land, where Longfellow received the
degree of D. C. L. at Oxford; and they then visited Devonshire,
Edinburgh, and the Scottish lakes. He again received numberless
invitations in London, and wrote to Lowell, "It is only by dint of great
resolution that I escaped a dozen public and semi-public dinners." At
the very last moment before sailing, he received a note from Mr. E. J.
Reed, the chief constructor to the British Navy, who pronounced his poem
"The Building of the Ship" to be the finest poem on shipbuilding that
ever was or ever would be written. He reached home September 1, 1869. In
his letters during this period, one sees the serene head of a family,
the absolutely unspoiled recipient of praise, but not now the eager and
enthusiastic young pilgrim of romance. Yet he writes to his friend
Ferguson that if he "said his say" about York Cathedral, his friends
would think him sixteen instead of sixty; and again tells his publisher
Fields that he enjoys Lugano--never before visited--to the utmost, but
that "the old familiar place saddened" him.{91} Many a traveller has had
in later life the same experience.

{86 _Life_, iii. 111.}

{87 _Life_, iii. 111, 112.}

{88 _Ib._ 112.}

{89 _Life_, iii. 114.}

{90 _Ib._ 114, 115.}

{91 _Life_, iii. 122.}

CHAPTER XX

DANTE

We come now to that great task which Longfellow, after an early
experiment, had dropped for years, and which he resumed after his wife's
death, largely for the sake of an absorbing occupation. Eighteen years
before, November 24, 1843, he had written to Ferdinand Freiligrath that
he had translated sixteen cantos of Dante, and there seems no reason to
suppose that he had done aught farther in that direction until this new
crisis. After resuming the work, he translated for a time a canto as
each day's task, and refers to this habit in his sonnet on the subject,
where he says:--

"I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate."

The work was not fully completed until 1866, and was published in part
during the following year.

The whole picture of the manner in which the work was done has long been
familiar to the literary world, including the pleasing glimpse of the
little circle of cultivated friends, assembled evening after evening, to
compare notes and suggest improvements. For many years this was regarded
by students and critics as having been almost an ideal method for the
production of a great work, and