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Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches, Longfellow (search)
low par. Everyone has his or her favorite poet or poets, and it is a common practice with young critics to disparage one in order to elevate another. Longfellow was the most popular American poet of his time, but there were others besides Edgar A. Poe who pretended to disdain him. I have met more such critics in Cambridge than in England, Germany, or Italy; and the reason was chiefly a political one. At a distance Longfellow's politics attracted little attention, but in Cambridge they couline this; but he was certainly one of the best poets of his time. Professor Hedge, one of our foremost literary critics, spoke of him as the one American poet whose verses sing themselves; and with the exception of Bryant's Robert of Lincoln, and Poe's Raven, and a few other pieces, this may be taken as a judicious statement. Longfellow's unconsciousness is charming, even when it seems childlike. As a master of verse he has no English rival since Spenser. The trochaic meter in which Hiawa
John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana, Chapter 3: community life (search)
f his disapproval with the familiar conge of the British quarterlies. Short poems and literary notices formed the major part of his work, but it is unnecessary to particularize the amount or quality of what he did. It was all excellent practice. Poe, Cooper, and Anthon were his youthful hatreds. According to Colonel Higginson, the Professor was the best all-round man at Brook Farm, but was held not to be quite so zealous or unselfish for the faith as were some of the others, though his spebstinate assertions with some of the pears named in Mr. Downing's catalogue. No one whose soul such flavors had ever approached could refuse to assent to the most glowing anticipations of the Future of Mankind. In another article he condemned Poe's Tales, then attracting wide attention, as clumsily contrived, unnatural, and every way in bad taste, while in still another he commends Martin Farquhar Tupper's Crock of gold as a poem which abounds in beautiful passages, is written in a ner
John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana, Chapter 10: last days with the tribune (search)
s naturally regarded as prejudiced against everything Southern. It has already been pointed out in this narrative that Dana was slow to recognize the merit of Edgar A. Poe, and as he did not include either of that brilliant but erratic writer's poems in his first edition, that fact was regarded as conclusive evidence of a sectional bias even in literature. Inasmuch, however, as Poe was born in Boston, and received much of his fragmentary education at West Point, the criticism did but little harm to Dana or the book. It must be confessed, however, that a sharp review in one of the magazines had the merit of calling Dana's attention anew to the whole list of American poets, which resulted in the selection of Poe's Annabel Lee, The Bells, and The Raven, as well as many others from both native and foreign authors, for the next and subsequent editions of the work. The Household Book has been frequently imitated under one name or another. It was thoroughly revised by Dana in 1884, has
John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana, Chapter 21: administration of War Department (search)
ks from now. About brevets for your officers, I suppose the fact is just the same as with everybody else, Mr. Stanton has been too busy to sign the papers. There is a pile of them about two feet high now lying upon his table, and I presume, though I don't know, that yours are in with the rest. I propose to show your letter to General Grant, but to no one else. Rawlins has gone to Galena with his wife. General Grant has gone to Albany to celebrate the Fourth. General Halleck is here on his way to San Francisco. Slocum is assigned to command Mississippi, and I suppose Steedman will have Georgia. A heap of generals will be mustered out very soon, but you are not in the lot. Poe is here getting up his engineer's work from Sherman's campaigns, but I haven't seen him. Ulffers is with him. He came to see me the other day. Peter Hains got his leave of absence about three weeks since to take command of a New Jersey regiment, so that he is a colonel in spite of everything.
