. .o> . - ; v . 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 t* Htfc, ffimius, antr Writings; 
 
 BY 
 
 W. SLOANE KENNEDY 
 
 AUTHOR OF A LIFE OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, ETC 
 
 Such music as the woods and streams 
 Sang in his ear, he sang aloud. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 For all his quiet life flowed on 
 
 As meadow streamlets flow, 
 Where fresher green reveals alone 
 The noiseless ways they go. 
 
 The Friend s Burial. 
 
 OF THE *> 
 
 UNIVERSITY J 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 S. E. CASSINO, PUBLISHER 
 1882 
 
Copyright^ 
 BY S. E. CASSINO, 
 
 1882. 
 
 F.LKCTKOTYPKD. 
 
 BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDKY 
 No. 4 TEAKL STREET. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Part 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. ANCESTRY ........ 9 
 
 The Poet s Titles. Heredity. Spelling of the Name 
 Whittier. Whitticr Ancestors. Greenleaf Ancestors. The 
 Husseys and Batchelders. Portrait of Whittier s Mother. 
 
 II. THE MERRIMACK VALLEY .... 24 
 
 Description of Essex County, Ilaverhill, Amesbury, 
 Newburyport, Salisbury Beach, and the Isles of Shoals. 
 Extracts from the " Supernaturalism of New England." 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 
 III. BOYHOOD ........ 36 
 
 Birthplace. Kenoza Lake. Whitman and Whittier. 
 The Old Homestead. Members of the Household. Harriet 
 Livermore and Lady Hester Stanhope. The Poet s School 
 Days. " My Playmate." Elhvood and Burns. Old Strag 
 glers. " Pilgrim s Progress." The Demon Fiddler. 
 First Poem. William Lloyd Garrison and the Free Press. 
 Haverhill Academy. Robert Dinsmore, the Quaint Farmer- 
 Poet of Windham. 
 
 IV. EDITOR AND AUTHOR : FIRST VKXTURF.S . 83 
 
 W hittier as Editor of the Boston Manufacturer, the 
 Essex Gazette, and the N< J ~M England Rei ieiv. First 
 Volume, " Legends of New England." The Poet, J. G. C. 
 Brainard. Ballad of " The Black Fox." Whittier s 
 Views on the Poetical Resources of the New World. 
 " Moll Pitcher." 
 
 183673 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 V. WHITTIER THE REFORMER .... 97 
 
 Identifies Himself with the Anti-Slavery Movement. 
 Publication of his Brochure, "Justice and Expediency." 
 Social Martyrdom. Prudence Crandall and her Battle with 
 the Philistinism of Canterbury, Conn. Tailor Woolman 
 and Saddler Lundy. Account of the Philadelphia Conven 
 tion for the Formation of the American Anti-Slavery 
 Society. Whittier s Account of the Convention. William 
 Lloyd Garrison draws up the Famous Declaration of 
 Principles. Samuel J. May Mobbed at East Haverhi l. 
 Whittier and George Thompson Mobbed at Concord, 
 N. H. Story of the Landlord and the Flight by Night. The 
 Poet s Account of the Mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison. 
 Letters of John Quincy Adams. Harriet Martineau on 
 Slavery. Attitude of Whittier toward the Quakers on the 
 Slavery Question. 
 
 VI. AMESBURY . . 123 
 
 Removal to Amesbury. Description of the Town and 
 of the Poet s Residence. The Study. Whittier Corre 
 sponding Editor of the National Era. Various Works 
 Written, including "Stranger in Lowell," " Supernatural- 
 ism of New England," " Songs of Labor," "Child-Life," 
 "Child-Life in Prose," "Introduction" to Woolman s 
 Journal, and " Songs of Three Centuries " (Edited). 
 Whittier College Established. 
 
 VII. LATER DAYS . . . . . . .141 
 
 Danvers. Oak Knoll. Summerings of the Poet at the 
 Isles of Shoals and the Bearcamp House. The Literary 
 World Tribute, and the Whittier Banquet at the Hotel 
 Brunswick. The Whittier Club. Various Volumes of 
 Poetry Published. 
 
 VIII. PERSONAL . ... . . . . . 153 
 
 Whittier s Personal Appearance Described by Frederika 
 Bremer, Geo. W. Bungay, David A. Wasson, and others. 
 Incident of his Kind-heartedness to a Stranger. Dom 
 Pedro II. and Whittier at Mrs. John T. Sargent s Recep 
 tion. Letter to Mrs. Sargent. Humor. Love of Children. 
 Offices of Dignity and Honor. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Part ft 
 ANALYSIS OF His GENIUS AND WRITINGS. 
 
 I. THE MAN 169 
 
 The Moral in Whittier Predominates over the ./Esthetic. 
 Love of Freedom the Central Element of his Character. 
 Freedom, Democracy, and Quakerism, links in one Chain. 
 Quakerism Described; Freedom and the Inner Light; 
 Quakerism is Pure Democracy or Christianity, and Pure 
 Individualism, or Philosophical Idealism; it Resembles 
 Transcendentalism ; the Details of the Quaker Religion 
 Considered; Quotations from William Penn, Mary Brook, 
 and A. M. Powell ; Objections to Quakerism ; Beautiful 
 Lives of the Quakers; Whittier s Attitude Toward the 
 Religion of his Fathers. His Religious Development, 
 Doubt, and Trust. Patriotism. Has Blood Militant in his 
 Veins. A Representative American Poet. Summing Up. 
 
 II. THE ARTIST 196 
 
 Little or no Technique. More Fancy than Imagination. 
 The Artistic Quality of his Mind a Fusion of that of Words 
 worth and Byron. His Bookish Lore. The Beauty and Mel 
 ody of his Finest Ballads. His Strength and Nervous 
 Energy. Culmination of his Genius. His Three Crazes. 
 Letters to the Nation, and to the American Anti-Slavery 
 Society. Illustrations of the Predominance of the Moral in 
 his Nature. Taine Quoted. Pope-Night. His Over-religi 
 ousness. Love of Consecutive Rhymes. Minor Manner- 
 isms. Originality. 
 
 III. POEMS SERIATIM 217 
 
 Mr. David A. Wasson s Classifica lon of Epochs in the 
 Poet s Development. The Author s Classification. Four 
 Periods: ist, Introductory; 2d, Storm and Stress ; 3d, 
 Transition ; 4th, Religious and Artistic Repose. General 
 Review of Earlier Productions. The Indian Poems. 
 " Songs of Labor." The Ballad Decade. " Prophecy of 
 Samuel Sewall." John Chadwick on " Skipper Ireson s 
 Ride." The "Barbara Frietchie" Controversy. The 
 Romance of the " Countess." Winter in Poetry. " Snow- 
 Bound." " The Tent on the Beach." Various Poems. 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 IV. THE KING S MISSIVE 254 
 
 Joseph Besse Quoted. Story of the Quaker and the 
 King of England. The Debate of Whittier and Dr. Geo. E. 
 Ellis of Boston. Humorous Specimen of Quaker Rant 
 from Mather s Magnolia. Terrible Sufferings of the 
 Quakers. 
 
 V. POEMS BY GROUPS . . . . . .272 
 
 The Anti-Slavery Poems Reviewed. Poems Inspired 
 by the Civil War. Hymns. Children s Poems : "Red 
 Riding-Hood," " The Robin," etc. Oriental Poems and 
 Paraphrases. 
 
 VI. PROSE WRITINGS 279 
 
 Much of his Prose of Historical or Sectarian Interest 
 Only. Charming Nature-and Folk-Studies and Sketches. 
 " Margaret Smith s Journal." " Old Portraits and Modern 
 Sketches." " Literary Recreafions and Miscellanies." 
 Specimens of Whittier s Prose. 
 
 APPENDIX I. A QUAKER MEETING . . . 289 
 
 II. WHITTIER AND BURNS . . . 295 
 
 III. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . ... 297 
 
PART I. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ANCESTRY. 
 
 THE Hermit of Amesbury, the Wood- 
 thrush 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. What effect this predetermina 
 tion of character has had upon his artistic 
 development shall be discussed in another 
 place. 
 
 The present chapter which may be 
 called the propylacum or vestibule of the 
 biographical structure that follows will 
 deal with the poet s ancestry, and the 
 information afforded by it, and the two chap 
 ters that succeed will afford unmistakable 
 
TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 evidence of the truth that a poet, no less than 
 a solar system or a loaf of bread, is the logi 
 cal resultant of a line of antecedent forces 
 and circumstances. The fine but infrangible 
 threads of our destiny are spun and woven 
 out of atom-fibres indelibly stamped with 
 the previous owners names. Their char 
 acters immingle in our own, the affluence 
 or the indigence of their intellects, the sugar 
 or the nitre of their wit, the shifting sand or 
 the unwedgeable iron of their moral natures. 
 
 The name Whittier is spelled in thirty- 
 two different ways in the old records : a list 
 of these different spellings is given in 
 Daniel Bodwell Whittier s genealogy of 
 the family. The common ancestor of the 
 Whittiers is Thomas Whittier, who in the 
 year 1638 came from Southampton, England, 
 to New England, in the ship " Confidence," 
 of London, John Dobson, master. It is 
 recorded of Thomas Whittier, says his de 
 scendant, the poet, in a half facetious way, 
 that the only noteworthy circumstance con 
 nected with his coming was that he brought 
 with him a hive of bees. He was born in 
 1620. His mother was probably a sister of 
 
ANCESTRY. II 
 
 John and Henry Rolfe, with the former of 
 whom he came to America. His name at 
 that time was spelled " Whittle." He mar 
 ried Ruth Green, and lived at first in Salis 
 bury, Mass. He seems afterward to have 
 lived in Newbury. In 1650 he removed to 
 Haverhill, where he was admitted freeman, 
 May 23, 1666. 
 
 It was customary in those days, says 
 the historian of Haverhill, for the nearest 
 neighbors to sleep in the garrisons at night, 
 but Thomas Whittier refused to take shel 
 ter there with his family. " Relying upon 
 the weapons of his faith, he left his own 
 house unguarded, and unprotected w r ith 
 palisades, and carried with him no weapons 
 of war. The Indians frequently visited him, 
 and the family often heard them, in the still 
 ness of the evening, whispering beneath the 
 windows, and sometimes saw them peep in 
 upon the little group of practical ? non-resist 
 ants. Friend Whittier always treated them 
 civilly and hospitably, and they ever retired 
 without molesting him."* Thomas Whittier 
 
 * "The History of Haverhill, Mass. ; from its first settle 
 ment in 1640 to the year 1860. By George Wingate Chase, 
 Haverhill. Published by the author, 1861." 
 
12 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 died in Haverhill, November 28, 1696. His 
 autograph appears in the probate records of 
 Salem, Mass., as witness to a will of Samuel 
 Gild. His widow died in July, 1710, and 
 her eldest son John was appointed adminis 
 trator of her estate. Thomas had ten chil 
 dren, of whom John became the ancestor of 
 the most numerous branch of the Whittiers. 
 Joseph, the brother of John, became the 
 head of another branch of the family, and is 
 the great-grandfather of our poet. Joseph 
 married Mary, daughter of Joseph Peasley, 
 of Haverhill, by whom he had nine children, 
 among them Joseph, 2d, the grandfather of 
 the poet. Joseph, 2d, married Sarah Green- 
 leaf of Newbury, by whom he had eleven 
 children. The tenth child, John (the father 
 of the poet), married Abigail Hussey, who 
 was a daughter of Joseph Hussey, of Somers- 
 worth, now Rollinsford, N. H., a town 
 on the Piscataqua River, which forms the 
 southern part of the boundary line between 
 New Hampshire and Maine. The mother 
 of Abigail Hussey (the poet s mother) was 
 Mercy Evans, of Berwick, Me. John Whit- 
 tier, the father of the poet, died in Haverhill, 
 June 30, 1830. His children were four in 
 
ANCESTRY. 13 
 
 number : (i) Mary, born September 3, 
 1806, married Jacob Caldwell, of Haverhill, 
 and died January 7, 1860; (2) John Green- 
 leaf, the poet, born December 17, 1807, in 
 Haverhill; (3) Matthew Franklin, born July 
 1 8, 1812, married Jane E. Vaughan; (4) 
 Elizabeth Hussey, born December 7, 1815, 
 died September 3, 1864. From this state 
 ment it will be seen that Matthew is the 
 only surviving member of the family, be 
 sides the poet himself. Matthew resides in 
 Boston, and has sons, daughters, and grand 
 children.* 
 
 The name Whittier constantly appears 
 in important documents signed by the chief 
 citizens of Haverhill. The family was evi 
 dently respected and honored by the com 
 munity. In 1669 a Whittier was chosen 
 town-constable. It is recorded that in 1711 
 Thomas Whittier probably a son of 
 Thomas (ist) was one of a militia com 
 pany provided with snow-shoes in order the 
 
 * The foregoing statements are taken from the Whittier 
 genealogy. But the author finds that there are a few slight 
 discrepancies of date between this book and the inscriptions 
 on the family tombstones in Amesbury. The tombstones say 
 that John Whittier died " nth of 6mo., 1831," and that Mary 
 died " ist mo. 7, 1861." 
 
14 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 better to repel an anticipated attack of the 
 Indians. But, in spite of civil honors, it is 
 well known that, down to comparatively 
 recent times, the family suffered considerable 
 social persecution and slight on account of 
 their religious belief. For example, when 
 the citizens built a new meeting-house, in 
 1699, they peremptorily refused to allow the 
 Quakers to worship in it, although petitioned 
 to do so by Joseph Peasley and others, and 
 although they were taxed for its support. It 
 w r as not until 1774 that an act was passed by 
 the State exempting dissenters from taxa 
 tion for the support of what we may call 
 the State religion. It is important to bear 
 this in mind, if we would know all the in 
 fluences that went to form the character of 
 the poet. 
 
 The poet s paternal grandmother was 
 Sarah Greenleaf, of Newbury. The gene 
 alogist of the Greenleafs says: "From all 
 that can be gathered it is believed that the 
 ancestors of the Greenleaf family were 
 Huguenots, who left France on account of 
 their religious principles some time in the 
 course of the sixteenth century, and settled 
 in England. The name was probably trans- 
 
ANCESTRY. 15 
 
 lated from the French Feuillevert.* Ed 
 mund Greenleaf, the ancestor of the Ameri 
 can Greenleafs, was born in the parish of 
 Brixham, and county of Devonshire, near 
 Torbay, in England, about the year 1600." 
 He came to Newbury, Mass., in 1635. He 
 was by trade a silk-dyer. Respecting the 
 family coat-of-arms the genealogist gives, 
 on page 116, the following interesting 
 statement: 
 
 "The Hon. William Greenleaf, once of 
 Boston, and then of New Bedford, being in 
 London about the year 1760, obtained from 
 an office of heraldry a device, said to be 
 the arms of the family, which he had 
 painted, and the painting is now in the pos 
 session of his grand-daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, 
 of Roxbury, Mass. The field is white (ar 
 gent), bearing a chevron between three 
 leaves (vert). The crest is a dove stand 
 ing on a wreath of green and white, hold 
 ing in its mouth three green leaves. The 
 helmet is that of a w T arrior (visor down) ; a 
 garter below, but no motto." 
 
 * Whittier has thus alluded to this surmise : 
 " The name the Gallic exile bore, 
 
 St. Malo ! from thy ancient mart, 
 Became upon our Western shore 
 Greenleaf for Feuillevert." 
 
1 6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 What more appropriate emblazonment 
 for the escutcheon of our Martial Quaker 
 poet than a warrior s helmet, and a dove 
 holding in its mouth the emblem of 
 peace! 
 
 Jonathan Greenleaf, born in Newbury, in 
 1723, is described as possessing a remark 
 ably kind and conciliatory disposition. 
 "Even the tones of his voice were gentle 
 and persuasive, and he was very frequently 
 resorted to as a peacemaker between con 
 tending parties. His dress was remarkably 
 uniform, usually in his later years being 
 deep blue or drab. He seldom walked fast, 
 his gait being a measured and moderate 
 step. His manners were plain, unassuming, 
 but very polite. He was very religious, and 
 a strict Calvinist. Nothing but absolute 
 necessity kept him from public worship on 
 the Sabbath, and he was scarce ever known 
 to omit regular morning and evening 
 worship." 
 
 Of Professor Simon Greenleaf, the Har 
 vard Law Professor (1833-1845), the family 
 genealogist says: "For the last thirty years 
 of his life he was one of the most spiritu 
 ally-minded of men, evidently intent on 
 
ANCESTRY. I/ 
 
 walking humbly with God, and doing good 
 to the bodies and souls of his fellow-men; 
 scarce ever writing a letter of friendship 
 even, without breathing in it a prayer, or 
 delivering in it some good message." Pro 
 fessor Greenleaf published some dozen 
 works, both legal and religious. It is a 
 curious fact that his son James married 
 Mary Longfellow, a sister of the Cambridge 
 poet, thus making Whittier and Longfellow 
 distant kinsmen.* 
 
 Another English Greenleaf contempo 
 rary with Edmund, being a silk-dyer as 
 well as he, and in all probability a near 
 kinsman was a lieutenant under Oliver 
 Cromwell, and served also under Richard 
 Cromwell, and was in the army of the Pro 
 tector ui, ier General Monk, at the time of 
 the restoration of Charles II. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to call the reader s 
 attention to the significant fact, elicited by 
 the foregoing researches, that, in tracing 
 down two hereditary lines of the poet s 
 
 * It may be added that the ancestral home of the Long- 
 fellows is still standing in Byfield, about five miles distant 
 from the Whittier homestead in Haverhill. (See the authors 
 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, p. 15.) 
 
T8 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEP. 
 
 paternal ancestors, we discover that fo? 
 many generations those ancestors suffered 
 religious persecution for loyalty to their 
 religious convictions, and that many of them 
 were remarkable for their sensitive piety. 
 
 Turn we now to the maternal ancestry 
 of Whittier. 
 
 In 1873 the poet wrote to Mr. D. B. 
 Whittier, of Boston, as follows: 
 
 "My mother was a descendant of Chris 
 topher Hussey, of Hampton, N. H., who 
 married a daughter of Rev. Stephen Bache 
 lor, the first minister of that town. 
 
 "Daniel Webster traces his ancestry to 
 the same pair, so Joshua Coffin informed 
 me. Colonel W. B. Greene, of Boston, is 
 of the same family."* 
 
 In the light of the preceding note, the 
 following letter of Col. W. B. Greene ex 
 plains itself: 
 
 "JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS., Sept. 24, 1873. 
 "Mr. D. B. WHITTIER, Danville, Vt. 
 
 "DEAR SIR, Yours of September 20 
 is just received, and I reply to it at once. 
 
 * The name of Daniel Webster s paterna. grandmother 
 was Susannah Bachelor, or Batchelder. 
 
ANCESTRY. 19 
 
 My grandfather, on my mother s side, was 
 the Rev. William Batchelder, of Haverhill, 
 Mass. In the year 1838 I had a conversa 
 tion, on a matter of militar} T business, with 
 the Hon. Daniel Webster; and, to my as 
 tonishment, Mr. Webster treated me as a 
 kinsman. My mother afterwards explained 
 his conduct by telling me that one of Mr. 
 W. s female ancestors was a Batchelder. In 
 1838 or 1839, or thereabouts, I met school 
 master [Joshua] Coffin on a Mississippi 
 steamboat, near Baton Rouge. The cap* 
 tain of the boat told me, confidentially, 
 that Coffin was engaged in a dangerous mis 
 sion respecting some slaves, and inquired 
 whether my aid and countenance could be 
 counted on in favor of Coffin, in case vio 
 lence should be offered him. This he did 
 because I was on the boat as a military man, 
 and in uniform. When Coffin found he 
 could count on me, he came and talked with 
 me, and finally told me he had [once] been 
 hired by Daniel Webster to go to Ipswich, 
 and there look up Mr. W. s ancestry. He 
 spoke of Rev. Stephen Batchelder, of New 
 Hampshire, and said that Daniel Webster, 
 John G. Whittier, and myself were related 
 
20 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 by Batchelder blood. I did not feel at all 
 ashamed of my relatives. In 1841 or 1842 
 Mrs. Crosby, of Hallowell, Me., who had 
 charge of my grandfather when he was a 
 boy, and knew all about the family, told me 
 that Daniel Webster was a Batchelder, that 
 she had known his father intimately, and 
 knew Daniel when he was a boy. At the 
 time of my conversation with her, Aunt 
 Crosby might have been anywhere from 
 seventy-five to eighty-five years of age. 
 When I was a boy, at (say) about the year 
 1827 or 1828, 1 used to go often to the house 
 of J. G. Whittier s father, a little out of 
 the village (now city) of Haverhill, Mass. 
 There was a Mrs. Hussey in the family, who 
 baked the best squash pies I ever ate, and 
 knew how to make the pine floors shine like 
 a looking-glass. 
 
 "This is, I think, all the information, in 
 answer to your request, that I am competent 
 to give you. 
 
 rf Yours respectfully, 
 w WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE." 
 
 In a note addressed to the New England 
 Historical and Genealogical Society, the 
 
ANCESTRY. 21 
 
 poet says: ?f On my mother s side my 
 grandfather was Joseph Hussey, of Som- 
 ersworth, N. H.; married Mercy Evans, of 
 Berwick, Me." 
 
 Some of the genealogical links connect 
 ing the Husseys of Somers worth with those 
 of Hampton have not yet been recovered. 
 But this mucn is known of the family,* that 
 in 1630 Christopher Hussey came from 
 Dorking, Surrey, England, to Lynn, Mass. 
 He had married, in Holland, Theodate, the 
 daughter of the Rev. Stephen Bachiler, a 
 Puritan minister, who had fled to that coun 
 try to avoid persecution in England. The 
 author was told by a local antiquary in 
 Hampton, N. H., that there is a tradition in 
 the town that Stephen Bachiler would not 
 let his daughter marry young Hussey unless 
 he embraced the Puritan faith. His love 
 was so great that he consented, and came 
 with his bride to America, where two 
 years later his father-in-law followed him. 
 Stephen Bachiler came to Lynn in 1632, 
 with six persons, his relatives and friends, 
 who had belonged to his church in Holland, 
 and with them he established a little inde- 
 
 * See histories of Lynn and Newbury, passim. 
 
22 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 pendent church in Lynn. The progenitive 
 faculty of this worthy divine must have 
 been highly developed: he was married 
 four times, and was dismissed from his 
 church at Lynn on account of charges twice 
 preferred against him by women of his con 
 gregation. The recorded dates show that 
 both he and his son-in-law, Hussey, came 
 to Hampton in the year 1639. The Hamp 
 ton authorities had the previous year made 
 Mr. Bachiler and Mr. Hussey each a grant 
 of three hundred acres of land, to induce 
 them to settle there. When and how the 
 Husseys became Quakers is not known to 
 the author. But in Savage s Genealogical 
 Dictionary, II. 507, it is recorded that as 
 early as 1688 a certain John Hussey of 
 Hampton was a preacher to the Quakers in 
 Newcastle, Del. The mother of the poet 
 was a devoted disciple of the Society of 
 Friends. That she was a person of deep 
 and tender religious nature is evident to 
 one looking at the excellent oil-portrait of 
 her which hangs in the little parlor at Ames- 
 bury. The head is inclined graciously to 
 one side, and the face wears that expression 
 of ineffable tranquillity which is always a 
 
ANCESTRY. 23 
 
 witness to generations of Quaker ancestry. 
 In the picture, her garments are of smooth 
 and immaculate drab. The poet once re 
 marked to the writer that one of the reasons 
 why his mother removed to Amesbury, in 
 1840, was that she might be near the little 
 Friends "Meeting" in that town. 
 
 Thus among the maternal as well as the 
 paternal progenitors of our Quaker poet we 
 find the religious nature predominant. 
 
24 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE MERRIMACK. 
 
 IN the valley of the Merrimack John 
 Greenleaf Whittier was born (December 
 17, 1807), and in the same region he has 
 passed nearly his entire life, first in the town 
 of Haverhill, and then in Amesbury, some 
 nine miles distant. To strangers, the hilly 
 old county of Essex wears a somewhat bleak 
 and Scotian look; but it is fertile in poetical 
 resources, and the tillers of its glebe are 
 passionately attached to its blue hills and 
 sunken dales, its silver rivers and wind 
 ing roads, umbrageous towns and thrifty 
 homes. Like Burns and Cowper, Whittier 
 is distinctively a rustic poet, and he and 
 Whitman are the most indigenous and patri 
 otic of our singers. His idyllic poetry 
 savors of the soil and is full of local allu 
 sions. It is, therefore, essential to the full 
 enjoyment of his writings that one should 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE MERRIMACK. 2$ 
 
 get, at the outset, as vivid an idea as pos 
 sible both of the Essex landscape and the 
 Essex farmer. 
 
 Whittier was born some three miles north 
 east of what is now the thriving little city of 
 Haverhill. It was settled in 1640 by twelve 
 men from Newbury and Ipswich. Its In 
 dian name was Pentucket, the appellation 
 of a tribe once dwelling on its site, a tribe 
 under the jurisdiction of Passaconaway, 
 chief of the Pennacooks. The city is built 
 partly on the river-terrace of the northern 
 shore, and partly on the adjoining hills. It 
 is celebrated in colonial history for the heroic 
 exploit of Hannah Duston, who, when taken 
 captive by a party of twenty savages at the 
 time of the Haverhill massacre, killed and 
 scalped them all, with the aid of her com 
 panion (also a woman), and returned in 
 safety to the settlement. A handsome monu 
 ment has recently been erected to her mem 
 ory in the city square; it is a granite structure, 
 with bronze bas-reliefs, and surmounted by 
 a bronze statue of the heroine. In the pub 
 lic library of the city (founded in 1873) may 
 be seen a fine bust of Whittier, by Powers. 
 On February 17 and 18, 1882, almost the 
 
26 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 entire business portion of the city was 
 destroyed by fire; eight acres were burned 
 over, and $2,000,000 worth of property 
 destroyed. Haverhill is eighteen miles east 
 of Lowell, thirty-two miles northwest of 
 Boston, and six miles northeast of Law 
 rence. The manufacture of boots and 
 shoes gives employment to 6,000 men. 
 The population in 1870 was 13,092. 
 
 Down to the sea, some seventeen miles 
 away, winds the beautiful Merrimack, with 
 the deep-shaded old town of Newburyport 
 seated at its mouth. A little more than half 
 way down lies Amesbury, just where the 
 winding Powwow joins the Merrimack, but 
 not before its nixies and river-horses have 
 been compelled to put their shoulders to the 
 wheels of several huge cotton mills that lift 
 their forbidding bulk out of the very centre 
 of the village. A horse-railroad connects 
 Amesbury with Newburyport, six miles dis 
 tant. At about half that distance the road 
 crosses the Merrimack by way of Deer Island 
 and connecting bridges. The sole house on 
 this wild, rough island is the home of the 
 Spoffords. 
 
 As you near Newburyport, coming down 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE MERRIMACK. 27 
 
 from Amesbury, you see the river widened 
 into an estuary, and bordered by wide and 
 intensely green salt-meadows. Numerous 
 large vessels lie at the wharves, a"gunde- 
 low," with lateen sail, creeps slowly down 
 the current; the draw of the railroad bridge 
 is perhaps opening for the passage of a tug, 
 and out at sea athwart the river s mouth 
 
 " Long and low, with dwarf^trees crowned, 
 Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, 
 A stone s toss over the narrow sound." 
 
 Prophecy of Samuel Sew all. 
 
 Far off to the left lie Salisbury and 
 Hampton beaches, celebrated by Whittier 
 in his poems w Hampton Beach," w Snow- 
 Bound," and "The Tent on the Beach ":- 
 
 " Where Salisbury s level marshes spread 
 
 Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ; 
 Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
 Swept, scythe on scythe; their swaths along 
 The low green prairies of the sea." 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 Standing on the sand-ridge by the beach, 
 you have before you the washing surf, and 
 miles on miles of level sand, rimmed with 
 creeping, silver water-lace, overhung here 
 and there by thinnest powdery mist Out 
 
28 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 at sea the waves are tossing their salt- 
 threaded manes, or flinging the sunlight from 
 their supple coats (aeonian roar; white- 
 haired, demoniac shapes) while at evening 
 you see far aw r ay to the northeast the revolv 
 ing light of the Isles of Shoals. 
 
 " Quail and sandpiper and swallow and sparrow are here ; 
 Sweet sound their manifold notes, high and low, far 
 
 and near; 
 
 Chorus of musical waters, the rush of the breeze, 
 Steady and strong from the south, what glad voices 
 
 are these ! " 
 
 So sings the poet of the Isles of Shoals, 
 Celia Thaxter, who, be it known, was dis 
 covered and introduced to the world by 
 Whittier, her rocky home being still one 
 of his favorite summer resorts. 
 
 Landward, your gaze sweeps the beauti 
 ful salt-meadows and rests on the woods 
 beyond, or reaches still farther to the steeples 
 of Newburyport rising sculpturesquely in 
 the pellucid atmosphere, and often at even 
 ing filling the air with faint silver hymns that 
 chime with the liquid undertone of the 
 pouring surf. 
 
 The valley of the Merrimack with the 
 surrounding region, is, or was until recently, 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE MERRIMACK. 2Q 
 
 full of legends of the marvellous and the 
 supernatural, which, in this remote and iso 
 lated corner of the State, have come down 
 in unbroken tradition from earlier times. 
 One of the distinguishing peculiarities of 
 Whittiers genius is his story -telling power, 
 and since he has not only written many 
 poems about the legends of his native prov 
 ince, but also published in his youth two 
 small collections of those legends in prose 
 form, it will be proper to give the reader 
 a taste of them, both here and elsewhere 
 in the volume, and thus assist him to an 
 understanding of our poet s early environ 
 ment. 
 
 The following extracts from his " Super- 
 naturalism of New England," published in 
 the year 1847, are germane to the subject in 
 hand: 
 
 "One of my earliest recollections," he 
 says, w is that of an old woman residing at 
 Rocks Village, in Haverhill, about two 
 miles from the place of my nativity, who for 
 many years had borne the unenviable repu 
 tation of a witch. She certainly had the 
 look of one, a combination of form, voice, 
 
30 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 and features, which would have made the 
 fortune of an English witch-finder in the 
 days of Matthew Paris or the Sir John Pod- 
 gers of Dickens, and insured her speedy 
 conviction in King James High Court of 
 Justiciary. She was accused of divers ill- 
 doings, such as preventing the cream in her 
 neighbor s churn from becoming butter, and 
 snuffing out candles at huskings and quilt 
 ing parties. The poor old woman was at 
 length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate 
 reputation, that she took the trouble to go 
 before a Justice of the Peace, and made a 
 solemn oath that she was a Christian woman 
 and no witch." 
 
 ^ Some forty years ago, on the banks of 
 the pleasant little creek separating Berwick, 
 in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hamp 
 shire, within sight of my mother s home, 
 dwelt a plain, sedate member of the Society 
 of Friends, named Bantum. He passed, 
 throughout a circle of several miles, as a 
 conjurer and skilful adept in the art of 
 magic. To him resorted farmers who had 
 lost their cattle, matrons whose household 
 gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had been 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE MERRIMACK. $1 
 
 stolen, and young maidens whose lovers 
 were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited 
 old man received them all kindly, put on his 
 huge, iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his 
 ? conjuring book, which my mother de 
 scribes as a large clasped volume, in strange 
 language and black-letter type, and after due 
 reflection and consideration gave the re 
 quired answers without money and without 
 price. The curious old volume is still in 
 possession of the conjurer s family. Appar 
 ently inconsistent as was this practice of the 
 Black Art with the simplicity and truthful 
 ness of his religious profession, I have not 
 been able to learn that he was ever sub 
 jected to censure on account of it." 
 
 This incident reminds one of some verses 
 in a poem of Whittier s entitled " Flowers 
 in Winter": 
 
 " A wizard of the Merrimack 
 
 So old ancestral legends say 
 Could call green leaf and blossom back 
 To frosted stem and spray. 
 
 The dry logs of the cottage wall, 
 
 Beneath his touch, put out their leaves ; 
 
 The clay-bound swallow, at his call, 
 Played round the icy eaves. 
 
32 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 The settler saw his oaken flail 
 
 Take bud, and bloom before his eyes ; 
 
 From frozen pools he saw the pale, 
 Sweet summer lilies rise. 
 
 The beechen platter sprouted wild, 
 The pipkin wore its old-time green ; 
 
 The cradle o er the sleeping child 
 Became a leafy screen." 
 
 In chapter second of the " Supernatural- 
 ism " we have a whimsical story about a 
 certain " Aunt Morse," who lived in a town 
 adjoining Amesbury : 
 
 " After the death of Aunt Morse no will 
 was found, though it was understood before 
 her decease that such a document was in 
 the hands of Squire S., one of her neighbors. 
 One cold winter evening, some weeks after 
 her departure, Squire S. sat in his parlor, 
 looking over his papers, when, hearing some 
 one cough in a familiar way, he looked up. 
 and saw before him a little crooked old 
 woman, in an oil-nut colored woollen frock, 
 blue and white tow and linen apron, and 
 striped blanket, leaning her sharp, pinched 
 face on one hand, while the other supported 
 a short black tobacco pipe, at which she 
 
ANCESTRY. 33 
 
 was puffing in the most vehement and spite 
 ful manner conceivable. 
 
 "The squire was a man of some nerve; 
 but his first thought was to attempt an es 
 cape, from which he was deterred only by 
 the consideration that any effort to that 
 effect would necessarily bring him nearer 
 to his unwelcome visitor. 
 
 "< Aunt Morse, he said at length, for the 
 Lord s sake, get right back to the bury ing- 
 ground! What on earth are you here for? 
 
 "The apparition took her pipe deliberately 
 from her mouth, and informed him that she 
 came to see justice done with her will; and 
 that nobody need think of cheating her, 
 dead or alive. Concluding her remark with 
 a shrill emphasis, she replaced her pipe, and 
 puffed away with renewed vigor. Upon the 
 squire s promising to obey her request, she 
 refilled her pipe, which . she asked him to 
 light, and then took her departure." 
 
 "Elderly people in this region," says our 
 author, "yet tell marvellous stories of Gen 
 eral M., of Hampton, N. H., especially of 
 his league with the devil, who used to visit 
 him occasionally in the shape of a small man 
 in a leathern dress. The general s house 
 
34 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 was once burned, in revenge, as it is said, by 
 the fiend, whom the former had outwitted. 
 He had agreed, it seems, to furnish the 
 general with a boot full of gold and silver 
 poured annually down the chimney. The 
 shrewd Yankee cut off, on one occasion, the 
 foot of the boot, and the devil kept pouring 
 down the coin from the chimney s -top, in a 
 vain attempt to fill it, until the room was 
 literally packed with the precious metal. 
 When the general died, he was laid out, 
 and put in a coffin, as usual; but, on the 
 day of the funeral, it was whispered about 
 that his body was missing; and the neigh 
 bors came to the charitable conclusion that 
 the enemy had got his own at last." 
 
