Longfellow, and that, as it seemed to
us, for qualities which stamp him as a true and original poet. The
writer who appeals to more peculiar moods of mind, to more complex or
more esoteric motives of emotion, may be a greater favorite with the
few; but he whose verse is in sympathy with moods that are human and not
personal, with emotions that do not belong to periods in the development
of individual minds, but to all men in all years, wins the gratitude and
love of whoever can read the language which he makes musical with solace
and aspiration. The present volume, while it will confirm Mr.
Longfellow's claim to the high rank he has won among lyric poets,
deserves attention also as proving him to possess that faculty of epic
narration which is rarer than all others in the nineteenth century. In
our love of stimulants, and our numbness of taste, which craves the red
pepper of a biting vocabulary, we of the present generation are apt to
overlook this almost obsolete and unobtrusive quality; but we doubt if,
since Chaucer, we have had an example of more purely objective narrative
than in "The Courtship of Miles Standish." Apart from its intrinsic
beauty, this gives the poem a claim to higher and more thoughtful
consideration; and we feel sure that posterity will confirm the verdict
of the present in regard to a poet whose reputation is due to no
fleeting fancy, but to an instinctive recognition by the public of that
which charms now and charms always,--true power and originality, without
grimace and distortion; for Apollo, and not Milo, is the artistic type
of strength.
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