plainly, to which the revolver adds additional eloquence, for, wrenching himself free, he springs forward in the dark right on to the very brink of the chasm. He reels, and tries to recover himself too late. With a shriek he disappears into the Devil's Cauldron. Even as he falls the sky is rent by a vivid lightning flash which momentarily lights up the dark abyss. As it plays for an instant on the surface of the water I see his face-set in an unearthly and lurid halo-turn upward and vanish as the lightning vanishes from our gaze for ever. CUTHBERT WITHERS. 71 LONGFELLOW AND HIS FRIENDS. THE HERE are so many homes in England as well as in America in which the name of Longfellow is cherished as a dear and familiar one, that this faithful and graphic record of his life can hardly fail to find a hearty welcome here among not a few of us to whom his poems are "familiar in our mouths as household words." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born at Portland, in the State of Maine, on the 27th February, 1807. His maternal grandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, had, after his marriage with Elizabeth Bartlett, removed thither from Duxbury in Massachusetts, whither their ancestors had emigrated from England; the Wadsworths, like the Longfellows, hailing from Yorkshire. Zilpah Wadsworth, the poet's mother, was the third of eleven children. From her her son appears to have inherited the imaginative and romantic side of his nature. Fond of poetry and music, and in her youth of dancing and social gaiety, she was also a lover of nature in all its aspects. She would sit by a window during a thunderstorm, enjoying the excitement of its splendours. She had been beautiful in her youth, and retained through later years a sweet and expressive countenance, and her disposition, through all trials and sorrows, was always cheerful, with a gentle and tranquil fortitude. The poet's father, Stephen Longfellow, was a man much honoured in the community for his ability in his profession of the law, for his sound good sense in affairs, for his high integrity, his liberality and public spirit, and for his old-world courtesy of manners and cordial hospitality. Here at Portland, in a happy and tranquil home, passed Longfellow's childhood and early school years, save for vacation visits and journeys to grandfather Longfellow's or grandfather Wadsworth's house, of which pleasant enough glimpses are given us by his biographer. It was in his fourteenth year, and when he was still only a child, that his first verses appeared in print in the Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence. Edited by Samuel Longfellow. In two volumes. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. 1886. poet's corner of the Portland Gazette, November 17, 1820. Not far from Hiram, in the neighbouring town of Fryeburg, lies one of those small lakes of which the State of Maine is full, their clear waters rimmed with a beach of pale sand. It is called Lovewell's (or Lovell's) Pond, and is the scene of an event famous in New-England history as "Lovewell's Fight" with the Indians. The story made a deep impression on the boy's imagination, and begot the following first-fruits of his maiden muse: THE BATTLE OF LOVELL'S POND. Cold, cold is the north wind and rude is the blas', That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast, As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and drear, The war-whoop is still, and the savage's yell The din of the battle, the tumult, is o'er, They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And their names are engraven on honour's bright crest.-HENRY. We cannot agree with Longfellow's biographer that "there is very little, even of promise, in these verses;" that "other boys of thirteen have written better;" and that "their only interest lies in their being, as far as is known, the first printed verses of our poet." They are, it seems to us, at least as good as many of the verses in Byrɔn's "Hours of Idleness," written much later on in his teens. But the boy's first printed verses were to him, at least, of vast interest. He recalled, in after years, the trembling and misgiving of heart with which he ran down to Mr. Shirley's printing-office at the foot of Exchange Street, and cautiously slipped his manuscript into the letter-box. The evening before the publication of the paper he went again, and stood shivering in the November air, casting many a glance at the windows, as they trembled with the jar of the ink-balls and the press-afraid to venture in. No one but his sister had been let into his secret; and she shared with him the excited expectation with which the appearance of the paper was looked for the next morning. With impatience they watched the unfolding of the damp sheet in their father's methodical hands, and the rising vapour as he held it before the wood fire to dry. Slowly he read the paper, and said nothing-perhaps saw nothing-of the verses, and the children kept their secret. But when they could get the paper-the poem was there! Inexpressible was the boy's delight, and innumerable times he read and re-read his performance, each