Besides a group of literary essays (published in his collected works under the title of ‘Driftwood’) Longfellow wrote a novel of New England life, _Kavanagh_, which suffered by coming too soon after _Evangeline_. It seems colorless when placed beside the romantic tale of Acadie. Yet one can well afford to take time to learn of Mr. Pendexter’s griefs, and incidentally to become acquainted with Billy Wilmerdings, who was turned out of school for playing truant, and ‘promised his mother, if she would not whip him, he would experience religion.’ Hawthorne was enthusiastic over _Kavanagh_; he, however, disclosed the secret of its unpopularity when he said to Longfellow: ‘Nobody but yourself would dare to write so quiet a book.’ V _VOICES OF THE NIGHT, BALLADS, SPANISH STUDENT, BELFRY OF BRUGES, THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE_ Longfellow served the cause of his art in two ways: first, he was an original poet, having a genius which, if not profound, or brilliant, or massive, or bewilderingly fresh and new, was eminently poetical and eminently attractive; second, he was an enthusiastic interpreter of the poetry of other lands through the medium of trustworthy and graceful translations. In _Voices of the Night_, his earliest volume of verse, the translations, from Manrique, Lope de Vega, Dante, Charles d’Orléans, Klopstock, and Uhland, outnumber the original pieces almost two to one. Their characteristic is fidelity in spirit and letter. They illustrate the genius of a poet who found pleasure in giving wider audience to the work of men he loved, and who did his utmost to preserve the singular qualities of these men. Longfellow’s second volume, _Ballads and Other Poems_, contains only four translations, but one of them is Tegnér’s _Children of the Lord’s Supper_, in three hundred and fifty hexameter verses. _The Belfry of Bruges_ contains a handful of translations from the German, including a lyric of Heine’s done in a way to cause regret that Longfellow did not put more of the _Buch der Lieder_ into English. In _The Seaside and the Fireside_ is given entire ‘The Blind Girl of Castèl Cuillè’ by the barber-poet Jasmin. The translations bulk so large and are so plainly a labor of love that it would seem as if Longfellow regarded such work an important part of his poetic mission. At the present time there is no need to urge the translator to ‘aggrandize his office.’ He does so cheerfully. Sometimes it is done for him. Are we not told that Fitzgerald was a greater poet than Omar Khayyám? In 1840 the office had not grown so great.