Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1898 — Longfellow at Cambridge. [ARTICLE]

Longfellow at Cambridge.

In 1836, when Lowell was a sophomore, Mr. Longfellow came to Cambridge, a young man, to begin his long and valuable life in the college His presence there proved a benediction, and, I might say, marks an epoch in the history of Harvard. In the first place, he was fresh from Europe, and he gave the best possible stimulus to the budding Interest in German literature. In the second place, he came from Bowdoln College, and in those days it was a very good thing for a Harvard under-graduate to know that there were people not bred in Cambridge quite as well read, as intelligent, as elegant and accomplished as any Harvard graduate. In the third place, Longfellow, though he was so young, ranked already distinctly as a man of letters. This was no broken-winded minister who had been made professor. He was not a lawyer without clients, or a doctor without patients, for whom “a place” had to be found. He was already known as a poet by all educated people—Edward Everett Hale in the Outlook.