It is a fearful proof of the
widespread
nature of this
contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from
under the cloak (_credite, posteri!
contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from
under the cloak (_credite, posteri!
James Russell Lowell
Snooks,
But, as men deepest read in books
Are perfectly aware, bones,
If buried fifty years or so,
Lose their identity and grow
From human bones to bare bones. '
Still, if to Jaalam you go down,
You'll find two parties in the town, 871
One headed by Benaiah Brown,
And one by Perez Tinkham;
The first believe the ghosts all through
And vow that they shall never rue
The happy chance by which they knew
That people in Jupiter are blue,
And very fond of Irish stew,
Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo 879
Rapped clearly to a chosen few--
Whereas the others think 'em
A trick got up by Doctor Slade
With Deborah the chambermaid
And that sly cretur Jinny.
That all the revelations wise,
At which the Brownites made big eyes,
Might have been given by Jared Keyes,
A natural fool and ninny,
And, last week, didn't Eliab Snooks
Come back with never better looks, 890
As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks,
And bright as a new pin, eh?
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs)
That no case to his mind occurs
Where spirits ever did converse,
Save in a kind of guttural Erse,
(So say the best authorities;)
And that a charge by raps conveyed 900
Should be most scrupulously weighed
And searched into, before it is
Made public, since it may give pain
That cannot soon be cured again,
And one word may infix a stain
Which ten cannot gloss over,
Though speaking for his private part,
He is rejoiced with all his heart
Miss Knott missed not her lover.
FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM
I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,
And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;
But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel;
I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel,
And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn't say,
I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p----
[I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount
_Clump, Clump_, the stairways of the brain with--'_Sir, my small
account_,'
And, after every good we gain--Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom--still,
As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, 10
The _garcons_ in our Cafe of Life, by dreaming us forgot--
Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,--
Till they say, bowing, _S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note! _]
I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day,
The Tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway,
Great Caesar in mid-march would stop, if Caesar could not pay;
Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now
Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow;
Nay, as long back as Bess's time,--when Walsingham went over
Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover 20
He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,
He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand.
If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win,
Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in?
Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on,
And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison?
I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true;
'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new:
The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne
Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne. 20
But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages,
With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged pages,
Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam,
By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home;
And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then,
Our outlay is about as small--just paper, ink, and pen.
Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew;
Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view,
Then take an _alias_, change the sign, and the old trade renew;
Indeed, 'tis wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, 40
Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last;
How it is sure its system would break up at once without
The bunion which it _will_ believe hereditary gout;
How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder,
Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder,
Shouts, _Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! One moment, more aspire! _
Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher,
And like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire.
There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer
The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked
whilere, 50
And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth,
The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth:
'Well,' thus it muses, 'well, what odds? 'Tis not for us to warn;
'Twill be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born;
Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn?
Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent received from Treadmill shares,
We might . . . but these poor devils at last will get our easy chairs.
High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug,
Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug;
From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum 60
Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come;
Young ears Hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on,
Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone;
Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an egg was laid!
_Cack-cack-cack-cackle! _ rang around, the scratch for worms was stayed,
_Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! _ from _this_ egg the coming cock shall stalk!
The great New Era dawns, the age of Deeds and not of Talk!
And every stupid hen of us hugged close his egg of chalk,
Thought,--sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength,
When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot, 70
But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot! '
So muse the dim _Emeriti_, and, mournful though it be,
I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me,
Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame
Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all--coming till they came.
Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers?
Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears;
Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut,
Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there--But!
* * * * *
We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead, 80
With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead,
With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare _shall_ be a portal,
And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal;
We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition,
With _mediums_ and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission,
(The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,--
'Twould seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak. )
Make but the public laugh, be sure 'twill take you to be somebody;
'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body;
'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why 90
Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?
Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,
And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?
Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then
Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen?
Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff;
But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;--
No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,
And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,
From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a
club-lick, 100
So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.
Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow;
They take the sun-warmth down with them--pearls could not conquer so;
There _is_ a moral here, you see: if you would preach, you must
Steep all your truths in sunshine would you have them pierce the crust;
Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign
And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine;
Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine!
I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far
To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar, 110
And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light
In which . . . I trace . . . a . . . let me see--bless me! 'tis out of sight.
* * * * *
There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel
A grandeur in the silent man forever at the wheel,
That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,
Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain, and will,
And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud,
Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud;
And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled,
Towards the great moon which, setting on, the silent underworld, 120
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,
Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales,
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails;
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare
With any thing that any race has fashioned any where;
'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,
We think of Hyde Park Corner, and concede you beat us flat 130
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked hat;
But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,
Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,
You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too;
No; mortal men build nowadays, as always heretofore,
Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,
Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,
And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery, 140
If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;
'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger--say, _per
Contra_ to a loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;
And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,
Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,
Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark; 149
Religion, painting, sculpture, song--for these they ran up jolly ticks
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics,
And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates
Are not entirely deaf to men who _can_ build ships and states;
The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,
Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin;
And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid nineteenth century;
This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did 160
When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-leashed lightning now
Replaces Delphos--men don't leave the steamer for the scow;
What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read
The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelungenlied?
_Their_ public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah,
the hairy Graf--
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; _we_ weary o'er a paragraph;
The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles;
From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused
jars 170
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;
Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,
The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking.
AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE
Somewhere in India, upon a time,
(Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse,)
There dwelt two saints whose privilege sublime
It was to sit and watch the world grow worse,
Their only care (in that delicious clime)
At proper intervals to pray and curse;
Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother
Used for himself, Damnonian for the other.
One half the time of each was spent in praying
For blessings on his own unworthy head, 10
The other half in fearfully portraying
Where certain folks would go when they were dead;
This system of exchanges--there's no saying
To what more solid barter 'twould have led,
But that a river, vext with boils and swellings
At rainy times, kept peace between their dwellings.
