1807, December 17—John Greenleaf Whittier was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts. 1815, December 7—Elizabeth Whittier was born. 1826, June 8—Whittier’s first published poem, “The Exile’s Departure,” appeared in Newburyport Free Press. 1827, May 1—Entered Haverhill Academy, where he spent two terms of six months each. 1828–29—Spent the winter in Boston, editing the American Manufacturer. 1830—Began editing the Haverhill Gazette. Went to Hartford to edit the New England Review. 1831—Published his first book, “Legends of New England.” 1832—Published “Moll Pitcher.” 1833—Published “Justice and Expediency.” November. Went to Philadelphia as delegate to National Anti-slavery Society. December. One of the committee to draft the “Declaration of Sentiments.” 1835—Elected Representative of Haverhill in State Legislature. Stoned by mob in Concord, New Hampshire. 1836—Again assumed editorial charge of the Haverhill Gazette. Sold the Haverhill farm, and removed to Amesbury. Published “Mogg Megone.” 1837—Isaac Knapp, of Boston, published first edition of Whittier’s poems, entitled “Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between the Years 1830 and 1838.” 1838—Became editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman of Philadelphia. May 17. Pennsylvania Hall, in which was Whittier’s office, burned by mob. 1840—February. Severed his connection with the Freeman, and returned to Amesbury. 1843—Published “Lays of my Home, and Other Poems.” 1844—Went to Lowell for six months to edit the Middlesex Standard. 1845—Published “The Stranger in Lowell.” 1847—Began writing for the Washington National Era. 1849—Published “Voices of Freedom.” 1850—Published “Songs of Labour.” 1854—Published “Maud Müller” in the Era. 1857—Whittier’s mother died. Contributed poem entitled “The Gift of Tritemius” to the initial number of the Atlantic Monthly. Ticknor & Fields published complete edition of Whittier’s poems, known as “Blue and Gold Edition.” 1858—Published “Telling the Bees” in the Atlantic. Elected Overseer of Harvard College. 1860—Published “Home Ballads, and Other Poems.” Member of the electoral college. Received the degree of M.A. from Harvard. 1863—Published “In War Time, and Other Poems.” 1864—Elizabeth Whittier died. 1866—Published “Snow-Bound” and prose works in two volumes. Received degree of LL.D. from Brown University. 1867—Published “The Tent on the Beach.” 1868—Published “Among the Hills, and Other Poems. 1870—Published “Miriam, and Other Poems.” 1874—Published “Mabel Martin.” 1876—Removed to Oak Knoll, Danvers. Wrote the Centennial Hymn for the Exposition at Philadelphia. 1877—December 17. Dinner, in honour of Whittier, given by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. to the contributors to the Atlantic Monthly. 1881—Published “The King’s Missive, and Other Poems.” 1886—Published “St. Gregory’s Guest, and Other Poems.” 1888—Riverside Edition of Whittier’s writings was published. 1892—Published “At Sundown.” September 7. John Greenleaf Whittier died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire.

Personal

  He has a good exterior, a figure slender and tall, a beautiful head with refined features, black eyes full of fire, dark complexion, a fine smile, and lively but very nervous manner. Both soul and spirit have overstrained the nervous cords and wasted the body. He belongs to those natures who would advance with firmness and joy to martyrdom in a good cause, and yet who are never comfortable in society, and who look as if they would run out of the door every moment. He lives with his mother and sister in a country-house to which I have promised to go. I feel that I should enjoy myself with Whittier, and could make him feel at ease with me. I know from my own experience what this nervous bashfulness, caused by the overexertion of the brain, requires, and how persons who suffer therefrom ought to be met and treated.

  I knew quite well that I was in the presence of one of the purest-minded and most gifted men in America; a man whose name and fame are world-wide, and “as familiar as household words;” a man whose mighty thoughts are winged with words of fire; but he is so unassuming, so accessible, so frank, and so well “posted up” on all matters of news, that, whatever subject is broached, one feels at home in the presence of a friend, while conversing with him. This eminent poet of the slave is forty years of age. His temperament is nervous-bilious; he is tall, slender, and straight as an Indian; has a superb head; his brow looks like a white cloud, under his raven hair; eyes large, black as sloes, and glowing with expression. He belongs to the society of Friends, and in matters of dress and address, he is of “the strictest sort.” Should a stranger meet him in the street, with his collarless coat and broad-brimmed hat, he would not discover anything remarkable in his appearance, certainly would not dream that he had seen the Elliott of America. But, let him uncover that head, and see those star-like eyes flashing under such a magnificent forehead, and he would know, at a glance, that a great heart, a great soul, and a great intellect, must light up such a radiant frontispiece.

	Some blamed him, some believed him good,—
	The truth lay doubtless ’twixt the two,—
	He reconciled as best he could
	Old faith and fancies new.
	In him the grave and playful mixed,
	And wisdom held with folly truce,
	And Nature compromised betwixt
	Good fellow and recluse.
	He loved his friends, forgave his foe;
	And, if his words were harsh at times,
	He spared his fellow-men,—his blows
	Fell only on their crimes.

	Before his human heart we bend,
	Far nobler than his noblest song.

	O thou, whose daily life anticipates
	The life to come, and in whose thought and word
	The spiritual world preponderates,
	Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
	Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
	And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!

	The faith that lifts, the courage that sustains,
	These thou wert sent to teach:
	Hot blood of battle, beating in thy veins,
	Is turned to gentle speech.
	Not less, but more, than others hast thou striven;
	Thy victories remain;
	The scars of ancient hate, long since forgiven,
	Have lost their power to pain.
	Apostle pure of Freedom and of Right,
	Thou had’st thy one reward:
	Thy prayers were heard, and flashed upon thy sight
	The Coming of the Lord!
	Now, sheathed in myrtle of thy tender songs,
	Slumbers the blade of truth;
	But Age’s wisdom, crowning thee, prolongs
	The eager hope of Youth!

	From this far realm of pines I waft thee now
	A brother’s greeting, Poet, tried and true;
	So thick the laurels on thy reverend brow,
	We scarce can see the white locks glimmering through!
	O pure of thought! Earnest in heart as pen,
	The tests of time have left thee undefiled;
	And o’er the snows of threescore years and ten
	Shines the unsullied aureole of a child.

  I should be glad to celebrate in verse the seventieth return of John Greenleaf Whittier’s birthday; but I find I must content myself with humble prose…. I rejoice at the dispensation which has so long spared to the world a poet whose life is as beautiful as his verse, who has occupied himself only with noble themes and treated them nobly and grandly, and whose songs in the evening of life are as sweet and thrilling as those of his vigorous meridian. If the prayers of those who delight in his poems shall be heard, that life will be prolonged in all its serenity for the sake of a world which is the better of his having lived.

	Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake,
	The lily’s anchorage, which no eyes behold
	Save those of stars, yet for thy brother’s sake
	That lay in bonds, thou blewst a blast as bold
	As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake,
	Far heard across the New World and the Old.

  Whittier has never forgotten his connection with the gentle craft in early life; nor has he been ashamed to own fellowship with its humble but worthy members. What he thinks of the craft itself, and of the spirit of the men who have followed it, may be learned from his lines addressed to shoemakers in the “Songs of Labor,” published in 1850.

  Of Mr. Whittier’s social side less has been written than of the reformatory and literary. He is generally spoken of as a shy man, avoiding all society. If by society we mean large parties, dinners, and receptions, the general idea is a true one. But I think that no one enjoys the society of a few friends better than this accredited society hater; and with these, his humor, and sometimes keen wit, finds ready play. No one relishes a good story more, nor can relate one with better grace. The sense of the ludicrous is very vivid, and the absurdities of life and its situations strike him never more forcibly than when they involve himself. Thus in the many instances where the celebrity hunter, the autograph tramp, has ferreted him out, some point of the ludicrous in the experience has lighted up, and made a little comedy of what would otherwise have been an unmitigated bore.

