LONG-'FELLOW, HENRY IVAnswoirrn ( 1807 82). The most popular of American poets, He was born in Portland. Maine, February 27, 1807, and was the second son of Stephen Longfellow, a well-to-do lawyer of Portland, and Zilpah Wadsworth. Through his mother's family Long fellow was descended from .John Alden and Pris cilla Mullens, whom he made famous in his poem "The Courtship of Miles Standish." He early showed a liking for literature. As early as 1S20 he had printed verses in the Portland Ga zette. In 1825 he was graduated in the same class with Hawthorne from Bowdoin College, Brunswick. Maine, after a course marked by studiousness and quiet. He was immediately made professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, but was allowed to go to Europe for three years, to fit himself for his profession. In Europe, from 1826 to 1829, his life was passed in hard study in Paris, and in Italy and Spain. He was married in 1831 to :Miss Mary Storer Potter, who died in 1835. Aside from a col lection of juvenile poems, in IS26, and his trans lation of a French grammar for use in his classes, in 1830, his first literary work was the translation of the Coplas de Alum-nine ( tti:331. The same year be published the first part of Outrc-Mcr: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Rot, and the second part the following year (in book form, 1835), both rather stilted sketches of travel. In 1835 he resigned his chair at Bow doin, and went again to Europe for a year's study, in preparation for the Smith ship of modern lammages at Harvard, which had been held by George Ticknor. the historian of Spanish literature. From 1836 his residence was in Cambridge. he first occupied and afterwards owned the Craigie House. the head quarters of Washimdon during the operations about Boston in the War of Independence.
In 1838 his well-known "Psalm of Life" ap peared in the Knickm rbockee Magazine, and the following year was published, with other poems, in 1 (de m s of the Night. '('lie same year appeared Hyla•ion, a rather florid romance, the heroine of whieb was Miss Frances Appleton. of Boston.
whom he married in 1843. In 1841 such poems as "The Wreck of the Hesperus." "The Skeleton in A•mor." and "The Village Blacksmith." in cluded in the volume Ballads and Other Poems, confirmed his literary reputation, and made him perhaps the most widely read of American poets. In 184• he again went to England, and the same year published Poems on Slarery. It is suffi cient to indicate the chief titles of his prolific later work: The Spanish, Student (1843), a drama of no great merit ; The Belfry of Bruges, and Olher Poems (18413) : Erangclinc:_l Talc of Aeadie (1847), a very popular narrative pastoral in hexameter verse; Kavanagh. (1849), a romance of better quality than Hyperion; The Seaside and the Fireside (1850), a volume of poems which in cluded "The Building of the Ship;" The Golden Legend (1851); The Song of Hiawatha (1855) m The Courtship of des Standish (1858), a narra tive ]mein in hexameters; Birds of Passage (1858): Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), a vol ume of narrative poems modeled on the Canter bury Tales: •lowe•-de-1,liee and Other Poems (1867) : a translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante, in verse (1867-70) ; New England Trage dies (1868), two dramas dealing with historical events of early New England; The Dirine Tragedy (18711: Three Books of Sony (1872); Aftermath ( 1873 ; The Hanging of the Crane (1874) : The Masque of Pandora (1875) ; Ke ramos and Other Poems (1878) ; Ultima Thule (1880); ln the Harbor (1882) ; and Michael Angelo, the fragment of a drama (1883). He also edited an anthology, the Poets and Poetry of Europe (1843), and Poems of Places (1876 79, in 31 vols.). During this time his private life had been uneventful. except for the death of his wife. through burning, in 1861. In 1854 he resigned his professorship at Harvard, and thenceforward lived quietly in Cambridge until his death, on March 24, 1882.