I. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW: 1807-1882.

Parentage.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, the most widely read of all the American poets and the one that has the closest hold upon the hearts of the American people, was born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. His father, a graduate of Harvard College, was a leading lawyer in the city. Both parents were of the best English stock and descendants of the early settlers in New England. On his mother's side, the poet traced his ancestry to John Alden, whose peculiar courtship of the Plymouth maid, Priscilla, he was to celebrate in one of his happiest poems. It was from his mother, a lover of nature and of poetry, that Longfellow inherited his romantic taste and his literary ambition.

Youth.

School life commenced early for this boy. He began to study at three, and was placed in an academy at six; at seven he was well on his way through the Latin grammar; and was reported by his master "one of the best boys we have in school.... His conduct last quarter was very correct and amiable." There were eight children in the home, four brothers and four sisters; Henry was the second child. Books were at hand; and out of doors there was not a little to stir the imagination of a boy in the brisk seaport town which has always been noted for both enterprise and beauty. Its picturesque features were never forgotten. In the descriptive poem, My Lost Youth, written in 1855, they are vividly recalled, -- the pleasant streets of the sea-side town, the gleam of the sunlight on the bay, the harbor islands, the garrison in the little fort, the sea-fight between the Enterprise and the Boxer, which was watched by the citizens, from the shore. Like Irving, Longfellow was fascinated by the sight of the wharves and the shipping; and thus he writes:--

"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.
... . .
"I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
   Across the school-boy'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.'"

Longfellow was twelve years old when Irving's Sketch-Book appeared; the young reader was immediately captivated by its charm. At thirteen, he began to write verse, some of which was printed in the newspapers. He was fourteen when he passed his entrance examinations for college. Bowdoin. Literary Ambitions.

In 1822, Longfellow became a student at Bowdoin College, and was admitted to the Sophomore Class. In college, he was a general favorite, social in disposition, but above everything else, the industrious student and voluminous reader. We have already seen that his acquaintance with Hawthorne, his classmate, was comparatively slight. Although Long-fellow wrote considerable prose and verse, some of which was published in the United States Literary Gazette, of Boston, there is little in the work of this period which calls for comment. We note the recurrence of nature themes, and the influence of Bryant's poems -- an influence so strong that these early compositions appear hardly more than imitations. Before the end of his college course, Longfellow had recognized his true vocation, and had formulated his desires in a letter to his father, written in his senior year.

"I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul burns ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres in it."

Again he writes: "Whatever I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul, -- for I will be eminent in something."

At the commencement exercises of his class in 1825, Longfellow spoke on the theme Our Native Writers. Travel and Study.

The opportunity for further equipment came speedily. A professorship of modern languages had just been established at Bowdoin, and to the young graduate, already marked as a youth of talent, this position was offered with permission to spend three years in Europe for study. The call was accepted with eagerness and delight. This first European sojourn extended from the spring of 1826 to the summer of 1829; and Longfellow returned with a practical knowledge of French, Spanish, and Italian. The study of these languages was then altogether new in American colleges, and much of the professor's time was employed in preparing texts for the use of his students. There was little opportunity for literary composition; nevertheless, during 1833 and 1834, Longfellow began the publication of some travel sketches, which in 1835 appeared in book form under the title of Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea. This volume is a lesser Sketch-Book, in the manner of Irving, without his skill.

The Call to Harvard, and the Second Tour.

In 1834, Longfellow received a call from Harvard College, to follow the distinguished scholar George Ticknor in the professorship of Belles-Lettres, which he was about to resign. A second trip abroad followed the acceptance of this call. Longfellow was now accompanied by his wife, -- he had married, in 1831, Miss Mary Potter, of Portland, -- and in the autumn, while they were in Holland, Mrs. Longfellow died. The loneliness and desolation of that experience are suggested in the opening pages of Hyperion:--

"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."

The poet hastened on to Heidelberg, and, like Paul Flemming, the hero of his romance, buried himself in books.

Professor and Poet.

For eighteen years, from 1836 to 1854, Longfellow retained his active connection with harvard College. However exacting his duties, and there were times when they became irksome, he never slighted them. His students found him patient and gentle; his presence, equally with his instruction, was an inspiration. The poet's life is inseparably associated with the history of Harvard and of Cambridge. In the midst of a distinguished society, he became, as time went on, its most distinguished member. Soon after his arrival in Cambridge, Longfellow had taken rooms in the stately and historic mansion known as Craigie House, celebrated as having been the headquarters of General Washington, but now more famous as the poet's home. It remained his residence until his death.

The Real Beginning.

In 1839, Longfellow published two volumes which commanded immediate recognition. The one, a prose romance, Hyperion, is more or less a record of the moods and thoughts associated with its author's sojourn in Germany and Switzerland, warmly colored by the sentiment of youth and by the imagination of a poet who is stirred by romantic regions and legend-haunted scenes. The other, a thin volume of verse, entitled Voices of the Night, contained a number of his earlier compositions, together with eight new poems of genuine worth. These were the impressive Hymn to Night, beginning with its finely imaginative stanza:--

"I heard the trailing garments of the Night
   Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
   From the celestial walls!"--

the Psalm of Life, now so time-worn and so hackneyed that we treat it slightingly instead of submitting our imagination to the stirring appeal of its verse, The Reaper and the Flowers, The Light of Stars, Footsteps of Angels, Flowers, The Beleaguered City, and Midnight Mass for the Dying Year. Simple and melodious, these poems quickly found their way into the homes and hearts of the people. Two years later a volume of Ballads and Other Poems appeared; and to the songs in the earlier group were added the now familiar Skeleton in Armor, The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Village Blacksmith, The Rainy Day, Maidenhood, and Excelsior -- this last, like the Psalm of Life, a favorite mark for the arrow of the critic. It is worth while, in passing, to note how many of these compositions have held their place in popularity and justified the first impression of their merit.

Poems on Slavery.

Longfellow took little part in the political discussions of his day. He was neither abolitionist nor transcendentalist, nor did he, like Whittier or Lowell, employ his verse in the furtherance of any specific cause. He did, however, on his return voyage, after a six months' stay in Europe, in 1842, compose seven poems dealing with the subject of slavery; and these were published at the close of the year. They lack intensity of feeling and possess little artistic merit, but are interesting as the only utterance on this theme to which the poet gave public expression.

Second Marriage.

In 1843, occurred the poet's marriage to Miss Frances Appleton, whom he had first met in Switzerland, seven years before. In the character of Mary Ashburton, she had figured in the romance Hyperion. In this year of his marriage was published the first of Longfellow's dramas, The Spanish Student. Succession of the Works.

The next ten years were richly productive. Two collections were edited by Longfellow in 1845, one of which, The Poets and Poetry of Europe, contained numerous translations made by the poet. Then followed, in 1846, the volume entitled The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems; and in 1847, the first long narrative poem, Evangeline. Kavanagh, a Tale, was completed in 1849, and a fresh volume of verse, The Seaside and the Fireside, appeared in 1850. Another dramatic work, The Golden Legend, was finished in 1851. In 1854, Longfellow began working upon Hiawatha. The work was completed and published in 1855.

Evangeline.

Of the two narrative poems it is necessary to speak in some detail. The pathetic incident on which the story of Evangeline is based was related first to Hawthorne, as a subject well suited to romance; the novelist, however, made no use of the material thus obtained, but willingly resigned the theme to Longfellow, who had shown a lively interest in the tale.

There was no question of the poet's success. This beautiful idyll of the Acadian exiles, with its plaintive romance of Evangeline's weary, heart-breaking search for the lover so ruthlessly separated from his bride, was immediately accepted as the crown of the poet's work. And it is worthy of note that the poem was finished upon his fortieth birthday.

Hexameters.

