The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (page 8)

the starry deeps, the empyrean glooms, and far-flashing splendors await.

* * * * *

_From the Onion Grove Phoenix._

A talented young townsman of ours, recently returned from a Continental tour, and who is already favorably known to our readers by his sprightly letters from abroad which have graced our columns, called at our office yesterday. We learn from him, that, having enjoyed the distinguished privilege, while in Germany, of an introduction to the celebrated Von Humbug, he took the opportunity to present that eminent man with a copy of the ‘Biglow Papers.’ The next morning he received the following note, which he has kindly furnished us for publication. We prefer to print it _verbatim_, knowing that our readers will readily forgive the few errors into which the lllustrious writer has fallen, through ignorance of our language.

‘HIGH-WORTHY MISTER!

‘I shall also now especially happy starve, because I have more or less a work of one those aboriginal Red-Men seen in which have I so deaf an interest ever taken full-worthy on the self shelf with our Gottsched to be upset.

‘Pardon my in the English-speech un-practice!

‘Von Humbug.’

He also sent with the above note a copy of his famous work on ‘Cosmetics,’ to be presented to Mr. Biglow; but this was taken from our friend by the English custom-house officers, probably through a petty national spite. No doubt, it has by this time found its way into the British Museum. We trust this outrage will be exposed in all our American papers. We shall do our best to bring it to the notice of the State Department. Our numerous readers will share in the pleasure we experience at seeing our young and vigorous national literature thus encouragingly patted on the head by this venerable and world-renowned German. We love to see these reciprocations of good-feeling between the different branches of the great Anglo-Saxon race.

[The following genuine ‘notice’ having met my eye, I gladly insert a portion of it here, the more especially as it contains one of Mr. Biglow’s poems not elsewhere printed.–H.W.]

_From the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss._

… But, while we lament to see our young townsman thus mingling in the heated contests of party politics, we think we detect in him the presence of talents which, if properly directed, might give an innocent pleasure to many. As a proof that he is competent to the production of other kinds of poetry, we copy for our readers a short fragment of a pastoral by him, the manuscript of which was loaned us by a friend. The title of it is ‘The Courtin’.’

Zekle crep’ up, quite unbeknown,
An’ peeked in thru the winder,
An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
‘ith no one nigh to hender.

Agin’ the chimbly crooknecks hung,
An’ in amongst ’em rusted
The ole queen’s-arm thet gran’ther Young Fetched back frum Concord busted.

The wannut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An’ leetle fires danced all about
The chlny on the dresser.

The very room, coz she wuz in,
Looked warm frum floor to ceilin’, An’ she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez th’ apples she wuz peelin’.

She heerd a foot an’ knowed it, tu,
Araspin’ on the scraper,–
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.

He kin’ o’ l’itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o’ the seekle;
His heart kep’ goin’ pitypat,
But hern went pity Zekle.

An’ yet she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An’ on her apples kep’ to work
Ez ef a wager spurred her.

‘You want to see my Pa, I spose?’
‘Wall, no; I come designin’–‘
‘To see my Ma? She’s sprinklin’ clo’es Agin to-morrow’s i’nin’.’

He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on tother,
An’ on which one he felt the wust
He couldn’t ha’ told ye, nuther.

Sez he, ‘I’d better call agin;’
Sez she,’Think likely, _Mister;_’
The last word pricked him like a pin, An’–wal, he up and kist her.

When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kind o’smily round the lips
An’ teary round the lashes.

Her blood riz quick, though, like the tide Down to the Bay o’ Fundy,
An’ all I know is they wuz cried
In meetin’, come nex Sunday.

SATIS multis sese emptores futuros libri professis, Georgius Nichols, Cantabrigiensis, opus emittet de parte gravi sed adhuc neglecta historiae naturalis, cum titulo sequente, videlicet:

_Conatus ad Delineationem naturalem nonnihil perfectiorem Scarabaei Bombilatoris, vulgo dicti_ HUMBUG, ab HOMERO WILBUR, Artium Magistro, Societatis historico-naturalis Jaalamensis Praeside (Secretario, Socioque (eheu!) singulo), multarumque aliarum Societatum eruditarum (sive ineruditarum) tam domesticarum quam transmarinarum Socio–forsitan futuro.

PROEMIUM

LECTORI BENEVOLO S.

Toga scholastica nondum deposita, quum systemata varia entomologica, a viris ejus scientiae cultoribus studiosissimis summa diligentia aedificata, penitus indagassem, non fuit quin luctuose omnibus in iis, quamvis aliter laude dignissimis, hiatum magni momenti perciperem. Tunc, nescio quo motu superiore impulsus, aut qua captus dulcedine operis, ad eum implendum (Curtius alter) me solemniter devovi. Nec ab isto labore, [Greek: daimonios] imposito, abstinui antequam tractatulum sufficienter inconcinnum lingua vernacula perfeceram. Inde, juveniliter tumefactus, et barathro ineptiae [Greek: ton bibliopolon] (necnon ‘Publici Legentis’) nusquam explorato, me composuisse quod quasi placentas praefervidas (ut sic dicam) homines ingurgitarent credidi. Sed, quum huic et alio bibliopolae MSS. mea submisissem et nihil solidius responsione valde negativa in Musaeum meum retulissem, horror ingens atque misericordia, ob crassitudinem Lambertianam in cerebris homunculorum istius muneris coelesti quadam ira infixam, me invasere. Extemplo mei solius impensis librum edere decrevi, nihil omnino dubitans quin ‘Mundus Scientificus’ (ut aiunt) crumenam meam ampliter repleret. Nullam, attamen, ex agro illo meo parvulo segetem demessui praeter gaudium vacuum bene de Republica merendi. Iste panis meus pretiosus super aquas literarias faeculentas praefidenter jactus, quasi Harpyiaram quarundam (scilicet bibliopolarum istorum facinorosorum supradictorum) tactu rancidus, intra perpaucos dies mihi domum rediit. Et, quum ipse tali victu ali non tolerarem, primum in mentem venit pistori (typographo nempe) nihilominus solvendum esse. Animum non idcirco demisi, imo aeque ac pueri naviculas suas penes se lino retinent (eo ut e recto cursu delapsas ad ripam retrahant), sic ego Arga meam chartaceam fluctibus laborantem a quaesitu velleris aurei, ipse potius tonsus pelleque exutus, mente solida revocavi. Metaphoram ut mutem, _boomarangam_ meam a scopo aberrantem, retraxi, dum majore vi, occasione ministrante, adversus Fortunam intorquerem. Ast mihi, talia volventi, et, sicut Saturnus ille [Greek: paidoboros], liberos intellectus mei depascere fidenti, casus miserandus, nec antea inauditus, supervenit. Nam, ut ferunt Scythas pietatis causa et parsimoniae, parentes suos mortuos devorasse, sic filius hic meus primogenitus, Scythis ipsis minus mansuetus, patrem vivum totum et calcitrantem exsorbere enixus est. Nec tamen hac de causa sobolem meam esurientem exheredavi. Sed famem istam pro valido testimonio virilitatis roborisque potius habui, cibumque ad eam satiandam, salva paterna mea carne, petii. Et quia bilem illam scaturientem ad aes etiam concoquendum idoneam esse estimabam, unde aes alienum, ut minoris pretii, haberem, circumspexi. Rebus ita se habentibus, ab avunculo meo Johanne Doolittie, Armigero, impetravi ut pecunias necessarias suppeditaret, ne opus esset mihi universitatem relinquendi antequam ad gradum primum in artibus pervenissem. Tune ego, salvum facere patronum meum munificum maxime cupiens, omnes libros primae editionis operis mei non venditos una cum privilegio in omne aevum ejusdem imprimendi et edendi avunculo meo dicto pigneravi. Ex illo die, atro lapide notando, curae vociferantes familiae singulis annis crescentis eo usque insultabant ut nunquam tam carum pignus e vinculis istis aheneis solvere possem.

Avunculo vero nuper mortuo, quum inter alios consanguineos testamenti ejus lectionem audiendi causa advenissem, erectis auribus verba talia sequentia accepi: ‘Quoniam persuasum habeo meum dilectum nepotem Homerum, longa et intima rerum angustarum domi experientia, aptissimum esse qui divitias tueatur, beneficenterque ac prudenter iis divinis creditis utatur,–ergo, motus hisce cogitationibus, exque amore meo in illum magno, do, legoque nepoti caro meo supranominato omnes singularesque istas possessiones nec ponderabiles nec computabiles meas quae sequuntur, scilicet: quingentos libros quos mihi pigneravit dictus Homerus, anno lucis 1792, cum privilegio edendi et repetendi opus istud “scientificum” (quod dicunt) suum, si sic elegerit. Tamen D.O.M, precor oculos Homeri nepotis mei ita aperiat eumque moveat, ut libros istos in bibliotheca unius e plurimis castellis suis Hispaniensibus tuto abscondat.’

His verbis vix credibilibus, auditis, cor meum in pectore exsultavit. Deinde, quoniam tractatus Anglice scriptus spem auctoris fefellerat, quippe quum studium Historiae Naturalis in Republica nostra inter factionis strepitum languescat, Latine versum edere statui, et eo potius quia nescio quomodo disciplina academica et duo diplomata proficiant, nisi quod peritos linguarum omnino mortuarum (et damnandarum, ut dicebat iste [Greek: panourgos] Guilielmus Cobbett) nos faciant.

