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xviii
INTRODUCTION
especially in Germany, that the poem owed its origin to
Hermann und Dorothea,—somewhat in story, but
especially in metre. This, it seems, has been the common
opinion ever since. The part of the theory concerning the story
is untenable, because only in those episodes which we
know Longfellow got from Hawthorne’s friend is there
any similarity to Hermann und Dorothea. The same
general likeness exists between Evangeline and Frithiofs Saga;
yet there would be no foundation for saying that
Longfellow derived his plot from the latter. As to the source
of the metre, it is impossible to be dogmatic, for
Longfellow knew well the hexameters of Homer, Virgil,
Chapman, Goethe, and others. But when one reflects that of
the three poems in hexameters which Longfellow wrote
before he began Evangeline, the first was an extract from
Frithiof and the second a translation of the
Nattvards-barnen, one cannot help concluding that Tegner above
all others influenced Longfellow in the metre of
Evangeline.*
Tegner died while Evangeline was being written.
Longfellow paused in his work to compose a death-song or
drapa in honor of the older poet. One of the stanzas in
it is here specially worthy of note:
•After the above pages had been written, I came across the following
remarks in Edmund Gosse’s essay on Runeberg (Northern Studies, Camelot
Series,London, 1890, p. 143}: "Between Tegner and Runeberg the natural link
is wanting. This link properly consists, it appears to me, in Longfellow, who is
an anomaly in American literature, but who has the full character of a Swedish
poet, and who, had he been born in Sweden, would have completed exactly
enough the chain of style that ought to unite the idealism of Tegner to the
realism of Runeberg. The poem of Evangeline has really no place in
Anglo-Saxon poetry; in Swedish it would accurately express a stage in the progress
of literature which is now unfilled." This is only a general impression, but it
is that of an English critic who knew Swedish literature thoroughly.
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