his bookshop a social centre long before the social centre had been capitalized and turned into an institution. "Everybody" came to the store during business hours, and later in the day, in the back room, the men came together in the spirit of a literary club, though without organization or name. Russell's Magazine was just as natural a consequence of these meetings and the talk that took place in them, as was The Atlantic of similar meetings in Boston at exactly the same time, or as had been The Dial sixteen years earlier. With its founding, young Hayne was made editor. It was in work of this literary journalism that Hayne's talents should have been allowed to exercise themselves. He was a man certainly of no greater calibre than Aldrich and Howells and Gilder and Stoddard-all men of nice discrimination, poetic gifts and the consequent critical powers that are more often needed than secured in editorial offices. The reason that they all carried their editorships with such distinction was that each of them was in a way just a little too good for that sort of drudgery. Yet they were not much too good, for the highest creative abilities simply will not be chained to a desk. Furthermore, each of these other men continued to write, as well as to market other people's writings, and each of them grew steadily in power. But a career like theirs was denied to Hayne by the fact that Charleston was in the path of the war. Russell's was discontinued in 1860 never to be revived, and Hayne was forced into the most precarious of existences-that of writing for a living. The result was unfortunate not only to his purse but to his productive powers as well. He had to force himself, and he wrote, in consequence, the sort of poetry that must be the result of industry and good-will. Much of it was in the form of occasional poetry, with the result that the public fell into the habit of looking to him for the ready delivery of a few appropriate verses on demand, and that, worse still, he came to regard all sorts of events as necessary subject-matter for poetical treatment. Thus he wrote for ceremonies all the way from the Carolina Art Association Anniversary in 1856 to the International Cotton Exposition twenty-five years later. He got into the way of doing the conventional 19th century thing, regardless of any connection with his own experience or even observation: dramatic sketches located in Westmoreland, Savoy, Candia; legends of Greece, Sicily, Brittany, India, Australia, "The Coast of Astolf," Paradise, which were all equally legendary to him; and always, betweentimes, sonnets and yet more sonnets. Had Russell's survived, or could some other magazine have demanded him after the war, the blue pencil would have usurped most of his time, and might have made him more self-critical when he took up the pen. The work of Hayne's that counts for most is contained in the poems which touched the universal through the simple and unpretentious treatment of native themes. Some of his war lyrics are effective, though not up to the best of Timrod's. Some of his post-bellum protests are as vigorous as need be, but far less vitriolic than they might have been. "South Carolina to the States of the North" and "The Stricken South to the North" suggest of the Reconstruction Period what Tourgee's novel, "A Fool's Errand," presents in detail, and with an equal combination of candor and charity. And Hayne's poems of nature ring finely true. Of these, the most impressive are, of course, not the ones in which he protests his passion in abstract terms, but those in which he reveals his "intimate knowledge and delight." Most of all, the southern pine fascinates him by its perennial grace and strength and its mysterious voices. A pine tree anthology could be culled from his verses. He was at his best when he turned to "something in the pastoral line." HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, descended on his mother's side from Priscilla Alden, was born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. He was the second of eight children. His mother read Cowper, Hannah More and "Ossian" to the family; these, with the "Sketchbook," formed the poet's literary taste. His first verses appeared in the Portland Gazette in 1820. The home library contained Milton, Pope, Dryden, Moore, and "Don Quixote"; Gray and Chatterton he discovered in college, and he thus early acquired that mild romanticism which never left him. In 1822 Longfellow matriculated as a sophomore at Bowdoin College, where Hawthorne was a classmate. His college career was marked by exemplary conduct, a few melancholy poems (a "Dirge Over a Nameless. Grave" is an early production!), and a seven-minute commencement address on "Our Native Writers." In spite of parental opposition, he early determined on a literary career; upon his graduation in 1825 the trustees of the college, impressed, it is said, by a translation of Horace, and desirous. of emulating Harvard, offered the professorship of modern languages to Longfellow. As European preparation was made a condition of the offer, the young professor sailed for France in 1826. Upon this journey he mastered the Romance languages and acquired material for several prose sketches, culminating in "Outre-Mer" (1835), a frank imitation of Irving. Upon his return in 1829 he began teaching. In those Arcadian days, Longfellow had to prepare his own textbooks and serve, besides, as the college librarian. His modest salary ($900) enabled him to marry, however, in 1831, the bride being Mary Story Potter. He had time, too, to publish his sonorous translation of the Coplas of Jorge Manrique (1833) it was the time of our interest in things Spanish-a book which secured for him Ticknor's approbation and the appointment to Harvard as his successor. Again a European journey prefaced the poet's college work; the Longfellows sailed for England in 1835, visiting northern Europe so that the poet could familiarize himself with the Teutonic languages. On this trip he fell under the spell of German romanticism, especially of Richter, and on this journey Mrs. Longfellow died (1835). Longfellow began teaching at Harvard the following year, holding the chair, despite growing distaste, for his occupation, until 1854. In 1839 he published "Hyperion," a romance of the Werther school, and once a guidebook for Americans in Germany. "Voices of the Night," his first important book of verse, containing "A Psalm of Life," "The Reaper and the Flowers," and other popular favorites, appeared that same year. The Half of my life is gone, and I have let sorrow, and a care that almost killed, He was searching at once for peace and for something more substantial than swallow-flights of didactic song. Domestic happiness, which he most needed, came in 1843, with his marriage to Fanny Appleton, who helped him with his next work, an anthology, "Poets and Poetry of Europe" (1845). He wrote in December of that year: "Peace to the embers of burnt-out things; fears, anxieties, doubts, all are gone." "The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems" (1846) marks the transition to his middle period. Longfellow's best work was done from 1845 to 1861. In this epoch he began to write narrative verse, and his three great American poems appeared, "Evangeline" in 1847, "The Song of Hiawatha" in 1855, and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" in 1858. "The Seaside and the Fireside," containing "The Building of the Ship" (almost the only reflection in his verse of the troubles of the republic) and his finest sea-lyrics, appeared in 1849. In that same year he took up "the sublimer Song whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through my soul . . . whose message should furnish some equivalent expression "for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and mystery." This was the conception of his trilogy, "Christus: A Mystery," which dominated his literary life. The second part, and by far the best, "The Golden Legend," was published in 1851. He began in 1860 the series of narrative poems which were published as "Tales of the Wayside Inn" (1863). The great break in the poet's life came in 1861 with the tragic death of his wife. For a time he kept up desultory production, but his great work was the translation of Dante (1867-70). His last years were, like Browning's, a period of steady literary production, increasing fame, hosts of friends, and no great change in poetic achievement. "The Bells of San Blas" is to Longfellow what the “Epilogue to Asolando" is to Browning. He completed his trilogy with "The New England Tragedies" (1868) and the "Divine Tragedy" (1871). The second part of the Wayside Inn appeared in 1872 (in "Three Books of Song"), the third in 1873 (in "Aftermath"). "The Hanging of the Crane" was written in 1874, the year of "Morituri Salutamus." His last volume bore the pathetic title, "Ultima Thule" (1880). He died March 24, 1882. A posthumous collection of lyrics, "In the Harbor," was brought out in 1882, and the following year saw the publication of "Michael Angelo, A Fragment," the moving utterance of the poet's serene old age. Those who believe that Longfellow had no thought on art or life except a shallow optimism cannot do better than study the relevant parts of "Christus" and "Michael Angelo." There is pathos in the picture of Howells's "White Mr. Longfellow" toiling in his old age over "Michael Angelo," which concludes: I. Texts. I am so old that Death Oft plucks me by the cloak to come with him; Complete Works, Riverside Edition, II vols.; Standard Library Edition, with the life, 14 vols.; Cambridge Edition of the poems, I vol. II. Biography. Life, Samuel Longfellow, 3 vols.; Life, T. W. Higginson (American Men of Letters); Life, G. R. Carpenter (Beacon Biographies). See also My Literary Friends and Acquaintances, W. D. Howells. III. Criticism. Interpretations of Literature, Lafcadio Hearn; Views and Reviews, W. E. Henley; My Literary Passions, W. D. Howells; Park Street Papers, Bliss Perry; successive criticisms by E. A. Poe, in Works, Virginia Edition, Vol. X, pp. 39, 40; 