So what's the real deal on Longfellow and Emerson? Were they friends or not? They were both members of the literary group, The Saturday Club, of course, and although Emerson was not a member of the Dante Club that met at Longfellow's home in Cambridge, Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club, characterizes Emerson as a friend of the group in his book.

According to author/professor Charles C. Calhoun, Emerson and Longfellow were good friends, but not close.

In letters to each other, and in public, according to Edward Waldo Emerson, in The Early Years of the Saturday Club, they praised and supported each other's efforts. In fact, at the Saturday Club they often chose to sit at the same end of the table.

But as to what they thought about each other in private, that's another story, according to Calhoun, who wrote Longfellow, A Rediscovered Life.

In fact, said Calhoun, "Longfellow and his wife attended several of Emerson's lectures in Boston, admiring his rhetorical skills but often finding themselves puzzled afterwards as to what he had actually said!"

"Longfellow, though immensely learned," said Calhoun, "did not have a philosophical turn of mind and probably found much of Emerson's thought rather fuzzy and unfocussed.

"Emerson, on the other hand," said Calhoun, "thought Longfellow too conventional and too fond of playing the social role of Brattle Street man of letters. But their day-to-day relationship was cordial. Longfellow's younger brother Samuel, a Unitarian minister and hymn writer, did become a Transcendentalist and knew Emerson's circle well."

However, in death as in life, their public respect for each other remained. They both died in the same year, 1882, within a month of each other. Although weak and failing, Emerson summoned the energy to attend Longfellow's funeral. He said to his daughter, Ellen, "I cannot recall the name of our friend, but he was a good man."

As Emerson lay ailing later, his son Edward read Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," to his father who, in those weeks, liked to have his adult children read to him.

And at the private service for Emerson after his death, before the larger one for the public, a friend read Longfellow's words, "There is no death! What seems so is transition/ This life of mortal breath/ Is but a suburb of the life elysian, / Whose portal we call Death."