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DEATH OF LONGFELLOW

_Camden, April, '82_.--I have just return'd from an old forest haunt,
where I love to go occasionally away from parlors, pavements, and the
newspapers and magazines--and where, of a clear forenoon, deep in the
shade of pines and cedars and a tangle of old laurel-trees and vines,
the news of Longfellow's death first reach'd me. For want of anything
better, let me lightly twine a sprig of the sweet ground-ivy trailing
so plentifully through the dead leaves at my feet, with reflections
of that half hour alone, there in the silence, and lay it as my
contribution on the dead bard's grave.

Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to me not only to be eminent
in the style and forms of poetical expression that mark the present
age, (an idiosyncrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal melody,) but to
bring what is always dearest as poetry to the general human heart
and taste, and probably must be so in the nature of things. He is
certainly the sort of bard and counteractant most needed for our
materialistic, self-assertive, money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races,
and especially for the present age in America--an age tyrannically
regulated with reference to the manufacturer, the merchant, the
financier, the politician and the day workman--for whom and among
whom he comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference--poet of the
mellow twilight of the past in Italy, Germany, Spain, and in Northern
Europe--poet of all sympathetic gentleness--and universal poet of
women and young people. I should have to think long if I were ask'd to
name the man who has done more, and in more valuable directions, for
America.

I doubt if there ever was before such a fine intuitive judge and
selecter of poems. His translations of many German and Scandinavian
pieces are said to be better than the vernaculars. He does not urge or
lash. His influence is like good drink or air. He is not tepid either,
but always vital, with flavor, motion, grace. He strikes a splendid
average, and does not sing exceptional passions, or humanity's jagged
escapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new,
does not deal hard blows. On the contrary, his songs soothe and heal,
or if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His very
anger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in the "Quadroon Girl" and the
"Witnesses.")

There is no undue element of pensiveness in Longfellow's strains. Even
in the early translation, the Manrique, the movement is as of strong
and steady wind or tide, holding up and buoying. Death is not avoided
through his many themes, but there is something almost winning in his
original verses and renderings on that dread subject--as, closing "the
Happiest Land" dispute,

And then the landlord's daughter
Up to heaven rais'd her hand,
And said, "Ye may no more contend,
There lies the happiest land."

To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity and
special originality, I shall only say that America and the world may
well be reverently thankful--can never be thankful enough--for any
such singing-bird vouchsafed out of the centuries, without asking
that the notes be different from those of other songsters; adding what
I have heard Longfellow himself say, that ere the New World can be
worthily original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she must
be well saturated with the originality of others, and respectfully
consider the heroes that lived before Agamemnon.

STARTING NEWSPAPERS

_Reminiscences (From the "Camden Courier")_. As I sat taking my evening
sail across the Delaware in the staunch ferry-boat "Beverly," a night
or two ago, I was join'd by two young reporter friends. "I have a
message for you," said one of them; "the C. folks told me to say they
would like a piece sign'd by your name, to go in their first number.
Can you do it for them?" "I guess so," said I; "what might it be
about?" "Well, anything on newspapers, or perhaps what you've done
yourself, starting them." And off the boys went, for we had reach'd
the Philadelphia side. The hour was fine and mild, the bright
half-moon shining; Venus, with excess of splendor, just setting in the
west, and the great Scorpion rearing its length more than half up in
the southeast. As I cross'd leisurely for an hour in the pleasant
night-scene, my young friend's words brought up quite a string of
reminiscences.

I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writing
sentimental bits for the old "Long Island Patriot," in Brooklyn; this
was about 1832. Soon after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris's
then celebrated and fashionable "Mirror," of New York city. I remember
with what half-suppress'd excitement I used to watch for the big, fat,
red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who distributed the
"Mirror" in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and cutting the
leaves with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see
_my piece_ on the pretty white paper, in nice type.

My first real venture was the "Long Islander," in my own beautiful
town of Huntington, in 1839. I was about twenty years old. I had been
teaching country school for two or three years in various parts of
Suffolk and Queens counties, but liked printing; had been at it while
a lad, learn'd the trade of compositor, and was encouraged to start
a paper in the region where I was born. I went to New York, bought
a press and types, hired some little help, but did most of the work
myself, including the press-work. Everything seem'd turning out well;
(only my own restlessness prevented me gradually establishing a
permanent property there.) I bought a good horse, and every week went
all round the country serving my papers, devoting one day and night to
it. I never had happier jaunts--going over to south side, to Babylon,
down the south road, across to Smithtown and Comac, and back home. The
experiences of those jaunts, the dear old-fashion'd farmers and their
wives, the stops by the hay-fields, the hospitality, nice dinners,
occasional evenings, the girls, the rides through the brush, come up
in my memory to this day.

I next went to the "Aurora" daily in New York city--a sort of free
lance. Also wrote regularly for the "Tattler," an evening paper. With
these and a little outside work I was occupied off and on, until I
went to edit the "Brooklyn Eagle," where for two years I had one of
the pleasantest sits of my life--a good owner, good pay, and easy work
and hours. The troubles in the Democratic party broke forth about
those times (1848-'49) and I split off with the radicals, which led to
rows with the boss and "the party," and I lost my place.

Being now out of a job, I was offer'd impromptu, (it happen'd between
the acts one night in the lobby of the old Broadway theatre near Pearl
street, New York city,) a good chance to go down to New Orleans on the
staff of the "Crescent," a daily to be started there with plenty of
capital behind it. One of the owners, who was north buying material,
met me walking in the lobby, and though that was our first
acquaintance, after fifteen minutes' talk (and a drink) we made a
formal bargain, and he paid me two hundred dollars down to bind the
contract and bear my expenses to New Orleans. I started two days
afterwards; had a good leisurely time, as the paper wasn't to be
out in three weeks. I enjoy'd my journey and Louisiana life much.
Returning to Brooklyn a year or two afterward I started the
"Freeman," first as a weekly, then daily. Pretty soon the secession
war broke out, and I, too, got drawn in the current southward, and
spent the following three years there, (as memorandized preceding.)

Besides starting them as aforementioned, I have had to do, one time or
another, during my life, with a long list of papers, at divers places,
sometimes under queer circumstances. During the war, the hospitals at
Washington, among other means of amusement, printed a little sheet
among themselves, surrounded by wounds and death, the "Armory Square
Gazette," to which I contributed. The same long afterward, casually,
to a paper--I think it was call'd the "Jimplecute"--out in Colorado
where I stopp'd at the time. When I was in Quebec province, in Canada,
in 1880, I went into the queerest little old French printing-office
near Tadousac. It was far more primitive and ancient than my Camden
friend William Kurtz's place up on Federal street. I remember, as a
youngster, several characteristic old printers of a kind hard to be
seen these days.

THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART

My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-day
in solitude and half-shade by the creek--returning mainly to two
principal centres. One of my cherish'd themes for a never-achiev'd
poem has been the two impetuses of man and the universe--in the
latter, creation's incessant unrest,[19] exfoliation, (Darwin's
evolution, I suppose.) Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all its
visible, and still more its invisible processes? Or what is humanity
in its faith, love, heroism, poetry, even morals, but _emotion_?

Note:

[19] "Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great Bear
or Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence the
imaginary Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form the
bowl and handle will have changed places. The misty nebulae are
moving, and besides are whirling around in great spirals, some one
way, some another. Every molecule of matter in the whole universe is
swinging to and fro; every particle of ether which fills space is
in jelly-like vibration. Light is one kind of motion, heat another,
electricity another, magnetism another, sound another. Every human
sense is the result of motion; every perception, every thought is
but motion of the molecules of the brain translated by that
incomprehensible thing we call mind. The processes of growth, of
existence, of decay, whether in worlds, or in the minutest organisms,
are but motion."

BY EMERSON'S GRAVE

_May 6, '82._--We stand by Emerson's new-made grave without
sadness--indeed a solemn joy and faith, almost hauteur--our
soul-benison no mere

"Warrior, rest, thy task is done,"

for one beyond the warriors of the world lies surely symboll'd here. A
just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and
clear as the sun. Nor does it seem so much Emerson himself we are here
to honor--it is conscience, simplicity, culture, humanity's attributes
at their best, yet applicable if need be to average affairs, and
eligible to all. So used are we to suppose a heroic death can only
come from out of battle or storm, or mighty personal contest, or amid
dramatic incidents or danger, (have we not been taught so for ages
by all the plays and poems?) that few even of those who most
sympathizingly mourn Emerson's late departure will fully appreciate
the ripen'd grandeur of that event, with its play of calm and fitness,
like evening light on the sea.

How I shall henceforth dwell on the blessed hours when, not long
since, I saw that benignant face, the clear eyes, the silently smiling
mouth, the form yet upright in its great age--to the very last, with
so much spring and cheeriness, and such an absence of decrepitude,
that even the term _venerable_ hardly seem'd fitting.

Perhaps the life now rounded and completed in its mortal development,
and which nothing can change or harm more, has its most illustrious
halo, not in its splendid intellectual or esthetic products, but as
forming in its entirety one of the few (alas! how few!) perfect and
flawless excuses for being, of the entire literary class.

We can say, as Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, It is not we who come to
consecrate the dead--we reverently come to receive, if so it may be,
some consecration to ourselves and daily work from him.

AT PRESENT WRITING--PERSONAL

_A letter to a German friend--extract_

_May 31, '82._--"From to-day I enter upon my 64th year. The paralysis
that first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain'd, with
varying course--seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably
continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; but my
spirits are first-rate. I go around in public almost every day--now
and then take long trips, by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles--live
largely in the open air--am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)--keep up
my activity and interest in life, people, progress, and the questions
of the day. About two-thirds of the time I am quite comfortable. What
mentality I ever had remains entirely unaffected; though physically
I am a half-paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. But the
principal object of my life seems to have been accomplish'd--I
have the most devoted and ardent of friends, and affectionate
relatives--and of enemies I really make no account."

AFTER TRYING A CERTAIN BOOK

I tried to read a beautifully printed and scholarly volume on "the
Theory of Poetry," received by mail this morning from England--but
gave it up at last for a bad job. Here are some capricious pencillings
that follow'd, as I find them in my notes:

In youth and maturity Poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp
of day; but as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous
still included,) the Dusk becomes the poet's atmosphere. I too have
sought, and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according.
But as I grow old, the half-lights of evening are far more to me.

The play of Imagination, with the sensuous objects of Nature for
symbols and Faith--with Love and Pride as the unseen impetus and
moving-power of all, make up the curious chess-game of a poem.

Common teachers or critics are always asking "What does it mean?"
Symphony of fine musician, or sunset, or sea-waves rolling up the
beach--what do they mean? Undoubtedly in the most subtle-elusive sense
they mean something--as love does, and religion does, and the best
poem;--but who shall fathom and define those meanings? (I do not
intend this as a warrant for wildness and frantic escapades--but to
justify the soul's frequent joy in what cannot be defined to the
intellectual part, or to calculation.)

At its best, poetic lore is like what may be heard of conversation in
the dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few broken
murmurs. What is not gather'd is far more--perhaps the main thing.

Grandest poetic passages are only to be taken at free removes, as we
sometimes look for stars at night, not by gazing directly toward them,
but off one side.

(_To a poetic student and friend._)--I only seek to put you in
rapport. Your own brain, heart, evolution, must not only understand
the matter, but largely supply it.

FINAL CONFESSIONS--LITERARY TESTS

So draw near their end these garrulous notes. There have doubtless
occurr'd some repetitions, technical errors in the consecutiveness of
dates, in the minutiae of botanical, astronomical, &c., exactness,
and perhaps elsewhere;--for in gathering up, writing, peremptorily
dispatching copy, this hot weather, (last of July and through August,
'82,) and delaying not the printers, I have had to hurry along, no
time to spare. But in the deepest veracity of all--in reflections of
objects, scenes, Nature's outpourings, to my senses and receptivity,
as they seem'd to me--in the work of giving those who care for it,
some authentic glints, specimen-days of my life--and in the _bona
fide_ spirit and relations, from author to reader, on all the subjects
design'd, and as far as they go, I feel to make unmitigated claims.

The synopsis of my early life, Long Island, New York city, and so
forth, and the diary-jottings in the Secession war, tell their own
story. My plan in starting what constitutes most of the middle of the
book, was originally for hints and data of a Nature-poem that should
carry one's experiences a few hours, commencing at noon-flush, and so
through the after-part of the day--I suppose led to such idea by my
own life-afternoon now arrived. But I soon found I could move at
more ease, by giving the narrative at first hand. (Then there is a
humiliating lesson one learns, in serene hours, of a fine day or
night. Nature seems to look on all fixed-up poetry and art as
something almost impertinent.)

Thus I went on, years following, various seasons and areas, spinning
forth my thought beneath the night and stars, (or as I was confined to
my room by half-sickness,) or at midday looking out upon the sea, or
far north steaming over the Saguenay's black breast, jotting all down
in the loosest sort of chronological order, and here printing from my
impromptu notes, hardly even the seasons group'd together, or anything
corrected--so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or
starlight might cling to the lines, I dared not try to meddle with
or smooth them. Every now and then, (not often, but for a foil,) I
carried a book in my pocket--or perhaps tore out from some broken or
cheap edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had something of
the sort ready, but only took it out when the mood demanded. In that
way, utterly out of reach of literary conventions, I re-read many
authors.

