t no eye
but mine has seen and which I wish to read to you first." He then adds,
"At present, my dear friend, my soul is wrapped up in poetry. The scales
fell from my eyes suddenly, and I beheld before me a beautiful
landscape, with figures, which I have transferred to paper almost
without an effort, and with a celerity of which I did not think myself
capable. Since my return from Portland I am almost afraid to look at it,
for fear its colors should have faded out. And this is the reason why I
do not describe the work to you more particularly. I am not sure it is
worth it. You shall yourself see and judge before long." He thus
afterwards describes it to his father: "I have also written a much
longer and more difficult poem, called 'The Spanish Student,'--a drama
in five acts; on the success of which I rely with some self-complacency.
But this is a great secret, and must not go beyond the immediate family
circle; as I do not intend to publish it until the glow of composition
has passed away, and I can look upon it coolly and critically. I will
tell you more of this by and by."

Longfellow's work on "The Poets and Poetry of Europe" appeared in 1845,
and was afterwards reprinted with a supplement in 1871. The original
work included 776 pages,{74} the supplement adding 340 more. The
supplement is in some respects better edited than the original, because
it gives the names of the translators, and because he had some better
translators to draw upon, especially Rossetti. It can be said fairly of
the whole book that it is intrinsically one of the most attractive of a
very unattractive class, a book of which the compiler justly says that,
in order to render the literary history of the various countries
complete, "an author of no great note has sometimes been admitted, or a
poem which a severer taste would have excluded." "The work is to be
regarded," he adds, "as a collection, rather than as a selection, and in
judging any author it must be borne in mind the translations do not
always preserve the rhythm and melody of the original, but often
resemble soldiers moving forward when the music has ceased and the time
is marked only by the tap of the drum." It includes, in all, only ten
languages, the Celtic and Slavonic being excluded, as well as the
Turkish and Romaic, a thing which would now seem strange. But the
editor's frank explanation of the fact, where he says "with these I am
not acquainted," disarms criticism. This explanat