CHAPTER XIV
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS AND SECOND MARRIAGE
It is difficult now to realize what an event in Longfellow’s life was the fact of his writing a series of anti-slavery poems on board ship and publishing them in a thin pamphlet on his return. Parties on the subject were already strongly drawn; the anti-slavery party being itself divided into subdivisions which criticised each other sharply. Longfellow’s temperament was thoroughly gentle and shunned extremes, so that the little thin yellow-covered volume came upon the community with something like a shock. As a matter of fact, various influences had led him up to it. His father had been a subscriber to Benjamin Lundy’s “Genius of Universal Emancipation,” the precursor of Garrison’s “Liberator.” In his youth at Brunswick, Longfellow had thought of writing a drama on the subject of “Toussaint l’Ouverture,” his reason for it being thus given, “that thus I may do something in my humble way for the great cause of negro emancipation.”
Margaret Fuller, who could by no means be 164 called an abolitionist, described the volume as “the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow’s thin books; spirited and polished like its forerunners; but the subject would warrant a deeper tone.” On the other hand, the editors of “Graham’s Magazine” wrote to Mr. Longfellow that “the word slavery was never allowed to appear in a Philadelphia periodical,” and that “the publisher objected to have even the name of the book appear in his pages.” His friend Samuel Ward, always an agreeable man of the world, wrote from New York of the poems, “They excite a good deal of attention and sell rapidly. I have sent one copy to the South and others shall follow,” and includes Longfellow among “you abolitionists.” The effect of the poems was unquestionably to throw him on the right side of the great moral contest then rising to its climax, while he incurred, like his great compeers, Channing, Emerson, and Sumner, some criticism from the pioneers. Such differences are inevitable among reformers, whose internal contests are apt to be more strenuous and formidable than those incurred between opponents; and recall to mind that remark of Cosmo de Medici which Lord Bacon called “a desperate saying;” namely, that “Holy Writ bids us to forgive our enemies, but it is nowhere enjoined upon us that we should forgive our friends.”
165To George Lunt, a poet whose rhymes Longfellow admired, but who bitterly opposed the anti-slavery movement, he writes his programme as follows:—
“I am sorry you find so much to gainsay in my Poems on Slavery. I shall not argue the point with you, however, but will simply state to you my belief.
“1. I believe slavery to be an unrighteous institution, based on the false maxim that Might makes Right.
“2. I have great faith in doing what is righteous, and fear no evil consequences.
“3. I believe that every one has a perfect right to express his opinion on the subject of Slavery, as on every other thing; that every one ought so to do, until the public opinion of all Christendom shall penetrate into and change the hearts of the Southerners on this subject.
“4. I would have no other interference than what is sanctioned by law.
“5. I believe that where there is a will there is a way. When the whole country sincerely wishes to get rid of Slavery, it will readily find the means.
“6. Let us, therefore, do all we can to bring about this will, in all gentleness and Christian charity.
“And God speed the time!”[61]
166Mr. Longfellow was, I think, not quite justly treated by the critics, or even by his latest biographer, Professor Carpenter,[62] for consenting to the omission of the anti-slavery poems from his works, published by Carey and Hart in Philadelphia in November, 1845. This was an illustrated edition which had been for some time in preparation and did not apparently, like the nearly simultaneous edition of Harper, assume to contain his complete works. The Harper edition was published in February, 1846, in cheaper form and double columns, and was the really collective edition, containing the anti-slavery poems and all. As we do not know the circumstances of the case, it cannot positively be asserted why this variation occurred, but inasmuch as the Harpers were at that period, and for many years after, thoroughly conservative on the slavery question and extremely opposed to referring to it in any way, it is pretty certain that it must have been because of the positive demand of Longfellow that these poems were included by them. The criticism of the abolitionists on him was undoubtedly strengthened by the apostrophe to the Union at the close of his poem, “The Building of the Ship,” in 1850, a passage which was described by William Lloyd Garrison in the “Liberator” as “a eulogy dripping with the 167 blood of imbruted humanity,”[63] and was quite as severely viewed by one of the most zealous of the Irish abolitionists, who thus wrote to their friends in Boston:—
Dublin [Ireland], April 28, 1850.[After speaking about Miss Weston’s displeasure with Whittier and her being unfair to him, etc., the letter adds—]
Is it not a poor thing for Longfellow that he is no abolitionist—that his anti-slavery poetry is perfect dish water beside Whittier’s—and that he has just penned a Pæan on the Union? I can no more comprehend what there is in the Union to make the Yankee nation adore it—than you can understand the attractions of Royalty & Aristocracy which thousands of very good people in England look on as the source & mainstay of all that is great and good in the nation....
Rich D. Webb.[64]
Yet Mr. Whittier himself, though thus contrasted with Longfellow, had written thanking him for his “Poems on Slavery,” which in tract form, he said, “had been of important service to the Liberty movement.” Whittier had also asked whether Longfellow would accept a nomination 168 to Congress from the Liberty Party, and had added, “Our friends think they could throw for thee one thousand more votes than for any other man.”[65] Nor was Whittier himself ever a disunionist, even on anti-slavery grounds.
It is interesting to note that it was apparently the anti-slavery question which laid the foundation for the intimacy between Longfellow and Lowell. Lowell had been invited, on the publication of “A Year’s Life,” to write for an annual which was to appear in Boston and to be edited, in Lowell’s own phrase, “by Longfellow, Felton, Hillard and that set.”[66] Lowell subsequently wrote in the “Pioneer” kindly notices of Longfellow’s “Poems on Slavery,” but there is no immediate evidence of any personal relations between them at that time. In a letter to Poe, dated at Elmwood June 27, 1844, Lowell says of a recent article in the “Foreign Quarterly Review” attributed to John Forster, “Forster is a friend of some of the Longfellow clique here, which perhaps accounts for his putting L. at the top of our Parnassus. These kinds of arrangements do very well, however, for the present.”[67]... It will be noticed that what Lowell had originally called a “set” has now become a “clique.” 169 It is also evident that lie did not regard Longfellow as the assured head of the American Parnassus, and at any rate he suggests some possible rearrangement for the future. Their real friendship seems to have begun with a visit by Longfellow to Lowell’s study on October 29, 1846, when the conversation turned chiefly on the slavery question. Longfellow called to see him again on the publication of his second volume of poems, at the end of the following year, and Lowell spent an evening with Longfellow during March, 1848, while engaged on “The Fable for Critics,” in which the younger poet praised the elder so warmly.
Longfellow’s own state of mind at this period is well summed up in the following letter to his wife’s younger sister, Mrs. Peter Thacher, then recently a mother.
Cambridge, Feb. 15, 1843.My dear Margaret,—I was very much gratified by your brief epistle, which reached me night before last, and brought me the assurances of your kind remembrance. Believe me, I have often thought of you and your husband; and have felt that your new home, though remote from many of your earlier friends, was nevertheless to you the centre of a world of happiness. With your affection, and your “young Astyanax,” 170 the “yellow house” becomes a golden palace.
For my part, Life seems to be to me “a battle and a march.” I am sometimes well,—sometimes ill, and always restless. My late expedition to Germany did me a vast deal of good; and my health is better than it has been for years. So long as I keep out of doors and take exercise enough, I feel perfectly well. So soon as I shut myself up and begin to study, I feel perfectly ill. Thus the Sphinx’s riddle—the secret of health—is discovered. In Germany I led an out-of-door life; bathing and walking from morning till night. I was at Boppard on the Rhine, in the old convent of Marienberg, now a Bathing establishment. I travelled a little in Germany; then passed through Belgium to England. In London I staid with Dickens; and had a very pleasant visit. His wife is a gentle, lovely character; and he has four children, all beautiful and good. I saw likewise the raven, who is stuffed in the entry—and his successor, who stalks gravely in the garden.
I am very sorry, my dear Margaret, that I cannot grant your request in regard to Mary’s Journal. Just before I sailed for Europe, being in low spirits, and reflecting on the uncertainties of such an expedition as I was then beginning, I burned a great many letters and private papers, 171 and among them this. I now regret it; but alas! too late.
