phen Hopkins, Richard Warren, and Gilbert Winslow were all among the Mayflower passengers, and were alive at this time.] Page 183. After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland. [ May 12 was the first marriage in this place, which, according to the laudable custome of the Low-Cuntries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the scripturs, Ruth 4, and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers as a part of their office." Bradford: History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 101.] Page 186. That of our vices we can frame A ladder. The words of St. Augustine are, "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus. -Sermon III. De Ascensione. Page 187. In Mather's Magnalia Christi. [The passage in Mather upon which the poem is based is found in Book I. chapter vi., and is in the form of a letter to Mather from the Rev. James Pierpont, Pastor of New Haven.] Page 190. And the Emperor but a Macho. Macho, in Spanish, signifies a mule. Golondrina is the feminine form for Golondrino, a swallow, and also a cant name for a deserter. Page 192. OLIVER BASSELIN. Oliver Basselin, the "Père joyeux du Vaudeville," flourished in the fifteenth century, and gave to his convivial songs the name of his native valleys, in which he sang them, Vaux-de-Vire. This name was afterwards corrupted into the modern Vaudeville. Page 193. VICTOR GALBRAITH. Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a company of volunteer cavalry; and was shot in Mexico for some breach of discipline. It is a common superstition among soldiers, that no balls will kill them unless their names are written on them. The old proverb says: Every bullet has its billet." 66 Page 194. I remember the sea-fight far away. This was the engagement between the Enterprise and Boxer off the harbor of Portland, in which both captains were slain. They were buried side by side in the cemetery on Mountjoy. [The fight took place in 1813. The Enterprise was an American brig, the Boxer an English one. The fight, which could be seen from the shore, lasted for three quarters of an hour, when the Enterprise came into the harbor, bringing her captive with her.] Page 197. The palm, the lily, and the spear. At Pisa the church of San Francisco contains a chapel dedicated lately to Santa Filomena; over the altar is a picture, by Sabatelli, representing the Saint as a beautiful, nymphlike figure, floating down from heaven, attended by two angels bearing the lily, palm, and javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and maimed, who are healed by her interces sion."- Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 298. Page 200. Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer. ["Rabbi Eliezer hath said: "There is an Angel who standeth on earth and reacheth with his head to the door of Heaven. It is taught in the Mishna that he is called Sandalphon."" "There are three [angels] who weave or make garlands out of the prayers of the Israelites . . the third is Sandalphon.' "There be Angels which are of Wind and there be Angels which are of Fire." "The holy and blessed God creates every day a multitude of angels in heaven, who, after they have sung a hymn before Him, do perish. .. Except Michael and Gabriel ... and Sandalphon and their equals, who remain in their glory wherewith they were invested in the six days' creation." "The prophet Elias is the Angel Sandalphon, who twisteth or bindeth garlands out of the prayers, for his Lord." The above passages from J. P. Stehelin's The Traditions of the Jews were marked by Mr. Longfellow, and evidently furnished the mate rial upon which he based his poem.] Page 205. Writ near a century ago By the great Major Molineaux Whom Hawthorne has immortal made. [The lines are as follows: 1774. What do you think? Here is good drink, Perhaps you may not know it; If not in haste, Do stop and taste! You merry folk will show it. On another pane appears the Major's name, Wm. Molineux Jr. Esq., and the date, June 24, The allusion is to Hawthorne's tale, My Kinsman, Major Molineux. Hawthorne, writing to Mr. Longfellow after the publication of the Tales, says, "It gratifies my mind to find my own name shining in your verse, - even as if I had been gazing up at the moon and detected my own features in its profile."] Page 207. The midnight ride of Paul Re vere. [It is possible that Mr. Longfellow derived the story from Paul Revere's account of the incident in a letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, printed in Mass. Hist. Coll. V. Mr. Frothingham, in his Siege of Boston, pp. 57-59, gives the story mainly according to a memorandum of Richard Devens, Revere's friend and associate. The publication of Mr. Longfellow's poem called out a protracted discussion both as to the church from which the signals were hung, and as to the friend who hung the lanterns. The subject is discussed and authori ties cited in Memorial History of Boston, III. 101.] Page 209. THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO. [The story is found in the Decameron, Fifth day, ninth tale. As Boccaccio, however, was not the first to tell it, so Mr. Longfellow is not APPENDIX the only one after him to repeat it. So remote a source as Pantschatantra (Benfey, II. 247) contains it, and La Fontaine includes it in his Contes et Nouvelles under the title of Le Faucon. Tennyson has treated the subject dramatically in The Falcon. See also Delisle de la Drévetière, who turned Boccaccio's story into a comedy in three acts.] Page 214. THE LEGEND OF RABBI BEN LEVI. [Varnhagen refers to three several sources of this legend in the books Col Bo, Ben Sira, and Ketuboth, but it is most likely that Mr. Longfellow was indebted for the story to his friend Emmanuel Vitalis Scherb.] Page 215. KING ROBERT OF SICILY. [This story is one of very wide distribution. It is given in Gesta Romanorum as the story of Jovinian. Frere in his Old Deccan Days, or Hindoo Fairy Legends current in Southern India, recites it in the form of The Wanderings of Vicram Maharajah. Varnhagen pursues the legend through a great variety of forms. Leigh Hunt, among moderns, has told the story in A Jar of Honey from Mt. Hybla, from which source Mr. Longfellow seems to have drawn. Dante refers to the King in Paradiso, Canto VIII.] Page 240. THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. [Killingworth in Connecticut was named from the English town Kenilworth in Warwickshire, and had the same orthography in the early records, but was afterwards corrupted into its present form. Sixty or seventy years ago, according to Mr. Henry Hull, writing from personal recollection, "the men of the northern part of the town did yearly in the spring choose two leaders, and then the two sides were formed the side that got beaten should pay the bills. Their special game was the hawk, the owl, the crow, the blackbird, and any other hird supposed to be mischievous to the corn. Some years each side would bring them in by the bushel. This was followed up for only a few years, for the birds began to grow scarce." The story, based upon such a slight suggestion, was Mr. Longfellow's own invention.] Page 245. THE BELL OF ATRI. [See Gualteruzzi's Cento Novelle Antiche.] [See Boni's edition of Il Milione di Marco Polo, II. 35 and I. 14.] Page 255. LADY WENTWORTH. [The incidents of this tale are recounted by C. W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth, I. 101. After the publication of Mr. Longfellow's poem, Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote to one of Mr. Longfellow's kinsmen a version of the story sent him by Mrs. Mary Anne Williams, who had the story from her grandmother, née Mary Wentworth, who was niece to Governor Wentworth, and a child at the time of the incident. "I have seen Mr. Longfellow's "but I should poem," writes Mrs. Williams, think he would be afraid some of the old fellows would appear to him for making it appear that any others than the family were pres 669 ent to witness what they considered a great degradation. Only the brothers and brothers in law were present, and Mr. Brown; and the bride, who had been his housekeeper for seven years, was then 35, and attired in a calico dress and a white apron. The family stood in wholesome awe of the sturdy old governor, so treated Patty with civility, but it was hard work for the stately old dames, and she was dropped Governor Wentworth was after his death." born July 24, 1696, and his marriage was on March 15, 1760.] Page 265. CHARLEMAGNE. [In his diary, under date of May 12, 1872, Mr. [As intimated in the Interlude which follows, the tale of Elizabeth was founded on a prose tale by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, entitled The Youthful Emigrant, which fell under Mr. Longfellow's eye in a Portland paper. Besides this he had recourse to A Call to the Unfaithful Professors of Truth, by John Estaugh, with Preface by his widow. E. E.'s Testimony concerning her husband J. E. Several expressions in the poem are derived from this little book.] Page 282. THE MOTHER'S GHOST. [A Danish ballad to be found in Grundtvig's Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, II. 478, was the basis of this poem.] Page 310. "O Casar, we who are about to die Salute you!" [This use of the phrase Morituri Salutamus agrees with the treatment of Gérôme in his painting, beneath which he wrote the words, Ave Caesar, Imperator, Morituri te Salutant. The reference to a gladiatorial combat, however, is doubted by some scholars, who quote Suetonius and Dion Cassius as using the phrase in connection with the great sea-fight exhibition given by the Emperor on Lacus Fucinus. The combatants were condemned criminals, and they were to fight until one of the parties was killed, unless saved by the interposition of the Emperor.] Page 311. All save one. [Professor Alpheus Spring Packard, since deceased.] Page 314. In Attica thy birthplace should have been. [Cornelius Conway Felton, at one time Professor of Greek, and afterward President, at Harvard College.] Page 314. Piteously calling and lamenting thee. [Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, the eminent naturalist, whose summer home at Nahant was near Mr. Longfellow's, while they were also fellow-townsmen in Cambridge.] Page 315. A friend who bore thy name. [Charles Sumner, one of Mr. Longfellow's closest friends.] 