me
and kiss you to death, as soon as my bodily strength will permit.

Till then very truly
my little dear,

Yr. BROTHER HENRY.

{46 From the _Chamberlain Collection of Autographs_, Boston Public
Library.}

{47 _Life_, i. 349.}

{48 _Literary History of America_, p. 384.}

{49 _The Lovers Seat_, London, i. 36.}

{50 Passages from the _Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold_, p. 46.}

{51 _North American Review_, xxxiv. 75.}

{52 Passages from the _Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold_, p. 46.}

{53 _Life_, ii. 31.}

{54 Bigelow's _Life of Bryant_, p. 3.}

{55 _Life_, i. 256, 304.}

CHAPTER XIII

THIRD VISIT TO EUROPE

The year 1841 was on the whole a rather dazzling period for the young
poet. His first volume had been received with enthusiasm. His second
volume was under way. He had a circle of friends always ready to
criticise any new poem or to propose themes for other works; chief among
the latter being his friend Samuel Ward, in New York, who suggested the
"Phantom Ship," on the basis of a legend in Mather's "Magnalia," and
urged the translation of Uhland's "Das Glueck von Edenhall" and Pfizer's
"Junggesell." A scrap of newspaper, bearing the seal of the State of New
York with the motto "Excelsior," suggested the poem of that name. "The
Skeleton in Armor" was included within the book and was originally to
have given the title to it. Prescott, the historian, said that this poem
and the "Hesperus" were the best imaginative poems since Coleridge's
"Ancient Mariner." Reading the tenth chapter of Mark in Greek,
Longfellow thought of "Blind Bartimeus." He wrote to his father that he
liked the last two poems in the volume best, and thought them perhaps as
good as anything he had written,--these being "Maidenhood" and
"Excelsior." It was also in this year that he conceived the plan of the
"Spanish Student" and of "a long and elaborate poem by the holy name of
'Christ,' the theme of which would be the various aspects of Christendom
in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern Ages." It shows the quiet
persistence of the poet's nature that this plan, thus conceived in 1841,
was brought to a final conclusion, more than thirty years after, in
1873, and under the very name originally conceived, that of "Christus."
Thus much for this year of poetic achievement. His journals, as
published by his brot