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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge 156 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 42 0 Browse Search
Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters 24 0 Browse Search
Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition 24 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 12 0 Browse Search
Historic leaves, volume 5, April, 1906 - January, 1907 12 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 10 0 Browse Search
Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life 8 0 Browse Search
Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child (ed. John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall) 6 0 Browse Search
Charles E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe 4 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book. You can also browse the collection for H. W. Longfellow or search for H. W. Longfellow in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, III (search)
, to quote Willis again, whole shelves of his library walking about in coats and gowns, and they seem for the moment far more interesting than the similar shelves in home-made garments behind him. He is not cured until he is some day startled with the discovery that there are cultivated foreigners to whom his own world is foreign, and therefore fascinating; men who think the better of him for having known Mark Twain, and women who are unwearied in their curiosity about the personal ways of Longfellow. Nay, when I once mentioned to that fine old Irish gentleman, the late Richard D. Webb, at his house in Dublin, that I had felt a thrill of pleasure on observing the street sign, denoting Fishamble Lane, at Cork, and recalling the ballad about Misthress Judy McCarty, of Fishamble Lane, he pleased me by saying that he had felt just so in New York, when he saw the name of Madison Square, and thought of Miss Flora McFlimsey. So our modest continent had already its storied heroines and its
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, IV (search)
let, the civilization which we are organizing is the great civilization of the future. He computes that in 1980 the English-speaking population of the globe will be, at the present rate of progress, one billion; and that of this number, eight hundred million will dwell in the United States. Now, all the interest we take in our schools, colleges, libraries, galleries, is but preliminary work in founding this great future civilization. Toils and sacrifices for this end may be compared, as Longfellow compares the secret studies of an author, to the submerged piers of a bridge: they are out of sight, but without them no structure can endure. If American society is really unimportant, and is foredoomed to fail, all these efforts will go with it; but if it has a chance of success, these are to be its foundations. If they are to be laid, they must be laid seriously. No man can do anything well, says Emerson, who does not think that what he does is the centre of the visible universe.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, VII (search)
ic till within twenty-five years, is now arresting its full share of attention, and perhaps even more than its share. It is difficult to say just how far the influence of a literary tonic extends, and Goethe might doubtless be cited as an instance where art was its own sufficient stimulus. In the cases of a writer like Poe, we trace no tonic element. The great anti-slavery agitation and the general reformatory mood of half a century ago undoubtedly gave us Channing, Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell; not that they would not have been conspicuous in any case, but that the moral attribute in their natures might have been far less marked. The great temporary fame of Mrs. Stowe was identified with the same influence. Hawthorne and Holmes were utterly untouched by the antislavery agitation, yet both yielded to the excitement of the war, and felt in some degree its glow. It elicited from Aldrich his noble Fredericksburg sonnet. Stedman, Stoddard, and Bayard Taylor wrote war
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, IX (search)
on, but you get little more. A great metropolis is moreover disappointing, because, although it may furnish great men, its literary daily bread is inevitably supplied by small men, who revolve round the larger ones, and who are even less interesting to the visitor than the same class at home. There is something amusing in the indifference of every special neighborhood to all literary gossip except its own. For instance, one might well have supposed that the admiration of Englishmen for Longfellow might inspire an intelligent desire to know something of his daily interests, of his friendships and pursuits; yet when his Memoirs appeared, all English critics pronounced these things exceedingly uninteresting; while much smaller gossip about much smaller people, in the Hayward Memoirs, was found by these same critics to be an important addition to the history of the times. It is an absolute necessity for every nation, as for every age, to insist on setting its own standard, even to th
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, X (search)
e only pearls! With what discontent did the audience of Emerson's day inspect his precious stones! Even now Matthew Arnold shakes his head over them and finds Longfellow's little sentimental poem of The Bridge worth the whole of Emerson. When we consider that Byron once accepted meekly his own alleged inferiority to Rogers, ands's writings came into instant acceptance, while Hawthorne's, according to their early publisher, attracted no attention whatever; that Willis indeed boasted to Longfellow of making ten thousand dollars a year by his pen, when Longfellow wished that he could earn one-tenth of that amount,—we must certainly admit that the equation Longfellow wished that he could earn one-tenth of that amount,—we must certainly admit that the equation of fame may require many years for its solution. Fuller says in his Holy State that learning hath gained most by those books on which the printers have lost; and if this is true of learning, it is far truer of that incalculable and often perplexing gift called genius. Young Americans write back from London that they wish they
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XI (search)
he advantage possessed by a shorter poem, it may be superseded at last by his Daughters of Time. No one doubts that Bayard Taylor will go down to fame, if at all, by his brief Legend of Balaklava, and Julia Ward Howe by her Battle Hymn of the Republic. It is, perhaps, characteristic of the even and well-distributed muse of Whittier that it is less easy to select his high-water mark; but perhaps My Playmate comes as near to it as anything. Bryant's Waterfowl is easily selected, and so is Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus, as conveying more sense of shaping imagination than any other, while Evangeline would, of course, command the majority of votes among his longer poems. In some cases, as in Whitman's My Captain, the high-water mark may have been attained precisely at the moment when the poet departed from his theory and confined himself most nearly to the laws he was wont to spurn—in this case, by coming nearest to a regularity of rhythm. The praise generally bestowed on the
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XIV (search)
ss has greatly diminished, and certain also that Mr. Bryce gives us plenty of praise. But the main difference seems to lie in this, that Mr. Bryce treats us as a subject for serious study, and not as a primary class for instruction in the rudiments of morals and grammar. The usual complaint made by us against English writers is the same now as in the days of Dickens, that they come here chiefly to teach and not to inquire. No man had so many foreign visitors in his time as the late Professor Longfellow, and there never lived a man in whom the element of kindly charity more prevailed; yet he records in his diary January 16, 185. his surprise that so few foreigners apparently desire any information about this country, while all have much to communicate on the subject. The reason why every one reads with pleasure even the censures of Mr. Bryce is because he has really taken the pains to learn something about us. There is probably no American author who has traversed this continent
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XVII (search)
ooks he selects as test-subjects for rendering. About Longfellow there can be no difference of opinion. He seems to me, al at the same time, is refuted by the very existence of Longfellow, whose instinct for the transference of his author's lanads and their originals, one neither detects anything of Longfellow put in nor anything of Uhland or Heine left out. The mor. Even Mrs. Austin, in that exquisite version quoted by Longfellow in his Hyperion, beginning Many a year is in its gra It is perhaps more beautiful, as it stands, than any of Longfellow's ballad-versions; but it is less perfect as a rendering. It is possible that Longfellow's own method swerved a little, in his later years, toward over-literalness. There are man quality to the influence of those who met to criticise Longfellow's work; it was rather due to the strong hold taken, by t. Mr. Bryant undoubtedly had, in his youth, something of Longfellow's gift for translation; his early Spanish ballads had in
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XVIII (search)
parts of books, referring to the person named, and enumerated in the Cleveland catalogue. The actual works of the author himself are not included. The list is as follows:— Washington.48 Emerson, Lincoln (each)41 Franklin 37 Webster34 Longfellow33 Hawthorne25 Jefferson23 Grant22 Irving21 Clay19 Beecher, Poe, M. F. Ossoli (each)16 Theodore Parker, Lowell (each)15 John Adams, Sumner (each)14 Cooper, Greeley, Sheridan, Sherman (each)12 Everett11 John Brown, Channing, Farragut (lus, one cannot help wondering that there should have been as many books written—so far as this catalogue indicates—about the recluse scholar as about the martyr-president. The prominence of Washington and Franklin was to be expected, but that Longfellow should come so near Webster, and that both he and Hawthorne should distinctly precede Jefferson and Grant, affords surely some sensations of surprise. Again, there is something curious in the fact that Poe should stand bracketed, as they say o<
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XXVI (search)
probably, its repose will be as undisturbed as that of Hans Andersen's forgotten Christmas-tree in the garret. Did, then, the authorship of that book give to its author so very substantial a hold on immortality? But there is in literary fame such a thing as recurrence—a swing of the pendulum which at first brings despair to the young author, yet yields him at last his only consolation. L‘éternite est une pendule, wrote Jacques Bridaine, that else forgotten Frenchman whose phrase gave Longfellow the hint of his Old Clock on the Stair. When our professors informed us that books remained unchanged, those of us who were studious at once pinched ourselves to buy books; but the authors for whom we madeeconomies in our wardrobe are now as obsolete, very likely, as the garments that we exchanged for them. No undergraduate would now take off my hands at half price, probably, the sets of Landor's Imaginary Conversations and Coleridge's Literary Remains, which it once seemed worth a month
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