Mr. Longfellow has been greatly
popular because he so greatly deserved it. He has the secret of all the
great poets--the power of expressing universal sentiments simply and
naturally. A false standard of criticism has obtained of late, which
brings a brick as a sample of the house, a line or two of condensed
expression as a gauge of the poem. But it is only the whole poem that is
a proof of the poem, and there are twenty fragmentary poets, for one who
is capable of simple and sustained beauty. Of this quality Mr.
Longfellow has given repeated and striking examples, and those critics
are strangely mistaken who think that what he does is easy to be done,
because he has the power to make it seem so. We think his chief fault is
a too great tendency to moralize, or rather, a distrust of his readers,
which leads him to point out the moral which he wishes to be drawn from
any special poem. We wish, for example, that the last two stanzas could
be cut off from "The Two Angels," a poem which, without them, is as
perfect as anything in the language.
Many of the pieces in this volume having already shone as captain jewels
in Maga's carcanet, need no comment from us; and we should, perhaps,
have avoided the delicate responsibility of criticizing one of our most
precious contributors, had it not been that we have seen some very
unfair attempts to depreciate Mr.
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