No More Learning

Light, airy, and free,
The foam-Aphrodite of Bacchus's sea,
A fancy-tinged bubble, an orbed rainbow-stain,
That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and brain;
A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught,
And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought.
Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple;
Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple
Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek,
And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek; 60
Once fix it, 'tis naught, for the charm of it rises
From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.

I've tried to define it, but what mother's son
Could ever yet do what he knows should be done?
My rocket has burst, and I watch in the air
Its fast-fading heart's-blood drop back in despair;
Yet one chance is left me, and, if I am quick,
I can palm off, before you suspect me, the stick.

Now since I've succeeded--I pray do not frown--
To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical gown, 70
And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf,
I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself,
Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose
A sentiment treading on nobody's toes,
And give, in such ale as with pump-handles _we_ brew,
Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew,--
A toast that to deluge with water is good,
For in Scripture they come in just after the flood:
I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir,
Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor, 80
The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs
Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues;
And a name all-embracing I couple therewith,
Which is that of my founder--the late Mr. Smith.



A PARABLE

An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale
From passion's fountain flooded all the vale.
'Hee-haw! ' cried he, 'I hearken,' as who knew
For such ear-largess humble thanks were due.
'Friend,' said the winged pain, 'in vain you bray,
Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my lay;
None but his peers the poet rightly hear,
Nor mete we listeners by their length of ear. '




V. EPIGRAMS



SAYINGS

1.

In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee,
'I find thee worthy; do this deed for me'?

2.

A camel-driver, angry with his drudge,
Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind
Thus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal Judge
Dooms not his work, but ours, the crooked mind. '

3.

Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark? --he borrows a lantern;
Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his steps by the stars.

4.

'Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who governs the Faithful? '
'Thither my footsteps are bent: it is where Saadi is lodged. '



INSCRIPTIONS

FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY

I call as fly the irrevocable hours,
Futile as air or strong as fate to make
Your lives of sand or granite; awful powers,
Even as men choose, they either give or take.



FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH, SET UP IN ST. MARGARET'S,
WESTMINSTER, BY AMERICAN CONTRIBUTORS

The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew
Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew,
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name.



PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON

To those who died for her on land and sea,
That she might have a country great and free,
Boston builds this: build ye her monument
In lives like theirs, at duty's summons spent.



A MISCONCEPTION

B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth,
'Twixt participle and noun no difference feeling,
In office placed to serve the Commonwealth,
Does himself all the good he can by stealing.



THE BOSS

Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope,
Who sure intended him to stretch a rope.



SUN-WORSHIP

If I were the rose at your window,
Happiest rose of its crew,
Every blossom I bore would bend inward,
_They'd_ know where the sunshine grew.



CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

Full oft the pathway to her door
I've measured by the selfsame track,
Yet doubt the distance more and more,
'Tis so much longer coming back!



WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER

We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain,
And I should hint sharp practice if I dared;
For was not she beforehand sure to gain
Who made the sunshine we together shared?



SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY

As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new, and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing;
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing.




LAST POEMS



HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES

What know we of the world immense
Beyond the narrow ring of sense?
What should we know, who lounge about
The house we dwell in, nor find out,
Masked by a wall, the secret cell
Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell?
The winding stair that steals aloof
To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?

It lies about us, yet as far
From sense sequestered as a star 10
New launched its wake of fire to trace
In secrecies of unprobed space,
Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears
Might earthward haste a thousand years
Nor reach it. So remote seems this
World undiscovered, yet it is
A neighbor near and dumb as death,
So near, we seem to feel the breath
Of its hushed habitants as they
Pass us unchallenged, night and day. 20

Never could mortal ear nor eye
By sound or sign suspect them nigh,
Yet why may not some subtler sense
Than those poor two give evidence?
Transfuse the ferment of their being
Into our own, past hearing, seeing,
As men, if once attempered so,
Far off each other's thought can know?
As horses with an instant thrill
Measure their rider's strength of will? 30
Comes not to all some glimpse that brings
Strange sense of sense-escaping things?
Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines?
Approaches, premonitions, signs,
Voices of Ariel that die out
In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt?

Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these
Phantasmas of the silences
Outer or inner? --rude heirlooms
From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40
Who in unhuman Nature saw
Misshapen foes with tusk and claw,
And with those night-fears brute and blind
Peopled the chaos of their mind,
Which, in ungovernable hours,
Still make their bestial lair in ours?

Were they, or were they not? Yes; no;
Uncalled they come, unbid they go,
And leave us fumbling in a doubt
Whether within us or without 50
The spell of this illusion be
That witches us to hear and see
As in a twi-life what it will,
And hath such wonder-working skill
That what we deemed most solid-wrought
Turns a mere figment of our thought,
Which when we grasp at in despair
Our fingers find vain semblance there,
For Psyche seeks a corner-stone
Firmer than aught to matter known. 60

Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show
Made of the wish to have it so?
'Twere something, even though this were all:
So the poor prisoner, on his wall
Long gazing, from the chance designs
Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines
New and new pictures without cease,
Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece:
But these are Fancy's common brood
Hatched in the nest of solitude; 70
This is Dame Wish's hourly trade,
By our rude sires a goddess made.
Could longing, though its heart broke, give
Trances in which we chiefly live?
Moments that darken all beside,
Tearfully radiant as a bride?
Beckonings of bright escape, of wings
Purchased with loss of baser things?
Blithe truancies from all control
Of Hyle, outings of the soul? 80

The worm, by trustful instinct led,
Draws from its womb a slender thread,
And drops, confiding that the breeze
Will waft it to unpastured trees:
So the brain spins itself, and so
Swings boldly off in hope to blow
Across some tree of knowledge, fair
With fruitage new, none else shall share:
Sated with wavering in the Void,
It backward climbs, so best employed, 90
And, where no proof is nor can be,
Seeks refuge with Analogy;
Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell
Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well,
With metaphysic midges sore,
My Thought seeks comfort at her door,
And, at her feet a suppliant cast,
Evokes a spectre of the past.
Not such as shook the knees of Saul,
But winsome, golden-gay withal,-- 100
Two fishes in a globe of glass,
That pass, and waver, and re-pass,
And lighten that way, and then this,
Silent as meditation is.
With a half-humorous smile I see
In this their aimless industry,
These errands nowhere and returns
Grave as a pair of funeral urns,
This ever-seek and never-find,
A mocking image of my mind. 110
But not for this I bade you climb
Up from the darkening deeps of time:
Help me to tame these wild day-mares
That sudden on me unawares.
Fish, do your duty, as did they
Of the Black Island far away
In life's safe places,--far as you
From all that now I see or do.
You come, embodied flames, as when
I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120
Your gold renews my golden days,
Your splendor all my loss repays.
'Tis more than sixty years ago
Since first I watched your to-and-fro;
Two generations come and gone
From silence to oblivion,
With all their noisy strife and stress
Lulled in the grave's forgivingness,
While you unquenchably survive
Immortal, almost more alive. 130
I watched you then a curious boy,
Who in your beauty found full joy,
And, by no problem-debts distrest,
Sate at life's board a welcome guest.
You were my sister's pets, not mine;
But Property's dividing line
No hint of dispossession drew
On any map my simplesse knew;
O golden age, not yet dethroned!
What made me happy, that I owned; 140
You were my wonders, you my Lars,
In darkling days my sun and stars,
And over you entranced I hung,
Too young to know that I was young.
Gazing with still unsated bliss,
My fancies took some shape like this:
'I have my world, and so have you,
A tiny universe for two,
A bubble by the artist blown,
Scarcely more fragile than our own, 150
Where you have all a whale could wish,
Happy as Eden's primal fish.
Manna is dropt you thrice a day
From some kind heaven not far away,
And still you snatch its softening crumbs,
Nor, more than we, think whence it comes.
No toil seems yours but to explore
Your cloistered realm from shore to shore;
Sometimes you trace its limits round,
Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160
Or hover motionless midway,
Like gold-red clouds at set of day;
Erelong you whirl with sudden whim
Off to your globe's most distant rim,
Where, greatened by the watery lens,
Methinks no dragon of the fens
Flashed huger scales against the sky,
Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy,
And the one eye that meets my view,
Lidless and strangely largening, too, 170
Like that of conscience in the dark,
Seems to make me its single mark.
What a benignant lot is yours
That have an own All-out-of-doors,
No words to spell, no sums to do,
No Nepos and no parlyvoo!
How happy you without a thought
Of such cross things as Must and Ought,--
I too the happiest of boys
To see and share your golden joys! ' 180

So thought the child, in simpler words,
Of you his finny flocks and herds;
Now, an old man, I bid you rise
To the fine sight behind the eyes,
And, lo, you float and flash again
In the dark cistern of my brain.
But o'er your visioned flames I brood
With other mien, in other mood;
You are no longer there to please,
But to stir argument, and tease 190
My thought with all the ghostly shapes
From which no moody man escapes.
Diminished creature, I no more
Find Fairyland beside my door,
But for each moment's pleasure pay
With the _quart d'heure_ of Rabelais!

I watch you in your crystal sphere,
And wonder if you see and hear
Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide
Conjecture of the world outside; 200
In your pent lives, as we in ours,
Have you surmises dim of powers,
Of presences obscurely shown,
Of lives a riddle to your own,
Just on the senses' outer verge,
Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge,
Where we conspire our own deceit
Confederate in deft Fancy's feat,
And the fooled brain befools the eyes
With pageants woven of its own lies? 210
But _are_ they lies? Why more than those
Phantoms that startle your repose,
Half seen, half heard, then flit away,
And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I
Know to be substance; tell me why
My visions, like those haunting you,
May not be as substantial too.
Alas, who ever answer heard
From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220
Your consciousness I half divine,
But you are wholly deaf to mine.
Go, I dismiss you; ye have done
All that ye could; our silk is spun:
Dive back into the deep of dreams,
Where what is real is what, seems!
Yet I shall fancy till my grave
Your lives to mine a lesson gave;
If lesson none, an image, then,
Impeaching self-conceit in men 230
Who put their confidence alone
In what they call the Seen and Known.
How seen? How known? As through your glass
Our wavering apparitions pass
Perplexingly, then subtly wrought
To some quite other thing by thought.
Here shall my resolution be:
The shadow of the mystery
Is haply wholesomer for eyes
That cheat us to be overwise, 240
And I am happy in my right
To love God's darkness as His light.



TURNER'S OLD TEMERAIRE

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE CHURCH

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things;
The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy wings,
And, patient in their triple rank,
The thunders crouched about thy flank,
Their black lips silent with the doom of kings.

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy pines,
And swell thy vans with breath of great designs;
Long-wildered pilgrims of the main
By thee relaid their course again,
Whose prow was guided by celestial signs.

How didst thou trample on tumultuous seas,
Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched at ease,
Let the bull-fronted surges glide
Caressingly along thy side,
Like glad hounds leaping by the huntsman's knees!

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod,
In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod,
While from their touch a fulgor ran
Through plank and spar, from man to man,
Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God.

Now a black demon, belching fire and steam,
Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream,
And all thy desecrated bulk
Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk,
To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air
To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare,
Shot-shattered to have met thy doom
Where thy last lightnings cheered the gloom,
Than here be safe in dangerless despair.

Thy drooping symbol to the flag-staff clings,
Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings,
Thy thunders now but birthdays greet,
Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet,
Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind brings.

Thou a mere hospital, where human wrecks,
Like winter-flies, crawl, those renowned decks,
Ne'er trodden save by captive foes,
And wonted sternly to impose
God's will and thine on bowed imperial necks!

Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame,
A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name.
And with commissioned talons wrench
From thy supplanter's grimy clench
His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke and flame?

This shall the pleased eyes of our children see;
For this the stars of God long even as we;
Earth listens for his wings; the Fates
Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits,
And the tired waves of Thought's insurgent sea.



ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER

Stood the tall Archangel weighing
All man's dreaming, doing, saying,
All the failure and the pain,
All the triumph and the gain,
In the unimagined years,
Full of hopes, more full of tears,
Since old Adam's hopeless eyes
Backward searched for Paradise,
And, instead, the flame-blade saw
Of inexorable Law.

Waking, I beheld him there,
With his fire-gold, flickering hair,
In his blinding armor stand,
And the scales were in his hand:
Mighty were they, and full well
They could poise both heaven and hell.
'Angel,' asked I humbly then,
'Weighest thou the souls of men?
That thine office is, I know. '
'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so;
But I weigh the hope of Man
Since the power of choice began,
In the world, of good or ill. '
Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place
All the glories of our race,
Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast,
Gems, the lightning of the East,
Kublai's sceptre, Caesar's sword,
Many a poet's golden word,
Many a skill of science, vain
To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw
Things regardless, outcast, few,
Martyr-ash, arena sand,
Of St Francis' cord a strand,
Beechen cups of men whose need
Fasted that the poor might feed,
Disillusions and despairs
Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs,
Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran
Seeing then the beam divine
Swiftly on this hand decline,
While Earth's splendor and renown
Mounted light as thistle-down.



A VALENTINE

Let others wonder what fair face
Upon their path shall shine,
And, fancying half, half hoping, trace
Some maiden shape of tenderest grace
To be their Valentine.

Let other hearts with tremor sweet
One secret wish enshrine
That Fate may lead their happy feet
Fair Julia in the lane to meet
To be their Valentine.

But I, far happier, am secure;
I know the eyes benign,
The face more beautiful and pure
Than fancy's fairest portraiture
That mark my Valentine.

More than when first I singled, thee,
This only prayer is mine,--
That, in the years I yet shall see.
As, darling, in the past, thou'll be
My happy Valentine.



AN APRIL BIRTHDAY--AT SEA

On this wild waste, where never blossom came,
Save the white wind-flower to the billow's cap,
Or those pale disks of momentary flame,
Loose petals dropped from Dian's careless lap,
What far fetched influence all my fancy fills,
With singing birds and dancing daffodils?

Why, 'tis her day whom jocund April brought,
And who brings April with her in her eyes;
It is her vision lights my lonely thought,
Even as a rose that opes its hushed surprise
In sick men's chambers, with its glowing breath
Plants Summer at the glacier edge of Death.

Gray sky, sea gray as mossy stones on graves;--
Anon comes April in her jollity;
And dancing down the bleak vales 'tween the waves,
Makes them green glades for all her flowers and me.
The gulls turn thrushes, charmed are sea and sky
By magic of my thought, and know not why.

Ah, but I know, for never April's shine,
Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her flowers
Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden fine
As she in various mood, on whom the powers
Of happiest stars in fair conjunction smiled
To bless the birth, of April's darling child.



LOVE AND THOUGHT

What hath Love with Thought to do?
Still at variance are the two.
Love is sudden, Love is rash,
Love is like the levin flash,
Comes as swift, as swiftly goes,
And his mark as surely knows.

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow,
Weighing long 'tween yes and no;
When dear Love is dead and gone,
Thought comes creeping in anon,
And, in his deserted nest,
Sits to hold the crowner's quest.

Since we love, what need to think?
Happiness stands on a brink
Whence too easy 'tis to fall
Whither's no return at all;
Have a care, half-hearted lover,
Thought would only push her over!



THE NOBLER LOVER

If he be a nobler lover, take him!
You in you I seek, and not myself;
Love with men's what women choose to make him,
Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf:
All I am or can, your beauty gave it,
Lifting me a moment nigh to you,
And my bit of heaven, I fain would save it--
Mine I thought it was, I never knew.

What you take of me is yours to serve you,
All I give, you gave to me before;
Let him win you! If I but deserve you,
I keep all you grant to him and more:
You shall make me dare what others dare not,
You shall keep my nature pure as snow,
And a light from you that others share not
Shall transfigure me where'er I go.

Let me be your thrall! However lowly
Be the bondsman's service I can do,
Loyalty shall make it high and holy;
Naught can be unworthy, done for you.
Men shall say, 'A lover of this fashion
Such an icy mistress well beseems. '
Women say, 'Could we deserve such passion,
We might be the marvel that he dreams. '



ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM

Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please,
For those same notes in happier days I heard
Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred
Yet now again for me delight the keys:
Ah me, to strong illusions such as these
What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird
Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word
Levels, and it is the soul that hears and sees!
Play on, dear girl, and many be the years
Ere some grayhaired survivor sit like me
And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears
Unto another who, beyond the sea
Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears
A music in this verse undreamed by thee!



VERSES

INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882

In good old times, which means, you know,
The time men wasted long ago,
And we must blame our brains or mood
If that we squander seems less good,
In those blest days when wish was act
And fancy dreamed itself to fact,
Godfathers used to fill with guineas
The cups they gave their pickaninnies,
Performing functions at the chrism
Not mentioned in the Catechism.
No millioner, poor I fill up
With wishes my more modest cup,
Though had I Amalthea's horn
It should be hers the newly born.
Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it
So brimming full she couldn't blow it.
Wishes aren't horses: true, but still
There are worse roadsters than goodwill.
And so I wish my darling health,
And just to round my couplet, wealth,
With faith enough to bridge the chasm
'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm,
And bear her o'er life's current vext
From this world to a better next,
Where the full glow of God puts out
Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt.
I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise,
What more can godfather devise?
But since there's room for countless wishes
In these old-fashioned posset dishes,
I'll wish her from my plenteous store
Of those commodities two more,
Her father's wit, veined through and through
With tenderness that Watts (but whew!
Celia's aflame, I mean no stricture
On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture)--
I wish her next, and 'tis the soul
Of all I've dropt into the bowl,
Her mother's beauty--nay, but two
So fair at once would never do.
Then let her but the half possess,
Troy was besieged ten years for less.
Now if there's any truth in Darwin,
And we from what was, all we are win,
I simply wish the child to be
A sample of Heredity,
Enjoying to the full extent
Life's best, the Unearned Increment
Which Fate her Godfather to flout
Gave _him_ in legacies of gout.
Thus, then, the cup is duly filled;
Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.



ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws
That sway this universe, of none withstood,
Unconscious of man's outcries or applause,
Or what man deems his evil or his good;
And when the Fates ally them with a cause
That wallows in the sea-trough and seems lost,
Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands
Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost,
Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands
They twist the cable shall the world hold fast
To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was he
Who helped us in our need; the eternal law
That who can saddle Opportunity
Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw
May minish him in eyes that closely see,
Was verified in him: what need we say
Of one who made success where others failed,
Who, with no light save that of common day,
Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed,
But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate van
Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man.

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze
Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair
With the beguiling light of vanished days;
This is relentless granite, bleak and bare,
Roughhewn, and scornful of aesthetic phrase;
Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams,
The Present's hard uncompromising light
Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams,
Yet vindicates some pristine natural right
O'ertopping that hereditary grace
Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race.

So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so,
Not in the purple born, to those they led
Nearer for that and costlier to the foe,
New moulders of old forms, by nature bred
The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to show,
Let but the ploughshare of portentous times
Strike deep enough to reach them where they lie;
Despair and danger are their fostering climes,
And their best sun bursts from a stormy sky:
He was our man of men, nor would abate
The utmost due manhood could claim of fate.

Nothing Ideal, a plain-people's man
At the first glance, a more deliberate ken
Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ran
Such blood as quelled the dragon In his den,
Made harmless fields, and better worlds began:
He came grim-silent, saw and did the deed
That was to do; in his master-grip
Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed
Such sure conviction as that close-clamped lip;
He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew
He had done more than any simplest man might do.
Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steel
Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil sway;
The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to feel
The world's base coin, and glozing knaves made prey
Of him and of the entrusted Commonweal;
So Truth insists and will not be denied.
We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame,
As if in his last battle he had died
Victor for us and spotless of all blame,
Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk,
One of those still plain men that do the world's rough work.




APPENDIX


I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES OF BIGLOW PAPERS

[Lowell took occasion, when collecting in a book the several numbers of
the second series of 'Biglow Papers,' which had appeared In the
'Atlantic Monthly,' to prefix an essay which not only gave a personal
narrative of the origin of the whole scheme, but particularly dwelt upon
the use in literature of the homely dialect in which the poems were
couched. In this Cabinet Edition it has seemed expedient to print the
Introduction here rather than in immediate connection with the poems
themselves. ]

Though prefaces seem of late to have fallen under some reproach, they
have at least this advantage, that they set us again on the feet of our
personal consciousness and rescue us from the gregarious mock-modesty or
cowardice of that _we_ which shrills feebly throughout modern literature
like the shrieking of mice in the walls of a house that has passed its
prime. Having a few words to say to the many friends whom the 'Biglow
Papers' have won me, I shall accordingly take the freedom of the first
person singular of the personal pronoun. Let each of the good-natured
unknown who have cheered me by the written communication of their
sympathy look upon this Introduction as a private letter to himself.

When, more than twenty years ago, I wrote the first of the series, I had
no definite plan and no intention of ever writing another. Thinking the
Mexican war, as I think it still, a national crime committed in behoof
of Slavery, our common sin, and wishing to put the feeling of those who
thought as I did in a way that would tell, I imagined to myself such an
up-country man as I had often seen at antislavery gatherings capable of
district-school English, but always instinctively falling back into the
natural stronghold of his homely dialect when heated to the point of
self-forgetfulness. When I began to carry out my conception and to write
in my assumed character, I found myself in a strait between two perils.
On the one hand, I was in danger of being carried beyond the limit of my
own opinions, or at least of that temper with which every man should
speak his mind in print, and on the other I feared the risk of seeming
to vulgarize a deep and sacred conviction. I needed on occasion to rise
above the level of mere _patois_, and for this purpose conceived the
Rev. Mr. Wilbur, who should express the more cautious element of the New
England character and its pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should serve for its
homely common-sense vivified and heated by conscience. The parson was to
be the complement rather than the antithesis of his parishioner, and I
felt or fancied a certain humorous element in the real identity of the
two under a seeming incongruity. Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of
Latin, though drawn from the life, I adopted deliberately to heighten
the contrast. Finding soon after that I needed some one as a mouth-piece
of the mere drollery, for I conceive that true humor is never divorced
from moral conviction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little
puppet-show. I meant to embody in him that half-conscious _un_morality
which I had noticed as the recoil in gross natures from a puritanism
that still strove to keep in its creed the intense savor which had long
gone out of its faith and life. In the three I thought I should find
room enough to express, as it was my plan to do, the popular feeling and
opinion of the time. For the names of two of my characters, since I have
received some remonstrances from very worthy persons who happen to bear
them, I would say that they were purely fortuitous, probably mere
unconscious memories of sign-boards or directories. Mr. Sawin's sprang
from the accident of a rhyme at the end of his first epistle, and I
purposely christened him by the impossible surname of Birdofredum not
more to stigmatize him as the incarnation of 'Manifest Destiny,' in
other words, of national recklessness as to right and wrong, than to
avoid the chance of wounding any private sensitiveness.

The success of my experiment soon began not only to astonish me, but to
make me feel the responsibility of knowing that I held in my hand a
weapon instead of the mere fencing-stick I had supposed. Very far from
being a popular author under my own name, so far, indeed, as to be
almost unread, I found the verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere; saw
them pinned up in workshops; I heard them quoted and their authorship
debated; I once even, when rumor had at length caught up my name in one
of its eddies, had the satisfaction of overhearing it demonstrated, in
the pauses of a concert, that _I_ was utterly incompetent to have
written anything of the kind. I had read too much not to know the utter
worthlessness of contemporary reputation, especially as regards satire,
but I knew also that by giving a certain amount of influence it also had
its worth, if that influence were used on the right side. I had learned,
too, that the first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and
definite purpose, whether aesthetic or moral, and that even good
writing, to please long, must have more than an average amount either of
imagination or common-sense. The first of these falls to the lot of
scarcely one in several generations; the last is within the reach of
many in every one that passes; and of this an author may fairly hope to
become in part the mouthpiece. If I put on the cap and bells and made
myself one of the court-fools of King Demos, it was less to make his
majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal ears for certain
serious things which I had deeply at heart. I say this because there is
no imputation that could be more galling to any man's self-respect than
that of being a mere jester. I endeavored, by generalising my satire, to
give it what value _I_ could beyond the passing moment and the immediate
application. How far I have succeeded I cannot tell, but I have had
better luck than I ever looked for in seeing my verses survive to pass
beyond their nonage.

In choosing the Yankee dialect, I did not act without forethought. It
had long seemed to me that the great vice of American writing and
speaking was a studied want of simplicity, that we were in danger of
coming to look on our mother-tongue as a dead language, to be sought in
the grammar and dictionary rather than in the heart, and that our only
chance of escape was by seeking it at its living sources among those who
were, as Scottowe says of Major-General Gibbons, 'divinely illiterate. '
President Lincoln, the only really great public man whom these latter
days have seen, was great also in this, that he was master--witness his
speech at Gettysburg--of a truly masculine English, classic, because it
was of no special period, and level at once to the highest and lowest of
his countrymen. I learn from the highest authority that his favorite
reading was in Shakespeare and Milton, to which, of course, the Bible
should be added. But whoever should read the debates in Congress might
fancy himself present at a meeting of the city council of some city of
Southern Gaul in the decline of the Empire, where barbarians with a
Latin varnish emulated each other in being more than Ciceronian. Whether
it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or
for whatever reason, it is certain that very few American writers or
speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and
force that are common as the day in the mother country. We use it like
Scotsmen, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove that
we belonged to it, by showing our intimacy with its written rather than
with its spoken dialect. And yet all the while our popular idiom is racy
with life and vigor and originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word)
to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere graft by sending up new
suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in
the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with
fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows
ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as
unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. That we should
all be made to talk like books is the danger with which we are
threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave
the minds and memories of his victims to what he esteems the best models
of English composition, that is to say, to the writers whose style is
faultily correct and has no blood-warmth in it.
No language after it has
faded into _diction_, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices
secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth
a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass
from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and
the lips suppled by downright living interests and by passion in its
very throe. Language is the soil of thought, and our own especially is a
rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed foliage of feeling,
fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the
vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living
green. There is death in the dictionary; and, where language is too
strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is
limited also; and we get a _potted_ literature, Chinese dwarfs
instead of healthy trees.

But while the schoolmaster has been busy starching our language and
smoothing it flat with the mangle of a supposed classical authority, the
newspaper reporter has been doing even more harm by stretching and
swelling it to suit his occasions. A dozen years ago I began a list,
which I have added to from time to time, of some of the changes which
may be fairly laid at his door. I give a few of them as showing their
tendency, all the more dangerous that their effect, like that of some
poisons, is insensibly cumulative, and that they are sure at last of
effect among a people whose chief reading is the daily paper. I give in
two columns the old style and its modern equivalent.

_Old Style. _ _New Style. _

Was hanged. Was launched into
eternity.

When the halter When the fatal
was put round noose was adjusted
his neck. about the
neck of the unfortunate
victim
of his own unbridled
passions.

A great crowd A vast concourse
came to see. was assembled to
witness.

Great fire. Disastrous conflagration.

The fire spread. The conflagration
extended its devastating
career.

House burned. Edifice consumed.

The fire was got The progress of
under. the devouring
element was arrested.

Man fell. Individual was
precipitated.

A horse and wagon A valuable horse
ran against. attached to a vehicle driven by
J. S. , in the employment of J. B. ,
collided with.

The frightened The infuriated animal.
horse.

Sent for the doctor. Called into requisition
the services of the family
physician.

The mayor of the The chief magistrate
city in a short of the metropolis, in well-
speech welcomed. chosen and eloquent
language, frequently
interrupted by the
plaudits of the
surging multitude,
officially tendered the
hospitalities.

I shall say a few I shall, with your
words. permission, beg
leave to offer
some brief observations.

Began his answer. Commenced his rejoinder.

Asked him to dine. Tendered him a banquet.

A bystander advised. One of those omnipresent
characters who, as if
in pursuance of some
previous arrangement,
are certain to be
encountered in the
vicinity when an accident
occurs, ventured
the suggestion.

He died. He deceased, he passed
out of existence, his
spirit quitted its
earthly habitation,
winged its way to
eternity, shook off
its burden, etc.

In one sense this is nothing new. The school of Pope in verse ended by
wire-drawing its phrase to such thinness that it could bear no weight of
meaning whatever. Nor is fine writing by any means confined to America.
All writers without imagination fall into it of necessity whenever they
attempt the figurative. I take two examples from Mr. Merivale's 'History
of the Romans under the Empire,' which, indeed, is full of such. 'The
last years of the age familiarly styled the Augustan were singularly
barren of the literary glories from which its celebrity was chiefly
derived. One by one the stars in its firmament had been lost to the
world; Virgil and Horace, etc. , had long since died; the charm which the
imagination of Livy had thrown over the earlier annals of Rome had
ceased to shine on the details of almost contemporary history; and if
the flood of his eloquence still continued flowing, we can hardly
suppose that the stream was as rapid, as fresh, and as clear as ever. ' I
will not waste time in criticising the bad English or the mixture of
metaphor in these sentences, but will simply cite another from the same
author which is even worse. 'The shadowy phantom of the Republic
continued to flit before the eyes of the Caesar. There was still, he
apprehended, a germ of sentiment existing, on which a scion of his own
house, or even a stranger, might boldly throw himself and raise the
standard of patrician independence. ' Now a ghost may haunt a murderer,
but hardly, I should think, to scare him with the threat of taking a new
lease of its old tenement. And fancy the _scion_ of a _house_ in the act
of _throwing itself_ upon a _germ of sentiment_ to _raise a standard! _ I
am glad, since we have so much in the same kind to answer for, that this
bit of horticultural rhetoric is from beyond sea. I would not be
supposed to condemn truly imaginative prose. There is a simplicity of
splendor, no less than of plainness, and prose would be poor indeed if
it could not find a tongue for that meaning of the mind which is behind
the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England
there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere
convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as
algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy
national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in
part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of
expressing feeling, but in part also, it is to be feared, from a growing
distrust, one might almost say hatred, of whatever is super-material.
There is something sad in the scorn with which their journalists treat
the notion of there being such a thing as a national ideal, seeming
utterly to have forgotten that even in the affairs of this world the
imagination is as much matter-of-fact as the understanding. If we were
to trust the impression made on us by some of the cleverest and most
characteristic of their periodical literature, we should think England
hopelessly stranded on the good-humored cynicism of well-to-do
middle-age, and should fancy it an enchanted nation, doomed to sit
forever with its feet under the mahogany in that after-dinner mood which
follows conscientious repletion, and which it is ill-manners to disturb
with any topics more exciting than the quality of the wines. But there
are already symptoms that a large class of Englishmen are getting weary
of the dominion of consols and divine common-sense, and to believe that
eternal three per cent. is not the chief end of man, nor the highest and
only kind of interest to which the powers and opportunities of England
are entitled.

The quality of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of
American character, and especially o? American humor. In Dr. Petri's
_Gedrangtes Handbuch der Fremdworter_, we are told that the word
_humbug_ is commonly used for the exaggerations of the North-Americans.
To be sure, one would be tempted to think the dream of Columbus half
fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West a nearer way to
Orientalism, at least in diction. But it seems tome that a great deal of
what is set down as mere extravagance is more fitly to be called
intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms ol the imaginative faculty in
full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw and
formless material in which poetry is to work. By and by, perhaps, the
world will see it fashioned into poem and picture, and Europe, which
will be hard pushed for originality erelong, may have to thank us for a
new sensation. The French continue to find Shakespeare exaggerated
because he treated English just as our country-folk do when they speak
of a 'steep price,' or say that they 'freeze to' a thing. The first
postulate of an original literature is that a people should use their
language instinctively and unconsciously, as if it were a lively part of
their growth and personality, not as the mere torpid boon of education
or inheritance. Even Burns contrived to write very poor verse and prose
in English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Mr.
Horace Mann, in one of his public addresses, commented at some length on
the beauty and moral significance ol the French phrase _s'orienter_ and
called on his young friends to practise upon it in life. There was not a
Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out
what was _about east_, and to shape his course accordingly. This charm
which a familiar expression gains by being commented, as it were, and.
set in a new light by a foreign language, is curious and instructive. I
cannot help thinking that Mr. Matthew Arnold forgets this a little too
much sometimes when he writes of the beauties of French style. It would
not be hard to find in the works of French Academicians phrases as
coarse as those he cites from Burke, only they are veiled by the
unfamiliarity of the language. But, however this may be, it is certain
that poets and peasants please us in the same way by translating words
back again to their primal freshness, and infusing them with a
delightful strangeness which is anything but alienation. What, for
example, is Milton's '_edge_ of battle' but a doing into English of the
Latin _acies? Was die Gans gedacht das der Schwan vollbracht_, what the
goose but thought, that the swan full brought (or, to de-Saxonize it a
little, what the goose conceived, that the swan achieved), and it may
well be that the life, invention, and vigor shown by our popular speech,
and the freedom with which it is shaped to the instant want of those who
use it, are of the best omen for our having a swan at last. The part I
have taken on myself is that of the humbler bird.

But it is affirmed that there is something innately vulgar in the Yankee
dialect. M. Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness: '_Je definis un
patois une ancienne langue qui a eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue
toute jeune st qui n'a pas fait fortune. _' The first part of his
definition applies to a dialect like the Provencal, the last to the
Tuscan before Dante had lifted it into a classic, and neither, it seems
to me, will quite fit a _patois/_, which is not properly a dialect, but
rather certain archaisms, proverbial phrases, and modes of
pronunciation, which maintain themselves among the uneducated side by
side with the finished and universally accepted language. Norman French,
for example, or Scotch down to the time of James VI. , could hardly be
called _patois_, while I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a
_lingo_ rather than a dialect. It has retained a few words now fallen
into disuse in the mother country, like to _tarry_, to _progress_,
_fleshy_, _fall_, and some others; it has changed the meaning of some,
as in _freshet_; and it has clung to what I suspect to have been the
broad Norman pronunciation of _e_ (which Moliere puts into the mouth of
his rustics) in such words as _sarvant_, _parfect_, _vartoo_, and the
like. It maintains something of the French sound of _a_ also in words
like _ch[)a]mber_, _d[)a]nger_ (though the latter had certainly begun to
take its present sound so early as 1636, when I find it sometimes spelt
_dainger_). But in general it may be said that nothing can be found in
it which does not still survive in some one or other of the English
provincial dialects. There is, perhaps, a single exception in the verb
to _sleeve_. To _sleeve_ silk means to divide or ravel out a thread of
silk with the point of a needle till it becomes _floss_. (A. S. _slefan_,
to _cleave_=divide. ) This, I think, explains the '_sleeveless_ errand'
in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously
darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that
cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, and therefore bootless?

I am not speaking now of Americanisms properly so called, that is, of
words or phrases which have grown into use here either through
necessity, invention, or accident, such as a _carry_, a _one-horse
affair_, a _prairie_, to _vamose_. Even these are fewer than is
sometimes taken for granted. But I think some fair defence may be made
against the charge of vulgarity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the
thought, and not in the word or the way of pronouncing it. Modern
French, the most polite of languages, is barbarously vulgar if compared
with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian.
There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between
_ministerium_ and _metier_, or _sapiens_ and _sachant_, than between
_druv_ and _drove_ or _agin_ and _against_, which last is plainly an
arrant superlative. Our rustic _coverlid_ is nearer its French original
than the diminutive cover_let_, into which it has been ignorantly
corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen
at different times three diverse pronunciations of a single
word,--_cowcumber_, _coocumber_, and _cucumber_. Of these the first,
which is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality of _concombre_. Lord
Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and
Voltaire tells his countrymen that _handkerchief_ was pronounced
_hankercher_. I find it so spelt in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity
the Yankee still persists in, and as there is always a reason for such
deviations from the sound as represented by the spelling, may we not
suspect two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor for _kercher_
in _couverture_ rather than in _couvrechef_? And what greater phonetic
vagary (which Dryden, by the way, called _fegary_) in our _lingua
rustica_ than this _ker_ for _couvre_? I copy from the fly-leaves of my
books, where I have noted them from time to time, a few examples of
pronunciation and phrase which will show that the Yankee often has
antiquity and very respectable literary authority on his side. My list
might be largely increased by referring to glossaries, but to them eyery
one can go for himself, and I have gathered enough for my purpose.

I will take first those cases in which something like the French sound
has been preserved in certain single letters and diphthongs. And this
opens a curious question as to how long this Gallicism maintained itself
in England. Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has given as two
words with different meanings, as in _genteel_ and _jaunty_, which I
find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering
between _genteel_ and _jantee_. It is usual in America to drop the _u_
in words ending in _our_--a very proper change recommended by Howell two
centuries ago, and carried out by him so far as his printers would
allow. This and the corresponding changes in _musique_, _musick_, and
the like, which he also advocated, show that in his time the French
accent indicated by the superfluous letters (for French had once nearly
as strong an accent as Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of
French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have
_riches'_ and _counsel'_, in Bishop Hall _comet'_, _chapelain_, in Donne
_pictures'_, _virtue'_, _presence'_, _mortal'_, _merit'_, _hainous'_,
_giant'_, with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The
two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected
of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes _baptime_. The tendency to throw the
accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and
perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's 'Albion's England' we
have _creator'_ and _creature'_ side by side with the modern _creator_
and _creature_. _E'nvy_ and _e'nvying_ occur in Campion (1602), and yet
_envy'_ survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to
the French, as in _rev'enue_ for _reven'ue_, I had been so used to
hearing _imbecile_ pronounced with the accent on the first syllable,
which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I
was surprised to find _imbec'ile_ in a verse of Wordsworth. The
dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and
he declared for _imbeceel'_. In general it may be assumed that accent
will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and
therefore quickness of utterance. _Blas'-phemous_, for example, is more
rapidly pronounced than _blasphem'ous_, to which our Yankee clings,
following in this the usage of many of the older poets. _Amer'ican_ is
easier than _Ameri'can_, and therefore the false quantity has carried
the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so
late as Cowley.

To come back to the matter in hand. Our 'uplandish man' retains the soft
or thin sound of the _u_ in some words, such as _rule_, _truth_
(sometimes also pronounced _tr[)u]th_, not _trooth_), while he says
_noo_ for _new_, and gives to _view_ and _few_ so indescribable a
mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be
called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire says that the English pronounce
_true_ as if it rhymed with _view_, and this is the sound our rustics
give to it. Spenser writes _deow_ (_dew_) which can only be pronounced
with the Yankee nasality. In _rule_ the least sound of _a_ precedes the
_u_. I find _reule_ in Pecock's 'Repressor. ' He probably pronounced it
_rayoole_, as the old French word from which it is derived was very
likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original
_regula_. Tindal has _reuler_, and the Coventry Plays have _preudent_.
In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find _reule_. As for _noo_, may it not
claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from _nouveau_ or _neuf_,
the ancient sound of which may very well have been _noof_, as nearer
_novus_? _Beef_ would seem more like to have come from _buffe_ than from
_boeuf_, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon _few_
may have caught enough from its French cousin _peu_ to claim the benefit
of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase _a few_ (as 'I
licked him a few') may well appeal to _un peu_ for sense and authority.
Nay, might not _lick_ itself turn out to be the good old word _lam_ in
an English disguise, it the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he
fairly might, from the Latin _lambere_? The New England _ferce_ for
_fierce_, and _perce_ for _pierce_ (sometimes heard as _fairce_ and
_pairce_), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of _verse
and pierce_ in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a
Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our _pairlous_ for
_perilous_ is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's _parlous_
than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our
pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it
is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with
English lips. Thus for _joint_, _employ_, _royal_, we have _jynt_,
_emply_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a
prolongation of the _y_ sound. I find _royal_ so pronounced in the
'Mirror for Magistrates. ' In Walter de Biblesworth I find _solives_
Englished by _gistes_. This, it is true, may have been pronounced
_jeests_, but the pronunciation _jystes_ must have preceded the present
spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was
forgotten, as analogical with other words in _oi_. In the same way after
Norman-French influence had softened the _l_ out of _would_ (we already
find _woud_ for _veut_ in N. F. poems), _should_ followed the example,
and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to
satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and
even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with
_eyster_ for _oyster_ as early as the fourteenth century. I find _viage_
in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne
and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_
(for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, in the Coventry Plays. In
Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of _employ_ for _imply_, fairly
inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this
pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the
elegant Gray said _naise_ for _noise_ just as our rustics still do. Our
_cornish_ (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better
than _cornice_ does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in
dropping the _g_ from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now
and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words
ending in _n_. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common,
though it may formerly have been more so. _Capting_, for instance, I
never heard save in jest, the habitual form being _kepp'n_. But at any
rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, 'Ane
Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,' in which I know not
whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more
charming, I find _burding_, _garding_, and _cousing_, and in the State
Trials _uncerting_ used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the _n_
better than _ng_.

Of Yankee preterites I find _risse_ and _rize_ for _rose_ in Beaumont
and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, _clim_ in Spenser, _chees_ (_chose_)
in Sir John Mandevil, _give_ (_gave_) in the Coventry Plays, _shet_
(_shut_) in Golding's Ovid, _het_ in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs,
_thriv_ and _smit_ in Drayton, _quit_ in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and
_pled_ in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. _Rid_
for _rode_ was anciently common. So likewise was _see_ for _saw_, but I
find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's
_seie_ and Gower's _sigh_ were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded.
_Shew_ is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden,
and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like _snew_,
_thew_, and even _mew_, are not without example. I find _sew_ for
_sewed_ in 'Piers Ploughman. ' Indeed, the anomalies in English
preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred _flew_ from
_flow_ (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to _fly_ because we
had another preterite in _fled_. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains
_growed_, _blowed_, for which he has good authority, and less often
_knowed_. His _sot_ is merely a broad sounding of _sat_, no more
inelegant than the common _got_ for _gat_, which he further degrades
into _gut_. When he says _darst_, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.

The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the _a_ in such
words as _axe_, _wax_, pronouncing them _exe_, _wex_ (shortened from
_aix_, _waix_). He also says _hev_ and _hed_ (_h[=a]ve_, _h[=a]d_ for
_have_ and _had_). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In
_aix_ for _axle_ he certainly does. I find _wex_ and _aisches_ (_ashes_)
in Pecock, and _exe_ in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with
_wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden
rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would.