INTRODUCTION

LONGFE

LONGFELLOW'S LIFE AND WORKS

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOw was born in Portland, Maine, in 1807. His mother's family had been represented in New England as far back as the settlement of Plymouth; indeed, it is asserted that the poet was merely telling family secrets when he related the love story of John Alden and the Puritan maiden Priscilla. His paternal ancestors were more recent arrivals in the New World, having settled in Massachusetts about 1675. Thrift and industry improved the circumstances of each succeeding generation of Longfellows. The author's great-greatgrandfather was the village blacksmith of Newbury, Massachusetts; the son of the blacksmith was a schoolmaster and, later, town clerk of Gorham, Massachusetts; the son of the town clerk became first a surveyor, then Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Portland, Maine; the son of the surveyor was a lawyer, and a man of culture, who was able to give his children the inestimable privilege of tumbling

during infancy about a fairly well ordered library a privilege which Holmes declares to be the only preventive of an absolute fear of books in later life.

There was nothing remarkable about Henry's childhood. His schooling began with Dame Fellows, or "Ma'am" Fellows, as she was familiarly called. She it must have been who sent the new pupil, provided with slate and pencil, upon a tour of observation, "to put words together about anything he might see," as he confidently asserted he could do, and who thus called forth the verses entitled Mr. Finny and the Turnip, did not the biographer, "on Mr. Longfellow's own authority," repudiate the "silly lines." It is very gratifying to know that our poet is not responsible for them. First poems are at best but poor things. At the age of fourteen, when he left Portland Academy, he was fully prepared for college. Not that he was necessarily any brighter than other boys of his time. The colleges of the beginning of the century resembled first-class boarding schools, rather than the higher educational institutions of to-day; college life then was a period of preparation, of attempts on the part of the student to "find himself." Nor was the curriculum very exacting. If there is any truth in the biographies of the famous men who have passed away within a quarter of a century, the graduates among them got their diplomas

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largely by consulting their own inclination, so far as study was concerned. In those days men did not pass at once from school to breadwinning. The scientific spirit had not yet invaded educational circles.

Next came the choice of a college. The father, Stephen Longfellow, was a graduate of Harvard, and had all the enthusiasm of a large and growing body of men for their alma mater. But, as one of the prominent men in the neighborhood, he had been elected to the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College, founded in Brunswick at the beginning of the century. Pride in a state institution doubtless led him to send his sons to the latter. Accordingly, the names of Henry and Samuel were entered upon the register of 1821, although actual residence in Brunswick did not begin until the following year. In a class distinguished for scholarship Longfellow held his own. He found the problems of the higher mathematics very hard; but the Odes of Gray, Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, the works of the unfortunate Chatterton, and Locke's Human Understanding, he liked to read, and, better still, to write about. He also found time to compose verses, equal but not superior to the average undergraduate lines, and to contribute to the newspapers prose articles on various subjects—all of which gave him a local reputation, and delighted his father and mother, who proved kindly and sympathetic critics.

As the time of graduation approached, the thoughts of the young man turned to the question of a profession. According to the traditions of the time, a college graduate became a clergyman, a physician, or a lawyer. Stephen Longfellow had destined his son for the last. Henry was willing to admit that he might become a lawyer; for medicine and theology he had much reverence, but no inclination. "The fact

is," he says, in a letter dated December 5, 1824, "I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres in it. . . . Surely, there never was a better opportunity offered for the exertion of literary talent in our own country than is now offered." And the better to fit himself for this kind of work, he proposed a year in Harvard, to be spent in the study of history and literature, before the expiration of which time a decision might safely be made. The father did not take kindly to the proposition. He was an eminently practical man; he wished to see his sons well established in the world; he admitted that a literary life must be a delightful one, but feared that "there was not enough wealth in the country to afford encouragement and patronage to merely literary men." And he was right. To-day,

1 Life, by Samuel Longfellow, I. 53 ff,

under far more favorable circumstances, the author enjoys a precarious existence; in 1825 there was not a single American who was supporting himself by literature alone. In fact, there were only half a dozen writers. Our literature was just dawning. Americans were too busy with the practical concerns of life to give thought, much less money, to the cultivation of the higher intellectual pleasures.

This was Longfellow's first disappointment- and the course of his life was disturbed by few of them. It seemed great at the time; though conscious as he was of ability to make his way into literature, the choice of a nominal profession was really a matter of little importance. But fortune favored him. The authorities of Bowdoin determined to establish a professorship of Modern Languages. Now Longfellow, like all earnest students of literature, had shown great interest in the Classics; and, like all embryo poets, was particularly pleased with the Odes of Horace. He therefore took pains with his translations, endeavoring to reproduce not only the letter, but the spirit, too, of the ancient writers. It so happened that one of these translations was read at a public examination, where it attracted the notice of a Trustee of the col

lege, a Mr. Orr. When the subject of the new professorship was broached at a meeting of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Orr suggested that the chair be offered.