  Recurring once more to the matter of character, it must be said that few men have presented such a tempting and such a baffling study. While he is neither “odd” nor “eccentric” (in usual parlance), his personality is marked, and there is a strongly individual flavor in all his utterances. Many great writers adopt the state of kings, and their only sincere worshippers so are those who adore from a distance. Goethe came to be more royal than the Grand Duke whom he served. In the case of Whittier, with his perception of the beautiful, his devotion to right, his hatred of falsity and oppression, there are found many endearing human traits—generous sympathy, a well-spring of humor, a relish for native wit and for quaint phases of character. He is utterly free from the vanity, envy, and jealousy which belittle so many writers. Some imperfection clings to all souls, but few have been observed in our time so well poised, so pure, and so stainless as his.

  Dear Angel: Is it your birthday? Thank Heaven you were born! Thank Heaven a thousand times more that you will never die, for a kingdom of heaven is within you. Sweetheart, I am going to Newburyport this week, but I don’t believe you will be in Amesbury so soon. Early next week I am going to Salem, and thence I will run up and sit with you for an hour or two “between meals”—I shall not come to stay—but just tell you how lovely you are, and how blessed the ground on which you stand, and a few little newsy things like that. And if you don’t want me, why, I will run away and come again—but I will write you beforehand of the exact day. Will this suit you? Tell a lie for once, and say yes,—there’s the dearest of dears. Always truly, whatever else I am.

	Through all thy life the foe of every wrong,
	Strong of heart to labor, high of soul to pray,
	Guide to recall when errant footsteps stray;
	What blessed memories round thy dear name throng!

  I doubt if any boy ever rose to intellectual eminence who had fewer opportunities for education than Whittier. He had no such pasturage to browse on as is open to every reader, who, by simply reaching them out, can lay his hands on the treasures of English literature. He had to borrow books wherever they could be found among his neighbors who were willing to lend, and he thought nothing of walking several miles for one volume. The only instruction he received was at the district school, which was open a few weeks in midwinter, and at the Haverhill Academy, which he attended two terms of six months each, paying for his tuition by work done in his spare hours. A feeble spirit would have languished under such disadvantages, and how he would have bewailed them after outliving them! But Whittier scarcely refers to them, and, instead of begging for pity, he takes them as part of the common lot, and seems to remember only what was beautiful and good.

  The poet’s dwelling in Amesbury is exceedingly simple and exquisitely neat, the exterior of a pale cream color, with many trees and shrubs about it, while, within, one room opens into another till you reach the study that should be haunted by the echoes of all sweet sounds, for here have been written the most of those verses full of the fitful music,

Of winds that out of dreamland blew.

Here, in the proper season, the flames of a cheerful fire dance upon the brass andirons of the open hearth, in the centre of a wall lined with books; water-colors by Harry Fenn and Lucy Larcom and Celia Thaxter, together with interesting prints, hang on the other walls, rivaled, it may be, by the window that looks down a sunny little orchard, and by the glass-topped door through which you see the green dome of Powow Hill. What worthies have been entertained in this enticing place? Garrison, and Phillips, and Higginson, and Wasson, and Emerson, and Fields, and Bayard Taylor, and Alice and Phœbe Cary, and Gail Hamilton, and Anna Dickinson, are only a few of the names that one first remembers, to say nothing of countless sweet souls, unknown to any other roll of fame than heaven’s, who have found the atmosphere there kindred to their own.

	Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
	Earth’s noblest tributes to thy name belong.
	A lifelong record closed without a stain,
	A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.
	Lift from its quarried ledge a flawless stone;
	Smooth the green turf, and bid the tablet rise,
	And on its snow-white surface carve alone
	These words,—he needs no more,—HERE WHITTIER LIES.

  The house where Mr. Whittier was a guest was ornamented indeed; for a more genial, suggestive, inspiring friend, or one with a more distinct personality, has rarely given the blessing and benediction of his presence to any home, and the family fortunate enough to have him with them at the fireside, counted themselves especially favored and enriched. He was unique in his absolute simplicity and truthfulness—the simplicity and truthfulness of clear conviction and sturdy strength, and of a nature that in its tenderness and justice seemed to reflect the very heart of God. Mr. Whittier was responsive to every appeal, whether of joy or sorrow, as his hearty laugh, his “smartly smitten knee,” at some amusing story, or his burst of righteous indignation, at a tale of injustice and wrong, plainly showed. As intense in nature as he was sagacious, though ordinarily shy and cautious and reserved, he could, under favorable conditions, blossom into rare graciousness and sympathy of speech and manner. Those who have sat with him of an evening, in a quiet firelit room, will never forget his charming vivacity and pleasant confidences, alternating with dreamy silence and repose.

  His friends were to Whittier, more than to most men, an unfailing source of daily happiness and gratitude. With the advance of years, and the death of his unmarried sister, his friends became all in all to him. They were his mother, his sister, and his brother; but in a certain sense they were always friends of the imagination. He saw some of them only at rare intervals, and sustained his relations with them chiefly in his hurried correspondence. He never suffered himself to complain of what they were not; but what they were, in loyalty to chosen aims, and in their affection for him, was an unending source of pleasure. With the shortcomings of others he dealt gently, having too many shortcomings of his own, as he was accustomed to say, with true humility. He did not, however, look upon the failings of his friends with indifferent eyes. “How strange it is!” he once said. “We see those whom we love going to the very verge of the precipice of self-destruction, yet it is not in our power to hold them back!” A life of invalidism made consecutive labor of any kind an impossibility. For years he was only able to write for half an hour or less, without stopping to rest, and these precious moments were devoted to some poem or other work for the press, which was almost his only source of income. His letters suffered, from a literary point of view; but they were none the less delightful to his friends; to the world of literature they are perhaps less important than those of most men who have achieved a high place.

  Mr. Whittier’s remains were interred in the village cemetery, in the section reserved for the Society of Friends. His lot is surrounded by a well-kept arbor vitæ hedge. At the corner where his brother is buried is a tall cedar, and at the foot of his own grave is another symmetrical tree of the same kind. Between him and his brother lie their father and mother, their two sisters, their aunt Mercy and uncle Moses. These comprise the whole family commemorated in the poem “Snow-Bound.” Plain marble tablets, all exactly alike, mark these graves, and the poet’s tombstone, afterward erected, is of the same simple pattern. The cemetery is upon an eminence overlooking the valley of the Powow in which nestles the thriving village of Amesbury; and the broad waters of the noble Merrimac, here a tidal stream, are close at hand, with the hills of old Newbury beyond. It is a spot midway between his birthplace and the place where he died,—a fit resting-place for him whose verse has celebrated every phase of the scenery it overlooks. Hither for all time will come those who love the memory and admire the genius of the prophet of freedom, the poet of New England life.

  Seldom have I known any one who better relished jokes and humorous anecdotes than Mr. Whittier; and he told them with that peculiar zest and sparkle which so delights the hearer. Both in letters and conversation, he would often use a term or tone with most amusing effect…. Mr. Whittier was himself notably fearless and self-reliant, in regard to his literary opinions, as well as all others. He was not afraid of being the first to commend what he liked, and did not wait to hear what others thought, before venturing on its praise. Best of all, he stood by what he said, and was as ready to write it as to speak it, ever willing that whatever he spoke should be used in printed criticism.

