Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1883-09-21
LITERATURE.

lie estate OF LOnSIellOW Is O1f1clal
ly appraised at $3.50, 900, a sum which
though no longer regarded in these
days of abundant personal wealtl
as fortune, is yet a very handsome
competence. Longfellow's fame wa.
made with his pen, which was also the
main source of his fortune, though
he enjoyed for nearly half century
a profitable professorship at Cam
bridge. In his journey through life
there were no hardships. He ambled
comfortably to the highest of Par
nassus, where the grazing was good
and drank temperately of the Pierian
spring. His temperament was calm
his habits frugal, his industry system
attic. The place he held in the re-
gard of The American people was
firmer fixed, perhaps, than that of any
of his contemporaries of the literary
guild, unless Washington Irving,
whom he SO long survived, may be
excepted. If bis poetry lacked the
fire of genius; if it fell short of ths
bold imagery and the virile expression
of Byron; if, as was certainly the case,
it was devoid of the genial humor of
Holmes and the aggressive moral
purpose of Whittier; if his invention
was commonplace and his versifica-
tion merely correct and placid, vet he
found his way to the hearts and the
homes of the people, and his reward
in honors, and in the money that
must accompany to sweeten them,
was surprising.
While Longfellow may be set down
as exceptionally fortunate in his get
tings, it will not be forgotten that he
wrote for an age which has literally
rewarded literary merit. Presses
have multiplied beyond computation;
of the making of books there is now
no end: newspapers are everywhere.
With the increase of wealth there
hes been increase of education and
refinement. Everybody reads, and
he who writes acceptably has his full
guerdon. The struggles of literary
men in the seventeenth and eight
eenth centuries have no counterpart
in this age. The newspaper is not
literature; but Shakespeare, who in
his earlier career became a play
actor to gain the livelihood that the
coinings of his own brain would not
secure him; or Milton, who received
few guineas for paradise Lost;'
or Chatterton, who died of starvation
in a garret; or the great cham of
literature himself, whose youthful
struggle, less for position and recog-
milton than to appease an abnormal
appetite for food. is revolving in the
recital-the genius as we'll as the
whole tribe of Grub street would all
have been glad in their time to have
had the steady income of police
court reporter of this age The poets
of the previous centuries who were
fiscally successful-and not the richest
of them, like Pope or Addison, had
the fortune piled up by Longfellow-
acquired competence through the
rich and powerful rather than from
the patronage of the people. and that
this thrift might come there was
degrading fawning.
Not all the poets. novelists and
historians Of the time may acquire
such fortune as Longfellow's; that
as a guerdcn of literary endeavor
was exceptional. Dickens profits
were immense, but he spent with a
lavish hand. Macaulay had single
check of 100000 from the publisher
Of his history, and had he been spared
in unimpaired vigor to Longfellow's
span of life, the fortune earned by
his pen would have been vastly
greater. Scott made and lost fortunes.
But the significant fact is that liter.
ary work is now fully compensated
when it is meritorious, and oftentimes
rewarded beyond its deserts. The
writer may now live the life of a
gentleman in ease and independence.
He is spared the horrible wasting of
the mind and wearing of the body
that made the life of the earlier and
unappreciated writer's a revolving
struggle for existence, breaking and
embittering their spirit, and bringing
them to early graves.
This improved condition of the
writer for bread is reflex of tho
better fortune of a more enlightened
teller mt and richer age. The people
are now the patrons of literature,
and the author who works for them
is certain of a comfort bringing hire.
Il Chicago Times.