Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1882-05-25

"my unfortunate friend p" whose wit.
were little disordered, there are gro
tesque hints Of famous persons. P
talks with Burns at eighty-seven; By
ron, grown old and fat, wears wis
and spectacles; Shelley is reconciled tt
the Church of England; Coleridge fin
ishes "Christabel;" Keats writes a re
ligious epic on the millennium; and Geo
Canning is peer. On our side of the
sea, DR.. Claiming had just published g
volume of verses; Whittier had beer
lynched ten years before in South Caro-
lima; and, continues P: 81 remember
too, a lad just from college, Longfellow
by name, who scattered some delicate
verses TO the winds, and went to Ger.
many, and perished. think, of intense
application, at the University of Coffin.
gen." Longfellow. in turn, recalled his
classmate Hawthorne-a shy, dark-hair.
ed youth fitting across the college
grounds in coat with bright buttons.
Among these delicate verses was
the poem to "An April Day." As the
work Of very young man it is singular
ly restrained and finished. 1t has the
characteristic elegance and flowing mel
edy of his later verse, and its half-pen-
sive tone is not extensive nor immature.
1t is not, however, for this that it is
most interesting, but because, with Bry-
ants March" it is the fresh and simple
note of truly American strain. Per-
haps the curious reader, enlighted by
| the observation of subsequent years, may
| find ia the March" a more vigorous
love Of nature, and in the april" ten
derer tone of tranquil sentiment. But
neither of the poems is the echo of a
foreign music, nor an exercise of re-
membered reading. They both deal
with the sights and sounds and sugges-
tions of the American landscape in the
early spring. In Longfellow's April
there are none of the bishops caps and
foreign ornament of illustration to
which Margaret Fuller afterward OBJ
jected in his verse. But these early as
sociated poems, both of the younger and
of the older singer, show an
original movement of American lite
rary genius, and, like the months which
they celebrate, they fOretold summer.
That summer had been long awaited.
In 1909, Buckminster said in his Phi
Beta Kappa oration at Harvard College:
"Our poets and historians, our critics
and orators, the men of whom posterity
are to stand in awe, and by whom they
are to be instructed, are yet to appear
among u.s." Happily, however, the ora
tor thought he beheld the promise of
their coming, although he does not say
where. But even as he spoke they were
at hand. Irving's Kuickerboeker was
published in 1909, and Bryant's "Thana-
topsis'' was written 1912. The North
American Review, an enterprise of lit
erary men in Boston and Cambridge, was
begun in 1915, and Bryant and Long
fellow were both contributors. But it
was in the year 1921, the year in which
Longfellow entered college, that the
beginning of distinctive American lit
erarature became most evident. There
were signs of an independent intellectu-
al movement both in the choice of sub
jects and in the character of treatment.
This was the year of the publication of
Bryant's first slim volume, and of Coop
er's Spy, and of Dana's Idle Man. IT.
Wings Sketch-Book was already finished,
Miss Sedgwick's Hope Leslie and Perci-
walls first volume had been issued, and
Halleck's and brakes "Croakers" were
already popular. In these works, as in
all others of that time, there was indeed
no evidence of great creative genius.
The poet and historian whom Buckmin-
ster foresaw, and who were to strike
pesterity with awe, had not yet appear
ed, but in the same year the voice of the
orator whom he anticipated was heard
upon Plymouth rock in cadences massive
and sonorous as the voice of the sea. In
the year 1921 there was the plain evil
dsnce of an awakening original activity.
Longfellow was the youngest of the
group in which he first appeared. His |
work was graceful, tender, r,meledious,th |
strain of troubadour. When he went |
to Europe in 1925 to fit himself more |
fully for his professorship, he had but
scattered some delicate verses to the
winds" When he returned, and pub
lished in 1888 his translations of "Cap-
las de Manrique" and other Spanish po-
ems. he had apparently done no more.
There was plainly shown an exquisite
literary artist, very Benvenuto of grace
and skill. But he would hardly have
been selected as the poet who was to
.ake the strongest hold of the hearts of
MS countrymen, the singer whose sweet
md hallowing spell was to be so deep
Ind universal that at last it would be
Iaid in another country that to it also
lis death was national loss.
The qualities of these early verses,
however, were never lost. The genius
If the poet steadily and beautifully de-
Ieleped, Towering according to its ma
ure.-GEoRGE WILLIAM CURTIS, in
darper's Magazine for June.