translations, from Manrique, Lope de Vega, Dante, Charles d’Orléans,
Klopstock, and Uhland, outnumber the original pieces almost two to one.
Their characteristic is fidelity in spirit and letter. They illustrate
the genius of a poet who found pleasure in giving wider audience to the
work of men he loved, and who did his utmost to preserve the singular
qualities of these men.
Longfellow’s second volume, _Ballads and Other Poems_, contains only
four translations, but one of them is Tegnér’s _Children of the Lord’s
Supper_, in three hundred and fifty hexameter verses. _The Belfry of
Bruges_ contains a handful of translations from the German, including
a lyric of Heine’s done in a way to cause regret that Longfellow did
not put more of the _Buch der Lieder_ into English. In _The Seaside and
the Fireside_ is given entire ‘The Blind Girl of Castèl Cuillè’ by the
barber-poet Jasmin.
The translations bulk so large and are so plainly a labor of love that
it would seem as if Longfellow regarded such work an important part of
his poetic mission. At the present time there is no need to urge the
translator to ‘aggrandize his office.’ He does so cheerfully. Sometimes
it is done for him. Are we not told that Fitzgerald was a greater poet
than Omar Khayyám? In 1840 the office had not grown so great.
This interpretative work by no means ended when Longfellow’s fame as a
creative poet was at its height and there was every incentive to build
for himself. When compiling (with Felton’s aid) the _Poets and Poetry
of Europe_ he translated many pieces for the volume. He gave years to
reproducing in English the majesty of Dante’s verse, counting himself
fortunate if his transcript, made in all reverence and love, approached
its great original. This disinterestedness in the exercise of his art
is so greatly to his honor that praise becomes impertinent. Catholic
in his attitude toward workers in the field of poesy, Longfellow
recognized the truth of the line
Many the songs, but song is one.
Longfellow’s early verse had all the requisites for popularity; it is
clear, melodious, simple in its lessons, tinged with sentiment and
melancholy, dashed with romantic color, and abounding in phrases which
catch the ear and pulsate in the brain. The poet voices the longings,
regrets, fears, aspirations, the restlessness, or the faith, which go
to make up the warp and woof of everyday life. An allegory, a moralized
legend, a song, a meditation, a ballad,--these are what we find in
turning the leaves of _Voices of the Night_ or the _Ballads_. Here
is a certain popular quality not to be attained by taking thought.
‘A Psalm of Life,’ ‘Flowers,’ ‘The Beleaguered City,’ ‘The Village
Blacksmith,’ ‘The Rainy Day,’ ‘Maidenhood,’ ‘Excelsior,’ ‘The Bridge,’
‘The Day is Done,’ ‘Resignation,’ ‘The Builders,’ are a few among many
illustrations of the type of verse which carried Longfellow’s name into
every home where poetry is read. The range of emotions expressed is
of the simplest. There is feeling, but no thinking. The robust reader
who perchance has battened of late on sturdy diet, like _Fifine at the
Fair_, hardly knows what to make of these poems, so little resistance
do they offer to the mind. The meaning lies on the surface. But it
is no less true that their essence is poetical. The one thing never
lacking is the note of distinction. The human quality to be found in
such a poem as the ‘Footsteps of Angels’ almost overpowers the poetic
element. Nevertheless the poetry is there, and by virtue of this
Longfellow’s early work lives.
Other poems show his scholar’s love for the past. They express the
natural longing felt by an inhabitant of a crude new land for countries
where romance lies thick because history is ancient. ‘The Belfry of
Bruges’ and ‘Nuremberg’ are examples. Moreover Longfellow’s ballads
have genuine quality. ‘The Skeleton in Armor’ illustrates his study of
Scandinavian literature. ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ is based on an
actual incident which came under his notice. The criticism reflecting
on this ballad because the poet had never seen the reef of Norman’s
Woe, is superfine. Longfellow was born and reared almost within a
stone’s throw of the Atlantic. His knowledge of the ocean began with
his first lessons in life. His sea poems are distinctive. ‘The Building
of the Ship,’ ‘The Fire of Driftwood,’ ‘Sir Humphrey Gilbert,’ ‘The
Secret of the Sea,’ ‘The Lighthouse,’ ‘Chrysaor,’ and ‘Seaweed,’
whether or not they deserve the praise Henley gives them, will always
be accounted among Longfellow’s characteristic pieces.
Two other works may be noted in this section: the _Poems on Slavery_
and a play, _The Spanish Student_. The first of these, though academic,
shows how early Longfellow took his rank with the unpopular minority.
_The Spanish Student_, a play based on _La Gitanilla_ of Cervantes, was
written _con amore_, and ‘with a celerity of which I did not think
myself capable.’ Longfellow had great hopes of its success, though
he seems not to have been ambitious for a dramatic presentation. The
success was to come through the reader. _The Spanish Student_ shows
that Longfellow could have written good acting plays had he chosen
to submit to the irritations and rebuffs which are the inevitable
preliminary to dramatic good fortune.
VI
_EVANGELINE, HIAWATHA, MILES STANDISH, TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN_
_Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_ mark the climax of Longfellow’s
contemporary popularity and may be regarded as the principal bulwarks
of his fame. There is an anecdote to the effect that Hawthorne, to
whom the subject of Evangeline was proposed, was not attracted by it,
while Longfellow seized on it eagerly. Such was the divergence of their
genius. Longfellow’s mind always sought the fair uplands of thought,
checkered with alternate sunshine and shadow; it did not willingly
traverse deep ravines, gloomy and mysterious, or haunted groves such as
those about which Hawthorne’s spirit loved to keep. The instinct which
led the one poet to reject the narrative was as infallible as that
which led the other to appropriate it.
The tale of Acadie is engrossing in its very nature, and whether told
in prose or verse must always invite, even chain, the attention. It
is dramatic without being melodramatic. The characters are not mere
‘persons’ of the drama, they are types. Evangeline will always stand
for something more than the figure of an unhappy Acadian girl bereft
of her lover. As Longfellow has painted her, she is the incarnation of
beauty, devotion, maidenly pride, self-abnegation. So too of the other
characters, Gabriel, old Basil, Benedict; each has that added strength
which a character conceived dramatically is bound to have if it shall
prove typical as well.
Longfellow gave himself little anxiety about the historic difficulties
of the Acadian question. It was enough for him that these unhappy
people were carried away from their homes and that much misery ensued.
He painted the French Neutrals as a romancer must. Father Felician was
not sketched from the Abbé Le Loutre, nor was life in the actual Grand
Pré altogether idyllic.
_Evangeline_ aroused interest in French-American history. For example,
Whewell wrote to Bancroft to say that he feared Longfellow had some
historical basis for the story and to ask for information.
In the Plymouth idyl of the choleric little captain who believed
that the way to get a thing well done was to do it one’s self, and
who exemplified his theory by having his secretary make a proposal of
marriage for him, Longfellow made one of his most fortunate strokes.
_The Courtship of Miles Standish_ showed the poetic possibilities in
the harsh, dry annals of early colonial life. The wonder is that so few
adventurers have cared to follow the path indicated.
Bound up with the story of Priscilla and John Alden is a handful of
poems to which Longfellow gave the collective title of ‘Birds of
Passage.’ Here are several fine examples of his art: ‘The Warden of
the Cinque-Ports,’ ‘Haunted Houses,’ ‘The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,’
‘Oliver Basselin,’ ‘Victor Galbraith,’ ‘My Lost Youth,’ ‘The Discoverer
of the North Cape,’ and ‘Sandalphon.’ It is a question whether in
these eight poems we have not a small but well-nigh perfect Longfellow
anthology. Certainly no selection of his writings can pretend to be
characteristic which does not contain them.
_Hiawatha_ was not intended for a poetic commentary on the manners
and customs of the North American Indians, though that impression
sometimes obtains. It is a free handling of Ojibway legends drawn from
Schoolcraft’s _Algic Researches_ and supplemented by other accounts of
Indian life. The grossness of the red man’s character, his cruelty, his
primitive views of cleanliness, are wisely kept in the background,
and his noble and picturesque qualities brought to the front. The
psychology is extremely simple. This Indian edda must be enjoyed for
its atmosphere of the forest, its childlike spirit, and its humor.
Hiawatha was a friend of animals (when he was not their enemy), and
understood them even better than writers of modern nature-books. One
does not need to be young again to enjoy the account of Hiawatha’s
fishing in company with his friend the squirrel. The sturgeon swallows
them both, and the squirrel helps Hiawatha get the canoe crossways in
the fish, a timely service in recognition of which (after both have
been rescued) he receives the honorable name of Tail-in-air. In fact,
the poem abounds in observations of animal life which as yet await the
sanction of John Burroughs.
