* * * * *
LONGFELLOW.
The preface of "Outre-Mer," Longfellow's first book, is dated 1833. The
last poem in his last volume is published in 1863. In those thirty years
what wide renown, what literary achievement, what love of friends in
many lands, what abounding success and triumph, what profound sorrow,
mark the poet's career! The young scholar, returning from that European
tour which to the imaginative and educated American is the great
romance, sits down in Bowdoin College in Maine, where he is Professor,
and writes the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "worthy and gentle reader."
Those two phrases tell the tale. The instinct of genius and literary
power stirring in the heart of the young man naturally takes the quaint,
dainty expression of an experience fed, thus far, only upon good old
books and his own imagination. The frolicking tone of mock humility,
deprecating the intrusion upon the time of a busy world, does not
conceal the conviction that the welcome so airily asked by the tyro will
at last be commanded by the master.
Like the "Sketch-Book" of the other most popular of our authors, Irving,
the "Outre-Mer" of Longfellow is a series of tales, reveries,
descriptions, reminiscences, and character-pieces, suggested by European
travel.
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