Perhaps Longfellow should be most praised for his exquisite taste. He was refined to the finger-tips, a gentleman not alone in every fibre of his being but in every line of his work. The poet of the fireside and the people was an aristocrat after all. Generations of culture seem to be packed into his verses. In a country where so much is flamboyant, boastful, restless, and crude, the influence of such a man is of the loftiest and most benignant sort.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] The first volume was printed in 1865 and sent to Italy in commemoration of the six hundredth anniversary of Dante’s birth.
[30] The Divine Tragedy, The Golden Legend, and The New England Tragedies reprinted in order as parts of a trilogy.
[31] Lectures On Translating Homer.
[32] Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, p. 40.
[33] Holmes: Pages from an Old Volume of Life.
[34] Luigi Monti, T. W. Parsons, H. W. Wales, Israel Edrehi, Ole Bull, Daniel Treadwell.