In one of the most memorable episodes of modernist condescension to a Victorian predecessor, Ludwig Lewisohn spat, ‘Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow?’ Lewisohn himself may have faded from view, but his impression of Longfellow as a ‘schoolroom poet’, fit solely for the gentle moral instruction of the young rather than the edification of those who know better, remains ours today. Longfellow's didacticism is now accepted fact, and most critics see it as an obstacle to the serious academic study of his poetry. Edward Wagenknecht has observed, ‘Neither Longfellow's “sentimentalism” nor his didacticism is a very profitable subject for discussion now, for the modern rebellion against both these tendencies in literature is too recent to permit us to approach the subject dispassionately.’ By trying to protect Longfellow from the charges of thinking like a teacher, Wagenknecht actually hides from view one of the most significant forces that shaped Longfellow's writing from his earliest essays in the 1830s to his late masterwork, his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy: a desire to provide a cosmopolitan education for his readers.