Et mihi adhue superstes est tota illa editio prima, quam quasi crepitaculum per quod dentes caninos dentibam retineo.

* * * * *

OPERIS SPECIMEN

(_Ad exemplum Johannis Physiophili speciminis Monachologiae_)

12. S.B. _Militaris_, WILBUR. _Carnifex_, JABLONSK. _Profanus_, DESFONT.

[Male hanece speciem _Cyclopem_ Fabricius vocat, ut qui singulo oculo ad quod sui interest distinguitur. Melius vero Isaacus Outis nullum inter S. milit. S. que Belzebul (Fabric. 152) discrimen esse defendit]

Habitat civitat. Americ. austral.

Aureis lineis splendidus; plerumque tamen sordidus, utpote lanienas valde frequentans, foetore sanguinis allectus. Amat quoque insuper septa apricari, neque inde, nisi maxima conatione detruditur. _Candidatus_ ergo populariter vocatus. Caput cristam quasi pennarum ostendit. Pro cibo vaccam publicam callide mulget; abdomen enorme; facultas suctus haud facile estimanda. Otiosus, fatuus; ferox nihilominus, semperque dimicare paratus. Tortuose repit.

Capite saepe maxima cum cura dissecto, ne illud rudimentum etiam cerebri commune omnibus prope insectis detegere poteram.

Unam de hoc S. milit. rem singularem notavi; nam S. Guineens. (Fabric. 143) servos facit, et idcirco a multis summa in reverentia habitus, quasi scintillas rationis paene humanae demonstrans.

24. S.B. _Criticus_, WILBUR. _Zoilus_, FABRIC. _Pygmaeus_, CARLSEN.

[Stultissime Johannes Stryx cum S. punctato (Fabric. 64-109) confundit. Specimina quamplurima scrutationi microscopicae subjeci, nunquam tamen unum ulla indicia puncti cujusvis prorsus ostendentem inveni.]

Praecipue formidolosus, insectatusque, in proxima rima anonyma sese abscondit, _we, we_, creberrime stridens. Ineptus, segnipes.

Habitat ubique gentium; in sicco; nidum suum terebratione indefessa aedificans. Cibus. Libros depascit; siccos praecipue.

MELIBOEUS-HIPPONAX

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THE

Biglow Papers

EDITED,

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, GLOSSARY, AND COPIOUS INDEX,

BY

HOMER WILBUR, A.M.,

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN JAALAM, AND (PROSPECTIVE) MEMBER OF MANY LITERARY, LEARNED, AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES,

(_for which see page 227_.)

The ploughman’s whistle, or the trivial flute, Finds more respect than great Apollo’s lute. _Quarles’s Emblems_, B. ii. E. 8.

Margaritas, munde porcine, calcasti: en, siliquas accipe. _Jac. Car. Fil. ad Pub. Leg._ Section 1.

NOTE TO TITLE-PAGE

It will not have escaped the attentive eye, that I have, on the title-page, omitted those honorary appendages to the editorial name which not only add greatly to the value of every book, but whet and exacerbate the appetite of the reader. For not only does he surmise that an honorary membership of literary and scientific societies implies a certain amount of necessary distinction on the part of the recipient of such decorations, but he is willing to trust himself more entirely to an author who writes under the fearful responsibility of involving the reputation of such bodies as the _S. Archaeol. Dahom._ or the _Acad. Lit. et Scient. Kamtschat_. I cannot but think that the early editions of Shakespeare and Milton would have met with more rapid and general acceptance, but for the barrenness of their respective title-pages; and I believe that, even now, a publisher of the works of either of those justly distinguished men would find his account in procuring their admission to the membership of learned bodies on the Continent,–a proceeding no whit more incongruous than the reversal of the judgment against Socrates, when he was already more than twenty centuries beyond the reach of antidotes, and when his memory had acquired a deserved respectability. I conceive that it was a feeling of the importance of this precaution which induced Mr. Locke to style himself ‘Gent.’ on the title-page of his Essay, as who should say to his readers that they could receive his metaphysics on the honor of a gentleman.

Nevertheless, finding that, without descending to a smaller size of type than would have been compatible with the dignity of the several societies to be named, I could not compress my intended list within the limits of a single page, and thinking, moreover, that the act would carry with it an air of decorous modesty, I have chosen to take the reader aside, as it were, into my private closet, and there not only exhibit to him the diplomas which I already possess, but also to furnish him with a prophetic vision of those which I may, without undue presumption, hope for, as not beyond the reach of human ambition and attainment. And I am the rather induced to this from the fact that my name has been unaccountably dropped from the last triennial catalogue of our beloved _Alma Mater_. Whether this is to be attributed to the difficulty of Latinizing any of those honorary adjuncts (with a complete list of which I took care to furnish the proper persons nearly a year beforehand), or whether it had its origin in any more culpable motives, I forbear to consider in this place, the matter being in course of painful investigation. But, however this may be, I felt the omission the more keenly, as I had, in expectation of the new catalogue, enriched the library of the Jaalam Athenaeum with the old one then in my possession, by which means it has come about that my children will be deprived of a never-wearying winter evening’s amusement in looking out the name of their parent in that distinguished roll. Those harmless innocents had at least committed no–but I forbear, having intrusted my reflections and animadversions on this painful topic to the safe-keeping of my private diary, intended for posthumous publication. I state this fact here, in order that certain nameless individuals, who are, perhaps, overmuch congratulating themselves upon my silence, may know that a rod is in pickle which the vigorous hand of a justly incensed posterity will apply to their memories.

The careful reader will note that, in the list which I have prepared, I have included the names of several Cisatlantic societies to which a place is not commonly assigned in processions of this nature. I have ventured to do this, not only to encourage native ambition and genius, but also because I have never been able to perceive in what way distance (unless we suppose them at the end of a lever) could increase the weight of learned bodies. As far as I have been able to extend my researches among such stuffed specimens as occasionally reach America, I have discovered no generic difference between the antipodal _Fogrum Japonicum_ and the _F. Americanum_, sufficiently common in our own immediate neighborhood. Yet, with a becoming deference to the popular belief that distinctions of this sort are enhanced in value by every additional mile they travel, I have intermixed the names of some tolerably distant literary and other associations with the rest.

I add here, also, an advertisement, which, that it may be the more readily understood by those persons especially interested therein, I have written in that curtailed and otherwise maltreated canine Latin, to the writing and reading of which they are accustomed.

OMNIB. PER TOT. ORB. TERRAR. CATALOG. ACADEM, EDD.

Minim. gent, diplom. ab inclytiss. acad. vest. orans, vir. honorand. operosiss., at sol. ut sciat. quant. glor. nom. meum (dipl. fort. concess.) catal. vest. temp. futur. affer., ill. subjec., addit. omnib. titul. honorar. qu. adh. non tant. opt. quam probab. put.

*** _Litt. Uncial, distinx. ut Praes. S. Hist. Nat. Jaal_.

HOMERUS WILBUR, Mr., Episc. Jaalam, S.T.D. 1850, et Yal. 1849, et Neo-Caes. et Brun. et Gulielm. 1852, et Gul. et Mar. et Bowd. et Georgiop. et Viridimont. et Columb. Nov. Ebor. 1853, et Amherst. et Watervill. et S. Jarlath. Hib. et S. Mar. et S. Joseph, et S. And. Scot. 1854. et Nashvill. et Dart. et Dickins. et Concord. et Wash. et Columbian. et Charlest. et Jeff. et Dubl. et Oxon. et Cantab. et Caet. 1855. P.U.N.C.H. et J.U.D. Gott. et Osnab. et Heidelb. 1860, et Acad. BORE US. Berolin. Soc., et SS. RR. Lugd. Bat. et Patav. et Lond. et Edinb. et Ins. Feejee. et Null. Terr. et Pekin. Soc. Hon. et S.H.S et S.P.A. et A.A.S. et S. Humb. Univ. et S. Omn. Rer. Quarund. q. Aliar. Promov. Passamaquod. et H.P.C. et I.O.H, et [Greek: A.D.Ph.] et [Greek: P.K.P.] et [Greek: Ph.B.K.] et Peucin. et Erosoph. et Philadelph. et Frat. in Unit. et [Greek: S.T.] et S. Archaeolog. Athen. et Acad. Scient, et Lit. Panorm. et SS.R.H. Matrit. et Beeloochist. et Caffrar. et Caribb. et M.S. Reg. Paris, et S. Am. Antiserv. Soc. Hon. et P.D. Gott. et LL.D. 1852, et D.C.L. et Mus. Doc. Oxon. 1860, et M.M.S.S. et M.D. 1854, et Med. Fac. Univ. Harv. Soc. et S. pro Convers. Pollywog. Soc. Hon. et Higgl. Piggl. et LL.B. 1853, et S. pro Christianiz. Moschet. Soc. et SS. Ante-Diluv. ubiq. Gent. Soc. Hon. et Civit. Cleric. Jaalam. et S. pro Diffus. General. Tenebr. Secret. Corr.