Ah! my dear Margaret! though somewhat wayward and restless, I most affectionately cherish the memory of my wife. You know how happily we lived together; and I know that never again shall I be loved with such devotion, sincerity, and utter forgetfulness of self. Make her your model, and you will make your husband ever happy; and be to him as a household lamp irradiating his darkest hours.
Give my best regards to him. I should like very much to visit you; but know not how I can bring it about. Kiss “young Astyanax” for me, and believe me ever affectionately your brother
Henry W. Longfellow.
Meanwhile a vast change in his life was approaching. He had met, seven years before in Switzerland, a maiden of nineteen, Frances Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of Nathan Appleton, a Boston merchant; and though his early sketch of her in “Hyperion” may have implied little on either side, it was fulfilled at any rate, after these years of acquaintance, by her consenting; to become his wife, an event which took place on the 13th of July, 1843, and was thus announced by him in a letter to Miss Eliza 172 A. Potter of Portland, his first wife’s elder sister.
173Cambridge, May 25, 1843.My dear Eliza,—I have been meaning for a week or more to write you in order to tell you of my engagement, and to ask your sympathies and good wishes. But I have been so much occupied, and have had so many letters to write, to go by the last steamers, that I have been rather neglectful of some of my nearer and dearer friends; trusting to their kindness for my excuse.
Yes, my dear Eliza, I am to be married again. My life was too lonely and restless;—I needed the soothing influences of a home;—and I have chosen a person for my wife who possesses in a high degree those virtues and excellent traits of character, which so distinguished my dear Mary. Think not, that in this new engagement, I do any wrong to her memory. I still retain, and ever shall preserve with sacred care all my cherished recollections of her truth, affection and beautiful nature. And I feel, that could she speak to me, she would approve of what I am doing. I hope also for your approval and for your father’s.... Think of me ever as
Very truly your friendHenry W. Longfellow.[68]
The lady thus described was one who lives in the memory of all who knew her, were it only by her distinguished appearance and bearing, her “deep, unutterable eyes,” in Longfellow’s own phrase, and her quiet, self-controlled face illumined by a radiant smile. She was never better described, perhaps, than by the Hungarian, Madame Pulszky, who visited America with Kossuth, and who wrote of her as “a lady of Junonian beauty and of the kindest heart.”[69] Promptly and almost insensibly she identified herself with all her husband’s work, a thing rendered peculiarly valuable from the fact that his eyes had become overstrained, so that he welcomed an amanuensis. Sometimes she suggested subjects for poems, this being at least the case with “The Arsenal at Springfield,” first proposed by her within the very walls of the building, a spot whose moral was doubtless enhanced by the companionship of Charles Sumner, just then the especial prophet of international peace. She also aided him effectually in his next book, “The Poets and Poetry of Europe,” in which his friend Felton also coöperated, he preparing the biographical notices while Longfellow made the selections and also some of the translations.
I add this letter from his betrothed, which 174 strikes the reader as singularly winning and womanly. This also is addressed to the elder sister of the first Mrs. Longfellow.
Boston, June 5, 1843.Dear Miss Potter,—Accept my warmest thanks for the very kind manner in which you have expressed an interest in our happiness. It is all the more welcome in coming from a stranger upon whom I have no past claim to kindle a kindly regard, and touches my heart deeply. Among the many blessings which the new world I have entered reveals to me, a new heritage of friends is a choice one. Those most dear to Henry, most closely linked with his early associations, I am, naturally, most anxious to know and love,—and I trust an opportunity will bring us together before long.
But I should feel no little timidity in being known to you and his family; a dread that loving him as you do I might not fulfil all the exactions of your hearts; were not such fears relieved by the generous determination you have shown to approve his choice,—upon faith in him. To one who has known him so long and so well, I need not attempt to speak of my happiness in possessing such a heart,—nor of my infinite gratitude to the Giver of every good gift for bestowing upon me the power of rendering 175 him once more happy in the hope of a home,—so sacred and dear to his loving nature by blessed memories to which I fervently pray to be found worthy to succeed.