So they two played at wordy battledore
And kept a curse forever in the air,
Flying this way or that from shore to shore;
Nor other labor did this holy pair, 20
Clothed and supported from the lavish store
Which crowds lanigerous brought with daily care;
They toiled not, neither did they spin; their bias
Was tow'rd the harder task of being pious.
Each from his hut rushed six score times a day,
Like a great canon of the Church full-rammed
With cartridge theologic, (so to say,)
Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, slammed
His hovel's door behind him in away
That to his foe said plainly,--_you'll_ be damned; 30
And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill and strong
The two D---- D'd each other all day long.
One was a dancing Dervise, a Mohammedan,
The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist;
One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ramadan,
Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws of his
Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called Ahmed an
Old top, and, as a clincher, shook across a fist
With nails six inches long, yet lifted not
His eyes from off his navel's mystic knot. 40
'Who whirls not round six thousand times an hour
Will go,' screamed Ahmed, 'to the evil place;
May he eat dirt, and may the dog and Giaour
Defile the graves of him and all his race;
Allah loves faithful souls and gives them power
To spin till they are purple in the face;
Some folks get you know what, but he that pure is
Earns Paradise and ninety thousand houris. '
'Upon the silver mountain, South by East,
Sits Brahma fed upon the sacred bean; 30
He loves those men whose nails are still increased,
Who all their lives keep ugly, foul, and lean;
'Tis of his grace that not a bird or beast
Adorned with claws like mine was ever seen;
The suns and stars are Brahma's thoughts divine,
Even as these trees I seem to see are mine. '
'Thou seem'st to see, indeed! ' roared Ahmed back;
'Were I but once across this plaguy stream,
With a stout sapling in my hand, one whack
On those lank ribs would rid thee of that dream! 60
Thy Brahma-blasphemy is ipecac
To my soul's stomach; couldst thou grasp the scheme
Of true redemption, thou wouldst know that Deity
Whirls by a kind of blessed spontaneity.
'And this it is which keeps our earth here going
With all the stars. '--'Oh, vile! but there's a place
Prepared for such; to think of Brahma throwing
Worlds like a juggler's balls up into Space!
Why, not so much as a smooth lotos blowing
Is e'er allowed that silence to efface 70
Which broods round Brahma, and our earth, 'tis known,
Rests on a tortoise, moveless as this stone. '
So they kept up their banning amoebaean,
When suddenly came floating down the stream
A youth whose face like an incarnate paean
Glowed, 'twas so full of grandeur and of gleam;
'If there _be_ gods, then, doubtless, this must be one,'
Thought both at once, and then began to scream,
'Surely, whate'er immortals know, thou knowest,
Decide between us twain before thou goest! ' 80
The youth was drifting in a slim canoe
Most like a huge white water-lily's petal,
But neither of our theologians knew
Whereof 'twas made; whether of heavenly metal
Seldseen, or of a vast pearl split in two
And hollowed, was a point they could not settle;
'Twas good debate-seed, though, and bore large fruit
In after years of many a tart dispute.
There were no wings upon the stranger's shoulders.
And yet he seemed so capable of rising 90
That, had he soared like thistle-down, beholders
Had thought the circumstance noways surprising;
Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders
Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize-ring,
The painter of his boat he lightly threw
Around a lotos-stem, and brought her to.
The strange youth had a look as if he might
Have trod far planets where the atmosphere
(Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light,
Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here; 100
His air was that of a cosmopolite
In the wide universe from sphere to sphere;
Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty)
An officer of Saturn's guards off duty.
Both saints began to unfold their tales at once,
Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile,
That they might seize his ear; _fool! knave! _ and _dunce! _
Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil
In a child's fingers; voluble as duns,
They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110
In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger
Began to think his ear-drums in some danger.
In general those who nothing have to say
Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it;
They turn and vary it in every way,
Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, _ragouting_ it;
Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay,
Then let it slip to be again pursuing it;
They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it,
Refute it, flout it, swear to 't, prove it, doubt it. 120
Our saints had practised for some thirty years;
Their talk, beginning with a single stem,
Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers,
Colonies of digression, and, in them,
Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the ears,
They could convey damnation in a hem,
And blow the pinch of premise-priming off
Long syllogistic batteries, with a cough.
Each had a theory that the human ear
A providential tunnel was, which led 130
To a huge vacuum (and surely here
They showed some knowledge of the general head,)
For cant to be decanted through, a mere
Auricular canal or mill-race fed
All day and night, in sunshine and in shower,
From their vast heads of milk-and-water-power.
The present being a peculiar case,
Each with unwonted zeal the other scouted,
Put his spurred hobby through its every pace, 139
Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, jeered, sneered, flouted,
Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with his face
Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be shouted,
And, with each inch of person and of vesture,
Contrived to hint some most disdainful gesture.
At length, when their breath's end was come about,
And both could now and then just gasp 'impostor! '
Holding their heads thrust menacingly out,
As staggering cocks keep up their fighting posture,
The stranger smiled and said, 'Beyond a doubt
'Tis fortunate, my friends, that you have lost your 150
United parts of speech, or it had been
Impossible for me to get between.
'Produce! says Nature,--what have you produced?
A new strait-waistcoat for the human mind;
Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, arteried, juiced,
As other men? yet, faithless to your kind,
Rather like noxious insects you are used
To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the rind
Laying your creed-eggs, whence in time there spring
Consumers new to eat and buzz and sting. 160
'Work! you have no conception how 'twill sweeten
Your views of Life and Nature, God and Man;
Had you been forced to earn what you have eaten,
Your heaven had shown a less dyspeptic plan;
At present your whole function is to eat ten
And talk ten times as rapidly as you can;
Were your shape true to cosmogonic laws,
You would be nothing but a pair of jaws.
'Of all the useless beings in creation
The earth could spare most easily you bakers 170
Of little clay gods, formed in shape and fashion
Precisely in the image of their makers;
Why it would almost move a saint to passion,
To see these blind and deaf, the hourly breakers
Of God's own image in their brother men,
Set themselves up to tell the how, where, when,
'Of God's existence; one's digestion's worse--
So makes a god of vengeance and of blood;
Another,--but no matter, they reverse
Creation's plan, out of their own vile mud 180
Pat up a god, and burn, drown, hang, or curse
Whoever worships not; each keeps his stud
Of texts which wait with saddle on and bridle
To hunt down atheists to their ugly idol.
'This, I perceive, has been your occupation;
You should have been more usefully employed;
All men are bound to earn their daily ration,
Where States make not that primal contract void
By cramps and limits; simple devastation
Is the worm's task, and what he has destroyed 190
His monument; creating is man's work,
And that, too, something more than mist and murk. '
So having said, the youth was seen no more,
And straightway our sage Brahmin, the philosopher,
Cried, 'That was aimed at thee, thou endless bore,
Idle and useless as the growth of moss over
A rotting tree-trunk! ' 'I would square that score
Full soon,' replied the Dervise, 'could I cross over
And catch thee by the beard. Thy nails I'd trim
And make thee work, as was advised by him. 200
'Work? Am I not at work from morn till night
Sounding the deeps of oracles umbilical
Which for man's guidance never come to light,
With all their various aptitudes, until I call? '
'And I, do I not twirl from left to right
For conscience' sake? Is that no work? Thou silly gull,
He had thee in his eye; 'twas Gabriel
Sent to reward my faith, I know him well. '
'Twas Vishnu, thou vile whirligig! ' and so
The good old quarrel was begun anew; 210
One would have sworn the sky was black as sloe,
Had but the other dared to call it blue;
Nor were the followers who fed them slow
To treat each other with their curses, too,
Each hating t'other (moves it tears or laughter? )
Because he thought him sure of hell hereafter.
At last some genius built a bridge of boats
Over the stream, and Ahmed's zealots filed
Across, upon a mission to (cut throats
And) spread religion pure and undefiled; 220
They sowed the propagandist's wildest oats,
Cutting off all, down to the smallest child,
And came back, giving thanks for such fat mercies,
To find their harvest gone past prayers or curses.
All gone except their saint's religious hops,
Which he kept up with more than common flourish;
But these, however satisfying crops
For the inner man, were not enough to nourish
The body politic, which quickly drops
Reserve in such sad junctures, and turns currish; 230
So Ahmed soon got cursed for all the famine
Where'er the popular voice could edge a damn in.
At first he pledged a miracle quite boldly.
And, for a day or two, they growled and waited;
But, finding that this kind of manna coldly
Sat on their stomachs, they erelong berated
The saint for still persisting in that old lie,
Till soon the whole machine of saintship grated,
Ran slow, creaked, stopped, and, wishing him in Tophet,
They gathered strength enough to stone the prophet. 240
Some stronger ones contrived (by eatting leather,
Their weaker friends, and one thing or another)
The winter months of scarcity to weather;
Among these was the late saint's younger brother,
Who, in the spring, collecting them together,
Persuaded them that Ahmed's holy pother
Had wrought in their behalf, and that the place
Of Saint should be continued to his race.
Accordingly, 'twas settled on the spot
That Allah favored that peculiar breed; 250
Beside, as all were satisfied, 'twould not
Be quite respectable to have the need
Of public spiritual food forgot;
And so the tribe, with proper forms, decreed
That he, and, failing him, his next of kin,
Forever for the people's good should spin.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS
FIRST SERIES
NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
[I have observed, reader (bene-or male-volent, as it may happen), that
it is customary to append to the second editions of books, and to the
second works of authors, short sentences commendatory of the first,
under the title of _Notices of the Press_. These, I have been given to
understand, are procurable at certain established rates, payment being
made either in money or advertising patronage by the publisher, or by an
adequate outlay of servility on the part of the author. Considering
these things with myself, and also that such notices are neither
intended, nor generally believed, to convey any real opinions, being a
purely ceremonial accompaniment of literature, and resembling
certificates to the virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, I conceived
that it would be not only more economical to prepare a sufficient number
of such myself, but also more immediately subservient to the end in view
to prefix them to this our primary edition rather than to await the
contingency of a second, when they would seem to be of small utility. To
delay attaching the _bobs_ until the second attempt at flying the kite
would indicate but a slender experience in that useful art. Neither has
it escaped my notice nor failed to afford me matter of reflection, that,
when a circus or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial step is
to send forward large and highly ornamented bills of performance, to be
hung in the bar-room and the post-office. These having been sufficiently
gazed at, and beginning to lose their attractiveness except for the
flies, and, truly, the boys also (in whom I find it impossible to
repress, even during school-hours, certain oral and telegraphic
communications concerning the expected show), upon some fine morning the
band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and with
noisy advertisement, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, makes the
circuit of our startled village streets. Then, as the exciting sounds
draw nearer and nearer, do I desiderate those eyes of Aristarchus,
'whose looks were as a breeching to a boy. ' Then do I perceive, with
vain regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage of a pancratic or
pantechnic education, since he is most reverenced by my little subjects
who can throw the cleanest summerset or walk most securely upon the
revolving cask. The story of the Pied Piper becomes for the first time
credible to me (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners dating their legal
instruments from the period of his exit), as I behold how those strains,
without pretence of magical potency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor
leave to the pedagogic an entire self-control. For these reasons, lest
my kingly prerogative should suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless
commons, whom I follow into the street, chiefly lest some mischief may
chance befall them. After the manner of such a band, I send forward the
following notices of domestic manufacture, to make brazen proclamation,
not unconscious of the advantage which will accrue, if our little craft,
_cymbula sutilis_, shall seem to leave port with a clipping breeze, and
to carry, in nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. Nevertheless, I have
chosen, as being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently
objurgatory, that readers of every taste may find a dish to their
palate. I have modelled them upon actually existing specimens, preserved
in my own cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, I had
copied with tolerable exactness from a notice of one of my own
discourses, which, from its superior tone and appearance of vast
experience, I concluded to have been written by a man at least three
hundred years of age, though I recollected no existing instance of such
antediluvian longevity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author
to be a young gentleman preparing for the ministry under the direction
of one of my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom I had once
instinctively corrected in a Latin quantity. But this I have been
forced to omit, from its too great length. --H. W. ]
* * * * *
_From the Universal Littery Universe_.
Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader. . . . Under a
rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to the
memory and engraven on the heart of every moral and social being. . . . We
consider this a _unique_ performance. . . . We hope to see it soon
introduced into our common schools. . . . Mr. Wilbur has performed his
duties as editor with excellent taste and judgment. . . . This is a vein
which we hope to see successfully prosecuted. . . . We hail the appearance
of this work as a long stride toward the formation of a purely
aboriginal, indigenous, native, and American literature. We rejoice to
meet with an author national enough to break away from the slavish
deference, too common among us, to English grammar and orthography. . . .
Where all is so good, we are at a loss how to make extracts. . . . On the
whole, we may call it a volume which no library, pretending to entire
completeness, should fail to place upon its shelves.
* * * * *
_From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle_.
A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our
bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the
editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should
any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve
them! ) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves of
Vallum-brozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the
combined heads of author and editor. The work is wretchedly got up. . . .
We should like to know how much _British gold_ was pocketed by this
libeller of our country and her purest patriots.
* * * * *
_From the Oldfogrumville Mentor_.
We have not had time to do more than glance through this handsomely
printed volume, but the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr.
Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty for the worth of
its contents. . . . The paper is white, the type clear, and the volume of a
convenient and attractive size. . . . In reading this elegantly executed
work, it has seemed to us that a passage or two might have been
retrenched with advantage, and that the general style of diction was
susceptible of a higher polish. . . . On the whole, we may safely leave the
ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that
in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial
dialect and turns of expression, a dash of humor or satire might be
thrown in with advantage. . . . The work is admirably got up. . . . This work
will form an appropriate ornament to the centre table. It is beautifully
printed, on paper of an excellent quality.
* * * * *
_From the Dekay Bulwark_.
We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous
engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such
an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by
without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas!
too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask
of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all
the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common
humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and
senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the
respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to
the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and
infidelity.
It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of this
contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from
under the cloak (_credite, posteri! _) of a clergyman. It is a mournful
spectacle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new
ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred
precincts of the pulpit. . . . On the whole, we consider this volume as one
of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the
late French 'Revolution' (! )
* * * * *
_From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a try-weakly family
journal)_.
Altogether an admirable work. . . . Full of humor, boisterous, but
delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos
cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet
keen as the scymitar of Saladin. . . . A work full of 'mountain-mirth,'
mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel. . . . We know not whether to
admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author,
or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once
both objective and subjective. . . . We might indulge in some criticisms,
but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As
it is, he has a wonderful _pose_, which flits from flower to flower, and
bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede)
to the 'highest heaven of invention. ' . . . We love a book so purely
objective . . . Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an
extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity. . . . In fine, we consider
this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We
know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to
which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the
Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the
star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds,
may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved
Europe. . . . We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks
of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving enduring
fame. Already we should be inclined to assign him a high position in the
bright galaxy of our American bards.
* * * * *
_From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom. _
A volume in bad grammar and worse taste. . . . While the pieces here
collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of
obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as
the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must
expect the lash he so richly merits. . . . Contemptible slanders. . . . Vilest
Billingsgate. . . . Has raked all the gutters of our language. . . . The most
pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant
venom. . . . General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies. . . .
The _Reverend_ Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth. . . .
* * * * *
_From the World-Harmonic-AEolian-Attachment_.
Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance more Orphic than this.
While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works
continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those
who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph
God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed. . . . Under mask of
quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship-wracked)
soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate, but ever climbing hopefully
toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow. . . . Yes, thou poor,
forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this
life of ours has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity and
laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites-cloak,
we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, that is
in him. Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself
to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the 'nicer proprieties,' inexpert
of 'elegant diction,' yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears,
up there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy,
indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the
_Necessity of Creating_ somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not
Oedipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum
Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need)
a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He
shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him
also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine
Comedies,--if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay
all; for what truly is this which we name _All_, but that which we do
_not_ possess? . . . Glimpses also are given us of an old father Ezekiel,
not without paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown,
parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed,
we fancy, _queued_ perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful
September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest
Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no
more. . . . Of 'Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M. , Pastor of the First Church in
Jaalam,' we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his
Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the--blindness! A tolerably
caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite faculty of
sermonizing, muscularized by long practice and excellent digestive
apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small
private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own.
To him, there, 'Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,' our Hosea
presents himself as a quite inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich poverty
of Latin and Greek,--so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic
through horn-lensed editorial spectacles,--but naught farther? O
purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are
things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that
old bewildered head of thine that there was the _Possibility of the
Infinite_ in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped,
has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? 'Talented young
parishioner'? Among the Arts whereof thou art _Magister_, does that of
_seeing_ happen to be one? Unhappy _Artium Magister! _ Somehow a Nemean
lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad-howling
sand-wildernesses of a sufficiently rare spirit-Libya (it may be
supposed) has got whelped among the sheep. Already he stands
wild-glaring, with feet clutching the ground as with oak-roots,
gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of thy little fold. In
heaven's name, go not near him with that flybite crook of thine! In good
time, thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the appointed place of
departed Artillery-Election Sermons, Right-hands of Fellowship, and
Results of Councils, gathered to thy spiritual fathers with much Latin
of the Epitaphial sort; thou too, shalt have thy reward; but on him the
Eumenides have looked, not Xantippes of the pit, snake-tressed,
finger-threatening, but radiantly calm as on antique gems; for him paws
impatient the winged courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit; him
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.
