Part 20 (2/2)

He proved himself to be possessed of a very bright mind even as a boy, and entered Bowdoin College when only fourteen years of age. He afterwards served this same inst.i.tution as professor of modern languages, and in 1835 was called to fill a similar position in Harvard University.

He visited Europe, twice at least, for purposes of study; and, on his return from his second trip, began that ill.u.s.trious career of instruction and authors.h.i.+p which has been the source of so much honorable pride on the part of his countrymen. Longfellow selected a historic home in Cambridge; it was the house occupied by Was.h.i.+ngton when he took command of the United States Army in 1776,--a s.p.a.cious structure, full of welcoming windows, and situated in the midst of old elms. Here he lived till his death; and now the stretch of land, from the estate to the river Charles, has been bought and adorned as a memorial.

The writings of Longfellow are household possessions, fully as much in England as in America, and we need not enumerate them. They are famous not so much for originality, as for their calm, spiritual, purifying messages. They are full of good-will, aspiration, trust, and real loftiness of tone. Indeed, Longfellow ”loved to make clear his disciples.h.i.+p to him whose ministry was love, whose flock was all humanity, whose kingdom was peace and righteousness.”

So deep was the impression made by Mr. Longfellow's beauty of character, that it equaled his literary fame. He always responded to callers, and they came by hundreds; he never refused his autograph; children loved him; his charities were manifold; young authors received his encouragement. Modest as to his own writings, he strove to praise the good in others. Every one who met him perceived the source of all this rare grace and fascinating n.o.bility of soul to be a sense of the glory and divineness of all life. His soul stood in a reverential att.i.tude toward existence, and a marvelous light shone through him and his poetry as the result.

Down to the last his pen was active. He died on the 24th of March, 1882.

Degrees and honors had been freely bestowed on him; but the highest tributes came from his admirers on both sides of the Atlantic; and his reverential spirit still lives in hundreds of those who read his beautiful verses.

[Footnote: See ”Life of Longfellow,” and ”Final Memorials” both by his brother; Samuel Longfellow, and articles in all the best magazines.]

XXIX.

SENTIMENT.

MEMORY GEMS.

Sentiment is nothing but thought blended with feeling.--J. F. Clarke

Sentiment takes part in the shaping of all destinies.--R. Southey

A little child is the sweetest and purest thing in the world.

--J. S. White

Sentiment is the life and soul of poetry and art.--J. Flaxman

Sentiment is emotion precipitated in pretty crystals by the fancy.

--J. R. Lowell

It is quite difficult to define sentiment. This has been done, however, by the use of the following figures. ”We may think of it as color, without which nothing in nature or art is complete. A colorless character is as unsatisfactory as a colorless landscape. We may also think of it as cement; for it serves to bind together the ordinary facts and incidents of life. Just as the bricks and stones of a building are useless until held in the places designed for them under some governing plan, so we may say that a selfish and gross character is not bound together by n.o.ble sentiments. Or we may say, again, that sentiment is the wing-power of man, whereby he has ability to fly away from the commonplace and unworthy. By it the ordinary citizen becomes a glowing patriot; the drudging youth turns into the devoted statesman; and life is made better in a thousand ways.”

In one of our memory gems we find it a.s.serted that ”sentiment is the life and soul of poetry and art.” Perhaps this statement may help us here. Pure poetry is the perfection of prose, or prose idealized. ”It is a dream drawn from the infinite, and portrayed to mortal sense.” It takes a great mind, a great genius to weave into a gossamer web, complete and perfect in every part, a story, a tale, an idea, which alike charms the mind, enthralls the sense, and enchains the spirit.

Poetry is the perfection of language. It is not a mere mechanical contrivance of words, but a glorious picture in which the outward execution is lost in a glory of expression.

The poet Holmes was brimful of sentiment. Listen to him as he talks about the flowers.

”Do you ever wonder why poets talk so much about flowers? Did you ever hear of a poet who did not talk about them? Don't you think a poem, which, for the sake of being original, should leave them out, would be like those verses where the letter 'a' or 'e' or some other is omitted?

No,--they will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old and always new.

”Are you tired of my trivial personalities,--those splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps of sentimentality, which you may see when I show you my heart's corolla as if it were a tulip? Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot, whose conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional being. It is because you are just like me that I talk and know that you listen. We are all splashed and streaked with sentiments,--not with precisely the same tints, or in exactly the same patterns, but by the same hand and from the same palette.”

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