HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. ONGFELLOW is a house- ! hold name in England as well as in America; in translation he is read in almost every civilized language of Europe. Dom Pedro II., the enlightened and philanthropic exemperor of Brazil, made versions of his principal poems in Portuguese with his own hand, and said, on his visit to the United States, in 1876, that one of the two things he most desired to see was Longfellow. 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. 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 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 " charin, 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. 66 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"? 66 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 | pression of their thoughts, veil them in figcounts among his most finished and effectures of speech and forms of rhetoric which ive pieces versions of European poems which require the reader to study before he can undo more than justice to the originals. Such derstand and enjoy. To use a figure, they is "The Children of the Lord's Supper," pose for purpose; they count upon the effect from Bishop Tegnér; such his "Into the Si- of a rapt air, a look of inspiration, a wand lent Land," the "Coplas de Manrique," the of mystery. This is to be observed in By"Blind Girl of the Castel Cuillé," by Jasmin, ron and in Thomas Moore. Such is often the "the last of the troubadours." Everybody Everybody case with Wordsworth in his forced simpliciknows "a maiden fair to see," but every- ty; such is eminently true of Browning in body does not beware!" Of his "Build- his larger poems; of Tennyson in his "Two ing of the Ship" the enthusiastic popular Voices," "The Talking Oak," and even in verdict is heard from a thousand voices as those exquisite poems poems "Enone" and "A they chant, 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. "Thou too sail on, O Ship of State! It is with no feeling of detraction that we cannot fail to observe how it must have been suggested by the poem of Schiller, "Das Lied von der Glocke "("The Song of the Bell"). As the bell is founded the ship is built; the fortunes of multitudes are figured in both; and, while upon the bell "Concordia" is inscribed, the name of the good ship, built of “cedar of Maine and Georgia pine," is "The Union.' With these features the resemblance ceases the handling is his own and the diction simply perfect. Most liberal in his religious views, Longfellow has constantly felt the divine life, and his poetry abounds in a love for the beautiThe genial nature of the poet is every- ful in the ritual and ceremonial of worship. where adorned, though never overloaded, Like Milton, he enjoys "the dim religious with the charms of an extensive scholarship light of storied windows richly dight," the and the skill of a consummate rhetorician, and apostles carved in stone at Nuremberg, the yet he is always simple and intelligible to all. great bells which rejoice at weddings and Unfortunately, much of the apparent mys- mourn at funerals. He had but little draticism of poetry is found in the fact that matic power. His only drama-The Spanmany poets, not content with the natural ex-ish Student-although it abounds in beauti ful descriptions and effective monologues, was 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. After a life of singular completeness and of an ideal happiness-checkered, indeed, with a few great sorrows-Longfellow waited for the gentle clasp which should lead him into the silent land of which he had in low sung and tender notes which have at once saddened and strengthened those whose loved ones have gone before and will stand at its portal to beckon us all in God's good time: "Into the silent land! Ah! who shall lead us thither? Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather, Thither-oh, thither, Into the silent land? "Into the silent land To you, ye boundless regions Of all perfection, tender morning visions Of beauteous souls, the future's pledge and band! Who in life's battle firm doth stand Shall bear Hope's tender blossoms Into the silent land. "O land! O land! For all the broken-hearted The mildest herald by our fate allotted HENRY COPPÉE. NOTE. A beautiful serial edition of the poet's works is ton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. THE THE RED MAN. HERE is in the fate of these unfortunate beings much to awaken our sympathy 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 |