But, as men deepest read in books
Are perfectly aware, bones,
If buried fifty years or so,
Lose their identity and grow
From human bones to bare bones. '
Still, if to Jaalam you go down,
You'll find two parties in the town, 871
One headed by Benaiah Brown,
And one by Perez Tinkham;
The first believe the ghosts all through
And vow that they shall never rue
The happy chance by which they knew
That people in Jupiter are blue,
And very fond of Irish stew,
Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo 879
Rapped clearly to a chosen few--
Whereas the others think 'em
A trick got up by Doctor Slade
With Deborah the chambermaid
And that sly cretur Jinny.
That all the revelations wise,
At which the Brownites made big eyes,
Might have been given by Jared Keyes,
A natural fool and ninny,
And, last week, didn't Eliab Snooks
Come back with never better looks, 890
As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks,
And bright as a new pin, eh?
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs)
That no case to his mind occurs
Where spirits ever did converse,
Save in a kind of guttural Erse,
(So say the best authorities;)
And that a charge by raps conveyed 900
Should be most scrupulously weighed
And searched into, before it is
Made public, since it may give pain
That cannot soon be cured again,
And one word may infix a stain
Which ten cannot gloss over,
Though speaking for his private part,
He is rejoiced with all his heart
Miss Knott missed not her lover.
FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM
I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,
And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;
But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel;
I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel,
And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn't say,
I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p----
[I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount
_Clump, Clump_, the stairways of the brain with--'_Sir, my small
account_,'
And, after every good we gain--Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom--still,
As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, 10
The _garcons_ in our Cafe of Life, by dreaming us forgot--
Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,--
Till they say, bowing, _S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note! _]
I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day,
The Tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway,
Great Caesar in mid-march would stop, if Caesar could not pay;
Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now
Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow;
Nay, as long back as Bess's time,--when Walsingham went over
Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover 20
He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,
He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand.
If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win,
Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in?
Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on,
And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison?
I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true;
'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new:
The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne
Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne. 20
But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages,
With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged pages,
Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam,
By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home;
And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then,
Our outlay is about as small--just paper, ink, and pen.
Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew;
Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view,
Then take an _alias_, change the sign, and the old trade renew;
Indeed, 'tis wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, 40
Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last;
How it is sure its system would break up at once without
The bunion which it _will_ believe hereditary gout;
How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder,
Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder,
Shouts, _Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! One moment, more aspire! _
Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher,
And like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire.
There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer
The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked
whilere, 50
And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth,
The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth:
'Well,' thus it muses, 'well, what odds? 'Tis not for us to warn;
'Twill be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born;
Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn?
Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent received from Treadmill shares,
We might . . . but these poor devils at last will get our easy chairs.
High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug,
Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug;
From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum 60
Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come;
Young ears Hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on,
Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone;
Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an egg was laid!
_Cack-cack-cack-cackle! _ rang around, the scratch for worms was stayed,
_Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! _ from _this_ egg the coming cock shall stalk!
The great New Era dawns, the age of Deeds and not of Talk!
And every stupid hen of us hugged close his egg of chalk,
Thought,--sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength,
When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot, 70
But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot! '
So muse the dim _Emeriti_, and, mournful though it be,
I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me,
Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame
Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all--coming till they came.
Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers?
Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears;
Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut,
Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there--But!
* * * * *
We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead, 80
With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead,
With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare _shall_ be a portal,
And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal;
We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition,
With _mediums_ and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission,
(The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,--
'Twould seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak. )
Make but the public laugh, be sure 'twill take you to be somebody;
'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body;
'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why 90
Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?
Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,
And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?
Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then
Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen?
Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff;
But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;--
No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,
And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,
From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a
club-lick, 100
So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.
Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow;
They take the sun-warmth down with them--pearls could not conquer so;
There _is_ a moral here, you see: if you would preach, you must
Steep all your truths in sunshine would you have them pierce the crust;
Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign
And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine;
Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine!
I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far
To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar, 110
And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light
In which . . . I trace . . . a . . . let me see--bless me! 'tis out of sight.
* * * * *
There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel
A grandeur in the silent man forever at the wheel,
That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,
Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain, and will,
And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud,
Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud;
And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled,
Towards the great moon which, setting on, the silent underworld, 120
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,
Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales,
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails;
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare
With any thing that any race has fashioned any where;
'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,
We think of Hyde Park Corner, and concede you beat us flat 130
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked hat;
But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,
Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,
You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too;
No; mortal men build nowadays, as always heretofore,
Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,
Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,
And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery, 140
If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;
'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger--say, _per
Contra_ to a loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;
And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,
Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,
Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark; 149
Religion, painting, sculpture, song--for these they ran up jolly ticks
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics,
And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates
Are not entirely deaf to men who _can_ build ships and states;
The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,
Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin;
And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid nineteenth century;
This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did 160
When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-leashed lightning now
Replaces Delphos--men don't leave the steamer for the scow;
What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read
The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelungenlied?
_Their_ public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah,
the hairy Graf--
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; _we_ weary o'er a paragraph;
The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles;
From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused
jars 170
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;
Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,
The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking.
AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE
Somewhere in India, upon a time,
(Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse,)
There dwelt two saints whose privilege sublime
It was to sit and watch the world grow worse,
Their only care (in that delicious clime)
At proper intervals to pray and curse;
Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother
Used for himself, Damnonian for the other.
One half the time of each was spent in praying
For blessings on his own unworthy head, 10
The other half in fearfully portraying
Where certain folks would go when they were dead;
This system of exchanges--there's no saying
To what more solid barter 'twould have led,
But that a river, vext with boils and swellings
At rainy times, kept peace between their dwellings.
So they two played at wordy battledore
And kept a curse forever in the air,
Flying this way or that from shore to shore;
Nor other labor did this holy pair, 20
Clothed and supported from the lavish store
Which crowds lanigerous brought with daily care;
They toiled not, neither did they spin; their bias
Was tow'rd the harder task of being pious.
Each from his hut rushed six score times a day,
Like a great canon of the Church full-rammed
With cartridge theologic, (so to say,)
Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, slammed
His hovel's door behind him in away
That to his foe said plainly,--_you'll_ be damned; 30
And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill and strong
The two D---- D'd each other all day long.
One was a dancing Dervise, a Mohammedan,
The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist;
One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ramadan,
Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws of his
Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called Ahmed an
Old top, and, as a clincher, shook across a fist
With nails six inches long, yet lifted not
His eyes from off his navel's mystic knot. 40
'Who whirls not round six thousand times an hour
Will go,' screamed Ahmed, 'to the evil place;
May he eat dirt, and may the dog and Giaour
Defile the graves of him and all his race;
Allah loves faithful souls and gives them power
To spin till they are purple in the face;
Some folks get you know what, but he that pure is
Earns Paradise and ninety thousand houris. '
'Upon the silver mountain, South by East,
Sits Brahma fed upon the sacred bean; 30
He loves those men whose nails are still increased,
Who all their lives keep ugly, foul, and lean;
'Tis of his grace that not a bird or beast
Adorned with claws like mine was ever seen;
The suns and stars are Brahma's thoughts divine,
Even as these trees I seem to see are mine. '
'Thou seem'st to see, indeed! ' roared Ahmed back;
'Were I but once across this plaguy stream,
With a stout sapling in my hand, one whack
On those lank ribs would rid thee of that dream! 60
Thy Brahma-blasphemy is ipecac
To my soul's stomach; couldst thou grasp the scheme
Of true redemption, thou wouldst know that Deity
Whirls by a kind of blessed spontaneity.
'And this it is which keeps our earth here going
With all the stars. '--'Oh, vile! but there's a place
Prepared for such; to think of Brahma throwing
Worlds like a juggler's balls up into Space!
Why, not so much as a smooth lotos blowing
Is e'er allowed that silence to efface 70
Which broods round Brahma, and our earth, 'tis known,
Rests on a tortoise, moveless as this stone. '
So they kept up their banning amoebaean,
When suddenly came floating down the stream
A youth whose face like an incarnate paean
Glowed, 'twas so full of grandeur and of gleam;
'If there _be_ gods, then, doubtless, this must be one,'
Thought both at once, and then began to scream,
'Surely, whate'er immortals know, thou knowest,
Decide between us twain before thou goest! ' 80
The youth was drifting in a slim canoe
Most like a huge white water-lily's petal,
But neither of our theologians knew
Whereof 'twas made; whether of heavenly metal
Seldseen, or of a vast pearl split in two
And hollowed, was a point they could not settle;
'Twas good debate-seed, though, and bore large fruit
In after years of many a tart dispute.
There were no wings upon the stranger's shoulders.
And yet he seemed so capable of rising 90
That, had he soared like thistle-down, beholders
Had thought the circumstance noways surprising;
Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders
Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize-ring,
The painter of his boat he lightly threw
Around a lotos-stem, and brought her to.
The strange youth had a look as if he might
Have trod far planets where the atmosphere
(Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light,
Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here; 100
His air was that of a cosmopolite
In the wide universe from sphere to sphere;
Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty)
An officer of Saturn's guards off duty.
Both saints began to unfold their tales at once,
Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile,
That they might seize his ear; _fool! knave! _ and _dunce! _
Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil
In a child's fingers; voluble as duns,
They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110
In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger
Began to think his ear-drums in some danger.
In general those who nothing have to say
Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it;
They turn and vary it in every way,
Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, _ragouting_ it;
Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay,
Then let it slip to be again pursuing it;
They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it,
Refute it, flout it, swear to 't, prove it, doubt it. 120
Our saints had practised for some thirty years;
Their talk, beginning with a single stem,
Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers,
Colonies of digression, and, in them,
Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the ears,
They could convey damnation in a hem,
And blow the pinch of premise-priming off
Long syllogistic batteries, with a cough.
Each had a theory that the human ear
A providential tunnel was, which led 130
To a huge vacuum (and surely here
They showed some knowledge of the general head,)
For cant to be decanted through, a mere
Auricular canal or mill-race fed
All day and night, in sunshine and in shower,
From their vast heads of milk-and-water-power.
The present being a peculiar case,
Each with unwonted zeal the other scouted,
Put his spurred hobby through its every pace, 139
Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, jeered, sneered, flouted,
Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with his face
Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be shouted,
And, with each inch of person and of vesture,
Contrived to hint some most disdainful gesture.
At length, when their breath's end was come about,
And both could now and then just gasp 'impostor! '
Holding their heads thrust menacingly out,
As staggering cocks keep up their fighting posture,
The stranger smiled and said, 'Beyond a doubt
'Tis fortunate, my friends, that you have lost your 150
United parts of speech, or it had been
Impossible for me to get between.
'Produce! says Nature,--what have you produced?
A new strait-waistcoat for the human mind;
Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, arteried, juiced,
As other men? yet, faithless to your kind,
Rather like noxious insects you are used
To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the rind
Laying your creed-eggs, whence in time there spring
Consumers new to eat and buzz and sting. 160
'Work! you have no conception how 'twill sweeten
Your views of Life and Nature, God and Man;
Had you been forced to earn what you have eaten,
Your heaven had shown a less dyspeptic plan;
At present your whole function is to eat ten
And talk ten times as rapidly as you can;
Were your shape true to cosmogonic laws,
You would be nothing but a pair of jaws.
'Of all the useless beings in creation
The earth could spare most easily you bakers 170
Of little clay gods, formed in shape and fashion
Precisely in the image of their makers;
Why it would almost move a saint to passion,
To see these blind and deaf, the hourly breakers
Of God's own image in their brother men,
Set themselves up to tell the how, where, when,
'Of God's existence; one's digestion's worse--
So makes a god of vengeance and of blood;
Another,--but no matter, they reverse
Creation's plan, out of their own vile mud 180
Pat up a god, and burn, drown, hang, or curse
Whoever worships not; each keeps his stud
Of texts which wait with saddle on and bridle
To hunt down atheists to their ugly idol.
'This, I perceive, has been your occupation;
You should have been more usefully employed;
All men are bound to earn their daily ration,
Where States make not that primal contract void
By cramps and limits; simple devastation
Is the worm's task, and what he has destroyed 190
His monument; creating is man's work,
And that, too, something more than mist and murk. '
So having said, the youth was seen no more,
And straightway our sage Brahmin, the philosopher,
Cried, 'That was aimed at thee, thou endless bore,
Idle and useless as the growth of moss over
A rotting tree-trunk! ' 'I would square that score
Full soon,' replied the Dervise, 'could I cross over
And catch thee by the beard. Thy nails I'd trim
And make thee work, as was advised by him. 200
'Work? Am I not at work from morn till night
Sounding the deeps of oracles umbilical
Which for man's guidance never come to light,
With all their various aptitudes, until I call? '
'And I, do I not twirl from left to right
For conscience' sake? Is that no work? Thou silly gull,
He had thee in his eye; 'twas Gabriel
Sent to reward my faith, I know him well. '
'Twas Vishnu, thou vile whirligig! ' and so
The good old quarrel was begun anew; 210
One would have sworn the sky was black as sloe,
Had but the other dared to call it blue;
Nor were the followers who fed them slow
To treat each other with their curses, too,
Each hating t'other (moves it tears or laughter? )
Because he thought him sure of hell hereafter.
At last some genius built a bridge of boats
Over the stream, and Ahmed's zealots filed
Across, upon a mission to (cut throats
And) spread religion pure and undefiled; 220
They sowed the propagandist's wildest oats,
Cutting off all, down to the smallest child,
And came back, giving thanks for such fat mercies,
To find their harvest gone past prayers or curses.
All gone except their saint's religious hops,
Which he kept up with more than common flourish;
But these, however satisfying crops
For the inner man, were not enough to nourish
The body politic, which quickly drops
Reserve in such sad junctures, and turns currish; 230
So Ahmed soon got cursed for all the famine
Where'er the popular voice could edge a damn in.
At first he pledged a miracle quite boldly.
And, for a day or two, they growled and waited;
But, finding that this kind of manna coldly
Sat on their stomachs, they erelong berated
The saint for still persisting in that old lie,
Till soon the whole machine of saintship grated,
Ran slow, creaked, stopped, and, wishing him in Tophet,
They gathered strength enough to stone the prophet. 240
Some stronger ones contrived (by eatting leather,
Their weaker friends, and one thing or another)
The winter months of scarcity to weather;
Among these was the late saint's younger brother,
Who, in the spring, collecting them together,
Persuaded them that Ahmed's holy pother
Had wrought in their behalf, and that the place
Of Saint should be continued to his race.
Accordingly, 'twas settled on the spot
That Allah favored that peculiar breed; 250
Beside, as all were satisfied, 'twould not
Be quite respectable to have the need
Of public spiritual food forgot;
And so the tribe, with proper forms, decreed
That he, and, failing him, his next of kin,
Forever for the people's good should spin.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS
FIRST SERIES
NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
[I have observed, reader (bene-or male-volent, as it may happen), that
it is customary to append to the second editions of books, and to the
second works of authors, short sentences commendatory of the first,
under the title of _Notices of the Press_. These, I have been given to
understand, are procurable at certain established rates, payment being
made either in money or advertising patronage by the publisher, or by an
adequate outlay of servility on the part of the author. Considering
these things with myself, and also that such notices are neither
intended, nor generally believed, to convey any real opinions, being a
purely ceremonial accompaniment of literature, and resembling
certificates to the virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, I conceived
that it would be not only more economical to prepare a sufficient number
of such myself, but also more immediately subservient to the end in view
to prefix them to this our primary edition rather than to await the
contingency of a second, when they would seem to be of small utility. To
delay attaching the _bobs_ until the second attempt at flying the kite
would indicate but a slender experience in that useful art. Neither has
it escaped my notice nor failed to afford me matter of reflection, that,
when a circus or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial step is
to send forward large and highly ornamented bills of performance, to be
hung in the bar-room and the post-office. These having been sufficiently
gazed at, and beginning to lose their attractiveness except for the
flies, and, truly, the boys also (in whom I find it impossible to
repress, even during school-hours, certain oral and telegraphic
communications concerning the expected show), upon some fine morning the
band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and with
noisy advertisement, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, makes the
circuit of our startled village streets. Then, as the exciting sounds
draw nearer and nearer, do I desiderate those eyes of Aristarchus,
'whose looks were as a breeching to a boy. ' Then do I perceive, with
vain regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage of a pancratic or
pantechnic education, since he is most reverenced by my little subjects
who can throw the cleanest summerset or walk most securely upon the
revolving cask. The story of the Pied Piper becomes for the first time
credible to me (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners dating their legal
instruments from the period of his exit), as I behold how those strains,
without pretence of magical potency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor
leave to the pedagogic an entire self-control. For these reasons, lest
my kingly prerogative should suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless
commons, whom I follow into the street, chiefly lest some mischief may
chance befall them. After the manner of such a band, I send forward the
following notices of domestic manufacture, to make brazen proclamation,
not unconscious of the advantage which will accrue, if our little craft,
_cymbula sutilis_, shall seem to leave port with a clipping breeze, and
to carry, in nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. Nevertheless, I have
chosen, as being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently
objurgatory, that readers of every taste may find a dish to their
palate. I have modelled them upon actually existing specimens, preserved
in my own cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, I had
copied with tolerable exactness from a notice of one of my own
discourses, which, from its superior tone and appearance of vast
experience, I concluded to have been written by a man at least three
hundred years of age, though I recollected no existing instance of such
antediluvian longevity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author
to be a young gentleman preparing for the ministry under the direction
of one of my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom I had once
instinctively corrected in a Latin quantity. But this I have been
forced to omit, from its too great length. --H. W. ]
* * * * *
_From the Universal Littery Universe_.
Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader. . . . Under a
rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to the
memory and engraven on the heart of every moral and social being. . . . We
consider this a _unique_ performance. . . . We hope to see it soon
introduced into our common schools. . . . Mr. Wilbur has performed his
duties as editor with excellent taste and judgment. . . . This is a vein
which we hope to see successfully prosecuted. . . . We hail the appearance
of this work as a long stride toward the formation of a purely
aboriginal, indigenous, native, and American literature. We rejoice to
meet with an author national enough to break away from the slavish
deference, too common among us, to English grammar and orthography. . . .
Where all is so good, we are at a loss how to make extracts. . . . On the
whole, we may call it a volume which no library, pretending to entire
completeness, should fail to place upon its shelves.
* * * * *
_From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle_.
A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our
bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the
editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should
any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve
them! ) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves of
Vallum-brozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the
combined heads of author and editor. The work is wretchedly got up. . . .
We should like to know how much _British gold_ was pocketed by this
libeller of our country and her purest patriots.
* * * * *
_From the Oldfogrumville Mentor_.
We have not had time to do more than glance through this handsomely
printed volume, but the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr.
Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty for the worth of
its contents. . . . The paper is white, the type clear, and the volume of a
convenient and attractive size. . . . In reading this elegantly executed
work, it has seemed to us that a passage or two might have been
retrenched with advantage, and that the general style of diction was
susceptible of a higher polish. . . . On the whole, we may safely leave the
ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that
in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial
dialect and turns of expression, a dash of humor or satire might be
thrown in with advantage. . . . The work is admirably got up. . . . This work
will form an appropriate ornament to the centre table. It is beautifully
printed, on paper of an excellent quality.
* * * * *
_From the Dekay Bulwark_.
We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous
engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such
an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by
without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas!
too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask
of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all
the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common
humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and
senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the
respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to
the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and
infidelity.
It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of this
contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from
under the cloak (_credite, posteri! _) of a clergyman. It is a mournful
spectacle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new
ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred
precincts of the pulpit. . . . On the whole, we consider this volume as one
of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the
late French 'Revolution' (! )
* * * * *
_From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a try-weakly family
journal)_.
Altogether an admirable work. . . . Full of humor, boisterous, but
delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos
cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet
keen as the scymitar of Saladin. . . . A work full of 'mountain-mirth,'
mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel. . . . We know not whether to
admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author,
or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once
both objective and subjective. . . . We might indulge in some criticisms,
but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As
it is, he has a wonderful _pose_, which flits from flower to flower, and
bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede)
to the 'highest heaven of invention. ' . . . We love a book so purely
objective . . . Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an
extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity. . . . In fine, we consider
this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We
know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to
which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the
Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the
star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds,
may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved
Europe. . . . We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks
of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving enduring
fame. Already we should be inclined to assign him a high position in the
bright galaxy of our American bards.
* * * * *
_From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom. _
A volume in bad grammar and worse taste. . . . While the pieces here
collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of
obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as
the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must
expect the lash he so richly merits. . . . Contemptible slanders. . . . Vilest
Billingsgate. . . . Has raked all the gutters of our language. . . . The most
pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant
venom. . . . General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies. . . .
The _Reverend_ Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth. . . .
* * * * *
_From the World-Harmonic-AEolian-Attachment_.
Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance more Orphic than this.
While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works
continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those
who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph
God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed. . . . Under mask of
quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship-wracked)
soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate, but ever climbing hopefully
toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow. . . . Yes, thou poor,
forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this
life of ours has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity and
laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites-cloak,
we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, that is
in him. Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself
to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the 'nicer proprieties,' inexpert
of 'elegant diction,' yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears,
up there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy,
indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the
_Necessity of Creating_ somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not
Oedipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum
Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need)
a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He
shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him
also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine
Comedies,--if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay
all; for what truly is this which we name _All_, but that which we do
_not_ possess? . . . Glimpses also are given us of an old father Ezekiel,
not without paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown,
parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed,
we fancy, _queued_ perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful
September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest
Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no
more. . . . Of 'Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M. , Pastor of the First Church in
Jaalam,' we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his
Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the--blindness! A tolerably
caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite faculty of
sermonizing, muscularized by long practice and excellent digestive
apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small
private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own.
To him, there, 'Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,' our Hosea
presents himself as a quite inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich poverty
of Latin and Greek,--so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic
through horn-lensed editorial spectacles,--but naught farther? O
purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are
things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that
old bewildered head of thine that there was the _Possibility of the
Infinite_ in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped,
has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? 'Talented young
parishioner'? Among the Arts whereof thou art _Magister_, does that of
_seeing_ happen to be one? Unhappy _Artium Magister! _ Somehow a Nemean
lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad-howling
sand-wildernesses of a sufficiently rare spirit-Libya (it may be
supposed) has got whelped among the sheep. Already he stands
wild-glaring, with feet clutching the ground as with oak-roots,
gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of thy little fold. In
heaven's name, go not near him with that flybite crook of thine! In good
time, thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the appointed place of
departed Artillery-Election Sermons, Right-hands of Fellowship, and
Results of Councils, gathered to thy spiritual fathers with much Latin
of the Epitaphial sort; thou too, shalt have thy reward; but on him the
Eumenides have looked, not Xantippes of the pit, snake-tressed,
finger-threatening, but radiantly calm as on antique gems; for him paws
impatient the winged courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit; him
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.
