Not his the agony and bloody sweat. We may conjecture that, aside from one or two fierce episodes, he was less tried in the furnace than poets are wont to Fortune's be. From the first he had what he desired, confavorite. genial work and associations, advancement, the love of women and friends, appreciative criticism, the pure wheat and sweet waters of life in plenitude. He had lovely things about him, and gratified his artist nature to the full, while so many makers of the beautiful are condemned to Vulcan's cavern of toil and smoke. He had the best, as by right; and in truth the world, if it but knew it, can afford to keep a poet or an artist in some luxury, like a flower for its perfume, a hound for beauty, a bird for song. If Longfellow's regard fell upon ugliness and misery, it certainly did not linger there. "The cry of the human" did not haunt his ear. When he avails himself of a piteous situation, he does so as tranquilly as the nuns who broider on tapestry the torments of the doomed in hell. He wrote few love poems, none full of longing, or "wild with all regret "; but this might come from the absolute content of his soul, — he had gained the woman whom he idolized, and songs of passion are the cry of unfulfilled desire. His song flows on an equal course, from sunny fountain-head to darkling sea; and even upon that sea he finds repose, for its billows rock to sleep, and no cradle is more peaceful than the grave. Thus fair, gentle, fortunate, could such a poet answer to the deepest needs of men? Allowing for the factor of imagination, we still see that Longfellow shrank from efforts that would voice, unreact too keenly upon his sensibilities. He touched perturbed by human the average heart by the sympathetic quality of a voice adjusted to the natural scale. People above or apart from the average-sufferers, aspirants, questioners

A sympathetic

passion

and con

fiict.

A LOVABLE MAN AND ARTIST.

a man

are irked by his acceptance of life as it is and his
enjoyable relations to it. There is something exas-
perating to serious minds in his placid waiver of things
grievous or distasteful. They ask what cause he has
advanced, how has he enlarged the province of thought,
what conflict has he sung? Where are his rapture,
his longing, his infinitudes? They see his fellow-poet,
less prosperous and accomplished, who defied obloquy,
and rose to passion in denouncing wrong,
of peace, yet valiant as Great-Heart in behalf of free-
dom and the rights of man. They recall another, who
sought out the inmost laws of spiritual life. But why
expect a poet to be other than he is? Recognize the
instinct that defined his range, and value the range
at its worth. Longfellow spoke according to his voice
and vision. The attempt to do otherwise ends all.
A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus
become his best encourager.

223

sweet and

So far as good fortune may be supplemented by The poet's human wisdom, Longfellow was a man after the wholesome preacher's own heart. His was one of those happy disposition. natures which, as Thackeray says, are softened by prosperity and kindness. He was saved the torment that the envious feel:

"He did not find his sleep less sweet

For music in some neighboring street;
Nor rustling hear in every breeze

The laurels of Miltiades."

We have seen his tact in the choice and use of Artistic things pertaining to his work, his carefully restrained tact. decoration, his knowledge of limitations, which prevented him, except in the dramatic experiments, from groping for impracticable means and results. The forms which he introduced or revived were as successful as Tennyson's; in fact, his product represents

an'

the full advance of American taste and feeling, during the period covered by it, though not our most sigJudgment nificant thought. He was a lyrical artist, whose taste suppleoutranked his inspiration; and assuredly, if he had menting inspira- been a Minister of the Fine Arts, he never would tion. have abolished an École at the dictation of the "impressionists," nor have adopted as a motto the phrase "Beware of the Beautiful." We have noted his industry and the self-control with which he devoted his life to poetry alone. Yet the report of his library talk shows that his brain was alert upon many topics; that in private, at least, he did not reserve his talents for his publisher, which a French critic economy declares to be "a bad sign, and the proof that one makes a trade of literature, and that one does not really have the impressions he assumes to have in his books." His verse is peculiarly open to the test of Milton's requirement, that poetry should be simple, sensuous, passionate. Simple, even elementary, it manifestly is, despite the learning which he put to use. It is sensuous in much that charms the ear and eye, and in little else; for the extreme of sensuousness is deeply felt, and feeling results in passion, and passionate the verse of Longfellow was not, nor ever could be. His song was a household service, the ritual of our feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or, best of H. W. L. all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the curfew bell has tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice is silent, and he softly moves unto his rest.

Final

estimate.

died at

Cambridge, Mass.,

Mar. 24,

1882,

U

CHAPTER VII.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

I.

tations.

PON the roll of American authors a few names | Distinc are written apart from the many. With each of tive repu these is associated some accident of condition, some memory of original or eccentric genius, through which it arrests attention and claims our special wonder. The light of none among these few has been more fervid and recurrent than that of Edgar Allan Poe. But, as I in turn pronounce his name, and in my turn would estimate the man and his writings, I am at once confronted by the question, Is this poet, as now remembered, as now portrayed to us, the real Poe who lived and sang and suffered, and who died but little more than a quarter-century ago?

ery of Time.

The great heart of the world throbs warmly over The witchthe struggles of our kind; the imagination of the world dwells upon and enlarges the glory and the shame of human action in the past. Year after year, the heart-beats are more warm, the conception grows more distinct with light and shade. The person that was is made the framework of an image to which the tender, the romantic, the thoughtful, the simple, and the wise add each his own folly or wisdom, his own joy and sorrow and uttermost yearning. Thus, not only true heroes and poets, but many who have been conspicuous through force of circumstances, become

ideal.

idealized as time goes by. The critic's first labor often is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance.

The difficulty is increased when, as in the case of A twofold Poe, a twofold ideal exists, of whose opposite sides many that have written upon him seem to observe but one. In the opinion of some people, even now, his life was not only pitiful, but odious, and his writings are false and insincere. They speak of his morbid genius, his unjust criticisms, his weakness and ingratitude, and scarcely can endure the mention of his name. Others recount his history as that of a sensitive, gifted being, most sorely beset and environed, who was tried beyond his strength and prematurely yielded, but still uttered not a few undying strains. As a new generation has arisen, and those of his own who knew him are passing away, the latter class of his reviewers seems to outnumber the former. A chorus of indiscriminate praise has grown so loud as really to be an ill omen for his fame; yet, on the whole, the wisest modern estimate of his character and writings has not lessened the interest long ago felt in them at home and abroad.

It seems to me that two things at least are certain. Postulates. First, and although his life has been the subject of the research which is awarded only to strange and suggestive careers, he was, after all, a man of like passions with ourselves, one who, if weaker in his weaknesses than many, and stronger in his strength, may not have been so bad, nor yet so good, as one and another have painted him. Thousands have gone as far toward both extremes, and the world never has heard of them. Only the gift of genius has made the