Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

He met his lifelong friend Hawthorne as a student; Emerson and Holmes later joined them in a circle of friends in Cambridge (Emerson called him “a sweet and beautiful soul”). As a young man he was acquainted with da Ponte. Irving encouraged him; he encouraged Wharton’s childhood writing. Whitman knew and liked him, while thinking his poetry innocuous. He wrote a poem in honour of his friend Agassiz’s 50th birthday. Dickens was a good friend, Ruskin was very taken by his young daughter, and in old age he visited Tennyson (who took him to be photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron).