Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's primary place in literary history is as a poet whose ballads, pensive lyrics, verse-narratives, and moral exhortations achieved a degree of popularity and respect in his own time and for a generation or two after his death. The poetry of no other American poet has ever achieved that level of success. He was important, too, as a scholar and a man of letters who introduced to the American reading public an eclectic assortment of poets and poetry from the European past. Largely self-taught, Longfellow conducted enthusiastic forays into the languages and literatures of half a dozen European cultures and published the results of his searches to a growing audience of American readers. Longfellow was never a critic, never one to theorize, analyze, or explain the detailed inner workings of literary creations. He was a discoverer, an appreciator, and a promoter of what he perceived as...