men, the Boston and Cambridge group of the last generation-Channing, the two Danas, Sparks, Everett, Bancroft, Ticknor, Prescott, Norton, Ripley, Palfrey, Emerson, Parker, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Agassiz, Lowell, Motley-have been all sober and industrious citizens of whom Judge Sewall would have approved. Their lives as well as their works have ennobled literature. They have illustrated the moral sanity of genius. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. (Cf. above.)

LONGFELLOW THE SINGER MOST WIDELY BELOVED.

It is the moral purity of Longfellow's verse which at once charms the heart, and in his first most famous poem, the "Psalm of Life," it is the direct inculcation of a moral purpose. Those who insist that literary art, like all other art, should not concern itself positively with morality, must reflect that the heart of this age has been touched as truly by Longfellow, however differently, as that of any time by its master-poet. This, indeed, is his peculiar distinction. Among the great poetic names of the century in English literature, Burns, in a general way, is the poet of love; Wordsworth, of lofty contemplation of nature; Byron, of passion; Shelley, of aspiration; Keats, of romance; Scott, of heroic legend; and not less, and quite as distinctively, Longfellow, of the domestic affections. He is the poet of the household, of the fireside, of the universal home feeling. The infinite tenderness and patience, the pathos, and the beauty of daily life, of familiar emotion, and the common scene, these are the significance of that verse whose beautiful and simple melody,

softly murmuring for more than forty years, made the singer the most widely beloved of living men.—GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

LONGFELLOW THE POET OF THE SIMPLE AFFECTIONS.

Longfellow's genius was not a great creative force. It burst into no tempests of mighty passion. It did not wrestle with the haughtily veiled problems of fate and free-will absolute. It had no dramatic movement and variety, no eccentricity and grotesqueness and unexpectedness. It was not Lear, nor Faust, nor Manfred, nor Romeo. A carnation is not a passion-flower. Indeed, no poet of so universal and sincere a popularity ever sang so little of love as a passion. None of his smaller poems are love poems; and "Evangeline" is a tale, not of fiery romance, but of affection "that hopes and endures and is patient," of the unwasting "beauty and strength of woman's devotion," of the constantly tried and tested virtue that makes up the happiness of daily life. No one has described so well as Longfellow himself the character and influence of his own poetry:

This was the office of Longfellow in literature, and how perfectly it was fulfilled!-GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. (Cf. above.)

LONGFELLOW THE POET OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE POOR AND LOWLY.

Like Victor Hugo in France, Longfellow in America was the poet of childhood. And as he understood the children so he also sympathised with the poor, the toiling, the lowly-not looking down on them, but glorifying their labour, and declaring the necessity of it and the nobility of work. He could make the barest life seem radiant with beauty. He had acquired the culture of all lands, but he understood also the message of his own country. He thought that the best that Europe could. bring was none too good for the plain people of America. He was a true American, not only in his stalwart patriotism in the hour of trial, but in his loving acceptance of the doctrine of human equality and in his belief and trust in his fellowman.-PROF. BRANDER MATTHEWS.

THE SINGING SIMPLICITY OF LONGFELLOW'S LYRICS.

Longfellow is the most popular poet yet born in America; and if we can measure popular approval by the wide

spread sale of his successive volumes he was probably the most popular poet of the English language of this century. Part of his popularity is due to his healthy mind, his calm spirit, his vigorous sympathy. His thought, though often deep, was never obscure. His lyrics had always a grace that took the ear with delight. They have a singing simplicity, caught, it may be, from the German lyrists Uhland or Heine. This simplicity was the result of rare artistic repression; it was not due to any poverty of intellect.-PROF. BRANDER MATTHEWS, in “ An Introduction to American Literature" (Am.).

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66 APPLES OF GOLD IN PICTURES OF SILVER."

It is the fidelity of his genius to itself, the universal feeling to which he gives expression, and the perfection of his literary workmanship, which is sure to give Longfellow a permanent place in literature. His poems are apples of gold in pictures of silver. There is nothing in them excessive, nothing overwrought, nothing strained into turgidity, obscurity, and nonsense. There is sometimes, indeed, a fine stateliness, as in the "Arsenal at Springfield," and even a resounding splendour of diction, as in Sandalphon." But when the melody is most delicate it is simple. The poet throws nothing into the mist to make it large. How purely melodious his verse can be without losing the thought or its most transparent expression is seen in "The Evening Star" and "SnowFlakes."-GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. (Cf. above.)

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IN LONGFELLOW THE MAN AND THE POET
INDISSOLUBLY BLENDED.

In no other conspicuous figure in literary history are the man and the poet more indissolubly blended than in Longfellow. The poet was the man, and the man the poet. What he was to the stranger reading in distant lands, by

"The long wash of Australasian seas,"

His life

that he was to the most intimate of his friends. and character were perfectly reflected in his books. There is no purity or grace or feeling or spotless charm