TJic Poet Longfellow, by James T. Fields. 



THE POET LONGFELLOW. 



LECTURE BY MR. JAMES T. FIELDS. 



A DISCOURSE UPON HIS CHARACTER AND POETICAL 

 WORKS HIS GENIUS AND ZEAL FOR STUDY IN- 

 TERESTING DETAILS OF THE ORIGIN OF SOME OF 

 HIS FAMOUS POEMS HOW THE " PSALM OF LIFE " 

 AND " EXCELSIOR" WERE WRITTEN HIS TRIBUTES 

 TO HIS FRIENDS A DELINEATOR OF FINE AND 

 TENDER SYMPATHIES. 



I FROM AN OCCASIONAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE TRIBUNE.! 

 BOSTON, April 24. The pupils of the Girls' High 

 School have had another addition to tlie debt they 

 already owe Mr. James T. Fields. He has always 

 taken a great deal of interest in the school, and 

 when he had prepared his interesting lecture on 

 Tennyson, he first submitted it to their indulgent 

 ears. The lecture on Longfellow, which he read to 

 them on April 24, surpasses any of his previous 

 essays of a similar nature in its admiring apprecia- 

 tion of his subject and intimate acquaintance with 

 it. Its delivery may be. considered as a eort of 

 literary dress rehearsal, and, if the evident delight 

 of the young ladies and the few score of visitors 

 who heard it is any criterion of the favor with which 

 it will be received by the general public, it will 

 prove more successful than either of the half-dozen 

 similar essays which have been so favorably received 

 during the past Winter. The lecture, which is fully 

 reported below, occupied in delivery hardly an hour. 



THE LECTURE. 



FELLOW-STUDENTS: I once had the pleasure of speak- 

 ing to you ID this hall cm "Alfred Tenuyson, the Foot 

 Laureate of England." I am to speak to you now on 

 one of our own stars who have sung, a poet of such 

 marked and varied excellence, a character so reverenced 

 and beloved among us, and iudeed everywhere, that I 

 have only to mention the name of Longfellow to secure 

 at once your sympathy and your interest in my theme. 

 It seems to me that this earlv hour of the day is the 

 selectest one for reading an essay on Longfellow to such 

 an audience as this; for lie is always young, always 

 full of the spirit of sunshine and the dawn, always im- 

 parting strength and courage to endeavor, and alwavs 

 singing in his own peculiar way that " life is real and 

 earuest:" that we must all strive to "act in the living 

 present," and that "still achieving, still pursuing," 

 should be the end of our flying and fleeting existence. 

 Somehow the world has always had an irreverent habit 

 of elevating its nose at living authors of genius, as if it 

 was a crime for a really great poet or prose writer to 

 be alive and well and enjoying the society of his friends ; 

 as if dust and ashes added a certain respectability to 

 merit, and it were highly appropriate to wait till a inau 

 be safely under the ground before he was lo be con- 

 sidered aa heir to fame and celebrated accordingly. As 



soon as a great author is (load, wo all be- in to do him 

 justice. Then we crowd about his grave and throw in 

 tributary flowers that should have nude glad his heart 

 and all his living senses while ho wtill lived among us, 

 and when he could htivo heard tho voice of piviiso not 

 with the dull, cold car of death, and felt tho laurels 

 around his living, sensitive brow. L'.;t us try, t<>- luy, to 

 be just to a living pout, and express wilhout ro^ervo 

 that earnest pride we feel in him, :md which thuau who 

 will come after us will bo sure to cherish. 



THE GRAND AND HEALTHY LESSONS OF HIS POETRY. 



The poetry of Longfellow is full of grand and healthy 

 lessons. " Stand up to your work, whatever it maybe, 

 and do not be afraid of it," is one of them. We aro 

 sometimes unmindful here in America that corn must bo 

 ground before it is baked. Wo are apt to hurry every- 

 thing, and to forget that if wo do not know a thing cor- 

 rectly we really do not know it at all. But L mgfellow 

 is to be placed with the army of scholars as w,-!l as with 

 the gifted band of world-renowned singers. I am to 

 speak to you of a man whose poetry is not ;vu exp TI - 

 ment, but au assured and lasting fact ; of 0:10 who has 

 no infirmities which I have been able to discover; of 

 one whose fancy never disordered or mis lirectod tho 

 purpose of his muse. Some poets, and good ones, have 

 sometimes fl.mied out, vaguely bristling with dictionary 

 words, and shocked us with their vagaries of thought 

 and expression ; but Ljugfollow is never lalse 

 or affected ; his language is always that of 

 man to man and human heart to liumau 

 heart. He never writes of one thing for 

 the purpose of putting another. His purpose is always 

 direct, and he goes to his worlc with the certainty of the 

 arrow and with a power .that is thoroughly in earnest. 

 In the year 1820 just fifty-lour years ago the question 

 was started iu The Edinburgh Review, which raised such 

 a breeze throughout America that the query is destined 

 never to be forgotten. The exact form of the inquiry 

 is precisely in these words: " Iu the four quarters of the 

 gl >be, who reads an American book'?" Now I don't 

 think at that period this question was an impertinent 

 one. We really had not much literature to show, as to 

 quantity or quality either, in those days. Twelve 

 months after that question was asked, a young lad had 

 just entered his name as a student in Bo wdom College 

 who was destined, forty years later, to become the most 

 popular poet iu the civilized world, including this same 

 kingdom of Great Britain, whore The Edinburgh Review 

 was published. 



MORE READ THAN ANY OTHER LIVING POET. 



To-day there is no disputing the fict that Henry 

 Longfellow is more read than auv other living poet; that 

 his books are more widely circulated and bring more 

 copyright than any other written in English verse. 

 There must be somo reason lor this popularity, among 

 high and low ; some sufficient cause for thi^ lasting and 

 firm regard for tho man who at a very early ago came 

 singing out from the borders of Maine into tho world of 

 song. E.irly he says somewhere and I wish you all to 

 remember this that " genius is ouly the infinite capacity 

 of taking trouble." I often think of the infinite pains 

 Louglellow took when a, youth to become a scholar, 

 ripe, and mature. Starting off iu a. small brig, 

 m tho first year of his college life, ho 

 goes into Denmark and studies Danish, and ob- 

 tains a knowledge of Icelandic, German and Dutch in 

 tho same way. He resolved to be not a m< re king of 

 shreds and patches, but a rc.il master in tuc studies ho 



