sent to the printer in April, 1863, under that title, which was however changed to "Tales of a Wayside Inn," through the urgency of Charles Sumner. It is the common fate of those poets who live to old age, that their critics, or at least their contemporary critics, are apt to find their later work less valuable than their earlier. Browning, Tennyson, and Swinburne, to mention no others, have had to meet this fate, and Longfellow did not escape it. Whether it is that the fame of the earlier work goes on accumulating while the later has not yet been tested by time, or that contemporary admirers have grown older and more critical when they are introduced to the later verses, this is hard to decide. Even when the greatest of modern poets completed in old age the dream of his youth, it was the fashion for a long time to regard the completion as a failure, and it took years to secure any real appreciation to the second part of "Faust." This possibility must always be allowed for, but the fact remains that the title which Longfellow himself chose for so many of his poems, "Birds of Passage," was almost painfully suggestive of a series of minor works of which we can only say that had his fame rested on those alone, it would have been of quite uncertain tenure. A very few of them, like "Keramos," "Morituri Salutamus," and "The Herons of Elmwood," stand out as exceptions, and above all of these was the exquisite sonnet already printed in this volume, "The Cross of Snow," recording at last the poet's high water-mark, as was the case with Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar." Apart from these, it may be truly said that the little volume called "Flower de Luce" was the last collection published by him which recalled his earlier strains. His volume "Ultima Thule" appeared in 1880, and "In the Harbor," classed as a second part to it, but issued by others after his death. With these might be placed, though not with any precision, the brief tragedy of "Judas Maccabæus," which had been published in the "Three Books of Song," in 1872; and the unfinished fragment, "Michael Angelo," which was found in his desk after death. None of his dramatic poems showed him to be on firm ground in respect to this department of poesy, nor can they, except the "Golden Legend," be regarded as altogether successful literary undertakings. It is obvious that historic periods differ wholly in this respect; and all we can say is that while quite mediocre poets were good dramatists in the Elizabethan period, yet good poets have usually failed as dramatists in later days. Longfellow's efforts on this very ground were not less successful, on the whole, than those of Tennyson and Swinburne; nor does even Browning, tried by the test of the actual stage, furnish a complete exception. CHAPTER XIX LAST TRIP TO EUROPE