HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 407 



illustrious. In 1826, one year after receiving his degree, he was 

 appointed Professor of Modern Languages at Bovvdoin, In 1834 he 

 was chosen to succeed the eminent scholar, Mr. George Ticknor, as 

 Professor of Modern Languages in Harvard University. He resigned 

 in 1854, and James Russell Lowell, now Minister to England, was 

 elected to the vacant chair. In the mean time JNIr. Longfellow had 

 made three long visits to Europe, accomplishing himself for his pro- 

 fessorial duties, and gathering rich materials for his pen. For forty- 

 six years he resided in Cambridge, most of the time in the historical 

 mansion known as Washington's headquarters. 



In the removal of the name of Mr. Longfellow from the list of its 

 Fellows, the Academy bears its share in a great national loss. There 

 is DO need to give a moi-e extended account of a life so illustrious as 

 that of Mr. Longfellow, or to enumerate his familiar and secure titles 

 to fame. 



For the space of a whole generation he has been the most popular 

 and beloved of American poets. No poet who has ever written in the 

 English language has addressed a wider audience among his contem- 

 poraries in other countries as well as in his own, and none has ever 

 attached his readers to himself with firmer ties of personal regard. 

 The distinguishing characteristic of his poetry was its simple, sincere, 

 and exquisite expression of sentiment and emotion common to the 

 hearts of men, and of the sympathy of the poet, at once strong and deli- 

 cate, with the deepest and the most familiar exjjeriences of human life. 

 His poeti-y evoked the sympathy of his readers, and it strengthened 

 their best feelings by giving natural, appropriate, and beautiful utter- 

 ance to them. The service is incalculable which Mr. Longfellow has 

 thus rendered in refining, purifying, and elevating the moral disposition 

 of his numberless readers. His broad and liberal culture, his native 

 sense of poetic melody, his fine and critical taste, his admirable skill 

 and culture as an artist in verse, all contributed to the worth and to 

 the success of his work. But its chief source of power lay in the 

 character of the man. His poems in their excellence were the true 

 image of the poet. It was the man speaking in them that gave to 

 them their force of good. Sincerity was in the very tone of their 

 music. 



Tlie range of the subjects of his poetry was astonishingly wide. The 

 legends of the Old World and of the New, of the North and of the 

 South, deeds of patriotism and of devotion, stories of the past and of the 

 present, themes of household and domestic concern, of birth and death, 

 of joy and sorrow, were equally familiar to his lyre of many strings. 