Receive again my thanks for your kind sympathy, with the assurance of my warm regards,—which I trust will not always be imprisoned in words, and with kindest remembrances to my other Portland friends,
I remain sincerely and gratefully yrs
Fanny E. Appleton.Henry sends his most affectionate regards and hopes, tho’ faintly, to be soon able to visit his home, and talk over his future with you all.[70]
It is pleasant to record in connection with this sweet and high-minded letter, that a copy of “Hyperion” itself lies before me which is inscribed on the first page in pencil to “Miss Eliza A. Potter, from her affectionate friend and brother, the Author.” That he preserved through life a warm friendliness toward all the kindred of his first wife is quite certain.
CHAPTER XV
ACADEMIC LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE
There exists abundant evidence, to which the present writer can add personal testimony, in regard to Longfellow’s success as an organizer of his immediate department of Harvard University and in dealing with his especial classes. He was assigned, for some reason, a room in University Hall which was also employed for faculty meetings, and was therefore a little less dreary than the ordinary class-room of those days. It seemed most appropriate that an instructor of Longfellow’s well-bred aspect and ever-courteous manners should simply sit at the head of the table with his scholars, as if they were guests, instead of putting between him and them the restrictive demarcation of a teacher’s desk. We read with him, I remember, first the little book he edited, “Proverbes Dramatiques,” and afterwards something of Racine and Molière, in which his faculty of finding equivalent phrases was an admirable example for us. When afterwards, during an abortive rebellion in the college yard, the students who had refused to 177 listen to others yielded to the demand of their ringleader, “Let us hear Professor Longfellow; he always treats us like gentlemen,” the youthful rebel unconsciously recognized a step forward in academical discipline. Longfellow did not cultivate us much personally, or ask us to his house, but he remembered us and acknowledged our salutations. He was, I think, the first Harvard instructor who addressed the individual student with the prefix “Mr.” I recall the clearness of his questions, the simplicity of his explanations, the well-bred and skilful propriety with which he led us past certain indiscreet phrases in our French authors, as for instance in Balzac’s “Peau de Chagrin.” Most of all comes back to memory the sense of triumph with which we saw the proof-sheets of “Voices of the Night” brought in by the printer’s devil and laid at his elbow. We felt that we also had lived in literary society, little dreaming, in our youthful innocence, how large a part of such society would prove far below the standard of courtesy that prevailed in Professor Longfellow’s recitation room.
Yet the work of this room was, in those days of dawning changes, but a small part of the function of a professor. Longfellow was, both by inclination and circumstances, committed to the reform initiated by his predecessor, George 178 Ticknor. He had inherited from this predecessor a sort of pioneership in position relative to the elective system just on trial as an experiment in college. There exists an impression in some quarters that this system came in for the first time under President Walker about 1853; but it had been, as a matter of fact, tried much earlier,—twenty years, at least,—in the Modern Language Department under Ticknor, and had been extended much more widely in 1839 under President Quincy. The facts are well known to me, as I was in college at that period and enjoyed the beneficent effects of the change, since it placed the whole college, in some degree, for a time at least, on a university basis. The change took the form, first, of a discontinuance of mathematics as a required study after the first year, and then the wider application of the elective system in history, natural history, and the classics, this greater liberty being enjoyed, though with some reaction, under President Everett, and practically abolished about 1849 under President Sparks, when what may be called the High School system was temporarily restored. An illustration of this reactionary tendency may be found in a letter addressed by Longfellow to the President and Fellows, placing him distinctly on the side of freedom of choice. The circumstances are these: Students had for some time been 179 permitted to take more than one modern language among the electives, and I myself, before receiving my degree of A. B. in 1841, had studied two such languages simultaneously for three years of college course. It appears, however, from the following letter, that this privilege had already been reduced to one such language, and that Longfellow was at once found remonstrating against it, though at first ineffectually.
Cambridge, June 24, 1845.Gentlemen,—In arranging the studies for the next year, the Faculty have voted, as will be seen from the enclosed Tabular view, that “no student will be allowed to take more than one Modern Language at a time, except for special reasons assigned, & by express vote of the Faculty.”
You will see that this is the only Department upon which any bar or prohibition is laid. And when the decision was made, the Latin & Greek Departments were allowed two votes each, & the Department of Modern Languages but one vote.