64 Page 318. Here lies the gentle humorist. [Washington Irving. It is interesting to note the influence which this writer had upon Mr. Longfellow, as shown not only in his early prose, but in his direct testimony. In presenting the resolutions upon the death of Irving at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, December 5, 1859, Mr. Longfellow said: Every reader has his first book; I mean to say, one book among all others which in early youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me, this first book was the SketchBook of Washington Irving. I was a schoolboy when it was published, and read each succeeding number with ever increasing wonder and delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of revery, nay, even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of its titles, and the fair clear type, which seemed an outward symbol of its style. How many delightful books the same author has given us, written before and since, volumes of history and of fiction; most of which illustrate his native land, and some of which illuminate it and make the Hudson, I will not say as classic, but as romantic as the Rhine! Yet still the charm of the SketchBook remains unbroken; the old fascination remains about it; and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth." Page 319. PARKER CLEAVELAND. [A distinguished naturalist who was senior professor at Bowdoin College, where Mr. Longfellow was first a student and afterward an instructor. The father of the poet was an intimate friend of Professor Cleaveland, and when the son went to Brunswick he found in the older man one of his most cherished associates. When he went back to give his poem, Morituri Salutamus, he made his stay at the Cleaveland mansion, with the daughter of the deceased professor.] Page 323. Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine. and with his entire force put to death by th Page 342. Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb. Το THE AUTHOR THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH, This chair, made from the wood of the spreading chestnut-tree, is presented as An expression of grateful regard and veneration by Who with their friends join in best wishes on This Anniversary. February 27, 1879. In 1880, when the city of Cambridge celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth_anniversary of the founding of the town, December 28th, there was a children's festival at Sanders Theatre in the morning, and the chair stood on the platform in full view of the thousand children assembled. Mr. George Riddle read the poem ; then, to the surprise of all, the poet himself came forward and made this little speech: "My dear young Friends,—I do not rise to make an address to you, but to excuse myself from making one. I know the proverb says that he who excuses himself accuses himself, and I am willing on this occasion to accuse myself, for I feel very much as I suppose some of you do when you are suddenly called upon in your class-room, and are obliged to say that you are not prepared. I am glad to see your faces and to hear your voices. I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking you in prose, as I have already done in verse, for the beautiful present you made me some two years ago. Perhaps some of you have forgotten it, but I have not; and I am afraid - yes, I am afraid that fifty years hence, when you celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of this occasion, this day and all that belongs to it will have passed from your memory for an English philosopher has said that the ideas as well as children of our youth often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are ap "When any came to take the government of the Hundred or Wapentake in a day and place appointed, as they were accustomed to meete, all the better sort met him with lances, and he alighting from his horse, all rise up to him, and he setting or holding his lance upright, all the rest come with their lances, according to the auncient custome in confirming league and pub-proaching, where though the brass and marble like peace and obedience, and touch his lance or weapon, and thereof called Wapentake, for the Saxon or old English wapun is weapon, and tac, tactus, a touching, thereby this meeting called Wapentake, or touching of weapon, because that by that signe and ceremonie of touching weapon or the lance, they were sworne and confederate." Master Lamberd in Minshew. Page 336. Of the White Chief with yellow hair. [General George A. Custer, who was surprised remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away."] Page 355. So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with ca dence sonorous, Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentame ter flows. [Schiller's lines will be recalled: In Hexameter steigt des Springquells flüssige Säule; In Hexameter sings serenely a Harvard Professor; Page 408. THE GOLDEN Legend. The old Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend, was originally written in Latin, in the thirteenth century, by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar, who afterwards became Archbishop of Genoa, and died in 1292. He called his book simply Legends of the Saints. The epithet of Golden was given it by his admirers; for, as Wynkin de Worde says, "Like as passeth gold in value all other metals, so this Legend exceedeth all other books." But Edward Leigh, in much distress of mind, calls it "a book written by a man of a leaden heart for the basenesse of the errours, that are without wit or reason, and of a brazen forehead, for his impudent boldnesse in reporting things so fabulous and incredible." This work, the great text-book of the legendary lore of the Middle Ages, was translated into French in the fourteenth century by Jean de Vignay, and in the fifteenth into English by William Caxton. It has lately been made more accessible by a new French translation: La Legende Dorée, traduite du Latin, par M. G. B. Paris, 1850. There is a copy of the original, with the Gesta Longobardorum appended, in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, printed at Strasburg, 1496. The title-page is wanting; and the volume begins with the Tabula Legendorum. I have called this poem the Golden Legend, because the story upon which it is founded seems to me to surpass all other legends in beauty and significance. It exhibits, amid the corruptions of the Middle Ages, the virtue of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, and the power of Faith, Hope, and Charity, sufficient for all the exigencies of life and death. The story is told, and perhaps invented, by Hartmann von der Aue, a Minnesinger of the twelfth century. The original may be found in Mailáth's Altdeutsche Gedichte, with a modern German version. There is another in Marbach's Volksbücher, No. 32. [Mr. S. Arthur Bent has annotated The Golden Legend with fulness and care, and the reader is referred to his volume for more extended notes than are here expedient.] Page 409. For these bells have been anointed, And baptized with holy water! The consecration and baptism of bells is one of the most curious ceremonies of the Church in the Middle Ages. The Council of Cologne ordained as follows: 'Let the bells be blessed, as the trumpets of the Church militant, by which the people are assembled to hear the word of God; the clergy to announce his mercy by day, and his truth in their nocturnal vigils: that by their sound the faithful may be invited to prayers, and that the spirit of devotion in them may be increased. The fathers have also maintained that demons, affrighted by the sound of bells calling Christians to prayers, would flee away; and when they fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure that the destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be averted, and the spirits of the storm defeated." Edinburgh Encyclopædia, Art. "Bells." See also Scheible's Kloster, vi. 776. Page 418. EVENING SONG. [Mr. Bent, in his annotated edition of The Golden Legend, remarks that this is modelled upon the choral songs which the Reformed Church of Germany adopted from existing popular chorals, which had long been in use in the social and public observances of the German people.] Page 420. Who would think her but fifteen? [In Der Arme Heinrich, Elsie is but eight years of age.] Page 421. It is the malediction of Eve! "Nec esses plus quam femina, quæ nunc etiam viros transcendis, et quæ maledictionem Evæ in benedictionem vertisti Mariæ."- Epistola Abalardi Heloissa. Page 429. To come back to my text! In giving this sermon of Friar Cuthbert as a specimen of the Risus Paschales, or streetpreaching of the monks at Easter, I have exaggerated nothing. This very anecdote, offensive as it is, comes from a discourse of Father Barletta, a Dominican friar of the fifteenth century, whose fame as a popular preacher was so great that it gave rise to the proverb,Nescit predicare Qui nescit Barlettare. "Among the abuses introduced in this century," says Tiraboschi, I was that of exciting from the pulpit the laughter of the hearers; as if that were the same thing as converting them. We have examples of this, not only in Italy, but also in France, where the sermons of Menot and Maillard, and of others, who would make a better appearance on the stage than in the pulpit, are still celebrated for such follies." If the reader is curious to see how far the freedom of speech was carried in these popular sermons, he is referred to Scheible's Kloster, vol. I., where he will find extracts from Abraham a Sancta Clara, Sebastian Frank, and others; and in particular an anonymous discourse called Der Gräuel der Verwüstung, The Abomination of Desolation, preached at Ottakring, a village west of Vienna, November 25, 1782, in which the license of language is carried to its utmost limit. See also Prédicatoriana, on Révélations singulières et amusantes sur les Prédicateurs; par