Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/275

 10 S. VII. MARCH 23, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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with it, and it cost him hardly an effort. On the following night, the last of the old year, he writes in his diary :

" Shake hands, old friend ; I have learned much from thee ; and sung thy spring in prose and thy autumn in song. And now farewell !

Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb !

Take this new tenant to thy trust,

And give these sacred relics room

To slumber in the silent dust."

' Poems on Slavery ' were composed during his return from Europe in 1842, and pub- lished in a pamphlet of thirty pages. These were followed by ' The Spanish Student.'

Although the scheme was not completed until thirty years later, it was on the 8th of November, 1841, that Longfellow entered in his diary :

"This evening it has come into my mind to undertake a long and elaborate poem by the holy name of Christ ; the theme of which would be the various aspects of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and modern ages."

The second part was published in 1851 as ' The Golden Legend ' ; the third part was 1868 ; and the last written was ' The Divine Tragedy,' which appeared in 1871. The whole, with the title of ' Christus,' was pub- lished in the autumn of 1872.
 * The New England Tragedies,' issued in

On the 13th of July, 1843, Longfellow married Frances Elizabeth Appleton. She was twenty-five years of age, and is described as " a woman of stately presence, of cultivated intellect, and deep, though reserved feeling." The event of 1847 was the publishing of ' Evangeline,' followed by ' Kavanagh ' in 1849. The name of the tale is that of an old Roman Catholic familyof Maine, nowextinct. On the 3rd of August, 1849, in the early morning, Longfellow's father, whom he had always consulted in reference to his poems, died at the age of seventy-three ; and on the 5th, at sunset, in the Western Cemetery at Portland, he was buried. On his return from the funeral the son wrote in his journal : " Farewell, O thou good man, thou excellent father ! "

Longfellow, who had long felt dissatisfaction with his work at Harvard, on account of the lack of time for writing, at length resigned, and on the 12th of September, 1854, received from President Walker the information that the resignation had been accepted.

' Hiawatha ' was published on the 10th of November, 1855, by Ticknor & Fields.

Bogue, the publisher in Fleet Street, wrote in December, when sending Longfellow 100Z. for the early sheets, that he had " sold eighteen hundred of the five-shilling edition, and 10,000 of the shilling edition."

In November, 1857, the first number of The Atlantic Monthly was published by Phillips & Sampson, Longfellow contributing his ' Santa Filomena,' a poem in honour of Florence Nightingale.

' The Courtship of Miles Standish ' was published in 1858. Ten thousand copies were rapidly sold, and a second edition of the same number soon followed.

On the 9th of July, 1861, a great calamity came to him. It is thus recorded in the ' Life ' edited by Samuel Longfellow, vol. ii. p. 369 (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.) :

"His wife was sitting in the library, with her two little girls, engaged in sealing up some small packages of their curls which she had just cut off. From a match fallen upon the floor, her light summer dress caught lire. The shock was too great, and she died the next morning. She was buried three days later at Mount Auburn. It was the anniversary of her marriage day, and on her beautiful head, lovely and unmarred in death, some one had placed a wreath of orange blossoms. Her husband was not there, confined to his chamber by the severe burns which he had himself received."

After this there is a great break in his usually well-kept journal, the first entry being the following lines from Tennyson : Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace !

Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul ! While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll.

JOHN C. FRANCIS. (To be continued.)

BY

GRANGER ANNOTATED CAULFIELD.

(See ante, p. 65.)

IN compliance with requests received, I am transcribing the whole of Caulfield's notes for these pages. The bracketed figures following the name indicate the page in Granger, second edition, 1775, vol. iv.

Nathanaelis Highmorii [18]. " 7-s. 6d. The Por- trait of Highmore is a small square at the right corner of an engraved title-page ; it is very often overlooked as a Portrait, but is the only one of him extant."

A copy in Dodd's sale of portraits, 4 April, 1811, lot 173, sold for 11. 5s. In the Sykes Sale, March, 1824, lot 862, 6 prints, bought by Rodd for 18s., included this print, " small head in a frontispiece." Lot 863,

It was a great success : four thousand out " Nathaniel Highmore, M.D. (oval), by A. of the five composing the first edition were j Blooteling, 4to, fine proof," sold for 1L 2s. 6d. sold on the same day, and a new edition of | (Hunt). The last named was not known to tlxree thousand ordered ; while David | Bromley.