tion between divergent or opposing views of life and motives of conduct. This seems to be a characteristic attitude: 'The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.' Meditative, dreamy, coy, sincere, gentle, reverent; of refined taste, of tenderest affection in the domestic circle, of rare kindliness in personal intercourse; so shrinking, so exquisite. "There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet. . . . When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted Influence. The drift and weight of his thought and art are on the side of purity, tenderness, and aspiration. He has too little sympathy with action and its responsibilities to be soon, if ever, widely popular. He is too ideal, too reflective, too deficient in excitement, to be relished by readers of the matter-of-fact type, or by such as require stirring incident, glittering brilliance, or whirlwind power. Like the greatest, he has had tardy recognition. To-day his position among men of imagination is commanding. His popularity will extend with the refinement of taste. By his unique vision and its inimitable form, he mounts into the silent blue of the constellations. 1 Fable for Critics. THE LAUREATE OF THE GENTLE. 519 LONGFELLOW. His gracious presence upon earth Was as a fire upon a hearth; As pleasant songs, at morning sung, The words that dropped from his sweet tongue Made all our slumbers soft and light.-Golden Legend. Biography.-Born in Portland, Maine, in 1807; his father, a man of some note in law and in politics, one of the early members of the House of Representatives; graduated from Bowdoin in 1825, in the same class as Hawthorne; was immediately appointed to the chair of Modern Languages and Literature in his alma mater, and, to fit himself more fully for his professorship, spent the next four years in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy; in 1837, having again visited Europe, removed to a similar chair in Harvard University, made vacant by the resignation of his friend Professor Ticknor; continued in the discharge of his official duties until 1854, when he resigned; received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford in 1869, and a complimentary vote for the Lord Rectorship of the University of Edinburgh in 1874. He died in March, 1882, mourned in two hemispheres by the greatest and the least, whose common experience and sentiments he had sung; in talent and fame, a man of steady growth; having had, beyond most, the satisfaction and joy of existence: Type of the wise who soar but never roam, Writings. Living in the heart of the transcendental movement, yet apparently untouched by it, Longfellow wrote his first important work-Hyperion, a romance in poetic prose, vivid and beautiful from the vividness and beauty of the author's own mind; charged with the sentiment and lore of storied and picturesque Europe, enriched, almost every page, with his fondness for color, his passion for music, or fine intimations of the gentle faith in which he lived. Thus: 'When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the tears of regret, the feebleness of purpose, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, the scorn of a world that has little charity, the desolation of the soul's sanctuary, and threatening voices within; health gone, happiness gone; even hope, that stays longest with us, gone,-I have little heart for anything but thankfulness that it is not so with me, and would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands it came.' And still better, though of like tone,-neither optimistic nor pessimistic, simply submissive: "Tell me, my soul, why art thou restless? Why dost thou look forward to the future with such strong desire? The present is thine, and the past; and the future shall be! Oh, that thou didst look forward to the great hereafter with half the longing wherewith thou longest for an earthly future, which a few days, at most, will bring thee!-to the meeting of the dead as to the meeting of the absent! Thou glorious spirit land! Oh, that I could behold thee as thou art, the region of light and life and love, and the dwelling-place of those beloved ones whose being has flowed onward, like a silver-clear stream into the solemn-sounding main, into the ocean of Eternity!' Evangeline, based upon a legend of Acadia; a story of unsuccessful love, in which the heroine, exiled by the fortunes of war, seeks for her lover with pathetic constancy of purpose: 'Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered. Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey; She finds him at last, among the sick, in a plague-stricken city, where she had taken upon herself the duties of nurse: 'Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, Golden Legend, a mediæval tale, in form and design resembling Faust, but without symmetry, and not very intelligible; an ornament, as it were, in which, side by side with inferior substances some gems of the purest lustre are set; for example, the virginal prayer of Elsie: 'My Redeemer and my Lord, I beseech thee, I entreat thee, Watching, waiting, hoping, yearning, With my lamp well-trimmed and burning!' Her reply to her parents when she communicates to them her resolution to offer her life for that of her Prince: 'Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie Beneath the flowers of another land; Far at Salerno, far away Over the mountains, over the sea, It is appointed me to die! And it will seem no more to thee Than if at the village on market-day I should a little longer stay Than I am used.' Perhaps Longfellow's fame rests most securely on Hiawatha, the dirge of a departing race, in strains that sometimes recall the passing of Arthur. Its best episodes are the accounts of the Son of the Evening Star, of the Ghosts and the Famine, of the hero's childhood, his wooing of Minnehaha, with its sorrowful sequel, so beautifully told: The poem, it may be said, sings the parable of human life, its birth, love, death, civilization, and decay. But Longfellow throws himself not more completely into the spirit of aboriginal Western life than into that of Northern Paganism in the Challenge of Thor Thou art a God, too, O Galilean! And thus single-handed Unto the combat, Or the Skeleton in Armor — 'Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea, Longfellow's earliest strains preluded the music of his prime, and his essential qualities, familiar emotion, clear thought, pure aspiration, simple melody, reappear in all his verse; in his longer as in his shorter pieces; in his translations, as in his originals; in the Occultation of Orion, in the Building of the Ship, in Resignation, in Excelsior, in the Psalm of Life. Style. Various but simple, choice, musical, sincere, vitalized with sympathy; clear as crystal, pure as snow; admirable in prose as in poetry. We have seen the quality of the former, but the following passage is remarkably pleasing: The voice within us is more distinctly audible in the stillness of the place; and the gentler affections of our nature spring up more freshly in its tranquillity and sunshinenurtured by the healthy principle which we inhale with the pure air, and invigorated by the genial influences which descend into the heart from the quiet of the sylvan solitude around, and the soft serenity of the sky above.' None studied rhythm more thoroughly. Few have bestowed more pains. He has himself expressed the rule that prevails in all his works: 'In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.' Rank. In extent of popularity, the central figure in American poetry. In respect of airy grace, elegance, melody, pathos, naturalness, he stands unsurpassed, if not unequalled, among the poets of the age. In scholarship, in polite culture, he must be classed among the learned; yet he has not the strong pinion to dive into the abyss of thought or soar into the empyrean of speculation. He does not approach the concentration and intensity of the grand masters, nor their dramatic movement and variety. He is not the bard of passion, as Byron; nor of ideality, as Shelley; nor of high contemplation, as Wordsworth; but of daily life, familiar experience, domestic affection. The form is artistic, the ideas are mediocre. In his verse we see the cheer, the glow, the benevolence, of a sunny and benignant spirit in sympathy with the universal life of men; but where is the insight into the deeper passages of the soul? Magnificent almost never; creative rarely. Cut out Germany, it has been said, and you cut out nearly one half. His version of Dante aside, he has given us forty or fifty translations from the European tongues. As a clear and elegant, though uninspired, translator, he is well-nigh incomparable. Loving humanity is the secret of his magnetism. 'Be kind, be patient, be hopeful,' seems the perpetual refrain of his songs. Hence his impregnable position as the laureate of women, children, and gentle folk,—his the desire and the power'To quiet The restless pulse of care And come like the benediction Character. As a boy, modest, refined, studious, of gentle manners, and personal charm; as an instructor, mild, sympathetic, generous, helpful; as a man, the most urbane of men, capable of uniform courtesy to an endless procession of pilgrims; meditative, interior, the soul of charity and of kindness, a benign lover |