I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myself
eventually trying it all by Nature--_first premises_ many call it, but
really the crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs. (Has it
never occur'd to any one how the last deciding tests applicable to a
book are entirely outside of technical and grammatical ones, and that
any truly first-class production has little or nothing to do with the
rules and calibres of ordinary critics? or the bloodless chalk of
Allibone's Dictionary? I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, the
mountain and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on our
books. I have fancied some disembodied human soul giving its verdict.)

NATURE AND DEMOCRACY--MORALITY

Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny and
hardy and sane only with Nature--just as much as Art is. Something is
required to temper both--to check them, restrain them from excess,
morbidity. I have wanted, before departure, to bear special testimony
to a very old lesson and requisite. American Democracy, in its myriad
personalities, in factories, work-shops, stores, offices--through
the dense streets and houses of cities, and all their manifold
sophisticated life--must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular
contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals,
fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly
dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work
people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on
any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of
Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itself
at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part--to be its
health-element and beauty-element--to really underlie the whole
politics, sanity, religion and art of the New World.

Finally, the morality: "Virtue," said Marcus Aurelius, "what is it,
only a living and enthusiastic sympathy with Nature?" Perhaps indeed
the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures,
all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come,
essentially the same--to bring people back from their persistent
strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless average, divine,
original concrete.

COLLECT

ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS

Though the ensuing COLLECT and preceding SPECIMEN DAYS are both
largely from memoranda already existing, the hurried peremptory needs
of copy for the printers, already referr'd to--(the musicians' story
of a composer up in a garret rushing the middle body and last of his
score together, while the fiddlers are playing the first parts down
in the concert-room)--of this haste, while quite willing to get the
consequent stimulus of life and motion, I am sure there must have
resulted sundry technical errors. If any are too glaring they will be
corrected in a future edition.

A special word about PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH at the end. On jaunts over
Long Island, as boy and young fellow, nearly half a century ago,
I heard of, or came across in my own experience, characters,
true occurrences, incidents, which I tried my 'prentice hand at
recording--(I was then quite an "abolitionist" and advocate of the
"temperance" and "anti-capital-punishment" causes)--and publish'd
during occasional visits to New York city. A majority of the sketches
appear'd first in the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian
Magazine," or the "American Review," of that period. My serious wish
were to have all those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in
oblivion--but to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as
lately announced, from outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd
them on here. _A Dough-Face Song_ came out first in the "Evening
Post"--_Blood-Money_, and _Wounded in the House of Friends_, in the
"Tribune."

_Poetry To-day in America_, &c., first appear'd (under the name of
"_The Poetry of the Future_,") in "The North American Review" for
February, 1881. _A Memorandum at a Venture_, in same periodical, some
time afterward.

Several of the convalescent out-door scenes and literary items,
preceding, originally appear'd in the fortnightly "Critic," of New
York.

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the
lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons
also in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for
instance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European and
American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, as
lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amount
of them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future,
where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly
grand nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, full
play for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even
conflicting directions--(seems to be for general humanity much like
the influences that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial
health-action of the air we call the weather--an infinite number
of currents and forces, and contributions, and temperatures, and
cross-purposes, whose ceaseless play of counterpart upon counterpart
brings constant restoration and vitality.) With this thought--and not
for itself alone, but all it necessitates, and draws after it--let me
begin my speculations.

America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems,
cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism, (as, indeed, the
present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism,)
counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, as
yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that
hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas,
a copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider far
less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results
to come. Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the
task to put in forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of
amplitude rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral
political speculations of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic
republican principle, and the theory of development and perfection by
voluntary standards, and self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the
United States, in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith,
and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, these
things? But preluding no longer, let me strike the key-note of the
following strain. First premising that, though the passages of it have
been written at widely different times, (it is, in fact, a collection
of memoranda, perhaps for future designers, comprehenders,) and though
it may be open to the charge of one part contradicting another--for
there are opposite sides to the great question of democracy, as to
every great question--I feel the parts harmoniously blended in my own
realization and convictions, and present them to be read only in such
oneness, each page and each claim and assertion modified and temper'd
by the others. Bear in mind, too, that they are not the result
of studying up in political economy, but of the ordinary sense,
observing, wandering among men, these States, these stirring years of
war and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling dangers of universal
suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to admit and face these
dangers I am writing. To him or her within whose thought rages the
battle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's convictions,
aspirations, and the people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I mainly
write this essay. I shall use the words America and democracy as
convertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United States
are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or
else prove the most tremendous failure of time. Not the least doubtful
am I on any prospects of their material success. The triumphant future
of their business, geographic and productive departments, on larger
scales and in more varieties than ever, is certain. In those respects
the republic must soon (if she does not already) outstrip all examples
hitherto afforded, and dominate the world.[20]