onjured out of the little old
familiar anecdote of John Alden's vicarious wooing. We are astonished,
like the fisherman in the Arabian tale, that so much genius could be
contained in so small and leaden a casket. Those who cannot associate
sentiment with the fair Priscilla's maiden name of Mullins may be
consoled by hearing that it is only a corruption of the Huguenot
Desmoulins--as Barnum is of the Norman Vernon.

Indifferent poets comfort themselves with the notion that contemporary
popularity is no test of merit, and that true poetry must always wait
for a new generation to do it justice. The theory is not true in any
general sense. With hardly an exception, the poetry that was ever to
receive a wide appreciation has received it at once. Popularity in
itself is no test of permanent literary fame, but the kind of it is and
always has been a very decided one. Mr. Longfellow has been greatly
popular because he so greatly deserved it. He has the secret of all the
great poets--the power of expressing universal sentiments simply and
naturally. A false standard of criticism has obtained of late, which
brings a brick as a sample of the house, a line or two of condensed
expression as a gauge of the poem. But it is only the whole poem that is
a proof of the poem, and there are twenty fragmentary poets, for one who
is capable of simple and sustained beauty. Of this quality Mr.
Longfellow has given repeated and striking examples, and those critics
are strangely mistaken who think that what he does is easy to be done,
because he has the power to make it seem so. We think his chief fault is
a too great tendency to moralize, or rather, a distrust of his readers,
which leads him to point out the moral which he wishes to be drawn from
any special poem. We wish, for example, that the last two stanzas could
be cut off from "The Two Angels," a poem which, without them, is as
perfect as anything in the language.

Many of the pieces in this volume having already shone as captain jewels
in Maga's carcanet, need no comment from us; and we should, perhaps,
have avoided the delicate responsibility of criticizing one of our most
precious contributors, had it not been that we have seen some very
unfair attempts to depreciate Mr. Longfellow, and that, as it seemed to
us, for qualities which stamp him as a true and original poet. The
writer who appeals to more peculiar moods of mind, to more complex or
more esoteric motives of emotion, may be a