meaning. Given a material city, a river, a fog, and so on, the poet sets his wits to work to discover what corresponds, or can be made to correspond, with them spiritually. If he is skilful, he constructs an

VIEW FROM THE REAR PIAZZA. (THE OPEN GATE-WAY LEADS TO THE LAWN, A BROAD AND SPLENDID STRETCH RUNNING TOWARD THE NORTH.) ingenious poem, of doubtful intellectual value. "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year" is a medley of medieval suggestion and Shakespearean remembrance, which demands a large and imaginative appreciation.

The Shakespearean element appears somewhat out of place, though it adds to the impressiveness and effectiveness as a whole. It is a medley, however, and it must be judged by its own fantastic laws. Whatever faults disfigured "The Voices of the Night" were lost sight of or forgiven for the sake of their beauties and the admirable poetic spirit which they displayed. A healthful poet was singing, and his song had many tones.

"Hyperion" and "The Voices of the Night," which were published in the same year (1839), established the reputation of Mr. Longfellow as a graceful prose writer, and a poet who resembled no poet of the time, either in America or England. His scholarship was evident in both, and was not among the least of the charms which they exercised over their readers.

Mr. Bryant was the only American poet of any note who had enriched the literature of his native land with translations. They showed his familiarity with other languages, and were well thought of by scholars, but they added nothing to his fame, for fainous he was from the day he published "Thanatopsis." It was otherwise with the translations of Mr. Longfellow, which brought him many laurels, and were in as great demand as his original poems. There were twenty-three of them in the little volume which contained "The Voices of the Night," culled from "Hyperion," "Outre-Mer," his review articles, not forgetting the great ode of Don Jorge Manrique, and they represented six different languages. They were well chosen, with the exception of the two versions from the French; the subjects being in themselves poetical, and the words in which they were clothed, characteristic of the originals. The highest compliment that can be paid to Mr. Longfellow is to say that they read like original poems. The most felicitous among them are "The Castle by the Sea," "Whither?" "The Bird and the Ship," and the exquisite fragment entitled "The Happiest Land." Nearly forty years have passed since they were collected in "The Voices of the Night," and these years have seen no translator equal to Mr. Longfellow.

Mr. Longfellow's second poetical venture, "Ballads and Other Poems," determined his character as a poet. It was more mature, not to say more robust, than "The Voices of the Night," and its readers felt sure of its author hereafter, for he felt sure of himself. The opening ballad, "The Skeleton in Armour," was the most vigorous poem that he had yet

written,-a striking conception embodied in picturesque language, and in a measure which had fallen into disuse for more than two centuriesthe measure of Drayton's "Ballad of Agincourt." I do not see that a line or a word could be spared. There were two elements in this collection not previously seen in Mr. Longfellow's poetry, one being the power of beautifying common things, the other, the often renewed experiment of hexameter verse. What I mean by beautifying common things is the making a village blacksmith a theme, and a legitimate theme, too, for poetry. Mr. Longfellow has certainly done this. More purely poetical than "The Village Blacksmith" is "Endymion" and "Maidenhood." The sentiment of the last is very refined and spirited. "It is not always May," "The Rainy Day," and "God's Acre," are each perfect of its kind, and the kinds are very different. "The Rainy Day," for instance, is in the manner of "The Beleaguered City," which for once has produced a good poem,-I suspect, because it is a short one. "To the River Charles" is a pleasant glimpse of Mr. Longfellow's early Cambridge life, and the art of it is perfect.

The most popular poem in Mr. Longfellow's second collection"Excelsior "--has more moral than poetical value. The conception of a young man carrying a banner up a mountain, suggests a set scene

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in a drama, and the end of this imaginary person does not affect us as it should, his attempt to excel being so fool-hardy. That he would be frozen to death was a foregone conclusion. The most important of the translations here (all of which are excellent) was The Children of the Lord's Supper," from the Swedish of Tegnér. ́ It renewed, as I have said, the often baffled attempt to naturalize hex ameters in English poetry, an attempt which Mr. Longfellow had made four years before, in his paper on Frithiof's Saga," when he translated the description of Frithiof's ancestral estate at Framnäs into this measure. The poets and poetasters of the Elizabethan era tried in vain to revive it. Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, projected a reform of English poetry,—a reform which, if it had succeeded, would have caused " a general surceasing of rhyme" and a return to certain, or uncertain, rules of quantity. "Spenser suffered himself to be drawn into this foolish scheme," says Professor Child, "and for a year worked away at hexameters and iambic trimeters quite seriously." (The year in question, I take it, was 1580.) Harvey's project was taken up with zeal by a coterie over which Sidney and Dyer presided; but the wits, notably Nash, ridiculed it, the latter saying (in substance) that the hexameter was a gentleman of an ancient house, but that the English language was too craggy for him to run his long plough in it. And Ascham wrote of it, about fifteen years before, that it rather trotted and hobbled than ran smoothly "in our English tong." So thought not Master Abraham Fraunce, who, in 1587, published a translation of the "Aminta" of Tasso, in hexameters, and in the following year a work entitled "Lawier's Logicke," wherein he stowed away a version of Virgil's Eclogue of Alexis, in the same measure. Less than a century from this date, Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, paid his respects and disrespects to the ancient and modern poets in his "Theatrum Poetarum" (1675),—a curious little book, which is thought to reflect the opinions of his illustrious uncle. He sums up the unlucky translator of Tasso in a few lines: "Abraham Fraunce, a versifier of Queen Elizabeth's time, who, imitating Latin measure in English verse, wrote his 'Ivy Church' and some other things in hexameter, some also in hexameter and pentameter; nor was he altogether singular in this way of writing, for Sir Philip Silney, in the pastoral interludes of his 'Arcadia,' uses not only these, but all other sorts of Latin measure, in which no wonder

bei fl wed by so few, since they neither become the Englen for my other nodem language" Winstanley expressed me same micrordne gitive of France's becameters twee years or Die", sealing me very words of Phillipe for that purpose..

Linghine, in his "Atcomnt of the English Trimacek Fiera * (1/90% alls four separate works, not mentioned by Money and Philips, to the list of Frummer's productions in betumeters, wit mounds the disuse of quantitive experiments in English versionzon. "Notwithstanding Mr. Capan in his mashain of Elmer in Sr Hillip Spiney in his Eclogues, have practised mis vig iỂ VoDng THE the way of mating the Lite Desces in verses, paramiar z me benmeter, is now land aside, and the verse if en ladies, vim ve style berie verse, is moet in see.” The sexs icon ca any scale was made by tas necul aber dentist Sturbey, in his - Vision of Judgment" in 1990-a piece of 10serious profanity which rily deserved the micile fren 16 I Such, su far as I know, is the history of mis let newsin Engli

fortified in so thinking by the excelence of his own practic desem -The Children of the Lord's Supper is a charmmg poem. a VIR J antique setting is very becoming.

Mr. Longfellow made a thin voire : Bunge after pubbling lis *Bullsis and other Poems and passed the summer in the Eline. E+ mored after a few months, bringing with himmer of prema wish were written at sea, and in willd be expressed his debestan slavery. Puems on Savery" were published in 1841, and dedicat to W. E. Channing, who did not live to read the poets admin of his character and his work. This dedication, vilih işited, BOOTLIN a noble stanza:

- Well Some! Thy words are great and bout.

At times they seem " me

Lite Luther's in the days if sã,

Half battles for the free.”

"The Slave's Dream" is cre of the few remembemble poems of vaka the peculiar institution" was the inspinate. It is exowingly per taresque, and its versification is masterly. The hamony of sound and se, the movement of the fourth stanza is very fine: