TAYLOR, BAYARD. Critical Essays and Literary Notes. 1880. UNDERWOOD, F. H. John Greenleaf Whittier: a Biography. 1884. WENDELL, BARRETT. Stelligeri and Other Essays. 1893. WHITMAN, WALT. Specimen Days. April 16, 1881. TOPICS AND PROBLEMS Read the poems in Whittier the titles of which suggest local treatment of Essex County life and scenes. Compare these with similar poems in Burns. Read such poems as "First-Day Thoughts," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "The Garrison of Cape Ann," "The Waiting," "The Eternal Goodness," and "Our Master" for evidences of Whittier's religion. Read Emerson's essay on "The New England Reformers," remembering that Whittier was one of these. Compare the war poetry of Whittier and Freneau. In Whittier's controversial poetry note the different levels of "Barbara Frietchie," "Expostulation," and "The Waiting," and cite other poems which may fairly be located in these three classes. Read Whittier's ballads with the comments on page 261 concerning his inclination to expound. Compare and contrast Whittier's "Snow-Bound" with Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." Apply the tests for popular fireside poetry to those poems of Whittier's which you regard as general favorites. CHAPTER XVIII HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW It is a matter of common practice to mention Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) as a member of "the Cambridge group," with the suggestion that there was some such agreement in point of view as existed between the men who lived and wrote in Concord. Yet there was no such oneness of mind among Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes as among Emerson and his younger associates. Between Longfellow and Lowell the real point of contact was their scholarship, and particularly their enthusiasm for the writings of Dante; between Lowell and Holmes there was neighborly regard but no real intimacy of feeling. The Cambridge men, to be sure, were different from the men of Concord. The fathers of all three were professional gentlemen of some distinction, all were college bred, ripened by residence abroad, and holders of professorships in Harvard College. All enjoyed and deserved social position as members of the "Brahmin caste,"[17] all were frequenters of the celebrated Saturday Club, and all contributed to the early and lasting fame of the _Atlantic Monthly_. But as far as their deeper interests in life were concerned they went their several ways. Lowell was a representative first of New England and the North and later of the country as a whole; Holmes belonged far more to Boston than to the college town across the Charles; so that, of the three, Longfellow, the only one not born there, was most closely associated with Cambridge, less clearly allied with any other part of the world. In the literary vista, therefore, the local relationship should not loom too large. Longfellow should be