generally regarded as the greatest artistic achievement of a literary nature of any age-namely, his Translation of Dante's Divina Commedia. The entire poem, numbering fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines, has been rendered into English, answering line for line and word for word to the original Italian; and this, it is claimed, without detracting from the native vigor, sense, and grace of the poem. In this triumph of translation Longfellow stands alone, though Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, Coleridge, Fairfax and Rose, and Cary have all been competitors. In 1868, The New England Tragedies appeared. They are two in number, and constitute a romantic setting off of early Quaker history in New England, executed in a style whose clearness and severe plainness are strikingly germain to the incidents. The Poets and Poetry of Europe, and a volume recently issued, entitled The Divine Tragedy, close the long and worthy list of Longfellow's labors. "They are the work of a scholar, of a man of taste, of a fertile fancy, and of a loving heart."* Longfellow's eminence as a poet consists not so much in originality or boldness of conception, or in ingenuity of plot, as in the exuberance and beauty of his language, the harmonious flow of his verse, and the striking appositeness of his imagery. "It is at once his aid and his merit that he can produce the choice pictures of the past and of other minds with new accessories of his own; so that the quaint old poets of Germany, the singers of the past centuries, the poetical vision and earnest teachings of Goethe, and the every-day humors of Jean Paul, as it were, come to live among us in American homes and landscapes."† A healthful, hopeful, solacing, ennobling, religious air pervades his every utterance. He is the poet of the heart and hoine; and his writings, now so widely and pleasurably read, will continue to savor of beauty, purity, and pathos * Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature. † Ibid. Day after day we think what she is doing Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, Not as a child shall we again behold her; In our embraces we again enfold her, But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, And beautiful with all the soul's expansion, And though at times impetuous with emotion And anguish long suppressed, The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, We will be patient, and assuage the feeling We may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. The leading peculiarity of Longfellow's style is its musicalness-a musicalness, too, that is not so far removed as that only a practiced ear may catch it, but is simple and unequivocal and spontaneous. "His artistic sense is so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable study. In this he has now reached a perfection quite unrivaled among living poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. . . . . His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the learned poets." WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cummington, Hampshire county, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. "Bryant early displayed the poetical faculty, and fastened upon the genial influences of Nature about him. He began to write verses at nine, and at the age of fourteen he prepared a collection of poems which was published at Boston in 1809."* Leaving Williams College without graduating-though honorably-he began the study, and subsequently the practice, of law, which he prosecuted some ten years. Thanatopsis was written in his nineteenth year, and, when published in 1816, was for some time, attributed by ritics to his father. Of this poem it has been remarked by ne of the most scrupulous and able of reviewers, † "It lone would establish the author's claim to the honors of enius." Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around,- Yet a few days, and thee In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Shalt thou retire alone,-nor couldst thou wish Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured rour Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. |