Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“ It is the influence of natural scenery in forming the poetical character. Genius, to be sure, must be born with a man; and it is its high prerogative to be free, limitless, irrepressible. Yet how is it moulded by the plastic hand of Nature! how are its attributes shaped and modulated, when a genius like Canova’s failed in the bust of the Corsican, and amid the splendor of the French metropolis languished for the sunny skies and vine-clad hills of Italy? ”

“ Men may talk of sitting down in the calm and quiet of their libraries, and of forgetting, in the eloquent companionship of books, all the vain cares that beset them in the crowded thoroughfares of life; but, after all, there is nothing which so frees us from the turbulent ambition and bustle of the world, nothing which so fills the mind with great and glowing conceptions, and at the same time so warms the heart with love and tenderness, as a frequent and close communion with natural scenery. ”

“ Longfellow spent his summer at the water-cure in Marienberg, with some diverging trips, as those to Paris, Antwerp, and Bruges. In Paris he took a letter to Jules Janin, now pretty well forgotten, but then the foremost critic in Paris, who disliked the society of literary men, saying that he never saw them and never wished to see them; and who had quarrelled personally with all the French authors, except Lamartine, whom he pronounced “as good as an angel.” In Bruges the young traveller took delight in the belfry, and lived to transmit some of its charms to others. ”

“ I was so happy with my dear Mary, that it is very hard to be alone. The sympathies of friendship are doubtless something—but after all how little, how unsatisfying they are to one who has been so loved as I have been! This is a selfish sorrow, I know: but neither reason nor reflection can still it. Affliction makes us childish. A grieved and wounded heart is hard to be persuaded. We do not wish to have our sorrow lessened. There are wounds, which are never entirely healed. A thousand associations call up the past, with all its gloom and shadow. ”

“ With us, the spirit of the age is clamorous for utility,—for visible, tangible utility,—for bare, brawny, muscular utility. We would be roused to action by the voice of the populace, and the sounds of the crowded mart, and not ‘lulled to sleep in shady idleness with poet’s pastimes.’ We are swallowed up in schemes for gain, and engrossed with contrivances for bodily enjoyments, as if this particle of dust 76 were immortal,—as if the soul needed no aliment, and the mind no raiment. ”

“ This was practically conceded by those poets themselves, and it is this fact which in reality excited the wrath of their especial admirers. No man ever sacrificed less for mere fame than Longfellow, no man ever bore attack or jealousy with more of manly self-respect and sweetness; he simply lived his own life, and worked out his own literary method; all that he asked was to be taken for what he was worth, and the world’s praise was the answer to his request. The continuance of this hold on men surely affords a sufficient reason for the renewed study of this poet’s life, training, and career. ”

“ Of the many causes which have hitherto retarded the growth of polite literature in our country, I have not time to say much. The greatest, which now exists, is doubtless the want of that exclusive attention, which eminence in any profession so imperiously demands. Ours is an age and a country of great minds, though perhaps not of great endeavors. Poetry with us has never yet been anything but a pastime. ”

“ MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT BRUNSWICK
It has been a source of regret to many that the memoirs of Longfellow, even when prepared by his brother, have given, perhaps necessarily, so little space to his early love and first marriage, facts which are apt to be, for a poet, the turning-points in his career. We know that this period in Lowell’s life, for instance, brought what seemed almost a transformation of his nature, making an earnest reformer and patriot of a youth who had hitherto been little more than a brilliant and somewhat reckless boy. ”

“ Is, then, our land to be indeed the land of song? Will it one day be rich in romantic associations? Will poetry, that hallows every scene,—that renders every spot classical,—and pours out on all things the soul of its enthusiasm, breathe over it that enchantment, which lives in the isles of Greece, and is more than life amid the “woods, that wave o’er Delphi’s steep”? ”

“ Thus all the hopes I had so fondly cherished of returning home with my dear Mary in happiness and renovated health have in the providence of God ended in disappointment and sorrow unspeakable. All that I have left to me in my affliction is the memory of her goodness, her gentleness, her affection for me—unchangeable in life and in death—and the hope of meeting her again hereafter, where there shall be no more sickness, nor sorrow, nor suffering, nor death. I feel, too, that she must be infinitely, oh, infinitely happier now than when with us on earth, and I say to myself,—
“Peace! ”

“ Emerson reached greater depths of thought; Whittier touched the problems of the nation’s life more deeply; Holmes came personally more before the public; Lowell was more brilliant and varied; but, taking the English-speaking world at large, it was Longfellow whose fame overshadowed all the others; he was also better known and more translated upon the continent of Europe than all the rest put together, and, indeed, than any other contemporary poet of the English-speaking race, at least if bibliographies afford any test. ”

“ It is a curious but indisputable fact that no house in Cambridge, even in the tenfold larger university circle of to-day, presents such a constant course of hospitable and refined social intercourse as existed at Craigie House in the days of Longfellow. Whether it is that professors are harder worked and more poorly paid, or only that there happens to be no one so sought after by strangers and so able, through favoring fortune, to receive them, is not clear. ”

“ No one, surely, but must recognize the dignity of the proceeding when an American writer, born and bred, is, as it were, invited after death to stand as a permanent representative of his race in the storied abbey. On the other hand, it may easily be conceded that the dignitaries of Westminster are not, of themselves, necessarily so well versed in American claims as to make their verdict infallible or even approximate. ”

“ We boast of the increase and extent of our physical strength, the sound of populous cities, breaking the silence and solitude of our Western territories,—plantations conquered from the forest, and gardens springing up in the wilderness. Yet the true glory of a nation consists not in the extent of its territory, the pomp of its forests, the majesty of its rivers, the height of its mountains and the beauty of its sky ”

“ It was undoubtedly an important fact to the young poet to be brought thus early in contact with Sir William Jones and his twenty-eight languages. It is the experience of all that the gift of learning a variety of tongues is something which peculiarly belongs to youth. In Southern Europe, in Russia, in the East, it is a common thing to encounter mere children who with next to no schooling will prattle readily in three or four languages with equal inaccuracy but with equal ease; while a much older person may acquire them by laborious study and yet never feel at home. ”

“ True greatness is the greatness of the mind;—the true glory of a nation is moral and intellectual preëminence.” [25]
“Not he alone,” the poet boldly goes on, “does service to the State, whose wisdom guides her councils at home, nor he whose voice asserts her dignity abroad. A thousand little rills, springing up in the retired walks of life, go to swell the rushing tide of national glory and prosperity; and whoever in the solitude of his chamber, and by even a single effort of his mind, has added to the intellectual preëminence of his 77 country, has not lived in vain, nor to himself alone.” ”

“ I want to spend one year at Cambridge for the purpose of reading history and of becoming familiar with the best authors in polite literature; whilst at the same time I can be acquiring a knowledge of the Italian language, without an acquaintance with which I shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful departments of letters. The French I mean to understand pretty thoroughly before I leave college. After leaving Cambridge I would attach myself to some literary periodical publication, by which I could maintain myself and still enjoy the advantages of reading. ”

“ Is it not a poor thing for Longfellow that he is no abolitionist—that his anti-slavery poetry is perfect dish water beside Whittier’s—and that he has just penned a Pæan on the Union? I can no more comprehend what there is in the Union to make the Yankee nation adore it—than you can understand the attractions of Royalty & Aristocracy which thousands of very good people in England look on as the source & mainstay of all that is great and good in the nation.... ”

“ Truly, many quaint and quiet customs, many comic scenes and strange adventures, many wild and wondrous things, fit for humorous tale, and soft, pathetic story, lie all about us here in New England. There is no tradition of the Rhine nor of the Black Forest, which can compare in beauty with that of the Phantom Ship. ”

“ It is in the hearts of those men, whose love for the world’s gain,—for its business and its holiday,—has grown cold within them, and who have gone into the retirements of Nature, and have found there that sweet sentiment and pure devotion of feeling can spring up and live in the shadow of a low and quiet life, and amid those that have no splendor in their joys, and no parade in their griefs. ”

“ It is the common fate of those poets who live to old age, that their critics, or at least their contemporary critics, are apt to find their later work less valuable than their earlier. Browning, Tennyson, and Swinburne, to mention no others, have had to meet this fate, and Longfellow did not escape it. Whether it is that the fame of the earlier work goes on accumulating while the later has not yet been tested by time, or that contemporary admirers have grown older and more critical when they are introduced to the later verses, this is hard to decide. ”

“ It is indeed doubtful if any Harvard professor of to-day could record in his note-books an equally continuous course of mild festivities. There are weeks when he never spends an evening at home. He often describes himself as “gloomy,” but the gloom is never long visible. He constantly walks in and out of Boston, or drives to Brookline or Jamaica Plain; and whist and little suppers are never long omitted. Lowell was not as yet promoted to his friendship because of youth, nor had he and Holmes then been especially brought together, but Prescott, Sumner, Felton, and others constantly appear. ”

“ And whether we are charmed by his imagery, or soothed by his melodious versification, or elevated by the moral teachings of his pure muse, or follow with sympathetic hearts the wanderings of Evangeline, I am sure that all who hear my voice will join with me in the tribute I desire to pay to the genius of Longfellow.’” [108]
“We have but one life here on earth,” wrote Longfellow in his diary; “we must make that beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of mind are needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must be avoided.” ”

“ No great subject in educational thought ever obtained a firm hold that had not some modern connection with the day. I do not overlook the literary element in the study of modern languages, but you will have a stronger hold for the next twenty years than you have in the past, owing to this use of modern languages in daily life, incident to the industrial and commercial activity of the country.’”
It is always to be borne in mind that Longfellow’s self-restrained and well-ordered temperament habitually checked him in the career of innovator. ”

“ There is then the novel and peculiar fact which attaches to the erection of a monument here to the memory of Henry Longfellow. In some sense, poets—great poets like him—may be said to be natives of all lands; but never before have the great men of other countries, however brilliant and widespread their fame, been admitted to a place in Westminster Abbey. A century ago America was just commencing her perilous path of independence and self-government. ”

“ A national literature is the expression of national character and thought; and as our character and modes of thought do not differ essentially from those of England, our literature cannot. Vast forests, lakes, and prairies cannot make great poets. They are but the scenery of the play, and have much less to do with the poetic character than has been imagined. Neither Mexico nor Switzerland has produced any remarkable poet. ”

“ Literature in a new country naturally tends to the florid, and one needs only to turn to the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, or even Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” to see how eminently this was the case in America. Whatever the genius of Poe, for instance, we can now see that he represented, in this respect, a dangerous tendency, and Poe’s followers and admirers exemplified it in its most perilous form. ”

“ I am happy to observe that my ambition has never been to accumulate wealth for my children, but to cultivate their minds in the best possible manner, and to imbue them with correct moral, political, and religious principles,—believing that a person thus educated will with proper diligence be certain of attaining all the wealth which is necessary to happiness. With regard to your spending a year at Cambridge, I have always thought it might be beneficial; and if my health should not be impaired and my finances should allow, I should be very happy to gratify you.... ”