Martyn. We think him their inferior in the degree to which he was in advance of his system. And if it is intended to display in him the prime article of the Anglican stock-in-trade, then (it may be our bad taste) we can walk safely by, oculo irretorto, without once coveting our neighbour's goods. ART. II.-1. The Golden Legend. By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. London: David Bogue, 1852. 2. The Poetical Works of HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. London: David Bogue. 3. The Prose Works of HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. London: David Bogue. THE HE literary aspirant in America, with some advantages derived from sources of interest as yet not only unexhausted but almost untried, has his special difficulties to contend with. Human nature, indeed, though by no means "in all places the same," has always a poetic element in it, and affords materials which, when used by the hand of a master, are capable of being combined into the noblest results: but in a new land it is not easy for genius itself to find its way. Literature, like art, is in part a_tradition; and to reunite its severed links is not easy. In Europe the traditions that presided over the schools of mediæval art, have long since been broken; and those who would revive art among us have to solve a problem, the vastness of which might well appal them. Is the artist to work on the foundations of the earlier schools? or to continue the progress of the later? or to combine the characteristics of many schools? He has to learn at the same time how to conceive and how to execute. His feet are in a new world; and he has to walk, not only without leading strings, but without the slenderest line to steady his steps, and prevent his eye from wandering. In America, where poetry is but a recent growth, the poet is met by the same difficulty. The very abundance of his materials is an additional embarrassment to him. Is he to seek for subjects among the in terests of the day; or to sit down beneath the shade of antiquity, amid the ruined cities of central America, where trees, centuries old, grow from the fissures of walls which in their day rose above the labours of earlier builders? Is he to look on the conquerors as his ancestors, or as an intrusive race? Should he aim at something wholly new; or is he to seek his models in the old world? If so, in what country, and at what period? His difficulty in this respect is illustrated with much humour by Mr. Longfellow; and there is excellent sense in the conclusion he arrives at. A literary pretender betakes himself to a man of genius with a view of turning his abilities to account. "I think, Mr. Churchill,' said he, that we want a national literature, commensurate with our mountains and rivers,-commensurate with Niagara, and the Alleghanies, and the great Lakes!' "Oh !' "We want a national epic that shall correspond to the size of the country; that shall be to all other epics what Banvard's Panorama of the Mississippi is to all other paintings,—the largest in the world.' 66 6 We want a national drama in which scope enough shall be given to our gigantic ideas, and to the unparalleled activity and progress of our people.' "Of course!' "In a word, we want a national literature altogether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies.' "Precisely,' interrupted Mr. Churchill; but excuse me :—are you not confounding things that have no real analogy? Great has a very different meaning when applied to a river and when applied to a literature.' * But at all events,' urged Mr. Hathaway, 'let us have our literature national. If it is not national it is nothing,' * * "On the contrary, it may be a great deal. Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent; but universality is better. All that is best in the great poets of all countries, is, not what is national in them, but what is universal. Their roots are in their native soil; but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language unto all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. ** Let us be natural, and we shall be national enough. Besides, our literature can be strictly national only so far as our character and modes of thought differ from those of other nations. Now, as we are very * like the English,-are, in fact English under a different sky,-I do not see how our literature is to be very different from theirs. It is not an imitation, but as some one has said, a continuation of it.' "But I insist on originality.' "Yes, but without spasms and convulsions. Authors must not, like Chinese soldiers, expect to win victories by turning summersets in the air. ** A national literature is not the growth of a day. Centuries must contribute their dew and sunshine to it. * * As the blood of all nations is mingling with our own, so will their thoughts and feelings finally mingle in our literature. We shall draw from the Germans tenderness, from the Spaniards passion, from the French vivacity, to mingle more and more with our English solid sense. And this will give us universality, so much to be desired.'” These views seem to us, in the main, sound. The only expression against which we are disposed to except, is that which implies an antagonism between the national and the universal in poetry. It is in but a superficial sense that a poet is national, if he is precluded by that circumstance from being universal also. Whether we refer to ancient times or to modern, we shall find that in poetry of the highest order the universal element exists as the basis of a human interest, and that the national element is an addition, not a thing substituted. The former exists as the form, so to speak, the latter as the colour; and each, far from prejudicing, adds to the effect of the other. The characters of Homer have been extolled by one set of critics for their universality, and by another for their individuality and the truth is, that between the two no opposition exists. The larger quality includes the smaller. To advance, indeed, from the principle of individuality to a universal conception of character by a process of generalization, could at best but produce delineations of a very hybrid order: but in the case of a first-rate poet, one whose creations are universal by nature, not by effort, the process is the converse of this. His characters are originally conceived by the imagination in the universal mould of humanity, and, at the same time endowed by a lively observation with the graphic traits of individuality. We need hardly point out that if between the extreme points of individuality and universality there is no necessary opposition, still less can an essential antagonism exist between the national and the universal types. : Shakspeare is the most universal of poets; yet so national is he that not a few have derived from his historic plays the greater part of their knowledge of English history; and grave senators invoke his verses in banqueting halls as a protection against "the cardinal's hat. Burns is perhaps the most national poet of recent times; yet even his Scotch dialect cannot confine an enthusiastic affection for his song to the northern side of the border. For all practical purposes, however, the true doctrine is substantially put forth in Mr. Longfellow's statement, "let us be natural and we shall be national enough. His own poetry is national as long as it treads American soil. He has also, however, cultivated in no small degree that faculty which, abandoning its own especial point of view, enters into that mode of thought, and those associations of ideas, which belong to other countries and other periods. His poetic sympathies are singularly ductile; and, without losing its identity his genius exerts itself in a different mode according as it finds its materials in America or in Europe. We shall endeavour to illustrate both classes of his works. The best known in this country of Mr. Longfellow's poems, Evangeline, is an illustration of American annals. In those annals few passages are more touching than that political eviction, described at length in Haliburton's history of Nova Scotia, which desolated a whole province, and in one day uprooted so large a proportion of the original colonists of what was then called Acadia, from the fields they had embanked, the forest they had cleared, and the homesteads they had raised in the wild, On this occasion a European race experienced what the Indian races had so often encountered on a larger scale. The wanderings of those exiles, some of whom in the evening of their days found their way back to their native land, and laid their dust beside that of their forefathers, presented to Mr. Longfellow a theme which he has known how to use. No one can read the poem without receiving from its perfect verisimilitude and consistency, a pledge that he has been true to the manners and characters described. The following lines are taken from the earlier part of the poem, descriptive, of the patriarchal ways and happy security of the Acadians before the fatal edict was issued against them: "Now recommenced the reign of rest, and affection, and stillness. Day with its burden and heat had departed, and twilight, descending, Brought back, the evening star to the sky, and the herds to the homestead. Pawing the ground they came, and resting their necks on each other, And with their nostrils distended, inhaling the freshness of evening. Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer, Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved from her collar, Quietly paced, and slow, as if conscious of human affection. Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside, Where was their favourite pasture. Behind them followed the watch-dog, Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his instinct, Not less excellent is the following sketch of an American Prairie: "Just where the woodlands met the flowery surf of the prairie, Gazed on the peaceful scene, with the lordly look of its master. Suddenly out of the grass the long white horns of the cattle And the whole mass became a cloud, a shade in the distance." Its singular descriptive power is, however, but a subordinate merit in a work which has already taken its place among the very best in a class of which modern times have produced few good specimens,-that of narrative poetry. In its pathos at once, and in its singular completeness, it VOL. XXXIV.-No. LXVIII. |