HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. ONGFELLOW is a house- pal poems in Portuguese with in 1876, that one of the two things he most The poet was born in Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February, 1807. He was the son of the Hon. Stephen W. Longfellow, by whose care he was well trained from his infancy. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825, and for a time studied law. He was soon, however, appointed to the chair of modern languages in his own college; in order to prepare himself for which, he travelled more than three years in Europe. In 1835 he received and accepted a similar appointment at Harvard, succeeding that accomplished scholar Mr. George Ticknor. Again he travelled extensively, and especially in the North of Europe. On his return he purchased the Craigie House-the old headquarters of Washington at Cambridge-where he resided until his death, and which he has mentioned in his poems in its historical and domestic connections. With no purpose to give a list of Longfellow's works, let us say a word. as to the character and the critical estimate of his poetry. Every true poet at some time issues his view of the poet's functions. In one of his bestknown pieces Longfellow has instructively, and perhaps unconsciously, set forth his poetic canons and forecast his own brilliant career: "God sent his singers upon earth With songs of sadness and of mirth, "The first, a youth with soul of fire, Through groves he wandered and by streams, "The second, with a bearded face, Stood singing in the market-place, "A gray old man, the third and last, "And those who heard the singers three "But the great Master said, "I see I 'These are the three great chords of might, Such is his ideal of the poet's functions, and he is himself the best illustration of their noble employment. As a youth, he touched indeed a golden lyre in groves and by streams, by the light of stars, on Alpine Alpine pinnacles straining toward the voice which cried "Excelsior!" He sang the beautiful psalm of life—“ what the heart of the young man said to the psalmist;" with bated breath he heard the "footsteps of angels,' "when the forms of the departed enter at the open door." Then the music changes. As a bearded man he stirs the listening crowd in the market-place with his tearful story of Evangeline, addressed to all hearts; with his "Building of the Ship," addressed to all patriots; with his Indian song of "Hiawatha." Then as a gray old man, like him who sang in cathedrals dim and vast, he took up the chant of the mystery of Christ; he sang in English accordant with the terza rima of Dante of hell, purgatory and paradise; and at last, on the fiftieth anniversary of the day of his graduation, he sounded for himself and his classmates a farewell to his alma mater in his "Morituri te Salutamus. There was no discord in the changes of his poet-life. He always sang to " charm, to strengthen and to teach," and every ear was intent to catch the harmonious notes. There is no affectation of hidden meanings: he takes the serious, tender thoughts of our common humanity and puts them into the fittest words; so that when in our moods we think them again we speak them in his own language. This may not be in itself the highest poetry, but it is better, as the true singer is more useful and more satisfying than the poet. The simple singer gives counsel, sympathy, consolation, instruction. Instead of being forced into an attitude of intellectual acuteness and resistance, we go out to meet him; we crave and accept. Such is an explanation of the success of Evangeline." It is an American subject; it is a sentimental subject-the exile and wanderings of two lovers of that Acadian band expatriated by the British; it is a pastoral, pleasing by the simple charms of the quaint country-side and country-personages of the French colonists, pure in sentiment, liberal in religion, full of gospel charity. In addition to all this, it presents a curious study in prosody-the use of hexameters, always so doubtful in English and by no means entirely successful in the poet's hands. It may indeed be claimed as the most ambitious of his works, and yet it can hardly be doubted that he owed the suggestion to Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea." And yet what would our literature be without "Evangeline"? Another tour-de-force, so gracefully managed and so strikingly presented that there is nothing disagreeable in the stratagem, is the "Song of Hiawatha," in which we have somewhat of the Indian mythology, not departing much from the authorities, but securing attention from its national and popular interest. The somewhat unusual measure the trochaic tetrameter-seems not illapplied to the utterances of Indian wisdom and pathos. It contains a few descriptions of men and women more grotesque than ideal, too theatrical to be real, and yet with some exquisite touches of that nature which makes the whole world kin. Unlike most poets who make their doubt ful first essays in translation, Longfellow counts among his most finished and effective pieces versions of European poems which do more than justice to the originals. Such is "The Children of the Lord's Supper," from Bishop Tegnér; such his "Into the Silent Land," the "Coplas de Manrique," the "Blind Girl of the Castel Cuillé," by Jasmin, "the last of the troubadours." Everybody knows "a maiden fair to see," but everybody does not "beware!" Of his "Building of the Ship" the enthusiastic popular