After all, no translation, even taken at its best, can wholly satisfy an essentially original mind. Longfellow wrote in his diary, November 19, 1849, as follows: “And now I long to try a loftier strain, the sublimer Song whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through my soul in the better hours of life, and which I trust and believe will ere long unite themselves into a symphony not all unworthy the sublime theme, but furnishing ‘some equivalent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery.’” This of course refers to the great poetic design of his life, “Christus, a Mystery,” of which he wrote again on December 10, 1849, “A bleak and dismal day. Wrote in the morning ‘The Challenge of Thor’ as prologue or ‘Intro?tus’ to the second part of ‘Christus.’” This he laid aside; just a month from that time he records in his diary, “In the evening, pondered and meditated the sundry scenes of ‘Christus.’” Later, he wrote some half dozen scenes or more of 237 “The Golden Legend” which is Part Second of “Christus,” representing the medi?val period. He afterwards wished, on reading Kingsley’s “Saint’s Tragedy,” that he had chosen the theme of Elizabeth of Hungary in place of the minor one employed (Der Arme Heinrich), although if we are to judge by the comparative interest inspired by the two books, there is no reason for regret. At any rate his poem was published—the precursor by more than twenty years of any other portion of the trilogy of “Christus.” The public, and even his friends, knew but little of his larger project, but “The Golden Legend” on its publication in 1851 showed more of the dramatic quality than anything else he had printed, and Ruskin gave to it the strong praise of saying, “Longfellow in his ‘Golden Legend’ has entered more closely into the temper of the monk, for good or for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life’s labor to the analysis.”[96] It is to be noted that the passage in the book most criticised as unjust is taken from a sermon of an actual Italian preacher of the fifteenth century. But its accuracy or depth in this respect was probably less to the general public than its quality of readableness or that which G. P. R. James, the novelist, described as “its resemblance 238 to an old ruin with the ivy and the rich blue mould upon it.” If the rest of the long planned book could have been as successful as for the time being was the “Golden Legend,” the dream of Longfellow’s poetic life would have been fulfilled.
In view of such praise as Ruskin’s, the question of anachronism more or less is of course quite secondary. Errors of a few centuries doubtless occur in it. Longfellow himself states the period at which he aims as 1230. But the spire of Strassburg Cathedral of which he speaks was not built until the fifteenth century, though the church was begun in the twelfth, when Walter the Minnesinger flourished. “The Lily of Medicine,” which Prince Henry is reading when Lucifer drops in, was not written until after 1300, nor was St. John Nepomuck canonized until after that date. The Algerine piracies did not begin until the sixteenth century. There were other such errors; yet these do not impair the merit of the book. Some curious modifications also appear in later editions. In the passage where the monk Felix is described in the first edition as pondering over a volume of St. Augustine, this saint disappears in later editions, while the Scriptures are substituted and the passage reads:—
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“Wherein amazed he read
A thousand years in thy sight
Are but as yesterday when it is past
And as a watch in the night;”
and in the next line “downcast” is substituted for “cast down,” in order to preserve the rhyme. A very curious modification of a whole scene is to be found where the author ventured in the original edition (1851) to introduce a young girl at the midnight gaudiolum or carnival of the monks, she being apparently disguised as a monk, like Lucifer himself. This whole passage or series of passages was left out in the later editions, whether because it was considered too daring by his critics or perhaps not quite daring enough to give full spirit to the scene.
Turning now to “The New England Tragedies,” we find that as far back as 1839, before he had conceived of “Christus,” he had thought of a drama on Cotton Mather. Then a suggestion came to him in 1856 from his German friend, Emanuel Vitalis Scherb, of whom he writes on March 16, 1856: “Scherb wants me to write a poem on the Puritans and the Quakers. A good subject for a tragedy.” On March 25 and 26 we find him looking over books on the subject, especially Besse’s “Sufferings of the Quakers;” on April 2 he writes a scene of the play; on May 1 and 2 he is 240 pondering and writing notes, and says: “It is delightful to revolve in one’s mind a new conception.” He also works upon it in a fragmentary way in July and in November, and remarks, in the midst of it, that he has lying on his table more than sixty requests for autographs. As a background to all of this lie the peculiar excitements of that stormy summer of 1856, when his friend Sumner was struck down in the United States Senate and he himself, meeting with an accident, was lamed for weeks and was unable to go to Europe with his children as he had intended. The first rough draft of “Wenlock Christison,” whose title was afterwards changed to “John Endicott,” and which was the first of “The New England Tragedies,” was not finished till August 27, 1857, and the work alternated for a time with that done on “Miles Standish;” but it was more than ten years (October 10, 1868) before it was published, having first been written in prose, and only ten copies printed and afterwards rewritten in verse. With it was associated the second New England Tragedy, “Giles Corey” of the Salem farms, written rapidly in February of that same year. The volume never made a marked impression; even the sympathetic Mr. Fields, the publisher, receiving it rather coldly. It never satisfied even its author, and the new poetic idea which occurred 241 to him on April 11, 1871, and which was to harmonize the discord of “The New England Tragedies” was destined never to be fulfilled. In the mean time, however, he carried them to Europe with him, and seems to have found their only admirer in John Forster, who wrote to him in London: “Your tragedies are very beautiful—beauty everywhere subduing and chastening the sadness; the pictures of nature in delightful contrast to the sorrowful and tragic violence of the laws; truth and unaffectedness everywhere. I hardly know which I like best; but there are things in ‘Giles Corey’ that have a strange attractiveness for me.” Longfellow writes to Fields from Vevey, September 5, 1868: “I do not like your idea of calling the ‘Tragedies’ sketches. They are not sketches, and only seem so at first because I have studiously left out all that could impede the action. I have purposely made them simple and direct.” He later adds: “As to anybody’s ‘adapting’ these ‘Tragedies’ for the stage, I do not like the idea of it at all. Prevent this if possible. I should, however, like to have the opinion of some good actor—not a sensational actor—on that point. I should like to have Booth look at them.” Six weeks later, having gone over to London to secure the copyright on these poems, he writes: “I saw also Bandmann, the tragedian, who expressed 242 the liveliest interest in what I told him of the ‘Tragedies.’” Fina............