Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, one of the most popular of modern poets, born in Portland, Maine, Feb. 27, 1807, is a son of the late Hon. Stephen Longfellow, and a descendant of William Longfellow, of Newbury, Massachusetts. This gentleman--the first of the name who came to America--was born in Hampshire, England, in 1651, emigrated to Newbury, Massachusetts, where, in 1676, he married Anne Sewall, and was drowned at Anticosti, a large desert island of Canada East, in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, in 1690. (See Joshua Coffin's Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, from 1635 to 1844, Bost., S. Drake, 1845, 8vo, plates.) On the mother's side he is a descendant of John Alden, who came over in the Mayflower, and who was the first man that landed at Plymouth. He entered Bowdoin College in 1821, and graduated in 1825, after which he devoted himself for a short time to the study of the law. Having received the appointment of Professor of Modern Languages in his alma mater, he went abroad in 1826, for the purpose of enlarging his opportunities of studious application, and spent three years and a half in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England. In 1829 he assumed the duties of his office, and two years later became a married man. In 1835, by the resignation of George Ticknor, (the distinguished author of the History of Spanish Literature,) a vacancy occurred in the faculty of Harvard College, and Mr. Longfellow was elected Professor of Belles-Lettres. A second trip to Europe was the consequence of this new appointment, and the pilgrim-scholar again enjoyed the opportunity of gratifying his thirst for the choicest productions of Continental literature among the scenes--and, in some cases, amidst the associations--to which they owed their birth. The summer of 1835 was passed in Denmark and Sweden, the autumn and winter in Holland and Germany, and the ensuing spring and summer in the Tyrol and Switzerland. Whilst residing in Rotterdam, a melancholy event occurred in Mr. Longfellow's family history, which has invested that ancient city with an undying interest in his memory. The companion of his wanderings was suddenly summoned to other and eternal scenes, and he returned home a widower. In 1842 he again visited France, Germany, and England, passing the summer at Boppard on the Rhine. In 1843 he was again married. After holding his professorship in Harvard College for about twenty years, Mr. Longfellow retired in 1854 to the undisturbed enjoyment of literary leisure; and, as he has since that period given to the world the most famous of his poetical compositions, (Hiawatha, published in 1855,) we are encouraged to hope that what Harvard University has lost by his temporary withdrawal the world at large will gain by his retirement,--the autumn fruitage of a mind eminent for the fragrance and luxuriance of its early blossoms, and whose golden summer has not "unbeseem'd the promise of its spring." Mr. Longfellow has resided since 1837 in the "Craigie House," Cambridge, the head-quarters of General Washington after the battle of Bunker Hill, and since distinguished as the temporary residence of Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, and several others of the scholars whose profound and varied acquisitions have made the city of Boston "a name and a praise" alike in the cloisters of Oxford and in the rude hut of the backwoodsman of the Western wilds. The history of "Craigie House" has been so admirably written by Mr. George William Curtis, in his biographical sketch of Longfellow in the Homes of American Authors, that we trust all admirers of the author of the Golden Legend (and their name is Legion,) will not rest until they have made themselves familiar with this charming narration.

Mr. Longfellow first sought the road to public honours by pursuing the beaten path, time out of mind the highway of trembling and unconfirmed authorship, -- contribution to the literary periodicals, which on every side tempt unfledged genius to make the first essay of its pinions on the uncertain atmosphere of popular appreciation. We have spoken of the "early blossoms" of Longfellow's genius,--the promise of its "spring;" and no one will quarrel with the phrase who remembers that the seven Earlier Poems, included between pages 20 and 23 of the first vol. of the last collective ed. of the author's Poetical Works, (Boston, 1857,) were all written before the poet was nineteen years of age. The titles of these are as follows: I. An April Day. II. Autumn. III. Woods in Winter. IV. Hymn of the Moravian Nuns at Bethlehem. V. Sunrise on the Hills. VI. The Spirit of Poetry. VII. Burial of the Minnisink. Many of his juvenile poems were originally published in the United Literary Gazette, a Boston Magazine; and at a later day, when success had increased his confidence in his own powers, he contributed a number of admirable papers to the North American Review, -- that priceless repository of so many of the best thoughts of the best minds of the most highly-educated portion of the American Republic. Among these papers of our young author may be noticed the Essay on Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy; and one on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain, which first introduced to the public the reviewer's translation of Don Jorge Manrique's sublime Ode on the death of his father. Having thus seen Mr. Longfellow fairly committed to a literary career, and abundantly encouraged by critical judgment and popular favour to pursue that career with the brightest hopes of merited distinction, it is now proper that we should proceed to present a list of the volumes of prose and poetry which he has from time to time given to the world, accompanied with quotations from the opinions of eminent authorities respecting the merits of these publications.

l. Coplas De Don Jorge Manrique. Translated from the Spanish, with an Introductory Essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain, Bost., 1833 12mo.

"Professor Longfellow's version is well calculated to give the English reader a correct notion of the Castilian bard, and of course a very exaggerated one of the literary culture of the age."--Prescott's Hist. of the Reign of Ferd. and Isabella, 11th ed., Bost., 1856, ii. 231, n.; and see the text.

"The beautiful version of Mr. Longfellow."--Ticknor's Hist. of Spanish Lit., 2d ed., 1854, N. York, i. 19, n. And see p.32,n.; 408, n.

"Mr. Longfellow's version is much superior to Dr. Bowring's both in elegance and fidelity."--N. Amer. Rev., l.269.

We commend the following to the attention of the reader:

Las Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique. Con una glossa muy devota y Christiana de un religioso de la Cartuxa. Va juntamente un caso memorable de la conversion de una Dama, Madrid, 1598.--Coplas de Mingo Revulgo. Glossadas por Hernando Pulgar, Madrid, 1598. Cartas en refranes de Blasco de Garay Racionero de la Santa Yglesia de Toledo. 3 parts in one vol. oblong 12mo, Madrid, Luis Sanchez, 1598. Edition trиs-rare, inconnue а M. Brune--Salua.

2. Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, N. York, 1835, 2 vols. Sale to April, 1857, 7,500 copies.

"Snelling writes well in his way. He cannot help doing so. He appears to us a man of a truculent genius desperately ill-disciplined. What a contrast to Longfellow! This writer--not unknown here as the author of Outre-Mer--comes nearer to a literary character than most of his associates. [In the Boston Book.] A professor of modern tongues in Harvard University, it is said; not of unknown tongues, we presume, though we were just about to call him an Irvingite. We speak in the literary acceptation, not theological. We cannot say that he imitates the author of the Sketch-Book: he has a spirit of his own. But it seems to us that his mind is much of the same description. He is sprightly, and witty, and graphic: he has seen much of the world, and used his opportunities well. There is an elegant ease in his style,--finished, but not finical; just the thing,--as we say of a private gentleman whose manners and dress excite no other remark, while they satisfy all who observe them. And, withal, he has the genial bonhommie of Irving. He sees the pleasant side of things. He likes that his reader should be innocently pleased, and is content if he be so. If Longfellow, in a word, had come before Irving, his fame would be that of a founder of a school (so far as America is concerned) rather than of one of the scholars. As it is, he may be popular, but not famous; and he will hardly have credit even for what he is worth."--Lon Athenжum, 1838,389; Review of the Boston Book, edited by B. B. Thatcher, Bost., 1837, 12mo.

"His rich and poetical and yet graphic description, and the true feeling with which he looks on nature and on social life, are the qualities which most attract us in his writings, because they are not precisely those in which travellers are most apt to abound."--O. W. B. Peabody: N. Amer. Rev., xxxix. 459-467; Review of Nos. 1 and 11, pub. in Boston, 1833 34.

See also Amer. Month. Rev., iv. 157.

3. Hyperion; A Romance, N. York, 1839, 2 vols. 12mo. Sale to April, 1857, 14,550 copies. henry wadsworth longfellow poet

"We shall never forget the circumstance of its first perusal. We took it, as our pocket-companion, with us on our first walk down the Tweed, by Peebles, Inverleithen, Clovenford, Ashestiel, and Abbotsford. It was fine at any special bend of the stream, or any beautiful spot along its brink, taking it out and finding in it a conductor to our own surcharged emotions. In our solitude we felt, We are not alone, for these pages can sympathize with us! The course of Hyperion, indeed, is that of a river, winding at its own sweet will, now laughing and singing to itself in its sparkling progress, and now slumbering in still, deep pools: here laving cornfields and vineyards, and there lost in wooded and sounding glens. Interest it has much,--incident, little: its charm is partly in the 'Excelsior' progress of the hero's mind, partly in the sketches of the great German authors, and principally in the sparkling imagery and waving, billowy language of the book. Longfellow in this work is Jean Paul Richter without his grotesque extravagancies, or riotous humour, or turbulent force."--Gilfillan's Second Gallery of Literary Portraits, 2d ed., Edin., 1852, 254-264.

"It is a book for minds attuned to sentiments of tenderness,-- minds of an imaginative turn, and willing and ready to interest themselves in reveries as gorgeous as morning dreams, and in the delicate perceptions of art and poetry,--minds tried by suffering and sensitively alive to the influence of the beautiful.... In tender and profound feeling, and in brilliancy of imagery, the work will bear a comparison with the best productions of romantic fiction which English literature can boast."--C. C. Felton: N. Amer. Rev., l. 145-161.

"The production of a man of taste, refinement, and feeling: in truth, a pure poem."--Oakley's ed. of Kent and King's Outlines of a Course of English Reading, N. York, 1853, 108.

See also South. Lit. Mess., v. 839.

4. Voices of the Night, Cambridge, Mass., 1839, l6mo. Sale to April, 1857, 43,000 copies. The title Voices of the Night is applied to eight poems, most of which were originally pub. in The New York Knickerbocker, viz.: I. Hymn to the Night. II. A Psalm of Life. III. The Reaper and the Flowers. IV. The Light of Stars. V. Footsteps of Angels. VI. Flowers. VII. The Beleaguered City. VIII. Midnight Mass for the Dying Year. But this vol. contains, in addition to the Voices of the Night, a number of the author's early poems and some translations from modern languages. From a notice of this vol. in the North American Review for Jan. 1840 (l. 266-269) we quote the following lines:

"The poetry of Mr. Longfellow is marked by a very vivid imagination, great susceptibility to the impressions of natural scenery, and a ready perception of the analogies between natural objects and the feelings of the human heart. But, besides this he possesses an extraordinary command over the powers of language, and turns it to any form at will,--

'Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony."'