Longfellow had chosen a peculiar metre for Evangeline. The use of hexameter verse had not been deemed consistent with the principles of English versification, and had not been employed with marked success. It had, however, been used by the German poet Goethe with very pleasing effect in his pastoral poem Hermann und Dorothea; and Longfellow, who had experimented slightly with the measure, determined to use it here. The poet was invariably happy in his choice of metrical forms; the reader of his poems is inevitably struck with the appropriateness of the measure to the theme. As Dr. Holmes says in respect to the metre of Evangeline:--

"The hexameter has been often criticised, but I do not believe any other measure could have told that lovely story with such effect, as we feel when carried along the tranquil current of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines.... The poet knows better than his critics the length of step which best befits his muse."

Hiawatha.

The second of these great compositions makes use of a distinctively native theme. Longfellow had for some time been attracted to the American Indian as a subject, and finally hit upon a plan for weaving together a number of the Indian traditions in narrative form. The Finnish epic Kalevala suggested an appropriate measure and in other ways served as a model for the poem, which he wrote with intense enjoyment. As in the case of Evangeline, the form selected proved remarkably apt to the treatment of this primitive theme. The trochaic tetrameter, -- using classic terminology, -- and the employment of parallelism and repetition, gave an elemental effect to the narrative that was both appropriate and rhythmically pleasing. Hiawatha is the epic of the red man, and the romantic, the heroic phase of Indian nature has never been better presented. Considerable criticism greeted its appearance, and there were many charges of plagiarism; nevertheless, the poem was immensely popular, and is now generally regarded as the poet's most original and most satisfactory achievement.

The demands of the class-room had increased with the years and college duties became more and more irksome to the poet. "This college work is like a great hand laid on all the strings of my lyre, stopping their vibrations," he writes in his journal in 1850. In 1854, Longfellow resigned the professorship and gave himself wholly to his vocation as a poet. Following Hiawatha, his next important work was the delightful Puritan pastoral, The Courtship of Miles Standish -- a bit of refreshing human comedy drawn from the sober annals of Plymouth. The poem was published in 1858. Three years later, in 1861, the happiness and serenity of Longfellow's life were suddenly broken by the shocking accident which caused the death of his wife. Sitting in the library of their home, sealing some packages of their little daughter's curls, Mrs. Longfellow's dress caught fire. She died the following day. The deep grief of his loss the poet bore in silence. After his death, there was found in his portfolio the sonnet entitled The Cross of Snow, written in 1879, the single utterance of his grief in verse.

In Middle Life.

"There is a mountain in the distant West
   That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
   Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
   These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
   And seasons, changeless since the day she died."

To occupy his mind and alleviate his sorrow, the poet began a translation of Dante. Upon this he worked at intervals for several years. The Divine Comedy was completed in 1867; it holds a place among the best versions of Dante's work in English. Meanwhile the first part of Tales of a Wayside Inn had appeared in 1863; in 1872 and 1873, the remaining parts were published.

Honors in England.

In the spring of 1868, Mr. Longfellow went again to Europe, accompanied by his children. The poet was everywhere accorded a royal welcome. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge honored him with their degrees, and Queen Victoria received him as her guest at Windsor. The winter was spent in Florence and Rome and (after again visiting England) the party returned home in the fall.

The Later Volumes.

Longfellow's most ambitious, but not most successful, dramatic work, Christus: a Mystery (which includes The Divine Tragedy, The Golden Legend, and The New England Tragedies), was published, complete, in 1872; The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems, in 1875; Kéramos and Other Poems, in 1878; Ultima Thule, in 1880, and In the Harbor, in 1882. Michael Angelo, a Fragment, did not appear until 1884. The most notable among these later compositions was the Morituri Salutamus written for the fiftieth anniversary of the famous class at Bowdoin.

Closing Days.

Longfellow's last years can hardly be termed declining years. His health continued vigorous, his spirit was cheerful, his house remained a centre of sociability. His children married and established their homes around him. Outside the circle of distinguished men in Cambridge and Boston who cherished his friendship, he might well have called all his countrymen his friends, for no American man of letters was ever so widely beloved. His popularity, indeed, had its drawbacks. It was sometimes amusing and often annoying to the poet, -- this insistent pressure of friendly feeling. His time and strength were absorbed by well-meaning but inconsiderate visitors whose only errand was to express their admiration. Requests for autographs were numberless; in one day Longfellow wrote, sealed, and directed seventy replies. One ingenious lady in Ohio sent him a hundred cards, with the request that he would write his name on each, that she might distribute them among her guests at a party which she was to give upon the poet's birthday!

