Had Longfellow been more rugged, and had he been content to end his poems now and then with a question mark (figuratively speaking) instead of a full stop, there would have been much talk about the ‘depth of his meaning;’ and had he been frankly suggestive on tabooed topics, we should have heard a world of chatter about ‘the largeness of his view’ and the surprising degree in which he was in ‘advance of his time.’ Doubtless he lacked brute strength. Whitman could have spared him a little of his own surplus, and neither poet would have been the worse for the transfer. Nevertheless Longfellow had abundance of power exerted in his own way, which was not the way of the world. What preposterous criticism is that of Frederic Harrison, who characterizes _Evangeline_ as ‘goody-goody dribble’! Perhaps Longfellow should be most praised for his exquisite taste. He was refined to the finger-tips, a gentleman not alone in every fibre of his being but in every line of his work. The poet of the fireside and the people was an aristocrat after all. Generations of culture seem to be packed into his verses. In a country where so much is flamboyant, boastful, restless, and crude, the influence of such a man is of the loftiest and most benignant sort. FOOTNOTES: [29] The first volume was printed in 1865 and sent to Italy in commemoration of the six hundredth anniversary of Dante’s birth. [30] _The Divine Tragedy_, _The Golden Legend_, and _The New England Tragedies_ reprinted in order as parts of a trilogy. [31] Lectures _On Translating Homer_. [32] _Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough_, p. 40. [33] Holmes: _Pages from an Old Volume of Life_. [34] Luigi Monti, T. W. Parsons, H. W. Wales, Israel Edrehi, Ole Bull, Daniel Treadwell. IX _John Greenleaf Whittier_ REFERENCES: =W. S. Kennedy=: _John Greenleaf Whittier, his Life, Genius, and Writings_, 1882. =S. T. Pickard=: _Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier_, 1894. =Richard Burton=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘Beacon Biographies,’ 1901. =T. W. Higginson=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘English Men of Letters,’ 1902. =G. R. Carpenter=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘American Men of Letters,’ 1903. I HIS LIFE John Greenleaf Whittier was born at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1807. His father, John Whittier, a farmer, was noted for probity, sound judgment, and great physical strength. A man of few words, he always spoke to the point, as when, in relation to public charities with which he had officially to do, he said: ‘There are the Lord’s poor and the Devil’s poor; there ought to be a distinction made between them by the overseers of the poor.’ He had imperfect sympathy with his son’s literary aspirations, but it were unjust to say that he was wholly opposed to them.