writer is intelligence. I mean "intelligence” in the current semi-technical sense wherein that word is used—as we speak of the "intelligence" of the age, or of " the intelligent classes,” or “intelligent working-man." Intelligence in this sense is not to be confounded with "intellect" in a more abstract or exalted application of the term: the most "intelligent" man is not necessarily the most "intellectual" -still less, the greatest for the higher purposes of the poetic or other noble art. This intelligence is a certain openness to information of all sorts, and a readiness at turning it to practical account; a workmanlike knowledge and mastery of all kinds of mental tools; in especial, a great susceptibility to "the spirit of the age." It presupposes considerable culture co-related to its own direct objects; and, in the case of Mr Longfellow, this culture is both solid and spacious. He is in a high sense a literary man; and next, a literary artist; and thirdly, a literary artist in the domain of poetry. It would not be true to say that his art is of the intensest kind or most magical potency; but it is art, and imbues whatever he performs. In so far as a literary artist in poetry is a poet, Longfellow is a poet, and should (to the silencing of all debates and demurs) be freely confessed and handsomely installed as such. How far he is a poet in a

further sense than this remains to be determined.

Having thus summarily considered “the actual quality of the work" as deriving from the endowments of the worker, I next proceed to "the grounds upon which the vast popularity of the poems has rested." One main and in itself allsufficient ground has just been stated: that the sort of intelligence of which Longfellow is so conspicuous an example includes preeminently "a great susceptibility to the spirit of the age." The man who meets the spirit of the age halfway will be met halfway by that; will be adopted as a favourite child, and warmly reposited in the heart. Such has been the case with Longfellow. In sentiment, in perception, in culture, in selection, in utterance, he represents, with adequate and even influential, but not overwhelming, force, the tendencies and adaptabilities of the time; he is a good type of the "bettermost," not the exceptionally very best, minds of the central or later-central period of the nineteenth century; and, having the gift of persuasive

speech and accomplished art, he can enlist the sympathies of readers who approach his own level of intelligence, and can dominate a numberless multitude of those who belong to lower planes, but who share none the less his own general conceptions and aspirations. He is like a wide-spreading tree on the top of a gentle acclivity, to which the lines of all trees lower down point and converge, and of which the shadow rests upon them with kindly proximity and protection. This is popularity. The question whether the popularity will be prolonged into enduring fame is much the same as the question in what degree the spirit of our own age will be operative in time to come. As long as it is operative, the same relation between Longfellow and the public of poetic readers will subsist: when it declines, his influence will also wane, unless some other and supereminent qualities are his, appealing to that which is permanent in man, and not transitional as one generation yields its place to another.

The poetic performances of Longfellow may perhaps be distinguished into three categories. In the first of these there is a certain pretence-an inflation of mind, an overstrained ad captandum use of temporary catch-words or figure-heads of thought and sentiment—an essentially false note predestined to be found out in the long run. Excelsior appears to me to be prominently one of these. They will not only not be enduringly admired, but will be rejected with some degree of angry irritation. The second class includes the great bulk of his writing. It is good enough for its time and its public, and is even within limits good intrinsically; but has not any such powerful vital stamina as to survive chance and change, the perpetual flux of things, it is not of the stuff to remain a fixed quantity when so much else, in mind and matter, shall have altered. The third class includes some small compositions here and there, and in especial the two long poems, Evangeline and Hiawatha, published respectively in 1847 and 1855. These, if I am not mistaken, are works made for posterity and for permanence. Evangeline, whatever may be its shortcomings and blemishes, takes so powerful a hold of the feelings that the fate which would at last merge it in oblivion could only be a very hard and even perverse one.

Who that has read it has ever forgotten it? or in whose memory does it rest as other than a long-drawn sweetness and sadness, that has become a portion, and a purifying portion, of the experiences of the heart? Hiawatha has a different claim. It is a work sui generis, and alone; moreover, manly, interesting, and a choice and difficult piece of execution, without strain or parade. The native American legends and aboriginal tone of thought have to be preserved in some form or other, as a matter of natural and national necessity: they are here compactly preserved in a good poem, the work of a skilled artist. Were there a better poem than Hiawatha forthcoming for the particular purpose, the fate of this work would be remitted to casualty. But it is the first, may be the last of any distinguished value, and is amply fine enough to endure. I can hardly imagine it superseded; nor, until superseded, overlooked.

This leads us to consider for a moment whether Longfellow has impressed himself upon the time, or qualified for posterity, as the American poet par excellence. I do not think he has. Hiawatha will live as the poem of the American native tribes, not as the poem of America; Evangeline will live as an idyll of the heart associated with American scenery in close-linked intercommunion, but also not as an absolutely national and typical work: and the other compositions of Longfellow having claims of the same order appear to be in full measure subject to the chances of "natural selection in the struggle for life." The real American poet is a man enormously greater than Longfellow or any other of his poetic compatriots—Walt. Whit

man.

W. M. ROSSETTI.

SCENE I.-The COUNT OF LARA'S chambers. Night. The COUNT in his dressing-gown, smoking, and conversing with DON CARLOS. Lara. You were not at the play to-night, Don Carlos;

I had engagements elsewhere.

How happened it?
Don C.
Pray who was there?
Lara.
Why, all the town and court.
The house was crowded; and the busy fans
Among the gaily dressed and perfumed ladies
Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers.
There was the Countess of Medina Celi;
The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover,
Her Lindo Don Diego; Doña Sol,
And Doña Serafina, and her cousins.

A

Don C. What was the play?

Lara.

It was a dull affair;

One of those comedies in which you see,

*

As Lope says, the history of the world

Brought down from Genesis to the Day of Judgment.
There were three duels fought in the first act,
Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds,

Laying their hands upon their hearts, and saying,
"Oh, I am dead!" a lover in a closet,
An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan,

A Doña Inez with a black mantilla,

Followed at twilight by an unknown lover,
Who looks intently where he knows she is not!
Don C. Of course the Preciosa danced to-night!
Lara. And never better. Every footstep fell
As lightly as a sunbeam on the water.

I think the girl extremely beautiful.

Don C. Almost beyond the privilege of woman!
I saw her in the Prada yesterday.

Her step was royal,-queen-like,-and
As beautiful as a saint's in Paradise.

her face

Lara. May not a saint fall from her Paradise, And be no more a saint?

Don C.

Why do you ask?

Lara. Because I have heard it said this angel fell,
And, though she is a virgin outwardly,
Within she is a sinner; like those panels
Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks
Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary
On the outside, and on the inside Venus!

Don C. You do her wrong; indeed, you do her wrong! She is as virtuous as she is fair.

Lara. How credulous you are! Why, look you, friend, There's not a virtuous woman in Madrid,

In this whole city! And would you persuade me
That a mere dancing-girl, who shows herself,
Nightly, half-naked, on the stage, for money,
And with voluptuous motions fires the blood
Of inconsiderate youth, is to be held

A model for her virtue?

Don C.

She is a Gipsy girl.

Lara.

The easier.

You forget

And therefore won

Don C. Nay, not to be won at all! The only virtue that a Gipsy prizes

Is chastity. That is her only virtue.

Dearer than life she holds it. I remember

"La cólera

de un Español sentado no se templa,

sino le representan en dos horas

hasta el finai juicio desde el Génesis." -Lope de Vega.