The Longfellow War — 1902 historical reading — reading text

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 the quotation, the aggrieved poet, through one of the two friends as before, or perhaps through a third, finally prevailed on the good nature of Mr. Willis to publish an explicit declaration of his disagreement with “all the disparagement of Longfellow” which had appeared in the criticism in question. Now when we consider that many of the points of censure made by me in this critique were absolutely as plain as the nose upon Mr. Longfellow's face — that it was impossible to gainsay them — that we defied him and his coadjutors to say a syllable in reply to them — and that they held their tongues and not a syllable said — when we consider all this, I say, then the satire of the “all” in Mr. Willis’ manifesto becomes apparent at once. Mr. Longfellow did not see it; and I presume his friends did not see it. I did. In my mind's eye it expanded itself thus; — “My dear Sir, or Sirs, what will you have? You are an insatiable set of cormorants, it is true; but if you will only let me know what you desire, I will satisfy you, if I die for it. Be quick! — merely say what it is you wish me to admit, and (for the sake of getting rid of you) I will admit it upon the spot. Come! I will grant at once that Mr. Longfellow is Jupiter Tonans, and that his three friends are the Graces, or the Furies, whichever you please. As for a fault to be found with either of you, that is impossible, and I say so. I disagree with all — with every syllable of the disparagement that ever has been whispered against you up to this date, and (not to stand upon trifles) with all that ever shall be whispered against you henceforward, forever and forever. May I hope at length that these assurances will be sufficient?” But if Mr. Willis really hoped anything of the kind he was mistaken. In the meantime Mr. Briggs — in this paper — did me the honor of taking me to task for what he supposed to be my insinuations against Mr. Aldrich. My reply (in the “Mirror”), prefaced by a few words from Mr. Willis, ran as follows: Much interest has been given in our literary circles of late to the topic of plagiarism. About a month ago a very eminent critic connected with this paper, took occasion to point out a parallelism between certain lines of Thomas Hood, and certain others which appeared in the collection of American poetry edited by Mr. Griswold. Transcribing the passages, he ventured the assertion that “somebody is a thief.” The matter had been nearly forgotten, if not altogether so, when a “good-natured friend” of the American author (whose name had by us never been mentioned) considered it advisable to re-collate the passages, with the view of convincing the public (and himself) that no plagiarism is chargeable to the party of whom he thinks it chivalrous to be the “good-natured friend.” For our own part, should we ever be guilty of an indiscretion of this kind, we deprecate all aid from our “good-natured friends” — but in the mean time it is rendered necessary that once again we give publicity to the collation of poems in question. Dr.Hood's lines run thus: We watched her breathing through the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. So silently we seemed to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her being out. Our very hope belied our fears; Our fears our hope belied; We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died. But when the morn came dim and sad, And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed; — she had Another morn than ours. Mr. Aldrich's thus: — Her sufferings ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away In statue-like repose; But when the sun in all its state Illumed the eastern skies, She passed through Glory's morning gate, And walked in paradise. And here, to be sure, we might well leave a decision in the case to the verdict of common sense. But since the “Broadway Journal” insists upon the “no resemblance,” we are constrained to point out especially where our supposed similarity lies. In the first place, then, the subject in both pieces is death. In the second it is the death of a woman. In the third, it is the death of a woman tranquilly dying. In the fourth, it is the death of a woman who lies tranquilly throughout the night. In the fifth it is the death of a woman whose “breathing soft and low is watched through the night” in the one instance and who “breathed the long long night away in statue-like repose” in the other. In the sixth place, in both poems this woman dies just at daybreak. In the seventh place, dying just at daybreak, this woman, in both cases, steps directly into Paradise. In the eighth place all these identities of circumstance are related in identical rhythms. In the ninth place these identical rhythms are arranged in identical metres; and, in the tenth place. these identical rhythms and metres are constructed into identical stanzas. At this point the matter rested for a fortnight, when a fourth friend of Mr. Longfellow took up the cudgels for him and Mr. Aldrich conjointly, in another communication to the “Mirror.” I copy it in full. PLAGIARISM. Dear Willis — Fair play is a jewel, and I hope you will let us have it. I have been much amused, by some of the efforts of your critical friend to convict Longfellow of imitation, and Aldrich and others, of plagiarism. What is plagiarism? And what constitutes a good ground for the charge? Did no two men ever think alike without stealing one from the other? or, thinking alike, did no two men ever use the same, or similar words, to convey the thoughts, and that, without any communication with each other? To deny it would be absurd. It is a thing of every day occurrence. Some years ago, a letter was written from some part of New England, describing one of these scenes, not very common during what is called “the January thaw,” when the snow, mingled with rain, and freezing as it falls, forms a perfect covering of ice upon every object. The storm clears away suddenly, and the moon comes up. The letter proceeds — “every tree and shrub, as far as the eye can reach, of pure transparent glass — a perfect garden of moving, waving, breathing chrystals. ... Every tree is a diamond chandelier, with a whole constellation of stars clustering to every socket,” &c. This letter was laid away where such things usually are, in a private drawer, and did not see the light for many years. But the very next autumn brought out, among the splendid annuals got up in the country, a beautiful poem from Whittier, describing the same, or rather a similar scene, in which is this line: “The trees, like crystal chandeliers,” was put in italics by every reviewer in the land, for the exceeding beauty of the imagery. Now the letter was written, probably about the same time with the poem, though the poem was not published till nearly a year after. — The writers were not, and never have been, acquainted with each other, and neither could possibly have seen the work of the other before writing. Now, was there any plagiarism here? Yet there are plenty of “identities.” The author of the letter, when urged some years after, to have it published, consented very reluctantly, through fear that he should be charged with theft; and, very probably, the charge has been made, though I have never seen it. May not this often occur? What is more natural? Images are not created, but suggested. And why not the same images, when the circumstances are precisely the same, to different minds? Perhaps your critic will reply, that the case is different after one of the compositions is published. How so? Does he, or you, or anybody read everything that is published? I am a great admirer, and a general reader of poetry. But, by what accident I do not know, I had never seen the beautiful lines of Hood, till your critical friend brought them to my notice in the Mirror. It is certainly possible that