yet
signalizing his genius. It was the day when Percival Halleck, Sprague,
Dana, Willis, Bryant, were the undisputed lords of the American
Parnassus. But the school reading-books already contained "An April Day"
and "Woods in Winter," and all the verses of the young author had a
recognition in volumes of elegant extracts and commonplace-books. But
the universal popularity of Longfellow was not established until the
publication of "Hyperion" in 1839, followed by "The Voices of the Night"
in the next year. With these two works his name arose to the highest
popularity, both in America and England; and no living author has been
more perpetually reproduced in all forms and with every decoration.

If now we care to explain the eager and affectionate welcome which
always hails his writings, it is easy to see to what general quality
that greeting must be ascribed. As with Walter Scott, or Victor Hugo, or
Beranger, or Dickens, or Addison in the "Spectator," or Washington
Irving, it is a genial humanity. It is a quality, in all these
instances, independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made
known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only
through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the
exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the
incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with
which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the
sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has
genius,--whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,--whether
some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,--and whether he
be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every
poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man permanently
accepts as a singer of its own hopes, emotions, and thoughts? And what
is poetry but that song? If words have a uniform meaning, it is useless
to declare that Pope cannot be a poet, if Lord Byron is, or that Moore
is counterfeit, if Wordsworth be genuine. For the art of poetry is like
all other arts. The casket that Cellini worked is not less genuine and
excellent than the dome of Michel Angelo. Is nobody but Shakspeare a
poet? Is there no music but Beethoven's? Is there no mountain-peak but
Dhawalaghiri? no cataract but Niagara?

Thirty years ago almost every critic in England exploded with laughter
over the poetry of Tennyson. Yet his poetry ha