generally regarded as the greatest artistic achievement of a literary nature of any age-namely, his Translation of Dante's Divina Commedia. The entire poem, numbering fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines, has been rendered into English, answering line for line and word for word to the original Italian; and this, it is claimed, without detracting from the native vigor, sense, and grace of the poem. In this triumph of translation Longfellow stands alone, though Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, Coleridge, Fairfax and Rose, and Cary have all been competitors. In 1868, The New England Tragedies appeared. They are two in number, and constitute a romantic setting off of early Quaker history in New England, executed in a style whose clearness and severe plainness are strikingly germain to the incidents. The Poets and Poetry of Europe, and a volume recently issued, entitled The Divine Tragedy, close the long and worthy list of Longfellow's labors. "They are the work of a scholar, of a man of taste, of a fertile fancy, and of a loving heart."* /Longfellow's eminence as a poet consists not so much in originality or boldness of conception, or in ingenuity of plot, as in the exuberance and beauty of his language, the harmonious flow of his verse, and the striking appositeness of his imagery."/ "It is at once his aid and his merit that he can produce the choice pictures of the past and of other minds with new accessories of his own; so that the quaint old poets of Germany, the singers of the past centuries, the poetical vision and earnest teachings of Goethe, and the every-day humors of Jean Paul, as it were, come to live among us in American homes and landscapes."+ A healthful, hopeful, solacing, ennobling, religious air pervades his every utterance. He is the poet of the heart and hoine; and his writings, now so widely and pleasurably read, will continue to savor of beauty, purity, and pathos * Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature. † Ibid. with the people so long as the affections of the human heart and the interests of home shall remain dear./ How almost like a divine message does the following poem from By the Fireside address itself to the bereaved and desolate heart most tenderly chiding its anguish, and pouring into its darkness rays of comfort and eternal promise! RESIGNATION. THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair! The air is full of farewells to the dying, The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Let us be patient! These severe afflictions But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps. There is no death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, She is not dead,—the child of our affection,— Where she no longer needs our poor protection, In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, Day after day we think what she is doing Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, Not as a child shall we again behold her; In our embraces we again enfold her, But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, And beautiful with all the soul's expansion, And though at times impetuous with emotion The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, We will be patient, and assuage the feeling We may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. The leading peculiarity of Longfellow's style is its musicalness-a musicalness, too, that is not so far removed as that only a practiced ear may catch it, but is simple and unequivocal and spontaneous. Y His artistic sense is so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable study. In this he has now reacned a perfection quite unrivaled among living poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. . . . . His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the learned poets." (See Supplement E.) .... BRYANT. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cummington, Hampshire county, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. "Bryant early displayed the poetical faculty, and fastened upon the genial influences of Nature about him. He began to write verses at nine, and at the age of fourteen he prepared a collection of poems which was published at Boston in 1809."* Leaving Williams College without graduating-thoigh honorably-he began the study, and subsequently the practice, of law, which he prosecuted some ten years. Thanatopsis was written in his nineteenth year, and, when published in 1816, was for some time, attributed by critics to his father. Of this poem it has been remarked by one of the most scrupulous and able of reviewers, † "It alone would establish the author's claim to the honors of genius." THANATOPSIS. To him who in the love of Nature holds When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around,- Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Shalt thou retire alone,-nor couldst thou wish The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, |