Taking a series of poems on the half-real, half-mythical King Olaf,
adding thereto a group of contrasting tales from Spanish, Italian,
Jewish, and American sources, assigning each narrative to an
appropriate character, binding the whole together with an Introduction,
Interludes, and a Conclusion, Longfellow produced the genial _Tales of
a Wayside Inn_. The device of the poem is old, but it can always be
given a new turn. Adapted to prose as well as verse, it may be used ‘in
little,’ as Hardy has done in _A Few Crusted Characters_, or in larger
form, as in _A Group of Noble Dames_.
No secret was made of the fact that the ‘Wayside Inn’ was the ‘Red
Horse Inn’ of Sudbury, Massachusetts, or that the characters, the
Sicilian, the Poet, the Student, the Spanish Jew, the Musician, and the
Theologian, were real people, friends of Longfellow.[34]
The reader who takes up _Tales of a Wayside Inn_ knows by instinct
that he may not look for the broad and leisurely treatment, the wealth
of beauty and harmony, which characterize _The Earthly Paradise_ of
Morris. That need not, however, prevent him from enjoying the _Tales_
on quite sufficient grounds. The poems are often too brief; some
are mere anecdotes ‘finished just as they are fairly begun.’ We are
prepared for a more generous treatment.
Though not written for that complex and formidable entity ‘the
child-mind,’ two poems in the collection, ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ and
‘King Robert of Sicily,’ are beloved of school-children and dear to
the amateur elocutionist. The most original of the tales is ‘The Saga
of King Olaf,’ drawn from the _Heimskringla_, and appropriately put
into the lips of the Musician. It is a poem redolent of the sea and the
forest. The theme was congenial to Longfellow, who loved ‘the misty
world of the north, weird and wonderful.’
Prompted by the good fortune of _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, the poet was
led to make additions to it. A second part appeared in _Three Books of
Song_, a third part in _Aftermath_. With these fifteen additional tales
the three parts were then collected into a single volume.
VII
_CHRISTUS, JUDAS MACCABÆUS, PANDORA, MICHAEL ANGELO_
As early as 1841 Longfellow had conceived the idea of an ‘elaborate
poem ... the theme of which would be the various aspects of Christendom
in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern Ages.’ In 1851 _The Golden Legend_
appeared, with no word to indicate that it was the second part of a
trilogy. Seventeen years more elapsed and _The New England Tragedies_
came from the press, to be followed three years later by _The Divine
Tragedy_. The three parts were then arranged in chronological order and
the completed work given the title of _Christus, a Mystery_.
One may guess why the first part of the trilogy was the last to
be published. A bard the most indubitably inspired might question
his power to meet the infinite requirements of so lofty a theme.
Longfellow’s _Divine Tragedy_ has received less than due meed of
praise. It has an austere beauty. If a reader can be moved by the
Scripture narrative, he can scarcely remain unmoved by this reverent
handling of the story of the Christ. Through many lines the poet
follows the Scriptural version almost to the letter, bending the text
only enough to throw it into metrical form. Often the dialogue seems
bald and the transitions abrupt because the poet allows himself the
least degree of liberty. This severity and repression in the treatment
are one source of that power which _The Divine Tragedy_ certainly has.
Part two, _The Golden Legend_, is a retelling of the story of Prince
Henry of Hoheneck. Here, Longfellow reproduces with skill the light
and color of mediæval life, if not its darkness and diablerie. The
street-preaching, the miracle-play in the church, the revel of the
monks at Hirschau, and the lawless gayety of the pilgrims are all
painted with a clear and certain touch, but in colors almost too pale,
too delicate. Longfellow had not the courage or the taste to handle
these themes with the touch of almost brutal realism they seem to
require.
The third part of the trilogy, _The New England Tragedies_, consists
of two plays, _John Endicott_ and _Giles Corey of the Salem Farms_,
one dealing with the persecution of the Quakers, the other with the
witchcraft delusion. The first is the better. Edith Christison’s
arraignment of Norton in the church, her trial, punishment, her return
to the colony at the risk of her life, and the release of the Quakers
by the king’s mandamus, followed by Endicott’s death, are vigorously
depicted. The character of the governor is finely drawn, and the
last scene between Bellingham and Endicott is a strong and moving
conception. As he bends over the dead man, Bellingham says:--
How placid and how quiet is his face,
Now that the struggle and the strife are ended!
Only the acrid spirit of the times
Corroded this true steel. Oh, rest in peace,
Courageous heart! Forever rest in peace!
The companion play, _Giles Corey_, shows what has been already
observed, how little adapted Longfellow’s genius was for dealing with
psychological mysteries. He could understand the mental conditions and
sympathize with persecutors and victims, but he could not reproduce the
uncanny atmosphere enveloping the witchcraft tragedies. _Giles Corey_
is a finished study of a theme which might have been developed into a
powerful play. It is profitable reading, yet if one would be carried
back into the horrors of that time he must go to Hawthorne’s ‘Young
Goodman Brown’ and not to _Giles Corey_. Poets are notorious for taking
liberties with the facts of history. But according to the late John
Fiske, the poetical conception of Cotton Mather as set forth in _The
New England Tragedies_ is much nearer truth than the popular conception
of the great Puritan minister based on the teachings of historians.
The little five-act play, _Judas Maccabæus_, is a piece of careful
workmanship, like everything to which Longfellow put his hand, and the
scene between Antiochus and Máhala rises into passionate energy. _The
Masque of Pandora_ was more to Longfellow’s taste, and if it does not
satisfy the classical scholar, who is proverbially hard to please,
it remains an attractive setting of one of the most attractive of
mythological stories.
The dramatic poem, _Michael Angelo_, though not usually accounted
Longfellow’s masterpiece, better deserves that rank than certain more
popular performances. Besides being a lovely example of his art, it is
the expression of his maturest thought. He kept it by him for years,
working on it with loving care, adding new scenes from time to time
and weighing critically the value of those already written. Finally he
put it to one side, and to show that he had not entirely carried out
his idea, the words ‘A Fragment’ were subjoined to the title. It was
published after his death.
_Michael Angelo_ is not a play, but a series of dramatic incidents
from the life of the great sculptor, illustrating his character, his
thought, his work, his friendships. Many passages display a strength
not commonly associated with Longfellow’s poetic genius. Little is
wanting to the delineation of Michael Angelo to create the effect of
massiveness. From the first monologue where he sits in his studio,
musing over his picture of the ‘Last Judgment,’ to the midnight scene
where Vasari finds him working on the statue of the Dead Christ, the
effect is cumulative. The other characters are no less skilfully
wrought. Vittoria Colonna is a beautiful conception, lofty yet human.
Equally attractive with a more earthly loveliness is Julia Gonzaga,
her friend, she to whom one to-day was worth a thousand yesterdays.
Titian, Cellini, the Pope and his cardinals, Vasari, Sebastiano, the
old servant Urbino, and the aged monk at Monte Luca effectively sustain
the parts assigned them, and unite to bring into always stronger relief
the character of the unique genius whom Longfellow has made his central
figure.
VIII
LAST WORKS
The translation of Dante was a difficult task to which Longfellow gave
himself for years with something like consecration. It is satisfactory
or it is not, according to the point of view. He who holds that verse
can never be translated into verse, and that a poem suffers least
by being rendered in prose, will make no exception in Longfellow’s
case. On the other hand, the reader who is not, and who has neither
the opportunity nor the power to become a scholar in Italian, owes
Longfellow an inestimable debt of gratitude. The unpoetic accuracy of
which some complain counts for a virtue. The translation remains, with
all that can be said against it, the work of a poet.
As age came on, Longfellow’s own verse, instead of losing in charm,
the rather increased. _Kéramos_, _Ultima Thule_, and _In the Harbor_
contain many of his loveliest and most gracious poems. ‘Not to be
tuneless in old age’ was his happy fortune.
* * * * *
His skill in the sentimental, homely, and obviously moral has blinded
not a few readers to the larger aspects of Longfellow’s work.
One wearies, no doubt, of the ethical lesson that comes with the
inevitableness of fate. But there is no need of impatience, Longfellow
does not invariably preach. Besides, all tastes must be taken into
account. Many prefer the ethical lesson, unmistakably put.
Had Longfellow been more rugged, and had he been content to end his
poems now and then with a question mark (figuratively speaking) instead
of a full stop, there would have been much talk about the ‘depth of
his meaning;’ and had he been frankly suggestive on tabooed topics,
we should have heard a world of chatter about ‘the largeness of his
view’ and the surprising degree in which he was in ‘advance of his
time.’ Doubtless he lacked brute strength. Whitman could have spared
him a little of his own surplus, and neither poet would have been
the worse for the transfer. Nevertheless Longfellow had abundance of
power exerted in his own way, which was not the way of the world. What
preposterous criticism is that of Frederic Harrison, who characterizes
_Evangeline_ as ‘goody-goody dribble’!
Perhaps Longfellow should be most praised for his exquisite taste. He
was refined to the finger-tips, a gentleman not alone in every fibre of
his being but in every line of his work. The poet of the fireside and
the people was an aristocrat after all. Generations of culture seem to
be packed into his verses. In a country where so much is flamboyant,
boastful, restless, and crude, the influence of such a man is of the
loftiest and most benignant sort.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] The first volume was printed in 1865 and sent to Italy in
commemoration of the six hundredth anniversary of Dante’s
birth.
[30] _The Divine Tragedy_, _The Golden Legend_, and _The New
England Tragedies_ reprinted in order as parts of a trilogy.
[31] Lectures _On Translating Homer_.
[32] _Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough_, p. 40.
[33] Holmes: _Pages from an Old Volume of Life_.
[34] Luigi Monti, T. W. Parsons, H. W. Wales, Israel Edrehi, Ole
Bull, Daniel Treadwell.
IX
_John Greenleaf Whittier_
REFERENCES:
=W. S. Kennedy=: _John Greenleaf Whittier, his Life, Genius, and
Writings_, 1882.
=S. T. Pickard=: _Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier_,
1894.
=Richard Burton=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘Beacon
Biographies,’ 1901.
=T. W. Higginson=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘English Men of
Letters,’ 1902.
=G. R. Carpenter=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘American Men of
Letters,’ 1903.
I
HIS LIFE
John Greenleaf Whittier was born at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, on
December 17, 1807. His father, John Whittier, a farmer, was noted for
probity, sound judgment, and great physical strength. A man of few
words, he always spoke to the point, as when, in relation to public
charities with which he had officially to do, he said: ‘There are the
Lord’s poor and the Devil’s poor; there ought to be a distinction made
between them by the overseers of the poor.’ He had imperfect sympathy
with his son’s literary aspirations, but it were unjust to say that he
was wholly opposed to them.
Whatever lack there may have been on this score was abundantly made
up to the youth by his beautiful and saintly mother. Abigail (Hussey)
Whittier was her husband’s junior by twenty-one years. From her the
poet inherited his brilliant black eyes, a physical trait (mistakenly)
supposed to have been derived from the old colonial minister, Stephen
Bachiler, that enterprising and turbulent spirit who came to America
at the age of seventy, founded cities, disputed the authority of the
clergy, and finally astonished friend and enemy alike by marrying for
the third time at the age of eighty-nine.
Young Whittier was apparently destined to the toilsome life of his
farmer ancestors. He suffered under the ‘toughening process’ to which
New England country lads were formerly subjected, and became in
consequence a lifelong valetudinarian.
With his frail physique and uncertain health the ‘Quaker Poet’ affords
a marked contrast, not alone to his own father, but to that mighty
ancestor Thomas Whittier, founder of the American family, who at
sixty-eight years of age was able to do his share in hewing the oak
timbers for a new house in which he proposed to pass his declining
days. The building was erected about 1688. Thomas Whittier enjoyed the
use of it until his death in 1696. Five generations of Whittiers were
harbored beneath its roof, and here the poet was born. Although not a
Quaker himself, Thomas Whittier was a friend of the Friends, and for
taking the part of certain unlicensed exhorters was for a time deprived
of his rights as a freeman.
Whittier was early a reader and soon devoured the contents of his
father’s slender library. So insatiable was his thirst for books that
he would walk miles to borrow a volume of biography or travel. At the
age of fourteen he became fascinated with the poems of Burns, and under
their stimulus began to make rhymes himself.[35] On his first visit to
Boston he bought a copy of Shakespeare. Scott’s novels he borrowed, to
read them delightedly but with a troubled conscience.