
 Cambridge. 
 
 Longfellow to the end had held to the Unitarian faith 
 in which he had been bred. 
 
 After the poet s death, a few of his later verses were 
 published under the title of "In the Harbour" (1882). 
 His tragedy, called " Michel Angelo," ran through three 
 numbers of The Atlantic Monthly for 1883. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A MERICA S chief poets Bryant, Longfellow, Emer- 
 2T\. son, Poe, Whittier, and Whitman although writing 
 in the youth of their country s literature, and almost 
 contemporaneously, have differed from one another very 
 widely in their aims and styles. 
 
 When Bryant as a lad, first read Wordsworth s poems, 
 he felt as if a thousand springs had gushed up in his 
 heart. He was by nature a solidly intellectual being, 
 rather than a dreamer. The vast horizons of American 
 scenery, the " grey and melancholy- waste " of ocean, the 
 untenanted prairies, the primeval forests of pine, the 
 unsung majesty of Western rivers whose floods mocked 
 the stream of Nilus these manifestations of mighty 
 nature impressed his growing mind with an awe that only 
 ceased to be dumb when Wordsworth s songs of beck 
 and hill and dale revealed to him the power that might 
 become his own the power of teaching in melodious 
 verse the joys of nature-worship. Expanding in the 
 exercise of this priest-like task, his spirit laid itself bare 
 to all the wonderful works of God that lay around him. 
 Patient in observation as any man of science might be, 
 casting about for the hidden teachings of creation, he 
 
172 LIFE OF 
 
 became imbued with those deep, calm joys that only 
 nature bestows ; his studies became song, chant-like in 
 character, though once or twice exultantly lyrical. With 
 all his sense of beauty in the external world, Bryant 
 is not possessed, so much as Wordsworth was, with 
 potent hopes. His moods are chiefly sombre ; he 
 loves best to sing the sad glories of autumn with a dying 
 fall. 
 
 Emerson, too, was strongly influenced by New Eng 
 land scenery ; but external nature was to him not so 
 much an object of worship as a stimulus towards the 
 purification of human character. Through all the scenes 
 he depicts, his thoughts pass with a cold keenness like that 
 of the early spring winds. Nothing, to him, is an end- 
 in-itself (as the German philosophers would say) except 
 moralizing. The moral ultimatum of all being is his 
 quest; he is Kant among the poets, considerably bewil 
 dered at times by his poetic fancies, and thereby rendered 
 a less consistent preacher. Bryant and Emerson are 
 both limited in their command over the musical re 
 sources of language. Bryant in his blank verse seldom 
 failed to produce sonorous, organ-like tones ; but in other 
 metres he was not sure of his effect. Emerson clung to 
 no special form of verse ; metre was never attractive to 
 him ; a strong thought was sufficient at any time to serve 
 him for an excuse to violate prosody ; but in his more 
 rhapsodical moments he has attained a clearer lyric 
 cry, a more pathetically human voice, than Bryant ever 
 reached. There are but two elements in the poetry of 
 Emerson first, the constant search after spiritual deve 
 lopments j and secondly, the study of the laws of so- 
 
LONGFELLOW. 173 
 
 called inanimate nature, used as a set-off or analogue 
 to the moral law. 
 
 However slight Emerson s sense of artistic form was, 
 he at least idealized consistently. A distinguished student 
 of Greek poetry has remarked with truth that the opposite 
 of the real is not the ideal, but the fantastic. Emerson, 
 so far as his strongly Puritan imagination allowed him, 
 idealized nature and humanity. Edgar Allan Poe was 
 fastidious even morbidly fastidious in his love of beau 
 tiful form ] but he had no root of humanity in him, and 
 little passion for actual external nature. He was not an 
 interpreter. He had no mission, save to create dreams. 
 A greater dreamer in prose than in verse, he has yet 
 added to American literature a few poems of the most 
 strikingly originality ; but of deep spirituality he has none. 
 His loftiest flights of imagination in verse, like his 
 boldest efforts in prose-fiction, rise into no more em 
 pyreal realm than the fantastic. His sense of beauty in 
 language was usually fine. Like Gautier, he loved to 
 work "in onyx and enamel." Yet his taste in rhymes 
 occasionally erred amazingly, like Keats s and Mrs. 
 Browning s ; and the lines which he reckoned his best 
 point of verbal workmanship 
 
 " And the silken sad uncertain 
 Rustling of each purple curtain 
 
 become positively contemptible, when considered as 
 verses seriously put before us by a poet as an achieve 
 ment in an imaginative art. 
 
 Whittier, using a humble vocabulary, exercises his 
 gentle though uneducated genius in finding natural 
 
174 LIFE OF 
 
 beauties amid the hedgerows, romance among the 
 Quakers, and subjects for tears and shame in the ill- 
 kept records of slavery. He puts Emerson s abstract 
 moralizings into the concrete. He has ranged over much 
 ground, but his forte lies in dealing with stories of flesh 
 and blood in New England or the South. 
 
 Walt Whitman is American among the Americans, un 
 tamable as a fowl of the Atlantic, rude in his strength, con 
 temptuous of authority, hopeful of a new cycle of great 
 national histories to be acted on this little earth, and 
 " sounding his barbaric yaup over the roof of the world " 
 in an ecstasy of healthy animalism. Notwithstanding 
 this animalism, he reveals the deepest spirituality at 
 times. His tuneless songs are full of noble thought. It 
 is impossible to describe Whitman without searching for 
 the language of exaggeration. He is a Hebrew bard 
 translated to the American backwoods, where he has 
 turned himself inside out, thence going on to study 
 pantheism on the quays of New York. 
 
 Compared with any one of these poets, Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow is seen to suffer, in certain points. 
 Longfellow had not Bryant s depth of feeling for ancient 
 history or for external nature. The moral ether which 
 Emerson inhaled upon the peaks of thought was too rare 
 I for Longfellow. Morality to Emerson was the very 
 I breath of existence; to Longfellow it was a sentiment. 
 Poe s best poetic efforts are evidence of an imagination 
 more completely self-sufficient than Longfellow s was. 
 In the best of Whittier s poems the pulse of human 
 sympathy beats more strongly than in any of our poet s 
 songs. Still more unlike Longfellow s sentimentality i& 
 
LONGFELLOW. lit 
 
 the universal range of Whitman s manly, outspoken 
 kinsmanship with all living things. 
 