See also Chris. Exam., xxviii. 242.

5. Ballads, and other Poems, Camb., Mass., 1841 16mo. Sale to April, 1857, 40,000 copies.

"Mr. Longfellow's poetry has become so generally known, and wherever known, is so universally admired, as to need no aid from the journals of literature. It is probably read and remembered in places 'beyond the solar road' over which the literary journals travel. It is, therefore, with no expectation of adding to its wide-spread renown, or of increasing the number of its admirers that we call our readers' attention to this second volume from Professor Longfellow's pen."--C. C. Felton: N. Amer. Rev., lv. 14-144.

Mr. Poe, in a review of this volume in his Literati, finds fault with Mr. Longfellow for what most critics have deemed worthy of high commendation:

"He regards the inculcation of a moral as essential....In common with all who claim the sacred title of poet, he should limit his endeavours to the creation of novel moods of beauty, in form, in colour, in sound, in sentiment; for over all this wide range has the poetry of words dominion. To what the world terms prose may be safely and properly left all else. The artist who doubts of this thesis may always resolve his doubt by the single question, 'Might not this matter be as well or better handled in prose?' If it may, then it is no subject for the Muse. In the general acceptation of the term Beauty we are content to rest,--being careful only to suggest that, in our peculiar views, it must be understood as inclusive of the sublime. Of the pieces which constitute the present volume there are not more than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the ideas we have proposed, although the volume, as a whole, is by no means so chargeable with didacticism as Mr. Longfellow's previous book, [Voices of the Night.] We would mention, as poems nearly true, The Village Blacksmith, The Wreck of the Hesperus, and especially The Skeleton in Armour."

It is impossible to avoid the reflection that, if the "inculcation of a moral" be sufficient to invalidate any claim to the title of a poet, the world has been greatly mistaken in their estimate of Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, Tasso,-- and, indeed, almost all of the greatest of those whom we have heretofore ignorantly reverenced as true poets.

6. Poems on Slavery, Camb., Mass., 1842, 12mo. 7. The Spanish Student, a Play, 1843, 12mo. Sale to April, 1857, 38,000 copies.

"The diction is easy and animated, and the story comes out distinctly enough. There are, to-be-sure, useless scenes and instances of vain repetition, which render the action languid; but this, in the closet, interferes little with the interest."--Lon. Athen., 1844, 8.

"The Spanish Student is a spirited composition, well conceived, and abounding in pretty passages. The first part of the first scene embodies an excellent satire on many of the insipid comedies of the present time; and the frequent erudite allusion to Spanish songs, fables, and authors which are made throughout its pages furnish abundant evidence of the author's great familiarity with Spanish literature. The plot is interesting, and many of the incidents show much ingenuity; but it is not adapted to the stage being deficient in many of the essential requisites to make it palatable as an acting drama."--Irish Quar. Rev. June, 1855. 202.

"Upon the whole, we regret that Professor Longfellow has written this work, and feel especially vexed that he has committed himself by its republication. Only when regarded as a mere poem can it be said to have merit of any kind. For, in fact, it is only when we separate the poem from the drama that the passages we have commended as beautiful can be understood to have beauty. We are not sure, indeed, that a 'dramatic poem' is not a flat contradiction in terms. At all events, a man of true genius (and such Mr. L. unquestionably is) has no business with these hybrid and paradoxical compositions. Let a poem be a poem only; let a play be a play and nothing more. As for The Spanish Student, its thesis is unoriginal, its incidents are antique; its plot is no plot; its characters have no character: in short, it is little better than a play upon words to style it 'A Play' at all."--Poe's Literati.

As the critic had just quoted from Mr. Longfellow's Preface, which informs the reader of the sources of the subject of the production which follows, it was quite unnecessary to assure us that the "thesis was unoriginal." Certainly it is unoriginal: the thesis of The Golden Legend is unoriginal, also; and so is that of Reynard the Fox. Such comments add little to our stock of knowledge. As regards instances of alleged imitations, &c. of other authors, which Mr. Poe produces from portions of Mr. Longfellow's works, it does not, of course, become us to offer any opinion; but, upon the subject of literary coincidences in general, we may be allowed to remark that to require a scholar who has mastered the choicest productions of half a dozen or more languages to discharge his mind of all foreign acquisitions and place them in a corner of his library, whilst he proceeds to compose from a mind in puris naturalibus, is about as wise as the expectation that the lake of the valley should be able, at the word of command, to reconvert itself into the insignificant mountain-stream to which it owes its origin.

"In The Spanish Student, the affluence of his imagination in images of grace, grandeur, and beauty is most strikingly manifested. The objection to it as a play is its lack of skill or power in the dramatic exhibition of character; but read merely as a poem cast in the form of a dialogue it is one of the most beautiful in American literature. None of his other pieces so well illustrates all his poetical qualities,--his imagination, his fancy, his sentiment, and his manner. It seems to comprehend the whole extent of his genius."--Whipple's Essays and Reviews, Bost., 1851, i. 66.

8. The Belfry of Bruges, and other Poems, Camb., Mass., 1846, 16mo. Sale to April, 1857, 38,000 copies. 9. Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie, Bost., 1847, 12mo. Sale to April, 1857, 37,000 copies.

"Next to Excelsior and the Psalm ofLife we are disposed to rank Evangeline. Indeed, as a work ofart, it is superior to both, and to all that Longfellow has written in verse.... Nothing can be more truly conceived or more tenderly expressed than the picture of that primitive Nova Scotia and its warm-hearted, hospitable, happy, and pious inhabitants. We feel the air of the Foreworld around us. The light of the Golden Age--itself joy, music, and poetry--is shining above. There are evenings of summer or autumntide so exquisitely beautiful, so complete in their own charms, that the entrance of the moon is felt almost as a painful and superfluous addition: it is like a candle dispelling the weird darkness of a twilight room. So we fool at first as if Evangeline, when introduced, were an excess of loveliness,--an amiable eclipser of the surrounding beauties. But even as the moon by-and-by vindicates her intrusion and creates her own 'holier day,' so with the delicate and lovely heroine of this simple story: she becomes the centre of the entire scene."--Gilfillan's Second Gallery of Literary Portraits, 2d ed., Lon., 1852, 260-261.

Mr. Gilfillan says many handsome things of Mr. Longfellow's minor poems, &c., which commendations the reader should not fail to peruse.

"With the sorrows of Evangeline a simpler rhythm would have been more in harmony,--were even the antique measure here selected completely bent to its modern occupation. This, however, is not the case.... The pilgrimage of the maiden in search of her betrothed is told with great feeling and pathos. But the real charm of the tale lies in its insulated pictures of scenery, one or two of which we will give."--Lon. Athen., 1848, 673.

"Evangeline, as almost all of our readers are aware, is one of the most pathetic and beautiful poetical narrations which has ever enriched our language. The pastoral scenes are lifelike daguerreotypes: there is an originality about the story of the lovers, and an appropriate solemnity of language throughout the whole piece, which, added to the beautiful descriptions which lie scattered among its pages, and the apposite comparisons which stud them, render it a truly fascinating if not enchanting poem. The most remarkable tale of passionate and constant love must 'pale its ineffectual fires' at the recital of the devotion of Evangeline and the heroic constancy of her lover. Sir Edwin Landseer may well envy the ensuing pastoral sketch:

"'Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a pent-house,' &c."

[Quoted to the end of the line concluding with "sang of mutation."]--Irish Quar. Rev., June, 1855, 202-203.

"This is an American poem, full of beauties of real indigenous growth; and we hail its appearance with the greater satisfaction inasmuch as it is the first genuine Castalian fount which has burst from the soil of America."--Fraser's Mag., xxxvii. 295; copied in Bost. Living Age, xvii. 145-147.

"His longest poem, Evangeline,... was not long since warmly commended in these pages. No one with any pretensions to poetic feeling can read its delicious portraiture of rustic scenery, and of a mode of life long since defunct, without the most intense delight."--The Metropolitan; copied in Bost. Living Age, xix. 481-485.

"It is a tale of simple earnestness, very graceful, and, amid its unexaggerated truthfulness, animated by a tranquil and lofty spirit of endurance.... The interest in Evangeline, throughout her devious, life-prolonged search, is kept up without intermission; and what is painful in the theme is relieved by beautiful sketches of the scenery of the Southwestern waters and the busy lives of their inhabitants.... The happy and varied imagery of the poem is throughout inwrought with that higher spirit which can impart a sad pleasure even to the deepest tragedy."--Lon. Examiner; copied in Bost. Liv. Age, xxiii. 390-391.

Mr. C. C. Felton, one of the most eminent of American classical scholars, after giving us a brief sketch of the history of Acadie, remarks:

"This subject, wholly national in its character, Mr. Longfellow has made the basis of the poem of Evangeline. He has selected those circumstances in the story which are susceptible of poetical treatment, and so combined themasto create, from authentic historical materials, a tale of rare beauty, tenderness, and moral power.... In Evangeline, Mr. Longfellow has managed the hexameter with wonderful skill. The homely features of Acadian life are painted with Homeric simplicity, while the luxuriance of a Southern climate is magnificently described with equal fidelity and minuteness of finish. The subject is eminently fitted for this treatment; and Mr. Longfellow's extraordinary command over rhythmical resources of language has enabled him to handle it certainly with as perfect a mastery over the dactylic hexameter as any one has ever acquired in our language."--N. Amer. Rev., xvi. 215-244.

"His Evangeline is a beautiful picture of rural life and love, which, from the charm of its pictures and the gentle harmony of its sentiment, became popular although written in hexameters."--Henry T. Tuckerman: Sketch of Amer. Lit.

"Elaborate and touching, his Evangeline is the most perfect specimen extant of the rhythm and melody of the English hexameter."--President Chas. King: Oakley's ed. of Kent and King's' Outlines of a Course of English Reading, N. York, 98.

The subject of English hexameters has already come under our notice on a preceding page, (635;) and it will be significant to refer the reader to our article on Abraham Fraunce and the authorities there cited. The critic in Blackwood (Feb. 1856) concludes his notice of Hiawatha with the remark:

"The poet was more successful in the wistfulness of his Evangeline, to which even these lengthened, desolate, inquiring hexameters lent a charm of appropriate sympathy; but it is a peculiarity of this sweet singer that his best strains are always wistful, longing, true voices of the night."

See other notices of Evangeline, in Amer. Whig Rev., vii. 155, (by G. W. Peck;) New Englander, vi. 548, (by G. H. Holliston;) Univ. Quar. Rev., v. [104,?] (by T. S. King;) Brownson's Quar. Rev., 2d ser., iv. 56; South. Lit. Mess., xv. 46; Amer. Lit. Mag., ii. 172; Eclec. Mag., xv. 96.

Of course, the admirer of Evangeline will not be satisfied to be without the beautiful picture of Evangeline painted by Thomas Faed and engraved by James Faed: size of plate, without margin, 14 by 17 1/2 inches:

"Sat by some nameless grave, and though that perhaps in its bosom He was already at rest; and she longed to slumber beside him."

This has received the highest compliment which the painter and engraver could covet:

"I am delighted with the work, both in conception and execution, and have written to Mr. Faed to express my acknowledgment for this mark of his consideration and my appreciation of the very great beauty and feeling of his illustration."--Letter of Mr. Longfellow to the publishers.

10. Kavanagh: a Tale, Bost., 1849, 16mo. Sale to April. 1857, 10,500 copies.

"Kavanagh is as far as it goes, an exact daguerreotype of New England life. We say daguerreotvpe, because we are conscious of a certain absence of motion and colour which detract somewhat from the vivacity, though not from the truth, of the representation. From Mr. [Pendexter?], with his horse and chaise, to Miss Manchester, painting the front of her house, the figures are faithfully after nature. The story, too, is remarkably sweet and touching.... All who love purity of tone, tenderness, and picturesque simplicity have incurred a new obligation to the author of Kavanagh."--J. Russell Lowell: N. Amer. Rev., lxix. 196-216.

In this paper will be found some very sensible comments upon the oft-repeated and seldom-comprehended phrase, "a national literature." See also Mr. Lowell's remarks on the same subject in his review of The Timon, N. Amer. Rev., lxiv 460, et seq. Mr. Longfellow himself, it will be remembered, has also written eloquently upon this theme; and, we may say, since the publication of Hiawatha he has written eloquently upon the other side of the question also. We should refer the reader to Mr. Longfellow's comments on "A National Literature" in the Preface to his Poets and Poetry of Europe.

"Kavanagh is essentially Richterish, yet with a difference. The sharpness of touch, the incessant revelations of stoical character which break through the fantastic waywardness of Richter, are not here. On the other hand, it has nothing of the conscious effort which sometimes characterizes Richter's wit,--nothing of the indulgence in sheer dirt which he mingles so harshly with passages of dreaming, ethereal purity."--Lon. Examiner; (copied in Bost. Liv. Age, xxiii. 389-390.)

See also Amer. Whig Rev., x. 57; Brownson's Quar. Rev., 2d ser., 456.

11. The Seaside and the Fireside, Bost., 1849, 16mo. Sale to April, 1857, 30,000 copies.

The Seaside collection contains seven poems; the Fireside collection is composed of thirteen poems. See a review of this volume in Brownson's Quar. Rev., 2d ser. iv. 268. Since the publication of this vol. the author has pub. a number of minor poems in Putnam's (New York) Magazine.

12. The Golden Legend, Bost., 1851, 12mo. Sale to April, 1857, 17,000 copies.

"In this poem he has obeyed the highest humanity of the poet's calling, by revealing,--which alone the poet can,--not coldly, but in the glowing and affluent reality of life, this truth: that the same human heart has throbbed in all ages and under all circumstances, and that the devotion of love is forever and ever and from the beginning the true salvation of man. To this great and fundamental value of the poem is added all the dramatic precision of the most accomplished artist. The art is so subtlely concealed that it is not suspected."--George William Curtis: Sketch of Longfellow, in Homes of Amer. Poets, 284.

"We have no hesitation in expressing our opinion that there is nearly as much fine poetry in Mr. Longfellow's Golden Legend as in the celebrated drama of Goethe.... Elsie, the farmer's daughter,--scarcely more than a child in years, but a woman in tenderness and devotion,--is as beautiful a conception as ever was formed in the mind of the poet.... We have already, at the commencement of this paper, expressed our decided objection to the machinery employed by Mr. Longfellow. It is the reverse of original, being now very hackneyed; and it is absurdly disproportionate to the object for which it is introduced.... Occasionally, whilst, retaining rhyme and the semblance of metre, Mr. Longfellow is betrayed into great extravagance."--Blackw. Mag., Feb. 1852.

See also Eclec. Rev., 4th ser., xxxi. 455.

"Longfellow, in the Golden Legend, has entered more closely into the temper of the Monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life's labour to the analysis."--Ruskin's Mod. Painters, vol. iv. p. 377.

13. The Waif; a collection of Poems, edited by H. W Longfellow, Bost., 1846, 12mo; Lon., 1849, 18mo. Pub in vol. with No. 14, Bost., 1857, 12mo.

14. The Estray; a Collection of Poems, edited by H. W. Longfellow, Bost., 1846, 12mo. Pub. in vol. with NO. 13, 1857, 12mo.

15. The Poets and Poetry of Europe, with Biographical Notices and Translations from the earliest period to the present time, Phila., 1845, 8vo, pp. 179; 1848, r. 8vo; 1855. r. 8vo. This valuable volume contains selections from about three hundred and sixty authors, translated from ten languages,--the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Mr. Longfellow himself gives us translations from all of these languages but two. Among the other translators are Bowring, Felton, Herbert, Costello, Taylor, Jamieson, Brooks, Adamson, Thorpe, &c.

