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LONGFELLOW.1

"I HAVE neither space, nor wish," writes Mr. Ruskin in his autobiography,2 "to extend my proposed account of things that have been by records of correspondence; it is too much the habit of modern biographers to confuse epistolary talk with vital fact." It is a long while since Mr. Ruskin has written anything so entirely to the purpose. In too much, perhaps, of all modern writing the vital fact is apt to get a little confused and lost sight

of; in biography it is certainly so. How could it be otherwise? Half of our latter-day biographies were worth writing in no circumstances; considerably more than one half of the remainder have too obviously been written in circumstances that could not but be fatal to the best biographer who ever set himself to paint a man "in his habit as he lived." That Gyas and Cloanthus were brave men no one doubts; and all would cordially allow them the merit of having been most charming in their family circles. But when the story of their lives comes to be writ large in black and white, how apt the charm is to fade. In the garish light of print the ways, the looks, the arts that seemed so winning and so wonderful to those who saw and felt them in their freshness, are apt to show such little things. The wit and the learning that set the affectionate critics of the fireside in a roar, or lulled them into mute admiring, but make the stony public stare. Those ethereal eyes that flashed such heavenly gleams beneath the bar of Michael Angelo, fade to the common light of every day. The great wave that was to fill the world with its

1 "The Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence.' Edited by Samuel Longfellow. Two volumes. London, 1886. 2 Præterita,' ch. vii.

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echoes sinks to a rustic murmur. "His coat, his waistcoat, his shoes and stockings, his trousers, his hat, his wit and humour, his pathos and his umbrella, all come before me like visions of my youth." That is the way of half our modern biographies. Mr. Sampson Brass failed as a lawyer; but had he lived on to our time he might have made his fortune as a biographer. A cunning artist may indeed contrive to give these dry bones some semblance of life; but cunning artists do not just at present seem inclined to labour in the field of biography. Too often the work has not even the saving virtue of Justice Shallow's estate :- 66 Barren, barren, barren; marry, good air;" but we miss even the good air.

And in those rare cases where the tale of the finished life is one we would willingly hear, still some malignant spirit is so apt to intervene. So fast the world moves now, so strenuously must we all pant after it, that unless the page comes hot from the press to supplement the funeral service, it is, we say, or seem to say, too late. The moment passes with the man. It is, indeed, a wonder we do not improve on the French fashion, and deliver our biographies impromptu over the open grave. They could not well be more perfunctory; and they could not but be shorter.

Small wonder then that our current biographical literature is such as it so frequently is; so confused, so barren and yet so wordy, so wanting in selection, arrangement, proportion; that so rarely the right man seems to have been chosen, or to have chosen himself, for the work. He who can work fastest is the man for our money; and where angels fear to tread who knows not what manner of man rushes in?

To all such biographers the habit Mr. Ruskin deprecates must be a boon indeed. To swell the volumes out with an unsorted, undigested mass of letters, journals, unpublished scraps, and the like, takes little time and less trouble; and thus at one blow fall the two great foes to modern literature. And it is a habit, moreover, which looks well upon the booksellers' counters. For we seem to have reversed in this, as in so many instances, the decision of our fathers, and hold a great book now to be no great evil. The reviewers may protest-when their own withers are unwrung; but who now cares for a reviewer?

Far be it from us to class Mr. Samuel Longfellow among these slipshod biographers; but we are bound to say that his work furnishes a very remarkable text to Mr. Ruskin's sermon. The two volumes make up about nine hundred pages, and we very much doubt if there are fifty of these unoccupied by the journals and correspondence. Mr. Longfellow, indeed, makes no pretence. In this fashion it seemed to him his appointed work could best be done; and in this fashion he has done it. Let him be heard in his own defence:

"The reader must be reminded at the outset, and must remember all along, that this is the life of a man of letters. Mr. Longfellow was not that exclusively, but he was that supremely. He touched life at many points ; and certainly he was no bookworm or dryasdust scholar shut up in a library. He kept the doors of his study always open, both literally and figuratively. But literature, as it was his earliest ambition, was always his most real interest; it was his constant point of view; it was his chosen refuge. His very profession was a literary one. Now, the life of a man of letters must needs be unexciting and uneventful in the eyes of men of activities and affairs. In such a life, a new book is a great adventure, a new poem or tale a chief event. Such a life can be painted only by a multitude of minute touches. For this reason, and because it was desirable that he should tell his own story as far as possible, a large part of this biography is made up of extracts from a daily journal. By such a method could the reader best learn how a man of letters spends his time, and what occupies his thoughts. It brings the reader face to face

with the author whom he has known in his books; letting him, as far as is fitting, into his intimacy. It presupposes an interest in, and a familiarity with, the writings whose inception and completion are so frequently, if briefly, noted. It trusts much to the personal interest which, in this instance, the writings seem in a remarkable degree to have inspired-an interest which it is believed this book, if it may in some things modify, will in no degree diminish. If in anything it should seem to fall short, let it be remembered that the poet had already put the best of himself into his books."

Precisely; but then, why give us so very much of the second best? Not being quite of Mr. Ruskin's stern virtue, we will cordially own that journals and correspondence are in themselves no bad things. Probably no one ever wished that Boswell or Lockhart or Mr. Trevelyan had given us less of either in their famous biographies. But there are journals and journals, journals, correspondence and correspondence.

"August 3rd (1848). The capacity of the human frame for sleep in summer is very great. F. read Channing's Life till dinner.

"4th. Brought T. with us to Melville's. A long chat in the evening, of course; about France and England, and Emerson and Tennyson, and Milnes and Florence Nightingale.

"5th. Walked with T. and C. to the pond. Found an enormous leech; propitious sign for bathers! Afternoon, drove to Dr. Holmes's house on the old Wendell farm; a snug little place, with views of the river and the mountains.'

The Grand Vizier must certainly have died in Boston about that time!

There are better things than this in the diary, of course; just as there are many letters in the two volumes better worth printing than this:—

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characteristic of this author; and as the reader is left in complete ignorance of the person addressed, and the work which stirred his, or her, sympathy, the irrelevance of the document is, to say the least, not diminished. We do not mean to offer these extracts as samples either of the journals or the correspondence; in the earlier part especially there is much that is very different from this, much that, if not absolutely vital, is at any rate pleasant to read and interesting; but certainly the supply of these very "minute touches seems rather in excess of any reasonable demand.

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We are very far indeed from wishing to cavil at this labour of love; and indeed the faults, such as they are, obviously arise from a feeling which one cannot but respect, while regretting that it should have marred what might have been so interesting a record of the life of so devoted and sincere a man of letters. How hard it must have been to let the editor over-ride the friend, to silence one of these voices of the dead, all will understand. Yet there is a duty imposed on all who would make a book for the people to read; and sentiment cannot be suffered to stand in its way. There must be passages in every journal which to the public eye will seem trivial and commonplace. The business of keeping a journal is apt to grow mechanical; sooner than let it languish the writer will jot down anything which comes into his head, merely to keep his hand in, or to satisfy the sense of duty. And often these insignificant entries will prove most pleasant and capable handmaids to memory, stealing fire and many another comfort from the fountains of

the past. But to us who are not behind the scenes they have not this virtue. And it is the same with letters. Those yellow, faded pages which seem perhaps to us so bald, so pointless, so unnecessary, may to him for whose eye they were written have been through long years inexhaustible

sources of consolation, tender secrets, sweet remembrances of the loved and lost, long lost but unforgotten.

"The touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still,"

may be felt and heard in every linebut not by all. There they are; the mere "epistolary talk," the passing chatter of the moment, the idle thought, the trivial record of an empty day-and "the vital fact." It is the business of an editor to separate the last from the heap and to give it to us. not done this.

Mr. Longfellow has One cannot be hard on him for the defects of his book, remembering whence no doubt they came; but one cannot be blind to them.

