Seatsfield: ‘No, Sir, perhaps not; there is a considerable difference of calibre between them. I should say now that Longfellow was a first-rate artist with a second-rate imagination, and that Pierpont was only a second-rate artist with a first-rate fancy. There is no mistake in Pierpont.’
I smiled at Seatsfield’s affectation of Americanisms, as if out of compliment to myself, or in honor of the day; and I rejoined: ‘There may be no mistake in Pierpont, but there is one or two in Longfellow.’
Seatsfield: ‘Grammatical or prosodiacal?’
‘Neither; but in the beginning of his ‘Psalm of Life,’ he says:
‘Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream;
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.’
‘Here he evidently meant things are what they seem; for in the next stanza he goes on to say:
‘Life is real, life is earnest,