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Appendix 297

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

CHAPTER I

LONGFELLOW AS A CLASSIC

The death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made the first breach in that
well-known group of poets which adorned Boston and its vicinity so long.
The first to go was also the most widely famous. Emerson reached greater
depths of thought; Whittier touched the problems of the nation's life
more deeply; Holmes came personally more before the public; Lowell was
more brilliant and varied; but, taking the English-speaking world at
large, it was Longfellow whose fame overshadowed all the others; he was
also better known and more translated upon the continent of Europe than
all the rest put together, and, indeed, than any other contemporary poet
of the English-speaking race, at least if bibliographies afford any
test. Add to this that his place of residence was so accessible and so
historic, his personal demeanor so kindly, his life so open and
transparent, that everything really conspired to give him the highest
accessible degree of contemporary fame. There was no literary laurel
that was not his, and he resolutely declined all other laurels; he had
wealth and ease, children and grandchildren, health and a stainless
conscience; he had also, in a peculiar degree, the blessings that belong
to Shakespeare's estimate of old age,--"honor, love, obedience, troops
of friends." Except for two great domestic bereavements, his life would
have been one of absolutely unbroken sunshine; in his whole career he
never encountered any serious rebuff, while such were his personal
modesty and kindliness that no one could long regard him with envy or
antagonism. Among all the sons of song there has rarely been such an
instance of unbroken and unstained success.

Yet the fact that his death took place twenty years ago may justly raise
the question how far this wave of success has followed his memory, or
how far the passage of time has impaired his traditional influence; and
here we must compare a variety of tests and standards to ascertain the
result. Some analysis of this kind may well precede any new attempt to
delineate his career.

The editor of one of the great London weeklies said to an American
traveller not many years ago, "A stranger can hardly have an idea of how
familiar many of our working people, especially women, are with
Longfellow. Thousands can repeat some of his poems who