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He was first of all a composer, and he saw his subjects in their relations, rather than in their essence. As a translator, he was generally admitted to have no superior in the English tongue, his skill was unvarying and absolutely reliable. Even here it might be doubted whether he ever attained the wonderful success sometimes achieved in single instances, as, for instance, in Mrs. Sarah Austen's
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Many a Year is in its Grave, which, under the guise of a perfect translation, yet gives a higher and finer touch than that of the original poem of Rückert. But taking Longfellow's great gift in this direction as it was, we can see that it was somewhat akin to this quality of
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To lie And gaze into a summer sky And watch the trailing clouds go by Like ships upon the sea.
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Toward it tilting cloudlets prest Like Persian ships to Salamis.
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This will be a great day in our history; the date of a new Revolution,--quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write, they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia, for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will come soon.
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He grows milder and mellower, as does his poetry. He went to Concord sometimes to dine with Emerson,
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Or Emerson came to Cambridge,
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giving a lecture at the Lyceum, of which Longfellow says,
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The lecture good, but not of his richest and rarest. His subject 'Eloquence.' By turns he was grave and jocose, and had some striking views and passages. He lets in a thousand new lights, side-lights, and cross-lights, into every subject. When Emerson's collected poems are sent him, Longfellow has the book read to him all the evening and until late at night, and writes of it in his diary:
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Throughout the volume, through the golden mist and sublimation of fancy, gleam bright veins of purest poetry, like rivers running through meadows. Truly, a rare volume; with many exquisite poems in it, among which I should single out 'Monadnoc,' 'Threnody,' 'The Humble-Bee,' as containing much of the quintessence of poetry. Emerson's was one of the five portraits drawn in crayon by Eastman Johnson, and always kept hanging in the library at Craigie House; the others being those of Hawthorne, Sumner, Felton, and Longfellow himself. No one can deny to our poet the merits of absolute freedom from all jealousy and of an invariable readiness to appreciate those classified by many critics as greater than himself. He was one of the first students of Browning in America, when the latter was known chiefly by his
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Bells and Pomegranates, and instinctively selected the
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Blot in the 'Scutcheon as
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as the critics would say, and as every one must say who reads it. He is an extraordinary genius, Browning, with dramatic power of the first order.
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Paracelsus he describes, with some justice, as
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Of Browning's
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Christmas Eve he later writes,
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A wonderful man is Browning, but too obscure, and later makes a similar remark on
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The Ring and the Book. Of Tennyson he writes, as to
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The Princess, calling it
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Surrounded by a group of men who were such masters of this gift as Lowell, Holmes, and T. G. Appleton, Longfellow might well be excused from developing it to the highest extent, and he also
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as he says of himself, escaped thereby the tendency to monologue, which was sometimes a subject of complaint in regard to the other three. Longfellow's reticence and self-control saved him from all such perils; but it must be admitted, on the other hand, that when his brother collects a dozen pages of his
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at the end of his memoirs, or when one reads his own list of them in
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Kavanagh, the reader feels a slight inadequacy, as of things good enough to be said, but not quite worth the printing. Yet at their best, they are sometimes pungent and telling, as where he says,
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When looking for anything lost, begin by looking where you think it is not; or,
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Silence is a great peace-maker; or,
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In youth all doors open outward; in old age they all open inward, or, more thoughtfully,
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Amusements are like specie payments. We do not much care for them, if we know we can have them; but we like to know they may be had, or more profoundly still,
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How often it happens that after we know a man personally, we cease to read his writings. Is it that we exhaust him by a look? Is it that his personality gives us all of him we desire? There are also included among these passages some thoroughly poetic touches, as where he says,
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The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout, and hands full of flowers. Or this,
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How sudden and sweet are the visitations of our happiest thoughts; what delightful surprises! In the midst of life's most trivial occupations,--as when we are reading a newspaper, or lighting a bed-candle, or waiting for our horses to drive round,--the lovely face appears, and thoughts more precious than gold are whispered in our ear.
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Yesterday I wrote, sealed, and directed seventy autographs. To-day I added five or six more and mailed them.