As children themselves are the perfect flowers of life, so a collection of the best poems written on children should be the most perfect of all anthologies. No English poet has written of children with more love and grace and delicacy [than Herrick]. His _Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour_, his poem _To His Saviour_, _A Child_: _A Present by a Child_, his _Graces for Children_, and his many lovely epitaphs on children are all of them exquisite works of art, simple, sweet and sincere. As the cross-benches form a refuge for those who have no minds to make up, so those who cannot make up their minds always take to Homeric studies. Many of our leaders have sulked in their tents with Achilles after some violent political crisis and, enraged at the fickleness of fortune, more than one has given up to poetry what was obviously meant for party. There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstand it and the other to praise it for qualities it does not possess. Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. It is true that such aphorisms as Graves are a _mother’s dimples_ When we complain, or The primrose wears a constant smile, And captive takes the heart, can hardly be said to belong to the very highest order of poetry, still, they are preferable, on the whole, to the date of Hannah More’s birth, or of the burning down of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the Great Exhibition; and though it would be dangerous to make calendars the basis of Culture, we should all be much improved if we began each day with a fine passage of English poetry. Even the most uninteresting poet cannot survive bad editing. Prefixed to the Calendar is an introductory note . . . displaying that intimate acquaintance with Sappho’s lost poems which is the privilege only of those who are not acquainted with Greek literature. Mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; it is in their reasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief. All premature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves. No one survives being over-estimated. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first true men of letters America produced, and as such deserves a high place in any history of American civilization. To a land out of breath in its greed for gain he showed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study of literature; his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were still productive of much good; he had a most charming and gracious personality, and he wrote some pretty poems. But his poems are not of the kind that call for intellectual analysis or for elaborate description or, indeed, for any serious discussion at all. Though the _Psalm of Life_ be shouted from Maine to California, that would not make it true poetry.