ty she
was to give on that day. The same day was celebrated by some forty
different schools in the Western States, all writing him letters and
requesting answers. He sent to each school, his brother tells us, some
stanza with signature and good wishes. He was patient even with the
gentleman who wrote to him to request that he would send his autograph
in his "own handwriting." As a matter of fact, he had to leave many
letters unanswered, even by a secretary, in his latest years.

It is a most tantalizing thing to know, through the revelations of Mr.
William Winter, that Longfellow left certain poems unpublished. Mr.
Winter says: "He said also that he sometimes wrote poems that were for
himself alone, that he should not care ever to publish, because they
were too delicate for publication."{105} Quite akin to this was another
remark made by him to the same friend, that "the desire of the young
poet is not for applause, but for recognition." The two remarks limit
one another; the desire for recognition only begins when the longing for
mere expression is satisfied. Thoroughly practical and methodical and
industrious, Longfellow yet needed some self-expression first of all. It
is impossible to imagine him as writing puffs of himself, like Poe, or
volunteering reports of receptions given to him, like Whitman. He said
to Mr. Winter, again and again, "What you desire will come, if you will
but wait for it." The question is not whether this is the only form of
the poetic temperament, but it was clearly his form of it. Thoreau well
says that there is no definition of poetry which the poet will not
instantly set aside by defying all its limitations, and it is the same
with the poetic temperament itself.

{100 Scudder's _Men and Letters_, p. 68.}

{101 _Life_, ii. 19, 20.}

{102 _The New England Poets_, p. 141.}

{103 _Life_, ii. 189.}

{104 Tennyson's _Life_, by his son, i. 507.}

{105 _Life_, iii. 356.}

CHAPTER XXIV

LONGFELLOW AS A MAN

Longfellow always amused himself, as do most public men, with the
confused and contradictory descriptions of his personal appearance: with
the Newport bookseller who exclaimed, "Why, you look more like a sea
captain than a poet!" and a printer who described him as "a hale,
portly, fine-looking man, nearly six feet in height, well proportioned,
with a tendency to fatness; brown hair and blue eyes, and bearing the
general appearance of a comfortable hotel-keeper." More graphi