 We feel that in these points Longfellow comes short. 
 How then has he outdistanced those men so easily ? By 
 virtue of his artistic eclecticism. He was not the single- 
 minded priest of nature that Bryant was ; but he took the 
 words out of Bryant s lips, and sang them in a hundred 
 measures. He lowered Emerson s philosophical Puritan 
 ism to the capacity of toilers in the streets ; Emerson may 
 have aimed, like Goethe, at being "humanity s high-priest " 
 Longfellow was content to be humanity s city mis 
 sionary, 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 atrocious, if rare, 
 faults that so disfigure Poe s writings in verse. The 
 same width of learning in matters of general culture) 
 to which allusion has just been made, gave L 
 fellow an appeal to far larger audiences than those th^t 
 Whittier can attract ; and by his gracious choice of sub 
 jects, 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. 
 
176 LIFE OF 
 
 To reach purely sensuous beauty, or abstract intel 
 lectual beauty of a still more exquisite sort, is to be 
 a Keats or a Shelley, at least, if not to be a Shake 
 speare ; and it is not necessary to give Longfellow equal 
 rank as an artist, with Keats or Shelley. But much as 
 we must reverence and rejoice in the more purely artistic 
 work of men like these, the world still needs poets of 
 another sort to warm ordinary blood. The facts of 
 I ordinary homely life our cradling, our childish sorrows, 
 our youthful temptations, the struggles of maturity, the 
 helpfulness of friends, the decay and regrets of old age, 
 the daily deeds of Death must we not ever have new 
 poets to sing about these things to us, and hearten us for 
 our work? Could Keats and Shelley have done much 
 with these themes, had they tried? Let it be admitted 
 that Longfellow almost totally lacked the higher imagina 
 tion that is the originally creative and sustaining power 
 in poetry : we must still give him credit for a wondrously 
 fertile fancy. Along with this pure fancy, he possessed a 
 curiously happy facility in selecting uncommon aspects of 
 common themes ; and furthermore, in a few of his ballads 
 in his "Evangeline," in his "Hiawatha" he laid hold 
 of very uncommon themes. Most of these themes, com- 
 jmon or uncommon, he embellished by his fancy with 
 Isuch a wealth of tender and beautiful sayings, that in every 
 Icivilized land his verses have become household favourites, 
 permeating the lives of rising generations. It is idle to 
 say that such an achievement could be wrought by talent 
 of a commonplace order. J now many hundreds of 
 imitators did Longfellow set a style? Has any one of 
 these imitators come within measurable distance of him ? 
 
LONGFELLOW. 177 
 
 The answer to this question must be " No." But these 
 imitators with their allies who squall "Excelsior" in 
 drawing-rooms have done much to give the critical a 
 distaste for Longfellow s manner of work. Popularity \ 
 undoubtedly caused Longfellow to write too easily ; the 
 public have continued to accept too eagerly all that he I 
 wrote; and therefore it seems to some a merciful task 
 for the army of accomplished pooh-poohers to step in, 
 in the name of the higher criticism, and announce 
 that Longfellow may have been all very well for the 
 vulgar, but was not really a poet of any consequence. 1 
 Such a judgment does not belong to enlightened criti 
 cism. He who has written verses that are committed toi 
 heart by millions for the gladdening of their lives, must! 
 have written much that is true poetry ; and although he I 
 is not necessarily among the twelve greatest poets of the 
 world, he is incontestably a great benefactor and a great 
 man. 
 
 THE END. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 (British Museum). 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 II. POETICAL WORKS 
 
 Smaller Collections. 
 Selections. 
 Single Works. 
 
 III. PROSE WORKS. 
 
 IV. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 
 V. APPENDIX 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 Magazine Articles. 
 Music. 
 
 VI. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OP 
 WORKS. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 The Riverside Edition of the 
 Works of Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow. In eleven vols. 
 With new notes relating to the 
 History, Various Readings, Sub 
 ject Matter, etc., of these Writ 
 ings. Illustrated by several 
 fine steel portraits of Mr. Long 
 fellow. London, 1886, etc., 8vo. 
 
 II. POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 Poems. With illustrations by 
 D. Huntington, Philadelphia, 
 1845, 8vo. 
 
 Among the numerous editions of 
 Longfellow s Poetical Works are the 
 following : London, 1851, 8vo ; Lon 
 don, 1854, 8yo ; London, 1856, 8vo, il 
 lustrated with designs by J. Gilbert, 
 engraved by the brothers Dalziel; 
 
 Boston, 1858, 8vo, 2 vols. ; London, 
 1864, 8vo, illustrated with engravings 
 on wood from designs by B. Foster, 
 J. Gilbert, etc. ; London, 1870, 8vo, 
 edited by W. M. Rossetti, illustrated 
 by W. Lawson ; London, 1878, 8vo, 
 in 11 vols. ; Boston 1879-80, 4to, in 2 
 vols. ; Boston, 1881, 8vo, in 4 vols. ; 
 London, 1884, 8vo, with a prefatory 
 notice by Eva Hope. 
 
 SMALLER COLLECTIONS. 
 
 Ballads and other Poems. Cam 
 bridge [U.S.], 1841, 16mo. 
 
 Poems (Voices of the Night 
 Ballads Miscellaneous). Lon 
 don, [1848], 16mo. 
 
 Later Poems. London, 1866, 8vo. 
 
 The Early Poems of Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow, now first 
 collected. Edited and prefaced 
 by Richard Herno Shepherd. 
 London, 1878, 16mo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 SELECTIONS. 
 
 Household Poems. With illustra 
 tions by John Gilbert, Birket 
 Foster, and John Absolon. 
 Boston [U.S.], 18G5, IGtno. 
 
 In the Woods with Bryant, Long 
 fellow, and Halleck. Illustrated 
 from drawings by John A. 
 Hows. New Y.ork, 1870, 4to. 
 
 Songs and Etchings. Set to 
 music bv T. Anderton and 
 illustrated by R. S. Ohattock. 
 London, 1871, 4to. 
 Contains " The Day is done." 
 
 Favorite Poems. . . . Illustrated. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1877, 16mo. 
 
 The Longfellow Birthday Book. 
 Arranged by C. Dixon. Ardros- 
 san, [1878], 16mo. 
 
 Longfellow Birthday Book. Ar 
 ranged by C. F. Bates. London, 
 [1881], Svo. 
 
 The Longfellow Birthday Book. 
 London, [1882], 32mo. 
 
 American Poems. Longfellow, 
 Whittier, etc. With biograph 
 ical sketches and notes, Lon 
 don, [1881], 8vo. 
 
 Poems and Prose Passages, from 
 the Works of H. W. Long 
 fellow. Compiled by J. E. 
 Hodgson. Illustrated. Boston, 
 [U.S.], 1881, Svo. 
 
 Seven Voices of Sympathy, from 
 the Writings of H. W. Long 
 fellow. Edited by C. F. Bates. 
 Boston, [U.S.], 1882, Svo. 
 
 Choice Poems from II. W. Long 
 fellow, illustrated from paint 
 ings by his son, Ernest W. 
 Longfellow. London, [1883], 
 Svo. 
 
 The same, entitled, Twenty 
 
 Poems, etc. Boston [U.S.], 
 1884, Svo. 
 
 Longfellow Forget-me-nots. A 
 text-book of Longfellow Quota 
 tions. London, [1885], 16mo. 
 
 SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 Aftermath. Boston [U.S.], 1873, 
 16mo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1873, Svo ; 
 Boston, 1874, Svo. 
 
 The Belfry of Bruges, and other 
 Poems. Cambridge [U.S.], 1846, 
 16mo. 
 
 Second edition. Cambridge 
 
 [U.S.], 1846, Svo. 
 
 Christus, a Mystery. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1872, 12mo. 
 
 The Divine Tragedy, The Golden 
 Legend, and the New England 
 Tragedies are here published to 
 gether under the above title. 
 
 Coplas do Don Jorge Manrique. 
 Translated from the Spanish, 
 with an Introductory Essay on 
 the Moral and Devotional Poetry 
 of Spain. Boston [U.S.], 1833, 
 16mo. 
 
 The Courtship of Miles Standish, 
 and other Poems. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1858, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1S5S, Svo ; 
 London, 1859, Svo, with illustrations 
 by J. Gilbert; Boston, 1859, Svo; 
 Boston, 1876, 24mo ; London, 1878, 
 r>mo ; Boston, 1884, Svo, Riverside 
 Literature Series, No. 3, arranged 
 for parlor theatricals ; Boston, 1885, 
 Svo, Riverside Literature Series, 
 No. 2. 
 
 The Divine Comedy of .Dante 
 Alighieri. Translated by Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow. 3 vols. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1867-70, Svo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1867, Svo. 
 in 2 vols. Leipzig, 1867, 16ino., vol. 
 901-03 of the Tauchnitz Edition; Lon 
 don, 1877, Svo ; London, 1886, Svo, 
 with Introduction by Henry Morley. 
 
 The Divine Tragedy. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1872, Svo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ni 
 
 The Divine Tragedy. Another 
 edition. London, 1872, 8vo. 
 
 Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1847, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions Boston, 1848, 
 12mo ; London, 1848, 16mo ; London, 
 [1848], 16mo, with an Introduction 
 historical and explanatory ; London, 
 [1850], 16mo ; London, 1860, 16mo, 
 printed phonetically ; London, 1856, 
 8vo, illustrated by J. Gilbert; 
 London, 1866, 8vo, illustrated from 
 designs by Jane E. Benham, B. 
 Foster, and J. Gilbert; Boston, 
 
 1875, 24mo, illustrated f Boston, 
 
 1876, 24mo, illustrated ; London, 
 1878, 12mo, illustrated; London, 
 1878, 16mo, Victoria School Series ; 
 London [1882], fol., with illustrations 
 by F. Dicksee; Boston, 1883, fol, 
 with illustrations by F. O. C. Darley; 
 Boston, 1883, 8vo, Riverside Litera 
 ture Series, No. 1. 
 
 Excelsior. With illustrations. 
 London, [1878], 8vo. 
 
 Flower-De-Luce, with illustra 
 tions. Boston [U.S.], 1867, 
 16mo. 
 
 The Golden Legend. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1851, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1851, 
 8vo; Boston, 1852, 12mo ; London, 
 1854, 8vo; London, 1855, 8vo; 
 Boston, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 The Hanging of the Crane. 
 Boston, 1874, 8vo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1874, 8vo; 
 Boston, 1875, 16mo, illustrated ; Lon 
 don, 1875, 4to, with illustrations. 
 
 In the Harbor. London, 1882, 
 
 8vo. See also Ultima Thule. 
 Keramos and other Poems. Boston 
 
 [U.S. ], 1878, 16mo. 
 The Masque of Pandora and other 
 
 Poems. Boston [U.S.], 1875, 
 
 16mo. 
 Other editions London, 1875, 
 
 8vo ; Boston, 1876, 12mo. 
 
 Michael Angelo, a Dramatic 
 Poem. Illustrated. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1884, 4to. 
 
 The New England Tragedies. I. 
 
 John Endicott. II. Giles Corey 
 
 of the Salem Farms. Boston 
 
 [U.S.], 1868, 16M10. 
 Poems on Slavery. Cambridge 
 
 [U.S.], 1842, 16mo. 
 Large paper copies were issued of 
 
 the third edition, 1843. 
 
 Second edition, Cambridge 
 
 [U.S.], 1842, 16mo. 
 Poems on Slavery, Early Poems, 
 
 etc. London, 1848, 16mo. 
 Poems on Slavery, by Longfellow, 
 
 Whittier, [E. M. Chandler], 
 
 Southey, etc. London, 1853, 
 
 16mo. " 
 The Seaside and the Fireside. 
 
 Boston [U.S.], 1850, 16mo. 
 Other editions London, 1850, 
 
 16mo ; London, 1850, 18mo. 
 The Skeleton in Armor. With 
 
 illustrations. Boston [U.S.], 
 
 1877, 8vo. 
 The Song of Hiawatha. Boston 
 
 [U.S.], 1855, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1855, 8vo; 
 
 London, 1856, 8vo ; Boston, 1859, 
 
 8vo ; London, 1860, 8vo, illustrated 
 
 from designs by G. H. Thomas ; 
 
 London, 1866, 8vo, includes the 
 
 Gpden Legend; Boston, 1884, 8vo ; 
 
 Riverside Literature Series, No. 13. 
 
