Chapter VIII: Last Works

The translation of Dante was a difficult task to which Longfellow gave himself for years with something like consecration. It is satisfactory or it is not, according to the point of view. He who holds that verse can never be translated into verse, and that a poem suffers least by being rendered in prose, will make no exception in Longfellow’s case. On the other hand, the reader who is not, and who has neither the opportunity nor the power to become a scholar in Italian, owes Longfellow an inestimable debt of gratitude. The unpoetic accuracy of which some complain counts for a virtue. The translation remains, with all that can be said against it, the work of a poet.

As age came on, Longfellow’s own verse, instead of losing in charm, the rather increased. _Kéramos_, _Ultima Thule_, and _In the Harbor_ contain many of his loveliest and most gracious poems. ‘Not to be tuneless in old age’ was his happy fortune.

* * * * *

His skill in the sentimental, homely, and obviously moral has blinded not a few readers to the larger aspects of Longfellow’s work. One wearies, no doubt, of the ethical lesson that comes with the inevitableness of fate. But there is no need of impatience, Longfellow does not invariably preach. Besides, all tastes must be taken into account. Many prefer the ethical lesson, unmistakably put.

Had Longfellow been more rugged, and had he been content to end his poems now and then with a question mark (figuratively speaking) instead of a full stop, there would have been much talk about the ‘depth of his meaning;’ and had he been frankly suggestive on tabooed topics, we should have heard a world of chatter about ‘the largeness of his view’ and the surprising degree in which he was in ‘advance of his time.’ Doubtless he lacked brute strength. Whitman could have spared him a little of his own surplus, and neither poet would have been the worse for the transfer. Nevertheless Longfellow had abundance of power exerted in his own way, which was not the way of the world. What preposterous criticism is that of Frederic Harrison, who characterizes _Evangeline_ as ‘goody-goody dribble’!

Perhaps Longfellow should be most praised for his exquisite taste. He was refined to the finger-tips, a gentleman not alone in every fibre of his being but in every line of his work. The poet of the fireside and the people was an aristocrat after all. Generations of culture seem to be packed into his verses. In a country where so much is flamboyant, boastful, restless, and crude, the influence of such a man is of the loftiest and most benignant sort.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] The first volume was printed in 1865 and sent to Italy in
commemoration of the six hundredth anniversary of Dante’s
birth.

[30] _The Divine Tragedy_, _The Golden Legend_, and _The New
England Tragedies_ reprinted in order as parts of a trilogy.

[31] Lectures _On Translating Homer_.

[32] _Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough_, p. 40.

[33] Holmes: _Pages from an Old Volume of Life_.

[34] Luigi Monti, T. W. Parsons, H. W. Wales, Israel Edrehi, Ole
Bull, Daniel Treadwell.