"All things are sad :— I go and ask of Memory, That she tell sweet tales to me And she takes me by the hand, Showeth the old faces In her hazy mirage-land; Oh, her voice is sweet and low, Gleaming through The half-unfolded Eglantine, But I feel that I am only Yet more sad and yet more lonely!"—Song. LONGFELLOW, 1807-1882 Biographical Outline.-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born in Portland, Mass. (afterward Maine), February 27, 1807, of parents descended on both sides from English ancestry; father a lawyer of high standing, a Harvard classmate of Channing and Judge Story, and at one time a member of Congress; Longfellow had four brothers and four sisters; as a boy he manifests the gentleness so characteristic of his poems, disliking violent games, noises, etc.; he has early access to the best English classics, and is especially fond of Cowper, Ossian, and Washington Irving; he is reared strictly, although he goes, with his family and church, into the earlier forms of Unitarianism and, as a young man, takes singing and dancing lessons; he enters a private school at the age of five, but soon withdraws, disgusted with the companionship of rough boys; at six he enters the Portland Academy, and is "half through his Latin grammar" before he is seven; among his teachers at the school was Jacob Abbott; as a boy Longfellow is handsome, frank, and retiring; his school vacations are spent on the farm of his grandfather, Judge Longfellow, at Graham Corners, near Portland, and at Hiram, where his maternal grandfather, General Wadsworth, of Revolutionary fame, and also a Harvard graduate, had an estate of 7,000 acres ; Longfellow's first published poem, "The Battle of Lovell's Pond," commemorating an Indian fight at a pond near Hiram, appears anonymously in the Portland Gazette, November 20, 1820 (the lines on "Mr. Finney and his Turnip," once so widely published as Longfellow's first poem, are not his); about this time he forms a literary partnership with a boy named William Browne, and together they write plays, epi grams, and "tragedies;" Longfellow's youthful feelings and experiences are afterward expressed in the poem "My Lost Youth." Longfellow enters Bowdoin College, of which his father was a trustee, in 1821, but does the work of Freshman year at home, and begins his residence at Brunswick in 1822, rooming Iwith his elder brother in the house where Mrs. Stowe afterward wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin ;" in college Longfellow maintains a high rank, and is noted for his refined manners and happy temperament; he confesses that he "cares little about politics or anything of the kind;" in the winter vacation of 1823-24 he visits Boston and dances at "a splendid ball" given at Cambridge in honor of the Russian Consul; while in college he contributes to a Portland journal several poems not thought worth reprinting and to the American Monthly Magazine several prose articles; in November, 1824, he publishes in the U. S. Military Gazette a poem entitled "Thanksgiving," which shows plainly the influence of Bryant, who was then contributing to the same periodical; during 1825 Longfellow publishes in the Gazette sixteen poems, of which five were reprinted in "Voices of the Night," his first volume of poems; he also contributes to the Gazette three prose essays; at this time, when Longfellow was only seventeen, his name was "honorably mentioned" in the Galaxy with those of Bryant (then already famous) and Percival, and Longfellow's poem "Autumnal Nightfall" was attributed to Bryant; in March, 1824, he writes to his father: "I am anxious to know what you intend to make of me. I hardly think nature intended me for the bar, the pulpit, or the dissecting-room. I am altogether in favor of the farmer's life;" while at Bowdoin he unites with five fellow-students in forming a Unitarian club, and disseminates Unitarian tracts; as early as December, 1824, he proposes to his father to allow him to spend a year at Harvard after graduation, where he means to study history, literature, and Italian, and after which ... he proposes to attach himself to some literary journal as a means of livelihood; he adds: "The fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature. My whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres in it. I will be eminent in something;" at graduation, in September, 1825, he stands fourth in a class of thirtyeight; immediately after Commencement he is offered the newly established chair of modern languages at Bowdoin, on the condition that he visit Europe to prepare himself for the place; he remains at Portland, awaiting mild weather for his ocean voyage, till May, 1826, meantime reading a little Blackstone in his father's office, but devoting most of his time to writing; during this winter he writes "Autumn," "Musings," "The Burial of the Minnesink," and "The Song of the Birds;" he starts for Europe by way of Boston, Northampton, Albany, and New York early in May, 1826; at Northampton Dr. Channing gives him letters to Irving, Southey, and Professor Eichorn of Göttingen; he reaches Havre June 15th, after a month's voyage, and journeys by diligence to Paris, where he remains till February, 1827, spending the warm months of the summer at Auteuil and making a pedestrian tour along the Loire and Cher through Orleans, Tivher, Blois, Amboise, Tours, Vendome, and Chartres; at Paris he meets Cooper and Sidney Smith; he leaves Paris for Madrid late in February, 1827, travelling by way of Bordeaux, Bayonne, Tolosa, and Burgos; at Madrid he comes into close social relations with Alexander Everett, then American Minister to Spain, and with Washington Irving, then writing his "Life of Columbus;" Longfellow visits Segovia and the Escorial; he studies Spanish industriously, refusing to return to America "a mere charlatan," saying, “though I might deceive others as to the extent of my knowledge, I cannot so easily deceive myself;" in September, 1827, he leaves Madrid for Italy, travelling by way of Cordova, Seville, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malaga, Granada, Marseilles, Toulon, Nice, Genoa, and Pisa to Florence, where he remains several weeks and sees much brilliant society; he spends the spring and early summer of 1828 in Naples and Rome, and is dangerously ill at Rome in July; he convalesces at Arricia, returns to Rome, and remains till December, and then goes to Dresden by way of Venice, Verona, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, Trieste, Vienna, and Prague; meantime he learns that the trustees of Bowdoin have withdrawn their offer of a professorship because of a lack of funds, and have offered him instead an instructorship, which he promptly declines; by this time (December, 1828) he has acquired a fluent command of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian; he reaches Dresden late in December, and settles down to the study of German, greatly aided socially by letters of introduction from Irving; late in February he goes to Göttingen to join his friend Preble; in March, 1829, he writes to his sister : 66 My poetic career is finished. Since I left home I have hardly put two lines together;" in the spring of 1829 he takes a vacation in England, and returns through Holland to Göttingen and his German studies; in May, 1829, he begins to write "a kind of sketch-book of scenes in France, Spain, and Italy; "he is recalled in June, 1829, by the dangerous illness of his sister and by the refusal of his father to supply funds for a longer European residence; he reaches New York August 11, 1829, after the death of his sister Elizabeth. After again refusing a proffered instructorship at Bowdoin, he is elected, September 1, 1829, professor of modern languages at a salary of $800 a year, and is also made librarian with an additional salary of $100; he takes up his work at once, and begins by translating for his pupils a small French grammar and editing a collection of French proverbs and a Spanish reader; at the Commencement of 1830 he delivers his inaugural address on the origin and growth of the languages and literature of Southern Europe; in 1831 he begins to contribute to the North American Review, then edited by his friend Alexander Everett; in September, 1831, he marries Mary |