  In his old age he enjoyed the celebrity of his more vigorous years as if it had been the fame of a constant friend; but I think he enjoyed still more the consciousness of having succeeded in living through life as he intended to do in the beginning.

  He was full of frolic, in a gentle way; no one of the world’s people ever had a keener sense of humor. From every interview with him one carried away a good story, or a sense of having had a good time; he never darkened the day, or shadowed the heart. He inspirited. He invigorated. “I like,” he wrote to a friend, “the wise, Chinese proverb: ‘You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you may prevent them from stopping to build their nests in your hair.’”

  The life of Whittier, no less than his inspiring lines, bears a message of deep import to present-day civilization. In the fever and intoxication of modern existence, rife, too, as it is, with artificiality and duplicity, he maintained a lofty serenity of soul and in his simplicity, naturalness, and candor proved the falsity of the teachings of certain modern sophists, who claim that the Christ-life cannot be lived in the environment of modern times. He, more than any of the illustrious singers who were his contemporaries, preserved from youth to silver age the soul of a child. Many men who in their higher and truer moments have given the world noble and elevating thoughts, have themselves signally failed to live up to their fine teachings and, in unguarded moments and hours of temptation, have so fallen that the recollection of their shortcomings rests like a sable cloud over their noble utterances. Not so with Whittier; his life was exceptionally pure, and while I imagine no man ever reaches at all times his ideals, our Quaker poet, in a greater degree than most of us, maintained that serenity of soul, that purity of thought and kindliness of nature, which reflect the divine side of man.

  From our upper piazza [about 1846] we had a fine view of Boston harbor. Sitting there late one moonlight night, admiring the outlines of Bunker Hill Monument and the weird effect of the sails and masts of the vessels lying in the harbor, we naturally passed from the romance of our surroundings to those of our lives. I have often noticed that the most reserved people are apt to grow confidential at such an hour. It was under such circumstances that the good poet opened to me a deeply interesting page of his life, a sad romance of love and disappointment, that may not yet be told, as some who were interested in the events are still among the living.

  Mr. Whittier himself appeared, with all that report had ever told of gentle sweetness and dignified cordial courtesy. He was then seventy-seven years old, and, although he spoke of age and feebleness, he showed few signs of either; he was, in fact, to live eight years more. Perhaps because the room was low, he seemed surprisingly tall; he must, in fact, have been a little less than six feet high. The peculiarity of his face rested in the extraordinary large and luminous black eyes, set in black eyebrows, and fringed with thick black eyelashes curiously curved inwards. This bar of vivid black across the countenance was startlingly contrasted with the bushy snow-white beard and hair, offering a sort of contradiction which was surprisingly and presently pleasing. He was careful to keep on my right side, I noticed, being presumably deaf in the right ear; even if this were the case, which he concealed, his hearing continued to be markedly quick in a man of his years.

  There was no literary man of his time who worked under such a lifelong embargo in respect to health as Whittier. He once said, “I inherited from my parents a nervous headache, and on account of it have never been able to do all I wished to do.” Whittier’s early trouble was regarded by physicians as a disease of the heart, and he was told that he must carefully avoid excitement. With care, as one of them assured him, he might live to be fifty years old. His headaches always pursued him, and he could not read continuously for half an hour without severe pain. At public dinners and receptions he was obliged to stipulate that he should be allowed to slip out when he felt fatigue coming on. It showed great strength of will surely for one man, combining the functions of author, politician, and general reformer, under such disadvantages, to outlive his fellow chiefs, carry so many points for which he had toiled, and leave behind him seven volumes of his collected works. The most successful of these, “Snow-bound,” was written to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber.

  Whittier received me very kindly, but was reluctant in giving his consent for sittings. My idea of Whittier had been formed by an engraving from a daguerreotype in a volume of his poetry. In this the face was closely shaven—a face large and rugged, with a strong chin, and a large mouth kindly in expression. I now found him with a full beard, excepting the upper lip, making the mouth seem small, and giving him a general look of commonplaceness and lack of character…. I never found in Whittier that ruggedness which I had imagined, but soon grew to like him very much, and the sittings became most enjoyable.

  The pleasant little town of Burlington, N. J., in which I spent my earliest ministry, was the headquarters of orthodox Quakers. I was thrown much into the society of their most eminent people, and very delightful society I found it…. The wittiest Quaker in the town was my neighbor, William J. Allinson, the editor of the “Friends Review,” and an intimate friend of John G. Whittier. One afternoon he ran over to my room, and said: “Friend Theodore, John G. Whittier is at my house, and wants to see thee; he leaves early in the morning.” I hastened across the street, and, in the modest parlor of Friend Allinson, I saw, standing before the fire, a tall, slender man in Quaker dress, with a very lofty brow, and the finest eye I have ever seen in any American, unless it were the deep ox-like eye of Abraham Lincoln. We had a pleasant chat about the anti-slavery, temperance and other moral reforms; and I went home with something of the feeling that Walter Scott says he had after seeing “Rabbie Burns.” Whittier was a retiring, home-keeping man. He never crossed the ocean and seldom went even outside of his native home in Massachusetts.

Voices of Freedom, 1846

  These “Voices of Freedom” are not bad reading at the present day. They are of that strenuous quality, that the light of battle brings to view a finer print, which lay unseen between the lines. They are themselves battles, and stir the blood like the blast of a trumpet. What a beat in them of fiery pulses! What a heat, as of molten metal, or coal-mines burning underground! What anger! What desire! And yet we have in vain searched these poems to find one trace of base wrath, or of any degenerate and selfish passion. He is angry, and sins not. The sun goes down and again rises upon his wrath; and neither sets nor rises upon aught freer from meanness and egotism.

  They are earnestly written, but as the events which suggested them were of a temporary character, one has to stimulate an interest to read them now, and this not so much because the vexed question which so fiercely agitated the poet is happily an obsolete one, as because in grasping with it he forgot to be a poet.

  If the conservative is still unable to appreciate the merits of the “Voices,” the anti-slavery man who bore his part in the long and often desperate conflict is perhaps equally disqualified to form an impartial opinion. We may say once more that in his mind and memory the “Voices” are associated with all his toils and his triumphs; they represent his inmost feelings at the time when they were profoundly moved. They accord with his deepest convictions of right and duty; and their high, solemn phrases seem to come with a divine authority. For an abolitionist to assume a critical attitude in regard to the “Voices” would be as hard as for a Hebrew to find fault with “The horse and his rider” or “By the rivers of Babylon.”

  Some of his verse, as a pattern for verse hereafter, is not what it might have been if he had consecrated himself to poetry as an art; but it is memorably connected with historic times, and his rudest shafts of song were shot true and far and tipped with flame. This should make it clear to foreigners why we entertain for him a measure of the feeling with which Hungarians speak of Petöfi, and Russians of Turgénieff. His songs touched the hearts of the people.

  A large proportion of the “Voices of Freedom” may be mere improvisations, uttered, hardly to be said composed, on the spur of the occasion, with the passionate purpose of immediately reaching the hearts of his readers, with neither time nor care for consideration of artistic perfectness. The impulse which gave birth to them was, indeed, patriotic rather than poetic: so, however good the declamatory verse, it was often to be classed as rhetoric rather than poetry. But after any deduction on such ground there is enough, even in these first outbursts, and leaving aside what he did when he reached his full stature, to show the true and gifted poet, sure to find at last, in his own country, but compeers and no superiors.

