thief.’ Yet Poe, like Molière, whom he resembled in no other
particular, ‘took his own’ whenever it pleased him to do so, and he was
not over solicitous to advertise his sources. He was in the right. If
poets advertised their sources, what would be left for the commentators
to do? Poe hinted that Hawthorne appropriated his ideas, and he
flatly accused Longfellow of so doing. He was punished grotesquely,
for Chivers, the author of _Eonchs of Ruby_, accused Poe (after the
latter’s death, when it was quite safe to do so) of getting many of his
best ideas from Chivers.
VI
THE POET
Poe’s claim to mastership in verse rests on a handful of lyrics
distinguished for exquisite melody and a haunting beauty of phrase.
That part of the public which estimates a poet by such pieces as find
their way into anthologies regards Poe primarily as the author of ‘The
Bells’ and ‘The Raven.’ If popularity were the final test of merit,
these strikingly original performances would indeed crown his work.
After sixty years, neither has lost in appreciable degree the magical
charm it exerted when first the weird melody fell upon the ear. Each
is hackneyed beyond description; each has been parodied unmercifully,
murdered by raw elocutionists, and worse than murdered by generations
of school-children droning from their readers, about the ‘midnight
dreary’ and the ‘Runic rhyme.’ But it is yet possible to restore in a
measure the feeling of astonished delight with which lovers of poetry
greeted the advent of these studies in the musical power of words.
The practical and earnest soul will find little to comfort him in the
poetry of Poe. It teaches nothing, emphasizes no moral, never inspires
to action. The strange unearthly melodies must be enjoyed for the
reason that they are strange and unearthly and melodious. The genius of
the poet has travelled
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
and we can well believe that it comes
From an ultimate dim Thule,--
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space--out of Time.
Wholly out of space and time was he who wrote ‘Dreamland,’ ‘The City
in the Sea,’ ‘The Haunted Palace,’ ‘Israfel,’ ‘The Sleeper,’ and
‘Ulalume.’ It is idle to ask of these poems something they do not
pretend to give, and it can hardly be other than uncritical to describe
them as ‘very superficial.’ They are strange exotic flowers blooming
under conditions the most adverse, a fresh proof that genius is
independent of place and time.
* * * * *
In Poe’s work as a whole there is unquestionably too much of brooding
over death, the grave, mere physical horrors. Since his genius lay that
way, he must be accepted as he was. But it is permitted to regret, if
not the thing in itself (the domain of art being wide), at least the
excess. Poe speaks of certain themes which are ‘too entirely horrible
for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must
eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust.’ And having laid
down this doctrine, Poe goes on to relate the story of ‘The Premature
Burial.’ It turns out a vision. But the narrator affirms that he was
cured by the experience, that he read no more ‘bugaboo tales--_such as
this_. In short I became a new man and lived a man’s life.’ Without
assuming that Poe spoke wholly from the autobiographical point of view,
we may believe the passage to contain a measure of his actual thought.
We may claim for him a more important place in our literature than do
his radical admirers whose fervent eulogy too often takes the form
of the contention that Poe was greater than this or that American
man of letters. His strong, sombre genius saved the literature from
any danger of uniformity, relieved it at once and forever from the
possible charge of colorlessness. That strangeness of flavor which a
late distinguished critic notes as a mark of genius is imparted by
Poe’s work to our literary product as a whole. Here indeed was ‘the
blossoming of the aloe.’
FOOTNOTES:
[25] ‘... There is one thing I am anxious to caution you against,
& which has been a great enemy to our family, I hope,
however, in yr case, it may prove unnecessary, “A too free
use of the Bottle” ...’ William Poe to E. A. Poe, 15th June,
1843. Harrison’s _Poe_, vol. ii, p. 143.
[26] G. E. Woodberry.
[27] E. C. Stedman.
[28] ‘Reply to “Outis.”’
VIII
_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_
REFERENCES:
=Samuel Longfellow=: _Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_, second
edition, 1886, and _Final Memorials of ... Longfellow_, 1887.
=W. D. Howells=: _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_, 1900.
=G. R. Carpenter=: _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_, ‘Beacon
Biographies,’ 1901.
=T. W. Higginson=: _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_, ‘American Men of
Letters,’ 1902.
I
HIS LIFE
The Longfellows are descendants of William Longfellow of Horsforth
in Yorkshire, who came to New England ‘about 1676,’ settled in
Newbury, and married Anne Sewall, a sister of Samuel Sewall, the first
chief-justice of Massachusetts. ‘Well educated but a little wild’
is one of several illuminating phrases used to describe this young
Yorkshireman. He joined the expedition against Quebec under Sir William
Phipps (1690) and perished in a wreck on the coast of Anticosti.
One of his sons, Stephen, a blacksmith, had a son who was graduated
at Harvard, became a schoolmaster in Falmouth (Portland), and held
important offices in the town government. His son, the third Stephen,
grandfather of the poet, was judge of the court of common pleas, and
representative of his town in the legislature.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born at Portland, in the District
of Maine, on February 27, 1807. He was the second son of Stephen
Longfellow, a prominent lawyer, conspicuous in political life, a member
of the Massachusetts legislature, and afterwards, when Maine acquired
statehood, a representative for his state in Congress. The mother of
the poet, Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow, was a daughter of General
Peleg Wadsworth, whose adventures during the Revolution bordered on
the romantic. Through the Wadsworths the poet was a descendant of John
Alden and Priscilla Mullens.
At the age of thirteen Longfellow printed in the Portland ‘Gazette’
his boyish rhymes on ‘The Battle of Lovell’s Pond.’ He studied at
private schools and at the Portland Academy, entered Bowdoin College,
Brunswick, Maine, in the Sophomore year, and was graduated in 1825, the
fourth in a class of thirty-eight. That he stood so high seemed to him
‘rather a mystery.’ Before leaving college he had begun contributing
to the ‘United States Literary Gazette,’ a new bi-monthly, published
in Boston and edited by Theophilus Parsons. In one year seventeen of
his poems appeared in the ‘Gazette,’ for which payment was made at the
rate of two dollars a column. Five of these early poems were reprinted
in _Voices of the Night_.
At the Commencement of 1825 the trustees of Bowdoin had determined to
establish a professorship of modern languages. The chair was promised
Longfellow when he should have fitted himself for it by study abroad.
He sailed from New York in May, 1826, provided by George Ticknor with
letters of introduction to Irving, Eichhorn, and Southey. He travelled
in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, mastered the Romance languages,
planned certain prose volumes, and announced to his sister Elizabeth
that his poetic career was finished. In August, 1829, he was back in
America.
His appointment being confirmed and the stipend fixed at eight hundred
dollars (together with another hundred for services as college
librarian), Longfellow entered on his duties. During the next five and
a half years he corrected bad French and Italian exercises, heard worse
viva voce translations, in brief, was a pedagogue in all homely and
trying senses of the word. With any one save a born drill-master the
class-room soon loses novelty. In spite of the knowledge that he was
useful in a chosen field of work, more than happy in his home-life (he
had married, in 1831, Miss Mary Storer Potter of Portland), Longfellow
felt the narrowness of his surroundings. Bowdoin was a little college
and Brunswick a village. The young professor was ambitious. In his own
phrase, he wanted a stage on which he could ‘take longer strides and
speak to a larger audience.’ At one time he thought of buying the Round
Hill School, and visited Northampton to look over the ground. Fortune
had something better in store for him. Ticknor was about to resign the
chair of modern languages at Harvard, and proposed as his successor
Longfellow, whose translation of the _Coplas_ of Manrique (1833) had
attracted his notice. The position was formally offered and accepted;
it was understood that Longfellow was to spend a year and a half in
Europe before taking up his work.
Accompanied by his young wife, Longfellow crossed the ocean in April,
1835, and passed the summer in Stockholm and Copenhagen, studying
the Scandinavian languages. In the autumn he was in Holland. Mrs.
Longfellow died the last of November. Longfellow went to Heidelberg for
the winter, and to Switzerland and the Tyrol for the spring and summer,
and in December (1836) was at Cambridge preparing his college lectures.
He lodged at the famous colonial mansion in Brattle Street known
as Craigie House, in a room that had once been Washington’s. When
Longfellow first applied, old Mrs. Craigie, deceived by his youthful
appearance, told him that she had ‘resolved to take no more students
into the house.’ Craigie House passed into the possession of Worcester,
the lexicographer. Worcester sold it to Nathan Appleton, whose daughter
Longfellow married in 1843. It then became the property of Mrs.
Longfellow.
At Harvard the exactions of work were not like those in the smaller
college, strictly pedagogical. Longfellow had time for literature
and for society. The years were richly productive, as the following
bibliographical lists show.
_Outre-Mer, A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea_, 1835; _Hyperion, a Romance_,
1839; _Voices of the Night_, 1839; _Ballads and Other Poems_, 1842;
_Poems on Slavery_, 1842; _The Spanish Student_, 1843; _The Waif, a
Collection of Poems_, 1845 (edited); _The Poets and Poetry of Europe_,
1845 (edited); _The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems_, 1846; _The
Estray, a Collection of Poems_, 1847 (edited); _Evangeline, a Tale
of Acadie_, 1847; _Kavanagh, a Tale_, 1849; _The Seaside and the
Fireside_, 1850; _The Golden Legend_, 1851; _The Song of Hiawatha_,
1855.
After eighteen years of service at Harvard, Longfellow, in 1855,
resigned his professorship, handing over its responsibilities to a
worthy successor, James Russell Lowell. Released from academic duties,
he was able to give himself unreservedly to literary work. Even in
these new conditions he enjoyed less freedom than would be supposed.
Longfellow had become a world-famous poet and was compelled to pay
in full measure the penalties of fame. The demands on his time were
enormous. As his reputation increased there was a proportionate
increase in the army of visitors which besieged his door. The uniform
kindness of their reception encouraged hundreds more to come.
The beautiful serenity of Longfellow’s domestic life was broken in upon
by a frightful tragedy. One July morning in 1861 Mrs. Longfellow’s
dress caught fire from a lighted match. It was impossible to save her,
and she died the following day. The poet never recovered from the shock
of her death. How crushing the blow was may be faintly conceived from
that poem, ‘The Cross of Snow,’ found among his papers after his death.
During the last quarter century of his life Longfellow published the
following books: _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, 1858; _Tales
of a Wayside Inn_, 1863; _Flower-de-Luce_, 1867; _The New England
Tragedies_, 1868; _Dante’s Divine Comedy, a Translation_,[29] 1867–70;
_The Divine Tragedy_, 1871; _Christus, a Mystery_, 1872;[30] _Three
Books of Song_, 1872; _Aftermath_, 1873; _The Masque of Pandora_, and
_Other Poems_, 1875; _Poems of Places_, 1876–79 (edited); _Kéramos and
Other Poems_, 1878; _Ultima Thule_, 1880. The posthumous volumes were
_In the Harbor_, 1882, and _Michael Angelo_, 1884.
All the customary honors with which literary achievement may be
recognized were bestowed on Longfellow. Some were formal and academic,
scholastic tributes to scholastic achievement. Others were spontaneous
and popular, an expression of the heart. Two illustrations will suffice
to show the range of the poet’s influence. In 1869, during Longfellow’s
last journey in Europe, the degree of D. C. L. was conferred on him by
the University of Oxford. In 1879, when the tree which overhung ‘the
village smithy’ was felled, an armchair was made of the wood, and given
to the poet by the school-children of Cambridge. Both these tributes
were necessary. Each is the complement of the other. Taken together,
they symbolize the characteristics of the man and the artist.
Of all American poets Longfellow reached the widest audience. And it
was with a feeling of personal bereavement that every member of that
vast audience heard the news of his death at Cambridge, on March 24,
1882.
II
LONGFELLOW’S CHARACTER
As a young man Longfellow was pretty much like other young men, fond
of society and fond of dress. At Cambridge the sober-minded were a
little disturbed by the brilliancy of his waistcoats. In the Thirties
it was permitted men, if they would, to array themselves like birds of
paradise. Longfellow appears in some degree to have availed himself
of the privilege. After a visit to Dickens in London in 1842 the
novelist wrote Longfellow that boot-maker, hosier, trousers-maker, and
coat-cutter had all been at the point of death. ‘The medical gentlemen
agreed that it was exhaustion occasioned by early rising--to wait upon
you at those unholy hours!’ An English visitor who saw Longfellow in
1850 thought him too fashionably dressed with his ‘blue frock-coat of
Parisian cut, a handsome waistcoat, faultless pantaloons, and primrose
colored “kids.”’
In middle age his social instinct was as strong as ever, but he cared
less for ‘society.’ He restricted himself to the companionship of his
friends, holding always in reserve time for his dependants, of whom he
had more than a fair share.
Longfellow was large-hearted. He liked people if they were likable and
sympathized with them if they were unattractive or unfortunate. He was
open-handed, a liberal giver. Adventurers preyed upon him. He endured
them with patient strength. When their exactions became outrageous,
he made an effort to be rid of them. If unsuccessful, he laughed at
his own want of skill and resigned himself to be imposed on a little
longer. A weaker man would have sent these bores and parasites about
their business at once.
Incapable of giving pain to any living creature, he could not
understand the temper which prompts another to do so. Fortunately the
violence or malignity of criticism had little effect on him. He could
even be amused by it. Of Margaret Fuller’s ‘furious onslaught’ on him
in the ‘New York Tribune,’ Longfellow said, ‘It is what ‘might be
called a bilious attack.’
He disliked publicity whether in the form of newspaper chronicle of
his doings or recognition in public places. He thought it absurd
that because Fechter had dined with him this unimportant item must
be telegraphed to Chicago and printed in the morning journals. Fond
as he was of the theatre, he sometimes hesitated to go because of
the interest his presence excited. It was thought extraordinary that
he was willing to read his poem ‘Morituri Salutamus’ at the fiftieth
anniversary of his class at Bowdoin. He was delighted when he found
he was to stand behind the old-fashioned high pulpit; ‘Let me cover
myself as much as possible. I wish it might be entirely.’
One trait of Longfellow’s character has been over-emphasized--his
gentleness. He was indeed gentle; but continual harping on that string
has created the impression that he was gentle rather than anything
else. In consequence we have a legendary Longfellow in whom all other
traits of character are subordinated to the one. His amiability, his
sense of justice, his entire freedom from selfishness and vanity, and
his genuine modesty, which led him even when he was right and his
neighbor wrong to avoid giving needless pain by intimating to the
neighbor how wrong he was--all contributed to hide the more forceful
and emphatic qualities. But the qualities were there.
Nothing is easier than to multiply illustrations of this poet’s
gracious traits of character. Holmes epitomized all eulogy when he said
of Longfellow: ‘His life was so exceptionally sweet and musical that
any voice of praise sounds almost like a discord after it.’
III
THE POET
Americans sometimes disturb themselves needlessly over the question
whether Longfellow was a great poet. It is absolutely of no importance
whether he was or was not. Of one thing they may be sure,--he was a
poet. Song was his natural vehicle of expression. He had a masterly
command of technical difficulties of his art. Language became pliant
under his touch. Taking into account the range of his metres, the
uniform precision with which he handled words, and the purity of his
style, Longfellow is eminent among American poetical masters.
His sonnets are exquisite. His ballads, like ‘The Skeleton in Armor,’
have no little of the fresh unstudied character which charms us in old
English ballad literature, a something not to be traced to the spirit
alone but to the technique as well. The twenty-two poems of ‘The Saga
of King Olaf’ show an almost extraordinary metrical power.
It must also be remembered that Longfellow popularized for modern
readers the so-called English hexameter. _Evangeline_ was a metrical
triumph, considering it wholly aside from the innate beauty of the
story or the artistic handling of the incidents. The poet did not
foresee his success. In fact, as early as 1841, in the preface to his
translation of Tegnér’s _Children of the Lord’s Supper_, Longfellow
speaks of the ‘inexorable hexameter, in which, it must be confessed,
the motions of the English muse are not unlike those of a prisoner
dancing to the music of his chains.’ But here he was hampered by his
theory of translation, by his anxiety to render as literally as he
could the text of the original. When he took the matter into his own
hands and moulded the verse according to his own artistic sense, it
became another thing. Wholly aside from the pleasure _Evangeline_ has
given countless readers, it is something to have broken down prejudice
against the hexameter to the extent of drawing out an indirect
compliment from Matthew Arnold, whose self-restraint in the matter of
giving praise was notorious.[31] Scholars have by no means withdrawn
their opposition to the English hexameter. That a more liberal temper
prevails is largely due to Longfellow.
_Evangeline_ had a stimulating effect on one English poet of rare
genius, Arthur Hugh Clough. A reading of the Tale of Acadie immediately
after a reperusal of the _Iliad_ led to the composition of _The Bothie
of Tober-na-Vuolich_.[32]
Another of Longfellow’s triumphs was so great as to make it difficult
for any one to follow him. _Hiawatha_ succeeded both because of the
metre and in spite of it. Any one can master this self-writing jingle.
’Tis as easy as lying. One hardly knows how facile newspaper parodists
amused themselves before they got _Hiawatha_. Holmes explained the ease
of the measure on physiological grounds. We do not lisp in numbers, but
breathe in them. Did we but know it, we pass our lives in exhaling
four-foot rhymeless trochaics.[33] To write a poem in the metre of the
_Kalevala_ still remains, with all its specious fluency, an impossible
performance for any one not a poet. Thus Longfellow’s success had a
negative and restraining effect. He opened the field to whoever cared
to experiment with the hexameter, but closed it, for the present at
least, to any rhythmical inventions calculated however remotely to
suggest the metre of his Indian edda.
IV
_OUTRE-MER, HYPERION, KAVANAGH_
The most popular of American poets first challenged public attention as
a writer of prose. _Outre-Mer_ is a group of pieces after the manner
of Irving. _Hyperion_ is a romance ‘in the old style,’ and shows the
influence of Jean Paul Richter. _Kavanagh_, published ten years after
_Hyperion_, is a novel.
Neither of the first two books is marked by a buoyant Americanism.
_Outre-Mer_ does not, for example, suggest _A Tramp Abroad_, and
certainly Paul Flemming is no kinsman of ‘Harris.’ In other words,
Europe was as yet too remote to be made the subject of easy jest. Men
did not ‘run over’ to the Continent. The trip cost them dear in time
and money, and was not without the element of anticipated danger.
Travelling America was unsophisticated and viewed the Old World with
childlike curiosity. Foreign lands were transfigured in the romantic
haze through which they were seen.
The chapters of _Outre-Mer_ were written by a man too intoxicated with
the charm of European life to be annoyed by the petty irritations that
worry hardened tourists. Rouen, Paris, Auteuil, Madrid, El Pardillo,
Rome in midsummer, afford the Pilgrim only delight. As in all books of
the kind there are interpolated stones, and in this book interpolated
literary essays. Every page betrays the student and the lover of
literature, who quotes Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne at Père la
Chaise, James Howell at Venice, and Shakespeare everywhere.
_Hyperion_ is steeped in sentiment--almost in sentimentality. Such a
book could only have been written when the heart was young. It is a
mistake, however, to read the volume as an autobiography; the author
objected to its being so read. More important than the love story are
the romantic descriptions of the Rhine and the Swiss Alps and the
golden atmosphere enveloping it all. Both these books have a common
object, namely, to interpret the Old World to the New.
When _Outre-Mer_ was published an admirer said that the author of
_The Sketch Book_ must look to his laurels. The praise implied was
extravagant, but not groundless. Longfellow’s prose has a measure of
the sweetness and urbanity which we associate with Irving. Both writers
are classic in their serenity, and if highly artificial at times never
absurdly stilted. They often appear in old-fashioned dress, but they
wear the costume easily and it becomes them. The modern reader, with a
taste dulled by high seasoning, marvels how the grandparents could find
pleasure in _Hyperion_. It would be to the modern reader’s advantage
to forswear sack for a while and get himself into a condition to enjoy
what so greatly delighted the grandparents.
Besides a group of literary essays (published in his collected works
under the title of ‘Driftwood’) Longfellow wrote a novel of New England
life, _Kavanagh_, which suffered by coming too soon after _Evangeline_.
It seems colorless when placed beside the romantic tale of Acadie. Yet
one can well afford to take time to learn of Mr. Pendexter’s griefs,
and incidentally to become acquainted with Billy Wilmerdings, who was
turned out of school for playing truant, and ‘promised his mother, if
she would not whip him, he would experience religion.’ Hawthorne was
enthusiastic over _Kavanagh_; he, however, disclosed the secret of its
unpopularity when he said to Longfellow: ‘Nobody but yourself would
dare to write so quiet a book.’
V
_VOICES OF THE NIGHT, BALLADS, SPANISH STUDENT, BELFRY OF BRUGES, THE
SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE_
Longfellow served the cause of his art in two ways: first, he was an
original poet, having a genius which, if not profound, or brilliant,
or massive, or bewilderingly fresh and new, was eminently poetical and
eminently attractive; second, he was an enthusiastic interpreter of the
poetry of other lands through the medium of trustworthy and graceful
translations.