LONGFELLOW 



3495 



LONGFELLOW 



the various languages almost without effort. 

 His study went deeper than mere language 

 rules, however; it mastered the literatures and 

 the medieval legendary history of those coun- 

 tries. 



When, at twenty-two, he returned to Bow- 

 doin, it was to find himself perhaps the first 

 scholar in America the pioneer in giving to 

 the still somewhat crude young .country the 

 culture of Europe. America was ready for 

 such a service; Longfellow had grown up to 

 meet a unique opportunity. He had also the 

 ability and the methodical habits which made 

 possible a prodigious amount of hard work, 

 and there came from his pen, in rapid suc- 

 cession, prose sketches, reviews, translations of 

 foreign poems and textbooks. His Outre-Mer, 

 a collection of travel sketches somewhat after 

 the manner of Irving's Sketch-Book, was also 

 written during his years at Bowdoin. 



In 1834 he received an offer of a professor- 

 ship of modern languages at Harvard Univer- 

 sity, and the following year again set out for 

 Europe. His wife, Mary Potter,' whom he 

 had married in 1831, accompanied him, and the 



CRAIGIE HOUSE 

 The home of Longfellow at Cambridge, Mass. 



trip seemed to contain as much of joy as of 

 benefit. In London, the Longfellows found 

 many friends and a delightful welcome, for, 

 while the poet had as yet done little original 

 work, the promise for the future was evident. 

 They spent six months in Stockholm and 

 Copenhagen, in a study of the. Norwegian, 

 Finnish, Danish and Swedish languages, and 

 in October went on to Holland. Here Mrs. 

 Longfellow fell ill and died. That this caused 

 no pause in Longfellow's work does not prove 

 him unfeeling. Perhaps there was in his life 

 nothing more heroic than the silence, firm, but 

 not bitter or sullen, with which he bore this 

 grief and the other which came later. 



After visiting other parts of the Continent 

 and meeting many eminent men, Longfellow 



returned to his new duties. During the pro- 

 fessorship of seventeen years at Harvard, he 

 won the love of young and old alike, and 

 tried, by no means in vain, to help the students 

 to gain from their work in modern languages 

 not mere technical knowledge, but some per- 

 ception of the spirit and meaning of old-world 

 literature. 



A Great Career Begun. After living for 

 some years as a lodger in the old Craigie 

 House, Washington's headquarters in 1775, he 

 bought the house, and to it, in 1843, brought 

 his second bride, Miss Frances Appleton. With 

 almost ideal domestic surroundings, and in 

 constant touch with all of New England's 

 famous group of authors, he felt himself thor- 

 oughly content and at his best, and the years 

 that followed were the most productive of 

 his life. Such poems as The Reaper and the 

 Flowers, The Psalm oj Life, The Wreck of 

 the Hesperus and Excelsior had already won 

 him fame, and when there appeared, in 1847, 

 Evangeline, he became at once the most widely 

 read and universally loved poet in America. 

 This poem, the plot for which had been fur- 

 nished by Hawthorne, who thought it could 

 be told better in poetic form than in prose, 

 has never lost its popularity. Hiawatha, a 

 most remarkable success, followed in 1855, and 

 in 1858, The Courtship of Miles Standish; 

 many of his best-loved short poems were pub- 

 lished in the intervals. 



But all of Longfellow's interests were not 

 literary. "The Children's Poet," as he is so 

 frequently called, had the most constant and 

 ready sympathy for his own children, the 

 three girls of whom everyone knows from the 

 lines, 



Grave Alice and laughing Allegra, 

 And Edith with golden hair, 



and two boys, Charles and Ernest. Sharing 

 in their games, even coasting "for two hours 

 on the bright hillside," as his journal records, 

 sent him back to his work with renewed ability 

 to write the poems in which children still 

 delight. Not that the poems were written 

 for children; but the poet had a nature so 

 simple and genial, a mind which saw things 

 so clearly, and a genius which described so 

 well what others felt and saw, that even chil- 

 dren can understand and love him. 



The happy home life came to an abrupt and 

 tragic end in 1861. Mrs. Longfellow had been 

 making wax impressions to amuse the chil- 

 dren, when a burning drop of wax fired her 



