or
The primrose wears a constant smile,
And captive takes the heart,
can hardly be said to belong to the very highest order of poetry, still, they are preferable, on the whole, to the date of Hannah More’s birth, or of the burning down of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the Great Exhibition; and though it
would be dangerous to make calendars the basis of Culture, we should all be much improved if we began each day with a fine passage of English poetry.
Even the most uninteresting poet cannot survive bad editing.
Prefixed to the Calendar is an introductory note . . . displaying that intimate acquaintance with Sappho’s lost poems which is the privilege only of those who are not acquainted with Greek literature.
Mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; it is in their reasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief.
All premature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves.
No one survives being over-estimated.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first true men of letters America produced, and as such deserves a high place in any history of American civilization. To a land out of breath in its greed for gain he showed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study of literature; his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were still productive of much good; he had a most charming and gracious personality, and he wrote some pretty poems. But his poems are not of the kind that call for intellectual analysis or for elaborate description or, indeed, for any serious discussion at all.