lineation, and particularly to his style. He represents his hero, Captain Ahab, a whaler, as a mysterious fire-eating figure of colossal proportions who outdoes himself in high-sounding phrases and indulges in a quantity of exclamatory words. And at the same time, behind palpable events of the most commonplace sort, the cosmic soul of things is constantly sought.

CHAPTER V

THE HARVARD INTELLECTUALS

I. COMMON CHARACTERISTICS.-Of the poets that are brought together here under the common roof of Harvard University, each had a sharply marked individuality. One cannot detect in any poem of Longfellow a kinship of soul with Holmes, in any line of Lowell's political satire an answering chord to the poesy of the singer of Hiawatha. And yet there is one essential trait that they have in common, which makes them recognizable in the midst of the great mass of contemporary poets and prose writers-academic culture, the finest urbanity, and with all their Americanism a cosmopolitan breadth of view. The genius of Harvard College, the historic guardian of cultural tradition and of spiritual cohesion with the mother country, is personified in these three men who occupied, not in vain, chairs at the famous Alma Mater.

These academic men of Harvard are the last examples of the thinkers of former days who

still possessed the privilege, like the philosophers of antiquity, of indulging to their heart's content in free-hand literary production outside their special calling and occasionally even within it. Lowell was a most conscientious and thorough student of literary history, and could make it very unpleasant for a dabbler, as his sharp attack upon incompetent editors* shows. But that did not prevent him from chatting, joking, pamphleteering, in prose and verse. Holmes was a professional man of the first order; but he was also the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table. To-day, these men, in order to be taken seriously by their colleagues, would hide their lighter effusions in the most secret drawers of their desks.

The spiritual kinship of these men is apparent in all their works; Lowell not only reminds one constantly of Holmes by his extensive reading, but the two humorists are often struck by the same conceit, often even clothe a thought in a like form.

It may appear paradoxical, and yet it is an absolute fact, that American literature is indebted to one of these highly learned Brahmins for the utilization of dialect, and to another for

*Library of Old Authors. Literary Essays, I, 262 et seq.

the literary possibilities of table talk. All the literatures of Europe may envy America for these achievements. Lowell's "Biglow Papers" and the breakfast-table conceits of the "Autocrat" are unique of their kind.

2. LONGFELLOW.-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was ordained by Providence to be the poet of optimism. A temperament calm despite his warmth, a clear intellect, a susceptible, soft, loving heart, were nature's endowments; his parents provided him with an unclouded youth amid the most beautiful surroundings and in a happy home circle; and his country granted him the possibility of devoting his life, free from care, to learning and poetry. As a very young man he was offered the position of professor of modern languages at Bowdoin College, and sent to Europe to fit himself for it. The nineteen-year-old scholar travels through France and becomes acquainted with the seductive Lutetia without allowing himself to be captivated too long by her charms; in Spain and Italy he makes a long sojourn and penetrates into the spirit of the Romance languages and literatures. He sees Vienna, too, learns German in Dresden and Göttingen, and finally, after a three years' absence, returns home.

At the age of twenty-two he is actually made professor, with a salary of a thousand dollars; at twenty-four he leads a cultured and beautiful girl to the altar. Under the genial rays of domestic happiness, Longfellow's poetic and scholarly activities develop rapidly. His fame soon penetrated beyond the limits of his home, and in 1835 he received a call to Harvard, the oldest and the foremost of American universities. Longfellow was born under a lucky star. To how many scholars has it been given to succeed so rapidly? And now the spoiled darling of the Muses writes to his father that good luck has come to him at last, whereas it had never forsaken him for a moment.

He makes a second tour of Europe; and again he makes it alone, his young wife having died after but a few weeks' sojourn with him on the Continent. The poet tries to assuage his grief by zealous study. At Heidelberg he attends lectures on Shakespeare and Schiller, and makes the acquaintance of Gervinus; the beauties of nature and the pleasing sociability at Heidelberg endear the old university town to him. Ever deeper Longfellow penetrates into German life and German literature; he reads Middle High German and more modern masterpieces