As I foresaw at the time, this arrangement has proved very disadvantageous to the Department, & has reduced the number of pupils, at once, more than one half. During this year the whole number of students in the Department 180 has been 224. The applications for the next term do not amount to 100; nor, when all have been received, can it reach 110. I therefore, Gentlemen, appeal to you, for your interference in this matter, requesting that the restriction may be removed, & this Department put upon the footing of the others in this particular. Otherwise, I fear that as at present organized, it cannot exist another year.
I have the honor to be,
Gentlemen, your ob’dt. servantHenry W. Longfellow.[71][Addressed externally to the President and Fellows of Harvard College.]
[REPORT OF COMMITTEE.]Corporation of Harvard College, July 26, 1845.
The Committee to whom was referred the Memorial of Professor Longfellow on the subject of the arrangement of the studies of the undergraduates by the faculty of the College, & desiring that the restriction as to the number of modern languages that may be studied at once should be removed, have attended to the subject, & ask leave to report, that they have, in common with the other members of the Corporation already considered the general subject of the 181 arrangement of the studies of the undergraduates, with especial reference to the recommendations of the board of overseers; & that they were convinced by the examination of the details they made at that time that the business of ordering the times & the amount of study & recitation for the young men at Cambridge is not only a very complicated & difficult affair, but one which is in the hands of those best qualified, & considering all their relations, most truly interested to lead the students to give as much labor as is safe for them to the studies suitable to College years, & to distribute it in such manner as shall be most just & effective. The committee would not feel themselves authorized to change one part of a system, all the parts of which are intricately dependent upon each other, without they felt a confidence they do not possess that they could recommend one which should work better as a whole. They therefore must decline, so far as depends upon them, adopting a measure the ulterior effects of which they may not foresee with accuracy, & they express the belief that it will be well to allow the present arrangement to continue for a time, even at the risk, apprehended by Profr. Longfellow, of its producing an injurious effect upon his department. They cannot but hope, however, that the evils he fears may be avoided, or 182 if not, that they may be compensated by equivalent advantages.
Saml. A. Eliot
J. A. Lowell} Committee[72]
A year later than the above correspondence, the subject was evidently revived on the part of the governing powers of the College, and we find the following letter from Professor Longfellow:—
184Cambridge, Sept. 25, 1846.Dear Sir,—In answer to your favor of the 18th inst. requesting my opinion on certain points connected with the Studies of the University, I beg leave to state;
I. In regard to the “advantages and disadvantages of the Elective System.” In my own department I have always been strongly in favor of this system. I have always thought that the modern languages should be among the voluntary or elective studies and form no part of the required Academic course. As to the Latin and Greek I have many doubts; but incline rather to the old system, particularly if the fifth class can be added to the present course; for we could then secure the advantages of both systems.
II. The class examinations in my department are very slight and unsatisfactory. They serve however as a kind of Annual Report of 183 what has been done in the department; and as there is nothing depending upon them, it does not seem to me a matter of very urgent necessity to have them rendered more thorough.
III. “The Fifth class or New Department in the University” seems to me of the greatest importance, as it would enable us to carry forward the studies of each department much farther than at present, by means of Lectures, for which there is now hardly sufficient opportunity. Last year there were fifteen Resident Graduates. Why should not these have formed the Fifth Class?
IV. In regard to the “practical working of any other of the changes made in our system during the last twenty years,” I can hardly claim any distinct views. Many, perhaps most of them were made before I came to the University; so that I hardly know what is old and what is new.
I have made but a brief statement in answer to your enquiries, partly because writing is a painful process with me, and partly because many things here touched upon can be more clearly explained vive voce than with the pen.
I remain, with great regard
Faithfully YoursHenry W. Longfellow.[73]
It is a curious fact that more than half a century later, at a meeting of the American Modern Language Association, held at the very institution where this correspondence took place, it was President Charles William Eliot, son of the author of the letter just quoted, who recognized the immense advance made in this particular department as one of the most important steps in the progress of the University. His remarks were thus reported in the Boston “Herald” of December 27, 1901:—
“When the meeting opened yesterday afternoon President Eliot was present and graciously said a few words of welcome. He said that he knew of no body of modern learned men whom he would be so glad to welcome as the professors of language.
“‘Here at Harvard,’ he said, ‘we have been pressing forward for many years toward the same object you have in view. I congratulate you upon the great progress made in the last thirty years. One of the most striking features of American education has been the rapid development of the study of languages. It has been more rapid at some of the other colleges than at Harvard. They started at nothing a shorter time ago. [Laughter.]
“‘You are to be congratulated upon the cohesion which exists among learned men in 185 dealing with this important subject. The study of modern languages is beginning to connect itself with the life of the nation. It now bears a real connection to national life and interest. No great subject in educational thought ever obtained a firm hold that had not some modern connection with the day. I do not overlook the literary element in the study of modern languages, but you will have a stronger hold for the next twenty years than you have in the past, owing to this use of modern languages in daily life, incident to the industrial and commercial activity of the country.’”
It is always to be borne in mind that Longfellow’s self-restrained and well-ordered temperament habitually checked him in the career of innovator. Both in public and private matters, it was his way to state his point of view and then await results. It is clear that his mental habit, his foreign experience, and the traditions of his immediate department predisposed him to favor the elective system in university training. This system, after temporary trial and abandonment, was now being brought forward once more and was destined this time to prevail. Towards this success, the prosperity of the Modern Language Department formed a perpetual argument, because it was there that the reform was first introduced. The records of the Faculty at that 186 period give very little information as to the attitude of individual professors, and Longfellow may be viewed as having been for the most part a silent reformer. One finds, however, constant evidence in his diaries of the fact that his duties wore upon him. “I get very tired of the routine of this life.” “This college work is like a great hand laid on all the strings of my lyre, stopping their vibrations.” “How the days resemble each other and how sad it is to me that I cannot give them all to my poem.” “I have fallen into a very unpoetic mood and cannot write.” It must be remembered that his eyes were at this time very weak, that he suffered extremely from neuralgia, and that these entries were all made during the great fugitive slave excitement which agitated New England, and the political overturn in Massachusetts which culminated in the election of the poet’s most intimate friend, Sumner, to the United States Senate. He records the occurrence of his forty-fourth birthday, and soon after when he is stereotyping the “Golden Legend” he says: “I still work a good deal upon it,” but also writes, only two days after, “Working hard with college classes to have them ready for their examinations.” A fortnight later he says: “Examination in my department; always to me a day of anguish and exhaustion.” His correspondence is very 187 large; visitors and dinner parties constantly increase. His mother dies suddenly, and he sits all night alone by her dead body; a sense of peace comes over him, as if there had been no shock or jar in nature, but a “harmonious close to a long life.” Later he gets tired of summer rest at Nahant, which he calls “building up life with solid blocks of idleness;” but when two days later he goes back to Cambridge to resume his duties, he records: “I felt my neck bow and the pressure of the yoke.” Soon after he says: “I find no time to write. I find more and more the little things of life shut out the great. Innumerable interruptions—letters of application for this and for that; endless importunities of foreigners for help here and help there—fret the day and consume it.” He often records having half a dozen men to dine with him; he goes to the theatre, to lectures, concerts, and balls, has no repose, and perhaps, as we have seen at Nahant, would not really enjoy it. It was under these conditions, however, that the “Golden Legend” came into the world in November, 1851; and it was not until September 12, 1854, that its author was finally separated from the University. He was before that date happily at work on “Hiawatha.”
CHAPTER XVI
LITERARY LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE
Let us now return from the history of Longfellow’s academic life to his normal pursuit, literature. It seemed a curious transition from the real and genuine sympathy for human wrong, as shown in the “Poems on Slavery,” to the purely literary and historic quality of the “Spanish Student” (1843), a play never quite dramatic enough to be put on the stage, at least in English, though a German version was performed at the Ducal Court Theatre in Dessau, January 28, 1855. As literary work it was certainly well done; though taken in part from the tale of Cervantes “La Gitanilla,” and handled before by Montalvan and by Solis in Spanish, and by Middleton in English, it yet was essentially Longfellow’s own in treatment, though perhaps rather marred by taking inappropriately the motto from Robert Burns. He wrote of it to Samuel Ward in New York, December, 1840, calling it “something still longer which as yet no eye but mine has seen and which I wish to read to you first.” He then adds, “At present, 189 my dear friend, my soul is wrapped up in poetry. The scales fell from my eyes suddenly, and I beheld before me a beautiful landscape, with figures, which I have transferred to paper almost without an effort, and with a celerity of which I did not think myself capable. Since my return from Portland I am almost afraid to look at it, for fear its colors should have faded out. And this is the reason why I do not describe the work to you more particularly. I am not sure it is worth it. You shall yourself see and judge before long.” He thus afterwards describes it to his father: “I have also written a much longer and more difficult poem, called ‘The Spanish Student,’—a drama in five acts; on the success of which I rely with some self-complacency. But this is a great secret, and must not go beyond the immediate family circle; as I do not intend to publish it until the glow of composition has passed away, and I can look upon it coolly and critically. I will tell you more of this by and by.”
Longfellow’s work on “The Poets and Poetry of Europe” appeared in 1845, and was afterwards reprinted with a supplement in 1871. The original work included 776 pages,[74] the supplement adding 340 more. The supplement is 190 in some respects better edited than the original, because it gives the names of the translators, and because he had some better translators to draw upon, especially Rossetti. It can be said fairly of the whole book that it is intrinsically one of the most attractive of a very unattractive class, a book of which the compiler justly says that, in order to render the literary history of the various countries complete, “an author of no great note has sometimes been admitted, or a poem which a severer taste would have excluded.” “The work is to be regarded,” he adds, “as a collection, rather than as a selection, and in judging any author it must be borne in mind the translations do not always preserve the rhythm and melody of the original, but often resemble soldiers moving forward when the music has ceased and the time is marked only by the tap of the drum.” It includes, in all, only ten languages, the Celtic and Slavonic being excluded, as well as the Turkish and Romaic, a thing which would now seem strange. But the editor’s frank explanation of the fact, where he says “with these I am not acquainted,” disarms criticism. This explanation implies that he was personally acquainted with the six Gothic languages of Northern Europe—Anglo-Saxon, Icelandish, Danish, Swedish, German, and Dutch—and the four Latin languages of the South of Europe—French, 191 Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The mere work of compiling so large a volume in double columns of these ten languages was something formidable, and he had reason to be grateful to his friend Professor Felton, who, being a German student, as well as a Greek scholar, compiled for him all the biographical notes in the book. It is needless to say that the selection is as good as the case permitted or as the plan of the book allowed, and the volume has always maintained its place of importance in libraries. Many of the translations were made expressly for it, especially in the supplement; among these being Platen’s “Remorse,” Reboul’s “The Angel and Child,” and Malherbe’s “Consolation.” It is to be remembered that Longfellow’s standard of translation was very high and that he always maintained, according to Mrs. Fields, that Americans, French, and Germans had a greater natural gift for it than the English on account of the greater insularity of the latter’s natures.[75] It is also to be noted that he sometimes failed to find material for translation where others found it, as, for instance, amid the endless beauty of the Greek Anthology, which he called “the most melancholy of books with an odor of dead garlands about it. Voices from the grave, cymbals of Bacchantes, songs of love, sighs, groans, 192 prayers,—all mingled together. I never read a book that made me sadder.”[76]
His fame at this time was widely established, yet a curious indication of the fact that he did not at once take even Cambridge by storm, as a poet, is in a letter from Professor Andrews Norton, father of the present Professor Charles E. Norton, to the Rev. W. H. Furness of Philadelphia. The latter had apparently applied to Mr. Norton for advice as to a desirable list of American authors from whom to make some literary selections, perhaps in connection with an annual then edited by him and called “The Diadem.” Professor Norton, as one of the most cultivated Americans, might naturally be asked for some such counsel. In replying he sent Mr. Furness, under date of January 7, 1845, a list of fifty-four eligible authors, among whom Emerson stood last but one, while Longfellow was not included at all. He then appended a supplementary list of twenty-four minor authors, headed by Longfellow.[77] We have already seen Lowell, from a younger point of view, describing Longfellow, at about this time, as the head of a “clique,” and we now find Andrews Norton, from an older point of view, assigning him only the first place among authors of the second grade. It is curious 193 to notice, in addition, that Hawthorne stood next to Longfellow in this subordinate roll.
Longfellow published two volumes of poetic selections, “The Waif” (1845) and “The Estray” (1846), the latter title being originally planned as “Estrays in the Forest,” and he records a visit to the college library, in apparent search for the origin of the phrase. His next volume of original poems, however, was “The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems,” published December 23, 1845, the contents having already been partly printed in “Graham’s Magazine,” and most of them in the illustrated edition of his poems published in Philadelphia. The theme of the volume appears to have been partly suggested by some words in a letter to Freiligrath which seem to make the leading poem, together with that called “Nuremberg,” a portion of that projected series of travel-sketches which had haunted Longfellow ever since “Outre-Mer.” “The Norman Baron” was the result of a passage from Thierry, sent him by an unknown correspondent. One poem was suggested by a passage in Andersen’s “Story of my Life,” and one was written at Boppard on the Rhine. All the rest were distinctly American in character or origin. Another poem, “To the Driving Cloud,” the chief of the Omaha Indians, was his first effort at hexameters and prepared the way 194 for “Evangeline.” His translation of the “Children of the Lord’s Supper” had also served by way of preparation; and he had happened upon a specimen in “Blackwood’s Magazine” of the hexameter translation of the “Iliad” which had impressed him very much. He even tried a passage of “Evangeline” rendered into English pentameter verse, and thus satisfied himself that it was far less effective for his purpose than the measure finally adopted.
There is no doubt that the reading public at large has confirmed the opinion of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes when he says, “Of the longer poems of our chief singer, I should not hesitate to select ‘Evangeline’ as the masterpiece, and I think the general verdict of opinion would confirm my choice.... From the first line of the poem, from its first words, we read as we would float down a broad and placid river, murmuring softly against its banks, heaven over it, and the glory of the unspoiled wilderness all around.” The words “This is the forest primeval” have become as familiar, he thinks, as the “Arma virumque cano” which opened Virgil’s “Æneid,” and he elsewhere calls the poem “the tranquil current of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines.” The subject was first suggested to Longfellow by Hawthorne, who had heard it from his friend, the Rev. H. L. Conolly, and the 195 outline of it will be found in “The American Note-Books” of Hawthorne, who disappointed Father Conolly by not using it himself. It was finished on Longfellow’s fortieth birthday.
It was a striking illustration of the wide popularity of “Evangeline,” that even the proper names introduced under guidance of his rhythmical ear spread to other countries and were taken up and preserved as treasures in themselves. Sumner writes from England to Longfellow that the Hon. Mrs. Norton, herself well known in literature, had read “Evangeline,” not once only, but twenty times, and the scene on Lake Atchafalaya, where the two lovers pass each other unknowingly, so impressed her that she had a seal cut with the name upon it. Not long after this, Leopold, King of the Belgiums, repeated the same word to her and said that it was so suggestive of scenes in human life that he was about to have it cut on a seal, when she astonished him by showing him hers.
The best review of “Evangeline” ever written was probably the analysis made of it by that accomplished French traveller of half a century ago, Professor Philarète Chasles of the Collège de France, in his “Etudes sur la Littérature et les Mœurs des Anglo-Américains du XIX. Siécle,” published in 1851. It is interesting to read it, and to recognize anew what has often 196 been made manifest—the greater acuteness of the French mind than of the English, when discussing American themes. Writing at that early period, M. Chasles at once recognized, for instance, the peculiar quality of Emerson’s genius. He describes Longfellow, in comparison, as what he calls a moonlight poet, having little passion, but a calmness of attitude which approaches majesty, and moreover a deep sensibility, making itself felt under a subdued rhythm. In short, his is a slow melody and a reflective emotion, both these being well suited to the sounds and shadows of our endless plains and our forests, which have no history. He is especially struck with the resemblance of the American poet to the Scandinavians, such as Tegnèr and Oehlenschlaeger. He notices even in Longfellow the Norse tendency to alliteration, and he quotes one of the Northern poems and then one of Longfellow’s to show this analogy. It is worth while to put these side by side. This is from Oehlenschlaeger:—