As an illustration of this obvious fact that Longfellow, during this first European visit, while nominally training himself for purely educational work, was fitting himself also for a 55 literary career, we find from his letter to his father, May 15, 1829, that while hearing lectures in German and studying faithfully that language, he was, as he says, “writing a book, a kind of Sketch-Book of scenes in France, Spain, and Italy.” We shall presently encounter this book under the name of “Outre-Mer.” He connects his two aims by saying in the same letter, “One must write and write correctly, in order to teach.” Again he adds, “The further I advance, the more I see to be done. The more, too, I am persuaded of the charlatanism of literary men. For the rest, my fervent wish is to return home.” His brother tells us that among his note-books of that period, we find a favorite passage from Locke which reappears many years after in one of his letters and in his impromptu address to the children of Cambridge, in 1880: “Thus the ideas as well as the children of our youth often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.”[14] He also included a quotation from John Lyly’s “Endymion,” which ten years later furnished the opening of his own “Hyperion.” 56 “Dost thou know what a poet is? Why, fool, a poet is as much as one should say—a poet.” When we consider what he had just before written to his sister, it only furnishes another illustration of the fact, which needs no demonstration, that young authors do not always know themselves.
He reached home from Europe, after three years of absence, on August 11, 1829, looking toward Bowdoin College as his abode, and a professorship of modern languages as his future position. Up to this time, to be sure, the economical college had offered him only an instructorship. But he had shown at this point that quiet decision and firmness which marked him in all practical affairs, and which was not always quite approved by his more anxious father. In this case he carried his point, and he received on the 6th of September this simple record of proceedings from the college:—
“In the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College, Sept. 1st, 1829: Mr. Henry W. Longfellow having declined to accept the office of instructor in modern languages.
“Voted, that we now proceed to the choice of a professor of modern languages.
“And Mr. H. W. Longfellow was chosen.”
Thus briefly was the matter settled, and he was launched upon his life’s career at the age of 57 twenty-two. Of those who made up his circle of friends in later years, Holmes had just graduated from Harvard, Sumner was a Senior there, and Lowell was a schoolboy in Cambridge. Few American colleges had at that time special professors of modern languages, though George Ticknor had set a standard for them all. Longfellow had to prepare his own text-books—to translate “L’Homond’s Grammar,” to edit an excellent little volume of French “Proverbes Dramatiques,” and a small Spanish Reader, “Novelas Españolas.” He was also enlisted in a few matters outside, and drew up the outline of a prospectus for a girls’ high school in Portland, such high schools being then almost as rare as professorships of modern languages. He was also librarian. He gave a course of lectures on French, Spanish, and Italian literature, but there seems to have been no reference to German, which had not then come forward into the place in American education which it now occupies. As to literature, he wrote to his friend, George W. Greene, “Since my return I have written one piece of poetry, but have not published a line. You need not be alarmed on that score. I am all prudence now, since I can form a more accurate judgment of the merit of poetry. If I ever publish a volume, it will be many years first.” It was 58 actually nine years. For the “North American Review” he wrote in April, 1831, an essay on “The Origin and Progress of the French Language.” He afterwards sent similar papers to the same periodical upon the Italian and Spanish languages and literatures, each of these containing also original translations. Thus he entered on his career as a teacher, but another change in life also awaited him.
[11] Life, i. 90, 91.
[12] Life, i. 165.
[13] Scudder’s Men and Letters, 28, 29.
[14] Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, bk. ii. ch. 10, “Of Retention.”