Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/312

294 says in her own words more distinctly than any one else can say it for her: —

“We must confess to a coolness towards Mr. Longfellow, in consequence of the exaggerated praises that have been bestowed upon him. When we see a person of moderate powers receive honors which should be reserved for the highest, we feel somewhat like assailing him and taking from him the crown which should be reserved for grander brows. And yet this is, perhaps, ungenerous.”

The italics are my own. Then she defends him from the special charge of plagiarism, which Poe was just trying to fasten upon him, and goes on: —

“He has no style of his own, growing out of his own experiences and observations of nature. Nature with him, whether human or external, is always seen through the windows of literature. There are in his poems sweet and tender passages descriptive of his personal feelings, but very few showing him as an observer, at first hand, of the passions within, or the landscape without.

“This want of the free breath of nature, this perpetual borrowing of imagery, this excessive, because superficial, culture which he has derived from an acquaintance with the elegant literature of many nations and men, out of proportion to the experience of life within himself, prevent Mr. Longfellow’s verses from ever being a true refreshment to ourselves. …

“And now farewell to the handsome book, with its Preciosos and Preciosas, its vikings and knights and cavaliers, its flowers of all climes and wild flowers of