And in the case of such a life as Longfellow's, and such a temperament, this business of separation was preeminently necessary. That life so even, so serene, so unvexed by all jarring sounds that echoed outside the four walls of his Cambridge library, flowed on as tranquilly as his own dear river Charles

"The beauty of whose stillness Overflowed him like a tide."

Very beautiful was his life, and very still. In one of his later pieces there are some lines which one might almost fancy designed for his own theory of existence, if not for his practice

"On its terraced walk aloof

Leans a monk with folded hands,
Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he."

An indolent man he never was. Indeed during his tenure of the chairs of Modern Literature and Languages, first at Bowdoin College and afterwards at Harvard, that is to say, from his twenty-second to his forty

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seventh year, he was an extremely industrious man. Rarely through those years did a day pass without its line. He did not, as some do, take the completion of a work as the signal for a holiday, but rather as the signal for leisure to begin a new one. his journal for the year 1847, the fortieth year of his life, is this passage:-"Evangeline is ended. I wrote the last lines this morning. And now for a little prose; a romance, which I have in my brain-Kavanagh by name." And most assuredly he did not neglect his pupils. Never did a more conscientious professor hold a chair, and never, probably, a more popular one. Though the conditions of his appointment at Bowdoin College only prescribed instruction in modern languages, he carefully prepared a course of written lectures, besides selecting and editing many text-books for the students. Finding no French grammar to his taste, we are told, he translated and printed for the use of his pupils the grammar of L'Homond, which had the particular virtue of containing all that was essential in a small compass. He also in the same year edited a collection of French 'Proverbes Dramatiques,' and a small Spanish reader, 'Novelas Españolas.'

"Among the French books in the library," he writes to his father, "I have just found a few volumes which are so much what is wanted for a text-book that I have conIcluded to make a selection from them for my pupils and others. The work is a collection of Dramatic Proverbs, or small plays, such as are performed in Paris by ladies and gentlemen in private society. The book is so exactly what we stand in need of that I am only surprised that something of the kind has not appeared here before. The more I see of the life of an instructor, the more I wonder at the course generally pursued by teachers. They seem to forget that the young mind is to be interested in order to be instructed. Look at the text-books in use. What are they? Extracts from the best and most polished writers of the nation; food for mature minds, but a fruit that hangs beyond the reach of children, or those whom ignorance of a foreign language puts on the footing of children. But the little collection which I propose to publish unites the simplicity and ease of conversation with the interest of a short comedy which turns

upon some situation in common life, and whose plot illustrates some familiar proverb which stands at its head by way of motto."

This view of education is common enough now, but it was not so common half a century ago, and even less common probably in America than in England. It is much to the young and untried professor's credit that he should have broken from the bondage of custom, and dared to amuse his pupils as well as instruct them. And he did more; he interested and attracted them. "His intercourse with the students," writes one, was perfectly simple, frank, and manly." "His manner," testifies another, was invariably full of that charming courtesy which it never lacked throughout his whole life. . . . He was always on the alert, quick to hear, ready to respond. We were fond of him from the start; his speech charmed us; his earnest and dignified demeanour inspired us." To his chosen friend, George Greene, he about this time gives a pleasant picture of his life at the college

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"I rise at six in the morning, and hear a French recitation of Sophomores immediately. At seven I breakfast, and am then master of my time till eleven, when I hear a Spanish lesson of juniors. After that I take a lunch; and at twelve I go into the library" (he was librarian as well as professor) "where I remain till one. I am then at leisure for the afternoon till five, when I have a French recitation of juniors. At six I take coffee ; then walk and visit friends till nine; study till twelve, and sleep till six, when I begin the same round again. Such is the daily routine of my life. The intervals of collegeduty, I fill up with my own studies. You see, I lead a very sober, jog-trot kind of life. My circle of acquaintances is very limited. I am on very intimate terms with three families, and that is quite enough. I like intimate footings; I do not care for general society. I am delighted more and more with the profession I have embraced, and hope ere long to see you in a situation similar to my own.'

