Longfellow has treated Der arme Heinrich not as a romantic but as an objective poetindeed, were it not for Zola and his associates, one might very well say as a realist; the play is a historical painting, matter and color are from the Middle Ages, the soul is derived from our time. For what is the idea that animates the poet? Not the maiden's longing for celestial beatitude, nor her spirit of self-sacrifice alone; for what then would signify the prologue, the storm of the Powers of the air about the Strasburg Cathedral and the intervention of Lucifer? The underlying idea is clearly enough given at the close:

It is Lucifer

The son of mystery;

And since God suffers him to be,

He, too, is God's minister,

And labors for some good

By us not understood.

That is to say, "he is the Spirit that desires evil and produces good"; in other words: Hate wishes to destroy us, love uplifts us. Who is not

reminded here of Faust? As the fundamental idea of The Golden Legend differs from that of Der arme Heinrich, so also is the motive of the

maiden humanized in Longfellow by a love that is earthly and yet so divine.

Longfellow made repeated attempts to force the dramatic form-always without success. In 1868 appeared his "New England Tragedies"; one of the dramas has for its theme the persecution of the Quakers in Boston, the other the burning of witches at Salem. Both pieces are failures, and are justly pronounced even by American critics to be unsatisfactory and unpalatable. Judas Maccabæus (1872) can hardly* be characterized, being no more than a sketch. In the Divine Tragedy the life and passion of Christ are represented with an intentional simplicity meant to remind us of the medieval mysteries. The Masque of Pandora (1875) treats the old myth in a style formed, indeed, upon great models, but which does not even distantly approach them. Longfellow's last dramatic poem, Michael Angelo, is the biography of the hero in the shape of a dialogue, but again replete with carefully studied details like The Golden Legend, so that the reader obtains a faithful picture of the civilization of Italy in the sixteenth century.

Narrative poetry Longfellow offers us in two *Schönbach, "Aufsätze," p. 261.

forms the ballad and the epic. Both give evidence of the German school through which he passed. The Skeleton in Armor, The Wreck of the Hesperus, and the other ballads are vigorous, fresh, stirring; the reader is carried away by the swing of the rhythm as with Bürger, the sustained style creates an emotional tension as with Uhland.

Of the epics, Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Hiawatha, and Tales of a Wayside Inn, the first two are in hexameter, a mark that suggests Voss and Goethe.

The widely read epic, Evangeline, relates how two young and hopeful lives are blighted by the clumsy, merciless interposition of a political measure. The English government orders a sudden attack upon the French village of GrandPré and the inhabitants are scattered to the four quarters of the earth. Thus Evangeline and her affianced lover are torn asunder forever. Throughout her life Evangeline seeks the lost one; when an aged woman, she finds him dying in a hospital. As the use of the hexameter itself indicates, Longfellow was encouraged in his attempt by Hermann und Dorothea. He nowise approached Goethe's creation, however. The creation of human characters was not Long

fellow's strong point; the figures in Evangeline are bloodless shadows.

The language is simple and popular. All the more discordant are certain labored similes, as in

Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows.

or

Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven.

Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

Far above Evangeline stands the legend of Hiawatha. The matter is actually, as the poet says, taken

From the forests and the prairies,

From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.

The primitive world of old America finds admirable expression in Hiawatha, and the hero, Hiawatha, the promoter of religion and peace,

has taught us moderns, too, who have advanced so far in culture, many a good precept.

Longfellow enriched American literature by excellent translations from Old-English, German, Danish, Swedish, French, Italian (Dante), Portuguese, and Spanish.

Of all Longfellow's works The Golden Legend, Evangeline, and Hiawatha have been the most widely read and have found the greatest recognition. In truth, the poet gave his best in these productions, and the critic need add but a few lyrics in order to arrive at a judgment of his work and to designate his place in the literature of his people and of the world at large.

Longfellow took Goethe's saying about worldliterature perhaps too seriously; rarely do we find in his works a note that takes hold of us as something new, never heard before. He reflects the literature of the old and the new time, of the East and the West. He is a master of form; and in the art of entering into the spirit of a strange people he has scarcely a peer. He is the Herder of English literature. And as the words “Light, Love, Life!" decorate his tombstone, so the character of Longfellow's poetry is best summarized by the words "Faith, Love, and Hope."

3. HOLMES.Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809