Snow-Bound, 1866

  It is true to Nature and in local coloring, pure in sentiment, quietly deep in feeling, and full of those simple touches which show the poetic eye and the trained hand. Here is a New England interior glorified with something of that inward light which is apt to be rather warmer in the poet than the Quaker, but which, blending the qualities of both in Mr. Whittier, produces that kind of spiritual picturesqueness which gives so peculiar a charm to his verse. There is in this poem a warmth of affectionate memory and religious faith as touching as it is uncommon, and which would be altogether delightful if it did not remind us that the poet was growing old…. We have before had occasion to protest against Mr. Whittier’s carelessness in accents and rhymes, as in pronouncing “ly′ ceum,” and joining in unhallowed matrimony such sounds as awn and orn, ents and ence. We would not have the Muse emulate the unidiomatic preciseness of a Normal schoolmistress, but we cannot help thinking that, if Mr. Whittier writes thus on principle, as we begin to suspect, he errs in forgetting that thought so refined as his can be fitly matched only with an equal refinement of expression, and loses something of its charm when cheated of it.

  “Snow-Bound” is the most faithful picture of our Northern winter that has yet been put into poetry.

  In the poem of “Snow-Bound” there are lines on the death of the poet’s sister which have nothing superior to them in beauty and pathos in our language. I have read them often with always increasing admiration. I have suffered from the loss of those near and dear to me, and I can apply the lines to my own case and feel as if they were written for me.

  Years ago, when “Snow-Bound” was published, I was surprised at the warmth of its reception. I must have underrated it in every way. It did not interest one not long escaped from bounds, to whom the poetry of action then was all in all. And in truth such poetry, conceived and executed in the spirit of art, is of the higher grade. But I now can see my mistake, a purely subjective one, and do justice to “Snow-Bound” as a model of its class. Burroughs well avows it to be the “most faithful picture of our northern winter that has yet been put into poetry.” If his discussion had not been restricted to “Nature and the Poets,” he perhaps would have added that this pastoral gives, and once for all, an ideal reproduction of the inner life of an old-fashioned American rustic home; not a peasant home,—far above that in refinement and potentialities,—but equally simple, frugal, and devout; a home of which no other land has furnished the coadequate type.

  Of “Snow-Bound,”—that matchless, inimitable, victoriously original blending of real and ideal,—what can be said, except that it is the truest idyl of home and home-born joys and memories penned in English speech during the century that has elapsed since Goldsmith sang of sweet Auburn…. “Snow-Bound” fairly entitles this author of so many rude and jarring notes to a place as a literary artist by the side of Goldsmith,—I was about to say by the side of Gray. Inferior to Goldsmith in humor and to Gray in classic conciseness, he equals them both in pathos, he equals them both in tender grace, and he far surpasses them in depth of feeling and spontaneity. I find in “Snow-Bound” more marks of the abiding classic than in any other American poem. It bears the test of quotation; it bears the test of repeated perusal; it appeals alike to the simplest and to the most fastidious.

  It is not without perfect justice that “Snow-Bound” takes rank with “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” and “The Deserted Village;” it belongs to this group as a faithful picture of humble life. It is perfect in its conception and complete in its execution; it is the New England home, entire, with its characteristic scene, its incidents of household life, its Christian virtues. Perhaps many of us look back to it as Horace did to the Sabine farm; but there are more who can still remember it as a reality, and to them this winter idyl is the poetry of their own lives. It is, in a peculiar sense, the one poem of New England,—so completely indigenous that the soil has fairly created it, so genuine as to be better than history. It is by virtue of this poem that Whittier must be most highly rated, because he is here most impersonal, and has succeeded in expressing the common life with most directness.

  “Snow-Bound,” simple and radiant as it is with human life, is also the reflection of a mind equally at home in spiritual realities. It may fairly be said to sum up Whittier’s personal experience and faith, and yet so absolutely free is it from egotism that it has taken its place as the representative poem of New England country life, quite as surely as Burns’ “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” expresses one large phase of Scottish life.

  “Snow-Bound,” which was printed a year after the close of the war, and written during the summer following the downfall of the Confederacy, is expressive of his essential qualities. The position usually awarded it as his master-work rests on solid ground. Whittier was a New Englander in blood and bone. “Snow-Bound” is a representative poem of New England, describing in a series of etched scenes the typical life of a country household—in a setting of external nature that is deliriously recognisable to any son of New England. The poem is also intensely autobiographical. It commemorates the family group that was wont to gather before the big fireplace in the old kitchen of the Haverhill farm-house; and the members of that circle are seen through the pensive half-light of memory, touched with the glamour of the years, yet the more distinctly drawn (there is a Dutch-like fidelity of drawing) because in place of photography the idealism of art produces veritable portraiture. It is all so clearly, so lovingly visualised and felt…. Its charm is that of a homely genre piece by a Low Country painter. Perhaps such poetry does not thrill one with a passionate sense of beauty, but it has a household virtue.

  The gem of the group, indeed the most artistic, sustained, and in many ways the most important of Whittier’s poems, is the admirable idyll of New England rural life in winter, the several times mentioned “Snow-Bound.” It is not always safe to pay attention to comparisons of American literary productions with those of British writers, but it is entirely safe to say that the comparison so often instituted between Whittier’s best poem and Burns’s “Cotter’s Saturday Night” is not only warranted, but not altogether in favour of the greater poet. Whittier’s description in octosyllabics of the snow-beset farmhouse and of the cheerful glow of cottage hearth and rural hearts is not marked by great imaginative power or by conspicuous charm of style; but it is marked to a notable extent by the charm of faithfulness of description as well as by that of sincerity of feeling. The lines that are devoted to the memory of his dead kinsfolk are not often surpassed in tenderness, and the portraits given are so clear that one regrets that Whittier did not oftener try his hand at idyllic and sustained narrative verse.

General

  The author of the following graphic sketch, which would do credit to riper years, is a youth of only sixteen years, who we think bids fair to prove another Bernard Barton, of whose persuasion he is. His poetry bears the stamp of true poetic genius, which, if carefully cultivated, will rank him among the bards of his country.

  Editor of the American Manufacturer, a newspaper of Boston. He is one of the most youthful of our poets, but his verses show a more than common maturity of power.

  Is placed by his particular admirers in the very front rank of American poets. We are not disposed, however, to agree with their decision in every respect. Mr. Whittier is a fine versifier, so far as strength is regarded independently of modulation. His subjects, too, are usually chosen with the view of affording scope to a certain vivida vis of expression which seems to be his forte; but in taste, and especially in imagination, which Coleridge has justly styled the soul of all poetry, he is ever remarkably deficient. His themes are never to our liking.

  A common thought comes from the pen “rammed with life.” He seems, in some of his lyrics, to pour out his blood with his lines. There is a rush of passion in his verse which sweeps everything along with it. His fancy and imagination can hardly keep pace with their fiery companion. His vehement sensibility will not allow the inventive faculties fully to complete what they may have commenced. The stormy qualities of his mind, acting at the suggestions of conscience, produce a kind of military morality which uses all the deadly arms of verbal warfare. When well intrenched in abstract right, he always assumes a hostile attitude towards the champions or exponents of abstract wrong. He aims to give his song “a rude martial tone,—a blow in every thought.” His invective is merciless and undistinguishable; he almost screams with rage and indignation. Occasionally, the extreme bitterness and fierceness of his declamation degenerate into mere shrewishness and scolding.

  Although boldness and energy are Whittier’s leading characteristics, his works are not without passages scarcely less distinguished for tenderness and grace. In his later poems his style is more subdued and correct, though it is divested of none of his peculiar freshness…. Whittier may reasonably be styled a national poet. His works breathe affection for and faith in our republican polity and unshackled religion, but an affection and faith that do not blind him to our weakness or wickedness. He dares to “tell the world it lies.” He is of that class of authors whom we most need in America to build up a literature that shall elevate with itself the national feeling and character.

