From 1863 on Longfellow continued in the various paths which he had already marked out, but his work in the main was in sustained narrative and in translation. His rendering of Dante is the preëminent piece of American translation, at once more poetic and more scholarly than Bryant's "Iliad" or Bayard Taylor's "Faust." It was a labor of love, extending over many years, the fruit of his teaching as well as of his study, and in its final form the product of nightly counsels with his learned neighbors, Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell. Age, fame, and the affectionate respect of the choicest friends saw him broaden and deepen in his philosophy of life. Little psalms and ballads no longer expressed him. Life had become a great outreaching drama at which he hinted in his cyclic "Christus: a Mystery." His last lyrics opened vistas instead of supplying formulas, and quite appropriately he left behind as an uncompleted fragment his dramatic poem on the greatest of dreamers and workers, Michael Angelo. There is no possibility of debate as to Longfellow's immense popularity. The evidence of the number of editions in English and in translation, the number of works in criticism, the number of titles in the British Museum catalogue, the number of poems included in scores of "Household" and "Fireside" collections, and the confidence with which booksellers stock up in anticipation of continued sales,[19] tells the story. But these facts in themselves do not establish Longfellow's claim to immortality, for there is no necessary connection between such popularity and greatness. There was little evidence in him of the genius which takes no thought for the things of the morrow. Until after the height of his career he never wrote in disregard of the public. "The fact is," he sent word to his father, when he was but seventeen, "I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature." And even earlier he had laid down his program when he wrote, "I am much better pleased with those pieces which touch the feelings and improve the heart, than with those which excite the imagination only." He had the good sense and the honesty not to pretend to inspiration. On the contrary he was continually projecting poems and continually sitting down, not to write what he had thought but to think what he should write. He was an omnivorous but acquiescent reader, and what his reading yielded him was literary stuff rather than vital ideas. He accepted and reflected the ways of his own time and did not modify them in any slightest degree. He was never iconoclastic, rarely even fresh. He had something of Pope's gift for well-rounded utterances on life, something of Scott's ability to tell a good story well, and withal his own benevolent serenity. [19] See pages 2-7 in T. W. Higginson's "Longfellow," _American Men of Letters Series_.