 It should be understood that the state of 
 society which produced such superstitions 
 and legends as the foregoing lingers now 
 only in secluded corners of New England. 
 The railroad, the newspaper, and the influx 
 of foreign population, have combined to 
 frighten away ghost, conjurer, and witch, or 
 to drive them up into the mountainous dis 
 tricts. There are still plenty of quaint and 
 picturesque old Puritan farmers; and their 
 
ANCESTRY. 35 
 
 mythology is antique and rusty enough, to 
 be sure. But the folk-lore of the early days, 
 where is it? Let the shriek of the steam- 
 demon answer, or that powerful magician, 
 the w Spirit of the Age," who, ten thousand 
 times divided, and slyly hidden in plethoric 
 leathern mail bags, daily rushes into the re 
 motest nooks and corners of the land, there 
 to enter into the nooks and corners of the 
 mind of man. The "Spirit of the Age" has 
 exorcised the spirits of the ingle and the 
 forest. 
 
36 JOHN GREENLEAF WH1TTIEK. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BOYHOOD. 
 
 THE birthplace and early home of Whit- 
 tier is a lonely farm-house situated at a dis 
 tance of three miles northeast of the city of 
 Haverhill, Mass. The winding road lead 
 ing to it is the one described in " Snow- 
 Bound." A drive or a walk of one mile 
 brings you to sweet Kenoza Lake, with the 
 castellated stone residence of Dr. J. R. 
 Nichols crowning the summit of the high 
 hill that overlooks it. From the hill the 
 eye sweeps the horizon in every direction to 
 a distance of fifty or a hundred miles. Far 
 to the northwest rise bluely the three peaks 
 of Monadnock. Nearer at hand, in the same 
 direction, the towns of Atkinson and Straf- 
 ford whiten the hillsides, while southward, 
 through a clove in the hills, one catches a 
 glimpse of the smoky city of Lawrence. 
 
 Two other lakes besides Kenoza lie 
 
BOYHOOD. 39 
 
 in the immediate vicinity: namely, Round 
 Lake and Lake Saltonstall. Kenoza is 
 the lake in which Whittier used to fish and 
 boat. It was he who gave to it its present 
 name (meaning pickerel) : he wrote a very 
 pretty poem for the day of the rechristening, 
 in 1859. The lake lies in a bowl-shaped de 
 pression. The country thereabouts seems 
 entirely made up of huge earth-bowls, here 
 open to the sky, and there turned bottom- 
 upwards to make hills. 
 
 No prettier, quieter, lovelier lake than 
 Kenoza exists, a pure and spotless mirror, 
 reflecting in its cool, translucent depths the 
 rosy clouds of morning and of evening, the 
 silver-azure tent of day, the gliding boat, 
 the green meadow-grasses, and the massy 
 foliage of the terraced pines and cedars that 
 sweep upward from its waters in stately 
 pomp, rank over rank, to meet the sky. 
 Here, in one quarter of the lake, the surface 
 is only wrinkled by the tiniest wavelets or 
 crinkles; yonder, near another portion of 
 its irregularly picturesque shore, a thousand 
 white sun-butterflies seem dancing on the 
 surface, and the loveliest wind-dapples 
 curve and gleam. Along the shore are 
 
40 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 sweet wild roses interpleached, and flower- 
 de-luce, and yellow water-lilies. In such a 
 circular earth-bowl the faintest sounds are 
 easily heard across the water. Far off you 
 hear the cheery cackle of a hen; in the 
 meadows the singing of insects, the chat 
 tering of blackbirds, and the cry of the 
 peewee; and the ring of the woodman s 
 axe floats in rippling echoes over the water. 
 In one of his earlier essays Mr. Whittier 
 tells the following romantic story: "Who 
 ever has seen Great Pond, in the East 
 Parish of Haverhill, has seen one of the 
 very loveliest of the thousand little lakes 
 or ponds of New England. With its soft 
 slopes of greenest verdure its white and 
 sparkling sand-rim its southern hem of 
 pine and maple, mirrored with spray and 
 leaf in the glassy water its graceful hill- 
 sentinels round about, white with the 
 orchard-bloom of spring, or tasselled with 
 the corn of autumn its long sweep of 
 blue waters, broken here and there by pict 
 uresque headlands, it would seem a spot, 
 of all others, where spirits of evil must 
 shrink, rebuked and abashed, from the 
 presence of the beautiful. Yet here, too, 
 
BOYHOOD. 41 
 
 has the shadow of .the supernatural fallen. 
 A lady of my acquaintance, a staid, unim 
 aginative church-member, states that a few 
 years ago she was standing in the angle 
 formed by two roads, one of which traverses 
 the pond-shore, the other leading over the 
 hill which rises abruptly from the water. It 
 was a warm summer evening, just at sunset. 
 She was startled by the appearance of a 
 horse and cart of the kind used a century 
 ago in New England, driving rapidly down 
 the steep hillside, and crossing the wall a 
 few yards before her, without noise or dis 
 placing of a stone. The driver sat sternly 
 erect, with a fierce countenance; grasping 
 the reins tightly, and looking neither to the 
 right nor the left. Behind the cart, and 
 apparently lashed to it, was a woman of 
 gigantic size, her countenance convulsed 
 with a blended expression of rage and 
 agony, writhing and struggling, like Lao- 
 coon in the folds of the serpent." The 
 mysterious cart moved across the street, 
 and disappeared at the margin of the 
 pond. 
 
 The two miles of road that separate 
 Kenoza from the old Whittier homestead 
 
42 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 form a lonely stretch, passing between high 
 hills rolled back on either side in wolds that 
 show against the sky. The homestead is 
 situated at the junction of the main road to 
 Amesbury and a cross-road to Plaistow. 
 It is as wild and lonely a place as Craigen- 
 puttock, the hills shutting down all 
 around, so that there is absolutely no 
 prospect in any direction, and no other 
 house visible. But so much the better for 
 meditation. "The Children of the Light" 
 need only their own souls to commune 
 with. The expression that rose continually 
 to the author s lips on visiting this place 
 was a line from "Snow-Bound," 
 
 " A universe of sky and snow." 
 
 Not that the time was winter, but that the 
 locality explained the line so vividly, bet 
 ter than any commentary could do. Local 
 ity exercises a great influence on a poet s 
 genius. Whitman, for example, has always 
 lived by the sea, and he is the poet of the 
 infinite. Whittier was born, and passed his 
 boyhood and youth, in a green, sunken 
 pocket of the inland hills, and he became 
 the poet of the heart and the home. The 
 
BOYHOOD. 43 
 
 one poet wrestled with the waves of the sea 
 and the waves of humanity in great cities ; 
 the other lived the simple, quiet life of a 
 farmer, loving his mother, his sister, his 
 Quaker sect, freedom, and his own hearth. 
 Both are as lowly in origin as Carlyle or 
 Burns. 
 
 Between the front door of the old home 
 stead and the road rises a grassy, wooded 
 bank, at the foot of which flows a little am* 
 ber-colored brook. The brook is mentioned 
 in r? Snow-Bound ": 
 
 " We minded that the sharpest ear 
 The buried brooklet could not hear, 
 The music of whose, liquid lip 
 Had been to us companionship, 
 And, in our lonely life, had grown 
 To have an almost human tone." 
 
 Across the road is the barn. The house 
 is very plain, and not very large. Entering 
 the front door you are in a small entry with 
 a steep, quaint, little staircase. On the 
 right is the parlor where Whittier wrote. 
 In the tiny, low-studded room on the left, he 
 was born, and in the same room his father 
 and "Uncle Moses" died. The room is 
 
44 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 about fourteen by fourteen feet, is partly 
 wainscoted, has a fireplace and three win 
 dows. 
 
 All the windows in the house have small 
 panes, nine in the upper and six in the 
 lower sash. The building is supposed to be 
 two hundred and twelve years old. The 
 kitchen is, of course, the great attraction. 
 Let us suppose that it is winter, and that we 
 are all cosily seated around the blazing fire 
 place. Now, let us talk over together the 
 old days and scenes. The best picture of 
 the inner life of the Quaker farmer s family 
 can of course be had in "Snow-Bound," 
 a little idyl as delicate, spontaneous, and 
 true to nature in its limnings as a minute 
 frost-picture on a pane of glass, or the fairy 
 landscape richly mirrored in the film 
 of a water-bubble. After such a picture, 
 painted by the poet himself, it only remains 
 for the writer to give a few supplementary 
 touches here and there. The old kitchen, 
 ..although diminished in size by a dividing 
 partition, is otherwise almost unchanged. 
 It is a cosey old room, with its fireplace, and 
 huge breadth of chimney with inset cup 
 boards and oven and mantelpiece. Above 
 
. BOYHOOD. 45 
 
 the mantel is the nail where hung the old 
 bull s-eye watch. Set into one side of the 
 kitchen is the cupboard where the pewter 
 plates and platters were ranged; and here 
 upon the wall is the circle worn by the " old 
 brass warming-pan, which formerly shone 
 like a setting moon against the wall of the 
 kitchen": 
 
 " Shut in from all the world without, 
 We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
 Content to let the north-wind roar 
 In baffled rage at pane and door, 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
 And ever, when a louder blast 
 Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
 The merrier up its roaring draught 
 The great throat of the chimney laughed, 
 The house-dog on his paws outspread, 
 Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
 The cat s dark silhouette on the wall 
 A couchant tiger s seemed to fall ; 
 And, for the winter fireside meet, 
 Between, the andirons straddling feet, 
 The mug of cider simmered slow, 
 The apples sputtered in a row, 
 And, close at hand, the basket stood 
 With nuts from brown October s wood." 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
46 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 John Whittier, the father of the poet, is 
 described by citizens of Haverhill as be 
 ing a rough but good, kind-hearted man. 
 He went by the soubriquet of " Quaker 
 Whycher." In " Snow-Bound," we learn 
 something of his Wanderjahre, how he 
 ate moose and samp in trapper s hut and 
 Indian camp on Memphremagog s wooded 
 side, and danced beneath St. Francois hem 
 lock-trees, and ate chowder and hake-broil 
 at the Isle of Shoals. . He was a sturdy, de 
 cisive man, and deeply religious. Although 
 there was no Friends church in Haverhill, 
 yet on "First-Days" Quaker Whycher s 
 "one-hoss shay" could be seen wending 
 toward the old brown meeting-house in 
 Amesbury, six miles away. 
 
 The mother has been alluded to in Chap,- 
 ter I. p. 12. Hers was a deeply emo 
 tional and religious nature, pure, chastened, 
 and sweet, lovable, and kind-hearted to a 
 fault. In "Snow-Bound," she tells incidents 
 of her girlhood in Somersworth on the Pis- 
 cataqua, and retells stories from Quaker 
 Sewell s " ancient tome," and old sea-saint 
 Chalkley s Journal. An incident in Mr. 
 
BOYHOOD. 47 
 
 Whittier s <r Yankee Gypsies" (Prose Works, 
 II. p. 326,) will afford an indication of her 
 kind-heartedness: 
 
 "On one occasion," says the poet, "a few 
 years ago, on my return from the field at 
 evening, I was told that a foreigner had 
 asked for lodgings during the night, but that, 
 influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, 
 my mother had very reluctantly refused his 
 request. I found her by no means satisfied 
 with her decision. r What if a son of mine 
 was in a strange land? she inquired, self- 
 reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I vol 
 unteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, 
 and, taking a cross-path over the fields, soon 
 overtook him. He had just been rejected at 
 the house of our nearest neighbor, and was 
 standing in a state of dubious perplexity in 
 the street. His looks quite justified my 
 mother s suspicions. He was an olive-com- 
 plexioned, black-bearded Italian, with an eye 
 like a live coal, such a face as perchance 
 looks out on the traveller in the passes of the 
 Abruzzi, one of those bandit-visages which 
 Salvator has painted. With some difficulty, 
 I gave him to understand my errand, when he 
 
48 JOHN GREENLEAF. WHITTIER. 
 
 overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully 
 followed me back. He took his seat with us 
 at the supper-table; and when we were all 
 gathered around the hearth that cold au 
 tumnal evening, he told us, partly by words, 
 and partly by gestures, the story of his life 
 and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions 
 of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his 
 sunny clime, edified my mother with a 
 recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and 
 in the morning when, after breakfast, his 
 dark sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye 
 moistened with grateful emotion as in his 
 own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out 
 his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which 
 had so nearly closed our doors against him; 
 and, as he departed, we all felt that he had 
 left with us the blessing of the poor. 
 
 w It was not often that, as in the above in 
 stance, my mother s prudence got the better 
 of her charity. The regular r old strag 
 glers regarded her as an unfailing friend; 
 and the sight of her plain cap was to them 
 an assurance of forthcoming creature com 
 forts." 
 
 In ^Snow-Bound," too, we learn that the 
 
BOYHOOD- 49 
 
 good mother often stayed her step to express 
 a warm word of gratitude for their own com 
 forts, and to hope that the unfortunate might 
 be cared for also. It is a facetious saying in 
 Philadelphia that beggars are shipped to that 
 city from all parts of the country that they 
 may share the never-failing bounty of the 
 Quakers. However this may be, it is evi 
 dent that benevolence was the predominant 
 trait in the character of our poet s mother. 
 
 Other members of the household in Whit- 
 tier s boyhood were his elder sister Mary, 
 w r ho died in 1861; Uncle Moses Whittier, 
 who in 1824 received fatal injuries from the 
 falling of a tree which he was cutting down; 
 the poet s younger brother Matthew, who 
 was born in 1812, and has been for many 
 years a resident of Boston, himself a ver 
 sifier, and a contributor to the newspapers 
 of humorous dialect articles, signed w Ethan 
 Spike, from Hornby"; and finally the aunt, 
 Mercy E. Hussey, the younger sister Eliza 
 beth, and occasionally the " half-welcome " 
 eccentric guest, Harriet Livermore. 
 
 Elizabeth Hussey Whittier the younger 
 sister and intimate literary companion of her 
 
50 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 brother, the poet was a person of rare and 
 saintly nature. In the little parlor of the 
 Amesbury home there hangs a crayon sketch 
 of her. The face wears a smile of unfailing 
 sweetness and patience. That her literary 
 and poetical accomplishments were of an 
 unusually high order is shown by the poems 
 of hers appended to Mr. Whittier s " Hazel 
 Blossoms," published after her death. Her 
 poem, " Dr. Kane in Cuba," would do honor 
 to any poet. In the piece entitled the 
 * Wedding Veil," we have a hint of an 
 early love transformed by the death of its 
 object into a spiritual worship and hope, 
 nourished in the still fane of the heart. In 
 the prefatory note to " Hazel Blossoms," 
 Mr. Whittier says : " I have ventured, in 
 compliance with the desire of dear friends 
 of my beloved sister, Elizabeth H. Whittier, 
 to add to this little volume the few poetical 
 pieces which she left behind her. As she 
 was very distrustful of her own powers, and 
 altogether without ambition for literary 
 distinction, she shunned everything like 
 publicity, and found far greater happiness 
 in generous appreciation of the gifts of her 
 friends than in the cultivation of her own. 
 
 
BOYHOOD. 51 
 
 Yet it has always seemed to me that, had 
 her health, sense of duty and fitness, and 
 her extreme self-distrust permitted, she 
 might have taken a high place among lyr 
 ical singers. These poems, with perhaps 
 two or three exceptions, afford but slight 
 indications of the inward life of the writer, 
 who had an almost morbid dread of spiritual 
 and intellectual egotism, or of her tenderness 
 of sympathy, chastened mirthfulness, and 
 pleasant play of thought and fancy, when 
 her shy, beautiful soul opened like a flower 
 in the warmth of social communion. In 
 the lines on Dr. Kane, her friends will see 
 something of her fine individuality, the 
 rare mingling of delicacy and intensity of 
 feeling which made her dear to them. This 
 little poem reached Cuba while the great 
 explorer lay on his death-bed, and we are 
 told that he listened w r ith grateful tears 
 while it was read to him by his mother. 
 
 " I am tempted to say more, but I write 
 as under the eye of her who, while with us, 
 shrank with painful deprecation from the 
 praise or mention of performances which 
 seemed so far below her ideal of excellence. 
 To those who best knew her, the beloved 
 
52 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 circle of her intimate friends, I dedicate this 
 slight memorial." 
 
 Many readers of " Snow-Bound " have 
 doubtless often wondered who the beauti 
 ful and mysterious young woman is who 
 is sketched in such vigorous portraiture, 
 f - f the not unfeared, half-welcome guest," 
 half saint and half shrew. She is no other 
 than the religious enthusiast and fanatical 
 " pilgrim preacher," Harriet Livermore,* the 
 same who startled 
 
 " On her desert throne 
 The crazy Queen of Lebanon 
 With claims fantastic as her own." 
 
 By the w Queen of Lebanon " is meant Lady 
 Hester Stanhope. Harriet Livermore was 
 the grand-daughter of Hon. Samuel Liver- 
 more, of Portsmouth, N. H., and the daugh 
 ter of Hon. Edward St. Loe Livermore, of 
 Lowell. She was born April 14, 1788, at 
 Concord, N. H. Her misfortune was her 
 temper, inherited from her father. When 
 Whittier was a little boy, she taught needle 
 work, embroidery, and the common school 
 
 * For many items of information concerning this strange 
 woman we are indebted to the sketch of her published by Miss 
 Rebecca I. Davis, of East Haverhill. 
 
BOYHOOD. 53 
 
 branches, in the little old brown school-house 
 in East Haverhill, and was a frequent guest 
 at Farmer Whittier s. The poet thus char 
 acterizes her: 
 
 " A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 
 Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
 Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash ; 
 And under low brows, black with night, 
 Rayed out at times a dangerous light ; 
 The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
 Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
 Condemned to share her love or hate. 
 A woman tropical, intense 
 In thought and act, in soul and sense." 
 
