Let us now return from the history of Longfellow’s academic life to his normal pursuit, literature. It seemed a curious transition from the real and genuine sympathy for human wrong, as shown in the “Poems on Slavery,” to the purely literary and historic quality of the “Spanish Student” (1843), a play never quite dramatic enough to be put on the stage, at least in English, though a German version was performed at the Ducal Court Theatre in Dessau, January 28, 1855. As literary work it was certainly well done; though taken in part from the tale of Cervantes “La Gitanilla,” and handled before by Montalvan and by Solis in Spanish, and by Middleton in English, it yet was essentially Longfellow’s own in treatment, though perhaps rather marred by taking inappropriately the motto from Robert Burns. He wrote of it to Samuel Ward in New York, December, 1840, calling it “something still longer which as yet no eye but mine has seen and which I wish to read to you first.” He then adds, “At present, 189 my dear friend, my soul is wrapped up in poetry. The scales fell from my eyes suddenly, and I beheld before me a beautiful landscape, with figures, which I have transferred to paper almost without an effort, and with a celerity of which I did not think myself capable. Since my return from Portland I am almost afraid to look at it, for fear its colors should have faded out. And this is the reason why I do not describe the work to you more particularly. I am not sure it is worth it. You shall yourself see and judge before long.” He thus afterwards describes it to his father: “I have also written a much longer and more difficult poem, called ‘The Spanish Student,’—a drama in five acts; on the success of which I rely with some self-complacency. But this is a great secret, and must not go beyond the immediate family circle; as I do not intend to publish it until the glow of composition has passed away, and I can look upon it coolly and critically. I will tell you more of this by and by.” Longfellow’s work on “The Poets and Poetry of Europe” appeared in 1845, and was afterwards reprinted with a supplement in 1871. The original work included 776 pages,[74] the supplement adding 340 more. The supplement is 190 in some respects better edited than the original, because it gives the names of the translators, and because he had some better translators to draw upon, especially Rossetti. It can be said fairly of the whole book that it is intrinsically one of the most attractive of a very unattractive class, a book of which the compiler justly says that, in order to render the literary history of the various countries complete, “an author of no great note has sometimes been admitted, or a poem which a severer taste would have excluded.” “The work is to be regarded,” he adds, “as a collection, rather than as a selection, and in judging any author it must be borne in mind the translations do not always preserve the rhythm and melody of the original, but often resemble soldiers moving forward when the music has ceased and the time is marked only by the tap of the drum.” It includes, in all, only ten languages, the Celtic and Slavonic being excluded, as well as the Turkish and Romaic, a thing which would now seem strange. But the editor’s frank explanation of the fact, where he says “with these I am not acquainted,” disarms criticism. This explanation implies that he was personally acquainted with the six Gothic languages of Northern Europe—Anglo-Saxon, Icelandish, Danish, Swedish, German, and Dutch—and the four Latin languages of the South of Europe—French, 191 Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The mere work of compiling so large a volume in double columns of these ten languages was something formidable, and he had reason to be grateful to his friend Professor Felton, who, being a German student, as well as a Greek scholar, compiled for him all the biographical notes in the book. It is needless to say that the selection is as good as the case permitted or as the plan of the book allowed, and the volume has always maintained its place of importance in libraries. Many of the translations were made expressly for it, especially in the supplement; among these being Platen’s “Remorse,” Reboul’s “The Angel and Child,” and Malherbe’s “Consolation.” It is to be remembered that Longfellow’s standard of translation was very high and that he always maintained, according to Mrs. Fields, that Americans, French, and Germans had a greater natural gift for it than the English on account of the greater insularity of the latter’s natures.[75] It is also to be noted that he sometimes failed to find material for translation where others found it, as, for instance, amid the endless beauty of the Greek Anthology, which he called “the most melancholy of books with an odor of dead garlands about it. Voices from the grave, cymbals of Bacchantes, songs of love, sighs, groans, 192 prayers,—all mingled together. I never read a book that made me sadder.”[76]
His fame at this time was widely established, yet a curious indication of the fact that he did not at once take even Cambridge by storm, as a poet, is in a letter from Professor Andrews Norton, father of the present Professor Charles E. Norton, to the Rev. W. H. Furness of Philadelphia. The latter had apparently applied to Mr. Norton for advice as to a desirable list of American authors from whom to make some literary selections, perhaps in connection with an annual then edited by him and called “The Diadem.” Professor Norton, as one of the most cultivated Americans, might naturally be asked for some such counsel. In replying he sent Mr. Furness, under date of January 7, 1845, a list of fifty-four eligible authors, among whom Emerson stood last but one, while Longfellow was not included at all. He then appended a supplementary list of twenty-four minor authors, headed by Longfellow.[77] We have already seen Lowell, from a younger point of view, describing Longfellow, at about this time, as the head of a “clique,” and we now find Andrews Norton, from an older point of view, assigning him only the first place among authors of the second grade. It is curious 193 to notice, in addition, that Hawthorne stood next to Longfellow in this subordinate roll.
Longfellow published two volumes of poetic selections, “The Waif” (1845) and “The Estray” (1846), the latter title being originally planned as “Estrays in the Forest,” and he records a visit to the college library, in apparent search for the origin of the phrase. His next volume of original poems, however, was “The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems,” published December 23, 1845, the contents having already been partly printed in “Graham’s Magazine,” and most of them in the illustrated edition of his poems published in Philadelphia. The theme of the volume appears to have been partly suggested by some words in a letter to Freiligrath which seem to make the leading poem, together with that called “Nuremberg,” a portion of that projected series of travel-sketches which had haunted Longfellow ever since “Outre-Mer.” “The Norman Baron” was the result of a passage from Thierry, sent him by an unknown correspondent. One poem was suggested by a passage in Andersen’s “Story of my Life,” and one was written at Boppard on the Rhine. All the rest were distinctly American in character or origin. Another poem, “To the Driving Cloud,” the chief of the Omaha Indians, was his first effort at hexameters and prepared the way 194 for “Evangeline.” His translation of the “Children of the Lord’s Supper” had also served by way of preparation; and he had happened upon a specimen in “Blackwood’s Magazine” of the hexameter translation of the “Iliad” which had impressed him very much. He even tried a passage of “Evangeline” rendered into English pentameter verse, and thus satisfied himself that it was far less effective for his purpose than the measure finally adopted.
There is no doubt that the reading public at large has confirmed the opinion of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes when he says, “Of the longer poems of our chief singer, I should not hesitate to select ‘Evangeline’ as the masterpiece, and I think the general verdict of opinion would confirm my choice.... From the first line of the poem, from its first words, we read as we would float down a broad and placid river, murmuring softly against its banks, heaven over it, and the glory of the unspoiled wilderness all around.” The words “This is the forest primeval” have become as familiar, he thinks, as the “Arma virumque cano” which opened Virgil’s “?neid,” and he elsewhere calls the poem “the tranquil current of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines.” The sub............