"In this great crowd of translations by different hands, certainly very few appear equal to Professor Longfellow's in point of fidelity, elegance, and finish. The work is an honourable memorial of his great attainments as a linguist,--in which character, rather than as poet, his fame will be sustained and advanced by this publication.--Prof. Francis Bowen: N. Amer. Rev., lxi. 231.

"We think Professor Longfellow has done a good service to literature by preparing this work. It contains a great deal of valuable information respecting the different languages of Europe, as well as of the various writers of poetry. The extracts from the authors are sufficiently numerous and lengthy to give a fair idea of the peculiarities, style, and class of each.... Instead of decrying such selections on the ground that they give us only a smattering of the authors and their writings, we hail them as most powerful helps in disseminating information and creating and increasing a taste for mental cultivation."--Prot. Epis. Quar. Rev. and Church Register, N. York, April, 1855, 310-311.

See also Lon. Athen., 1845, 961-962.

We should be pleased to see a second volume of this work, according to the suggestion of the learned editor. As we have had occasion to refer to Mr. Longfellow's translations,--we speak not only of those in the volume just noticed,--we must quote a few lines more upon the subject:

"Longfellow's translations from the German, Swedish, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, and Anglo-Saxon possess in a very high degree that elegance of diction and thoroughly classical colouring for which all his other poems are remarkable."--Irish Quar. Rev. June, 1855, 202.

"Professor Longfellow excels in translating from the German and the Swedish."--Lon. Athen., 1844, 8.

The North American reviewer of Longfellow's Voices of the Night (1839, 16mo) remarks that the

"Translations from the French, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and German are all executed with a high degree of skill."--Vol. l. 269.

But Mr. Longfellow's fame as an accomplished linguist is so well established that it is not necessary for us to multiply quotations on this point.

16. The Song of Hiawatha, Bost., Oct. 1855, 16mo. Sale, in less than four weeks after publication, 10,000 copies; sale to end of March, 1857, 30,000 copies; to April 1857, 50,000 copies.

"This Indian Edda--if I may so call it--is founded on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michaboa, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenyawagan, and Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in his Algic Researches, vol. i. p. 134; and in his History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part 3, p. 314, may be found the Iriquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narrations of an Onondaga chief.

"Into this old tradition I have woven other curious Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians.

"The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable."--Note to Hiawatha.

Notwithstanding this full and explicit statement by Mr. Longfellow of the sources from which be had derived the material of his poem, a writer in the National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.) pub. an article, in a few weeks after the appearance of Hiawatha, charging the author with having borrowed "the entire form, spirit, and many of the most striking incidents'' of Kalevala, the great national epic of the Finns. This attack was answered in two letters in The New York Observer, (Jan. 24, 1856, et ante,)under the signature of Theodorus. The reviewer remarks, "Such a charge is not only untenable, but absurd," and proceeds to expose the alleged absurdity of which he complains. William Howitt, in a letter to the London Athenжum, Nov. 17, 1855,--elicited by a review of Hiawatha in a preceding number (Nov. 10, 1855,) of that excellent journal,--eulogizes Hiawatha in the highest terms, and commends the author for having chosen the metre of the Kalevala and the Kanteletar, but says not a word of plagiarism or even of imitation. Howitt's letter elicited another, (Athen., Nov. 24, 1855,) from. Mr. D. F. McCarthy, (translator of Dramas of Calderon from the Spanish,) who adduces examples to prove that the metre of Hiawatha is not confined to Finlandic or Sclavonic poets; and he does not think it a matter of course, therefore, that even the metre was suggested to Mr. Longfellow by any of those bards. In the same periodical for Dec. 1, 1855, Mr. W. S. takes the field and opens the question still further, remarking that

"Rhymeless trochaic dimeter is commonly used throughout Europe... Mr. Longfellow in his unalliterated trochaics, may with as little reason be said to imitate the metre of the 'Kalevala' or Philalethes", in his rhymeless iambic trimeter catalectic version of the Divina Comedia, can be asserted to represent the music of Dante."

As usual in cases of this character, two of the critics engaged in the controversy soon fell into a misunderstanding on their own account: Mr. Howitt felt himself aggrieved by some comments of W. S.'s upon his first communication, and in the Athenжum for Dec. 8, 1855, he takes the offender to task for his alleged want of courtesy. Mr. W. S., noways abashed, returns to the charge in the Athenжum for Dec. 15, and in the same paper appears a letter from W. Brockie, who, coolly enough, commences his dissertation with--

"The question as to whether or not Longfellow's Hiawatha is in the national metre of Finland seems not unlikely to raise a controversy in your columns. W. S. says it is not: I am inclined to think it is."

It would appear to our superficial judgment that the "controversy" had been already pretty well "raised." But the end is not yet. In the Athenжum for Dec. 29, Mr. Ferdinand Freiligrath gives us a summary of the Arguments advanced by the four contestants, and decides that Hiawatha

"is written in a modified Finnish metre,--modified by the exquisite feeling of the American poet, according to the genius of the English language and to the wants of modern taste. I feel perfectly convinced that, when Mr. Longfellow wrote Hiawatha, the sweet monotony of the trochees of Finland, and not the mellow and mellodious fall of those of Spain, vibrated in his soul."

