Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852

Now keep her head towards the south,
And there is no danger of bank or breaker.
With the breeze behind us, on we go;
Not too much, good Saint Antonio!"

The verse sounds like an echo of the shrill piping of the Mediterranean wind.

The voyagers arrive at Salerno; and we are immediately introduced to the schools, sonorous with academical wrangling. Mr Longfellow displays much humour in this part of his poem, having, we think, hit off excellently the extreme acerbity exhibited by the scholastic disputants on the most worthless of imaginable subjects. He has given us a vivid picture of the war which was so long maintained between the sect of the Nominalists and that of the Realists; and not less of the fury which possessed the souls of ancient hostile grammarians. "The heat and acrimony of verbal critics," says Disraeli the elder, "have exceeded description. Their stigmas and anathemas have been long known to bear no proportion against the offences to which they have been directed. 'God confound you,' cried one grammarian to another, 'for your theory of impersonal verbs!'" In the Golden Legend we have first a travelling Scholastic affixing, as was the usual custom, his Theses to the gate of the college, and offering to maintain his one hundred and twenty-five propositions against all the world. Then appear two Doctors disputing, followed by their pupils.

DOCTOR SERAFINO

"I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.

DOCTOR CHERUBINO

What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic,
With all his wordy chaffer and traffic?

DOCTOR SERAFINO

You make but a paltry show of resistance;
Universals have no real existence!

DOCTOR CHERUBINO

Your words are but idle and empty chatter;
Ideas are eternally joined to matter!

DOCTOR SERAFINO

May the Lord have mercy on your position,
You wretched, wrangling, culler of herbs!

DOCTOR CHERUBINO

May he send your soul to eternal perdition,
For your Treatise on the Irregular Verbs!"

(They rush out fighting.)

The sort of intellectual diet supplied to the students of Salerno is next explained by a hopeful votary of Sangrado. It seems very tempting.

SECOND SCHOLAR

"What are the books now most in vogue?

FIRST SCHOLAR

Quite an extensive catalogue;
Mostly, however, books of our own;
As Gariopontus' Passionarius,
And the writings of Matthew Platearius;
And a volume universally known
As the Regimen of the School of Salern,
For Robert of Normandy written in terse
And very elegant Latin verse.
Each of these writings has its turn.
And when at length we have finished these,
Then comes the struggle for degrees,
With all the oldest and ablest critics;
The public thesis and disputation,
Question, and answer, and explanation
Of a passage out of Hippocrates,
Or Aristotle's Analytics.
There the triumphant Magister stands!
A book is solemnly placed in his hands,
On which he swears to follow the rule
And ancient forms of the good old School;
To report if any confectionarius
Mingles his drugs with matters various,
And to visit his patients twice a-day,
And once in the night, if they live in town;
And if they are poor, to take no pay.
Having faithfully promised these,
His head is crowned with a laurel crown;
A kiss on his cheek, a ring on his hand,
The Magister Artium et Physices
Goes forth from the school like a lord of the land.
And now, as we have the whole morning before us,
Let us go in, if you make no objection,
And listen awhile to a learned prelection
On Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus."

Lucifer now comes upon the stage in the garb of the Doctor who is to decide regarding Elsie's fate. The main plot of the story, as we have already stated, is at once so obscure and unnatural that it will not stand examination. It is, therefore, rather from conjecture than assertion that we presume the author intended to represent the power of the Evil Spirit over the Prince, as depending upon his acceptance or rejection of the innocent self-offered sacrifice. Be that as it may, the Prince and Elsie appear; and, in spite of the remonstrances of the former, the girl persists in her resolution. Let us quote one more passage in Mr Longfellow's best and most pathetic manner.

ELSIE

"O my Prince! remember
Your promises. Let me fulfil my errand.
You do not look on life and death as I do.
There are two angels that attend unseen
Each one of us, and in great books record
Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down
The good ones, after every action closes
His volume, and ascends with it to God.
The other keeps his dreadful day-book open
Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing,