the fourth
verse much more vigorous to the ear as it was originally written,--

"Then up and spoke an old sailor
Had sailed the Spanish Main,"

than when he made the latter line read

"Sailed to the Spanish Main,"

as in all recent editions. The explanation doubtless was that he at
first supposed the "Spanish Main" to mean the Caribbean Sea; whereas it
actually referred only to the southern shore of it. Still more curious
is the history of a line in one of his favorite poems, "To a Child."
Speaking of this, he says in his diary,{103} "Some years ago, writing an
'Ode to a Child,' I spoke of

'The buried treasures of the miser, Time.'

What was my astonishment to-day, in reading for the first time in my
life Wordsworth's ode 'On the Power of Sound,' to read

'All treasures hoarded by the miser, Time.'"

As a matter of fact, this was not the original form of the Longfellow
passage, which was,--

"The buried treasures of dead centuries,"

followed by

"The burning tropic skies."

More than this, the very word "miser" was not invariably used in this
passage by the poet, as during an intermediate period it had been
changed to "pirate," a phrase in some sense more appropriate and better
satisfying the ear. The curious analogy to Wordsworth's line did not
therefore lie in the original form of his own poem, but was an
afterthought. It is fortunate that this curious combination of facts,
all utterly unconscious on his part, did not attract the attention of
Poe during his vindictive period.

It is to be noticed, however, that Longfellow apparently made all these
changes to satisfy his own judgment, and did not make them, as Whittier
and even Browning often did, in deference to the judgment of dull or
incompetent critics. It is to be remembered that even the academic
commentators on Longfellow still leave children to suppose that the
Berserk's tale in "The Skeleton in Armor" refers to a supposed story
that the Berserk was telling: although the word "tale" is unquestionably
used in the sense of "tally" or "reckoning," to indicate how much ale
the Norse hero could drink. Readers of Milton often misinterpret his
line,

"And every shepherd tells his tale,"

in a similar manner, and the shepherd is supposed by many young readers
to be pouring out a story of love or of adventure, whereas he is merely
counting up the number of his sheep.

It will always remain uncertain how far Poe influenced the New