The Longfellow party will soon depart for Naples, and I went to the Costanzi to make my final call. Mr. Henry W. Longfellow was alone in his parlor cutting the leaves of a large book. He said that his brother had gone to the Pincion with the ladies, but would probably return soon. Everything this man says and does has the same grace and elevated tone as his poetry. I took a chair and pretty soon he said to me, "How do you like your books, Mr. S----? For my part, I prefer to cut the leaves of a book, for then I feel as if I had earned the right to read it." I replied that I liked books with rough edges if they were printed on good paper; and then he said, "See this remarkable picture."
I drew my chair closer to him, and he showed me a large colored chart of Hell and Purgatory, according to the theory that prevailed in Dante's time. Satan with his three faces was represented in the centre, and on the other side rose the Mount of Purgatory.
"It is an Italian commentary," he said, "on the _Divina Commedia_," which had been sent to him that day; and he added that some of the information in it was of a very curious sort.
I asked him if he could read Italian as easily as English. "Very nearly," he replied; "but the fine points of Italian are as difficult as those of German."
He inquired how I and my friends spent our evenings in Rome, and I said, "In all kinds of study and reading, but just now P---- was at work on Browning's 'Ring and the Book.'"
Mr. Longfellow laughed. "I do not wonder you call it work," he said. "It seems to me a story told in so many different ways may be something of a curiosity--not much of a poem." [Footnote: I have since observed that poets as a class are not fair critics of poetry; for they are sure to prefer poetry which is like their own. This is true at least of Lowell, Emerson, or Matthew Arnold; but when I came to read "The Ring and the Book" I found that Longfellow's objection was a valid one.]
I remarked that Rev. Mr. Longfellow had a decided partiality for Browning. "Yes," he said; "Sam likes him, and my friend John Weiss prefers him to Tennyson. My objection is to his diction. I have always found the English language sufficient for my purpose, and have never tried to improve on it. Browning's 'Saul' and 'The Ride from Ghent to Aix' are noble poems."