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art, or any art pure and simple.
“Evangeline,” which is perhaps the finest of Longfellow's poems, is not a favorite with youthful readers.
He was greater as a man, perhaps, than as a poet.
Future ages will have to determine this; but he was certainly one of the best poets of his time.
Professor Hedge, one of our foremost literary critics, spoke of him as the one American poet whose verses sing themselves; and with the exception of Bryant's “Robert of Lincoln,” and Poe's “Raven,” and a few other pieces, this may be taken as a judicious statement.
Longfellow's unconsciousness is charming, even when it seems childlike.
As a master of verse he has no English rival since Spenser.
The trochaic meter in which “Hiawatha” is written would seem to have been his own invention; 1 and is a very agreeable change from the perpetual iambics of Byron and Wordsworth.
“Evangeline” is perhaps the most successful instance of Greek and Latin hexameter being grafted on to an English stem.
Matthew Arnold considered it too dactylic, but the lightness of its movement personifies the grace of the heroine herself.
Lines like Virgil's
1 At least I can remember no other long poem composed in it.
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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