The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the old
notary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glow
with life. The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, is
a heroine worthy of any poet of the present century.
The editor of the Boston Chronotype, in the course of an appreciative
review of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which we
are induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to the
minds of other readers:--
"We think Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeper
indignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the English
and Colonial persecutors than he has done. He should have put far bolder
and deeper tints in the picture of suffering. One great, if not the
greatest, end of poetry is rhadamanthine justice. The poet should mete
out their deserts to all his heroes; honor to whom honor, and infamy to
whom infamy, is due.
"It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered
upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that
pollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather musty
proverb.
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