 He was also important as a translator ; his translation of Dante became a required possession for those who wanted to be a part of high culture . He also encouraged and supported other translators . In 1845 , he published The Poets and Poetry of Europe , an 800 @-@ page compilation of translations made by other writers , including many by his friend and colleague Cornelius Conway Felton . Longfellow intended the anthology " to bring together , into a compact and convenient form , as large an amount as possible of those English translations which are scattered through many volumes , and are not accessible to the general reader " . In honor of Longfellow 's role with translations , Harvard established the Longfellow Institute in 1994 , dedicated to literature written in the United States in languages other than English . 
