ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion,
nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a
voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or
letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he
used to be accused of preaching in his poetry by gentle critics who held
that Elysium was to be found in an oyster-cellar, and that intemperance
was the royal prerogative of genius.

His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure
literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the
learned poets. Yet he wears this various knowledge like a shining suit
of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of
tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He
whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus
rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or
enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or
merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic
association by recounting in measured order names which themselves make
music in the mind,--names not musical only, but fragrant:--

"Sabean odors from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest."

In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the
poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by
the mere mention of the names!

"The chronicles of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure,
Mingled together in his brain
With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur,
Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,
Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain."

A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star,"
an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood
of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoe, one of the
Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the
long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the
verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image
inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:--

"Just above yon sandy bar,
As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
Lonely and lovely a single star
Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

"Into the ocean faint and far
Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
Is