With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter, Was it then for heads of arrows, Was it not to see the maiden, Who shall say what brains and visions Like a knight of the Old World, the hero of the New commences his career with penances-he fasts. This is national and appropriate. The carnivorous hunter must first learn the negative accomplishment-to do without his dinner. We cannot find fault with Hiawatha's performance in this respect. Nor does he seem weakened by the discipline-but he has got a lesson; and no sooner is he released from the inhospitable lodge he is self-confined in, and has proved himself incapable of breaking his parole with himself by lifting the latch of his own door, than he sets about making a canoe, with an eye to fishing. The canoe constructed, he essays an experimental trip, and finally addresses himself to the piscatorial art. But-as if to show how different the sporting adventures of uncivilised life are from those we have been accustomed to hear recounted in the Waltonian world-he has scarcely let down his line when the royal old sturgeon he has in his eye turns the tables on him, and swallows the sportsman instead of the bait! But Jonah was nothing to him; for whereas that prophet addressed him VOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXVII. self from within the fish to penitential observances with a view to escape, our patriarch of the West took the more decided course of belabouring the stomach and adjacent parts of the monster with his mittens, Minjekawun -succeeding in turning the former, and sending its owner staggering through the water. His escape was singular. The fish, after gasping and quivering awhile, found he had to deal with a thoroughly indigestible morsel, and resigned the contest, "drifting landward, "Till he grated on the pebbles, Then he heard a clang and flapping, And he shouted from below them, And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls But to follow the adventures of "our Hiawatha "would be to sing the "song" from beginning to end. Enough, that he wooed and won the arrow-maker's daughter, Minnehaha, Laughing Water-wooed her gracefully, in a few words "Let your heart speak, Minnehaha !" was accepted in as few "I will follow you, my husband!" The marriage feast-at which what remained of the sturgeon, Nahma, after H the gulls, was cooked and eaten-gave occasion meet to the gentle Chibiabos to "sing his song of love and longing;" to the handsome Pau-Puk-keewis to exhibit his feats of dancing, his head adorned with swan's-down plumes, his heels garnished with foxes' tails, a feather fan in one hand and a pipe in the other; and to Nokomis's friend, Iagoo, the marvellous story-teller, the boastful Iagoo, to outdo himself in "downeastern" tales. The banquet had an end, so had the singing, dancing, and even Iagoo's tales and the guests departed, "Leaving Hiawatha happy With the night and Minnehaha." But shadows begin to descend on the page. The song strikes into a minor key. The flat third is introduced. The penumbra of the white man projects itself upon the page, and his uncomfortable presence is felt in those solitudes, before he has quitted the port of Palos. The sweet singer, Chibiabos, dies; Pau-Puk-keewis, the handsome Yenadizze, performs some mischievous pranks to the discomposure of Hiawatha, and has to be put an end to as a dangerous nuisance. Another friend of Hiawatha's, whom we have not alluded to, "the very strong man, Kwasind," comes to grief-the Pukwudjies, or Little People, stoning, or rather coning him to death with the fruit of the fir. In short, in that country, where neighbours are not too plenty, a considerable gap is made in the social circle of Hiawatha. Misfortunes accumulate. We will not ask our reader's opinion of the simile which opens the chapter we have arrived at, for we can believe we address intelligent heads and tender hearts, and to such it can only speak one language "Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, Sees the downward plunge, and follows; So disasters come not singly; First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish." Winter has arrived. Ghosts come, and crouch down in the wigwam of Nokomis, wherein Minnehaha one evening awaits the return of Hiawatha, There they crouch, and establish themselves, even after her lord's appearance, saying nothing, but doing much, seizing upon everything of the best, without leave or license, and making themselves horribly at home. They are gone; but two yet more dreadful guests take their place "As silent As the ghosts were, and as gloomy, And the foremost said: 'Behold me! And the lovely Minnehaha Forth into the empty forest Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting, Through the far-resounding forest, All day long roved Hiawatha He had brought his young wife homeward And the streamlets laughed and glistened, Said with voice that did not tremble, 'I will follow you, my husband!' In the wigwam with Nokomis, With those gloomy guests, that watched her, 'Hark!' she said; 'I hear a rushing, "Tis the smoke, that waves and beckons !' 'Ah!' she said, the eyes of Pauguk Glare upon me in the darkness, I can feel his icy fingers Clasping mine amid the darkness! And the desolate Hiawatha, Over snow-fields waste and pathless, And he rushed into the wigwam, The white man arrives-appears-astonishes the natives. The disconsolate Hiawatha alone is neither surprised nor disconcerted. He has seen him already in a vision, and by the vision foretells the secrets of the future, the scattering of the nations which have neglected his counsels and warred with and weakened each other, the westward sweep of the remnant of the people, into the wilderness and oblivion! In the last scene "the Black-Robe Chief, the Prophet," has preached unto the people, seated with others of his colour and creed, before the wigwam of their host, Hiawatha. He has "Told his message to the people, The village population departed. Evening set in over the landscape, in its dusk and coolness "And the long and level sunbeams The guests of Hiawatha slept in the wigwam. Then did the solitary Chief announce to all but the white strangers who slumbered within, his final resolve "I am going, O Nokomis, Forth into the village went he, On the shore stood Hiawatha, Turned and waved his hand at parting; On the clear and luminous water Launched his birch-canoe for sailing, From the pebbles of the margin Shoved it forth into the water; Whispered to it, Westward! westward!' And with speed it darted forward. 