John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana, Index (search)
orge H. 390. People's Bank, 95. Perkins's Landing, 211. Perry, Commodore, 123, 132. Personal journalism, 430. Petersburg, 326, 329, 330, 332-334, 338, 339, 356. Phalanstery, 44, 48, 58. Phalanx, 43, 45. Phelps, Minister, 475. Philadelphia, 295, 296. Philadelphia-American, 62. Pierce, President, 126, 136, 137, 142. Pillsbury, Parker, 149. Pike, James, 116, 123; Campaign life of General Scott, 123. Piney Branch Church, 317. Platt, Senator, 458. Poems, 53-56. Poe, poet, 47, 53, 157. Poland, 81. Pope, General, 366. Port Gibson, 211, 219, 220. Porter, Admiral, 207, 209, 210, 411. Porter, Horace, 263-265, 279, 281, 285, 325, 331, 362. Port Hudson, 209, 212, 233. Port Royal, 120, 194. Post, New York, 180. Post-office at Washington, sketch of, 156. Post-tradership scandal, 441 442. Potomac River, 249, 337, 341. Prague, 8-. Prime, Captain, chief engineer, 208. Pritchard, Colonel, 364. Prohibition, 101. Protective Tariff, 102,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Chapter 2: school days and early ventures (search)
t a later time by his destruction of the volumes. Happy is he who has only this fault to deal with, and has no tinge of coarseness or mere frivolity for which to blush; and from all such elements Whittier was plainly free. Nevertheless, it must always remain one of the most curious facts in his intellectual history, that his first poetical efforts gave absolutely no promise of the future; he in this respect differing from all contemporary American poets-Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Poe, and Lowell. Whittier's desires in youth were almost equally divided between politics and poetry; and there presently appeared a third occupation in the form of that latent physical disease which haunted his whole life. This obliged him to give up the editorship of the New England Review and to leave Hartford on Jan. 1, 1832. He had been editing the Literary remains of J. G. C. Brainard, an early Connecticut poet, and wrote a preface, but did not see it in print until he had returned to
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Index. (search)
21, 122, 139, 172, 181; burning of hall and church in, 63-65. Philadelphia Society, 76. Philanthropist, the, mentioned, 32, 33. Pickard, Samuel T., 4, 39, 40, 159, 165; his Whittier, quoted, 32, 33, 37, 38, 41, 42, 45-47, 70, 71, 81, 90, 91, 109, 128-130, 135, 172; cited, 5 n., 39 n., 76 n., 77 n., 115 n. Pierpont, Rev., John, 81. Pike, Robert, 5. Pitman, Mrs., Harriet Minot, 57; her description of Whittier, 29-32. Pius IX., 88. Plato, 38, 111. Plymouth, N. H., 58. Poe, Edgar A., 37. Porlock, 162. Porter, Mrs. Maria S., 141. Portland, Me., 65. Portsmouth, N. H., 3. Powow River, 4. Prentice, George D., his letter to Whittier, 34, 35. Purdy, Mr., 42. Q. Quakers, 5, 112, 155; character of, 118-120. Quebec, 174. Quincy family, 52. R. Radical Club, 100, 102. Ramoth Hill, 141. Rantoul, Robert S., 109; quoted, 86; his delineation of Whittier, 110; his description of Whittier's funeral, 185. Republican party, 68. Reynolds, Mrs., 10
The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5. (ed. John Greenleaf Whittier), Tales and Sketches (search)
's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven,—how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,— Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-ordered law, The haunted palace, by Edgar A. Poe. do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance? I have seen, said Charles Lamb, faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding. In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine lov
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 1: Longfellow as a classic (search)
ogue under the name of Tennyson, for instance, up to September, 1901, were 487; under Longfellow, 357; then follow, among English-writing poets, Browning (179), Emerson (158), Arnold (140), Holmes (135), Morris (117), Lowell (114), Whittier (104), Poe (103), Swinburne (99), Whitman (64). The nearest approach to a similar test of appreciation in the poet's own country is to be found in the balloting for the new Hall of Fame, established by an unknown donor on the grounds of the New York Universio doubt extremely limited. The popular impression in such matters is too deep to be easily removed; and yet every test continues to prove that the hold taken on the average human heart by Longfellow is far greater than that held, for instance, by Poe or Whitman. This was practically conceded by those poets themselves, and it is this fact which in reality excited the wrath of their especial admirers. No man ever sacrificed less for mere fame than Longfellow, no man ever bore attack or jealous
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 12: voices of the night (search)
9. Halleck also said of the Skeleton in Armor that there was nothing like it in the language, and Poe wrote to Longfellow, May 3, 1841, I cannot refrain from availing myself of this, the only opportuadmirable, do not seem to me quite to recognize this truth, nor yet the companion fact that while Poe took captive the cultivated but morbid taste of the French public, it was Longfellow who called f of the United States, to see how eminently this was the case in America. Whatever the genius of Poe, for instance, we can now see that he represented, in this respect, a dangerous tendency, and PoePoe's followers and admirers exemplified it in its most perilous form. Take, for instance, such an example as that of Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers of Georgia, author of Eonchs of Ruby, a man of whom Bayar cannot turn a page of Chivers without recognizing that he at his best was very closely allied to Poe at his worst. Such a verse as the following was not an imitation, but a twin blossom:— On the b
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