From Mr. Freiligrath's intimate acquaintance with Von Schrцter's Finnische Runen (Finnisch und Deutsch Stuttgart und Tьbingen, 1834) and the Kalevala, surely he would have been the one to detect any close imitations on the part of the American poet; but nothing of this kind is intimated. The London Leader also took a part in the Hiawatha controversy, and Dr. Latham, in a letter to that paper, considers that Mr. Longfellow received many suggestions (as stated by the writer in the National Intelligencer) from Kalevala; but the editor of the Leader takes an entirely different view of the subject, defends the author of Hiawatha manfully, and dismisses the whole matter with the comment:

"In Longfellow's case the obligation to Kalevala is assumed: it is very possibly no direct obligation at all; but, granting the obligation, we entirely absolve the poet for not having mentioned it."

Now, it is evident that Dr. Schoolcraft himself is the best judge whether the author of Hiawatha has faithfully reproduced in poetry those peculiarities of Indian mythology, customs, and superstitions which Dr. Schoolcraft has given us in prose,--on which prose Longfellow avowedly bases his poem. To him, therefore, let us have recourse for the solution of this question. We quote from his dedication of The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians, Phila. and Lon., 1856, 12mo:

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

This certainly puts forever at rest the charge of the author of Hiawatha having borrowed--as has been alleged--"the form, spirit, and many of the most striking incidents of Kalevala." If these are dissimilar to those so graphically depicted by Dr. Schoolcraft, this gentleman could not endorse, as he has done, the faithfulness of Longfellow's poetical version of the latter: the admixture of foreign colours would necessarily destroy the vraisemblance of the whole picture. And if the Kalevala's "form, spirit, and incidents" are so exactly similar to the original Hiawatha characteristics, we see no necessity for borrowing the former, and no possibility of detecting their incorporation if they were borrowed. It is a very natural remark, that the author who first makes popular a peculiar style or measure must expect to be charged with plagiarism by the ignoramus who makes the wonderful discovery that such style or measure did not originate with the writer through whose agency it became known to him.

Having thus devoted quite as much space as we can afford to an examination of the paternity of Hiawatha, and recommitted this interesting aborigine to the domicile of the claimant whose name he bears, it is proper that we should inquire what impression he has made upon the many thousands in whose libraries and parlours he has become an intimate during his wanderings in his native country and in strange lands.

"Longfellow's epic," says a critic in Das Ausland, "is undoubtedly the most considerable poem which has appeared for some years in the English language. Its success has been unexampled on both sides of the Atlantic. In London the book has been twice reprinted; and, although we ordered it immediately after its publication, we were only able to secure a copy of the fourth edition. It was certainly a happy thought to gather the legends of the tawny aborigines of North America together in a great poem."

But this reviewer by no means accedes to Hiawatha unmixed commendation: he objects to portions of the plot, and to the measure.

"The tale itself is beautiful, fanciful, and new, and he has worked it up into a poem of many parts.... He has produced, in an imaginary memoir of the hero, Hiawatha, a picture of Indian life as it exists in the forest and by the river, full of light and colour, repose and action.... It is beyond all doubt that this Song of Hiawatha will increase Mr. Longfellow's reputation as a singer. The verse, as we have said and proved by extract, is sweet and simple, is full of local and national colour hasa tone and ring of its own: in a word, the story of Hiawatha is the poet's most original production."--Lon. Athenжum, Nov. 10, 1855, 1295; and see p. 1339.

"This Song is a quaint chant, a happy illustration of manners, but it lacks all the important elements which go to the making of a poem. We are interested, pleased, attracted, yet perfectly indifferent: the measure haunts the ear, but not the matter; and we care no more for Hiawatha and arc as little concerned for the land of the Ojibbeways, as if America's best minstrel had never made a song." --Blackwood's Mag., Feb. 1856.

But audi alteram partem: after an enthusiastic eulogy on Hiawatha in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine for Jan. 1856, the critic concludes with--

"Henceforth the Ojibway and the Dacotah are to us realities,--men of like passions with ourselves. In our own dear mother tongue their sweet singer Nawadaha has spoken to us, and the voice has gone direct from his heart to ours."

"Hiawatha may be taken as an accurate representation of Indian manners and superstitions artistically treated and poetically adorned."--Lon. Spectator.

"Mr. Longfellow's reputation will, we think, be raised by the Song of Hiawatha: it is by far, in our judgment, the most original of all his productions."--Lon. Examiner.

"If Mr. Longfellow had enriched the literature of his country with nothing save The Song of Hiawatha, he would deserve the poet's bays for this elaborate and most successful attempt to give to that literature a strong individuality, peculiar to the land where the red man once

'hunted the bison and the beaver,'

the home of the Indian, whose sire the sun was, and the earth his mother."--Home Journal, (N. York.)

"We think it is his greatest poem. It is the most absorbing work of its length we have ever read."--National Intelligencer, (Washington, D. C.)

The Liverpool Albion remarks that every succeeding effort of Longfellow is better than the last, and that Hiawatha is to be an immortal poem.

