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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 21: the Loftier strain: Christus (search)
whose title was afterwards changed to John Endicott, and which was the first of The New England Tragedies, was not finished till August 27, 1857, and the work alternated for a time with that done on Miles Standish; but it was more than ten years (October 10, 1868) before it was published, having first been written in prose, and only ten copies printed and afterwards rewritten in verse. With it was associated the second New England Tragedy, Giles Corey of the Salem farms, written rapidly in February of that same year. The volume never made a marked impression; even the sympathetic Mr. Fields, the publisher, receiving it rather coldly. It never satisfied even its author, and the new poetic idea which occurred to him on April 11, 1871, and which was to harmonize the discord of The New England Tragedies was destined never to be fulfilled. In the mean time, however, he carried them to Europe with him, and seems to have found their only admirer in John Forster, who wrote to him in Londo
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 24: Longfellow as a man (search)
wn room, refused all visitors outside of the family, and had a printed form provided for the acknowledgment of letters, leaving his daughters to answer them. During the last three months of his life he probably did not write three dozen letters, and though he saw some visitors, he refused many more. He might sometimes be seen walking on his piazza, or even in the street before the house, but he accepted no invitations, and confined himself mainly within doors. His seventy-fifth birthday, February 27, was passed very quietly at home, in spite of the many celebrations held elsewhere. On Sunday, March 19, he had a sudden attack of illness, not visibly connected with his previous symptoms. It was evident that the end was near, and he finally died of peritonitis on Friday afternoon, March 24, 1882. It will perhaps be found, as time goes on, that the greatest service rendered by Longfellow—beyond all personal awakening or stimulus exerted on his readers—was that of being the first c