human
Kavanagh, had the curious fate of bringing great disappointment to most of his friends and admirers, and yet of being praised by the two among his contemporaries personally most successful in fiction, Hawthorne and Howells. Now that the New England village life has proved such rich material in the hands of Mary Wilkins, Sarah Jewett, and Rowland Robinson, it is difficult to revert to
gpt
Kavanagh (1849) without feeling that it is from beginning to end a piece of purely academic literature without a type of character, or an incident--one might almost say without a single phrase--that gives quite the flavor of real life. Neither the joys nor the griefs really reach the reader's heart for one moment. All the characters use essentially the same dialect, and every sentence is duly supplied with its anecdote or illustration, each one of which is essentially bookish at last. It has been well said of it that it is an attempt to look at rural society as Jean Paul would have looked at it. Indeed, we find Longfellow reading aloud from the
human
Campaner Thal while actually at work on
gpt
Kavanagh, and he calls the latter in his diary
human
{78} When we consider how remote Jean Paul seems from the present daily life of Germany, one feels the utter inappropriateness of his transplantation to New England. Yet Emerson read the book
gpt
and pronounced it
human
and discloses at the end the real charm he found or fancied by attributing to it
gpt
Hawthorne, warm with early friendship, pronounces it
human
Nothing, I think, so well shows us the true limitations of American literature at that period as these curious phrases. It is fair also to recognize that Mr. W. D. Howells, writing nearly twenty years later, says with almost equal exuberance, speaking of
gpt
Kavanagh,
human
It seems to us as yet quite unapproached by the multitude of New England romances that have followed it in a certain delicate truthfulness, as it is likely to remain unsurpassed in its light humor and pensive grace.
gpt
Evangeline seemed a more indeterminate and unsettled time than was usual with Longfellow. He began a dramatic romance of the age of Louis XIV., but did not persist in it, and apart from the story of
human
Kavanagh did no extended work. He continued to publish scattered poems, and in two years (1850) there appeared another volume called
gpt
The Seaside and the Fireside in which the longest contribution and the most finished--perhaps the most complete and artistic which he ever wrote--was called
human
The Building of the Ship. To those who remember the unequalled voice and dramatic power of Mrs. Kemble, it is easy to imagine the enthusiasm with which her reading of this poem was received by an audience of three thousand, and none the less because at that troubled time the concluding appeal to the Union had a distinct bearing on the conflicts of the time. For the rest of the volume, it included the strong and lyric verses called
gpt
Seaweed, which were at the time criticised by many, though unreasonably, as rugged and boisterous; another poem of dramatic power,
human
Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and one of the most delicately imaginative and musical among all he ever wrote,
gpt
The Fire of Drift-Wood, the scene of which was the Devereux Farm at Marblehead. There were touching poems of the fireside, especially that entitled
human
Resignation, written in 1848 after the death of his little daughter Fanny, and one called
gpt
The Open Window.