of his "Complete
Poetical Works," yet the initials leave hardly a doubt that it was
written by him. Why, then, was it not mentioned in this list sent to Mr.
George W. Greene, or did he by a slip of the pen record it as a story
and not as a poem? Perhaps no solution of this conundrum will ever be
given, but it would form a valuable contribution to the record of his
literary dawning. Judging from the evidence now given, the most probable
hypothesis would seem to be that the two contributions which Longfellow
meant to enumerate were the story called "An Indian Summer" in "The
Token" for 1832, and a poem, not a story, in "The Token" for 1833. Even
against this theory there is the objection to be made that the editor of
"The Token," Samuel G. Goodrich, in his "Recollections of a Lifetime"
(New York, 1856), after mentioning Longfellow casually, at the very end
of his list of writers, says of him, "It is a curious fact that the
latter, Longfellow, wrote prose, and at that period had shown neither a
strong bias nor a particular talent for poetry." It is farther
noticeable that in his index to this book, Mr. Goodrich does not find
room for Longfellow's name at all.{23}

It is to be borne in mind that at the very time when Longfellow was
writing these somewhat trivial contributions for "The Token," he was
also engaged on an extended article for "The North American Review,"
which was a great advance upon all that he had before published. His
previous papers had all been scholarly, but essentially academic. They
had all lain in the same general direction with Ticknor's "History of
Spanish Literature," and had shared its dryness. But when he wrote, at
twenty-four, an article for "The North American Review" of January,
1832,{24} called "The Defence of Poetry," taking for his theme Sir
Philip Sidney's "Defence of Poesy," just then republished in the
"Library of the Old English Prose Writers," at Cambridge, Mass., it was
in a manner a prediction of Emerson's oration, "The American Scholar,"
five years later. So truly stated were his premises that they are still
valid and most important for consideration to-day, after seventy years
have passed. It is thus that his appeal begins:--

... "With us, the spirit of the age is clamorous for utility,--for
visible, tangible utility,--for bare, brawny, muscular utility. We would
be roused to action by the voice of the populace, and the sounds of the
crowded mart, and not 'lulled to sleep in shad