The Poet and the Children.

No account of Longfellow's personality would be complete without reference to his love for children. His relation to them was singularly intimate and tender. Among his sweetest poems are those which treat of childhood. It was no perfunctory greeting that he uttered:--

"Come to me, O ye children!
   And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
   In your sunny atmosphere.

"For what are all our contrivings,
   And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
   And the glandness of your looks?

"Ye are better than all the ballads
   That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
   And all the rest are dead."

And the children came to him. On his seventy-second birthday they brought him the famous chair made from the wood of the "spreading chestnut tree" which had shaded the doorway of the village smith. They continued to come collectively and individually; for the warm-hearted poet gave orders that no child who wished to see the chair should be excluded; and the muddy print of many a little shoe was left on the floor of the hall in Craigie house. Longfellow's seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated in the public schools throughout the land. His last visitors were four Boston schoolboys who had asked permission to call, whom the poet received with accustomed kindliness. That night he had a sudden attack of illness, and six days later, March 24, 1882, he died. His last poem, The Bells of San Blas, was written a few days before his death. One finds a touch of prophecy in the closing lines -- the last verses that he wrote: --

"Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
   It is daybreak everywhere."

Among the many tributes to the memory of the poet there was none quite so touching, none more apt, than the comment made by Emerson at Longfellow's funeral. He was then within a month of his own departure, his memory was shattered, and he showed all the weakness of his pathetic decline. Gazing intently upon the face of the dead poet, he turned to a friend and said: "That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name."

Longfellow's name is safe; and the many thousands who still read and love his poems continue to recognize therein the "sweet, beautiful soul" of the poet. His body lies in Mount Auburn, the resting-place of many famous contemporaries.

Poetic Gifts.

The qualities which especially mark the poetry of Longfellow are simplicity of style, beautiful imagery, moral earnestness, and narrative power.

Simplicity.

So simple is this poet that many critics pronounce him commonplace. Unquestionably he possessed what may be termed the common mind. He was not a profound thinker, not one of "the bards sublime"; he spoke out of the common experience of life, and it was this in large degree which gave him the comprehension and affection of the common people.

We must remember, also, that when we dwell upon the commonplaceness or the triteness of Longfellow's sentiment, we are often emphasizing the fact that the verse of our criticism has become worn by our own use.

Beauty of Imagery.

Longfellow shared generously in the gift bestowed on all poets, the sense of beauty and the power of figurative expression. Not at all like the magical art of Poe, Longfellow's art, impassionate, quiet, restrained, often pensive, sometimes melancholy, -- never morbid, -- is equally distinctive and equally true. He, too, had a rare felicity of phrase which gave artistic setting to his figures. The following passages are characteristic illustrations of his simple but effective imagery: --

"From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drank repose."

"She struck where the white and fleecy waves
   Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they goared her side
   Like the horns of an angry bull."

"Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels."³

"Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor
Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning."⁴

"For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day."⁵

Like Bryant, Longfellow is usually impressed by the "lesson" in the thing he sees, and often tags his poem with a moral that is obvious enough to be left unformulated. Yet the happy expression of these wise observations is far from unattractive to the average American reader; and through them he won his way to the hearts of many. Of this didactic tendency we may take as familiar examples A Psalm of Life and The Rainy Day, in which the moral lesson is the main purpose of each. In The Village Blacksmith we are reminded of Wordsworth's manner: --

"Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
   For the lesson thou hast taught!"

It is as a writer of narrative poems that Longfellow attains his chief distinction. No other American poet compares with him in this field. Not only the three long poems which deal with themes of national interest, but also the twenty-two tales of the Wayside Inn series and the numerous ballads like The Skeleton in Armor, The Wreck of the Hesperus, King Witlaf's Drinking-Horn, and The Discoverer of the North Cape must be taken in account. Not all are of equal merit; The Tales of a Wayside Inn attain a varying degree of success, but this body of narrative poems as a whole proves the poet to have been a master of the story-telling art.