verdict is heard from a thousand voices as they chant, pression of their thoughts, veil them in figures of speech and forms of rhetoric which require the reader to study before he can understand and enjoy. To use a figure, they pose for purpose; they count upon the effect of a rapt air, a look of inspiration, a wand of mystery. This is to be observed in Byron and in Thomas Moore. Such is often the case with Wordsworth in his forced simplicity; such is eminently true of Browning in his larger poems; of Tennyson in his "Two Voices," "The Talking Oak," and even in those exquisite poems "Enone" and “A Dream of Fair Women." This fault is never Longfellow's; he comes to you at once presenting his clear thought, and thus he reaches the hearts of men as with the salutation of a friend and the hearty grasp of a loving brother. Thus genial, pure, dignified, he uses neither force nor legerdemain. to bring you into his moods; what has affected him acts upon you-now a star-influence, now "the trailing garments of the night" and its solemn voices, and anon the domestic hearth in a thousand homes “when the shadows of the fitful firelight dance upon the parlor wall." It is probably due to this simplicity of expression that so many of his best pieces have been so easily parodied. It is with no feeling of detraction that we can- The genial nature of the poet is everywhere adorned, though never overloaded, with the charms of an extensive scholarship and the skill of a consummate rhetorician, and yet he is always simple and intelligible to all. Unfortunately, much of the apparent mysticism of poetry is found in the fact that many poets, not content with the natural ex Most liberal in his religious views, Longfellow has constantly felt the divine life, and his poetry abounds in a love for the beautiful in the ritual and ceremonial of worship. Like Milton, he enjoys "the dim religious light of storied windows richly dight," the apostles carved in stone at Nuremberg, the great bells which rejoice at weddings and mourn at funerals. He had but little dramatic power. His only drama-The Spanish Student-although it abounds in beauti ful descriptions and effective monologues, wast perhaps never intended for the stage. Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand To lead us with a gentle hand Thither, on the 24th of March, 1882, after a life of purity, peace, benevolence and high imaginings, the poet was led with gentle hand to join in "the seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies," the echoes of which he had caught on earth and discoursed of to his fellow-men. Of his prose-works little need be said. They are, in Outre Mer, Hyperion, autobiographic, and thus far valuable; in Kavanagh, descriptive of New England life. His lectures at Harvard he utilized in preparing his Poets and Poetry of Europe, which presents a sketch of each national literature and language with illustrations by the best translations, many of them from his own pen. The work, while it presents the result of his studies and travels, explains the beautiful facility with which he has touched many of the in course of publication by his publishers, Messrs. Houghlanguages of Europe in his own poetry. HENRY COPPÉE. NOTE. A beautiful serial edition of the poet's works is ton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. THE RED MAN. HERE is in the fate of these unfortunate beings much to awaken our syınpathy and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment, much which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities, much in their characters which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. Everywhere, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone for ever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago the smoke of their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose in every valley from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests, and the hunter's trace and dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down, but they wept not. They would soon be at rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver men never lived, truer men never drew the bow. They had courage and fortitude and sagacity and perseverance beyond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, and they feared no hardships. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villagers and warriors and youth, the sachems and the tribes, the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power-a moral canker which has eaten into their heartcores, a plague which the touch of the white man communicated, a poison which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. I see them leave their miserable homes-the aged, the helpless, the women and the warriors-" few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels for terror or despatch, but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears, they utter no cries, they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both, which chokes all utterance, which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them-no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race. Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in such a fate much that we know not how to interpret, much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep resentments, much of apology for wrong and perfidy, much of pity mingling with indignation, much of doubt and misgiving as to the past, much of painful recollections, much of dark forebodings. JUDGE STORY. |