 When a mere girl, she fell in love with a 
 young gentleman of East Haverhill, but the 
 parents of both families opposed the match, 
 and were not to be moved by her honeyed 
 words of persuasion or by her little gifts. 
 The poet says she often visited at his father s 
 home, "and had at one time an idea of be 
 coming a member of the Society of Friends; 
 but an unlucky outburst of rage, resulting in 
 a blow, at a Friend s house in Amesbury, did 
 not encourage us to seek her membership." 
 She embraced the Methodist Perfectionist 
 doctrine, and one day strenuously main 
 tained that she was incapable of sinning. 
 
54 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 But a few minutes afterward she burst 
 out into a violent passion about something 
 or other. Her opponent could only say to 
 her, " Christian, thou hast lost thy roll." 
 She became an itinerant preacher, and spoke 
 in the meetings of various sects in different 
 parts of the country. She made three voy 
 ages to Jerusalem. Says one: "At one 
 time we find her in Egypt, giving our late 
 consul, Mr. Thayer, a world of trouble from 
 her peculiar notions. At another we see 
 her amid the gray olive slopes of Jerusalem, 
 demanding, not begging, money for the 
 Great King [God]. And once when an 
 American, fresh from home, during the late 
 rebellion, offered her a handful of green 
 backs, she threw them away with disdain, 
 saying, The Great King will only have 
 gold. She once climbed the sides of Mt. 
 Libanus, and visited Lady Stanhope, that 
 eccentric sister of the younger Pitt, who 
 married a sheik of the mountains, and thus 
 had a fine opportunity of securing the finest 
 steeds of the Orient. Going to the stable 
 one day, Lady Hester pointed out to Harriet 
 Livermore two very fine horses, with pecu 
 liar marks, but differing in color. That 
 
BOYHOOD. 55 
 
 one, said Lady Hester, the Great King 
 when he comes will ride, and the other I 
 will ride in company with him. There 
 upon Miss Livermore gave a most emphatic 
 no! declaring with foreknowledge and 
 aplomb that c the Great King will ride this 
 horse, and it is I, as his bride, who will ride 
 upon the other at his second coming. It is 
 said she carried her point with Lady Hes 
 ter, overpowering her with her fluency and 
 
 assertion." 
 
 To pass now to the boy-poet himself. 
 An old friend and schoolmate of his, in 
 Haverhill, told the author that Whittier, in 
 stead of doing sums on his slate at school, 
 was always writing verses, even when a lit 
 tle lad. His first schoolmaster was Joshua 
 Coffin, afterward the historian of Newbury. 
 Another master of his was named Emerson. 
 To Coffin, Whittier has written a poetical 
 epistle, in which he says: 
 
 " I, the urchin unto whom, 
 In that smoked and dingy room, 
 Where the district gave thee rule 
 O er its ragged winter school, 
 Thou didst teach the mysteries 
 Of those weary A, B, C s, 
 
56 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Where, to fill the every pause 
 Of thy wise and learned saws, 
 Through the cracked and crazy wall 
 Came the cradle-rock and squall, 
 And the goodman s voice, at strife 
 With his shrill and tipsy wife, 
 Luring us by stories old, 
 With a comic unction told, 
 More than by the eloquence 
 Of terse birchen arguments 
 (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look 
 With complacence on a book ! 
 
 I, the man of middle years, 
 In whose sable locks appears 
 Many a warning fleck of gray, 
 Looking back to that far day, 
 And thy primal lessons, feel 
 Grateful smiles my lips unseal," etc. 
 
 In "School Days" he gives us another 
 and a pleasanter picture: 
 
 " Still sits the school-house by the road,* 
 
 A ragged beggar sunning ; 
 Around it still the sumachs grow, 
 And blackberry-vines are running. 
 
 Within, the master s desk is seen, 
 
 Deep scarred by raps official ; 
 The warping floor, the battered seats, 
 
 The jack-knife s carved initial; 
 
 * The old brown school-house is now no more, having 
 been removed to make room for a reservoir. 
 
BOYHOOD. 59 
 
 The charcoal frescos on its wall ; 
 
 Its door s worn sill, betraying 
 The feet that, creeping slow to school, 
 
 Went storming out to playing ! 
 
 Long years ago a winter sun 
 
 Shone over it at setting ; 
 Lit up its western window-panes, 
 
 And low eaves icy fretting. 
 
 It touched the tangled golden curls, 
 
 And brown eyes full of grieving, 
 Of one who still her steps delayed 
 
 When all the school were leaving. 
 
 For near her stood the little boy 
 
 Her childish favor singled : 
 His cap pulled low upon a face 
 
 Where pride and shame were mingled. 
 
 Pushing with restless feet the snow 
 To right and left, he lingered ; 
 
 As restlessly her tiny hands 
 
 The blue-checked apron fingered. 
 
 He saw her lift her eyes; he felt 
 
 The soft hand s light caressing, 
 And heard the tremble of her voice, 
 
 As if a fault confessing. 
 
 I m sorry that I spelt the word : 
 
 I hate to go above you, 
 Because, the brown eyes lower fell, 
 Because, you see, I love you ! 
 
60 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 It is probable that " My Playmate " is in 
 memory of this same sweet little lady: 
 
 " O playmate in the golden time ! 
 
 Our mossy seat is green, 
 Its fringing violets blossom yet, 
 The old trees o er it lean. 
 
 The winds so sweet with birch and fern 
 
 A sweeter memory blow; 
 And there in spring the veeries sing 
 
 The song of long ago. 
 
 And still the pines of Ramoth Wood 
 
 Are moaning like the sea, 
 The moaning of the sea of change 
 
 Between myself and thee ! " 
 
 Elsewhere in the poem we are told that 
 the little maiden went away forever to the 
 South: 
 
 " She lives where all the golden year 
 
 Her summer roses blow ; 
 
 The dusky children of the sun 
 
 Before her come and go. 
 
 There haply with her jewelled hands 
 She smooths her silken gown, 
 
 No more the homespun lap wherein 
 I shook the walnuts down." 
 
 We also learn from the poem that he was 
 the boy "who fed her father s kine." What 
 
BOYHOOD. 6l 
 
 a pretty little romance! and, let us hope, 
 not too sad a one. Shall we have one more 
 stanza about this lovely little school-idyl? 
 It is from "Memories": 
 
 " I hear again thy low replies, 
 
 I feel thy arm within my own, 
 And timidly again uprise 
 The fringed lids of hazel eyes, 
 
 With soft brown tresses overblown. 
 Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves, 
 
 Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 
 Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, 
 
 And smiles and tones more dear than they ! " 
 
 The reading material that found its way 
 to Farmer Whittier s house consisted of the 
 almanac, the weekly village paper, and 
 "scarce a score" of books and pamphlets, 
 among them Lindley Murray s "Reader": 
 
 " One harmless novel, mostly hid 
 From younger eyes, a book forbid, 
 And poetry (or good or bad, 
 A single book was all we had), 
 Where Ellwood s meek, drab-skirted Muse, 
 A stranger to the heathen Nine, 
 Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
 The wars of David and the Jews." 
 
 Knowing, as we do, the great influence 
 exerted upon our mental development by 
 
62 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 the books we read as children, and knowing 
 that a rural life, such as Whittier s has been, 
 is especially conducive to tenacity of early 
 customs, it becomes important to know 
 what the books were that first formed his 
 style and colored his thought. It seems 
 that Ell wood s "Davideis; or the Life of 
 David, King of Israel," was one of these. 
 The book was published in 1711, and had 
 a sale of five or more editions. Ellwood, 
 born in 1639, early adopted the then new 
 doctrines of George Fox. He has written 
 a quaint and pictorial autobiography, some 
 what like that of Bunyan or that of Fox. 
 In 1662 he was for six weeks reader to 
 Milton, who was then blind, and living in 
 London, in Jewin Street. It was he who 
 first suggested to Milton that he should 
 write "Paradise Regained."* 
 
 * This was in 1665. when Milton was living at Giles-Chal- 
 font. Ellwood says: "After some common discourse had 
 passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which 
 he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and 
 read it at mj leisure; and, when I had done so, return it to 
 him with my judgment thereon." It was " Paradise Lost." 
 When Ellwood returned it, and was asked his opinion, he 
 gave it, and added : " Thou hast said much here of " Para 
 dise Lost," but what hast thou to say of " Paradise Found "? 
 He made no answer, but sat some time in a muse." 
 
BOYHOOD. 63 
 
 An idea of the execrable nature of his 
 versification may be obtained from a few 
 specimens. Upon the passing of a severe 
 law against Quakers, he relieves his mind 
 in this wise: 
 
 "Awake, awake, O arm o th Lord, awake! 
 
 Thy sword up take ; 
 Cast what would thine forgetful of thee make, 
 
 Into the lake. 
 
 Awake, I pray, O mighty Jah ! awake, 
 Make all the world before thy presence quake. 
 Not only earth, but heaven also shake." 
 
 Another poem, entitled w A Song of the 
 Mercies and Deliverances of the Lord," 
 begins thus: 
 
 " Had not the Lord been on our side, 
 
 May Israel now say, 
 We were not able to abide 
 The trials of that day : 
 
 When men did up against us rise, 
 
 With fury, rage, and spite, 
 Hoping to catch us by surprise, 
 
 Or run us down by night." 
 
 An opponent s poetry is lashed by Ell- 
 wood in such beautiful stanzas as the fol 
 lowing: 
 
64 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 /, so dull, so rough, so void of grace, 
 Where symphony and cadence have no place ; 
 So full of chasmes stuck with prosie pegs, 
 Whereon his tired Muse might rest her legs, 
 (Not having wings) and take new breath, that then 
 She might with much adoe hop on again." 
 
 A striking peculiarity of Whittier s poetry 
 is the exceedingly small range of his rhymes 
 and metres. He is especially fond of the 
 four-foot iambic line, and likes to rhyme 
 successive or alternate lines in a wofully 
 monotonous and see-saw manner. These 
 are the characteristics of much of the lyric 
 poetry of a hundred years ago, and especially 
 distinguish the verses of Burns and Ellwood, 
 the first poets the boy Whittier read. 
 Burns, especially, he learned by heart, and 
 there can be no doubt that the Ayrshire 
 ploughman gave to the mind of his brother- 
 ploughman of Essex its life-direction and 
 coloring, as respects the swing of rhythm 
 and rhyme at least. Indeed, we shall 
 presently find him contributing to the 
 Haverhill Gazette verses in the Scotch dia 
 lect. His introduction to the poetry of 
 Burns was in this wise: He was one after 
 noon gathering in hay on the farm, when by 
 
BOYHOOD. 65 
 
 good hap a wandering peddler stopped and 
 took from his pack a copy of Burns, which 
 was eagerly purchased by the poetical 
 Quaker boy. Alluding to the circumstance 
 afterward in his poem, "Burns," he says: 
 
 " How oft that day, with fond delay, 
 
 I sought the maple s shadow, 
 And sang with Burns the hours away, 
 Forgetful of the meadow ! 
 
 Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 
 
 I heard the squirrels leaping, 
 The good dog listened while I read, 
 
 And wagged his tail in keeping." 
 
 By the reading of Burns his eyes were 
 opened, he says, to the beauty in homely 
 things. In familiar and humble things he 
 found the "tender idyls of the heart." 
 But the wanton and the ribald lines of the 
 Scotch poet found no entrance to his pure 
 mind.* 
 
 He had other relishing tastes of the rich 
 dialect of heather poetry. In r Yankee 
 Gypsies" he says: "One day we had a call 
 from a f pawky auld carle of a wandering 
 Scotchman. To him I owe my first intro 
 duction to the songs of Burns. After eating 
 
 * See Appendix II. 
 
66 JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT lIER. 
 
 his bread and cheese and drinking his mug 
 of cider, he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland 
 Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich 
 full voice, and entered heartily into the 
 spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to 
 the same melodies from the lips of Demp 
 ster (than whom the Scottish bard has had 
 no sweeter or truer interpreter) ; but the 
 skilful performance of the artist lacked the 
 novel charm of the gaberlunzie s singing in 
 the old farm-house kitchen." 
 
 A page or two of these personal recollec 
 tions of the poet will serve to fill out the 
 picture of his boyhood life; and, at the same 
 time, give the reader a taste of his often 
 charming prose pieces: 
 
 " The advent of wandering beggars, or 
 r old stragglers, as we were wont to call 
 
 OO 
 
 them, was an event of no ordinary interest 
 in the generally monotonous quietude of our 
 farm life. Many of them were well known 5 
 they had their periodical revolutions and 
 transits; we could calculate them like 
 eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy 
 knaves, fat and saucy; and whenever they 
 ascertained that the r men-folks were ab- 
 
BOYHOOD. 67 
 
 sent would order provisions and cider like 
 men who expected to pay for them, seating 
 themselves at the hearth or table with the 
 air of Falstaff, ? Shall I not take mine ease 
 in mine own inn ? Others poor, pale, 
 patient, like Sterne s monk, came creeping 
 up to the door, hat in hand, standing there 
 in their gray wretchedness, with a look of 
 heart-break and forlornness which was never 
 without its effect on our juvenile sensibilities. 
 At times, however, we experienced a slight 
 revulsion of feeling when even these hum 
 blest children of sorrow somewhat petu 
 lantly rejected our proffered bread and 
 cheese, and demanded instead a glass of 
 
 cider. 
 
 
 
 "One I think I see him now, grim, 
 gaunt, and ghastly, working his way up to 
 our door used to gather herbs by the 
 wayside, and call himself doctor. He was 
 bearded like a he-goat, and used to counter 
 feit lameness, yet when he supposed himself 
 alone would travel on lustily, as if walking 
 for a wager. At length, as if in punishment 
 for his deceit, he met with an accident in 
 his rambles, and became lame in earnest. 
 
68 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 hobbling ever after with difficulty on his 
 gnarled crutches. Another used to go 
 stooping, like Bunyan s pilgrim, under a 
 pack made of an old bed-sacking, stuffed 
 out into most plethoric dimensions, totter 
 ing on a pair of small, meagre legs, and 
 peering out with his wild, hairy face from 
 under his burden, like a big-bodied spider. 
 That man with the pack alw r ays inspired 
 me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost 
 sublime in its tense rotundity, the father 
 of all packs, never laid aside and never 
 opened, what might there not be within it! 
 With what flesh-creeping curiosity I used to 
 walk round about it at a safe distance, half 
 expecting to. see its striped covering stirred 
 by the motions of a mysterious life, or that 
 some evil monster would leap out of it, like 
 robbers from AH Baba s jars, or armed men 
 from the Trojan horse ! " 
 
 f Twice a year, usually in the spring and 
 autumn, we were honored with a call from 
 Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, peddler 
 and poet, physician and parson, a Yankee 
 Troubadour, first and last minstrel of the 
 valley of the Merrimack, encircled to my 
 
BOYHOOD. 69 
 
 wondering eyes with the very nimbus of 
 immortality. He brought with him pins, 
 needles, tape, and cotton thread for my 
 mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for 
 my father; and verses of his own compos 
 ing, coarsely printed and illustrated with 
 rude woodcuts, for the delectation of the 
 younger branches of the family. No love 
 sick youth could drown himself, no deserted 
 maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount 
 the gallows, without fitting memorial in 
 Plummer s verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers 
 and shipwrecks he regarded as personal 
 favors from Providence, furnishing the raw 
 material of song and ballad. Welcome 
 to us in our country seclusion as Autolycus 
 to the clown in Winter s Tale, we listened 
 with infinite satisfaction to his readings of 
 his own verses, or to his ready improvisa 
 tion upon some domestic incident or topic 
 suggested by his auditors. When once 
 fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a 
 new subject, his rhymes flowed freely, as 
 if he had eaten ballads, and all men s ears 
 grew to his tunes. His productions an 
 swered, as nearly as I can remember, to 
 Shakespeare s description of a proper ballad, 
 
70 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 r doleful matter merrily set down, or a 
 very pleasant theme sung lamentably. He 
 was scrupulously conscientious, devout, in 
 clined to theological disquisitions, and withal 
 mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly 
 independent; flattered nobody, cared for 
 nobody, trusted nobody. When invited to 
 sit down at our dinner-table, he invariably 
 took the precaution to place his basket of 
 valuables between his legs for safe-keeping. 
 r Never mind thy basket, Jonathan, said my 
 father, we shan t steal thy verses. ? I m 
 not sure of that, returned the suspicious 
 guest. < It is written, Trust ye not in any 
 brother. " 
 
 Thou, too, O Parson B., with thy pale 
 student s brow and thy rubicund nose, with 
 thy rusty and tattered black coat, overswept 
 by white flowing locks, with thy professional 
 white neckcloth scrupulously preserved, 
 when even a shirt to thy back was problem 
 atical, art by no means to be overlooked 
 in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen pos 
 sessing the entree of our farm-house. Well 
 do we remember with what grave and dig 
 nified courtesy he used to step over its 
 
BOYHOOD. 7 1 
 
 threshold, saluting its inmates with the same 
 air of gracious condescension and patronage 
 with which in better days he had delighted 
 the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old 
 man! He had once been the admired and 
 almost worshipped minister of the largest 
 church in the town, where he afterwards 
 found support in the winter season as a 
 pauper. He had early fallen into intemper 
 ate habits, and at the age of threescore and 
 ten, when I remember him, he was only 
 sober when he lacked the means of being 
 otherwise." 
 