"Longfellow is the most accomplished poet of the day. Hiawatha is unquestionably his ablest work.... Every scene the Indian hero traverses in his allegorical progress is a breathing landscape, every adventure he meets with a capital story.... The episode of Hiawatha's Wooing, which we quoted in our last week's number, is one of the finest in the volume. It is a delicious love-story and would, without the slightest context, make the fortune of any poet.... Of the legends themselves that Mr. Longfellow has collected, their possible origin, and interest as relating to other mythologies, we have no time to speak. We must content ourselves with an expression of unqualified approval of the manner in which they have been collected, digested, and set to the most exquisite music."--Lon. Illustrated Times.

As regards this "most exquisite music" there are very different opinions:

"Anybody who has read the five thousand and odd verses of Hiawatha has certainly had enough of this epic metre, which very soon becomes as tiresome to the ear as the tune of a barrelorgan."--Das Ausland.

"We have often had occasion," says the London Leader, "to remark on the careful study of our recent literature displayed in its criticisms of English authors by the Revue des Deux Mondes. The last number contains an article on Longfellow's Hiawatha, remarkable for subtle insight into the peculiar character of the poem and genial criticism of its special merits. The writer, M. Йmile Montйgut, shows a thorough appreciation of the poetic substance and form of Longfellow's Indian legend scarcely to be expected in a foreigner, and least of all in a Frenchman. He pronounces Hiawatha to be the most finished poem Longfellow has produced. Of the metre he says:

"'The melody of the verse, rapid and monotonous, is like the voice of nature, which never fatigues us though continually repeating the same sound. Two or three notes compose the whole music of the poem, melodious and limited as the song of a bird.' Describing the general character of Hiawatha, hc says, 'The feeling for nature that pervades the poem is at once most refined and most familiar. The poet knows how to give, as a modern, voices to all the inanimate objects of nature: he knows the language of the birds, he understands the murmur of the wind amongst the leaves, he interprets the voices of the running streams, and yet, notwithstanding this poetic subtlety, he never turns aside to minute description, nor attempts to prolong, by reflection, the emotion excited. His poem, made with exquisite art has thus a double character: it is Homeric from the precision, simplicity, and familiarity of its images, and modern from the vivacity of its impressions and from the lyrical spirit that breathes in every page.'"

The London Athenжum, after giving copious extracts, remarks

"The Song of Hiawatha moves throughout in this beautiful and simple measure. Except in good hands, an instrument so artless would most likely fail. The line would tire on the ear. But Mr. Longfellow has contrived to give variety even to a measure evidently chosen for its sad and tender monotone:... despite its sameness of cadence, it scarcely palls on the ear even at the five thousandth verse."--Nov. 10, 1855, 1295.

"Unhappily for the poet, this is the very measure to attract the parodist. Punch has opened the assault, and we will not venture to predict how many gleeful voices may echo his good-humoured mockery before the year is out. The jingle of this measure is irresistible, and, with a good vocabulary of any savage language at one's elbow, one feels a pleasing confidence that the strain might spin on forever, and almost make itself."--Blackw. Mag., Feb. 1856.

There have, indeed, we are sorry to say, been many parodies of Hiawatha. We have no patience with a burlesque imitation of an earnest original. Punning has been called (we say not, truly) the 1owest kind of wit; but surely he who first said so forgot parodying. There was indeed, so much true wit, so much hearty appreciation of the merits of the poet and the poem, in Punch's parody that we could have excused it, had it not been for the baleful effects of its potent example. We cite an instance from a Boston paper of a much more agreeable evidence of the popularity of Hiawatha:

"The beautiful three-decked ship Minnehaha (named from the heroine of Longfellow's charming poem of Hiawatha) was most successfully launched about noon, on Saturday last, from Donald McKay's yard at East Boston The occasion was one of unusual interest, and attracted a very large concourse of people, who rent the air with their huzzas as the Minnehaha gracefully glided into the 'laughing waters,' (her namesake.)"

As early as Feb. 15, 1856,--four months after the first publication of Hiawatha,--a German translation by Adolph Bцttger, was pub. in Leipsic. In April, 1856, another translation into German, by Ferdinand Freiligrath, was in the hands of the European public. The original poem was issued at Leipsic in January, 1856, at half a thaler by Alphons Dьrr. (for vol. xvii. of his Collection of Standard American Authors.) He notes on his title-page that Hiawatha is supplied in Rome, Vienna, Paris, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Basle, Turin, Trieste, Venice, and Verona. We quote some other evidences of the popularity of Hiawatha:

"A Plum for Hiawatha.--Mr. Bright, in his recent speech at Manchester, commenting upon the effect of the war upon all departments of English effort, spoke of its influence upon the tone of English poetry, and contrasted Tennyson's war-lyrics with Longfellow's Hiawatha, thus:--Take the poet-laureate as an example--[hear, hear]--a gentleman whom I have never seen or met, I believe, but once accidentally,--a gentleman of great refinement of manner and of mind, who has written poetry in our language, [hear, hear:] yet such was the pestilent influence of these scenes of carnage on a mind so accomplished and elevated as that, that he puts forth a poem which his friends are anxious should never be spoken of. I have had the opportunity lately of reading a poem from another country, written by the American poet Longfellow--[applause]--a poem which treats of the legends of the Indian tribes: and, while I have turned from the poem of our poet-laureate, in which I find him descending to slang of almost the grossest character. I turn with delight to the exquisite poem which has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic.' [Hear, hear.]"