NEW EDITION OF THE POETS. Edited by JOSEPH SKIPSEY, Author of "Lyric Poems." In Shilling Monthly Volumes, Square 8vo, well printed on Toned Paper, with Red-Line Border on each Page, Strongly bound in Cloth, with Artistic Design on Cover. Each Volume will contain 288 pages, including an original Introductory Notice, biographical and critical, by various Contributors. The first volume will be COLERIDGE, followed by SHELLEY, LONGFELLOW, BLAKE, POE, CAMPBELL, WORDSWORTH, CHATTERTON, MARLOWE (a selection), BALLADS, MILTON (2 vols.), WHITTIER, KEBLE, BURNS (2 vols.), etc. Arrangements have been made to publish a new edition of the British and American Poets, in which the desirabilities of clear and readable type, excellence in quality of paper, handiness in size, and elegancy in general get up, will be combined in a way so as to render them ornaments to the bookcase, or suitable as a series of pocket volumes, while the price at which they will be published will place them within the reach of every reader, however humble in circumstance. In the present issue quantity will be an important feature. Quality will, first of all, be considered, and side by side with a popular poet, such as Burns or Longfellow, will at intervals appear a Chatterton or a Blake, and one or two others whose works have never yet hitherto appeared in a cheap series, and scarcely in any series whatever, and the splendour of whose genius is only known to a select few. the eldest daughter of General Peleg Wadsworth. Henry was the second son, the eldest being named Stephen, after his father. The house in which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born was situated within a stone's throw of the spot where the first settler built his cabin in 1632. Portland was not then, as it is now, a flourishing sea-port city, beautifully situated on the broad Casco Bay, with its quiet waters and numerous beautiful islands." It was, as described by an American writer, "a lively scene, sleds growling, surveyors running about like madmen, a shingle in one hand and a rule-staff in the other, cattle white with frost, teamsters screaming, taverns lighted up, and the loggerhead hot to give customers their morning dram." Longfellow described it all in his poem, "My Lost Youth" "I remember the black wharves and the slips, And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still: A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts." Longfellow was first sent to a school kept by "Marm Fellows" in a small brick school-house; afterwards he went to "the town school," and then to a private school kept by Nathaniel Carter, who subsequently removed to Portland Academy. At the age of fourteen he entered Bowdoin College, an attractive youth with slight erect figure, auburn locks, delicate complexion, an intelligent expression of countenance, and well-bred manners and bearing. He wrote his first poems while at college, and some of them were published in the United States Literary Gazette. He generally received a dollar for his poems, though for one of them the payment was a year's subscription to the paper in which it appeared. He graduated second in a class of thirty-seven in the college, and in 1826 he left to begin the study of law in his father's office in Portland. But he did not care for the law and before many months had passed away a more congenial position was assigned him. Mrs. Bowdoin had some years previously given a thousand dollars to found a professorship of modern languages and literature in connection with the college; and Longfellow was asked to fill the chair. He was at this time very young for a professor, but he at once determined to thoroughly qualify himself; and he spent the next three years in Europe. In 1829 he entered upon his duties at Bowdoin College with great zeal and ability. The first thing he did was |