 Among the books read by Whittier when 
 a boy we must number the w Pilgrim s 
 Progress" of Bunvan. 
 
 o / 
 
 In his " Supernaturalism of New England " 
 the poet says: " How hardly effaced are the 
 impressions of childhood! Even at this day, 
 at the mention of the Evil Angel, an image 
 rises before me like that with which I used 
 especially to horrify myself in an old copy 
 of f Pilgrim s Progress. Horned, hoofed, 
 scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal extremity 
 twisted tight with rage, I remember him 
 illustrating the tremendous encounter of 
 
72 JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTIER. 
 
 Christian in the valley where r Apollyon 
 straddled over the whole breadth of the 
 way. There was another print of the 
 enemy which made no slight impression 
 upon me; it was the frontispiece of an old, 
 smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet (the prop 
 erty of an elderly lady, who had a fine col 
 lection of similar wonders, wherewith she 
 was kind enough to edify her young visit 
 ors), containing a solemn account of the fate 
 of a wicked dancing party in New Jersey, 
 whose irreverent declaration that they would 
 have a fiddler, if they had to send to the 
 lower regions after him, called up the fiend 
 himself, who forthwith commenced playing, 
 while the company danced to the music 
 incessantly, without the power to suspend 
 their exercise until their feet and legs were 
 worn off to the knees! The rude wood 
 cut represented the Demon Fiddler and his 
 agonized companions literally stumping it 
 up and down in f cotillions, jigs, strathspeys, 
 and reels." 
 
 So grew up the Quaker farmer s son, 
 drinking eagerly in such knowledge as he 
 could, and receiving those impressions of 
 
BOYHOOD. 73 
 
 nature and home-life which he was after 
 ward to embody in his popular lyrics and 
 idyls. Above all, his home education satu 
 rated his mind with religious and moral 
 earnestness. In the second part of this vol 
 ume will be given some remarks on Quaker 
 life in America, and an analysis of the 
 blended influence of Quakerism and Puri 
 tanism upon the development of Whittiers 
 genius. Enough has been said to show that 
 the surroundings of his early life were of 
 the plainest and simplest character, and not 
 different from those of a thousand other 
 secluded New England farms of the period. 
 We are now to follow the shy young poet 
 out into the world. He is nineteen years of 
 age. The circle of his experiences begins 
 to widen outward; manhood is dawning; 
 the village paper has taught him that there 
 are men beyond the mountains. He thirsts 
 for individuality, to know his powers, to 
 cast the horoscope of his future, and see if 
 the consciousness within him of unusual gifts 
 be a trustworthy one. To begin with, he 
 will write a poem for ?f our weekly paper." 
 Accordingly one day in 1826 the following 
 poem, written in blue ink on coarse paper, 
 
74 JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTIER. 
 
 was slipped by the postman under the door 
 of the office of the Free Press, in Newbury- 
 port, a short-lived paper, then recently 
 started by young William Lloyd Garrison, 
 and subscribed for by Farmer Whittier. 
 
 The poem is the first ever published by 
 the poet, and is his earliest known produc 
 tion.* The manuscript of it is now in the 
 possession of Whittier s kinsman, Mr. S. T. 
 Pickard, associate editor of the Portland 
 Transcript, in which journal it was repub- 
 lished November 27, 1880: 
 
 THE DEITY. 
 
 The Prophet stood 
 
 On the high mount and saw the tempest-cloud 
 Pour the fierce whirlwind from its reservoir 
 Of congregated gloom. The mountain oak 
 Torn from the earth heaved high its roots where once 
 Its branches waved. The fir-tree s shapely form 
 Smote by the tempest lashed the mountain side ; 
 Yet, calm in conscious purity, the seer 
 Beheld the awful devastation, for 
 The Eternal Spirit moved not in the storm. 
 
 The tempest ceased. The caverned earthquake burst 
 Forth from its prison, and the mountain rocked 
 Even to its base : The topmost crags were thrown 
 With fearful crashing down its shuddering slopes. 
 Unawed the Prophet saw and heard : He felt 
 Not in the earthquake moved the God of Heaven. 
 * See note on p. 301. 
 
BOYHOOD. 75 
 
 The murmur died away, and from the height, 
 Torn by the storm and shattered by the shock, 
 Rose far and clear a pyramid of flame, 
 Mighty and vast ! The startled mountain deer 
 Shrank from its glare and cowered beneath the shade : 
 The wild fowl shrieked ; yet even then the seer 
 Untrembling stood and marked the fearful glow 
 For Israel s God came not within the flame. 
 
 The fiery beacon sank. A still small voice 
 Now caught the Prophet s ear. Its awful tone, 
 Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed 
 Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart. 
 Then bowed the holy man ; his face he veiled 
 Within his mantle, and in meekness owned 
 The presence of his God, discovered not in 
 The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty flame, 
 But in the still small whisper to his soul. 
 
 It is characteristic of the man that his 
 first poem should be of a religious nature. 
 There is grandeur and majesty in the poem. 
 The rhetoric is juvenile, but the diction is 
 strong, nervous, and intense, and the general 
 impression made upon the mind is one of har 
 mony and solemn stateliness, not unlike that 
 of "Thanatopsis," composed by Bryant when 
 he was about the same age as was Whittier 
 when he wrote " The Deity." It was prob 
 ably owing to its anonymity that the first 
 impulse of the editor was to throw it into 
 
76 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 the waste-basket. But as he glanced over 
 the sheet his attention was caught: he read 
 it, and some weeks afterward published it 
 in the poet s corner. But in the interval of 
 waiting the boy s heart sank within him. 
 Every writer knows what he suffered. Did 
 we not all expect that first precious produc 
 tion of ours to fairly set the editor wild with 
 enthusiasm, so that nothing short of death or 
 apoplexy could prevent him from assigning 
 it the most conspicuous position in the very 
 next issue of his paper? 
 
 But one day, as our boy-poet was mend 
 ing a stone fence along the highway, in com 
 pany with Uncle Moses, along came the 
 postman on horseback, with his leathern bag 
 of mail, like a magician with a Fortuna- 
 tus purse; and, to save the trouble of call 
 ing at the house, he tossed a paper to young 
 Whittier. He opened it with eager fingers, 
 and behold! his poem in the place of honor. 
 He says that he was so dumfounded and 
 dazed by the event that he could not read a 
 word, but stood there staring at the paper 
 until his uncle chided him for loitering, and 
 so recalled him to his senses. Elated by 
 his success, he of course sent other poems 
 
BOYHOOD. 77 
 
 to the Free Press. They attracted the at 
 tention of Garrison so strongly that he in 
 quired of the postman who it was that was 
 sending him contributions from East Haver- 
 hill. The postman said that it was a 
 "farmer s son named Whittier." Garrison 
 decided to ride over on horseback, a distance 
 of fifteen miles, and see his contributor. 
 When he reached the farm, Whittier was at 
 work in the field, and when told that there 
 was a gentleman at the house who wanted 
 to see him, he felt very much like "break 
 ing for the brush," no one having ever called 
 on him in that way before. However, he 
 slipped in at the back door, made his toilet, 
 and met his visitor, who told him that he 
 had power as a writer, and urged him to 
 improve his talents. The father came in 
 during the conversation, and asked young 
 Garrison not to put such ideas into the mind 
 of his son, as they would only unfit him for 
 his home duties. But, fortunately, it was too 
 late: the spark of ambition had been fanned 
 into a flame. Years afterward, in an in 
 troduction to Oliver Johnson s "William 
 Lloyd Garrison and his Times," Mr. 
 Whittier said: "My acquaintance with him 
 
78 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 [Garrison] commenced in boyhood. My 
 father was a subscriber to his first paper, 
 the Free Press, and the humanitarian tone 
 of his editorials awakened a deep interest 
 in our little household, which was increased 
 by a visit he made us. When he after 
 wards edited the Journal of the Times, at 
 Bennington, Vt., I ventured to write him 
 a letter of encouragement and sympathy, 
 urging him to continue his labors against 
 slavery, and assuring him that he could do 
 great things." Indeed, the acquaintance 
 thus begun ripened into the most intimate 
 friendship and mutual respect. Mr. Whit- 
 tier told the writer that when he went to 
 Boston, in the winter of 1828-29, ne anc ^ 
 Garrison roomed and boarded at the same 
 house. Mr. Whittier frequently contrib 
 uted to the Liberator, and was for a quarter 
 of a century associated with Garrison in 
 anti-slavery labors. 
 
 Before we pass with our young Quaker 
 from the farm to the world at large, let us 
 correct an erroneous statement that has been 
 made about him. It has been said that he 
 worked at the trade of shoemaking when a 
 
BOYHOOD. 79 
 
 boy. The truth is that almost every farmer 
 in those days was accustomed to do a little 
 cobbling of his own, and what shoemaker s 
 work Whittier performed was done by him 
 solely as an amateur in his father s house. 
 
 In the year of his dzbut as a poet (1826), 
 he being then nineteen years of age, Whit- 
 tier began attending the Haverhill Acad 
 emy, or Latin School. Whether his parents 
 were influenced to take this step for his 
 advantage by the visit of the editor Garrison, 
 and by his evident taste for learning, is not 
 positively known, but it is quite possible that 
 such was the case. In 1827 he read an orig 
 inal ode at the dedication of the new Acad 
 emy. The building is still standing on 
 Winter Street. While at the Academy 
 he read history very thoroughly, and his 
 writings show that it has always been a 
 favorite study with him. He also contrib 
 uted poems at this time to the Haverhill 
 Gazette. Many of them were in the Scotch 
 dialect: it would be interesting to see a 
 few of these; but unfortunately no file of the 
 Gazette for those years can be found. A 
 friendly rival in the writing of Scotch poems 
 
80 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 was good Robert Dinsmore, the "Farmer 
 Poet of Windham," as Whittier calls him. A 
 few specimens of Farmer Dinsmore s verse 
 have been preserved. Take this on "The 
 Sparrow" : 
 
 " Poor innocent and hapless Sparrow ! 
 Why should my moul-board gie thee sorrow ? 
 This day thou ll chirp, and mourn the morrow 
 
 Wi anxious breast ; 
 The plough has turned the mould ring furrow 
 
 Deep o er thy nest ! 
 
 Just i the middle o the hill 
 
 Thy nest was placed wi curious skill, 
 
 There I espied thy little bill 
 
 Beneath the shade. 
 In that sweet bower, secure frae ill, 
 
 Thine eggs were laid. 
 
 Five corns. o maize had there been drappit, 
 An through the stalks thy head was pappit, 
 The drawing nowt could na be stappit 
 
 I quickly foun , 
 Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit, 
 
 Wild fluttering roun . 
 
 The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer, 
 In vain I tried the plough to steer, 
 A wee bit stumpie i the rear 
 
 Cam tween my legs, 
 An to the jee-side gart me veer 
 
 An crush thine eggs." 
 
BOYHOOD. 8 1 
 
 The following elegiac stanza, written by 
 honest Robert on the occasion of the death 
 of his wife, is irresistibly ludicrous: 
 
 " No more may I the Spring Brook trace, 
 No more with sorrow view the place 
 
 Where Mary s wash-tub stood ; 
 No more may wander there alone, 
 And lean upon the mossy stone, 
 
 Where once she piled her wood. 
 T was there she bleached her linen cloth, 
 
 By yonder bass-wood tree ; 
 From that sweet stream she made her broth, 
 
 Her pudding and her tea." 
 
 Mr. Whittier says that the last time he 
 saw Robert, fr Threescore years and ten, to 
 use his own words, 
 
 Hung o er his back, 
 And bent him like a muckle pack, 
 
 yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his 
 thick shoes of cowhide, like one accustomed 
 to tread independently the soil of his ow r n 
 acres, his broad, honest face seamed by 
 care and darkened by exposure to all the 
 airts that blow, and his white hair flowing 
 in patriarchal glory beneath his felt hat 
 A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, 
 
82 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 simple as a child, and betraying neither 
 in look nor manner that he was accustomed 
 to 
 
 Feed on thoughts which voluntary move 
 Harmonious numbers. " 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 83 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EDITOR AND AUTHOR : FIRST VENTURES. 
 
 THE winter of 1828-29 was passed by 
 Whittier in Boston. He once with charac 
 teristic modesty told the writer that he 
 drifted into journalism that winter, as edi 
 tor of the Boston Manufacturer, in the 
 following way: He had gone to Boston 
 to study and read. He undertook the 
 writing for the Manufacturer not be 
 cause he had much liking for questions of 
 tariff and finance, but because his own 
 finances would thereby be improved. Mr. 
 Whittier s chief personal trait is extreme 
 shyness and distrust of himself, and he dep 
 recated the idea that he had any special 
 power as a writer at the time of which we 
 are speaking, saying that he had to study up 
 his subjects before writing. But undoubtedly 
 he must have wielded a vigorous pen, and 
 been known to possess a cool and careful 
 
84 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 head, or he would not have been invited to 
 assume the editorship of such a paper. He 
 himself admitted, in the course of the con 
 versation, that at that time he had political 
 ambitions, and made a study of political 
 economy and civil polities. 
 
 In 1830 we find Whittier at Haverhill 
 again. In March of that year he was occu 
 pying the position of editor of the Essex 
 Gazette, and r * issued proposals to publish a 
 f History of Haverhill, in one volume of 
 two hundred pages, duodecimo, price 
 eighty-seven and one-half cents per copy. 
 ? If the material swelled the volume 
 above two hundred pages, the price 
 was to be one dollar per copy." : But 
 the limited encouragement offered, and the 
 amount of work required to compile the 
 volume, led the young editor to abandon the 
 project. Whittier was editor of this Ga 
 zette for six months, from January i to 
 July 10, 1830. On May 4, 1836, after he 
 had returned from Philadelphia, he resumed 
 the editorship of the journal, retaining the 
 position until December 17 of the same year. 
 
 He left the Gazette at the time of his 
 first connection with it, to go to Hartford 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 5 
 
 for the purpose of editing the New Eng 
 land Weekly Review of that city. His 
 first acquaintance with this Connecticut 
 periodical had been made while attending the 
 Academy at Haverhill. While there he 
 happened to see a copy of the Review, then 
 edited by George D. Prentice. He was 
 pleased with its sprightly and breezy tone, 
 and sent it several articles. Great was his 
 astonishment on finding that they were 
 accepted and published with editorial com 
 mendation. He sent numerous other con 
 tributions cfuring the same year. 
 
 One day in 18*30, he was at work in the 
 field, when a letter was brought to him from 
 the publishers of the Hartford paper, in 
 which they said that they had been asked 
 by Mr. Prentice to request him to edit the 
 paper during the absence of Mr. Prentice 
 in Kentucky, whither he had gone to write 
 a campaign life of Henry Clay. w I could 
 not have been more utterly astonished," said 
 Mr, Whittier once, "if I had been told that 
 I was appointed prime minister to the great 
 Khan of Tartary." 
 
 Mr. Whittier was at this time a member 
 
86 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 of the National Republican party. He 
 afterward belonged to the anti-slavery 
 Liberty party, a faction of the Abolitionists 
 which had separated from the Garrison 
 band. In 1855 Mr. Whittier acted with the 
 Free Democratic party. In the conversation 
 alluded to a moment ago, the poet laugh 
 ingly remarked that the proprietors of the 
 paper had never seen him when he w r ent to 
 Hartford in 1830 to take charge of their 
 periodical. They were much surprised at his 
 youth. But at the first meeting he discreetly 
 kept silence, letting them do most of the 
 talking. Here most assuredly, if never again, 
 his Quaker doctrine of silence stood him in 
 good stead; since, if we may believe him, 
 he was most wofully deficient in a knowl 
 edge of the intricacies of the political sit 
 uation of the time. 
 
 Whittier was twenty-four years old when 
 he published his first volume. It is a thin 
 little book entitled w Legends of New Eng 
 land" (Hartford: Hanmer and Phelps, 1831), 
 and is a medley of prose and verse. The 
 style is juvenile and extravagantly rhetori 
 cal, and the subject-matter is far from being 
 massive with thought. The libretto has 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 87 
 
 been suppressed by its author, and it would 
 be ungracious as well as unjust to criticise it 
 at any length, or quote more than a single 
 morsel of its verses. The poetry is in truth 
 sad stuff. But one may be pardoned for 
 giving two or three specimens of the prose 
 stories, for they are intrinsically interesting. 
 In the preface we have a striking passage, 
 which may be commended to those who 
 accuse Whittier of hatred of the Puritan 
 fathers, and undue partiality toward the 
 Quakers. He says: Pf I have in many in 
 stances alluded to the superstition and big 
 otry of our ancestors, the rare and bold race 
 who laid the foundation of this republic; 
 but no one can accuse me of having done 
 injustice to their memories. A son of New 
 England, and proud of my birthplace, I 
 would not willingly cast dishonor upon its 
 founders. My feelings in this respect have 
 already been expressed in language which I 
 shall be pardoned, I trust, for introducing in 
 this place: - 
 
 Oh ! never may a son of thine, 
 Where er his wandering steps incline, 
 Forget the sky which bent above 
 His childhood like a dream of love, 
 
88 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 The stream beneath the green hill flowing, 
 The broad-armed tree above it growing, 
 The clear breeze through the foliage blowing : 
 Or hear unmoved the taunt of scorn, 
 Breathed o er the brave New England born ; 
 Or mark the stranger s jaguar hand 
 
 Disturb the ashes of thy dead 
 The buried glory of a land 
 
 Whose soil with noble blood is red, 
 
 And sanctified in every part, 
 Nor feel resentment, like a brand, 
 
 Unsheathing from his fiery heart ! " 
 
 The flow of language in these prose pieces 
 is smooth and easy, and the narratives are 
 in the same vein and style as the "Twice 
 Told Tales," or Irving s stories, only they 
 are very much weaker than these, and 
 more extravagant and melodramatic in tone. 
 "The Midnight Attack" describes the ad 
 venture of Captain Harmon and thirty 
 Eastern rangers on the banks of the Ken- 
 nebec River in June, 1722. A party of 
 sleeping Indians are surprised by them and 
 all shot dead by one volley of balls. An 
 idea of the style of the piece will be obtained 
 from the following paragraphs. The men 
 are waiting for the signal of Harmon: 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 89 
 
 Fire! he at length exclaimed, as the 
 sight of his piece interposed full and dis 
 tinct between his eye and the wild scalp- 
 lock of the Indian. ? Fire, and rush on! 
 