His duties at Harvard, in which he succeeded George Ticknor in 1837, were more distinctly professorial, and left him accordingly more leisure for his own studies and for society. To

the same friend he writes in the beginning of that year

"I have taken up my abode in Cambridge. My chambers are very pleasant, with great

trees in front, whose branches almost touch my windows; so that I have a nest not unlike the birds, being high up in the third story.

My life here is very quiet and agreeable. Like the clown in Shakespeare, I have 'no enemy but winter and rough weather.' I wish never a worse one. . . . I am now occupied in preparing a course of lectures on German literature, to be delivered next summer. I do not write them out, but make notes and translations. I think this the best way decidedly. In this course something of the Danish and Swedish (the new feathers in my cap) is to be mingled. From all this you will gather that my occupations are of the most delightful kind."

A little later, when he had moved into Craigie House, which was to be his home for the rest of his life, he sends to the same friend a rather less satisfied picture of his condition :—

"I live in a great house which looks like an Italian villa; have two large rooms opening into each other. They were once General Washington's chambers. I breakfast at seven on tea and toast, and dine at five or six, generally in Boston. In the evening I walk on the Common with Hillard, or alone; then go back to Cambridge on foot. If not very late, I sit an hour with Felton or Sparks. For nearly two years I have not studied at night save now and then. Most of the time I am alone; smoke a good deal; wear a broad-brimmed black hat, black frock coat, a black cane. Molest no one. Dine out frequently. In winter go much into Boston society. The last year have written a great deal, enough to make volumes. Have not read much. Have a number of literary plans and projects, some of which will ripen before long, and be made known to you. I do not like this sedentary life. I want action. I want to travel."

His sedate toilette was possibly adopted in deference to the sober tastes of the new community he had entered. On his first appearance it was thought his fancies that way were a little too florid, showing rather too much colour in the matter of waistcoats and cravats ; just as some sterner academic tastes at first found his lectures rather "too flowery." It was perhaps some momentary sense of revolt against this Puritanism that led him to write rather

angrily to his father about "the LittlePeddlington community of Boston." "Boston is only a great village," he says; and, "the tyranny of public opinion there surpasses all belief; "a private opinion one has heard more than once expressed since. To his father, also, he sends this sketch of the course of his first year's lectures

"(1) Introduction. History of the French Language. (2) The other languages of the South of Europe. (3) History of the Northern, or Gothic, Languages. (4) Anglo-Saxon Literature. (5 and 6) Swedish Literature. (7) Sketch of German Literature. (8, 9, 10) Life and Writings of Goethe. (11 and 12) Life and Writings of Jean Paul Richter. Some of these are written lectures; others will be delivered from notes. If I feel well during the summer and am in good spirits, I may extend the course. People seem to feel some curiosity about the lectures, and consequently I am eager to commence, relying mainly for success on the interesting topics I shall be able to bring forward. Having in my own mind an idea, and a pretty fixed one, of what lectures should be, and having undertaken nothing but what I feel myself competent to do without effort, I have no great anxiety as to the result."

He lectured orally once a week the year through, and in the summer term read two weekly papers on literary history or belles-lettres in addition. Besides these he was expected to generally supervise the studies in foreign languages; the tutors as well as the students, and the former seem to have given him most trouble. In the autumn of the same year he writes to his father

"My lectures make something of a parade on paper, and require of course some attention, though they are all unwritten, save the summer course, which I think I shall this year write out. The arrangement with the Committee requires me to lecture but once a week. I throw in another, to show that I am not reluctant to work, and likewise for my own good; namely, to make me read attentively, give me practice, and keep me from growing indolent. It is, however, astonishing how little I accomplish during a week. then this four-in-hand of outlandish animals" (the foreign tutors) "all pulling the wrong way, except one, this gives me more trouble than anything else. I have more anxiety about their doing well than about my own.

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