f art, scholarship, and literature for the western world, and
particularly that New York is a Nazareth in such things, out of which
can come nothing good. For the Bostonians, who certainly cultivate
literature with more general devotion, if not always with more
individual success than the New Yorkers, can never forgive their
commercial neighbors for possessing by birth the two most eminent
prose-writers of the country--Irving and Cooper; and by adoption, two
of the leading poets--Bryant and Halleck. Nor are the good people of
the 'Empire State' slow to resent these exhibitions of small jealousy;
but, on the contrary, as the way of the world is, they are apt to
retort by greater absurdities. So shy are they of appearing to be
guided by the dicta of their eastern friends, that to this day there
is scarcely man or woman on Manhattan Island who will confess a
liking for Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett Browning, or Robert Browning, simply
because these poets were taken up and patronized (metaphorically
speaking, of course,) by the 'Mutual Admiration Society' of Boston.

"The immediate influences of this _camaraderie_ are highly flattering
and apparently beneficial to the subject of them, but its ultimate
effects are most injurious to the proper development of his powers.
When the merest trifles that a man throws off are inordinately
praised, he soon becomes content with producing the merest trifles.
Longfellow has grown unaccustomed to do himself justice. Half his
volumes are filled up with translations; graceful and accurate,
indeed; but translations, and often from originals of very moderate
merit. His last original poem, _Evangeline_, is a sort of pastoral
in hexameters. The resuscitation of this classical metre had a queer
effect upon the American quidnuncs. Some of the _critics_ evidently
believed it to be a bran-new metre invented for the nonce by the
author, a delusion which they of the 'Mutual Admiration' rather winked
at; and the parodists who endeavored to ridicule the new measure were
evidently not quite sure whether seven feet or nine made a hexameter.
It is really to be regretted that Longfellow has been cajoled into
playing these tricks with himself, for his earlier pieces were works
of much promise, and, had they been worthily followed out, might
have entitled him to a high place among the poets of the language....
Longfellow's poetry, whenever he really lays himself out to write
poetry, has a definite idea and purpose