Part 13

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.

In _Voices of the Night_, his earliest volume of verse, the 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!