 "The sharp voice of thirty rifles thrilled 
 through the heart of the forest. There was 
 a groan a smothered cry a wild and 
 convulsive movement among the sleeping 
 Indians; and all again was silent. 
 
 " The rangers sprang forward with their 
 clubbed muskets and hunting knives; but 
 their work was done. The red men had 
 gone to their audit before the Great Spirit; 
 and no sound was heard among them save 
 the gurgling of the hot blood from their 
 lifeless bosoms." 
 
 It was one of the superstitions of the 
 New England colonists that the rattlesnake 
 had the power of charming or fascinating 
 human beings. Whittier s story, " The Rat 
 tlesnake Hunter," is based upon this fact. 
 An old man with meagre and w r asted form 
 is represented as devoting his life to the 
 extermination of the reptiles among the 
 hills and mountains of Vermont, the in 
 spiring motive of his action being the death 
 
90 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 of his young and beautiful wife, many 
 years previously, from the bite of a rattle 
 snake. 
 
 :? The Human Sacrifice" relates the es 
 cape of a young white girl from the hands 
 of the Matchit-Moodus, an Indian tribe 
 formerly dwelling where East Haddam now 
 stands. The Indians are frightened from 
 their purpose of sacrificing the girl by a 
 rumbling noise proceeding from a high hill 
 near by. In his note on the story Mr. 
 Whittier says: "There is a story prevalent 
 in the neighborhood, that a man from Eng 
 land, a kind of astrologer or necromancer, 
 undertook to rid the place of the trouble 
 some noises. He told them that the sound 
 proceeded from a carbuncle a precious 
 gem, growing in the boiveh of the rock. 
 He hired an old blacksmith shop, and 
 worked for some time with closed doors, 
 and at night. All at once the necro 
 mancer departed, and the strange noises 
 ceased. It was supposed he had found the 
 precious gem, and had fled with it to his 
 native land." This story of the carbuncle 
 reminds us of Hawthorne s story on the 
 same subject. 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 9 1 
 
 The following remarks are prefixed to 
 the poem, "The Unquiet Sleeper": "Some 
 fifty or sixty years since an inhabitant of 
 , N. H., was found dead at a little dis 
 tance from his dwelling, which he left in 
 the morning in perfect health. There is 
 a story prevalent among the people of the 
 neighborhood that, on the evening of the 
 day on which he was found dead, strange 
 cries are annually heard to issue from his 
 grave! I have conversed with some who 
 really supposed they had heard them in the 
 dead of the night, rising fearfully on the 
 autumn wind. They represented the sounds 
 to be of a most appalling and unearthly 
 
 nature." 
 
 " The Spectre Ship" is the versification 
 of a legend related in Mather s w Magnalia 
 Christi." A ship sailed from Salem, having 
 on board w a young man of strange and wild 
 appearance, and a girl still younger, and of 
 surpassing beauty. She was deadly pale, 
 and trembled even while she leaned on the 
 arm of her companion." They were sup 
 posed by some to be demons. The vessel 
 was lost, and of course soon reappeared as 
 a spectre-ship. 
 
92 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Mr. Whittiers next work was the editing, 
 in 1832, of the "Remains" of his gifted 
 friend, J. G. C. Brainard. Students of Whit- 
 tier s poems know that for many years the 
 genius and writings of Brainard exercised 
 a potent influence on his mind. Brainard 
 undoubtedly possessed genius. He was at 
 one time editor of the Connecticut Mirror. 
 He died young, and his work can be consid 
 ered as hardly more than a promise of future 
 excellence. Whittier, in his Introduction 
 to the " Remains," shows a nice sense of 
 justice, and a delicate reserve in his eulo 
 gistic estimate of his dead brother-poet and 
 friend. That he did not falsely attribute to 
 him a rare genius will be evident to those 
 who read the following portion of Brainard s 
 spirited ballad of "The Black Fox": 
 
 " * How cold, how beautiful, how bright 
 
 The cloudless heaven above us shines ; 
 But tis a howling winter s night, 
 Twould freeze the very forest pines. 
 
 The winds are up while mortals sleep ; 
 
 The stars look forth while eyes are shut; 
 The bolted snow lies drifted deep 
 
 Around our poor and lonely hut. 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 93 
 
 * With silent step and listening ear, 
 
 With bow and arrow, dog and gun, 
 We ll mark his track, for his prowl we hear, 
 Now is our time come on, come on. 
 
 O er many a fence, through many a wood, 
 Following the dog s bewildered scent, 
 
 In anxious haste and earnest mood, 
 The Indian and the white man went. 
 
 The gun is cock d, the bow is bent, 
 
 The dog stands with uplifted paw ; 
 And ball and arrow swift are sent, 
 
 Aim d at the prowler s very jaw. 
 
 The ball, to kill that fox, is run 
 
 Not in a mould by mortals made ! 
 The arrow which that fox should shun 
 
 Was never shap d from earthly reed ! 
 
 The Indian Druids of the wood 
 
 Know where the fatal arrows grow 
 
 They spring not by the summer flood, 
 
 They pierce not through the winter snow ! " 
 
 *Mr. Whittier quotes this fine ballad in Vol. II. p. 243 of 
 his prose works, but with numerous changes of punctuation 
 and phrase. The differences between the poem as it there 
 appears and as it is given in his own edition of Brainard, 
 published in 1832, seem to show that he has amended the 
 ballad and punctuated it to suit himself, or else has quoted 
 it from memory, or at third or fourth remove. It must be 
 admitted that the changes are all improvements, however 
 they were made. The ballad is quoted above, however, as it 
 appears in Brainard s Poems. 
 
94 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Whittier s Introduction to Brainard s 
 poems reveals a mind matured by much 
 reading and thought. We hardly recognize 
 in the author and editor of Hartford the shy 
 girlish boy we so recently left on the farm 
 at Haverhill. There has evidently been a 
 good deal of midnight oil burned since then. 
 
 The following sentiments respecting the 
 resources and the proper field of the Amer 
 ican poet show that thus early had Whittier 
 taken the manly and patriotic resolution to 
 rind in his native land the chief sources of 
 poetic inspiration: "It has been often said 
 that the New World is deficient in the ele 
 ments of poetry and romance; that its bards 
 must of necessity linger over the classic ruins 
 of other lands; and draw their sketches of 
 character from foreign sources, and paint 
 Nature under the soft beauty of an Eastern 
 sky. On the contrary, New England is full 
 of romance; and her writers would do well 
 to follow the example of Brainard. The 
 great forest which our fathers penetrated, 
 the red men, their struggle and their disap 
 pearance, the powwow and the war-dance, 
 the savage inroad and the English sally, the 
 tale of superstition and the scenes of witch- 
 
EDITOR AND AUTHOR. 95 
 
 craft, all these are rich materials of poetry. 
 We have, indeed, no classic vale of Tempe, 
 no haunted Parnassus, no temple gray with 
 years, and hallowed by the gorgeous pagean 
 try of idol worship, no towers and castles 
 over whose moonlight ruins gathers the 
 green pall of the ivy; but we have moun 
 tains pillaring a sky as blue as that which 
 bends over classic Olympus, streams as 
 bright and beautiful as those of Greece and 
 Italy, and forests richer and nobler than 
 those which of old were haunted by sylph 
 and dryad." 
 
 It is easy to see here a foreshadowing of 
 Mogg Megone," ff The Bridal of Penna- 
 cook," the f f Supernaturalism of New Eng 
 land," and a hundred poems and ballads of 
 Whittier s founded on native themes. The 
 sentiments in the quotation just made remind 
 one of Emerson s " Nature," the preface of 
 Whitman to his first portentous quarto, 
 f Leaves of Grass," and- Wordsworth s essay 
 on the nature of the poetic art. But how 
 ever laudable was the Quaker poet s resolve 
 to choose indigenous subjects, it cannot be 
 said that either he or Bryant attained to 
 more than an indigeneity of theme. In 
 
g6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 form and style they are imitative. Emerson 
 and Whitman are our only purely original 
 poets. 
 
 Whittier was editor of the JVew England 
 Weekly Review for about eighteen months, 
 at the end of which time he returned to 
 the farm at Haverhill, and engaged in agri 
 cultural pursuits for the next five or six 
 years. In 1831 or 1832 he published "Moll 
 Pitcher," a tale of the Witch of Nahant. 
 This youthful poem seems to have com 
 pletely disappeared, and Mr. Whittier will 
 no doubt be devoutly thankful that the 
 writer has been unable to procure a copy. 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 97 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 
 
 " God said: Break thou these yokes ; undo 
 
 These heavy burdens. I ordain 
 A tvork to last thy ~vhole life through, 
 A ministry of strife and fain. 
 
 Forego thy dreams of 1 cttered ease, 
 
 Put thou the scholar s promise by, 
 The rights of man are more than these* 
 
 He heard, and answered ; Here am // " 
 
 WHITTIER, Sumner. 
 
 ON New Year s day of 1831 William 
 Lloyd Garrison issued the first number of 
 the Liberator from his little attic room, 
 No. 6 Merchants Hall, Boston. Its clear 
 bugle-notes sounded the onset of reform 
 and the death-knell of slavery. It called 
 for the buckling on of moral armor. Its 
 words were the touchstone of wills, the 
 shibboleth of souls. Cowards and time- 
 servers quickly ranged themselves on one 
 side, and heroes on the other. Before 
 young Whittier, editor, litterateur, and 
 
98 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITT1ER. 
 
 poet, a career full of brilliant promise had 
 opened up at Hartford. But through the 
 high chambers of his soul the voice of duty 
 rang in solemn and imperative tones. He 
 heard and obeyed. The cost was counted, 
 and his resolution taken. Upon his brow 
 he placed the lustrous fire-wreath of the 
 martyr, well assured of his power to endure 
 unflinchingly to the end its sharpest pains. 
 It was the most momentous act of his life; 
 it formed the keystone in the arch of his 
 destinies. 
 
 The first decided anti-slavery step taken 
 by him was the publication of his fiery 
 philippic, "Justice and Expediency." About 
 this time also he began the writing of his 
 stirring anti-slavery poems, many of them 
 full of pathos, fierce invective, cutting irony 
 and satire, stirring the blood like a 
 trumpet-call, giving impulse and enthu 
 siasm to the despised and half-despairing 
 Abolitionists of that day, and becoming a 
 part of the very religion of thousands of 
 households throughout the land. 
 
 It is almost impossible for those who 
 were not participants in the anti-slavery 
 conflict, or who have not read histories 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 99 
 
 and memoirs of the struggle, to realize 
 the deep opprobrium that attached to the 
 word "Abolitionist." To avow one s self 
 such meant in many cases suspicion, os 
 tracism, hunger, blows, and sometimes 
 death. It meant, in short, self-renunciation 
 and social martyrdom. All this Whitti^r 
 gladly took upon himself; and he knew that 
 it was a long struggle upon which he was 
 entering. As he says in one of his poems, 
 
 he was 
 
 " Called from dream and song, 
 Thank God ! so early to a strife so long, 
 That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair 
 Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare 
 On manhood s temples." 
 
 That the martyrdom was a severe one to 
 all who took up the cross goes without say 
 ing. Mr. Whittier remarked to the writer 
 that it was at some sacrifice of his ambi 
 tion and plans for the future that he decided 
 to throw in his lot with the opponents of 
 slavery. He knew that it meant the anni 
 hilation of his hopes of literary preferment, 
 and the exclusion of his articles from the 
 pages of magazines and newspapers. "For 
 twenty years," said he, "my name would 
 
100 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 have injured the circulation of any of the 
 literary or political journals of the country." 
 When Whittier joined the ranks of the 
 despised faction, Garrison had been im 
 prisoned and fined in Baltimore for his 
 arraignment of the slave traffic; Benjamin 
 Lundy had been driven from the same city 
 by threats of imprisonment and personal 
 outrage: Prudence Crandall was waging- 
 
 O 7 o O 
 
 her battle with the Philistinism of Canter 
 bury, Conn.; and the Legislature of Georgia 
 had offered a re ward of five thousand dollars 
 for "the arrest, prosecution, and trial to 
 conviction under the laws of the State, of 
 the editor or publisher of a certain paper 
 called The Liberator, published in the 
 town of Boston, and State of Massachu 
 setts." 
 
 But it is not within the province of this 
 biography to give an exhaustive resum of 
 the anti-slavery conflict, but only to speak 
 of such of its episodes as were especially 
 participated in by Mr. Whittier. How 
 tailor John Woolman became a life-long 
 itinerant preacher of his mild Quaker gospel 
 of freedom; how honest saddler Lundy 
 left his leather hammering, and walked his 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. IOI 
 
 ten thousand miles, carrying his types and 
 column-rules with him, and printing his 
 ."Genius of Universal Emancipation" as he 
 went; in what way and to what extent the 
 labors and writings of Lucretia Mott, 
 Samuel J. May, Lydia Maria Child, George 
 Thompson, James G. Birney, and Gerrit 
 Smith helped on the noble cause, to all 
 these things only allusion can be made. 
 For a full account of those perilous times 
 one must go to the pages of Henry Wilson s 
 "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave 
 Power," and to the fascinating "Recollec 
 tions" of Samuel J. May. Let us now 
 return to Whittier and consider his own 
 writings, labors, and adventures in the ser 
 vice of the cause. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1833 that he pub 
 lished at his own expense "Justice and 
 Expediency; or, Slavery Considered with a 
 view to its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, 
 Abolition." [Haverhill: C. P. Thayer and 
 Co.] It is a polemical paper, full of excla 
 mation points and italicized and capitalized 
 sentences. The hyperbole speaks well for 
 the author s heart, but betrays his juvenility. 
 He shrieks like a temperance lecturer or a 
 
102 JOHN GREENLEAF W HITHER. 
 
 stump politician. The pamphlet, however, 
 shows diligent and systematic study of the 
 entire literature of the subject. Every state 
 ment is fortified by quotation or reference. 
 He enumerates six reasons why the Afri 
 can Colonization Society s schemes were 
 worthy of good men s support, and but 
 tresses up his theses by citations from the 
 official literature of his opponents. A thor 
 ough familiarity with slavery in other lands 
 and times is also manifested. As a speci 
 men of the style of the book the following 
 will serve: 
 
 " But, it may be said that the miserable 
 victims of the System have our sympathies, 
 
 "Sympathy! the sympathy of the Priest 
 and the Levite, looking on, and acknowl 
 edging, but holding itself aloof from mortal 
 suffering. Can such hollow sympathy reach 
 the broken of heart, and does the blessing 
 of those who are ready to perish answer it? 
 Does it hold back the lash from the slave, 
 or sweeten his bitter bread? 
 
 "Oh, my heart is sick my very soul is 
 weary of this sympathy this heartless 
 mockery of feeling. . . . 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 103 
 
 "No let the TRUTH on this subject 
 undisguised, naked, terrible as it is, stand out 
 before us. Let us no longer seek to cover 
 it let us no longer strive to forget it 
 let us no more dare to palliate it." 
 
 In his sketch of Nathaniel P. Rogers, the 
 anti-slavery editor, Whittier remarks inci 
 dentally that the voice of Rogers was one 
 of the few which greeted him with words 
 of encouragement and sympathy at the 
 time of the publication of his "Justice and 
 Expediency." * 
 
 On the fourth day of December, 1833, the 
 Philadelphia Convention for the formation 
 of the American Anti-slavery Society held 
 its first sitting; Beriah Green, President, 
 Lewis Tappan and John G. Whittier, Sec 
 retaries. This assembly, if not so famous 
 as that which framed the Declaration of In 
 dependence in the same city some two gen 
 erations previously, was at any rate as worthy 
 of fame and respect as its illustrious prede- 
 
 *" He gave us a kind word of approval," says Whittier, 
 "and invited us to his mountain home, on the banks of the 
 Pemigewasset, an invitation which, two years afterwards, we 
 accepted." 
 
104 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 cessor. A deep solemnity, and high conse 
 cration filled the heart of every man and 
 woman in that little band. Heart answered 
 unto heart in glowing sympathy. They did 
 their work like men inspired. Perfect una 
 nimity prevailed. They were too eagerly 
 engaged to adjourn for dinner, and "baskets 
 of crackers and pitchers of cold water sup 
 plied all the bodily refreshment." Among 
 those who were present and spoke was 
 Lucretia Mott, " a beautiful and graceful wo 
 man," says Whittier, w in the prime of life, 
 with a face beneath her plain cap as finely 
 intellectual as that of Madame Roland." 
 She " offered some wise and valuable sug 
 gestions, in a clear sweet voice, the charm 
 of which I have never forgotten." 
 