G. P. Philomneste. (Menin.) This work contains extracts from the popular sermons of St. Vincent Ferrier, Barletta, Menot, Maillard, Marini, Raulin, Valladier, De Besse, Camus, Père André, Bening, and the most eloquent of all, Jacques Brydaine. My authority for the spiritual interpretation of bell-ringing, which follows, is Durandus, Ration. Divin. Offic., Lib. I., cap. 4. Page 431. THE NATIVITY: a Miracle-Play. A singular chapter in the history of the Middle Ages is that which gives account of the early Christian Drama, the Mysteries, Moralities, and Miracle-Plays, which were at first performed in churches, and afterwards in the streets, on fixed or movable stages. For the most part, the Mysteries were founded on the historic portions of the Old and New Testaments, and the Miracle-Plays on the lives of Saints; a distinction not always observed, however, for in Mr. Wright's Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, the Resurrection of Lazarus is called a Miracle, and not a Mystery. The Moralities were plays in which the Virtues and Vices were personified. The earliest religious play which has been preserved is the Christos Paschon of Gregory Nazianzen, written in Greek, in the fourth century. Next to this come the remarkable Latin plays of Roswitha, the Nun of Gandersheim, in the tenth century, which, though crude and wanting in artistic construction, are marked by a good deal of dramatic power and interest. A handsome edition of these plays, with a French translation, has been lately published, entitled Théâtre de Rotsvitha, Religieuse allemande du Xe Siècle. Par Charles Magnin. Paris, 1845. The most important collections of English Mysteries and Miracle-Plays are those known as the Townley, the Chester, and the Coventry Plays. The first of these collections has been published by the Surtees Society, and the other two by the Shakespeare Society. In his Introduction to the Coventry Mysteries, the editor, Mr. Halliwell, quotes the following passage from Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire:"Before the suppression of the monasteries, this city was very famous for the pageants, that were played therein, upon Corpus-Christi day; which, occasioning very great confluence of people thither, from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house had theaters for the severall scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city, for the better advantage of spectators: and contain'd the story of the New Testament, composed into old English Rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS. intituled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludus Conventriæ. I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eyewitnesses of these pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this city." The representation of religious plays has not yet been wholly discontinued by the Roman Church. At Ober-Ammergau, in the Tyrol, a grand spectacle of this kind is exhibited once in ten years. A very graphic description of that which took place in the year 1850 is given by Miss Anna Mary Howitt, in her Art-Student in Munich, vol. I., chap. 4. Mr. Bayard Taylor, in his Eldorado, gives a description of a Mystery he saw performed at San Lionel, in Mexico. See vol. II., chap. 11. In 1852 there was a representation of this kind by Germans in Boston: and 1 have now before me the copy of a play-bill, announcing the performance, on June 10, 1852, in Cincinnati, of the Great Biblico-Historical Drama, the Life of Jesus Christ, with the characters and the names of the performers. Page 432. Here the Angel Gabriel shall leave Paradise. [A stage of three stories was often erected, the topmost representing Paradise (hence in Germany this word is used for the upper gallery of a theatre, anglicé, "the Gods"); on the middle stage was the Earth; below were the "Jaws of Hell," sometimes represented by the opening and shutting of the mouth of an enormous dragon. Goethe introduces the Jaws of Hell to the stage machinery of Faust (V. 6). S. A. Bent.] Page 439. The Scriptorium. A most interesting volume might be written on the Calligraphers and Chrysographers, the transcribers and illuminators of manuscripts in the Middle Ages. These men were for the most part monks, who labored, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for penance, in multiplying copies of the classics and the Scriptures. Of all bodily labors which are proper for us, says Cassiodorus, the old Calabrian monk, that of copying books has always been more to my taste than any other. The more so, as in this exercise the mind is instructed by the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and it is a kind of homily to the others, whom these books may reach. It is preaching with the hand, by converting the fingers into tongues; it is publishing to men in silence the words of salvation; in fine, it is fighting against the demon with pen and ink. As many words as a transcriber writes, so many wounds the demon receives. In a word, a recluse, seated in his chair to copy books, travels into different provinces without |