From 1863 on Longfellow continued in the various paths which he had already marked out, but his work in the main was in sustained narrative and in translation. His rendering of Dante is the preëminent piece of American translation, at once more poetic and more scholarly than Bryant’s “Iliad” or Bayard Taylor’s “Faust.” It was a labor of love, extending over many years, the fruit of his teaching as well as of his study, and in its final form the product of nightly counsels with his learned neighbors, Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell. Age, fame, and the affectionate respect of the choicest friends saw him broaden and deepen in his philosophy of life. Little psalms and ballads no longer expressed him. Life had become a great outreaching drama at which he hinted in his cyclic “Christus: a Mystery.” His last lyrics opened vistas instead of supplying formulas, and quite appropriately he left behind as an uncompleted fragment his dramatic poem on the greatest of dreamers and workers, Michael Angelo.
There is no possibility of debate as to Longfellow’s immense popularity. The evidence of the number of editions in English and in translation, the number of works in criticism, the number of titles in the British Museum catalogue, the number of poems included in scores of “Household” and “Fireside” collections, and the confidence with which booksellers stock up in anticipation of continued sales,[19] tells the story. But these facts in themselves do not establish Longfellow’s claim to immortality, for there is no necessary connection between such popularity and greatness. There was little evidence in him of the genius which takes no thought for the things of the morrow. Until after the height of his career he never wrote in disregard of the public. “The fact is,” he sent word to his father, when he was but seventeen, “I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature.” And even earlier he had laid down his program when he wrote, “I am much better pleased with those pieces which touch the feelings and improve the heart, than with those which excite the imagination only.” He had the good sense and the honesty not to pretend to inspiration. On the contrary he was continually projecting poems and continually sitting down, not to write what he had thought but to think what he should write. He was an omnivorous but acquiescent reader, and what his reading yielded him was literary stuff rather than vital ideas. He accepted and reflected the ways of his own time and did not modify them in any slightest degree. He was never iconoclastic, rarely even fresh. He had something of Pope’s gift for well-rounded utterances on life, something of Scott’s ability to tell a good story well, and withal his own benevolent serenity.
This was not a supreme endowment, but it was a very large one, and he developed it to a lofty degree. There will always be a case for Longfellow in the hands of those who value the inspirer of the many above the inspirer of the wise. There are ten who read Longfellow to every one who reads Whitman or Emerson. His wholesomeness, his lucidity, his comfortable sanity, his very lack of intense emotion, endear him to those who wish to be entertained with a story or soothed and reassured by a gentle lyric. Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote finely of him: “His song was a household service, the ritual of our feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the curfew bell has tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice is silent, and he softly moves unto his rest.”
BOOK LIST
Individual Author
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Works. Riverside Edition. 1886. 11 vols. Poetry, Vols. I–VI, IX–XI. Prose, Vols. VII, VIII. Standard Library Edition. 14 vols. (Includes content of Riverside Edition plus the life by Samuel Longfellow.) The best single volume is the Cambridge Edition. His work appeared in book form originally as follows: Miscellaneous Poems from the United States Literary Gazette (with others), 1826; Coplas de Manrique, 1833; Outre-Mer, Vol. I, 1833, Vol. II, 1834; Hyperion, 1839; Voices of the Night, 1839; Ballads and Other Poems, 1842; Poems on Slavery, 1842; The Spanish Student, 1843; Poems, 1845; The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1846; Evangeline, 1847; Kavanagh, 1849; The Seaside and the Fireside, 1850; The Golden Legend, 1851; Hiawatha, 1855; Prose Works, 1857; The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858; The New England Tragedy, 1860; Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863; Flower-de-Luce, 1867; Dante’s Divina Commedia (translated), 1867; The New England Tragedies, 1868; The Divine Tragedy, 1871; Three Books of Song, 1872; Aftermath, 1873; The Masque of Pandora, 1875; Kéramos, 1878; Ultima Thule, 1880; In the Harbor, 1882; Michael Angelo, 1883.
Bibliography
A bibliography of first editions compiled by Luther S. Livingston. Privately printed 1908. See also Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 425–436.
Biography and Criticism
The standard life is by Samuel Longfellow. 3 vols. These first appeared as The Life, 1886 (2 vols), and Final Memorials, 1887 (1 vol).