New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-03-25
"REMINISCENCES OF r. II. sToDDARD.

| To the Editor OF The Tribune:
SIR: Imade my first acquaintance wiz the poetry
ofMr LongfeOw at much later period than should
have done-several years after was familiar with
the noble verse of his early master-the master of
all of us-Bryant, and about the line that Mr..
Edgar Allan Poe his bittcrest enemy, published
"The Raven" Il was in cheap reprint of " The
Voices Of the Night" by the Harpors-a double cell
| unn PACED pamphlet. dated somewhere in the
fourth decade Of the present century. Ii was, as
nearly as ] can recollect, in my twentieth year
which would De nearly AT the time of the Langley
Matthews republication Of the Poetical Works of
Miss Elizabeth Barrett" l read it care
fully as young people are apt to read metrical
writing and did not understand it as | might
have done. could not perceive the delicate grace
of the correspondence in the Prelude that airy
fantasy in which substance and shadow, body and
soul play at hide-and-scek, reminding one of
"The swan tia. on st. Mary's Lake
Floats double, swan and shadow"
Whether the peculiar structure of this poem origi-
nated with Mr. LOngfellow or was borrowed by him
from some romantic German master INLAND per
haps or Heine-I am not scholar enough to know.
1t is a very dangerous form OF composition, the
readers of "Ihe Reaper and the Flowers" The
Beleagured City" ana Midnight Mass for the Dy
ing Year." could not fail to discover. How exqus-
lite it could be- in more skilful hands, they felt
few years later, when they read The Rainy Day"
Maidonhood" and "The Arrow and the Song
which last perfect lyric has always flown into the
hearts of poets. making its divinest flight into the
heart of the greatest of her sex-Mrs. Browning. 1t
IL the finest bay-leaf in tine crown Of young Mr.
Longfellow that he was learned enough, while IA
professor at Bowdon. to transmute into his own
charming English the Ell Dorado of several Cont
mental teratures, the weghty soemnity of Don
Jorge Manrique. tho tender loveliness of Lope dc
Vega the heavcnness of De Aldana and De
Medrano and later still, the sacred vision of the
Celestial Pilot" in the Pnrgatorio." and the
blessedness Of the holy Beatrice, "MaHiJas date
lila plenis.'
Lighter and darker strains succeeded. from
Charles dOrleans, from the Ango-Saxon, from
stout Danish Ewald, and from Jaiedge, Muller
INLAND, and Sails. Professor Longicllow trans
planted the choicest flowers of the German Tempe
into his land Bryant'sl green land of groves
All this while poor Edgar Allan, unhappy, unsuc-
cessful, with a sick wife. and a demon struggling
in his shattered soul, was reving Mr.. Longlellow
and other "plaglarists," in The Home Journal, The
Broadray journal, and every other periodical into
which he could thrust his envenomed stylus. and
was exhausting his purchased praises of certain
literary ladies, who shall be nameless, since they
have long since joined our vanished of SapphOs
and Estees And all this while his sOvran in song
and all the virtues forgaye him. never bam ed
him." he wrote in substance, in note which have
mIsaid, " tor he suffering and soTowful. and
he thought me prosperous and happy" 1t was so
with all of us, Oh my brothers of the genus iTr-
tabiie-we were enyiOus of him, were jealous of
his superior powers and place IN the worlds regard
and he needed it not he knew beforehand all our
calamites. how begin in glldnesI las the great
Martin sings and end-so many of end--in mad |
ness. Pardon the least of thy followers, loving and
ilustrous Spirit,
" For there shall come & mightier blast,
There shall be d ,rkcr day:
And the stars from heaven downcast,
Like red leaves be swept away!
X fte, eley son
Christie. eleysOn
But all this, though heartfelt is from !
my present purpose, which is simply TO |
jot down the httlc-it is not much-that |
| know Of Henry Wadsworth Longiellow. l |
paid him my first visit between thirty and |
forty years ago. II was bright. hot day,
and be was living with his family. his stately wife |
and his gentle children, in n house which lac had at |
Lynn. OF Nahant. II was, l remember. perched |
upon bold and PERCEPTIONS elf, abrupt aud steep
to the slip of sand which separated it from the
wall OF surf which was the widest that |
l. almost sea-bOrn. had Ever seen. | was the OBJ
scurest Of tho obscure lie the most gracious of men.
With me was my good friend Fields, who has