The Literary Retrospect: Longfellow and Italy

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was a classmate with Longfellow in Bowdoin College. His first books were warmly received. These half-weird but felicitously told tales marked an epoch in American literature. They were followed by his delightful tales for children from "Grandfather's Chair," in which he first treated New England history. Meanwhile Bancroft, the historian, then collector of customs at Boston, appointed him a weigher and gauger, a place which the Whigs permitted him to retain but two years. He also embarked in the Acadian Brook Farm experiment. "I went to live in Acadia," he said, "and found myself up to my chin in a barn-yard." Deserting Brook Farm, he married and took the historic gambrel-roofed house at Concord, from whence issued the tales collected in the "Mosses from an Old Manse." His second series of "Twice-told Tales," with their Legends of the Province House, added a fresh romantic interest to Revolutionary Boston. Almost noiselessly his shy genius had made itself recognized as a new literary force. He returned to Salem for four years as surveyor in its old Custom House. After leaving this berth, he gave forth his masterwork, "The Scarlet Letter," in the preface to which he has told the story of that old Salem institution (1850). Hawthorne afterwards observed that "no author without a trial can see the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." Yet in "The Scarlet Letter" he had touched even the gloom of Puritanism with the glamour of romance, as well as achieved a world's masterpiece of psychology. He now retired to Lenox, Massachusetts, with Herman Melville, author of "Typee," as almost his sole companion, and wrote the "House of Seven Gables." In 1853 President Pierce appointed him consul at Liverpool. His Notebooks contain his observations on life in England, France, and Italy.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was a lineal successor to Irving, whom he also resembled in his equal treatment of foreign and native themes and legends alike. Such an academic influence as his, broadened and deepened by generous travel abroad to prepare him for his Harvard chair, was certainly needed in the decade after 1830. By his "Poets and Poetry of Europe" he familiarized Americans with the literature and lore of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, and even of old Anglo-Saxon days. His "Outre Mer," a book of travel, has kept a place for itself until to-day. When he came to write his Indian legend of "Hiawatha," his familiarity with the then little-known literature of the Northland enabled him to borrow the curious metre, style of imagery, and treatment of the Finnish epic "Kalevala." As a critic proper, Longfellow possessed more learning than Poe, but was less truly critical, nor had he the satire and penetration of Lowell. But it is as the great poet of sympathy, as America's most popular poet, that Longfellow must be chiefly considered; and, in the scope of this brief sketch, it is unnecessary to give a systematic account of his familiar poems. Long-fellow's conspicuous note as a poet was from the heart, and not the head. He touched his readers with tender poems of common sentiment and elevating tendency. Perhaps his most scholarly achievement in poetry was his translation of Dante's "Divina Commedia," published in 1867. How deeply he lingered throughout this long labor of love under the spell of the stern Florentine, may be seen in those sonnets inspired by his work and effectively mirroring on their surface this "mediaeval miracle of song." Long-fellow's translation is, in many respects, such as the metrical and onomatopoetic, superior to that of Carey. He was universally regarded with affection, and England paid her first tribute of memorial honor to an American writer by placing his bust in Westminster Abbey.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1888) succeeded Longfellow in his chair at Harvard. If not of Longfellow's rank as a poet, he was a greater critic and essayist, and had great influence for good in critical times. He was appointed Minister to England by President Hayes, where he won high and lasting favor, and received flattering degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. His "Fable for Critics," and the "Bigelow Papers" sparkled with homely humor, wit, satire, patriotism, and idyllicism, the latter being unique in literature. It is, however, chiefly as critic and essayist that he is best known. In his three books of literacy criticism and fancy, "Fireside Travels," "Among My Books," "My Study Windows," he proved himself to be America's most scholarly critic. The old English authors Chaucer, Spenser, the dramatists of Elizabeth's reign, attracted his attention particularly. But his catholicity of taste was also accompanied by a catholicity of subjects. In "My Garden Acquaintance," and "A Good Word for Winter," he displayed notable graces of style; and his paper "On a Certain Condescension of Foreigners," was a capital "retort courteous" to the woes inflicted upon America by foreign critics, and continues to be a compensating solace even to this day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was the most potent force in New England thought. In 1832, after his wife's death, he gave up the Congregational ministry, for reasons of conscience, and travelled in Italy, France, and England, where began the lifelong friendship with Thomas Carlyle. His transcendental writings attracted wide attention, and he retained his popularity as a lecturer during forty-six years.