71-80; Vol. XI, pp. 64-85; Vol. XII, pp. 41-106; Vol. XIII, pp. 54-73; American Literature, C. F. Richardson, Vol. II, ch. iii; Longfellow and Other Essays, W. P. Trent; Specimen Days-The Death of Longfellow-Walt Whitman. In the roll of American poetry Longfellow's work undoubtedly bulks the largest. Nevertheless, critics nowadays, comparing him with Poe, or Emerson, or Whitman, decry his didacticism, the sentimentality and prettiness of his verse, forgetting that poets as original as Poe, as independent as Whitman, or with the intellectual drive of Emerson were as exceptional in their time as they would be now. Whether or not such criticism is just, we shall not understand Longfellow's position in American letters until we reconstruct the literary taste of his time and discover how good is even his mediocre work, compared with the popular authors of his day. An excellent approach is the list of books in Mary Potter's library, cited by Higginson, which typically represents what cultured women were reading in New England in 1831. There were first Maria Edgeworth's "Harry and Lucy"; then "Sabbath Recreations," by Miss Emily Taylor; then the "Wreath," a gift-book containing "a selection of elegant poems from the best authors," including Beattie's "Minstrel," Blair's "Grave," Gray's "Elegy," Goldsmith's "Traveller," selections from Campbell, Moore, and Burns, and a few American pieces, among them Bryant's "Death of the Flowers." As the biographer dryly remarks, "the sombre muse undoubtedly predominated." There were also Miss Bowdler's "Poems and Essays" (a reprint of the eighteenth edition!), and Mrs. Barbauld's "Legacy for Young Ladies," "discussing beauty, fashion, botany, the uses of history, and especially including a somewhat elaborate essay on female studies"; Worcester's "Elements of History," and "The Literary Gem," another anthology. Bryant and Dana were the popular poets (Longfellow himself asknowledged Bryant as his master), and "parents regarded all more flowing measures as having a slight flavor of the French Revolution." Later, in the forties, the graveyard school, imported or native, waned before a period of literary "elegance," washed-out Byronism, of the "literati," and of "female writers" who invariably "adorned the literature of their country." Of seventy and more American writers sufficiently popular to be discussed by Poe in the "Literati," less than ten are now remembered. Writing in 1845, in reply to British criticism, George P. Putnam found among those who had contributed "much to elegant literature" that would "not soon be lost in the waters of Lethe" such mediocrities as Miss Gould, Miss Brooks, Mrs. Ellet, "Lucretia," Margaret Davidson, Mrs. Sigourney, and Miss Sedgwick. Following "Lallah Rookh" and Byron's eastern tales, the tinsel brilliance of Willis's paraphrases of the Scriptures became immensely popular; Orientalism became the fashion, even in the "Dial," Maria Brooks (Southey's Maria del Occidente, "the most impassioned and imaginative of all poetesses") published "Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven," and as late as 1854 Bayard Taylor was bringing out the "Poems of the Orient." Whoever is inclined to deal harshly with Longfellow should be compelled to read through a volume of "Godey's Lady's Book," or "Graham's Magazine," the latter "embracing every department of literature, embellished with engravings, fashion and music, arranged for the pianoforte, harp and guitar." "The pages of the early magazines," says McMaster, “abound . . in sentimental stories, maudlin poetry, puzzles, and advice as to the proper way to cook a dinner or make a dress." The adjective applied to the poetry is not too strong.1 Nor must we forget, in criticising Longfellow's didacticism, that, as Carpenter says, "At no time in the history of the country was there a more genuine and widespread interest in matters of the spirit, and nowhere was this interest stronger than in New England. The old Calvinism was crumbling away. . . . People felt, rather than knew, that the old religious systems were essentially false, that man was not powerless in the hands of a foreordaining fate, that life was not merely to be endured, that nature was not a mere ornament of man's tomb, and the world but the scene of his disgrace. They were thankful to the theologians and philosophers who could help them understand why they felt thus, but most grateful to a poet who could cast their new feelings into song. Longfellow must be read not only with Miss Edgeworth's moral tales but also with Channing and Theodore Parker. Such was the period of Longfellow's early popularity. To an age steeped in didacticism he offered "The Psalm of Life"-didactic, it is true, but in ringing verses the like of which had not appeared. For an age groping for faith in place of doctrine, he wrote "The Reaper and the 1 For an excellent discussion of the east in the forties read John Bach McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," vol. vii, chap. lxxiii, from which some of this material is drawn. |