principally at Portland, Maine (where his son, the poet, whom he lived to see famous, was born), and died in that city, which he had long faithfully served, in 1849. A number of his legal arguments will be found in the Massachusetts and the Maine Reports. He was noted for his copious stores of knowledge, and for the agreeable manner in which he imparted the results of his investigations to his hearers.*

Our poet entered Bowdoin College in 1821, and graduated in 1825, after which he devoted himself for a short time to the study of the law. Having received the appointment of Professor of Modern Languages in his Alma Mater, he went abroad in 1826, for the purpose of enla ging his opportunities of studious application, and spent three years and a-half in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England. To these early travels we owe the charming and graceful series of prose sketches, published some years afterwards, under the title of "Outre-Mer."

In 1829, Mr Longfellow assumed the duties of his office, and two years later he married. In 1835, by the resignation of George Ticknor, the distinguished historian of Spanish literature, a vacancy occurred in the faculty of Harvard College, and Mr Longfellow was elected Professor of Belles Lettres. A second trip to Europe was the consequence of this new appointment, and the pilgrim-scholar again enioyed the opportunity of gratifying his thirst for the choicest productions of Continental literature among the scenes—and, in some cases, amidst the associations-to which they owed their birth. The summer of 1835 was passed in Denmark and Sweden, the autumn and winter in Holland and Germany, and the ensuing spring and summer in the Tyrol and Switzerland. Whilst residing in Rotterdam, a melancholy event occurred in Mr Longfellow's family history, which has invested that ancient city with an undying interest in his memory. The companion of his wanderings was suddenly snatched away from him, and summoned to other and eternal scenes, and he returned home awidower. In 1842 he again visited France, Germany, and England, passing the summer at Boppard on the Rhine. In 1843 he married a second time. After holding his professorship in

* Sce Judge Story's Life and Letters; and Willis's Address before the Maine Historical Society. Portland. 1857.

Harvard College for about twenty years, Mr Longfellow retired in 1854 to the undisturbed enjoyment of literary leisure.

Mr Longfellow has resided since 1837 in the "Craigie House," Cambridge, the head-quarters of General Washington after the battle of Bunker Hill, and since distinguished as the temporary residence of Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, and several others of the scholars whose profound and varied acquisitions have made the city of Boston "a name and a praise" alike in the cloisters of Oxford and in the rude hut of the backwoodsman of the Western wilds.

As has been intimated above, Professor Longfellow commenced his literary life, and acquired an enviable reputation, at an early age. Indeed, while he was an undergraduate he wrote many tasteful and carefully finished poems for the United States Literary Gazette, and in æsthetic criticism he soon after exhibited abilities of a very high order, in various articles which he contributed to the North American Review. In 1833 he published his translation from the Spanish of the celebrated poem of Don Jorge Manrique on the death of his father, with a beautiful introductory essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain, incorporated two years later (1835) into his next work, "Outre-Mer, or a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea," a collection of tales and sketches (some of which had already appeared in the North American Review) illustrating the impressions of a youthful scholar as he wanders leisurely through Southern Europe. His next, and most popular prose work, "Hyperion," first published in 1839,* is in a similar spirit, but has a unity of purpose, and is bolder and more sustained.

"The Romance of Hyperion must not be judged by the principles of classical composition. It belongs, preeminently, to the Romantic School. The scene is laid in the very centre of all that is romantic in the land of recollections and ruins of the Middle Ages. It is steeped in the romantic spirit. The language is moulded into the gorgeous forms of Gothic art. The illustrations and comparisons are drawn wholly from the sphere of romantic literature. In tender and profound feeling, and in

Hyperion; a Romance. By the Author of "Outre-Mer." New York: Samuel Colman. 12mo, 2 vols., pp. 213 and 226.

brilliancy of imagery, the work will bear a comparison with the best productions of romantic fiction which English literature can boast. Some tastes will be offended by the luxuriance of the language, and the brocaded aspect which it occasionally presents. A mind educated in exclusive admiration of the ancient classics, or in the modern schools formed upon their principles, may naturally be displeased with many things which occur in 'Hyperion.' We are ourselves by no means insensible to the force of strictures which may be made upon it. But we remember, on the other hand, that nature is limited to no age or country, and art may select from the whole range of nature those objects which suit her purposes, whether they have been handled by the ancient masters or not, provided she do not transcend the limits of morality on the one side, nor sink to the region of commonplace on the other. 'Hyperion' must be judged wholly with reference to this view. The term romance has probably misled a great many readers. We have been accustomed to expect, in a work bearing this title, a prodigious amount of diabolical mysteries, trap-doors without number, subterranean dungeons, and the clanking of chains; fortunate if we escaped with half a dozen ghosts, to say nothing of wizards and enchanters. Mailed knights and dragon-guarded ladies are also quite necessary ingredients in the genuine mixture called a romance. 'Hyperion' is no romance of this description. Its quiet, delicate, and beautiful pictures contrast with the terrific scenes of old romance, like a soft, autumnal scene, compared with the landscape swept by the tropical hurricane.

