The Longfellow War — 1902 historical reading

The Longfellow War Historical reading from James A. Harrison’s 1902 Complete Works, volume XII. This is a later collected edition, not the first periodical printing. The selected historical work sections are preserved locally; modern website commentary and double-bracketed corrections are excluded. Paragraph and verse-line boundaries are retained, with simplified typography. No independent word-by-word proofreading is claimed. IMITATION — PLAGIARISM — MR. POE’S REPLY TO THE LETTER OF OUTIS — A LARGE ACCOUNT OF A SMALL MATTER — A VOLUMINOUS HISTORY OF THE LITTLE. LONGFELLOW WAR. [Broadway Journal, March 8, 1845.] [Broadway Journal, i. 10-14; cf. Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1840;(1) Graham's Magazine, March, 1842; New York Evening Mirror, Jan. 14, 1845;(2) Graham's Magazine, May, 1845.] NOTE. Poe's “A Reply to Outis” is in five parts and begins in the Broadway Journal for March 8, 1845, pp. 147-150, Vol. i., continues March 15, pp. 161-163, with “A Continuation of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War — Mr. Poe's further reply to the letter of Outis;” March 22, pp. 178-182, continuation of “A Reply to Outis;” March 29, pp. 194-198, continuation of “A Reply to Outis;” April 5, pp. 211, 212, conclusion of “A Reply to Outis,” under the title of “Postscript.” The preferable plan seemed to be to print the papers consecutively here, slightly disarranging the chronological order. — ED. I. IN replying to the letter signed “Outis,” which appears in last Saturday's “Weekly Mirror,” I find it advisable, for reasons which will be obvious as I proceed, to dismiss for the present the editorial “we.” For the “Evening Mirror” of January 14, (1846), before my editorial connexion with the “Broadway Journal,” I furnished a brief criticism on Professor Longfellow's “Waif.” In the course of my observations, I collated a poem called “The Death-Bed,” and written by Hood, with one by Mr. Aldrich, entitled “A Death-Bed.” The criticism ended thus: We conclude our notes on the “Waif,” with the observation that, although full of beauties, it is infected with a moral taint; — or is this a mere freak of our own fancy? We shall be pleased if it be so: — but there does appear, in this little volume, a very careful avoidance of all American poets who may be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of Mr. Longfellow. These men Mr. Longfellow can continuously imitate (is that the word?) and yet never even incidentally commend. Much discussion ensued. A friend of Mr. Longfellow's penned a defence which had at least the merit of being thoroughly impartial; for it defended Mr. L., not only from the one-tenth of very moderate disapproval in which I had indulged, but from the nine-tenths of my enthusiastic admiration into the bargain. The fact is, if I was not convinced that in ninety-nine hundredths of all that I had written about Mr. Longfellow I was decidedly in the wrong, at least it was no fault of Mr. Longfellow's very luminous friend. This well-intended defence was published in the “Mirror” with a few words of preface by Mr. Willis, and of postscript by myself. Still dissatisfied, Mr. L., through a second friend, addressed to Mr. Willis an expostulatory letter, of which the “Mirror” printed only the following portion: It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neglected in this collection? Might it not as well be asked why Bryant, Dana and Halleck were neglected? The answer is obvious to any one who candidly considers the character of the collection. It professed to be, according to the Proem, from the humbler poets; and it was intended to embrace pieces that were anonymous, or which were easily accessible to the general reader — the waifs and estrays of literature. To put anything of Lowell's, for example, into a collection of waifs would be a particular liberty with pieces which are all collected and christened. Not yet content, or misunderstanding the tenor of some of the wittily-put comments which accompanied t