	There was ne’er a man born who had more of the swing
	Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;
	And his failures arise (though perhaps he don’t know it,)
	From the very same cause that has made him a poet,—
	A fervor of mind which knows no separation
	’Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration.
	*        *        *        *        *
	Then his grammar’s not always correct, nor his rhymes,
	And he’s prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes,
	Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats,
	When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats,
	And can ne’er be repeated again any more
	Than they could have been carefully plotted before.

  To the descriptive talent as related to natural scenery, which we have noted as the gift of our best poets, John Greenleaf Whittier unites the enthusiasm of the reformer and the sympathies of the patriot. There are a prophetic anathema and a bard-like invocation in some of his pieces. He is a true son of New England, and beneath the calm, fraternal bearing of the Quaker, nurses the imaginative ardor of a devotee both of nature and humanity.

  We are not sure but that we like Whittier’s prose better than his poetry.

  In considering Whittier’s merits as an author, it is quite manifest that we should mention, first, his intensity,—that vivid force of thought and expression which distinguishes his writings. His verses sometimes bear marks of extreme haste, but the imperfections which would result from this cause are in a great measure obviated by the strength and simplicity of his conceptions. He begins to write with so clear an apprehension of what he intends to say, that in many cases his poems come out at first heat with a roundness and perfection which would lead one to suppose that they had passed through the fires of revision. But at times this vehemence is overdone, and needs a restraint which longer consideration would have supplied. This vividness, which Whittier possesses in a greater degree than any other living author with whom we are acquainted, is in part a natural peculiarity of his mind, and in part arises from the urgent circumstances under which he wrote…. Like every other true lyric poet, Whittier does not lack his multitude of friendly critics who advise him to concentrate his efforts upon some great work, instead of dissipating his energy upon what they consider mere ephemerals,—to devote himself to some gigantic undertaking, which shall loom up like the Pyramids to tell posterity his fame. But in our opinion the author has unwittingly best consulted his genius and reputation in the course which he has adopted. His shortest productions are his happiest. There is no doubt that the writing of long poems is sanctioned by many eminent examples; but they are the least read of an author’s works and are known to most people only by certain favorite extracts.

  His writings are characterized by earnestness of tone, high moral purpose, and energy of expression. His spirit is that of a sincere and fearless reformer; and his fervid appeals are the true utterance of a brave and loving heart…. He describes natural scenery correctly and beautifully, and a vein of genuine tenderness runs through his nature.

  The most intensely national of American bards…. The march of the verse [“Cassandra Southcote”] has something that reminds us of the rhythm of Mr. Macaulay’s fine classical ballads, something which is resemblance, not imitation; while in the tone of mind of the author, his earnestness, his eloquence, his pathos, there is much that resembles the constant force and occasional beauty of Ebenezer Elliott. While equally earnest, however, and equally eloquent, there is in Mr. Whittier not only a more sustained, but a higher tone than that of the Corn-law rhymer.

  He is as genuine, as wholesome and real as sweet-flag and clover. Even when he utters pure sentiment, as in that perfect lyric, “My Psalm,” or in the intrepid, exquisite humility—healthful and sound as the odor of new-mown hay or balsam-firs—of “Andrew Rykman’s Prayer,” he maintains the same attitude of realism. He states God and inward experience as he would state sunshine and the growth of grass. This, with the devout depth of his nature, makes the rare beauty of his hymns and poems of piety and trust. He does not try to make the facts by stating them; he does not try to embellish them; he only seeks to utter, to state them; and even in his most perfect verse they are not half so melodious as they were in his soul…. It is, however, in his ballads that Whittier exhibits, not, perhaps, a higher, yet a rarer, power than elsewhere,—a power, in truth, which is very rare indeed.

  Of all our American poets, John G. Whittier has from first to last done most for the abolition of slavery. All my anti-slavery brethren, I doubt not, will unite with me to crown him our laureate…. All his anti-slavery poetry helped mightily to keep us alive to our high duties, and fired us with holy resolution. Let our laureate’s verses still be said and sung throughout the land, for if the portents of the day be true, our conflict with the enemies of liberty, the oppressors of humanity, is not yet ended.

  He has everywhere devoted himself to the cause of truth and justice. No poet has spoken with more tenderness for humanity, or waged war more constantly and more defiantly with error and oppression. His intense hatred of wrong, and inexhaustible sympathy for struggling manhood, are always expressed with remarkable force and beauty in his prose and poetry.

  No American poet, it may be said, is so free as Mr. Whittier from obligations to English writers; his poems show no evidence of appropriation, or even of a study of masterpieces so assiduous and appreciative as almost inevitably to entail a general resemblance. He is eminently original, and eminently American. One principal charm of his poetry consists in its catholicity; he sings not of himself, but for humanity, and his voice is heeded as if it bore a special call to all who heard it. The moral tone of his writings is uncompromisingly high; his highest inspiration is found in the thought of elevating or helping his fellow man, or widening the bounds of his freedom. The sentiment of Mr. Whittier’s verse is generally elevated, and is expressed with mingled tenderness and dignity. His style lacks elegance, and is sometimes marred by positive faults; but these are more than balanced by the vigor of his lyrics and the intensity of his didactic passages.

  We have no American ballad-writer—that is, writer of ballads founded on our native history and tradition—who can be compared with him, either in the range or skillful treatment of his material.

  John G. Whittier, the poet of New England: his genius drew its nourishment from her soil; his pages are the mirror of her outward nature, and the strong utterance of her inward life.

  He is the true poet whose life is a poem, and our friend has received grace of the Father to live such a life. His life has been a consecration, his songs an inspiration, to all that is highest and best. It has been his chief glory, not that he could speak inspired words, but that he spoke them for the despised, the helpless, and the dumb; for those too ignorant to honor, too poor to reward him. Grace was given him to know his Lord in the lowest disguise, even that of the poor hunted slave, and to follow him in heart into prison and unto death. He had words of pity for all—words of severity for none but the cruel and hard-hearted. Though the land beyond this world be more beautiful and more worthy of him, let us pray the Father to spare him to us yet more years, and to fill those years with blessing.

	Or, snow-bound, let me, lingering, cheer the mind
	In happy converse with companions kind,
	And with them watch the pearly wonders gleam
	O’er forest, plain, rough glen and gelid stream,
	Or frosty magic on the panes assume
	New forms of light, transcending summer’s bloom.
	And, if I had them not, then let me ride
	With Skipper Ireson, feathered, tarred, and dyed,
	Through Marblehead, with rope-coils round my wrists,
	And hear the yells, and feel the fishwives’ fists
	Till I repent me, and roll back the wain
	Of truant thought to nature’s joys again!

  They who love their country will thank him for the verses, sometimes pathetic, sometimes stirring, which helped to redeem that country from a great sin and shame; they who rejoice in natural beauty will thank him that he has delightfully opened their eyes to the varied charms of the rough New England landscape, by highway, river, mountain, and seashore; they who love God will thank him from their hearts for the tenderness and simple trust with which he has sung of the Infinite Goodness.

  Whittier certainly has no fear of trivial and commonplace subjects, but in his treatment of them he rarely, if ever, rises above the level of the verse-maker. It was the opinion of Keats that a long poem is the test of invention; and if we accept this as a canon of criticism, we shall want no other evidence of Whittier’s poverty of imagination. All his pieces are short, though few readers, we suppose, have ever wished them longer. He cannot give sprightliness or variety to his verse, which like a sluggish stream creeps languidly along. There is no freshness about him, none of the breeziness of nature, none of its joyousness, exuberance, and exultant strength. In his youth, even, he had all the stiffness and slowness of age with its want of graceful motion…. We willingly bear testimony to the moral tone and purity which pervade Whittier’s verse. There is nothing to offend the most delicate ear; nothing to bring a blush to a virgin’s cheek. He lacks the power to portray passion, and was not tempted into doubtful paths. He delights in pictures of home, with its innocent joys and quiet happiness; sings of friendship and the endearing ties that bind the parent to the child; or, if he attunes his harp to love, he does it in numbers so sadly sweet that we only remember that the fickle god has wreathed his bowers with cypress boughs and made his best interpreter a sigh…. In Whittier’s verse we often catch the unmistakable accent of genuine feeling, and his best lyrics are so artless and simple that they almost disarm criticism.

