"nicety of epithet," or with "elaborate, scholarly finish," is still only good for nothing. The questions which are of real moment relate to qualities which lie deeper than rhetoric.

In

The great characteristic of Longfellow, that of addressing the moral nature through the imagination, of linking moral truth to intellectual beauty, is a far greater excellence. His artistical ability is admirable, because it is not seen. It is rather mental than mechanical. truth, it may be doubted if he is more distinguished as an artist than Dana or Bryant. If, by saying that a poem is artistical, we mean that its form corresponds with its spirit, that it is fashioned into the likeness of the thought or emotion it is intended to convey, then "The Buccaneer" and "Thanatopsis" are as artistical as any of the "Voices of the Night." If mere skill in the use of multitudinous metres be meant, then Percival is more artistical than either. If mechanical ingenuity in forcing sentiment into forms to which it has no affinity be the meaning, then to be artistical is a fault or an affectation. The best artist is he who accommodates his diction to his subject, and in this sense, Longfellow is an artist. By learning "to labor and to wait," by steadily brooding over the chaos in which thought and emotion first appear to the mind, and giving shape and life to both before uttering them in words, he has obtained a singular mastery of expression. By this we do not mean that he has a large command of language. No fallacy is greater than that which confounds fluency with expression. Washerwomen, and boys at debating clubs, often display moré fluency than Webster; but his words are to theirs as the roll of thunder to the patter of rain. Language generally receives its significance and power

Unless pern.eated by the unless it be, not the clothit is quite an humble

from the person who uses it.
higher faculties of the mind,
ing, but the creature, of thought,

power. There are some writers who repose undoubting confidence in words. If their minds be filled with the epithets of poetry, they fondly deem that they have clutched its essence. In a piece of inferior verse, we often observe expressions which have been employed with great effect by genius, but which seem to burn the fingers, and disconcert the equanimity, of the aspiring word-catcher who presses them into his service. Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit. There is such a thing, likewise, as making a style the expression of the nature of the writer who uses it. The rhetorical arrangement of Johnson is often pedantic, but it does not appear so bad in his writings as in the monstrous masses of verbiage beneath which the thin frames of his imitators are crushed. The style of Carlyle is faulty, when judged by the general rules of taste; but we should not desire that the rough gallop of his sentences should be changed for the graceful ambling of Addison's, without a corresponding change in his psychological condition.

Longfellow has a perfect command of that expression which results from restraining rather than cultivating fluency; and his manner is adapted to his theme. He rarely, if ever, mistakes "emotions for conceptions." He selects with great delicacy and precision the exact phrase which best expresses or suggests his idea. He colors his style with the skill of a painter; and in compelling words to picture thought, he not only has the warm flush and bright tints of language at his command, but he arrests its evanescent hues. In the higher department of his art,—that of so combining his words an'

mages that they make music to the soul as well as to the ear, and convey not only his feelings and thoughts but also the very tone and condition of the soul in which they have their being, he has given exquisite examples in "Maidenhood" and " Endymion." In what Mr. Griswold very truly calls one of his best poems, “The Skeleton in Armor," he manages a difficult verse with great skill. There is much of the old Norse energy in this composition, that rough, ravenous battle-spirit, which, for a time, makes the reader's blood rush and tingle in warlike sympathy. But the manner in which the passions of the savage are modified by the sentiment of the lover, and the stout, death-defying heart of the warrior yields to that gentle but irresistible power which conquers without arms and enslaves without fetters, corstitutes the great charm of the poem.

"Once as I told in glee

Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes looked love on me,
Burning, yet tender;

And, as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine

Fell their soft splendor."

It would be easy to say much of Longfellow's singular felicity in addressing the moral nature of man. It has been said of him, sometimes in derision, that all his poems have a moral. There is, doubtless, a tendency in his mind to evolve some useful meaning from his finest imaginations, and to preach when he should only sing; but we still think that the moral of his compositions is rarely thrust intrudingly forward, but rather flows naturally from the subject. There is nothing of the spirit of Joseph Surface in his genius; he does not pride him

2

self on being a man of "noble sentiments." The morality of the "Psalm of Life" is commonplace. If versified by a poetaster, it would inspire no deep feeling, and strengthen no high purposes. But the worn axioms of didactic verse have the breath of a new life breathed into them when they are touched by genius.

We are made to love and to follow what before we merely assented to with a lazy acquiescence.

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

"Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again."

This is very

different from saying, that, if we follow the example of the great and good, we shall live a noble life, and that the records of our deeds and struggles will strengthen the breasts of those who come after us to do and to suffer.

Longfellow's verse occupies a position half way between the poetry of actual life and the poetry of transcendentalism. Like all neutrals, hè is liable to attack from the zealots of both parties; but it seems to us that he has hit the exact point, beyond which no poet can at present go, without being neglected or ridiculed. He idealizes real life; he elicits new meaning from many of its rough shows; he clothes subtle and delicate thoughts in familiar imagery; he embodies high moral sentiment in beautiful and ennobling forms; he inweaves the golden threads of spiritual being into the texture of common existence; he discerns and addresses some of the finest sympathies of

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the heart; but he rarely soars into those regions of abstract imagination, where the bodily eye cannot follow, but where that of the seer is gifted with a vading vision." Though he fixes a keen glance on those filmy and fleeting shades of thought and feeling which common minds overlook, or are incompetent to grasp. he has his eye open a little wider, perhaps, when its gaze is directed to the outward world, than when it is turned within. His imagination, in the sphere of its activity, is almost perfect in its power to shape in visible forms, or to suggest, by cunning verbal combinations, the feeling or thought he desires to express; but it lacks the strength and daring, the wide magnificent sweep, which characterize the imagination of such poets as Shelley. He has little of the unrest and frenzy of the bard. We know, in reading him, that he will never miss his mark; that he will risk nothing; that he will aim to do only what he feels he can do well. An air of repose, of quiet power, is around his compositions. He rarely loses sight of common interests and sympathies. He displays none of the stinging earnestness, the vehement sensibility, the gusts of passion, which distinguish poets of the impulsive class. His spiritualism is not seen in wild struggles after an ineffable Something, for which earth can afford but imperfect symbols, and of which even abstract words can suggest little knowledge. He appears perfectly satisfied with his work. Like his own " Village Blacksmith," he retires every night with the feeling that something has been attempted, and something done.

The intellectual tendencies of Longfellow, judging from the mystical charm which many of his poems possess, seem to be purely spiritual. But his keen sense of what is physically pleasurable keeps them in check,