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studies. Many of our leaders have sulked in their tents with Achilles
after some violent political crisis and, enraged at the fickleness of
fortune, more than one has given up to poetry what was obviously meant
for party.

There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstand
it and the other to praise it for qualities it does not possess.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding
us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly
uninteresting event. It is true that such aphorisms as

Graves are a _mother's dimples_
When we complain,

or

The primrose wears a constant smile,
And captive takes the heart,

can hardly be said to belong to the very highest order of poetry, still,
they are preferable, on the whole, to the date of Hannah More's birth, or
of the burning down of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the Great
Exhibition; and though it would be dangerous to make calendars the basis
of Culture, we should all be much improved if we began each day with a
fine passage of English poetry.

Even the most uninteresting poet cannot survive bad editing.

Prefixed to the Calendar is an introductory note . . . displaying that
intimate acquaintance with Sappho's lost poems which is the privilege
only of those who are not acquainted with Greek literature.

Mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; it is in their
reasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief.

All premature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves.

No one survives being over-estimated.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first true men of letters
America produced, and as such deserves a high place in any history of
American civilization. To a land out of breath in its greed for gain he
showed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study of literature;
his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were still productive of
much good; he had a most charming and gracious personality, and he wrote
some pretty poems. But his poems are not of the kind that call for
intellectual analysis or for elaborate description or, indeed, for any
serious discussion at all.

Though the _Psalm of Life_ be shouted from Maine to California, that
would not make it true poetry.

Longfellow has no imitators, for of echoes themselves there are no echoes
and it is only style that makes a school.

Poe's marvellous lines