s as effectual.
Every one of us has his own private Valhalla, and it is not apt to be
populous. But the conditions of admission to the Abbey are very
different. We ought no longer to ask why is so-and-so here, and we ought
always to be able to answer the question why such a one is not here. I
think that on this occasion I should express the united feeling of the
whole English-speaking race in confirming the choice which has been
made,--the choice of one whose name is dear to them all, who has
inspired their lives and consoled their hearts, and who has been
admitted to the fireside of all of them as a familiar friend. Nearly
forty years ago I had occasion, in speaking of Mr. Longfellow, to
suggest an analogy between him and the English poet Gray; and I have
never since seen any reason to modify or change that opinion. There are
certain very marked analogies between them, I think. In the first place,
there is the same love of a certain subdued splendor, not inconsistent
with transparency of diction; there is the same power of absorbing and
assimilating the beauties of other literature without loss of
originality; and, above all, there is that genius, that sympathy with
universal sentiments and the power of expressing them so that they come
home to everybody, both high and low, which characterize both poets.
There is something also in that simplicity,--simplicity in itself being
a distinction. But in style, simplicity and distinction must be combined
in order to their proper effect; and the only warrant perhaps of
permanence in literature is this distinction in style. It is something
quite indefinable; it is something like the distinction of
good-breeding, characterized perhaps more by the absence of certain
negative qualities than by the presence of certain positive ones. But it
seems to me that distinction of style is eminently found in the poet
whom we are met here in some sense to celebrate to-day. This is not the
place, of course, for criticism; still less is it the place for eulogy,
for eulogy is but too often disguised apology. But I have been struck
particularly--if I may bring forward one instance--with some of my late
friend's sonnets, which seem to me to be some of the most beautiful and
perfect we have in the language. His mind always moved straight towards
its object, and was always permeated with the emotion that gave it
frankness and sincerity, and at the same time the most ample expression.
It seems that I s