Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[286] his own and was never wholly a silent partner. His saying of Ruskin, for instance, that he had ‘grand passages of rhetoric, Iliads in nutshells;’ of some one else, that ‘Criticism is double edged. It criticises him who receives and him who gives;’ his description of the contented Dutch tradesman ‘whose golden face, like the round and ruddy physiognomy of the sun on the sign of a village tavern, seems to say “Good entertainment here;” ’ of Venice, that ‘it is so visionary and fairylike that one is almost afraid to set foot on the ground, lest he should sink the city;’ of authorship, that ‘it is a mystery to many people that an author should reveal to the public secrets that he shrinks from telling to his most intimate friends;’ that ‘nothing is more dangerous to an author than sudden success, because the patience of genius is one of its most precious attributes;’ that ‘he who carries his bricks to the building of every one's house will never build one for himself;’ —these were all fresh, racy, and truthful, and would bear recalling when many a brilliant stroke of wit had sparkled on the surface and gone under. As a mere critic he grew more amiable and tolerant as he grew older, as is the wont of literary men; and John Dwight, then the recognized head of the musical brotherhood of Boston, always maintained that Longfellow was