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The juste milieu it may be hard for critical appraisers to hit. But, between two extremes, to hint with Sir Roger that much may be said on both sides, is easy enough; and, to indolent or incompetent judges, an agreeable observance of the maxim, In medio tutissimus ibis. Our own indolence, or incompetence, disposes us to steer in this middle course in a notice of the works of Professor Longfellow. Mr. Coventry Patmore may assure us he is hugely overrated, and Mr. George Gilfillan may assert that his reputation is hitherto only nascent, and his depth but partly fathomed. Benignly regarding the adverse factions, we accept neither allegation to the full, and pronounce neither a true bill (in the sense of speaking the whole truth, and nothing but the truth), and by adding to and diminishing from both, and putting this and that together, and letting the negative signs of the one cancel the plus signs of the other, we do our best to sustain a judicial centre of gravity, and to work out an equation of terms, a composition of forces. A month or two ago, we were taken to task in a contemporary journal for implying, in what the writer was pleased to call (and we equally pleased to recognise) our "strange admiration of Wordsworth," that Professor Longfellow was not a poet of the same calibre as the Bard of Rydal. For the life of us we cannot understand how any one admiring Wordsworth at all, could put the professor in competition with him:—assuredly the professor himself would shrink from the comparison. On the other hand, we avow a most cordial and lively admiration of the author of the "Golden Legend" and "Evangeline," of the noble Excelsior strains, that stir even stagnant souls as with the sound of a trumpet—echoes of silver trumpets heard from the battlement of a Temple not made with hands,—and of the "Psalm of Life," so invigorating, elevating, and seasonable,—and of the "Voices of the Night," so sweetly solemn, so tender and true. God bless the minstrel of verses like these, and increase his influence a hundred-fold! This benediction is sincere, and worth whole chapters of criticism—such as we could write.
Professor Longfellow's poems have been described as "rather golden recollections than present vision"—giving us the "elegiac words, and tender mien, and mellow music," which record some loved memory of bygone youth, than the "poet's outcry at things seen," or the poet's gesture significant of words he may not utter—ἀρρητα ῥηματα, ἁ ὀυκ ἐξον ἀνθρωπῳ λαλησαι. But he sings emphatically with a purpose, and a high one. He is, to adapt Tennyson's words, one
The winged shats of truth,
To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring
Of hope and youth.
Like Wordsworth's Wanderer, he is "rich in love and sweet humanity;" and like Wordsworth himself, he would, by excelsior! strains, and "psalms