"In simplicity of plan, 'Hyperion' is also distinguished from what a romance is commonly understood to be. The action, if action it may be called, is carried on by as few personages as that of an ancient Greek drama. Nor are there any heroic achievements which transcend the vigour of mortal arm; no battles astound us with their din, or shock us with their bloodshed. Why, then, is the book called a romance? The answer to this question is intimated in the remark we have already made, because its materials, thoughts, feelings, scenery, and illustration, are drawn from the regions of romantic sentiment and poetry. Two paths lay open to the author. He m

have constructed a romance which should have represented the romantic ages in their living reality. He might have gone back a few centuries, summoned the old knights from their tombs, re-peopled the ruined castles of the Rhine, and told a tale of love, such as the passion was felt in the olden time. But this would have been a work of a more artificial character than the present. It would have had less connexion with the feelings and aspirations of the present age; it would have been less a part of life, and an outpouring of the heart. The other course was the one which the author has followed. He has represented his hero under all the influences of the romantic age, which a man of modern times may be supposed to feel. In order to give him the greatest impressibility, he has conceived him as a person of delicately-strung nerves, of a poetical cast of mind, and as a day-dreamer. Add to this he is an American, and a man of sorrows. He is a lover of the Middle Ages, and the more earnest and profound in his love for them from the fact that he comes from the New World. This hero, with all his delicate sensibilities, his poetical reveries, his quick feeling of the beauties of natural scenery, and his familiar acquaintance with the storied past, he places in the very heart of the region of old romance. He is a traveller and a student. His memory is peopled with the tales and legends of the Rhine; he sees, in the mighty ruins of the Middle Ages, noble monuments of a glorious and poetical period, and his heart beats with rapture in the contemplation of them. There is something striking in the mode by which the author has reconciled the demands of the past and those of the present, in his delicate adaptation of the character of his hero to the impression which it was desirable that the romantic scenes and monuments around him should produce, and the picture which he proposed to give. We are carried back to the illusions of the past, and yet we never desert the familiar present. We see the poetry and architecture of the romantic ages visibly mirrored in a modern mind; and yet that modern mind is such as may naturally be formed by the peculiar circumstances and the heavy sufferings which the author represents it to have passed through.

"The passions which are unfolded in the course of the story are conducted upon the same principle. There is no modern

complication of plot; there are no petty difficulties and entanglements, such as impede the progress of most modern heroes. There is a tale of love; but it is so taken out of the ordinary accompaniments of that passion, that it seems to belong more to a past and distant age than to the present. The passion remains; but it is so surrounded with the halo of poetry and the recollections of other times, that its connexion with the real life of to-day is like that of a cloud picture in the distant horizon, with the landscape of the solid earth beneath it. To keep up the consistency of the representation, the love-tale is one of unrequited passion. Thus the dreamy character which ought to mark a literary work blending present realities and past illusions is preserved throughout. This would have been interrupted had the sober happiness of modern matrimony been allowed to close the scene. We should at once have stepped down from the fantastic heights of the Middle Ages to the prosaic level of modern prosperity. The illusion would have been broken; the dream would have been over; and, instead of an uninterrupted picture of the poetical features of chivalrous ages,-warmed by the fire of passion, which is felt in all times, -the imagination would have been forcibly led away to bridal favours, and domestic bliss, and household cares; things very excellent in their way, but which form no suitable conclusion to a gorgeous dream, like that of 'Hyperion.'

"There are a few points, already alluded to, which deserve a more particular consideration. The first is the suitableness of the style to the scenes described. The scenery, we have said, is wholly of the romantic character; and the language, descriptive of such scenery, should be such as to awaken romantic associations, and no other, if possible. Now, the English language has two elements, each of which predominates with a particular class of writers. In Johnson's time, the only models of composition were the ancient classics and the modern French. The Latin element of our language was then most in favour. Dr Johnson's sesquipedalian verbosity had spread far and wide, and had a great weight of literary authority on its side. But the old ballad poetry of England had already begun to be studied, and was slowly working a revolution in the poetical style, and through that in the literary style generally. The sources of the