Lyric and Dramatic Poems.

As a lyric poet, Longfellow ranks with the best. Many of his poems are songs. We think at once of The Rainy Day, The Bridge, The Day is Done, Curfew, Stars of the Summer Night, Resignation, Sandalphon, The Children, The Children's Hour, and many more. With the sonnet, too, Longfellow was eminently successful; those addressed to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats are among his best. The poetical dramas are inferior as a group to the lyric and narrative poems. In The Spanish Student and The Golden Legend his imagination is freer and stronger than in the other dramas, and the dramatic poem, Michael Angelo, shows the poet's creative power in its highest development.

Translations.

Longfellow's intimate acquaintance with the literatures of Europe and the influence of professional study are shown in the large number of facile translations from Scandinavian, German, French, Italian, and Spanish poets. They are marked by insight, sympathy, and felicity of interpretation; and form no unimportant portion of his work. It is unfair and ill-considered to cite these productions as proof of the poet's lack of originality -- as is sometimes done; the translator of The Castle by the Sea and The Song of the Silent Land is a poetical benefactor indeed.

Personality.

It is not altogether to his varied and rich accomplishment in verse that Longfellow's place in the affection of all Americans is due; it was the charm of his personality that confirmed it. He appeared to be one among his countrymen, not above them. Calm in spirit, gentle in utterance, benignant, modest, the people saw in him the embodiment of the beautiful ideal he taught. They admired him as a poet, they trusted and revered him as a man; they accepted him as a teacher; they crowned him poet laureate of the home.

To English readers, also, he became endeared. In 1884, a bust of Longfellow was placed with appropriate honors in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. It was the first time that an American man of letters had been commemorated in this place of high memorial. We have seen that the poetry of Poe found great favor among the Latin peoples of Europe; Longfellow's poems have enjoyed as wide if not wider popularity abroad. There is an anecdote which gives a remarkable illustration of this fact. It is said that on a French steamer sailing from Constantinople to Marseilles, a Russian, an Englishman, a Scotchman, a Frenchman, a Greek, and an American vied with one another in quotations from our poet. In America, certainly, Longfellow is still the poet of the people. It is an interesting fact that in the great printing establishment of Longfellow's publishers at Cambridge, there is always some edition of the poet in the press. His poems are printing continuously every working day in the year.

Suggestions for Reading.

Of the prose works of Longfellow, Hyperion will be found most interesting. Selections from the poems should include representative compositions in the various groups described in the text. The poetry of Longfellow is so familiar that particular directions are unnecessary. Houghton Mifflin Company publish the only complete editions of Longfellow's Works. The Cambridge Edition of the poems, in one volume, is complete, and its bibliographical notes are admirable. In the Riverside Literature Series, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Evangeline, Hiawatha, Tales of a Wayside Inn, are printed in separate numbers.

The Life of Longfellow (3 vols.), by his brother, Samuel Longfellow, is the standard biography. The Longfellow in the American Men of Letters Series is by T. W. Higginson; that in the Great Writers Series is by E. S. Robertson. The best brief biography is that by G. R. Carpenter, in the Beacon Biographies. Mrs. Annie Fields, in Authors and Friends, Edward Everett Hale, in Fireside Travels: Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, and W. D. Howells, in My Literary Friends and Acquaintance, have written interesting reminiscences of the poet. Valuable studies of Longfellow are to be found in Richardson's American Literature (vol. ii), Stedman's Poets of America, Trent's History of American Literature, Wendell's Literary History of America, and Vincent's American Literary Masters. An interesting book of reference is The Wayside Inn, its History and Literature, by S. A. Bent. A delightful essay upon Longfellow is found in the Literary and Social Essays, by G. W. Curtis.

Most noteworthy among the publications inspired by the one hundredth anniversary of Longfellow's birth are the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by Charles Eliot Norton (Houghton Mifflin Company), The Centenary of Longfellow (Atlantic Monthly, March, 1907), by Bliss Perry, and the critical article in the North American Review, March, 1907, by W. D. Howells.