time with increasing satisfaction. In the evening he went to visit at the house of Judge Mellen, his father's friend, whose son Frederick was his own intimate. In the circle gathered about the fire the talk turned upon poetry. The Judge took up the morning's Gazette: "Did you see the piece in to-day's paper? Very stiff, remarkably stiff; moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of it." The boy's heart shrunk within him, and he would gladly have sunk through the floor. He got out of the house as soon as possible, without betraying himself. It was his first encounter with "the critic," from whom he was afterwards destined to hear much, not always complimentary. This first mishap, however, did not discourage him. From time to time other pieces appeared in the Gazette, "not," his biographer thinks, "worth reprinting;" and there accordingly we must leave them buried, until some lucky enthusiast may chance to disinter them. Of one only a specimen, consisting of the first and last stanzas of the lines "To Ianthe," is vouchsafed to us. Mention is also made of some prose articles contributed to the American Monthly Magazine, edited in Philadelphia by Dr. James McHenry. But it was during his College years at Bowdoin in 1824-25, in a Boston periodical entitled The United States Literary Gazette, that Longfellow made his first recognisable appearance as a poet. Of the seventeen poems contributed to this journal, five were afterwards included by the author in his first volume of original poetry, “Voices of the Night." Besides these verses, he contributed to the Gazette three articles in prose, with the title of "The Lay Monastery." They were essays after the manner of "The Sketch-Book," or "Salmagundi." Two or three poems inserted in them are apparently original, and one of these, "The Angler's Song," was reprinted with his name, together with other verse contributions, in a volume of "Miscellaneous Poems selected from the U. S. Literary Gazette," published at Boston in 1826. The entire series of verse contributions to the Gazette appeared in London in 1878, under the present writer's editorship, in a dainty little volume printed at the Chiswick press.1 After graduation Longfellow travelled for three years (1826 The Early Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, now first collected. Edited and prefaced by Richard Herne Shepherd. London : Pickering & Co., 1878. 1829) in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, in order to fit himself for the newly-founded Professorship of the Modern Languages at Bowdoin College, to which he was appointed and which was kept open for him until his return. His private letters written from these countries form a very interesting portion of this biography. At Venice he found that nearly every one knew and remembered Byron, whose death, in 1824, was then still recent; and the whole city was still fragrant with memories of the immortal poet who had resided there. He came upon a communicative gondolier who had served Byron in that capacity, "and recited to me," writes Longfellow, a sonnet he composed to his lordship. It is," he adds (as we can well believe) "very curious." The gondolier described Byron as "un piccol' uomo, pallido, ma pien' di spirito e di talento." He also made a very brief visit to England, and sailing from Liverpool, reached New York 11th August, 1829, after an absence from America of three years and three months. On the 1st of September the young poet was fully appointed to the Professorship of Modern Languages in Bowdoin College, at a salary of eight hundred, subsequently augmented to a thousand dollars. Very soon after the appointment Longfellow took up his residence in Brunswick. He was now twenty-two years old. He at once devoted himself zealously to his duties of teaching. Finding no French grammar which suited him, he translated and printed for the use of his pupils the grammar of L'Homond, which had the merit, a great one in his eyes, of containing all essentials in a small compass. In the same year he edited for his classes a collection of French Proverbes Dramatiques, and a small Spanish reader, Novelas Españolas, taken from the Tareas de un Solitario of Jorge W. Montgomery. Among the students the new professor became at once extremely popular. Nearer to them in age than their other professors; less imbued with the old-fashioned ideas of the relation and its discipline; full of fresh interest in his work; with the glow of foreign travel upon him, and always cordial, courteous and sympathetic in his intercourse, he met them not merely as an instructor, but as a friend. In April 1831, Longfellow began a series of prose contributions to the North American Review, then edited by Alexander Everett, which continued through several succeeding years. In the following September, in his twenty-fifth year, took place his first marriage, to Mary Storer Potter, second daughter of his father's friend and neighbour, Judge Barrett Potter. Her character and person are described as alike lovely. Under the shadow of dark hair, eyes of deep blue lighted a countenance singularly attractive with the expression of a |