found impression, and, with the permission of the former, he determined to tell it in verse. This is the origin of Evangeline. Haliburton's History of Nova Scotia, containing Reynal's highly colored picture of life in Grand-Pré, furnished the historical details.

One may safely say that Evangeline is the most read poem in American literature. Critics may find fault with the hexameter, may regret the energy expended in the manufacture of comparisons, and may, if they please, deny to the poem all literary value. But the people will continue to read, to blame the English, to sympathize with the heroine; and perhaps some of them will, like Holmes, close the last leaf, leaving a little mark upon it which tells more than words could tell. The reason is clear: it is a story of love, ideal love, so simply told that the least imaginative can understand. There is no need of "putting oneself into a proper attitude" in order to comprehend it; all that is required is belief in "affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient."

The author never visited the scene of the story. Ideal surroundings were demanded, and ideal they are, the broad, rich meadows, reclaimed from an angry sea by the toil of the settlers, theirs in a double sense; the hills- Blomidon or any other-rising in the distance as if guarding the village; the quaint Normandy cottages and costumes of the peasants; and

the church, a veritable church of the Middle Ages, casting its dim, religious light over all. Here the inhabitants lived a Utopian life. Modest desires and mutual helpfulness made the richest seem poor, and the poorest rich. They were a sturdy people, industrious and unconventional. Of the characters that enter into the story Evangeline alone is vividly described. The others are clearly enough marked to be distinguished: Benedict, a prosperous farmer, well satisfied with the world and looking hopefully upon the future; Basil, the blacksmith, impetuous in judgment and in action, suspicious of the English, who had lately renewed their encroachments upon French territory; Father Felician, a model priest, the adviser of his people in temporal as well as spiritual matters; and, dimmest of all, Gabriel, the lover of Evangeline. Very charmingly is the home of Benedict pictured, with the young girl as central figure.

In the most beautiful season of the year, when Grand-Pré "lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood"; when the homes of the villagers were gladdened by a successful harvest; when preparations had been made for the establishment of a new home in the community, came the mysterious summons of the English commander, and then the announcement of the cruel sentence. In the trying moments of the removal how much depends upon Evangeline, and how

nobly she sustains her part! Thereafter her life is one of patient suffering, lighted by a single hope, tolerable because it is possible to forget self in the service of others. When at last the hope is realized, only to vanish away, the reaction is too great, and the strong nature breaks. There could be but this one ending. Any other would have dragged the story down to a very commonplace earth.

Kavanagh, a tale of life in a New England village, was not so successful. The rural scenes which make an admirable background for a poem, are too tame for a romance, unless they are relieved by unusually clever characters. Longfellow's story lacks one element of the requisite combination. His friends spoke of it guardedly. There were other romances in the field, and opportunity was offered for comparison. But the poems entitled By the Seaside and By the Fireside (1850) aroused all the old enthusiasm. Most striking among these is The Building of the Ship, the conclusion of which is the classic apostrophe of the Union. Resignation has all the intensity of the sorrow which called it forth.

The routine of college life was becoming wearisome. The poet was in easy circumstances. His books yielded a fair income. The time had come when he could carry on his literary work without the interruptions which the duties of a professorship occa

sioned. He therefore resigned (1854), and was succeeded by James Russell Lowell.

In the Journal for June 22, 1854, is the entry: "I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one, and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think the right and only one for such a theme."1 And again, on the 28th: "Work at 'Manabozho'; or, as I think I shall call it, 'Hiawatha,' that being another name for the same personage. The poem was completed and published in 1855. Hiawatha is certainly not an American epic, nor "the nearest approach to an American epic," as has been asserted; nor can it in any sense be compared to the Beowulf, as one writer has ventured to compare it. There is a vast difference between Beowulf and Hiawatha. The former is a national poem, the expression of a people's traditions and ideals, according to their own poetic instincts. Hiawatha is a series of pictures of Indian life drawn by a cultured American, who, for literary purposes, overlooks the real character of the Indian; from a heterogeneous bundle of attributes and conditions abstracts one, life in the open air, — and then represents him

as a child of nature.

We Americans might object to

But no one will hesi

owning Hiawatha as our ideal. tate to acknowledge him as the idol of the American boy, the attractive personage with whom many happy hours have been spent. Nor can one deny the artistic claims of the apparently artless story the swinging lines fitly bound together, the repetitions which echo in one's ears, the clear, pure atmosphere which the author's own personality has suffused about the whole. Seldom has it fallen to the lot of a writer to contribute so largely to the pleasure of youthful readers.

The Courtship of Miles Standish, which has neither the interest nor the literary value of Evangeline, appeared in 1858. The poem was well received, however, and encouraged the author to continue writing tales. The plan of The Tales of a Wayside Inn, published between 1865 and 1874, was, of course, derived from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Red Horse in Sudbury takes the place of the Tabard in Southwark. The characters represent actual persons; whether or not they met at the Inn is another question. The stories were drawn from all sources: Paul Revere's Ride and Lady Wentworth, from New England tradition; The Saga of Olaf, from the Norse; Charlemagne and others, from French romance; one, The Birds of Killingworth, is, it is asserted, the poet's own.

Of the remaining volumes — Flower de Luce (1867),