"I dislike as much as any one can the tone of English criticism in reference to our literature. But when you say, 'It is a lamentable fact that as yet our country has taken no decided steps towards establishing a national literature,' it seems to me that you are repeating one of the most fallacious assertions of the English critics. Upon this point I differ entirely from you in opinion. A national literature is the expression of national character and thought; and as our character and modes of thought do not differ essentially from those of England, our literature cannot. Vast forests, lakes, and prairies cannot make great poets. They are but the scenery of the play, and have much less to do with the poetic character than has been imagined. Neither Mexico nor Switzerland has produced any remarkable poet. "I do not think a 'Poets' Convention' would help the matter. In fact, the matter needs no helping."{101} In the same way he speaks with regret, three years later, November 5, 1847, of "The prospectus of a new magazine in Philadelphia to build up 'a national literature worthy of the country of Niagara--of the land of forests and eagles.'" One feels an inexhaustible curiosity as to the precise manner in which each favorite poem by a favorite author comes into existence. In the case of Longfellow we find this illustrated only here and there. We know that "The Arrow and the Song," for instance, came into his mind instantaneously; that "My Lost Youth" occurred to him in the night, after a day of pain, and was written the next morning; that on December 17, 1839, he read of shipwrecks reported in the papers and of bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck, and that he wrote, "There is a reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-Flower on Black Rock. I must write a ballad upon this; also two others,--'The Skeleton in Armor' and 'Sir Humphrey Gilbert.'" A fortnight later he sat at twelve o'clock by his fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into his mind to write the Ballad of the Schooner Hesperus, which he says, "I accordingly did. Then I went to bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It was three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines, but by stanzas." A few weeks before, taking up a volume of Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," he had received in a similar way the suggestion of "The Beleaguered City" and of "The Luck of Edenhall."