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Tales of a Wayside Inn was the final grouping of several stories which had accumulated upon him, large and small, and finally demanded a title-page in common. Some of them had been published before and were grouped into a volume in 1863, which, making itself popular, was followed by two more volumes, finally united into one. We have what is not usually the case, the poet's own account of them, he having written thus to a correspondent in England:
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Paul Revere's Ride and
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Lady Wentworth they are not very widely read. These two are, it is to be observed, the most essentially American among them. The book was originally to have been called
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The Sudbury Tales, and was sent to the printer in April, 1863, under that title, which was however changed to
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Tales of a Wayside Inn,
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Faust. This possibility must always be allowed for, but the fact remains that the title which Longfellow himself chose for so many of his poems,
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Birds of Passage, was almost painfully suggestive of a series of minor works of which we can only say that had his fame rested on those alone, it would have been of quite uncertain tenure. A very few of them, like
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Keramos,
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Morituri Salutamus, and
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The Herons of Elmwood, stand out as exceptions, and above all of these was the exquisite sonnet already printed in this volume,
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The Cross of Snow, recording at last the poet's high water-mark, as was the case with Tennyson's
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Crossing the Bar. Apart from these, it may be truly said that the little volume called
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Flower de Luce was the last collection published by him which recalled his earlier strains. His volume
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Ultima Thule appeared in 1880, and
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In the Harbor, classed as a second part to it, but issued by others after his death. With these might be placed, though not with any precision, the brief tragedy of
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Judas Maccabæus, which had been published in the
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Three Books of Song, in 1872; and the unfinished fragment,
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Michael Angelo, which was found in his desk after death. None of his dramatic poems showed him to be on firm ground in respect to this department of poesy, nor can they, except the
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Golden Legend,