Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[8] poet. Several editions of his works, single or collective, had recently appeared in London. Poems newly set to music had lately been published at the music stalls, and familiar citations from his poems were constantly heard in public speeches. Inquiries similar to mine were made a few years since in the book-stores of Switzerland and Germany by my friend, Professor W. J. Rolfe, who found without difficulty the German and English text of single or collected poems by Longfellow at Nuremberg, Cologne, Strasburg, Lucerne, Interlaken, and elsewhere.

Another form of obtaining statistics bearing on the relative position of Longfellow among English-writing poets would be to inspect books of selections made in Great Britain out of this class. I find two such lying near at hand; the first is ‘Pen and Pencil Pictures from the Poets,’ published by William P. Nimmo at Edinburgh, containing fifty-six poems in all, each with a full-page illustration, generally by Scottish artists. Of these selections, six are taken from Longfellow, five each from Wordsworth and Thomson, and three each from Shakespeare, Burns, and Moore. Of other American poets Bryant and Willis alone appear, each with one contribution. Another such book is ‘Words from the Poets; selected for the use ’