w lights,
side-lights, and cross-lights, into every subject." When Emerson's
collected poems are sent him, Longfellow has the book read to him all
the evening and until late at night, and writes of it in his diary:
"Throughout the volume, through the golden mist and sublimation of
fancy, gleam bright veins of purest poetry, like rivers running through
meadows. Truly, a rare volume; with many exquisite poems in it, among
which I should single out 'Monadnoc,' 'Threnody,' 'The Humble-Bee,' as
containing much of the quintessence of poetry." Emerson's was one of the
five portraits drawn in crayon by Eastman Johnson, and always kept
hanging in the library at Craigie House; the others being those of
Hawthorne, Sumner, Felton, and Longfellow himself. No one can deny to
our poet the merits of absolute freedom from all jealousy and of an
invariable readiness to appreciate those classified by many critics as
greater than himself. He was one of the first students of Browning in
America, when the latter was known chiefly by his "Bells and
Pomegranates," and instinctively selected the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon"
as "a play of great power and beauty," as the critics would say, and as
every one must say who reads it. He is an extraordinary genius,
Browning, with dramatic power of the first order. "Paracelsus" he
describes, with some justice, as "very lofty, but very diffuse." Of
Browning's "Christmas Eve" he later writes, "A wonderful man is
Browning, but too obscure," and later makes a similar remark on "The
Ring and the Book." Of Tennyson he writes, as to "The Princess," calling
it "a gentle satire, in the easiest and most flowing blank verse, with
two delicious unrhymed songs, and many exquisite passages. I went to bed
after it, with delightful music ringing in my ears; yet half
disappointed in the poem, though not knowing why. There is a discordant
note somewhere."

One very uncertain test of a man of genius is his "table-talk."
Surrounded by a group of men who were such masters of this gift as
Lowell, Holmes, and T. G. Appleton, Longfellow might well be excused
from developing it to the highest extent, and he also "being rather a
silent man," as he says of himself, escaped thereby the tendency to
monologue, which was sometimes a subject of complaint in regard to the
other three. Longfellow's reticence and self-control saved him from all
such perils; but it must be admitted, on the other hand, that when his
brother collects a dozen p