	Fresh as on breezy seas the ascendant day,
	And bright as on thick dew its radiant trace;
	Pure as the smile on some babe’s dreaming face;
	Hopeful as meadows at the breath of May,
	One loftiest aim his melodies obey,
	Like dawnward larks in roseate deeps of space—
	While that large reverent love for all his race
	Makes him a man in manhood’s lordlier way!
	His words like pearls are luminous yet strong;
	His duteous thought ennobles while it calms;
	We seem to have felt the falling, in his song,
	Of benedictions and of sacred balms;
	To have seen the aureoled angels group and throng
	In heavenly valleylands, by shining palms!

  Whittier has been characterized as the poet of freedom and humanity, and richly he deserves the compliment. During the antislavery discussions, his poetry, in its defiant and spirited tone, exerted great influence; and during the Civil War his soul-stirring strains sounded through the land, animating the friends of the nation.

  Mr. Whittier is one of the few American poets who have succeeded in obtaining the suffrages of the reading public and of the literary class. Men of letters respect his work for its sincerity, simplicity, and downright manliness, and average readers of poetry respect it because they can understand it…. I do not rank him high as an artist, though he has art enough to answer his purposes generally. Poetry seems never to have been a pursuit with him, but a charge which was entrusted to him, and which he was to deliver when the spirit moved him, well or ill, as it happened, but honestly, earnestfully and prayerfully.

  “Notwithstanding their many common points of harmony, Whittier’s sympathies—though fine and noble—find a less pleasing and less noble form of expression than Bryant’s. He habitually, and Bryant never or rarely, subordinates the poet to the man; and he obtrudes his own peculiar notions or opinions, on subjects religious, political, social, and philanthropic, upon his poetical utterances, and makes them important or ruling factors in some of his finest poems. It is also to be said that he differs from Bryant, very delightfully too sometimes, in making his poems vehicles for illustrating the familiar speech and lives and feelings of the men and women belonging to those simple-hearted folk in the lower and middle walks of life, whom President Lincoln was used to call “plain people.” In these last, Whittier best displays his powers and diffuses his bosky sweetness; but in the class first named a rigid austerity dominates, and poetry is only a garb contrived to cloak the writer’s ethics.”

  His poems are among the greatest favorites of the American people, and are admired wherever the English language is used.

  In Whittier, with his special themes—(his outcropping love of heroism and war, for all his Quakerdom, his verses at times like the measured step of Cromwell’s old veterans)—in Whittier lives the zeal, the moral energy, that founded New England—the splendid rectitude and ardour of Luther, Milton, George Fox—I must not, dare not, say the wilfulness and narrowness—though doubtless the world needs now, and always will need, almost above all, just such narrowness and wilfulness.

  After Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier is the political lyrist, par excellence, of America…. Whittier’s later verse, rapid as a torrent, is apt to overflow its banks. He seldom knows when to stop, and, ringing endless changes on a few ideas, has never sufficiently discerned the difference between nouns and adjectives.

  “The Eternal Goodness” is another poem which is worth a crowd of sermons which are spoken from the pulpits of our sects and churches, which I do not wish to undervalue. It is a great gift to mankind when a poet is raised up among us who devotes his great powers to the sublime purpose of spreading among men principles of mercy and justice and freedom. This our friend Whittier has done in a degree unsurpassed by any other poet who has spoken to the world in our noble tongue.

  Although not claiming it as a superior distinction, yet, to our mind, Mr. Whittier is perhaps the most peculiarly American poet of any that our country has produced. The woods and water-fowls of Bryant belong as much to one land as to another; and all the rest of our singers—Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren—with the single exception of Joaquin Miller, might as well have been born in the land of Shakespeare and Milton and Byron as in their own. But Whittier is entirely the poet of his own soil…. Thousands of his countrymen have lived their boyhood over again with him in the “Barefoot Boy.”

  The associations of Whittier’s poetry are almost everywhere to be found in the country in which he lives. The Merrimack, which clasps many historic towns in its arm, on its bending way to the sea, is his river of song. Marblehead, perhaps the quaintest town in America, with its sea-worn rocks, and its lighthouses flaming at evening above the silvery lagoons of the ocean, is the scene of Skipper Ireson’s punishment. Newburyport, where Whitefield’s coffin may still be seen,—

“Under the church on Federal Street,”

is the scene of “The Preacher.” The curving beaches that sweep away from the old coast-towns of Gloucester, Ipswich, and Marblehead, are accurately described in “The Tent on the Beach,” and in other poems. “The Shoemakers,” “The Huskers,” “The Drovers,” and “The Fishermen,” are subjects of poems that but picture familiar scenes in Amesbury, and in the neighboring towns…. His poems are among the æsthetic treasures of every intelligent family, as far as the English language is spoken. They are recited in every school, and quoted from many a platform and pulpit. Their influences range widely, and always for good.

  The Hermit of Amesbury, the Woodthrush of Essex, the Martial Quaker, the Poet of Freedom, the Poet of the Moral Sentiment—such are some of the titles bestowed upon Whittier by his admirers. Let us call him the Preacher-Poet, for he has written scarcely a poem or an essay that does not breathe a moral sentiment or a religious aspiration.

  The faults of Whittier’s early poetry may be summed up in the lack of the Hellenic element, the want of artistic taste. The void was never entirely filled, so enduring was the influence of his early training and of the Abolitionist movement. But in his later and more literary poetry the blemishes are less conspicuous. As his mental horizon widens, the grey atmosphere of his Quaker youth grows brighter…. His descriptive poetry is never cold. He paints in fresh bright colours, transfers the living scene to his page, and, without pausing to analyse or philosophise, gives us pictures of Nature at first hand. His poetry is fresh and simple; but it is not deep. He is a genuine story-teller. The want of depth here becomes a positive advantage. He never mars the vivid directness of his narrative by the intrusion of his own personality. Mystic beauty, dreamy grace, rounded art, lofty imagination are not his gifts. He would not, if he could, soar into the unreal world of Shelley. “Snow-bound” is on the whole, his most finished production. In it his pictures stand out with sharply defined outline against the snow; his background gives emphasis and expression to every feature which he describes.

  It was a lucky day for American verse when Whittier made the study which led up to his Legendary Poems; for, although these early poems are probably less read to-day than his later work, an original bent of mind was cultivated, and the American flavor of all his later work was assured by this study. The Indian and colonial names and events entered into his stock as a poet, and enriched his verse long after he had ceased to use the material as subject-matter. There came a time, perhaps, when he grew tired of the Indian legend, grew broader in his poetical range.

	Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine,
	For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine;

but the best is always the native home flavor such as one perceives in “The Maids of Attitash,” “Rivermouth Rocks,” “Amy Wentworth,” “Maud Müller,” “Telling the Bees,” “The Witch’s Daughter,” and “My Playmate.” The graces of his verse appeared more and more persuasively when the War was coming to an end, and the young soldiers were dragging their battered cannon home. There were many young Quakers among the soldiers, who had forgotten the drab and donned the blue. Whittier could not handle the guns; but he sounded the bugle, and none louder than he sang the jubilate of victory. Much of his broader verse has appeared since the War, and it is as grave, tender, and melodious as art, in long wedlock with genius, can make. There is a rich home quality that will endear verse and man to our American youth and manhood,—and there exists no man for whom we may more justly twine the garland which his brother poet Lowell bespoke for him nearly fifty years ago:—

	A wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true
	Who, for the sake of the many, dared stand with the few.