INTRODUCTION

When, more than three years ago, my talented young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, came to me and submitted to my animadversions the first of his poems which he intended to commit to the more hazardous trial of a city newspaper, it never so much as entered my imagination to conceive that his productions would ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ushered into the august presence of the reading public by myself.

So little are we short-sighted mortals able to predict the event! I confess that there is to me a quite new satisfaction in being associated (though only as sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a separate volume, those religious and godly-minded children (those Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first be buried in an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapped with a score of others in a cheap binding, with no other mark of distinction than the word ‘_Miscellaneous_’ printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I know myself, I am measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic phrase, is termed _shut-eyed_) flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some touches of my own, here and there, may have led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from my larger experience of literature and authorship.[9]

I was at first inclined to discourage Mr. Biglow’s attempts, as knowing that the desire to poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be not at once and with a bold hand applied, may become chronic, and render one, who might else have become in due time an ornament of the social circle, a painful object even to nearest friends and relatives. But thinking, on a further experience that there was a germ of promise in him which required only culture and the pulling up of weeds from about it, I thought it best to set before him the acknowledged examples of English composition in verse, and leave the rest to natural emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to the assiduous study of which he promised to devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he brought me some verses written upon that model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated ear. The poem consisted of childish reminiscences, and the sketches which follow will not seem destitute of truth to those whose fortunate education began in a country village. And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of the school-dame.

‘Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see The humble school-house of my A, B, C,
Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire, Waited in ranks the wished command to fire, Then all together, when the signal came, Discharged their _a-b abs_ against the dame. Daughter of Danaus, who could daily pour In treacherous pipkins her Pierian store, She, mid the volleyed learning firm and calm, Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could divine at once Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce.

‘There young Devotion learned to climb with ease The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees, And he was most commended and admired
Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired; Each name was called as many various ways As pleased the reader’s ear on different days, So that the weather, or the ferule’s stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek,
The vibrant accent skipping here and there, Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame;
With or without the points pleased her the same; If any tyro found a name too tough.
And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring.

‘Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap; From books degraded, there I sat at ease, A drone, the envy of compulsory bees;
Rewards of merit, too, full many a time, Each with its woodcut and its moral rhyme, And pierced half-dollars hung on ribbons gay About my neck (to be restored next day)
I carried home, rewards as shining then As those that deck the lifelong pains of men, More solid than the redemanded praise
With which the world beribbons later days.

‘Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye return! How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces burn! The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads, The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds, The impromptu pin-bent hook, the deep remorse O’er the chance-captured minnow’s inchlong corse; The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, That still a space for ball and peg-top found, Nor satiate yet, could manage to confine Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite’s wound twine, Nay, like the prophet’s carpet could take in, Enlarging still, the popgun’s magazine;
The dinner carried in the small tin pail, Shared with some dog, whose most beseeching tail And dripping tongue and eager ears belied The assumed indifference of canine pride; The caper homeward, shortened if the cart Of Neighbor Pomeroy, trundling from the mart, O’ertook me,–then, translated to the seat I praised the steed, how stanch he was and fleet, While the bluff farmer, with superior grin, Explained where horses should be thick, where thin, And warned me (joke he always had in store) To shun a beast that four white stockings wore. What a fine natural courtesy was his!
His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss; How did his well-thumbed hat, with ardor rapt, Its curve decorous to each rank adapt!
How did it graduate with a courtly ease The whole long scale of social differences, Yet so gave each his measure running o’er, None thought his own was less, his neighbor’s more; The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew Old times acknowledged ‘neath the threadbare blue! Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane, Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, While eager Argus, who has missed all day The sharer of his condescending play,
Comes leaping onward with a bark elate And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate; That I was true in absence to our love
Let the thick dog’s-ears in my primer prove.’

I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavored to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand.

‘Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad His slow artillery lip the Concord road, A tale which grew in wonder, year by year, As, every time he told it, Joe drew near To the main fight, till, faded and grown gray, The original scene to bolder tints gave way; Then Joe had heard the foe’s scared double-quick Beat on stove drum with one un-captured stick, And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop, Himself had fired, and seen a redcoat drop; Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight Had squared more nearly with his sense of right, And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale, Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail.’

I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. Biglow’s, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that my file had left nothing of his in them. I should not, perhaps, have felt entitled to take so great liberties with them, had I not more than suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, a very near ancestor having written a Latin poem in the Harvard _Gratulatio_ on the accession of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,–that Mr. Pope’s versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard’s clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken _tick, tick_, after all,–and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not what, to the effect that the sweet-water would only be the more disfigured by having its leaves starched and ironed out, and that Pegasus (so he called him) hardly looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other such opinions I did not long strive to eradicate, attributing them rather to a defective education and senses untuned by too long familiarity with purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. I was the more inclined to this leniency since sufficient evidence was not to seek, that his verses, wanting as they certainly were in classic polish and point, had somehow taken hold of the public ear in a surprising manner. So, only setting him right as to the quantity of the proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow the bent of his natural genius.

Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the tutelage of the pagan (which, literally interpreted, signifies village) muse without yet a further effort for his conversion, and to this end I resolved that whatever of poetic fire yet burned in myself, aided by the assiduous bellows of correct models, should be put in requisition. Accordingly, when my ingenious young parishioner brought to my study a copy of verses which he had written touching the acquisition of territory resulting from the Mexican war, and the folly of leaving the question of slavery or freedom to the adjudication of chance, I did myself indite a short fable or apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, to the end that he might see how easily even such subjects as he treated of were capable of a more refined style and more elegant expression. Mr. Biglow’s production was as follows:–

THE TWO GUNNERS

A FABLE

Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe,
One Sundy mornin’ ‘greed to go
Agunnin’ soon ‘z the bells wuz done And meetin’ finally begun,
So’st no one wouldn’t be about
Ther Sabbath-breakin’ to spy out.

Joe didn’t want to go a mite;
He felt ez though ‘twarn’t skeercely right, But, when his doubts he went to speak on, Isrel he up and called him Deacon,
An’ kep’ apokin’ fun like sin
An’ then arubbin’ on it in,
Till Joe, less skeered o’ doin’ wrong Than bein’ laughed at, went along.

Past noontime they went trampin’ round An’ nary thing to pop at found,
Till, fairly tired o’ their spree,
They leaned their guns agin a tree, An’ jest ez they wuz settin’ down
To take their noonin’, Joe looked roun’ And see (acrost lots in a pond
That warn’t mor’n twenty rod beyond) A goose that on the water sot
Ez ef awaitin’ to be shot.

Isrel he ups and grabs his gun;
Sez he, ‘By ginger, here’s some fun!’ ‘Don’t fire,’ sez Joe, ‘it ain’t no use, Thet’s Deacon Peleg’s tame wil’-goose:’
Sez Isrel, ‘I don’t care a cent.
I’ve sighted an’ I’ll let her went;’ _Bang!_ went queen’s-arm, ole gander flopped His wings a spell, an’ quorked, an’ dropped.

Sez Joe, ‘I wouldn’t ha’ been hired
At that poor critter to ha’ fired,
But since it’s clean gin up the ghost, We’ll hev the tallest kind o’ roast;
I guess our waistbands’ll be tight
‘Fore it comes ten o’clock ternight.’

‘I won’t agree to no such bender,’
Sez Isrel; ‘keep it tell it’s tender; ‘Tain’t wuth a snap afore it’s ripe.’
Sez Joe, ‘I’d jest ez lives eat tripe; You _air_ a buster ter suppose
I’d eat what makes me hol’ my nose!’

So they disputed to an’ fro
Till cunnin’ Isrel sez to Joe,
‘Don’t le’s stay here an’ play the fool, Le’s wait till both on us git cool,
Jest for a day or two le’s hide it, An’ then toss up an’ so decide it.’
‘Agreed!’ sez Joe, an’ so they did, An’ the ole goose wuz safely hid.

Now ‘twuz the hottest kind o’ weather, An’ when at last they come together,
It didn’t signify which won,
Fer all the mischief hed been done: The goose wuz there, but, fer his soul,
Joe wouldn’t ha’ tetched it with a pole; But Isrel kind o’ liked the smell on ‘t
An’ made _his_ dinner very well on ‘t.

My own humble attempt was in manner and form following, and I print it here, I sincerely trust, out of no vainglory, but solely with the hope of doing good.

LEAVING THE MATTER OPEN

A TALE

BY HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair, Together dwelt (no matter where),
To whom an Uncle Sam, or some one,
Had left a house and farm in common. The two in principles and habits
Were different as rats from rabbits; Stout Farmer North, with frugal care,
Laid up provision for his heir,
Not scorning with hard sun-browned hands To scrape acquaintance with his lands;
Whatever thing he had to do
He did, and made it pay him, too;
He sold his waste stone by the pound, His drains made water-wheels spin round, His ice in summer-time he sold,
His wood brought profit when ’twas cold, He dug and delved from morn till night,
Strove to make profit square with right, Lived on his means, cut no great dash,
And paid his debts in honest cash.

On tother hand, his brother South
Lived very much from hand to mouth. Played gentleman, nursed dainty hands,
Borrowed North’s money on his lands, And culled his morals and his graces
From cock-pits, bar-rooms, fights, and races; His sole work in the farming line
Was keeping droves of long-legged swine, Which brought great bothers and expenses To North in looking after fences,
And, when they happened to break through, Cost him both time and temper too,
For South insisted it was plain
He ought to drive them home again,
And North consented to the work
Because he loved to buy cheap pork.

Meanwhile, South’s swine increasing fast; His farm became too small at last;
So, having thought the matter over, And feeling bound to live in clover
And never pay the clover’s worth,
He said one day to Brother North:–

‘Our families are both increasing,
And, though we labor without ceasing, Our produce soon will be too scant
To keep our children out of want;
They who wish fortune to be lasting Must be both prudent and forecasting;
We soon shall need more land; a lot I know, that cheaply can be bo’t;
You lend the cash, I’ll buy the acres. And we’ll be equally partakers.’

Poor North, whose Anglo-Saxon blood
Gave him a hankering after mud,
Wavered a moment, then consented,
And, when the cash was paid, repented; To make the new land worth a pin,
Thought he, it must be all fenced in, For, if South’s swine once get the run on ‘t No kind of farming can be done on ‘t;
If that don’t suit the other side,
‘Tis best we instantly divide.’

But somehow South could ne’er incline This way or that to run the line,
And always found some new pretence
‘Gainst setting the division fence; At last he said:–
‘For peace’s sake,
Liberal concessions I will make;
Though I believe, upon my soul,
I’ve a just title to the whole,
I’ll make an offer which I call
Gen’rous,–we’ll have no fence at all; Then both of us, whene’er we choose,
Can take what part we want to use;
If you should chance to need it first, Pick you the best, I’ll take the worst.’

‘Agreed!’ cried North; thought he, This fall With wheat and rye I’ll sow it all;
In that way I shall get the start,
And South may whistle for his part. So thought, so done, the field was sown, And, winter haying come and gone,
Sly North walked blithely forth to spy, The progress of his wheat and rye;
Heavens, what a sight! his brother’s swine Had asked themselves all out to dine;
Such grunting, munching, rooting, shoving, The soil seemed all alive and moving,
As for his grain, such work they’d made on ‘t, He couldn’t spy a single blade on ‘t.

Off in a rage he rushed to South,
‘My wheat and rye’–grief choked his mouth: ‘Pray don’t mind me,’ said South, ‘but plant All of the new land that you want;’
‘Yes, but your hogs,’ cried North;

‘The grain
Won’t hurt them,’ answered South again; ‘But they destroy my crop;’

‘No doubt;
‘Tis fortunate you’ve found it out; Misfortunes teach, and only they,
You must not sow it in their way;’
‘Nay, you,’ says North, ‘must keep them out;’ ‘Did I create them with a snout?’
Asked South demurely; ‘as agreed,
The land is open to your seed,
And would you fain prevent my pigs
From running there their harmless rigs? God knows I view this compromise
With not the most approving eyes;
I gave up my unquestioned rights
For sake of quiet days and nights;
I offered then, you know ’tis true, To cut the piece of land in two.’
‘Then cut it now,’ growls North;

‘Abate
Your heat,’ says South, ’tis now too late; I offered you the rocky corner,
But you, of your own good the scorner, Refused to take it: I am sorry;
No doubt you might have found a quarry, Perhaps a gold-mine, for aught I know,
Containing heaps of native rhino;
You can’t expect me to resign
My rights’–

‘But where,’ quoth North, ‘are mine?’ ‘_Your_ rights,’ says tother, ‘well, that’s funny, _I_ bought the land’–
‘_I_ paid the money;’
‘That,’ answered South, ‘is from the point, The ownership, you’ll grant, is joint;
I’m sure my only hope and trust is
Not law so much as abstract justice, Though, you remember, ’twas agreed
That so and so–consult the deed;
Objections now are out of date,
They might have answered once, but Fate Quashes them at the point we’ve got to;
_Obsta principiis_ that’s my motto.’ So saying, South began to whistle
And looked as obstinate as gristle, While North went homeward, each brown paw Clenched like a knot of natural law,
And all the while, in either ear,
Heard something clicking wondrous clear.

To turn now to other matters, there are two things upon which it should seem fitting to dilate somewhat more largely in this place,–the Yankee character and the Yankee dialect. And, first, of the Yankee character, which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies in the persons of those unskilful painters who have given to it that hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspective, which, in truth, belonged, not to their subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful pencil.

New England was not so much the colony of a mother country, as a Hagar driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-exiled band which came hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold, but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his Thermopylae, where three hundred men fell in resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more invincible _storge_ that drew them back to the green island far away. These found no lotus growing upon the surly shore, the taste of which could make them forget their little native Ithaca; nor were they so wanting to themselves in faith as to burn their ship, but could see the fair west-wind belly the homeward sail, and then turn unrepining to grapple with the terrible Unknown.

As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress themselves against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud be long in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the old warfare were long a-healing, and an east-wind of hard times puts a new ache into every one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in their horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean finger of the hard schoolmistress, Necessity. Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add two hundred years’ influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary result of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of expedients, half-master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old enemy Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is best as for what will _do_, with a clasp to his purse and a button to his pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as in old countries, but against sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the world with no [Greek: pou sto] but his own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm, such sour-faced-humor, such close-fisted-generosity. This new _Graeculus esuriens_ will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterward. _In coelum, jusseris, ibit_,–or the other way either,–it is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very much fattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen. To move John you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will do for Jonathan.

* * * * *

*** TO THE INDULGENT READER

My friend, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, having been seized with a dangerous fit of illness, before this Introduction had passed through the press, and being incapacitated for all literary exertion, sent to me his notes, memoranda, &c., and requested me to fashion them into some shape more fitting for the general eye. This, owing to the fragmentary and disjointed state of his manuscripts, I have felt wholly unable to do; yet being unwilling that the reader should be deprived of such parts of his lucubrations as seemed more finished, and not well discerning how to segregate these from the rest, I have concluded to send them all to the press precisely as they are.

COLUMBUS NYE,

_Pastor of a Church in Bungtown Corner._

It remains to speak of the Yankee dialect. And, first, it may be premised, in a general way, that any one much read in the writings of the early colonists need not be told that the far greater share of the words and phrases now esteemed peculiar to New England, and local there, were brought from the mother country. A person familiar with the dialect of certain portions of Massachusetts will not fail to recognize, in ordinary discourse, many words now noted in English vocabularies as archaic, the greater part of which were in common use about the time of the King James translation of the Bible. Shakespeare stands less in need of a glossary to most New-Englanders than to many a native of the Old Country. The peculiarities of our speech, however, are rapidly wearing out. As there is no country where reading is so universal and newspapers are so multitudinous, so no phrase remains long local, but is transplanted in the mail-bags to every remotest corner of the land. Consequently our dialect approaches nearer to uniformity than that of any other nation.

The English have complained of us for coining new words. Many of those so stigmatized were old ones by them forgotten, and all make now an unquestioned part of the currency, wherever English is spoken. Undoubtedly, we have a right to make new words, as they are needed by the fresh aspects under which life presents itself here in the New World; and, indeed, wherever a language is alive, it grows. It might be questioned whether we could not establish a stronger title to the ownership of the English tongue than the mother-islanders themselves. Here, past all question, is to be its great home and centre. And not only is it already spoken here by greater numbers, but with a far higher popular average of correctness than in Britain. The great writers of it, too, we might claim as ours, were ownership to be settled by the number of readers and lovers.

As regards the provincialisms to be met with in this volume, I may say that the reader will not find one which is not (as I believe) either native or imported with the early settlers, nor one which I have not, with my own ears, heard in familiar use. In the metrical portion of the book, I have endeavored to adapt the spelling as nearly as possible to the ordinary mode of pronunciation. Let the reader who deems me over-particular remember this caution of Martial:–

‘Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus; Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus.’

A few further explanatory remarks will not be impertinent.

I shall barely lay down a few general rules for the reader’s guidance.

1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the _r_ when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel.

2. He seldom sounds the final _g_, a piece of self-denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the final _d_, as _han’_ and _stan’_ for _hand_ and _stand_.

3. The _h_ in such words as _while, when, where,_ he omits altogether.

4. In regard to _a_, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, as _hev_ for _have, hendy_ for _handy, ez_ for _as, thet_ for _that_, and again giving it the broad sound it has in _father_, as _hansome_ for _handsome._

5. To the sound _ou_ he prefixes an _e_ (hard to exemplify otherwise than orally).

The following passage in Shakespeare he would recite thus:–

‘Neow is the winta uv eour discontent Med glorious summa by this sun o’Yock,
An’ all the cleouds thet leowered upun eour heouse In the deep buzzum o’ the oshin buried;
Neow air eour breows beound ‘ith victorious wreaths; Eour breused arms hung up fer monimunce; Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins, Eour dreffle marches to delighfle masures. Grim-visaged war heth smeuthed his wrinkled front, An’ neow, instid o’ mountin’ bare-bid steeds To fright the souls o’ ferfle edverseries, He capers nimly in a lady’s ch[)a]mber,
To the lascivious pleasin’ uv a loot.’

6. _Au_, in such words as _daughter_ and _slaughter_, he pronounces _ah_.

7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl _ad libitum_.

[Mr. Wilbur’s notes here become entirely fragmentary.–C.N.]

[Greek: a]. Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Biglow, I thought the curious reader might be gratified with a sight of the editorial effigies. And here a choice between two was offered,–the one a profile (entirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait painted by a native artist of much promise. The first of these seemed wanting in expression, and in the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs has been heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of force on the part of the artist) into too close an approach to actual _strabismus_. This slight divergence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary model–however I may have been taught to regard it in the light of a mercy rather than a cross, since it enabled me to give as much of directness and personal application to my discourses as met the wants of my congregation, without risk of offending any by being supposed to have him or her in my eye (as the saying is)–seemed yet to Mrs. Wilbur a sufficient objection to the engraving of the aforesaid painting. We read of many who either absolutely refused to allow the copying of their features, as especially did Plotinus and Agesilaus among the ancients, not to mention the more modern instances of Scioppius, Palaeottus, Pinellus, Velserus, Gataker, and others, or were indifferent thereto, as Cromwell.

[Greek: b.] Yet was Caesar desirous of concealing his baldness. _Per contra_, my Lord Protector’s carefulness in the matter of his wart might be cited. Men generally more desirous of being _improved_ in their portraits than characters. Shall probably find very unflattered likenesses of ourselves in Recording Angel’s gallery.

[Greek: g.] Whether any of our national peculiarities may be traced to our use of stoves, as a certain closeness of the lips in pronunciation, and a smothered smoulderingness of disposition seldom roused to open flame? An unrestrained intercourse with fire probably conducive to generosity and hospitality of soul. Ancient Mexicans used stoves, as the friar Augustin Ruiz reports, Hakluyt, III. 468,–but Popish priests not always reliable authority.

To-day picked my Isabella grapes. Crop injured by attacks of rose-bug in the spring. Whether Noah was justifiable in preserving this class of insects?

[Greek: d]. Concerning Mr. Biglow’s pedigree. Tolerably certain that there was never a poet among his ancestors. An ordination hymn attributed to a maternal uncle, but perhaps a sort of production not demanding the creative faculty.

His grandfather a painter of the grandiose or Michael Angelo school. Seldom painted objects smaller than houses or barns, and these with uncommon expression.

[Greek: e]. Of the Wilburs no complete pedigree. The crest said to be a _wild boar_, whence, perhaps, the name. (?) A connection with the Earls of Wilbraham (_quasi_ wild boar ham) might be made out. This suggestion worth following up. In 1677, John W.m. Expect—-, had issue, 1. John, 2. Haggai, 3. Expect, 4. Ruhamah, 5. Desire.

‘Here lyes y’e bodye of Mrs. Expect Wilber, Ye crewell salvages they kil’d her
Together w’th other Christian soles eleaven, October y’e ix daye, 1707.
Y’e stream of Jordan sh’ as crost ore And now expeacts me on y’e other shore:
I live in hope her soon to join;
Her earthlye yeeres were forty and nine.’

_From Gravestone in Pekussett, North Parish._

This is unquestionably the same John who afterward (1711) married Tabitha Hagg or Ragg.

But if this were the case, she seems to have died early; for only three years after, namely, 1714, we have evidence that he married Winifred, daughter of Lieutenant Tipping.

He seems to have been a man of substance, for we find him in 1696 conveying ‘one undivided eightieth part of a salt-meadow’ in Yabbok, and he commanded a sloop in 1702.

Those who doubt the importance of genealogical studies _fuste potius quam argumento erudiendi_.

I trace him as far as 1723, and there lose him. In that year he was chosen selectman.

No gravestone. Perhaps overthrown when new hearse-house was built, 1802.

He was probably the son of John, who came from Bilham Comit. Salop. circa 1642.

This first John was a man of considerable importance, being twice mentioned with the honorable prefix of _Mr._ in the town records. Name spelt with two _l-s_.

‘Hear lyeth y’e bod [_stone unhappily broken_.] Mr. Ihon Wilber [Esq.] [_I inclose this in brackets as doubtful. To me it seems clear_.]
Ob’t die [_illegible; looks like xviii_.]…. iii [_prob. 1693_.] … paynt
… deseased seinte:
A friend and [fath]er untoe all y’e opreast, Hee gave y’e wicked familists noe reast, When Sat[an bl]ewe his Antinomian blaste. Wee clong to [Willber as a steadf]ast maste. [A]gaynst y’e horrid Qua[kers] …’

It is greatly to be lamented that this curious epitaph is mutilated. It is said that the sacrilegious British soldiers made a target of the stone during the war of Independence. How odious an animosity which pauses not at the grave! How brutal that which spares not the monuments of authentic history! This is not improbably from the pen of Rev. Moody Pyram, who is mentioned by Hubbard as having been noted for a silver vein of poetry. If his papers be still extant, a copy might possibly be recovered.

THE BIGLOW PAPERS

No. I

A LETTER

FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, INCLOSING A POEM OF HIS SON, MR. HOSEA BIGLOW

JAYLEM, june 1846.

MISTER EDDYTER:–Our Hosea wuz down to Boston last week, and he see a cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a drummin and fifin arter him like all nater. the sarjunt he thout Hosea hedn’t gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo ‘s though he’d jest com down, so he cal’lated to hook him in, but Hosy woodn’t take none o’ his sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster’s tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder out on.

wal, Hosea he com home considerabal riled, and arter I’d gone to bed I heern Him a thrashin round like a short-tailed Bull in fli-time. The old Woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our Hosee’s gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, don’t you Bee skeered, ses I, he’s oney amakin pottery[10] ses i, he’s ollers on hand at that ere busynes like Da & martin, and shure enuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint aney grate shows o’ book larnin himself, bimeby he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle tickled with ’em as i hoop you will Be, and said they wuz True grit.

Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call ’em hisn now, cos the parson kind o’ slicked off sum o’ the last varses, but he told Hosee he didn’t want to put his ore in to tetch to the Rest on ’em, bein they wuz verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind o’ didn’t hear him, for I never hearn o’ nobody o’ that name in this villadge, and I’ve lived here man and boy 76 year cum next tater diggin, and thair aint no wheres a kitting spryer ‘n I be.

If you print ’em I wish you’d jest let folks know who hosy’s father is, cos my ant Keziah used to say it’s nater to be curus ses she, she aint livin though and he’s a likely kind o’ lad.

EZEKIEL BIGLOW.

* * * * *

Thrash away, you’ll _hev_ to rattle
On them kittle-drums o’ yourn,–
‘Taint a knowin’ kind o’ cattle
Thet is ketched with mouldy corn;
Put in stiff, you fifer feller,
Let folks see how spry you be,–
Guess you’ll toot till you are yeller ‘Fore you git ahold o’ me!

Thet air flag’s a leetle rotten,
Hope it aint your Sunday’s best;– 10 Fact! it takes a sight o’ cotton
To stuff out a soger’s chest:
Sence we farmers hev to pay fer’t,
Ef you must wear humps like these, S’posin’ you should try salt hay fer’t,
It would du ez slick ez grease.

‘Twouldn’t suit them Southun fellers, They’re a dreffle graspin’ set,
We must ollers blow the bellers
Wen they want their irons het; 20 May be it’s all right ez preachin’,
But _my_ narves it kind o’ grates, Wen I see the overreachin’
O’ them nigger-drivin’ States.

Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, Haint they cut a thunderin’ swarth
(Helped by Yankee renegaders),
Thru the vartu o’ the North!
We begin to think it’s nater
To take sarse an’ not be riled;– 30 Who’d expect to see a tater
All on eend at bein’ biled?

Ez fer war, I call it murder,–
There you hev it plain an’ flat;
I don’t want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that;
God hez sed so plump an’ fairly,
It’s ez long ez it is broad,
An’ you’ve gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God. 40

‘Taint your eppyletts an’ feathers
Make the thing a grain more right; ‘Taint afollerin’ your bell-wethers
Will excuse ye in His sight;
Ef you take a sword an’ dror it,
An’ go stick a feller thru,
Guv’ment aint to answer for it,
God’ll send the bill to you.

Wut’s the use o’ meetin’-goin’
Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 50 Ef it’s right to go amowin’
Feller-men like oats an’ rye?
I dunno but wut it’s pooty
Trainin’ round in bobtail coats,– But it’s curus Christian dooty
This ‘ere cuttin’ folks’s throats.

They may talk o’ Freedom’s airy
Tell they’re pupple in the face,– It’s a grand gret cemetary
Fer the barthrights of our race; 60 They jest want this Californy
So’s to lug new slave-states in
To abuse ye, an’ to scorn ye,
An’ to plunder ye like sin.

Aint it cute to see a Yankee
Take sech everlastin’ pains,
All to get the Devil’s thankee
Helpin’ on ’em weld their chains?
Wy, it’s jest ez clear ez figgers,
Clear ez one an’ one make two, 70 Chaps thet make black slaves o’ niggers
Want to make wite slaves o’ you.

Tell ye jest the eend I’ve come to
Arter cipherin’ plaguy smart,
An’ it makes a handy sum, tu.
Any gump could larn by heart;
Laborin’ man an’ laborin’ woman
Hev one glory an’ one shame.
Ev’y thin’ thet’s done inhuman
Injers all on ’em the same. 80

‘Taint by turnln’ out to hack folks
You’re agoin’ to git your right,
Nor by lookin’ down on black folks
Coz you’re put upon by wite;
Slavery aint o’ nary color,
‘Taint the hide thet makes it wus, All it keers fer in a feller
‘S jest to make him fill its pus.

Want to tackle _me_ in, du ye?
I expect you’ll hev to wait; 90
Wen cold lead puts daylight thru ye You’ll begin to kal’late;
S’pose the crows wun’t fall to pickin’ All the carkiss from your bones,
Coz you helped to give a lickin’
To them poor half-Spanish drones?

Jest go home an’ ask our Nancy
Wether I’d be sech a goose
Ez to jine ye,–guess you’d fancy
The etarnal bung wuz loose! 100
She wants me fer home consumption,
Let alone the hay’s to mow,–
Ef you’re arter folks o’ gumption,
You’ve a darned long row to hoe.

Take them editors thet’s crowin’
Like a cockerel three months old,– Don’t ketch any on ’em goin
Though they _be_ so blasted bold;
_Aint_ they a prime lot o’ fellers? ‘Fore they think on ‘t guess they’ll sprout 110 (Like a peach thet’s got the yellers),
With the meanness bustin’ out.

Wal, go ‘long to help ’em stealin’
Bigger pens to cram with slaves,
Help the men thet’s ollers dealin’
Insults on your fathers’ graves;
Help the strong to grind the feeble, Help the many agin the few,
Help the men thet call your people
Witewashed slaves an’ peddlin’ crew! 120

Massachusetts, God forgive her,
She’s akneelin’ with the rest,
She, thet ough’ to ha’ clung ferever In her grand old eagle-nest;
She thet ough’ to stand so fearless W’ile the wracks are round her hurled,
Holdin’ up a beacon peerless
To the oppressed of all the world!

Ha’n’t they sold your colored seamen? Ha’n’t they made your env’ys w’iz? 130 _Wut_’ll make ye act like freemen?
_Wut_’ll git your dander riz?
Come, I’ll tell ye wut I’m thinkin’ Is our dooty in this fix.
They’d ha’ done ‘t ez quick ez winkin’ In the days o’ seventy-six.

Clang the bells in every steeple,
Call all true men to disown
The tradoocers of our people,
The enslavers o’ their own; 140
Let our dear old Bay State proudly
Put the trumpet to her mouth,
Let her ring this messidge loudly
In the ears of all the South:–

‘I’ll return ye good fer evil
Much ez we frail mortils can,
But I wun’t go help the Devil
Makin’ man the cuss o’ man;
Call me coward, call me traiter,
Jest ez suits your mean idees,–
Here I stand a tyrant hater, 151
An’ the friend o’ God an’ Peace!’

Ef I’d _my_ way I hed ruther
We should go to work an part,
They take one way, we take t’other, Guess it wouldn’t break my heart;
Man hed ough’ to put asunder
Them thet God has noways jined;
An’ I shouldn’t gretly wonder
Ef there’s thousands o’ my mind. 160

[The first recruiting sergeant on record I conceive to have been that individual who is mentioned in the Book of Job as _going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it._ Bishop Latimer will have him to have been a bishop, but to me that other calling would appear more congenial. The sect of Cainites is not yet extinct, who esteemed the first-born of Adam to be the most worthy, not only because of that privilege of primogeniture, but inasmuch as he was able to overcome and slay his younger brother. That was a wise saying of the famous Marquis Pescara to the Papal Legate, that _it was impossible for men to serve Mars and Christ at the same time_. Yet in time past the profession of arms was judged to be [Greek: kat exochaen] that of a gentleman, nor does this opinion want for strenuous upholders even in our day. Must we suppose, then, that the profession of Christianity was only intended for losels, or, at best, to afford an opening for plebeian ambition? Or shall we hold with that nicely metaphysical Pomeranian, Captain Vratz, who was Count Koenigsmark’s chief instrument in the murder of Mr. Thynne, that the Scheme of Salvation has been arranged with an especial eye to the necessities of the upper classes, and that ‘God would consider a _gentleman_ and deal with him suitably to the condition and profession he had placed him in’? It may be said of us all, _Exemplo plus quam ratione vivimus_.–H.W.]

No. II

A LETTER

FROM MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE HON. J.T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, COVERING A LETTER FROM MR. B. SAWIN, PRIVATE IN THE MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT

[This letter of Mr. Sawin’s was not originally written in verse. Mr. Biglow, thinking it peculiarly susceptible of metrical adornment, translated it, so to speak, into his own vernacular tongue. This is not the time to consider the question, whether rhyme be a mode of expression natural to the human race. If leisure from other and more important avocations be granted, I will handle the matter more at large in an appendix to the present volume. In this place I will barely remark, that I have sometimes noticed in the unlanguaged prattlings of infants a fondness for alliteration, assonance, and even rhyme, in which natural predisposition we may trace the three degrees through which our Anglo-Saxon verse rose to its culmination in the poetry of Pope. I would not be understood as questioning in these remarks that pious theory which supposes that children, if left entirely to themselves, would naturally discourse in Hebrew. For this the authority of one experiment is claimed, and I could, with Sir Thomas Browne, desire its establishment, inasmuch as the acquirement of that sacred tongue would thereby be facilitated. I am aware that Herodotus states the conclusion of Psammetieus to have been in favor of a dialect of the Phrygian. But, beside the chance that a trial of this importance would hardly be blessed to a Pagan monarch whose only motive was curiosity, we have on the Hebrew side the comparatively recent investigation of James the Fourth of Scotland. I will add to this prefatory remark, that Mr. Sawin, though a native of Jaalam, has never been a stated attendant on the religious exercises of my congregation. I consider my humble efforts prospered in that not one of my sheep hath ever indued the wolf’s clothing of war, save for the comparatively innocent diversion of a militia training. Not that my flock are backward to undergo the hardships of _defensive_ warfare. They serve cheerfully in the great army which fights, even unto death _pro aris et focis_, accoutred with the spade, the axe, the plane, the sledge, the spelling-book, and other such effectual weapons against want and ignorance and unthrift. I have taught them (under God) to esteem our human institutions as but tents of a night, to be stricken whenever Truth puts the bugle to her lips and sounds a march to the heights of wider-viewed intelligence and more perfect organization.–H.W.]

MISTER BUCKINUM, the follerin Billet was writ hum by a Yung feller of our town that wuz cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife, it ain’t Nater for a feller to let on that he’s sick o’ any bizness that He went intu off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather cal’late he’s middlin tired o’ voluntearin By this Time. I bleeve u may put dependunts on his statemence. For I never heered nothin bad on him let Alone his havin what Parson Wilbur cals a _pong shong_ for cocktales, and he ses it wuz a soshiashun of idees sot him agoin arter the Crootin Sargient cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat.

his Folks gin the letter to me and i shew it to parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter Bee printed. send It to mister Buckinum, ses he, i don’t ollers agree with him, ses he, but by Time,[11] ses he, I _du_ like a feller that aint a Feared.

I have intusspussed a Few refleckshuns hear and thar. We’re a kind o’prest with Hayin.

Ewers respecfly
HOSEA BIGLOW.

This kind o’ sogerin’ aint a mite like our October trainin’, A chap could clear right out from there ef ‘t only looked like rainin’, An’ th’ Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An’ send the insines skootin’ to the bar-room with their banners (Fear o’ gittin’ on ’em spotted), an’ a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an’ water. Recollect wut fun we hed, you ‘n’ I an’ Ezry Hollis, Up there to Waltham plain last fall, along o’ the Cornwallis?[12]

This sort o’ thing aint _jest_ like thet,–I wish thet I wuz furder,[13]– Ninepunce a day fer killin’ folks comes kind o’ low fer murder, 10 (Wy I’ve worked out to slarterin’ some fer Deacon Cephas Billins, An’ in the hardest times there wuz I ollers tetched ten shillins.) There’s sutthin’ gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so naturel to think about a hempen collar; It’s glory,–but, in spite o’ all my tryin’ to git callous, I feel a kind o’ in a cart, aridin’ to the gallus. But wen it comes to _bein’_ killed,–I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time ‘t ever I found out wy baggonets wuz peaked; Here’s how it wuz: I started out to go to a fandango, The sentinul he ups an’ sez, ‘Thet’s furder ‘an you can go.’ 20 ‘None o’ your sarse,’ sez I; sez he, ‘Stan’ back!’ ‘Aint you a buster?’ Sez I, ‘I’m up to all thet air, I guess I’ve ben to muster; I know wy sentinuls air sot; you aint agoin’ to eat us; Caleb haint no monopoly to court the seenorcetas; My folks to hum air full ez good ez his’n be, by golly!’ An’ so ez I wuz goin’ by, not thinkin’ wut would folly, The everlastin’ cus he stuck his one-pronged pitchfork in me An’ made a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz an in’my.

Wal, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin’ in ole Funnel Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our Leftenant Cunnle, 30 (It’s Mister Secondary Bolles,[14] thet writ the prize peace essay. Thet’s wy he didn’t list himself along o’ us, I dessay,) An’ Rantoul, tu, talked pooty loud, but don’t put _his_ foot in it, Coz human life’s so sacred thet he’s principled agin it,– Though I myself can’t rightly see it’s any wus achokin’ on ’em; Than puttin’ bullets thru their lights, or with a bagnet pokin’ on ’em; How dreffle slick he reeled it off (like Blitz at our lyceum Ahaulin’ ribbins from his chops so quick you skeercely see ’em), About the Anglo-Saxon race (an’ saxons would be handy To du the buryin’ down here upon the Rio Grandy), 40 About our patriotic pas an’ our star-spangled banner, Our country’s bird alookin’ on an’ singin’ out hosanner, An’ how he (Mister B. himself) wuz happy fer Ameriky,– I felt, ez sister Patience sez, a leetle mite histericky. I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle kind o’ privilege Atrampin’ round thru Boston streets among the gutter’s drivelage; I act’lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a little drummin’, An’ it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz acomin’ Wen all on us got suits (darned like them wore in the state prison) An’ every feller felt ez though all Mexico wuz hisn.[15] 50 This ‘ere’s about the meanest place a skunk could wal dlskiver (Saltillo’s Mexican, I b’lieve, fer wut we call Salt-river); The sort o’ trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all nater, I’d give a year’s pay fer a smell o’ one good blue-nose tater, The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to be so charmin’ Throughout is swarmin’ with the most alarmin’ kind o’ varmin. He talked about delishis froots, but then it wuz a wopper all, The holl on ‘t ‘s mud an’ prickly pears, with here an’ there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin’ out, an’, fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an’ you a copse, ‘fore you can say, ‘Wut air ye at?'[16] 60
You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I’ve seen a _scarabaeus pilularius_[17] big ez a year old elephant), The rigiment come up one day in time to stop a red bug From runnin off with Cunnle Wright,–‘twuz jest a common _cimex lectularius._

One night I started up on eend an’ thought I wuz to hum agin, I heern a horn, thinks I it’s Sol the fisherman hez come agin, _His_ bellowses is sound enough,–ez I’m a livin’ creeter, I felt a thing go thru my leg–‘twuz nothin’ more ‘n a skeeter! Then there’s the yaller fever, tu, they call it here el vomito,– (Come, thet wun’t du, you landcrab there, I tell ye to le’ _go_ my toe! 70
My gracious! it’s a scorpion thet’s took a shine to play with ‘t, I darsn’t skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he’d run away with ‘t,) Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong persuasion Thet Mexicans worn’t human beans,[18]–an ourang outang nation, A sort o’ folks a chap could kill an’ never dream on ‘t arter, No more ‘n a feller’d dream o’ pigs thet he hed hed to slarter; I’d an idee thet they were built arter the darkie fashion all, An’ kickin’ colored folks about, you know ‘s a kind o’ national; But wen I jined I worn’t so wise ez thet air queen o’ Sheby, Fer, come to look at ’em, they aint much diff’rent from wut we be, 80 An’ here we air ascrougin’ ’em out o’ thir own dominions, Ashelterin’ ’em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle’s pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o’ ‘s trowsis An’ walk him Spanish clean right out o’ all his homes an’ houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it’s reg’lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex’cans don’t fight fair, they say, they piz’n all the water, An’ du amazin’ lots o’ things thet isn’t wut they ough’ to; Bein’ they haint no lead, they make their bullets out o’ copper An’ shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich Caleb sez ain proper; 90
He sez they’d ough’ to stan’ right up an’ let us pop ’em fairly (Guess wen he ketches ’em at thet he’ll hev to git up airly), Thet our nation’s bigger ‘n theirn an’ so its rights air bigger, An’ thet it’s all to make ’em free thet we air pullin’ trigger, Thet Anglo Saxondom’s idee’s abreakin’ ’em to pieces, An’ thet idee’s thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases; Ef I don’t make his meanin’ clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know thet ‘every man’ don’t mean a nigger or a Mexican; An’ there’s another thing I know, an’ thet is, ef these creeters, Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State-prison feeturs, 100 Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an’ spout on ‘t, The gals ‘ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared out on ‘t.

This goin’ ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur, An’ ef it worn’t fer wakin’ snakes, I’d home agin short meter; O, wouldn’t I be off, quick time, ef ‘t worn’t thet I wuz sartin They’d let the daylight into me to pay me fer desartin! I don’t approve o’ tellin’ tales, but jest to you I may state Our ossifers aiut wut they wuz afore they left the Bay-state; Then it wuz ‘Mister Sawin, sir, you’re middlin’ well now, be ye? Step up an’ take a nipper, sir; I’m dreffle glad to see ye:’ 110 But now it’s ‘Ware’s my eppylet? here, Sawin, step an’ fetch it! An’ mind your eye, be thund’rin’ spry, or, damn ye, you shall ketch it!’ Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, but by mighty, Ef I hed some on ’em to hum, I’d give ’em linkum vity, I’d play the rogue’s march on their hides an’ other music follerin’– But I must close my letter here, fer one on ’em ‘s ahollerin’, These Anglosaxon ossifers,–wal, taint no use ajawin’, I’m safe enlisted fer the war,
Yourn,
BIRDOFREDOM SAWIN.

[Those have not been wanting (as, indeed, when hath Satan been to seek for attorneys?) who have maintained that our late inroad upon Mexico was undertaken not so much for the avenging of any national quarrel, as for the spreading of free institutions and of Protestantism. _Capita vix duabus Anticyris medenda!_ Verily I admire that no pious sergeant among these new Crusaders beheld Martin Luther riding at the front of the host upon a tamed pontifical bull, as, in that former invasion of Mexico, the zealous Gomara (spawn though he were of the Scarlet Woman) was favored with a vision of St. James of Compostella, skewering the infidels upon his apostolical lance. We read, also, that Richard of the lion heart, having gone to Palestine on a similar errand of mercy, was divinely encouraged to cut the throats of such Paynims as refused to swallow the bread of life (doubtless that they might be thereafter incapacitated for swallowing the filthy gobbets of Mahound) by angels of heaven, who cried to the king and his knights,_–Seigneurs, tuez! tuez!_ providentially using the French tongue, as being the only one understood by their auditors. This would argue for the pantoglottism of these celestial intelligences, while, on the other hand, the Devil, _teste_ Cotton Mather, is unversed in certain of the Indian dialects. Yet must he be a semeiologist the most expert, making himself intelligible to every people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial persuasion is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair or a tide-waiter’s stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter what. To us, dangling there over our heads, they seem junkets dropped out of the seventh heaven, sops dipped in nectar, but, once in our mouths, they are all one, bits of fuzzy cotton.

This, however, by the way. It is time now _revocare gradum_. While so many miracles of this sort, vouched by eye-witnesses, have encouraged the arms of Papists, not to speak of Echetlaeus at Marathon and those _Dioscuri_ (whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times captained the pagan Roman soldiery, it is strange that our first American crusade was not in some such wise also signalized. Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Do we not know from Josephus, that, careful of His decree, a certain river in Judaea abstained from flowing on the day of Rest? Or has that day become less an object of His especial care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence occurred to Mr. William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he and all on shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily, ‘which was enough to serve ’em; only on _Saturdays_ they still catched a couple, and on the _Lord’s Days_ they could catch none at all’? Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as _Cape Cod Clergymen_.

It has been a refreshment to many nice consciences to know that our Chief Magistrate would not regard with eyes of approval the (by many esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own myseif to be so far of that mind, that I could not but set my face against this Mexican Polka, though danced to the Presidential piping with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country should be seized with another such mania _pro propaganda fide_, I think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. I have seen lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated punctiliousness of Walton, secure pickerel, taking their unwary _siesta_ beneath the lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. Why not, then, since gunpowder was unknown in the time of the Apostles (not to enter here upon the question whether it were discovered before that period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to the age in which we live, and say _shooters_ as well as _fishers_ of men?

I do much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as we have neighbor Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,–I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is _No_ to us all. There is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against _e corde cordium_. And by what College of Cardinals is this our God’s-vicar, our binder and looser, elected? Very like, by the sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that we must all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the editor’s pen, this wags the senator’s tongue. This decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha. According to that sentence fathered upon Solon, [Greek: Onto daemosion kakon erchetai oikad ekasto] This unclean spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy,–‘Our country, right or wrong,’–by tracing its original to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles.–H.W.]

No. III

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS

[A few remarks on the following verses will not be out of place. The satire in them was not meant to have any personal, but only a general, application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they were intended as a commentary Mr. Biglow had never heard, till he saw the letter itself. The position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he would not have chosen, had the election been left to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated _tenues in auras._ For what says Seneca? _Longum iter per praecepta, breve et efficace per exempla_. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is printed in that large type which all men can read at sight, namely, the life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular persons. It is one of the cunningest fetches of Satan, that he never exposes himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to wound him through them, if at all. He holds our affections as hostages, the while he patches up a truce with our conscience.

Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which obscures Truth’s wreath of simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,–_aliquid sufflaminandus erat_. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants of reform with _aqua fortis_, yet, where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage a whole day’s war with an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden-walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will wither them up. _Est ars etiam maledicendi_, says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing to say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb merges in downright sheepishness. We may conclude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that ‘one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing general affronts to goodness they are asses which are not lions.’–H.W.]

Guvener B. is a sensible man;
He stays to his home an’ looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An’ into nobody’s tater-patch pokes;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez be wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du? We can’t never choose him o’ course,–thet’s flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don’t you?) An’ go in fer thunder an’ guns, an’ all that; Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
He’s ben on all sides thet gives places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,– He’s ben true to _one_ party,–an’ thet is himself;– So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
He don’t vally princerple more’n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an’ gunpowder, plunder an’ blood? So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

We were gittin’ on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o’ wut’s right an’ wut aint, We kind o’ thought Christ went agin war an’ pillage, An’ thet eppyletts worn’t the best mark of a saint; But John P.
Robinson he
Sez this kind o’ thing’s an exploded idee.

The side of our country must ollers be took, An’ Presidunt Polk, you know, _he_ is our country. An’ the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the _debit_ to him, an’ to us the _per contry;_ An’ John P.
Robinson he
Sez this is his view o’ the thing to a T.

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; Sez they’re nothin’ on airth but jest _fee, faw, fum;_ An’ thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ign’ance, an’ t’other half rum; But John P.
Robinson he
Sez it aint no sech thing: an’ of course, so must we.

Parson Wilbur sez _he_ never heerd in his life Thet th’ Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An’ marched round in front of a drum an’ a fife, To git some on ’em office, an’ some on ’em votes; But John P.
Robinson he
Sez they didn’t know everythin’ down in Judee.

Wal, it’s a marcy we’ve gut folks to tell us The rights an’ the wrongs o’ these matters, I vow,– God sends country lawyers, an’ other wise fellers, To start the world’s team wen it gits in a slough; Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez the world’ll go right, ef he hollers out Gee!

[The attentive reader will doubtless have perceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that pernicious sentiment,–‘Our country, right or wrong.’ It is an abuse of language to call a certain portion of land, much more, certain personages, elevated for the time being to high station, our country. I would not sever nor loosen a single one of those ties by which we are united to the spot of our birth, nor minish by a tittle the respect due to the Magistrate. I love our own Bay State too well to do the one, and as for the other, I have myself for nigh forty years exercised, however unworthily, the function of Justice of the Peace, having been called thereto by the unsolicited kindness of that most excellent man and upright patriot, Caleb Strong. _Patriae fumus igne alieno luculentior_ is best qualified with this,–_Ubi libertas, ibi patria_. We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a double, but not a divided, allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from this their original intendment. When, therefore, one would have us to fling up our caps and shout with the multitude,–‘_Our country, however bounded!_’ he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true country is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a hair’s-breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon _quasi noverca_. That is a hard choice when our earthly love of country calls upon us to tread one path and our duty points us to another. We must make as noble and becoming an election as did Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her.

Shortly after the publication of the foregoing poem, there appeared some comments upon it in one of the public prints which seemed to call for animadversion. I accordingly addressed to Mr. Buckingham, of the Boston Courier, the following letter.

JAALAM, November 4, 1847.

‘_To the Editor of the Courier:_

‘RESPECTED SIR,–Calling at the post-office this morning, our worthy and efficient postmaster offered for my perusal a paragraph in the Boston Morning Post of the 3d instant, wherein certain effusions of the pastoral muse are attributed to the pen of Mr. James Russell Lowell. For aught I know or can affirm to the contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very deserving person and a youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his which I could never rightly understand); and if he be such, he, I am certain, as well as I, would be free from any proclivity to appropriate to himself whatever of credit (or discredit) may honestly belong to another. I am confident, that, in penning these few lines, I am only forestalling a disclaimer from that young gentleman, whose silence hitherto, when rumor pointed to himward, has excited in my bosom mingled emotions of sorrow and surprise. Well may my young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, exclaim with the poet,

“Sic vos non vobis,” &c.;

though, in saying this, I would not convey the impression that he is a proficient in the Latin tongue,–the tongue, I might add, of a Horace and a Tully.

‘Mr. B. does not employ his pen, I can safely say, for any lucre of worldly gain, or to be exalted by the carnal plaudits of men, _digito monstrari, &c_. He does not wait upon Providence for mercies, and in his heart mean _merces_. But I should esteem myself as verily deficient in my duty (who am his friend and in some unworthy sort his spiritual _fidus Achates_, &c.), if I did not step forward to claim for him whatever measure of applause might be assigned to him by the judicious.

‘If this were a fitting occasion, I might venture here a brief dissertation touching the manner and kind of my young friend’s poetry. But I dubitate whether this abstruser sort of speculation (though enlivened by some apposite instances from Aristophanes) would sufficiently interest your oppidan readers. As regards their satirical tone, and their plainness of speech, I will only say, that, in my pastoral experience, I have found that the Arch-Enemy loves nothing better than to be treated as a religious, moral, and intellectual being, and that there is no _apage Sathanas!_ so potent as ridicule. But it is a kind of weapon that must have a button of good-nature on the point of it.

‘The productions of Mr. B. have been stigmatized in some quarters as unpatriotic; but I can vouch that he loves his native soil with that hearty, though discriminating, attachment which springs from an intimate social intercourse of many years’ standing. In the ploughing season, no one has a deeper share in the well-being of the country than he. If Dean Swift were right in saying that he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before confers a greater benefit on the state than he who taketh a city, Mr. B. might exhibit a fairer claim to the Presidency than General Scott himself. I think that some of those disinterested lovers of the hard-handed democracy, whose fingers have never touched anything rougher than the dollars of our common country, would hesitate to compare palms with him. It would do your heart good, respected Sir, to see that young man mow. He cuts a cleaner and wider swath than any in this town.

‘But it is time for me to be at my Post. It is very clear that my young friend’s shot has struck the lintel, for the Post is shaken (Amos ix. 1). The editor of that paper is a strenuous advocate of the Mexican war, and a colonel, as I am given to understand. I presume, that, being necessarily absent in Mexico, he has left his journal in some less judicious hands. At any rate, the Post has been too swift on this occasion. It could hardly have cited a more incontrovertible line from any poem than that which it has selected for animadversion, namely,–

“We kind o’ thought Christ went agin war an’ pillage.”

‘If the Post maintains the converse of this proposition, it can hardly be considered as a safe guide-post for the moral and religious portions of its party, however many other excellent qualities of a post it may be blessed with. There is a sign in London on which is painted,–“The Green Man.” It would do very well as a portrait of any individual who should support so unscriptural a thesis. As regards the language of the line in question, I am bold to say that He who readeth the hearts of men will not account any dialect unseemly which conveys a sound, and pious sentiment. I could wish that such sentiments were more common, however uncouthly expressed. Saint Ambrose affirms, that _veritas a quocunque_ (why not, then, _quomodocunque?) dicatur, a, spiritu sancto est_. Digest also this of Baxter: “The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest matters.”

‘When the paragraph in question was shown to Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed to give him any dissatisfaction was that which classed him with the Whig party. He says, that, if resolutions are a nourishing kind of diet, that party must be in a very hearty and flourishing condition; for that they have quietly eaten more good ones of their own baking than he could have conceived to be possible without repletion. He has been for some years past (I regret to say) an ardent opponent of those sound doctrines of protective policy which form so prominent a portion of the creed of that party. I confess, that, in some discussions which I have had with him on this point in my study, he has displayed a vein of obstinacy which I had not hitherto detected in his composition. He is also (_horresco referens_) infected in no small measure with the peculiar notions of a print called the Liberator, whose heresies I take every proper opportunity of combating, and of which, I thank God, I have never read a single line.

‘I did not see Mr. B.’s verses until they appeared in print, and there _is_ certainly one thing in them which I consider highly improper. I allude to the personal references to myself by name. To confer notoriety on an humble individual who is laboring quietly in his vocation, and who keeps his cloth as free as he can from the dust of the political arena (though _voe mihi si non evangelizavero_), is no doubt an indecorum. The sentiments which he attributes to me I will not deny to be mine. They were embodied, though in a different form, in a discourse preached upon the last day of public fasting, and were acceptable to my entire people (of whatever political views), except the postmaster, who dissented _ex officio_. I observe that you sometimes devote a portion of your paper to a religious summary. I should be well pleased to furnish a copy of my discourse for insertion in this department of your instructive journal. By omitting the advertisements, it might easily be got within the limits of a single number, and I venture to insure you the sale of some scores of copies in this town. I will cheerfully render myself responsible for ten. It might possibly be advantageous to issue it as an _extra_. But perhaps you will not esteem it an object, and I will not press it. My offer does not spring from any weak desire of seeing my name in print; for I can enjoy this satisfaction at any time by turning to the Triennial Catalogue of the University, where it also possesses that added emphasis of Italics with which those of my calling are distinguished.

‘I would simply add, that I continue to fit ingenuous youth for college, and that I have two spacious and airy sleeping apartments at this moment unoccupied. _Ingenuas didicisse_, &c. Terms, which vary according to the circumstances of the parents, may be known on application to me by letter, post-paid. In all cases the lad will be expected to fetch his own towels. This rule, Mrs. W. desires me to add, has no exceptions.

‘Respectfully, your obedient servant,

‘HOMER WILBUR, A.M.