 The Spanish Student. A Play in 
 three Acts. Cambridge [U.S.], 
 1843, 16mo. 
 
 Large paper copies were issued of 
 the third edition, 1843. 
 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1863, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1864, 8vo; 
 London, 1867, 8vo ; illustrated with 
 engravings on wood from designs by 
 B. Foster, J. Tenniel, J. R. Clayton, 
 and T. Dalziel ; London, [1874], 8vo. 
 with illustrations by Sir J. Gilbert ; 
 London, [1880], 8vo. 
 
 Three Books of Song, Boston 
 [U.S.], 1872, 16rao. 
 
iv 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Ultima Thnlo. Boston [U.S.], 
 1880, IGmo. 
 
 Ultima Thiile (In the Harbor, 
 Ultima Thule Pt. ii.), 2 pt. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1881-82, 16mo. 
 
 The Village Blacksmith. Illus 
 trated. [Edited, with an Intro 
 duction, by W. M. L. J.] Lon 
 don, 1885, 4to. 
 
 Voices of the Night. Cambridge 
 [U.S.], 1839, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions Cambridge, 1840, 
 8vo ; London, 1843, IGmo ; Boston, 
 1845, Svo ; London, 1850, 18mo, 
 edited by R. W. Griswold; London, 
 1852, 8vo, illustrated with engrav 
 ings on wood from designs by J. E. 
 Benham, B. Foster, etc.; London, 
 1857, 4to, with illustrations by J. 
 Gilbert. 
 
 III. PROSE WORKS. 
 
 The Prose Works of H. W. 
 Longfellow. Hyperion, Outre- 
 Mer, and Kavanagh. 3 pts. 
 London 1852, 12mo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1857, 8vo ; 
 Boston, 1857, 16mo, in 2 vols. ; 
 Boston, 1866, 16mo, in 2 vols. This 
 is a duplicate of the 1867 edition, 
 with a different title-page, and 
 printed on larger paper; London 
 [1874], 8vo ; edited, with an Intro 
 duction, by the author of "Tenny- 
 soniana, " (R. H. Shepherd) ; illus 
 trated by V. W. Bromley: Boston 
 [U.S.], 1880, 8vo, in 2 vols. 
 
 American Prose : Hawthorne : 
 Irving : Longfellow : etc. Bos 
 ton [U.S.I 1880, 8vo. 
 
 Contains the Valley of the Loire, 
 Journey into Spain from"Outre- 
 Mer." 
 
 Hyperion : A Romance. By the 
 author of " Outre-Mer." 2 vols. 
 New York, 1839, 8vo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1844, 
 16mo ; London, 1853, 8vo ; illus 
 trated with nearly one hundred 
 engravings on wood ; Boston, 1858, 
 
 8vo ; London, 1865, 4to. ; illus 
 trated with twenty-four photographs 
 of the Rhine, Switzerland, and the 
 Tyrol, by F. Frith. 
 
 Kavanagh, a Tale. Boston [U.S.], 
 1849, 16mo. 
 
 Other editions Bo?,ton, 1851, 
 12mo : London, 1858, 8vo ; illus 
 trated by B. Foster. 
 
 Outre-Mer, a Pilgrimage beyond 
 the Sea. 2 Nos. Boston [U.S.], 
 1833-34, 8vo. 
 
 After No. 2 the publication in num 
 bers was discontinued, and the 
 whole work appeared in 1835 in two 
 volumes from the press of Harper 
 and Bros., New York. 
 
 Outre-Mer, a Pilgrimage beyond 
 the Sea. 2 vols. New York, 
 1835, 12mo. 
 
 This is the complete work, the pub 
 lication of which was commenced in 
 numbers in 1833. Other editions- 
 London, 1835, 12mo; London, 1850, 
 IGmo; London, 1851, sn. Svo : Bos 
 ton, 1851, Svo. 
 
 IV. 
 MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 
 
 Origin and Progress of the French 
 Language. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 32, 
 April 1831.] 
 Defence of Poetry. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 34, 
 January 1832.] 
 The Schoolmaster. 
 
 [New England Magazine, 6 parts, 
 1831-33. The first sketches for Outre- 
 Mer.] 
 
 History of the Italian Language 
 and Dialects. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 35, 
 October 1832.] 
 
 Spanish Devotional and Moral 
 Poetry. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 34, 
 April 1832.] 
 
 Spanish Language and Literature. 
 [North American Review, vol. 30, 
 April 1833.] 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Old English Romances. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 37, 
 October 1833.] 
 The Great Metropolis. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 44, 
 April 1837.] 
 Hawthorne s Twice-Told Tales. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 45, 
 July 1837.] 
 Teener s Frithiofs Saga. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 45, 
 July 1837.] 
 Anglo-Saxon Literature. 
 
 [North American Review, vol. 47, 
 July 1838.] 
 
 The French Language in England. 
 [North American Review, vol. 51, 
 October 1840.] 
 
 Miscellaneous Poems, selected 
 from the United States Literary 
 Gazette. Boston [U.S.], 1826, 
 18mo. 
 
 Contains fourteen poems by Long 
 fellow. 
 
 Novelas Espanolas, El Serrano de 
 las Alpujarras ; y El Cuadro 
 Misterioso. Portland [U.S.], 
 1830, 12mo. 
 
 Edited by Longfellow, who also 
 wrote the Preface in Spanish. 
 
 Manuel de Proverbes Dramatiques. 
 Portland [U.S.], 1830, 12mo. 
 Preface in French, by Longfellow. 
 
 Elements of French Grammar. By 
 M. L Homond, Professor Emeri 
 tus in tho University of Paris. 
 Translated from tho French. 
 Portland [U.S.], 1830, 12mo. 
 
 French Exercises, selected chiefly 
 from Wanostrocht, and adapted 
 to the Elements of French Gram 
 mar by M. L Homond. Port 
 land [U.S.], 1830, 12mo. 
 
 Syllabus de la Grammaire Ital- 
 ienne. Boston [U.S.], 1832, 
 16mo. 
 
 Saggi de Novellieri Italian! 
 d ogni Secolo : tratti da piu 
 celebii scrittori, con brevi 
 notizie intorno alia vita di 
 ciascheduno. Boston [U.S.], 
 1832, 16mo. 
 
 The preface in Italian is by Long 
 fellow. 
 
 Cours de Langue Francaise. Course 
 of Study in the French 
 Language. 2 vols. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1832, 12mo. 
 
 Vol. i., Le Ministre de Wakeficld. 
 Vol. ii., Proverbes Dramatiques. 
 
 The Poets and Poetry of Europe. 
 With introductions and bio 
 graphical notices. Philadelphia, 
 1845, 8vo. 
 
 Other editions London, 1855, 8vo ; 
 Boston, 1871, 8vo. 
 
 The Waif: A Collection of Poems. 
 Cambridge [U.S.], 1845, 16mo. 
 Edited by Longfellow, who con 
 tributed the Proem, "The Day is 
 Done." 
 
 Other editions Boston, 1846, 
 
 12mo ; London, 1849, 16mo. 
 
 The Estray, a Collection of Poems. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1847, 16mo. 
 
 Edited by Longfellow, who con 
 tributed the Proem, " Once into a 
 Quiet Village." 
 
 Poems of Places. Edited by H. 
 W. Longfellow. 31 vols. Bos 
 ton [U.S.], 1876-79, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1877, etc., 8vo. 
 
 Poems of the "Old South," by 
 H. W. Longfellow, 0. W. 
 Holmes, and others. Illustrated. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1877, 4to. 
 
 Poems of America, with illustra 
 tions. [Edited by H. W. Long 
 fellow.*] 6 pts. in 8 vols. Bos 
 ton [U.S.], 1882, 8vo. 
 
VI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Y. AITEXDIX. 
 BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. 
 
 Atlantic Almanac. The Atlantic 
 Almanac for 1871. Boston 
 [U.S.], 1871, 8vo. 
 
 A short biography of Longfellow, 
 with portrait, pp. 38-39. 
 
 Austin, George Lowell. H. W. 
 Longfellow, his life, his works, 
 his friendships. Illustrated. 
 By George Lowell Austin. Bos 
 ton [U.S.], 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Bcchger,A. Literarisch-biograph- 
 ische studie. Yon A. Beehger. 
 Culemborg, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Bulkley, Robert W. Longfellow. 
 Par Robert W. Bulkley. La 
 Haye [1882], 8vo. 
 
 Cobb, Joseph B. Leisure Labors ; 
 or, miscellanies historical, liter 
 ary, and political. New York, 
 1858, 8vo. 
 Longfellow s Poems, pp. 330-356. 
 
 Davidson, Thomas. H. W. Long 
 fellow. By Thomas Davidson. 
 Boston [U.S.], 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Depret, Louis. Le Ya et Yient. 
 Notices litteraires, etc. Paris, 
 1866, 12mo. 
 
 La Poesie en Amerique. H. 
 
 W. Longfellow. Lille, 1876, 
 8vo. 
 
 Chez les Anglais. Shake 
 speare, Charles Dickens, Long 
 fellow, etc. Paris, 1879, 8vo. 
 
 Henry Wadswprth Longfellow. 
 La Poesie en Aine rique, pp. 131-194. 
 
 De Prins, A. Etudes Ameri- 
 caines. Louvain, 1877. 
 
 Devey, J. A Comparative Esti 
 mate of Modern English Poets. 
 By J. Devey. London, 1873, 
 8vo. 
 A Notice of Longfellow, pp. 360- 
 
 Drake, Samuel Adams. Our 
 Great Benefactors ; short bio 
 graphies of the men and women 
 most eminent in literature, etc. 
 Boston, 1884, 4to. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
 born 1807, died 1882, pp. 125-131. 
 
 Duyckinck, Evert A. National 
 Portrait Gallery, etc. 2 vols. 
 New York [1867], 4to. 
 
 Biography of Longfellow, with 
 Portrait, vol. ii., pp. 444-450. 
 
 Essays. English Essays. 4 vols. 
 Hamburg, 1870, 8vo. 
 
 Vol.iii.contains an article on Long 
 fellow, reprinted from the Illus 
 trated London News, July 17, 1869. 
 
 Friswell, J. Hain. Modern Men 
 of Letters. London, 1870, 8vo. 
 Longfellow, pp. 285-296. 
 
 Gilfillan, George, Galleries of 
 Literary Portraits. 2 vols. 
 Edinburgh, 1856, 8vo. 
 Longfellow, vol. i., pp. 217-223. 
 
 Goodwin, D. R. Memorial Ad 
 dress before the Alumni of 
 Bowdoin College, July 12, 1882. 
 By Rev. D. R. Goodwin. Port 
 land, 1882, Svo. 
 
 Hamilton, W. Parodies of the 
 works of English and American 
 authors. Collected by W. 
 Hamilton. 2 vols. London, 
 1884-85, 4to. 
 
 Contains a great number of paro 
 dies of Longfellow. 
 
 Hazeltine, Mayo W. Chats about 
 Books, Poets, and Novelists. 
 New York, 1883, Svo. 
 H. W. Longfellow, pp. 169-187. 
 
 Johnson, Charles F. Three 
 Americans and Three English 
 men. Lectures read before the 
 students of Trinity College, 
 Hartford. New York, 1886, 8ro. 
 H. W. Longfellow, pp. 213-245. 
 
 Kenned} 7 -, W. Sloane. Biography, 
 Anecdote, Letters, etc, By W. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Sloane Kennedy. Cambridge, 
 Mass., 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Knortz, Karl. Longfellow. Lit- 
 erar-historische Studie von Karl 
 Knortz. Hamburg, 1879, 8vo. 
 H. W. Field-Gar-a Jim. Not 
 by H. W. L. A parody on 
 "Hiawatha." Chicago, 1880, 
 16mo. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 
 The Longfellow collector s hand 
 book. A bibliography of first 
 editions. New York, 1885, 
 12mo. 
 
 Samuel. Life of Henry 
 
 Wadsworth Longfellow, with 
 extracts from his journals ami 
 correspondence. Edited by 
 Samuel Longfellow. 2 vols. 
 London, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 Macchetta, Blanche Roosevelt 
 Tucker. Home Life of H. W. 
 Longfellow. By Blanche Roose 
 velt Tucker Macchetta. New 
 York, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 M Crie, George. The Religion of 
 our Literature. Essays upon 
 Thomas Carlyle, etc. London, 
 1875, 8vo. 
 H. W. Longfellow, pp. 181-222. 
 
 Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollec 
 tions of a Literary Life ; or, 
 books, places, and people. By 
 Mary Russell Mitford. 3 vols. 
 London, 1852, 12mo. 
 
 Chapter vi., American Poets. 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 
 Nichol, John. American Litera 
 ture, an historical sketch, 1620- 
 1880. Edinburgh, 1882, 8vo. 
 Longfellow, pp. 193-206. 
 
 Orthos. Chimasia : a Reply to 
 Longfellow s Theologian. By 
 Orthos. Philadelphia, 1864, 
 12 mo. 
 
 Parton, James. Some noted 
 Princes, Authors, and States- 
 
 men of our time. By Canon 
 Farrar, James T- Fields, Archi 
 bald Forbes, etc. Edited, by 
 James Parton. New York 
 [1886], 4to. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By 
 J. Trowbridge. Illustrated, pp. 
 289-296. 
 
 Peck, G. W. Review of Mr. 
 Longfellow s Evangeline. New 
 York, 1848. 
 
 Poe, Edgar A. The Literati; 
 some honest opinions about 
 autorial merits and demerits, 
 etc. New York, 1850, 8vo. 
 
 The Literati forms vol. iii. of Poe s 
 works, and contains "Mr. Long 
 fellow and other Plagiarists," pp. 
 292-334; "Mr. Longfellow, Mr. 
 Willis, and the Drama," pp. 334-362 ; 
 "Longfellow s Ballads," pp. 363-374. 
 
 Rossetti, William Michael. Lives 
 of Famous Poets. London, 
 1878, 8vo. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, pp. 
 383-391. 
 
 Shepard, William. The Literary 
 Life. Edited by W. Shepard. 
 Pen pictures of modern authors. 
 New York, 1882, 8vo. 
 Longfellow and Whittier, pp. 119-134. 
 
 Shortfellow, Harry Wandsworth. 
 The Song of Drop o Wather. 
 [Parody by Harry Wandsworth 
 Shortfellow.] London, 1856,8vo. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund Clarence. 
 Poets of America. Boston, 
 [U.S.], 1885, 8vo. 
 Longfellow, pp. 180-294. 
 
 Another Edition. London, 
 
 1866, 8vo. 
 
 Stoddard, R. H. H. W. Long 
 fellow ; a medley in prose and 
 verse. New York, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Poet s Homes. Pen and 
 
 pencil sketches of American 
 poets and their homes. Boston 
 [1878], 4to. 
 H. W. Longfellow, pp. 1-16. 
 
VI11 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 fc iudrez Capalleja, Victor. Estu- 
 
 dios sobie Longfellow, etc. 
 
 [With a Preface by M. Gutier- 
 rcz.] Madrid, 1883, 8vo. 
 Underwood, Francis H. Henry 
 
 Wadsworth Longfellow. A Bio 
 graphical Sketch. Boston, 1882, 
 
 8vo. 
 Another Edition. London. 
 
 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Varnhagen, PL Tales of a Way 
 side Inn und ihre Quellen von 
 
 H. Varnhagcn. Berlin, 1884, 
 
 Svo. 
 Walcot, Charles M. Hiawatha ; 
 
 a musical extravaganza. By 
 
 C. M. Walcot. New York, 
 
 [1868], 12rno. 
 Ward, J. W. The Song of 
 
 Higher- Water. ByJ. W. Ward. 
 
 [A Parody.] New York, 1868, 
 
 Svo. 
 W hippie, Edwin P. Essays and 
 
 Reviews. Third edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Boston, 1856, Svo. 
 Longfellow occupies pp. 60-66 of 
 
 vol. i. of the Essay on the Poets and 
 
 Poetry of America. 
 Whitman, Walt. Essays from the 
 
 Critic. [Death of Longfellow : 
 
 an Essay by Walt Whitman.] 
 
 Boston, 1882, Svo. 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf. Prose 
 
 Works. Boston, [U.S.], 1866, 
 
 Svo. 
 Longfellow s Evangeline, vol. ii., 
 
 pp. 63-71. 
 Williams, S. F. Essays, critical, 
 
 biographical, and miscellaneous. 
 
 By S. F. Williams. London, 
 
 1862, Svo. 
 Longfellow, pp. 71-96. 
 
 MAGAZINE ARTICLES. 
 
 [The Numbers refer respectively to 
 the Volume and Page of the Magazine 
 where each article will be found.] 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. 
 
 London Quarterly, 2 : 410. 
 (A. Trollope) North American 
 Review, 132 : 383. (R. H. 
 Stoddard) Scribner s Monthly, 
 17 : 1. (F. F. Browne) Dial 
 (Chicago) 2: 275. National Re 
 view, 8 : 198 ; same article, 
 Eclectic Magazine, 46 : 459, 
 and Littell s Living Age, 60 : 
 399. National Magazine, 3 : 1. 
 Chambers s Journal, 22: 310; 
 same article, Littell s Living 
 Age, 43:522. (A. J. H. Crcspi) 
 Town and Country, N.S., 1873, 
 321 With portrait, Every 
 Saturday, 9 : 66. Irish Quar 
 terly, 5: 193 ; 8: 915. (C. Clark- 
 son) New Dominion Monthly, 
 18:97. De Bow, 26:357. (W. 
 Clark Russell), Broadway, 1 : 
 282. (J. F. Rusling) Method 
 ist Quarterly, 19 : 568. With 
 portrait, Eclectic Magazine, 
 49 : 566. With portrait, Eclec 
 tic Magazine, 84 : 246. With 
 portrait, Hogg s Instructor, 4 : 
 289-Sharpe s London Magazine, 
 39 : 199. Victoria Magazine, 
 12: 41. Southern Literary Mes 
 senger, 8 : 150 ; 11 : 92. Lit 
 tell s Living Age, 19: 481. (G. 
 W. Curtis) Atlantic Monthly, 
 12 : 769. (Augustin Cochin) 
 Le Correspondant, 10 Juillct 
 1872. (E.Montegut) Revue des 
 deux Mondcs, 15th Oct. 1849 
 (A. Dudley) 15th Nov. 1S54. 
 (0. B. Frothingham) Atlantic 
 Monthly, 49 : 819. Atlantic 
 Monthly, 57 : 702. Quarterly, 
 Oct. 1886. London Quarterly, 
 Oct. 1886. 
 
 Aftermath. Penn Monthly, 
 
 5: 159. 
 
 and his Works. (Ray Palmer) 
 
 International Review, Nov. 
 1875. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IX 
 
 Longfellow as a Poet. Christian 
 Review, 24 : 31. Southern 
 Literary Messenger, 17 : 663. 
 
 Ballads, and other Poems, 
 
 1843. Monthly Review, 160: 
 249. 
 
 Bryant and Tennyson. (G. 
 
 Smith) Bentley s Miscellany, 
 64 : 61. 
 
 Courtship of Miles Standish. 
 
 Chambers s Journal, 30 : 296 ; 
 same article, Eclectic Magazine, 
 46 : 18. Southern Literary 
 Messenger, 28 : 118. (A. P. 
 Peabody) North American 
 Review, 88 : 275. Rambler, 
 N.S., 10: 314. 
 
 Dante s Divine Comedy. (C. 
 
 E. Norton) North American Re 
 view, 105 : 124. (George W. 
 Greene) Atlantic Monthly, 20 : 
 188. 
 
 The Divine Tragedy. Dublin 
 
 Review, 79 : 331. Canadian 
 Monthly, 1 : 186. (J. H. Allen) 
 Chiistian Examiner, 83 : 261. 
 
 Evangeline. (C. C. Felton) 
 
 North American Review, 66 : 
 215. (G. W. Peck) American 
 Whig Review, 7 : 155. (G. H. 
 . Hollister) New Englander, 6 : 
 548. Southern Literary Mes 
 senger, 15 : 46. Eclectic Maga 
 zine, 15 : 96. American Liter 
 ary Magazine, 2 : 172. (T. S. 
 King) Universalist Quarterly 
 Review, 5 : 104. Eraser s Mag 
 azine, 37 : 295 ; same article, 
 Littell s Living Age, 17: 145. 
 Brownson s Quarterly Review, 
 7 : 56. Littell s Living Age, 
 23: 388. Pioneer, 4: 211. 
 (C. C. Smith) Christian Exam 
 iner, 44 : 143. (P. Chasles) Re 
 vue des deux Mondes, April 
 1849. 
 
 Longfellow. Evangeline Aca- 
 dia, the Scene of. (G. Macken 
 zie) Canadian Monthly 16 : 
 337. National Magazine, 7 : 
 107 
 
 Evening with. (G. B. 
 
 Griffith) Potter s American 
 Monthly, 11 : 276. 
 
 Golden Legend. (W. A. Lar- 
 
 ned) New Englander, 10: 90. 
 Blackwood s Magazine, 71 : 212. 
 British Quarterly Review, 39 : 
 31. Eclectic Review, 95 : 455. 
 Eraser s Magazine, 47 : 367 ; 
 same article, Eclectic Maga 
 zine, 29 : 228. Colburn s New 
 Monthly Magazine, 95 : 24 ; 
 same article, Littell s Living 
 Age, 39 : 417. Southern Liter 
 ary Messenger, 18 : 61. (C. C. 
 Smith) Christian Examiner, 52 : 
 141. (Simon Arnauld) Le Cor- 
 respondant, 10 Juillet 1872. 
 
 Hanging of the Crane. 
 
 Leisure Hour, 1877, 199. 
 
 Hiawatha. Dublin Univer 
 sity Magazine, 47 : 90. New 
 Quarterly Review, 5: 35. 
 Putnam s Monthly Magazine, 6 : 
 578. London Quarterly Re view 
 6 : 333. (K. Knortz) Western, 
 3 : 100. Chambers s Journal, 
 25 ; 7. Colburn s New Monthly 
 Magazine, 106 : 242. Canadian 
 Journal of Industry, n. s. 1 : 48. 
 Christian Remembrancer, 31 : 
 267. Littell s Living Age, 48 : 
 75. Irish Quarterly Review, 6: 
 1. (T. C. Porter) Mercersburg 
 Review, 8: 255. Christian 
 Examiner, 60 : 133. (E. E. 
 Hale) North American Review, 
 82 : 272. Monthly Review, 1 : 
 106. 
 
 Home of, Appleton s Journal, 
 
 2 : 577. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Longfellow. An Hour with. (L. 
 von Lb wenhertz) English 
 woman s Domestic Magazine, 
 11 : 313. 
 
 Hyperion. (C. C. Felton) 
 
 North American Review, 50 : 
 145. Southern Literary Mes 
 senger, 5 : 839. 
 
 Kavanagh. (J. R. Lowell) 
 
 North American Review, 69 : 
 196. American Whig Review, 
 10 : 57. Littell s Living Age, 
 23 : 388. Brownson s Quarterly 
 Review, 7: 56. (T. S. King) 
 Christian Examiner, 47 : 153. 
 
 New England Tragedies. (W. 
 
 F. Poole) North American 
 Review, 108 : 395. (E. J. 
 Cutler) North American Review, 
 108 : 669. 
 
 Obituary Notice of. Satur 
 day Review, April, 1882, p. 
 387 Academy, April, 1882, p. 
 232 Athenaeum, April, 1882, 
 p. 412. 
 
 Outre-Mer. (0. W. B. Pea- 
 body) North American Review, 
 39 : 459. American Monthly 
 Review, 4: 157. 
 Poems of. (A. H. Everett). 
 North American Review, 33 : 
 318. (E. P. Whipple) North 
 American Review, 58 : 22. (C. 
 C. Felton) North American Re 
 view, 55: 114. (W. D. Howells) 
 North American Review, 104: 
 531. Christian Observer, 51 : 
 611. London Quarterly Re view, 
 17 : 45 ; same article, Eclectic 
 Magazine, 55: 189. Southern 
 Literary Messenger, 6 : 230. 
 Dublin University Magazine, 35: 
 461 ; same article, Eclectic 
 Magazine, 20: 325. Eclectic 
 Review, 90: 710. American 
 Whig Review, 13 : 359. 
 
 Long ellow. Poems on Slavery. 
 (W. Ware) Christian Examiner, 
 
 33 : 353. Monthly Review, 
 161 : 64. 
 
 Poets and Poetry of Europe. 
 
 (C. C. Felton) Christian Ex- 
 aminer, 39: 225. (F. Boweri) 
 North American Review, 61 : 
 199. (J. Hadley) American 
 Whig Review, 4 : 496, 580. 
 Democratic Review, 20 : 121. 
 
 Puritan Element in, by Alex. 
 
 H. Japp. British Quarterly 
 Review, 76 : 34. 
 
 Residence of. Art Journal, 
 
 32: 54. 
 
 Seaside and Fireside. Brown- 
 son s Quarterly Review, 7 : 268. 
 
 Study of, by Henry Norman. 
 
 Fortnightly Review, N.S., 33: 
 100. 
 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn. 
 
 British Quarterly Review, 39 : 
 31. Littell s Living Age, 80 : 
 43. 
 
 Yoices of the Night. Christian 
 
 Examiner, 28 : 242. 
 Works of. Dublin Review, 
 
 34 : 359. Colburn s New 
 Monthly Magazine, 99 : 228. 
 
 Music. 
 
 The poems of Longfellow have 
 been extensively chosen by com 
 posers for musical illustration. 
 The following is a selection : 
 
 Operas " Hiawatha," produced 
 at the Royal English Opera, 
 Covent Garden, 1861. Music 
 by Robert Stoepel. London, 
 1861, 8vo. "The Masque of Pan 
 dora," 1881, libretto arranged by 
 Eolton Rowe, music by Alfred 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xi 
 
 Cellier ; "Victorian, the Span 
 ish Student," 1883, libretto 
 by Julian Edwards, music by 
 J. Reynolds Anderson. 
 
 Cantatas, " The Wreck of the 
 Hesperus" (1872), composed by 
 T. Anderton; "The Conse 
 cration of the Banner" (1872), 
 by J. F. H. Read; "The 
 Building of the Ship" (1869), by 
 Henry Lahee, also by J. F. 
 Barnett and H. Leduc ; "The 
 Golden Legend" (1879), by 
 the Rev. H. E. Hodson and Sir 
 Arthur Sullivan (1886) ; " Die 
 Glocken des Strassburger Muu- 
 sters" (1875) from "The Golden 
 Legend," by Franz Liszt ; "The 
 Tale of a Viking" ("The 
 Skeleton in Arm our"), by George 
 E. Whiting ; "The Arsenal, or 
 War and Peace," by C. T. 
 Specr ; "Caspar Becerra," by 
 W. F. Bradshaw, 1882 ; "The 
 Maid of Gascony," by J. II. 
 Gordon, 1876. 
 
 Songs. "Stars of Summer 
 Night," by Henry Smart, Dr. 
 E. G. Monk, J. L. Hatton; 
 " All are sleeping, weary heart," 
 by J. F. H. Read ; "The Old 
 Clock on the Stairs," by J. G. 
 Callcott ; "Good Night, Be 
 loved," by Giro Pinsuti, J. L. 
 Hatton, Dr. E. G. Monk ; 
 "Beware"("I know a Maiden"), 
 by J. L. Hatton, J. B. Boucher, 
 II. De Burgh, Blockley, Brahms, 
 Gounod, Loder, Mrs. Monnsey 
 Bartholomew, M. W. Balfe ; 
 " The Reaper and the Flowers," 
 by J. B. Boucher, A. R. Gaul ; 
 
 " Song of the Silent Land," by 
 A. R. Gaul, A. H. D. Premie r- 
 gast; "The Curfew," by T. 
 Anderton, P. H. Diemer, W. 
 Macfarren, II. Smart; "The 
 Day is Done," by A. R. Gaul ; 
 " The Hemlock Tree," by J. L. 
 Hatton ; " The Village Black 
 smith," by W. H. Weiss; 
 " King Witlafs Drinking 
 Horn," by J. L. Hatton ; "The 
 Arrow and the Song," by Walter 
 Hay, M. W. Balfe, Ch. 
 Gounod, Dolores, Macfarren, 
 Pinsuti; "I heard a Brooklet 
 gushing," by J. L. Hatton ; 
 "The Wreck of the Hesperus," 
 by Dr. H. Hiles ; "A Voice 
 came o er the Sea" ("Day 
 break"), by F. Quinn ; "A 
 Psalm of Life," by Henry 
 Smart, Dr. Mainzer; "The 
 Rainy Day," by A. S. Sul 
 livan ; " Woods in Winter," by 
 W. W. Pearson; "Up and 
 Doing," by Dr. Mainzer; 
 " Heart within and God o er- 
 head," by Rossini ; " The Nun 
 of Nidaros," and " King Olafs 
 Christmas " from the " Saga of 
 King Olaf," by Dudley Buck ; 
 "It is not always May," by 
 Gounod ; Six new songs and a 
 duet, from the poems of Long 
 fellow, set to music by M. W. 
 Balfe, 1856. ("The Reaper 
 and the Flowers," "Good 
 Night! Beloved," " The Green 
 Trees whispered low and wild," 
 "Annie of Tharaw," " This is 
 the place, stand still my child," 
 " The day is done," and " Trust 
 her not," duet.) 
 
xll 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OP THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Coplas de Manrique 1833 
 
 Outre-Mer 1835 
 
 Hyperion 1839 
 
 Voices of the Night 1839 
 
 Ballads and other Poems 1841 
 
 Poems on Slavery 1842 
 
 Spanish Student 1843 
 
 Poets and Poetry of Europe 1845 
 
 Belfry of Bruges 1846 
 
 Evangeline 1847 
 
 Kavanagh 1849 
 
 Seaside and the Fireside 1850 
 
 Golden Legend 1851 
 
 Hiawatha 1855 
 
 Miles Stanclish 1858 
 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn 18G3 
 
 Flower-De-Luce 1867 
 Divine Comedy of Dante 
 
 Alighieri 1867-70 
 
 New England Tiagedies 1868 
 
 Divine Tragedy 1871 
 
 Three Books of Song 1872 
 
 Christus 1872 
 
 Aftermath 1873 
 
 Hanging of the Crane 1874 
 
 Masque of Pandora 1875 
 
 Keramos 1878 
 
 Ultima Thulo 1880 
 In the Harbor [Uhima 
 
 Thule, Pt. ii.] 1882 
 
 Michael Angelo 1884 
 
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