  His verse is diffuse and of irregular merit; from it there might be drawn an instructive glossary of mispronunciations and excruciating rhymes; and it contains a large percentage of those “occasional” poems which would be a literary pest were they not so promptly and efficaciously covered by the recurrent tides of time. Yet Whittier, without being able to avail himself of the spoils of classical culture, and with all the disadvantages incident to the calling of the political poet, has succeeded by the strength of his conviction,—a conviction affecting, as well as relying upon, the spontaneous grace of a natural melodist. Sometimes his lame muse of language “goes halting along where he bids her go free;” but at other times thought and form unite in unstudied beauty. Not one of the chief American poets, in the strictest use of the adjective, Whittier has slowly reached, in a green old age, a recognised fame which the cold classicist in verse, or the restless sensationalist, might well envy.

  Whose Quaker righteousness, like the oratory of John Bright, often glows with such splendid indignation, because he hates cruelty and oppression with a hatred commensurate with the depth of his love for all that is tender and true.

  The pieces which make up the volume of “Voices of Freedom,” published in 1849, were written during the years from 1833 to 1848. There, and elsewhere, he made visible the wrongs of the slave, and helped to arouse the moral sentiment which should abolish those wrongs. Whether in this Whittier kept within the legitimate functions of the poet need not be discussed here. It may be that the poet, like the critic, should refuse “to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man.” Probably Whittier’s best poetry is to be found elsewhere than in his slave pieces. Be this as it may, he served humanity more and poetry not less than do those writers who pass as poets, whose poetry springs from no depth of character or earnestness of purpose, but is for the most part a chronicle of bar-parlor amours and the equally unedifying reflections of the next morning, given in the shape of sonnet, triolet, or rhymed epigram. Not the slave alone, but the victim of any form of oppression, had a claim on Whittier’s sympathy…. Quick as Whittier was to see and sympathise with those who were wronged, he was far from being a melancholy or despairing poet. He had faith that there was an overruling providence which could and would evolve good even out of seeming evil…. His tone, generally, is energetic and hopeful. It is distinctly less melancholy than that of Longfellow. Which of these was the greater poet is a point upon which opinions may differ. Longfellow, however, had the advantage in graceful and befitting phrase.

  The free flow of his thought, the simplicity of his structure, the willingness not to select with too nice a sense, but to tell the whole, all helped to that frankness of the man which is the great charm of his works, taken together, and assisted him in making his expression of old New England life complete. No man could have written “Snow-Bound” who remembered Theocritus. In Whittier, Nature reminds us, as she is wont to do from time to time, that the die which she casts exceeds the diploma of the schools. Art may lift an inferior talent to higher estimation, but genius makes a very little art go a long way. This was Whittier’s case. The poetic spark was inborn in him, living in his life; and when academic criticism has said its last word, he remains a poet, removed by a broad and not doubtful line from all stringers of couplets and filers of verses…. In the war time, he rose, under the stress of the great struggle, to finer poetic work; the softer feelings of pity, together with a solemn religious trust, made the verses of those battle-summers different in quality from those of the literary conflict of the earlier years. He never surpassed, on the lower level of rhetoric, the lines which bade farewell to Webster’s greatness, nor did he ever equal in intensity those rallying-cries of defiance to the South, in which the free spirit of the North seemed to speak before its time.

  New Englander of New Englanders is the Quaker poet of Massachusetts, John Greenleaf Whittier. Although not a Puritan, he is the most typical of the New England poets. His early life was that of a farmer’s boy, and his poems are full of farm scenes and homestead incidents. His “Snow Bound” pictures the cheer within and the cold without of a New England winter. He makes graphic the sturdy qualities of the old New England settlers. The reminiscences of his early days, picturing, as they do, a stalwart human nature, confirm the conscience of his readers against present temptations. His rhymes are often faulty, his metre sometimes rough, his spirit too surcharged with local feeling to be called national, his verse falls just short of inspiration, but what he has added to the moral worth of American letters is invaluable. He has given to American poetry a dignity of its own—the dignity of unaffected but undaunted manhood.

  Taken for all in all, Whittier, “our bard and prophet best-loved,” that purely American minstrel, so virginal and so impassioned, at once the man of peace and the poet militant, is the Sir Galahad of American song. He has read the hearts of his own people, and chanted their emotions, and powerfully affected their convictions. His lyrics of freedom and reform, in his own justified language, were “words wrung from the nation’s heart, forged at white heat.”

  Even the lightest touch of Whittier’s fancy bears the earnest purpose of a master-workman. All of Whittier’s work is characterized by intense earnestness, and this atones, in the eyes of the masses for defects which critics note.

  All through Whittier’s writings the spirit of trust in a beneficent order of things and a loving superintendence of the universe shows itself, ever hopeful, ever cheerful, always looking forward to a happier, brighter era when the Kingdom of Heaven shall be established…. I was first drawn to him by his strong human sympathies. In the great struggle with slavery, I found my slower sensibilities kindled by his burning enthusiasm; but more than all, I was attracted by that larger faith which is shared by the Brotherhood of Singers with whom he was enrolled.

  If Spenser was responsible for the magnificent poetry of Keats, Burns was Whittier’s literary godfather. An itinerant pedlar, a Scotchman, and himself a bit of a poet, bartered a copy of the Ayrshire ploughman’s works, together with a miscellaneous lot of fancy articles, to the Whittier family, and the young John Greenleaf dated his earliest inspiration from that fortunate purchase…. Some of Whittier’s short pieces remind us of the “Twice-told Tales;” they are vignettes in verse. “Andrew Rykman’s Prayer” and “The Two Rabbis” are an illustration of this similarity, but the poet has rarely attained the poetic excellence of the prose writer’s exquisite allegory, “The Great Stone Face.” We must not claim for Whittier even the slight measure of intellectuality which constitutes the baggage of most poets of his eminence; he was unintellectual in his spontaneity, unintellectual in his mode of looking at life and its appanage of triumphs and pain, unintellectual even in his literary style, which rarely presents any technical subtleties. He was certainly well acquainted with foreign masterpieces, as his poems are full of quotations and allusions to extraneous topics; but he had not the vivid assimilative power which renders the poet compatriot for the time being with the poets of all time. It is surely the strong accent of sincerity running through Whittier’s poetry which has brought him so prominently to the fore, for high-class magazine poetry at the present day is often superior as regards literary excellence.

  But this is not the place for political speculation. I have tried to show Whittier as he was, extenuating nothing nor setting down aught in malice. Above most men, he was one who can stand the test. His faults are patent. One cannot read him long without forgetting them in admiration of his nobly simple merits. Before considering his work in detail, I suggested that his chance of survival is better than that of any other contemporary American man of letters. Our consideration of his work has perhaps shown why. In the first place, he has recorded in a way as yet unapproached the homely beauties of New England Nature. In the second, he accepted with all his heart the traditional democratic principles of equality and freedom which have always animated the people of New England. These principles he uttered in words whose simplicity goes straight to the hearts of the whole American people. Whether these principles be true or false is no concern of ours here. If our republic is to live, they are the principles which must prevail. And in the verses of Whittier they are preserved to guide posterity, in the words of one who was incapable of falsehood.

  Mr. Whittier was himself notably fearless and self-reliant, in regard to his literary opinions, as well as all others. He was not afraid of being the first to commend what he liked, and did not wait to hear what others thought, before venturing on its praise. Best of all, he stood by what he said, and was as ready to write it as to speak it, ever willing that whatever he spoke should be used in printed criticism.

  The necessity laid on him as a poet was accepted by Whittier with the glad and solemn earnestness of a prophet, and for sixty years he was more influential as a teacher of religion than any other man in America. Believing as he did in God and human nature he was a foredoomed emancipator. Whether the slave was black or white, whether the tyrant was an evil law or a superstition that held men captive in the service of an infinite hate, Whittier never ceased to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that were bound. And he had the felicity, rare in the experience of prophets, of living to see his message heeded both by the state and the church. Dreamer and mystic as he was, he was also a New England Puritan, and he served his turn at “the Crank” with a Puritan’s grim devotion to duty. “His rustic reed of song,” made into a weapon, had a point that pierced through body and soul of many a champion who managed to parry the blows of Garrison’s bludgeon. In such poems as “The Pastoral Letter,” “Moloch in State Street,” and “Official Piety,” he turned his crank and used his weapons in a way that gave to both church and state a bitter foretaste of the judgment which was to come, which was to prove the rustic “dreamer” a better Christian and a truer statesman than any of those who were then misguiding the people of the land…. He had no hesitation about mixing religion with politics, and he believed in democracy because it made it possible for the religion of the whole nation, and of every man in it, to find expression in the laws and the life of the people. More than any other of our poets, Whittier was the singer and the prophet of the common people.

  The deep spiritual insight, the celestial music, and the brooding tenderness of Whittier have always taken me more than his fierier appeals and his civic virtues, though I do not underrate the value of these in his verse.

  [Anonymous.] Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave; who was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama. Portrait. 16mo. New York, 1838. A copy of this work has recently been sold by Messrs. Bangs & Co., New York, for $111, and in connection therewith a statement is repeated, which was advanced in 1895, to the effect that Whittier’s connection with the Narrative was never made public. This view is not supported by the fact that the Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Third Decade, 1864 (which appears in its chronological arrangement in the present list), contains a catalogue of anti-slavery publications, 1750–1863, where the Narrative is described as “drawn up by J. G. Whittier;” and considering Whittier’s devotion to, and labors in, the anti-slavery cause, the appearance of his name on the original board cover of the little volume would scarcely seem in keeping with the theory of rigid secrecy.

  Whittier, perhaps less graceful than Longfellow, will influence men longer, for his content of thought is more weighty, and the emotions called out by a great struggle of principle pulsate in his verse.

  One could almost wish “Barbara Frietchie” and “Maud Müller”—like tunes that lose their charm from too much repetition—less familiar. But “Snowbound,”—which many agree upon as Whittier’s masterpiece,—“In School Days,” “Ichabod,” “My Psalm,” and the dozen on dozens of other poems which other tastes will elect, could ill be spared from the pages of our literature; nay, the best of them could not be spared at all. When Whittier fails of his best, his artistic faults are not far to seek. Still farther from the beaten way of books, however, are his sweetness and purity of spiritual sense, his faithfulness to simple and true standards of living, and his hatred of wrong, however strongly entrenched. In such qualities as these he and his work make their quiet claim to abiding remembrance.

  It was printed in the office of the “Hartford Review,” of which Whittier was then editor, and contains eleven poems and seven prose sketches. Only two of the poems, one of them with a new title, and none of the prose pieces were included in the last edition of his collected works prepared shortly before his death. In later life whenever he could obtain a copy of his first book he destroyed it. He is said on one occasion to have paid $5 for a copy which he afterwards burned. He probably thought that a high price, but it is worth much more now. Mr. Bierstadt’s copy brought $41 and Mr. Roos’s copy $31, both in the original boards, uncut, and Mr. Foote’s copy, levant morocco uncut, bound by Matthews and with four lines in the author’s autograph, was sold in 1894 for $40.

  Mr. Whittier was composing verses all his life, and the difference of quality between those he wrote at twenty and at eighty is remarkably small. He was a poet in the lifetime of Gifford and Crabbe, and he was still a poet when Mr. Rudyard Kipling was already famous. During this vast period of time his style changed very little; it had its ups and downs, its laxities and then its felicities, but it bore very little relation to passing conditions. There rose up beside it Tennyson and Browning, Rossetti and Swinburne, but none of these affected Whittier. His genius, or talent, or knack—whichever we choose to call it—was an absolutely local and native thing…. None but a very hasty reader will fail to recognise Whittier’s lasting place in the history of literature. He is not rich, nor sonorous, nor a splendid artist; he is even rather rarely exquisite; but he has an individuality of his own that is of durable importance. He is filled with moral enthusiasm as a trumpet is filled with the breath of him who blows it. His Quaker quietism concentrates itself until it breaks into a real passion-storm of humanity, and when Whittier is roused he sings with the thrilling sweetness of a woodthrush.

  The secret of Whittier’s influence may be the best explained, perhaps, by one word,—sympathy. “Pure and unspotted from the world” as he was, so strong were his sympathies for humanity that it is not in normal human nature to resist the charm of his simplicity, charity, and courage; his loyalty to truth, honor, and conscience; his contempt for sham, tyranny, and hypocrisy. Denied scholastic training, he was recognized by the people as one who has risen from their own ranks, who had passed through their own experiences of life, and was in full sympathy with their own aims and purposes. It was not because he was intensely religious, for moral and didactic poets in this age rarely excite the enthusiasm of their readers. It was not because he was the poet of a section, for the whole nation now approves him as its interpreter. It was not because he was an ardent reformer, for reformers as such seldom ingratiate themselves in the love of their own contemporaries. It was not alone because he sang of freedom, goodness, and love of home. Other American singers had been doing the same thing for a century before his death. In all he wrote there was that broadly sympathetic spirit which went straight to the hearts of his readers.

  No one can dwell much on Whittier without recognising him as the distinctively American poet of familiar life. More than any other he reaches the actual existence of the people, up to the time of his death. He could say of himself what Lowell said dramatically only, “We draw our lineage from the oppressed.” Compared with him Longfellow, Holmes, and even Lowell, seem the poets of a class; Whittier alone is near the people; setting apart Emerson, who inhabited a world of his own, “so near and yet so far.” His whole position was indeed characteristic of American society; had he lived in England, he would always have been at his highest, in the position of some Corn-Law Rhymer, some Poet of the People; or at best, in the often degrading position of his favorite Burns himself, whereas in his own country this external difference was practically forgotten. Having gone thus far in fitting out this modest poet, nature gave to him, more directly than to either of the others, the lyric gift—a naturalness of song and flow, increasing with years and reaching where neither of the others attained. A few of Longfellow’s poems have this, but Whittier it pervades; and beginning like Burns, with the very simplest form, the verse of four short lines, he gradually trained himself, like Burns, to more varied or at least to statelier measures.

  He interprets as no other of our poets the innermost feelings of religious faith and trust. In all hymn books, of whatever creed, he is represented. In conscious mental weakness, in physical agony, under the shadow of death and deadly doubt, his words come to the lips as inevitably as David’s sweetest psalms. His “Burying Ground” is less lonely than Bryant’s “Crowded Street.” Even Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” Browning’s “Prospice,” or Stevenson’s cheeriest note of them all, the “Requiem,” is not more inspiriting, as we face in thought the last great earthly change, than “My Psalm” or “The Eternal Goodness.” If Whittier’s music, his thought, his fancy, was essentially commonplace, as older critics insist, so much the more marvelous is its infinite helpfulness to millions of men and women.