Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

About Longfellow there can be no difference of opinion. He seems to me, as to Mr. Boyesen, to rank first among those who have made translations into the English tongue. He alone avoids the perpetual difference between literal and poetic versions by absolutely combining the two methods; a thing which Mr. Boyesen thinks—but, I should say, mistakenly—cannot be done. Mr. Boyesen's dictum that ‘no poetic translation can be good and literal at the same time,’ is refuted by the very existence of Longfellow, whose instinct for the transference of his author's language seemed like a sixth sense or a special gift for that one purpose. Placing side by side his German ballads and their originals, one neither detects anything of Longfellow put in nor anything of Uhland or Heine left out. The more powerful and commanding class of translators insert themselves into the work of their authors; thus Chapman so Chapmanizes Homer that in the long run his