A LOVABLE MAN AND ARTIST. a man are irked by his acceptance of life as it is and his enjoyable relations to it. There is something exasperating to serious minds in his placid waiver of things grievous or distasteful. They ask what cause he has advanced, how has he enlarged the province of thought, : what conflict has he sung? Where are his rapture, his longing, his infinitudes? They see his fellow-poet, less prosperous and accomplished, who defied obloquy, and rose to passion in denouncing wrong, of peace, yet valiant as Great-Heart in behalf of freedom and the rights of man. They recall another, who sought out the inmost laws of spiritual life. But why expect a poet to be other than he is? Recognize the instinct that defined his range, and value the range at its worth. Longfellow spoke according to his voice and vision. The attempt to do otherwise ends all. A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager. 223 sweet and wholesome So far as good fortune may be supplemented by The poet's human wisdom, Longfellow was a man after the preacher's own heart. His was one of those happy disposition. natures which, as Thackeray says, are softened by prosperity and kindness. He was saved the torment that the envious feel: "He did not find his sleep less sweet For music in some neighboring street; The laurels of Miltiades." tact. We have seen his tact in the choice and use of Artistic things pertaining to his work, his carefully restrained decoration, his knowledge of limitations, which prevented him, except in the dramatic experiments, from groping for impracticable means and results. The forms which he introduced or revived were as successful as Tennyson's; in fact, his product represents supplementing inspiration. the full advance of American taste and feeling, during the period covered by it, though not our most sigJudgment nificant thought. He was a lyrical artist, whose taste outranked his inspiration; and assuredly, if he had been a Minister of the Fine Arts, he never would have abolished an École at the dictation of the "impressionists," nor have adopted as a motto the phrase "Beware of the Beautiful." We have noted his industry and the self-control with which he devoted his life to poetry alone. Yet the report of his library talk shows that his brain was alert upon many topics; that in private, at least, he did not reserve his talents for his publisher, an economy which a French critic declares to be "a bad sign, and the proof that one makes a trade of literature, and that one does not really have the impressions he assumes to have in his books." His verse is peculiarly open to the test of Milton's requirement, that poetry should be simple, sensuous, passionate. Simple, even elementary, it manifestly is, despite the learning which he put to use. It is sensuous in much that charms the ear and eye, and in little else; for the extreme of sensuousness is deeply felt, and feeling results in passion, and passionate the verse of Longfellow was not, nor ever could be. His song was a household service, the ritual of our feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or, best of H. W. L. all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the curfew bell has tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice is silent, and he softly moves unto his rest. Final estimate. died at Cambridge, Mass., Mar. 24, 1882. CHAPTER VII. EDGAR ALLAN POE. I. UPO tive repu tations. PON the roll of American authors a few names | Distincare written apart from the many. With each of these is associated some accident of condition, some memory of original or eccentric genius, through which it arrests attention and claims our special wonder. The light of none among these few has been more fervid and recurrent than that of Edgar Allan Poe. But, as I in turn pronounce his name, and in my turn would estimate the man and his writings, I am at once confronted by the question, Is this poet, as now remembered, as now portrayed to us, the real Poe who lived and sang and suffered, and who died but little more than a quarter-century ago? Time. The great heart of the world throbs warmly over The witchthe struggles of our kind; the imagination of the ery of world dwells upon and enlarges the glory and the shame of human action in the past. Year after year, the heart-beats are more warm, the conception grows more distinct with light and shade. The person that was is made the framework of an image to which the tender, the romantic, the thoughtful, the simple, and the wise add each his own folly or wisdom, his own joy and sorrow and uttermost yearning. Thus, not only true heroes and poets, but many who have been conspicuous through force of circumstances, become ideal. idealized as time goes by. The critic's first labor often is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance. The difficulty is increased when, as in the case of A twofold Poe, a twofold ideal exists, of whose opposite sides many that have written upon him seem to observe but one. In the opinion of some people, even now, his life was not only pitiful, but odious, and his writings are false and insincere. They speak of his morbid genius, his unjust criticisms, his weakness and ingratitude, and scarcely can endure the mention of his name. Others recount his history as that of a sensitive, gifted being, most sorely beset and environed, who was tried beyond his strength and prematurely yielded, but still uttered not a few undying strains. As a new generation has arisen, and those of his own who knew him are passing away, the latter class of his reviewers seems to outnumber the former. A chorus of indiscriminate praise has grown so loud as really to be an ill omen for his fame; yet, on the whole, the wisest modern estimate of his character and writings has not lessened the interest long ago felt in them at home and abroad. It seems to me that two things at least are certain. Postulates. First, and although his life has been the subject of the research which is awarded only to strange and suggestive careers, he was, after all, a man of like passions with ourselves, one who, if weaker in his weaknesses than many, and stronger in his strength, may not have been so bad, nor yet so good, as one and another have painted him. Thousands have gone as far toward both extremes, and the world never has heard of them. Only the gift of genius has made the HIS GENIUS AND BEARING. 227 quality of Poe's gen ius. temperament of Poe a common theme. And thus, I also think, we are sure, in once more calling up his shade, that we invoke the manes of a poet. Of his right to this much-abused title there can be little dispute, nor of the claim that, whatever he lacked in compass, he was unique among his fellows, so dif- Unique ferent from any other writer that America has produced as really to stand alone. He must have had genius to furnish even the basis for an ideal which excites this persistent interest. Yes, we are on firm ground with relation to his genuineness as a poet. But his narrowness of range, and the slender body of his poetic remains, of themselves should make writers hesitate to pronounce him our greatest one. His verse is as conspicuous for what it shows he could not do as for that which he did. He is another of those poets, outside the New England school, of whom each has made his mark in a separate way, among them all, none more decisively than Poe. far as the judgment of a few rare spirits in foreign lands may be counted the verdict of "posterity," an estimate of him is not to be lightly and flippantly made. Nor is it long since a group of his contemporaries and successors, in his own country, spoke of him as a poet whose works are a lasting monument, and of his "imperishable" fame. So After every allowance, it seems difficult for one not utterly jaded to read his poetry and tales without yielding to their original and haunting spell. Even as we drive out of mind the popular conceptions of Personal his nature, and look only at the portraits of him in aspect. the flesh, we needs must pause and contemplate, thoughtfully and with renewed feeling, one of the marked ideal faces that seem—like those of Byron, De Musset, Heine to fulfil all the traditions of - |