New-York tribune., 1868-07-24
TIM f,OuJTY or LETTERS.

| fellow in England has been exceedingly grati-
fying. not merely to American men OF letters
but perhaps in much greater degree 10 inc
great body of American readers, who nave
been so long regarding the poet with Affection
ate respect. OF all the mean passions which
infest tho human heart, there is none meaner
than literary jealousy. 1t is discredltapie
enough in private instances; it is far from
being less so when it assumes an international
aspect If we must speak with perfect cahuor,
it will be frankly to avow that American letters
were treated for many years, by English critlcS
with a palpable and careless, ana, we may
add contemptuous injustice, which was keehly
felt and very properly resented upon THIS slue OF
the Atlantic. Full of reverence for the great
examples which belonged exclusively neither
| to England nor to America, but to the common
language of either land, and not without
good deal of tho sensitiveneSs OF literary De-
gnners, we were perhaps a little Over-anxlouS
| to stand well abroad and estimated the opln-
| ions of The Edinb0rough and The London guar
! terly at their full value. 1t seemed to us that
what was worth reviewing at all, was worth
reviewing in candid and generous spirit In
stead of respect, our first essays were treated
with a coarse and hippant ridicule, unphilo-
sOphical at the best, and displaying IN anlmus
which, in bills of indictment, is usually attrlb-
uted to the instigation of the Devil. No reader
| of the present day, who is not familiar with
the early volumes of tho great reviews which
we have mentioned, can comprehend the re-
prchensible spirit in which Jeffrey and Clifford
noticed almost every American book which
they condesccnded TO notice at all. They were
b. in
which a school master might adopt in casti-
eating the juvenile essays under his thumb-a
way well enough, perhaps, and far
| from unwholesome in village acade-
mics but quite out of place in the
higher regions of manly and serious criticism
Many of the books thus denounced were un-
quc,tionably bad, and that would have been a
good reason for not reviewing them at all but
their main demerit was that they were AmeIi-
can and when we were praised at all, 1t was
with such an air of lofty condescenSion that
! the last Otlen5ivcness was worse than the first
/ We were naturally angry at the matter-we
were still more naturally angry at the manner; f;
and perhaps nothing tended more to tho rapid
advancement of American literature than our de-
! termination TO show the world that we had
been treated with injustice. We have been re-
warded according to our honest and earnest
! labor Our ability to make good books is no
/ longer doubted. I'm the department of history,
under every disadvantage, we are leading the
world In other branches of literature we are
holding our own; our defects are no longer
peculiar. but are the defects of the age, and
are shared with us by all nations; and if Mr.
/ Sidney Smith were alive to ask Who reads
] In iobf bn rpfpp M
once aud triumphantly to Mr.. Bohn's catalogue,
| aud to the continual and impudent piracies
and poaclings of the other London booksellers.
! We indulge in these "reminiscences in no un-
friendly spirit, but mainly because this contrast
between the past and the present renders the
! kindness shown to Mr.. LongfellOw in England
all the more gratifying. AS Americans, we
venture to claim our share of his honOrs.
Charming poet as he Is, he belongs to us.
| There may be tncture of foreign literature
/ in his writings, but that does not alter the fact
| that we were the first to love him and to praise
| him. He was famous here before he was heard
of in England. He has been read here by all
classes and in all parts of the country he has
popularity unlike any which it wOuld be
possible for any English, and hardly for any
| Scotch writer to attain and if there be poetcal
merits in his works of high, if not of the
very highest order, we may justly claim some
! thing of unusual refinement for a people
which reads them with constant avid
| ity, and watches for anything new from his
! hand with genial interest. Our English breth-
rem will see that we are not given TO money
| boarding altogether. We sometimes spend
! little. We buy, rs Messrs. TicknOr & Fields
can attest, great many editions of Mr.. Long
fellows books. We buy them in green and
gold, in octave and in Quarto, with pictures
and without. There are editions for the mil
lion, editions for the upper ten thousand, edi-
! tOns for the cottage, editions very costly and
beautiful for the drawing Mr.. Longfel-
low is admired down East" and he is praised
" out West Plain farmers grapple with his
Dante because it is his; factory girls weep
over his "Evangeline :" boys at school recite
long passages from " "Hiawatha;" and sturdy
mechanics know whole pages Of Miles Stand
I" ish" by heart. There is n little poem of his
called Resignation" over which thousands of
eyes have shed the first sweet rain of relief,
and of a tenderer sorrow following the arid
and fearless agony of bereavement All these
readers are proud of Mr.. Longfellow's recep-
ton in England and thankful that their own
poet is so Justly estimated in q far-Off land
1t is not long since we were afforded an op-
portunity of testifying our grateful admiration
of England's finest master of modern prose
fiction. We are proud to say that nothing could
be kinder than the relations existing between
the whole American public and Mr. Charles
Dickens during his recent visit. Our only re-
gret was that the circumstance of his ill-health