6 And the evening sun descending Set the clouds on fire with redness, One long track and trail of splendour, And the people from the margin And they said Farewell for ever!' Said, Farewell, O Hiawatha!' And the forests, dark and lonely, Moved through all their depths of darkness, Some idea of the story, and its meaning, may be caught from this outline. Enough has been given, it is hoped, to justify our estimate of the performance, both as a specimen and as an earnest of our author's powers. That a bold plunge has been made into untrodden tracts, may be safely affirm. ed. That these regions teem with the productions of a virgin soil, there is as little reason to deny ;-that they present rather the promise of a return to further and future enterprise, than the substantial fruits of a full cultivation, the intelligent reader will, perhaps, have already discovered for himself. The adventurous woodsman at times presents but a sorry figure, as he stumbles over such roots as Kabibonokka, Kayoshik, "the noble scratchers," Nebanawbaigs, Megissogwon, from which he lamely delivers his readers by the expedient of a glossary; and can but provoke a laugh when the necessities of his verse force him upon the briars of such lines as "I will put his smouldering fire out!" "Sought for bird or beast, and found none !" Nor can he quarrel with us if we side with the "Handsome men with belts of wampum, Handsome men with paint and feathers,” who refuse to be affected to tears by the tenderness of the strain "Ah, showain nemeshin, nosa!" The game of bowl and counters puts harmony to the blush. Chibiabos could have made nothing of it. Nevertheless, Mr. Longfellow has "Four round pieces, Ozawabeeks, And three Sheshebwug or ducklings. Why did not the poet himself take the hint conveyed in the following distich "I can even give you lessons On your game of bowl and counters !" But enough of this fault-finding. Can it be fairly called so? The faults lie on the surface. They are few, but easily gathered; and invite the hand. We have caught them, in reaching for the beauties more thickly scattered. Had we leisure, we could bear away a tolerable armful of these. How sure are the lights of heaven to inspire the poet! He rises above himself whenever he looks at them. "On the morrow and the next day, When the sun through heaven descendig, Like a red and burning cinder From the hearth of the Great Spirit, Fell into the western waters, Came Mondamin for the trial, For the strife with Hiawatha; Came as silent as the dew comes, From the empty air appearing, Into empty air returning, Taking shape when earth it touches, But invisible to all men In its coming and its going." And again : "Fiercely the red sun descending Burned his way along the heavens, Set the sky on fire behind him, As war-parties, when retreating, Burn the prairies on their war-trail; And the moon, the Night-Sun, eastward, Suddenly starting from his ambush, Followed fast those bloody footprints, Followed in that fiery war-trail, With its glare upon his features."; "The black muffle of his nostrils." The noble simile we have already quoted, in which the descent of disasters is compared to the gathering of birds of prey around their victim, may be cited as a specimen of Longfellow's best style. It would, indeed, do credit to any poem, and sparkles in this like a diamond upon a dusky brow. All we have extracted, and all we have left behind, combine to prove how completely unimpaired are the powers of a genuine living poet; and likewise conspire to show how greatly more remains to be done in the same field. Beauties now detached would then be continuous. Legend would underlie narrative, instead of overflowing it. Metrical effects would enhance the interest and pathos, which would call for more finished and less Finnish harmonies. What scope there is for the genius of America upon her own soil! Let Longfellow, who has now established himself on the outskirts of all previous imaginative exploration in this direction, not content himself with reproducing the legends of the past, but repeople it. Look at Uncas, and Chingachgook, and Wah-ha-wah. These are real characters, only not historical, because all history has been lost. Will Mexico furnish him with no hu man interest? Here were incidents unparalleled for poetical suggestiveness. Here were races possessing the elements of greatness, with distinctiveness of character enough to court the artist's hand. Does a Mexican nomenclature defy the conventionalities of rythm? Let him turn to Peru. The sorrow of Atahualpa might well draw forth the powers of the poet; or, if a real and massive foundation be necessary for the imaginative superstructure, let him follow in the track of Stephens, and penetrate into the thickets of Uxmal or Palenque, where the growth of oblivion has kept pace with that of vegetation, and strangled tradition, as that has grasped and wrenched the very pillars of the palaces of the past out of their sockets. Here is a middle ground, untrammelled by objections, and open to the peopling of the brain, where there will only be need to reintroduce at those lofty portals personages worthy of the ruins they must have constructed. Why, so rife has been the idea of a populous past in those mysterious parts, that a city has been imagined, discovered, entered, mapped down, and described in our own day - its very inhabitants produced before our eyes, and made to speak the tongue which baffles us upon the monoliths and entablatures of Copan! If imposture can do so much, what might not imagination achieve? We For our own part, we take upon ourselves to assign Longfellow his future function amid these scenes. forbid him, with friendly severity, all access to the Old World. We close up the Atlantic against him. Having high regard for his real fame, implicit faith in his powers, and a warm, brotherly interest in the progress and destiny of his country's literature, we would say to him-Abide where you are-build a wigwam where you have pitched a tent-settle yourself down where you have hunted-and make acquaintance with the men, as well as the myths, of primeval America. |