L74 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW By Hezekiah Butterworth (1807-1882) T'
- hat was a memorable scene in the Poet's
Corner of Westminster Abbey, when the veil was lifted from the bust of Henry Wads- worth Longfellow, the first American upon whom England had conferred such distin- guished honor. James Russell Lowell was there, and made the eulogy, and- left in all minds the impression of these simple words . "The most beautiful character that I have ever known." Mr. Lowell knew men, and among the great spirits of the age with whom he had been associated, he perhaps had known no literary man more intimately than Long- fellow. The original families of Lowell and Longfellow in America had grown side by side on the banks of the Merrimac. The younger poet had succeeded the elder in the professorship of literature at Harvard College ; the two had lived side by side in historic houses in the old Cambridge neighborhood on the Charles, and there had shared the amenities of suburban life and had studied the world together. It was said that Longfellow came to live in a house " on the way to Mt Auburn ; " Low- ell lived in a house on the same road, and the two poets sleep together there now in the loving shadows of Boston's " Field of God." Since the days of Horace, friendship has found no more sympathetic and beautiful expression in verse than in the lines inscribed by Lowell to Longfellow and in the poems written by Longfellow in reference to LowelL Says Lowell in his lines to H. W. L : " Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet As gracious natures find his song to be ; May age steal on with softly-cadenced feet Falling in music, as for him were meet Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he I " Says Longfellow of Lowell in the " Herons of Elmwood :" " Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, Some one hath lingered to meditate, And send him unseen this friendly greetipg ; Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess
