Longfellow was then, in all ways, at the right age for epic writing—or for that modern branch of the epic commonly called narrative verse. The Courtship of Miles Standish might be termed, for the story interest, picturesqueness, unity of design, and sustained power of poetic expression, a little epic. The metre he adopted for the poem was likewise well suited to this kind of work. Ten years or more before (in 1847) had appeared one of his masterpieces, the Acadian idyl of Evangeline. At that time the English hexameter was practically unknown in American poetry, as indeed it was in English verse as a whole. Of the several attempts made at about this time to domesticate in our accentual tongue the sweeping Homeric measure, none confessedly is so successful as that of the Cambridge poet, who, with no foolish effort to make a slavish imitation of the classic, admirably catches the swing and sound of that movement in which, from its old-time maker's hands, one hears "Like ocean on a Western beach, The surge and thunder of the Odyssey." The American singer subdued the majesty of the original somewhat, to fit it to a quiet old tale for whose remoteness and foreign charm the hexameter associations were peculiarly adapted. The popularity of the poem then and now is beyond peradventure due in part to this freshly pleasing metrical use. It was natural, then, that, a decade later, Longfellow should return to the hexameter when he wished to tell another old-time tale, of less breadth and romance of atmos phere, but possessing a very genuine poetic quality of its own. However much slighter than Evangeline as a performance, The Courtship of Miles Standish displays the hand of the poet in all its cunning. The metre shows the same plastic adaptation to the purposes of narrative; in the more glowing descriptive passages or in those of lyric tenderness it moves with all the lure of the most lovely melody; while in the rugged moments of the tale as where the doughty Miles defeats his Indian opponents with his trusty band of ten, or the good ship May Flower hoists anchor for the return voyage to mother England, an added strength and colloquial terseness impart a properly dramatic effect. The poem, too, contains excellent examples of Longfellow's mastery of imaginative language. In happy consonance with the setting of the story, the diction has a quaintness derived from the many biblical images and allusions, — just the figures and fancies which would, we feel, be in the minds and on the mouths of those God-fearing, Scripturefollowing Puritan ancestors of ours aforetime. This is a marked feature of the style. The selection of the salient points of the tale for poetic treatment bespeaks the true artist. The kernel of the whole thing, as Longfellow himself tells us, is in Priscilla's famous, tremulous-coy question, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Around this suggestion the poet develops his narrative. First the martial character of Miles is capitally hit off, with Alden in sharp contrast to him; then comes the soldier's frank avowal of his love and his awkwardness in the premises. Unlike Othello, another soldier-wooer, he has no complete confidence that Priscilla will love him for the dangers he had passed; and John, inwardly agonized at his false position, but faithful at all hazards to his friend, conveys the proposal-by-proxy, only to be shown (though he is a trifle slow to see it) that this sweet mistress is for quite another market - one nearer home. Particularly noteworthy is the skill with which the characters of Alden and Standish are set over against one another, the traits distinctive of each just those which would naturally make the two men antagonists not only in love but in life; yet both hold our sympathetic liking, Standish quite as firmly as Alden, and their relation, albeit strained for a season, is too close not to stand the test, so that a general peace recurs when the stalwart Indian fighter, after being reported dead, returns to bless the bridal party. It is easy to forgive the poet, who preferred to constitute himself a God from the machine, and not allow even the minor melancholy of the captain's death to make a note of discord among the marriage bells. This is indicative of Longfellow's method, of his conception of the aim of poetry; luckily, he did not live in the day of the "inevitableness" of the sad ending. The climax seems to have been reached when in the third canto Priscilla rejects Miles; yet but a third of the poem has been read. The going of the latter to war, the sailing of the May Flower, Alden's deci sion to stay at Plymouth for the sake of guarding his lady-love, the tidings of the killing of his rival, thus untying his tongue so that the full confession of his feeling may follow, these incidents and scenes lead up with perfect naturalness to the culmination, — and to the simple but everlastingly true and hence lovely picture of these lovers walking, after the ceremony that has made them one, through the forest, whose outward fairness of stately autumn blazonry is but a symbol of their inward rapture and peace. It is a close both pure and beautiful,—and very typical of our maiden-hearted American singer: "Like a picture it seemed of the primitive pastoral ages, Old and yet ever new and simple and beautiful always, An interesting comparison might be instituted between this poem and another masterpiece in little, Goethe's charming pastoral narrative, Hermann and Dorothea. Both are genialized by a homely human sympathy in the characters represented. The German poem, which was written half a century earlier than the American, has the archaic touches which lend it an old-world charm also felt in Longfellow's shaping of the Puritan story. Both too are, on the formal side, written in flowing hexameters; and both have humor salient against a grim background of suffering; while in both the prevailing mood is a sort of reminiscent tenderness, an afterglow of half-pensive happiness. Nor is the great German poet more true to the village life of his country in the days when the French were devastating its borders and bands of terror-smitten fugitives fled across the Rhine, than is the American poet to our primitive civilization that was so godly, stanch, and well founded on the abiding principles of self-government. It is worth adding, to complete the parallel, that, like The Courtship of Miles Standish, Hermann and Dorothea has stimulated many native artists to limn its scenes with brush and pencil. A certain kind of literature is always welcomed, and long held in affectionate remembrance: that which, while neither plumbing the murky depths. nor scaling the stormy heights of man's passionate tragi-comedy called Life, yet, with less of pretension, gives a true portrayal of the representative interests and emotions of humanity, - doing this by painting genre pictures with a sure hand, a realistic fidelity, and a loving heart. Productions like Whittier's Snowbound and Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish are of this character; and it is only as time passes and they are seen in historical perspective that their full worth and potent attraction come to be all perceived. RICHARD BURTON. |