“Combed and wattled gules and all the rest of the blazon,”—­

and into a prosaic phraseology which has now and then infected his style in other metres, as where he says

  “Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,”—­

using a word as essentially unpoetic as surtout or pea-jacket.  We think one great danger of the hexameter is, that it gradually accustoms the poet to be content with a certain regular recurrence of accented sounds, to the neglect of the poetic value of language and intensity of phrase.

But while we frankly avow our infidelity as regards the metre, we as frankly confess our admiration of the high qualities of “Miles Standish.”  In construction we think it superior to “Evangeline”; the narrative is more straightforward, and the characters are defined with a firmer touch.  It is a poem of wonderful picturesqueness, tenderness, and simplicity, and the situations are all conceived with the truest artistic feeling.  Nothing can be better, to our thinking, than the picture of Standish and Alden in the opening scene, tinged as it is with a delicate humor, which the contrast between the thoughts and characters of the two heightens almost to pathos.  The pictures of Priscilla spinning, and the bridal procession, are also masterly.  We feel charmed to see such exquisite imaginations conjured 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.