 A committee, of which Whittier was a 
 member, with William Lloyd Garrison as 
 chairman, was appointed to draw up a Dec 
 laration of Principles. Garrison sat up all 
 night, in the small attic of a colored man, 
 to draft this Declaration. The two other 
 members of the committee, calling in the 
 gray dawn of a December day, found him 
 putting the last touches to this famous 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 1 05 
 
 paper, while his lamp burned on unheeded 
 into the daylight. His draft was accepted 
 almost without amendment by the Conven 
 tion, and, after it had been engrossed on 
 parchment, was signed by the sixty-two 
 members present.* 
 
 In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 
 1874, Mr. Whittier has given an interesting 
 account of the Convention. Some of his 
 pictures are so graphic that they shall here 
 be given in his own words: 
 
 w In the gray twilight of a chill day of 
 late November, forty years ago, a dear 
 friend of mine residing in Boston, made his 
 appearance at the old farm-house in East 
 Haverhill. He had been deputed by the 
 Abolitionists of the city, William L. Garri 
 son, Samuel E. Sewall, and others, to in 
 form me of my appointment as a delegate to 
 the Convention about to be held in Phila 
 delphia for the formation of an American 
 Anti-slavery Society; and to urge upon me 
 the necessity of my attendance. 
 
 * Twenty-one of these persons were Quakers, as Mr. Whit- 
 tier and the writer proved by actual count of the names on 
 Mr. Whittier s fac-simile copy of the Declaration. 
 
IO6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 w Few words of persuasion, however, were 
 needed. I was unused to travelling; my 
 life had been spent on a secluded farm; and 
 the journey, mostly by stage-coach, at that 
 time was really a formidable one. More 
 over the few abolitionists were everywhere 
 spoken against, their persons threatened, 
 and, in some instances, a price set on their 
 heads by Southern legislators. Pennsylva 
 nia was on the borders of slavery, and it 
 needed small effort of imagination to pict 
 ure to oneself the breaking up of the Con 
 vention and maltreatment of its members. 
 This latter consideration I do not think 
 weighed much with me, although I was 
 better prepared for serious danger than for 
 anything like personal indignity. I had 
 read Governor TrumbulPs description of 
 the tarring and feathering of his hero Mac- 
 Fingal, when after the application of the 
 melted tar, the feather-bed was ripped open 
 and shaken over him, until 
 
 Not Maia s son with wings for ears, 
 Such plumes about his visage wears, 
 Nor Milton s six-winged angel gathers 
 Such superfluity of feathers, 
 
 and I confess I was quite unwilling to un- 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 107 
 
 clergo a martyrdom which my best friends 
 could scarcely refrain from laughing at. 
 But a summons like that of Garrison s 
 bugle-blast could scarcely be unheeded by 
 one who, from birth and education, held 
 fast the traditions of that earlier abolition 
 ism which, under the lead of Benezet and 
 Wool man, had effaced from the Society of 
 Friends every vestige of slaveholding. I 
 had thrown myself, w r ith a young man s 
 fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which 
 commended itself to my reason and con 
 science, to my love of country, and my sense 
 of duty to God and my fellow-men. My 
 first venture in authorship was the publica 
 tion, at my own expense, in the spring of 
 1833, of a pamphlet entitled Justice and 
 Expediency, * on the moral and political 
 evils of slavery, and the duty of emancipa 
 tion. Under such circumstances, I could 
 not hesitate, but prepared at once for my 
 journey. It was necessary that I should 
 start on the morrow, and the intervening 
 
 * Mr. Whittier here made a slip of memory. His first work 
 was "Legends of New England," as he himself testifies, in 
 his own handwriting, in a memorandum sent to the New 
 England Historic-Genealogical Society. 
 
108 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 time, with a small allowance for sleep, was 
 spent in providing for the care of the farm 
 and homestead during my absence." 
 
 Mr. Whittier proceeds to tell of his jour 
 ney to the Quaker City, and of the organiza 
 tion and work of the Convention. The fol 
 lowing pen-portraits are too valuable to be 
 omitted: 
 
 r? Looking over the assembly, I noticed 
 that it was mainly composed of compara 
 tively young men, some in middle age, 
 and a few beyond that period. They were 
 nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to 
 comfort rather than elegance. Many of the 
 faces turned toward me wore a look of ex 
 pectancy and suppressed enthusiasm all 
 had the earnestness which might be ex 
 pected of men engaged in an enterprise 
 beset with difficulty, and perhaps with peril. 
 The fine intellectual head of Garrison, pre 
 maturely bald, was conspicuous; the sunny- 
 faced young man at his side, in whom all 
 the beatitudes seemed to find expression, 
 was Samuel J. May, mingling in his veins 
 the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys; 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 1 09 
 
 a man so exceptionally pure and large- 
 hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that 
 he could be faithful to truth and duty with 
 out making an enemy. 
 
 The de il wad look into his face, 
 And swear he could na wrang him. 
 
 That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle- 
 faced, upon whose somewhat martial figure 
 the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, 
 was Lindley Coates, known in all Eastern 
 Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery; 
 that slight, eager man, intensely alive in 
 every feature and gesture, was Thomas 
 Shipley, who for thirty years had been the 
 protector of the free colored people of Phil 
 adelphia, and whose name was whispered 
 reverently in the slave cabins of Maryland 
 as the friend of the black man, one of a 
 class peculiar to old Quakerism, who, in do 
 ing what they felt to be duty, and walking 
 as the Light within guided them, knew no 
 fear and shrank from no sacrifice. Braver 
 men the world has not known. Beside him, 
 differing in creed but united with him in 
 works of love and charity, sat Thomas 
 Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, 
 
iro JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 fresh from his farm in Lancaster County, 
 dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form 
 surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, 
 the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting 
 strongly with the clearness and directness 
 of his spiritual insight. Elizur Wright, the 
 young professor of a Western college, who 
 had lost his place by his bold advocacy of 
 freedom, with a look of sharp concentration, 
 in keeping with an intellect keen as a Da 
 mascus blade, closely watched the proceed 
 ings through his spectacles, opening his 
 mouth only to speak directly to the purpose. 
 . In front of me, awakening pleas 
 ant associations of the old homestead in 
 Merrimack valley, sat my first school 
 teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and 
 worthy antiquarian and historian of New- 
 bury. A few spectators, mostly of the 
 Hicksite division of Friends, were present 
 in broad-brims and plain bonnets, among 
 them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott." 
 
 The year 1834 was passed by Whittier 
 quietly on the farm at East Haverhill. In 
 April of this year the first anti-slavery soci 
 ety was organized in Haverhill^ with John 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. TIT 
 
 G. Whittier as corresponding secretary. 
 Not long after a female anti-slavery society 
 was organized in the same town. The pro- 
 slavery feeling in Haverhill was as bitter as 
 in other places. 
 
 One Sabbath afternoon in August, 1835, 
 the Rev. Samuel J. May occupied the pulpit 
 of the First Parish Society in Haverhill, 
 and in the evening attempted to give an 
 anti-slavery lecture in the Christian Union 
 Chapel, having been invited to do so by Mr. 
 Whittier. In his "Recollections of the 
 Anti-Slavery Conflict" (p. 152), Mr. May 
 says : 
 
 " I had spoken about fifteen minutes when 
 the most hideous outcries and yells, from a 
 crowd of men who had surrounded the 
 house, startled us, and then came heavy 
 missiles against the doors and blinds of the 
 windows. I persisted in speaking for a few 
 minutes, hoping the blinds and doors were 
 strong enough to stand the siege. But pres 
 ently a heavy stone broke through one of 
 the blinds, shattered a pane of glass, and fell 
 upon the head of a lady sitting near the cen 
 tre of the hall. She uttered a shriek, and 
 fell bleeding into the arms of her sister. 
 
1 1-2 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 The panic-stricken audience rose en masse. 
 and began a rush for the doors." 
 
 Mr. May succeeded in quieting the fears 
 of the audience, and himself escaped through 
 the crowd of infuriated ruffians without by 
 walking between two ladies, one of them 
 the sister of Mr. Whittier and the other the 
 daughter of a wealthy and determined citi 
 zen of the place, who, it was well known, 
 would take summary vengeance for any 
 disrespect shown to his daughter. It was 
 well that the audience dispersed when it 
 did, since a loaded cannon was being drawn 
 to the spot by the furious mob. 
 
 This year, 1835, was a year of mobs. On 
 the very same evening that Mr. May was 
 mobbed in Haverhill, Mr. Whittier and his 
 English friend, the orator George Thomp 
 son, were treated in a similar manner in 
 Concord, N. H. Whether an account of 
 the Concord mob has been elsewhere pub 
 lished or not the author cannot say, but the 
 story given here is as he had it from the lips 
 of Mr. Whittier himself. 
 
 "Oh! we had a dreadful night of it," he 
 said. The inhabitants had heard that an 
 Abolition meeting was to be held in the 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 113 
 
 town, and that the arch anarchist, George 
 Thompson, was to speak. So on that Sab 
 bath evening they were on the alert, an angry 
 mob some five hundred strong. Mr. Whit- 
 tier, knowing nothing of their state of mind, 
 started down the street with a friend: the 
 mob surrounded them, thinking that he was 
 Thompson. His friend explained to them 
 that he was Mr. Whittier. "Oh!" they 
 exclaimed, ff so you are the one who is with 
 Thompson, are you?" and forthwith they 
 began to assail the two men with sticks and 
 stones. Mr. Whittier said that both he and 
 his friend were hurt, but escaped with their 
 lives by taking refuge in the house of a 
 friend named Kent, who was not an Aboli 
 tionist himself, but was a man of honor and 
 bravery. He barred his door, and told the 
 mob that they should have Whittier only 
 over his dead body. 
 
 In the course of the evening Mr. Whittier 
 learned that the house in which Thompson 
 was staying was surrounded by the mob. 
 Becoming anxious, he borrowed a hat, sal 
 lied out among the crowd, and succeeded 
 in reaching his friend. The noise and vio 
 lence of the mob increased; a cannon was 
 
114 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 brought, and at one time the little band in 
 the house feared they might suffer violence. 
 ? We did not much fear death," said Mr. 
 Whittier, " but we did dread gross personal 
 indignities." 
 
 It was fortunately a bright moonlight 
 night, suitable for travelling, and about one 
 o clock the two friends escaped by driving 
 off rapidly in their horse and buggy. They 
 did not know the road to Haverhill, but 
 were directed by their friends with all pos 
 sible minuteness. Three miles away, also, 
 there was the house of an anti-slavery man, 
 and they obtained further directions there. 
 Some time after sunrise they stopped at a 
 wayside inn to bait their horse, and get a 
 bite of breakfast for themselves. While 
 they were at table the landlord said, r 
 
 They ve been having a h 1 of a time 
 down at Haverhill." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 rp Oh, one of them d d Abolitionists was 
 lecturin there; he had been invited to the 
 town by a young fellow named Whittier; 
 but they made it pretty hot for him, and I 
 guess neither he nor Whittier will be in a 
 hurry to repeat the thing." 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 1 15 
 
 What kind of a fellow is this Whittier ? " 
 
 ff Oh, he s an ignorant sort of fellow; he 
 don t know much." 
 
 " And who is this Thompson they re talk 
 ing about? " 
 
 "Why, he s a man sent over here by the 
 British to make trouble in our government. 1 
 
 As the two friends were stepping into the 
 buggy, Mr. Whittier, with one foot on the 
 step, turned and said to the host, who was 
 standing by with several tavern loafers: 
 
 :f You ve been talking about Thompson 
 and Whittier. This is Mr. Thompson, and 
 I am Whittier. Good morning/ 
 
 f? And jumping into the buggy," said 
 the poet, with a twinkle in hi.s eye 9 " we 
 whipped up, and stood not on the order of 
 our going." As for the host he stood with 
 open mouth, being absolutely tongue-tied 
 with astonishment. ^ And for all I know," 
 said the narrator, rf he s standing there still 
 with his mouth open." 
 
 Mr. Thompson was secreted at the Whit 
 tier farm-house in Haverhill for two weeks 
 after this affair. 
 
 Some two months after the disgraceful 
 
Il6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 scenes just described occurred the mobbing 
 of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston. He 
 had gone in the evening to deliver a lecture 
 before the Female Anti-Slavery Society. 
 A furious mob of ff gentlemen of property 
 and standing ?? surrounded the building. 
 Mr. Garrison took refuge in a carpenter s 
 shop in the rear of the hall, but was vio 
 lently seized, let down from a window by a 
 rope, and dragged by the mob to the City 
 Hall. Mr. Whittier was staying at the 
 house of Rev. Samuel J. May. His sister 
 had gone to the lecture, and Mr. Whittier, 
 on hearing of the disturbance, had fears for 
 her safety, and went out to seek her. He 
 said to the writer that when he reached the 
 City Hall he saw before him the best 
 dressed mob imaginable. Presently he 
 heard a cry, ?r They ve got him!" After a 
 short, sharp scuffle Garrison was got into a 
 carriage by the police, and taken to the 
 Leverett Street jail, as the only place where 
 he could be safe that night in Boston. Mr. 
 Whittier and Mr. May immediately went 
 down to the jail to see him. Garrison said 
 that he could not say, with Paul, that he was 
 dwelling in his own hired house, and so he 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 
 
 could not ask them to stay all night with 
 him! His coat was not entirely gone, but 
 was pretty badly torn. He was at first a 
 good deal agitated by the affair, but when 
 they left him he had become calm and as 
 sured. On the same evening, the mob 
 threatened to make an attack upon Mr. 
 May s house. Mr. Whittier got his sister 
 Elizabeth safely bestowed for the night in 
 the dwelling of another friend. He and 
 
 o 
 
 Mr. May passed a sleepless night, and at 
 one time half thought that, for safety s sake, 
 the} 7 should have stayed in the jail with Gar 
 rison. However, they were not molested. 
 
 It is a remarkable testimony to the esteem 
 in which Mr. Whittier must have been held 
 by the citizens of Haverhill that, notwith 
 standing their bitter hatred of Abolitionism, 
 they elected him their representative to the 
 State Legislature in 1835, and again in 1836. 
 In 1837 he declined re-election. In the 
 legislative documents for 1835 ne figures as 
 a member of the standing committee on 
 engrossed bills. His name does not appear 
 in the State records for 1836: it was un 
 doubtedly owing to his secretarial duties, 
 mentioned below, that he was unable to 
 
118 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 take his seat as a member of the Legislature 
 in the second year of his election. 
 
 In 1836 Whittier published " Mogg Me- 
 gone," a poem on an episode in Indian life. 
 It will be reviewed, with the rest of his 
 poems, in the second part of this volume. 
 In the same year he was appointed Secre 
 tary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 
 and removed to Philadelphia. In 1838- 
 39, while in that city, he edited a paper 
 which he named the Pennsylvania Free 
 man. It had formerly been edited by 
 Benjamin Lundy, under the title of the Na 
 tional Enquirer. The office of the Penn 
 sylvania Freeman was in 1838 sacked and 
 burned by a mob. It was about the same 
 time that Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia 
 was burned to the ground by the citizens, 
 on the very day after its dedication. Mr. 
 Whittier had read an original poem on that 
 occasion. The hall had been built at con 
 siderable sacrifice by the lovers of freedom, 
 in order that one place at least might be 
 open for free discussion. And it was just 
 in order that it might not be used thus that 
 it was burned by the guilty-thoughted mob. 
 The keys had been given to the mayor, but 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 1 1 9 
 
 neither he nor the police interfered to pre 
 vent the atrocious deed. 
 
 In 1837 Mr. Whittier edited, and wrote 
 a preface for, the " Letters of John Quincy 
 Adams to his Constituents." These stirring 
 letters of Mr. Adams were called forth by 
 the attacks that had been made on him by 
 members of Congress for defending the right 
 of negroes to petition the Government. Mr. 
 Whittier, in his introductory remarks, speaks 
 of the " Letters " as follows : 
 
 J? Their sarcasm is Junius-like, cold, 
 keen, unsparing. In boldness, directness, 
 and eloquent appeal, they will bear compari 
 son with O Connell s celebrated letters to 
 the Reformers of Great Britain. ... It 
 will be seen that, in the great struggle for 
 and against the Right of Petition, an account 
 of which is given in the following pages, 
 their author stood in a great measure alone, 
 and unsupported by his northern colleagues. 
 On his gray, discrowned head the en 
 tire fury of slaveholding arrogance and 
 wrath was expended. He stood alone, 
 beating back, with his aged and single arm, 
 the tide which would have borne down and 
 
120 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 overwhelmed a less sturdy and determined 
 spirit." 
 
 In the same year (1837) Mr. Whittier 
 edited a pamphlet called "Views of Slavery 
 and Emancipation," taken from Harriet 
 Martineau s "Society in America." The 
 whole subject of slavery is canvassed by 
 Miss Martineau in the most searching and 
 judicial manner. 
 
 In closing this account of our author s 
 anti-slavery labors, we may bestow a word 
 on the attitude assumed toward the Aboli 
 tion movement by the Quakers as a sect. 
 Through the labors of John Woolman, Ben 
 jamin Lundy, Anthony Benezet, and others, 
 they had early been brought to see the 
 wickedness of slaveholding, and in 1784 had 
 succeeded in entirely ridding their denomi 
 nation of the wrong. They not only eman 
 cipated their slaves, but remunerated them 
 for their past services. Indeed, their record 
 in this respect is unique for its fine ideal 
 devotion to exact justice. They were the 
 first religious body in the world to remove 
 the pollution of slavery from their midst. 
 But the cautious, acquisitive, peace-loving 
 
WHITTIER THE REFORMER. 121 
 
 Quakers seemed content to rest here, satis- 
 fled with having cleared their own skirts 
 of wrong. They could not see the good 
 side of the Abolition movement. Tny 
 were scandalized by the violence and fanati 
 cism of many Abolitionists. Mr. Whittier 
 felt aggrieved by this attitude of the Friends, 
 but did not on that account break with the 
 denomination, or abandon the religion of his 
 fathers. In 1868 he wrote as follows to the 
 New Bedford Standard, which had spoken 
 of him in an article on Thomas A. Greene: 
 "My object in referring to the article in the 
 paper was mainly to correct a statement re 
 garding myself, viz.: That in consequence 
 of the opposition of the Society of Friends 
 to the anti-slavery movement, I did not for 
 years attend their meetings. This is not 
 true. From my youth up, whenever my 
 health permitted, I have been a constant at 
 tendant of our meetings for religious worship. 
 This is true, however, that after our meeting 
 houses were denied by the yearly meeting 
 for anti-slavery purposes, I did not feel it in 
 my way, for some years, to attend the annual 
 meeting at Newport. From a feeling of 
 duty I protested against that decision when 
 
122 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 it was made, but was given to understand 
 pretty distinctly that there was no f weight 
 in my words. It was a hard day for reform 
 ers; some stifled their convictions; others, 
 not adding patience to their faith, allowed 
 themselves to be worried out of the Society. 
 Abolitionists holding office were very gener 
 ally f dropped out/ and the ark of the church 
 staggered on with no profane anti-slavery 
 hands upon it." 
 
AMESBURY. 123 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AMESBURY. 
 
 AFTER the sacking and burning of the 
 office of the Pennsylvania Freeman, Whit- 
 tier returned to Haverhill, and soon after 
 (in 1840) he sold the old farm and removed 
 with his mother to Amesbury, a small town 
 some nine miles nearer the sea than Haver- 
 hill. It is a rural town of over three thou 
 sand inhabitants, and contains nothing of 
 note except the poet Whittier. The busi 
 ness of the place is the manufacture of wool 
 len and cotton goods, and of carriages. The 
 landscape is rugged and picturesque. The 
 town covers a sloping hillside that stretches 
 down to the Merrimack. Across this river 
 rises a high hill, crowned with orchards and 
 meadows. In summer time a sweet and 
 quiet air reigns in the place. There are 
 old vine-covered houses, grassy lawns, cool 
 crofts, and sunken orchards; bees are hum- 
 
124 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 ming, birds singing, and here and there 
 through the trees slender columns of blue 
 wood-smoke float upward in airy evanes 
 cence. Mr. Whittier s residence is on Friend 
 Street, and not far beyond, on the same 
 street, or rather in the delta formed by the 
 meeting of two streets, stands the Friends 
 Meeting-House, where the poet has been an 
 attendant nearly all his life: 
 
 " For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 
 And holy day, and solemn psalm ; 
 For me, the silent reverence where 
 My brethren gather, slow and calm." 
 
 This old meeting-house is alluded to by 
 the poet in "Abram Morrison," a fine humor 
 ous poem published in "The King s Mis 
 sive" (1881). We there read how 
 
 " On calm and fair First Days 
 Rattled down our one-horse chaise 
 Through the blossomed apple-boughs 
 To the old, brown meeting-house." 
 
 Whittier s house is a plain, white-painted 
 structure, standing at the corner of two 
 streets, and having in front of it numerous 
 forest trees, chiefly maple. Since 1876 the 
 

 THE WHITTIER HOUSE, AMESBURY. MASS. 
 
OF TH 
 
 UNIVER 
 
AMESBURY. 
 
 poet has passed only a part of each year at 
 Amesbury, his other home being Oak Knoll 
 in Danvers, where he resides with distant 
 relatives. 
 
 The study at Amesbury of course pos 
 sesses great interest for us as the place 
 where most of the poet s finest lyrics have 
 been written. It is a very cosey little study, 
 and is entered by one door from within and 
 another from without. The upper half of the 
 outer door is of glass. This door is at the end 
 of the left-hand porch shown in the view on 
 page 125. The two windows in the study 
 look out upon a long strip of yard in the 
 rear of the house, very pretty and quiet, 
 and filled with pear-trees and other trees and 
 vines. Upon one side of the room are 
 shelves holding five or six hundred well- 
 used volumes. Among them are to be no 
 ticed Charles Reade s novels and the poems 
 of Robert Browning. A side-shelf is com 
 pletely filled with a small blue and gold 
 edition of the poets. On the walls hang 
 oil paintings of views on the Merrimack 
 River and other Essex County scenes, in 
 cluding Mr. Whittier s birthplace. In one 
 
128 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 corner is a handsome writing-desk, littered 
 with papers and letters. Upon the hearth 
 of the Franklin stove, high andirons smile a 
 fireside welcome from their burnished brass 
 knobs. Indeed, everything in the room is 
 as neat and cosey as the wax cell of a honey 
 bee. And over all is shed the genial glow 
 of the gentlest, tenderest nature in all the 
 land. 
 
 In the autumn of 1844 was written "The 
 Stranger in Lowell," a series of light 
 sketches suggested by personal experiences. 
 The style of these essays reminds one of 
 that of fr Twice Told Tales," but it is not 
 so pure. The language is too florid and 
 extravagant, and the thought is developed 
 too rhetorically. The essays betray the 
 limitations attending the life of a recluse. 
 There is too much display of reading, and 
 one feels pretty sure that the author had 
 recently been " Carlyle-bitten." 
 
 In 1847 James G. Birney s anti-slavery 
 paper, The Philanthropist, published in 
 Cincinnati, was merged with the National 
 Era, of Washington, D. C., with Dr. Gam- 
 
AMESBURY. 131 
 
 aliel Bailey as managing editor, and John 
 G. Whittier as associate or corresponding 
 editor. Dr. Bailey had previously helped 
 edit The Philanthropist. Both papers were 
 treated to mobocratic attacks. The Era be 
 came an important organ of the Abolition 
 party in Washington. To it Mr. Whittier 
 contributed his "Old Portraits and Modern 
 Sketches " as well as other reform papers. 
 
 In the same year (1847) our author pub 
 lished his "Supernaturalism of New Eng 
 land." [New York and London; Wiley 
 and Putnam.] This pleasant little volume 
 shows a marked advance upon Whittier s 
 previous prose work. In its nine chapters 
 he has preserved a number of oral legends 
 and interesting superstitions of the farmer- 
 folk of the Merrimack region. Parts of the 
 work have been quoted elsewhere in this 
 volume. One of the chapters closes with 
 the following fine passage: 
 
 "The witches of Father Baxter and f the 
 Black Man of Cotton Mather have van 
 ished; belief in them is no longer possible 
 on the part of sane men. But this mysterious 
 
132 JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTIER. 
 
 universe, through which, half veiled in its 
 own shadow, our dim little planet is wheel 
 ing, with its star-worlds and thought-weary 
 ing spaces, remains. Nature s mighty mir 
 acle is still over and around us; and hence 
 awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be 
 the inheritance of humanity: still are there 
 beautiful repentances and holy death-beds, 
 and still over the soul s darkness and confu 
 sion rises star-like the great idea of duty. 
 By higher and better influences than the 
 poor spectres of superstition man must 
 henceforth be taught to reverence the Invis 
 ible, and, in the consciousness of his own 
 weakness and sin and sorrow, to lean with 
 childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy of 
 an overruling Providence." 
 
 In 1849 M F - Whittier collected and pub 
 lished his anti-slavery poems, under the title 
 f? Voices of Freedom." The year 1850 
 marks a new era in his poetical career. 
 He published at that time his ff Songs of 
 Labor," a volume which showed that his 
 mind had become calmed by time, and was 
 now capable of interesting itself in other 
 than reform subjects. 
 
AMESBURY. 133 
 
 There is not much of outward incident 
 and circumstance to record of the quiet 
 poetical years passed since 1840 at Ames- 
 bury and Danvers. Almost every year or 
 two a new volume of poems has been 
 issued, each one establishing on a firmer 
 foundation the Quaker Poet s reputation as 
 a creator of sweet and melodious lyrical 
 poetry. 
 
 In 1868 an institution called "Whittier 
 College " was opened at Salem, Henry 
 County, Iowa. It was founded in honor 
 of the poet, and is conducted in acord- 
 ance with the principles of the Society of^ 
 Friends. 
 
 In 1871 Whittier edited "Child-Life: A 
 Collection of Poems," by various home 
 and foreign authors. In the same year he 
 edited, with a long introduction, the "Journal 
 of John Woolman." 
 
 The name John Woolman is not widely 
 know r n to persons of the present generation; 
 and yet, as Whittier says, it was this humble 
 Quaker reformer of New Jersey who did 
 more than any one else to inspire all the 
 great modern movements for the emancipa 
 tion of slaves, first in the West Indies, then 
 
134 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 in the United States, and in Russia. Warner 
 Mifflin, Jean Pierre Brissot, Thomas Clark- 
 son, Stephen Grellet, William Allen, and 
 Benjamin Lundy, all these philanthropists 
 owed much of their impulse to labor for 
 the freedom of the slave to humble John 
 Woolman. His journal or autobiography 
 was highly praised by Charles Lamb, Ed 
 ward Irving, Crabb Robinson, and others. 
 t? The style is that of a man unlettered, but 
 with natural refinement and delicate sense 
 of fitness, the purity of whose heart enters 
 into his language." 
 
 Woolman \vas born in Northampton, 
 West Jersey, in 1720. One day, in the 
 year 1842, while clerk in a store in the vil 
 lage of Mount Holly, township of Northamp 
 ton, N. J., he was asked by his employer 
 to make out the bill of sale of a negro. He 
 drew up the instrument, but his conscience 
 was awakened, and some years after he 
 began his life-work as a pedestrian anti- 
 slavery preacher. He refused to ride in, or 
 have letters sent him by, the stage-coaches, 
 because of the cruelty exercised toward 
 the horses by the drivers. Neither would 
 he accept hospitality from those who kept 
 
AMESBURY. 135 
 
 slaves, always paying either the owners or 
 the slaves for his entertainment. Woolman 
 was most gentle and kind- in his appeals to 
 slave-owners, and rarely met with any vio 
 lent remonstrance. Much of his work was 
 within the limits of his own sect, and Mr. 
 Whittier s introduction gives a valuable and 
 succinct historical resume of the steps 
 taken by the Friends to rid their sect of the 
 stigma of slaveholding. 
 
 Mount Holly, in Woolman s day, says 
 Whittier, "was almost entirely a settle 
 ment of Friends. A very few of the 
 old houses with their quaint stoops or 
 porches are left. That occupied by John 
 Woolman was a small, plain, two-story 
 structure, with two windows in each story 
 in front, a four-barred fence enclosing the 
 grounds, with the trees he planted and 
 loved to cultivate. The house was not 
 painted, but whitewashed. The name of 
 the place is derived from the highest hill in 
 the county, rising two hundred feet above 
 the sea, and commanding a view of a rich 
 and level country of cleared farms and 
 woodlands." 
 
136 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Very amusing is the picture given by Mr. 
 Whittier of the eccentric Benjamin Lay, 
 once a member of the Society of Friends in 
 England, and afterward an inhabitant for 
 some time of the West Indies, whence he 
 was driven away on account of the violence 
 and extravagance of his denunciations of 
 slavery. He was a contemporary of Wool- 
 man. He lived in a cave near Philadelphia, 
 as a sort of Jonah or Elijah, prophesying 
 woe against the city on account of its par 
 ticipation in the crime of slavery. He wore 
 clothes made of vegetable fibre, and ate only 
 vegetable food. "Issuing from his cave, on 
 his mission of preaching deliverance to the 
 captive, he was in the habit of visiting the 
 various meetings for worship and bearing 
 his testimony against slaveholders, greatly 
 to their disgust and indignation. On one 
 occasion he entered the Market Street 
 Meeting, and a leading Friend requested 
 some one to take him out. A burly black 
 smith volunteered to do it, leading him to 
 the gate and thrusting him out with such 
 force that he fell into the gutter of the 
 street. There he lay until the meeting 
 closed, telling the bystanders that he did 
 
AMESBURY. 137 
 
 not feel free to rise himself. f Let those 
 who cast me here raise me up. It is their 
 business, not mine. 
 
 "His personal appearance was in remark 
 able keeping with his eccentric life. A 
 figure only four and a half feet high, hunch 
 backed, with projecting chest, legs small 
 and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a 
 huge head, showing only beneath the enor 
 mous whke hat large, solemn eyes and a 
 promfnent nose; the rest of his face covered 
 with a snowy semicircle of beard falling 
 low on his breast, a figure to recall the 
 old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. 
 Such was the irrepressible prophet who 
 troubled the Israel of slaveholding Qua 
 kerism, clinging like a rough chestnut-burr 
 to the skirts of its respectability, and set 
 tling like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore 
 places of its conscience. 
 
 "On one occasion, while the annual meet 
 ing was in session at Burlington, N. J., in 
 the midst of the solemn silence of the great 
 assembly, the unwelcome figure of Benja 
 min Lay, wrapped in his long white over 
 coat, was seen passing up the aisle. Stop 
 ping miclway, he exclaimed, You slave- 
 
138 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 holders! Why don t you throw off your 
 Quaker coats as I do mine, and show your 
 selves as you are? Casting off as he 
 spoke his outer garment, he disclosed to the 
 astonished assembly a military coat under 
 neath, and a sword dangling at his heels. 
 Holding in one hand a large book, he drew 
 his sword with the other. ? In the sight of 
 God, he cried, you are as guilty as if 
 you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as I 
 do this book! suiting the action to the 
 word, and piercing a small bladder filled 
 with the juice of poke-weed (phytolacca 
 decandrd)) which he had concealed be 
 tween the covers, and sprinkling as with 
 fresh blood those who sat near him." 
 
 There is something overwhelmingly ludi 
 crous about this bladder of poke-weed juice! 
 And what a subject for a painter! the 
 portentous, white-bearded dwarf standing 
 there in the midst of the church, in act 
 to plunge his gigantic sword tragically 
 into the innermost bowels of the crimson 
 poke-juice bladder, and from all parts of 
 the house the converging looks of the broad- 
 brimmed and shovel-bonneted Quakers! 
 
 Mr. Whittier further says that rr Lay was 
 
AMESBURY. 139 
 
 well acquainted with Dr, Franklin, who 
 sometimes visited him. Among other 
 schemes of reform he entertained the idea of 
 converting all mankind to Christianity. This 
 was to be done by three witnesses, him 
 self, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, 
 assisted by Dr. Franklin. But, on their 
 first meeting at the doctor s house, the 
 three f chosen vessels got into a violent 
 controversy on points of doctrine, and sepa 
 rated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who 
 had been an amused listener, advised the 
 three sages to give up the project of con 
 verting the world until they had learned to 
 tolerate each other." 
 
 In 1873 Mr. Whittier edited "Child-Life 
 in Prose." It is a collection of pretty stories, 
 chiefly about the childhood of various emi 
 nent persons. One of the stories is by the 
 editor, and is about "A Fish that I Didn t 
 Catch." 
 
 In 1875 appeared "Songs of Three Cen 
 turies." The poet s design in this work 
 was (to use his own words) "to gather up 
 in a comparatively small volume, easily ac 
 cessible to all classes of readers, the wisest 
 
140 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 thoughts, rarest fancies, and devoutest 
 hymns of the metrical authors of the last 
 three centuries." He says, " The selec 
 tions I have made indicate, in a general 
 way, my preferences." It is a choice col 
 lection, rich in lyrical masterpieces. 
 
LATER DAYS. 141 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LATER DAYS. 
 
 ABOUT a mile westward from the village 
 
 O 
 
 of Danvcrs, Mass., a grassy road, named 
 Summer Street, branches or! to the right 
 and north. It is a pleasant, winding road, 
 bordered by picturesque old stone fences 
 and lined with barberry and raspberry 
 bushes and gnarled old apple-trees. On 
 either side are cultivated fields. Oak 
 Knoll, the winter residence of Whittier, is 
 the second house on the left, some half a 
 mile up the road. Here, in the home of 
 relatives, the poet has lived since 1876. A 
 lovelier and more poetical place it would be 
 difficult to imagine. The extensive, care 
 fully kept grounds, and the antique ele 
 gance of the house, give to the estate the 
 air of an old English manor, or gentleman s 
 country hall. The house is approached by 
 a long, upward-sweeping lawn, diversified 
 
142 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 with stately forest trees, clumps of ever 
 greens, and shrubs and flowers. Down 
 across the road stands a large and hand 
 some barn, which is as neat as paint and 
 care can make it. In front of the house 
 the eye ranges downward over an extensive 
 landscape, as far as to the town of Pea- 
 body, in the direction of Salem. Indeed, 
 on every side of the estate there are broad 
 and distant views of the blue hills of Essex 
 and Middlesex. 
 
 In the summer, as you ascend the car 
 riage-road that winds through the grounds, 
 your ear may catch the click of the horse- 
 drawn lawn-mower, while you arc inhaling 
 in delicate sniffs the fresh fragrance of the 
 new-mown grass. Yonder is a tall living- 
 
 c5 O 
 
 wall of verdure, with an archway cut 
 through it. To the left the grounds sweep 
 gently down to a deep ravine, where a little 
 rivulet, named Beaver Brook, creeps leis 
 urely out, and winds seaward through 
 green and marish meadows. It is in this 
 portion of the grounds that the fine oak- 
 trees grow which give to the place its name. 
 Here, too, i$ a large grove of pines, with 
 numerous seats within it. There are trees 
 
OF THE ., 
 
 VERSVT* 
 
 DF 
 
 CALiFOK* N > 
 
LATER DAYS. 145 
 
 and trees at Oak Knoll, smooth and 
 shapely hickories, glistering chestnuts with 
 cool foliage, maples, birches, and the purple 
 beech. Add to the picture the rural acces 
 sories of bee-haunted clover-fields, apple 
 and pear orchards, and beds of tempting 
 strawberries. The house is of wood, sal 
 mon-colored, with tall porches on each side 
 up-propped by stately Doric columns. In 
 front a luxuriant vine clusters about the 
 eaves. On the front porch a mocking-bird 
 and a canary-bird fill the green silence with 
 gushes of melody, and near at hand, in his 
 study in the wing of the building, sits one 
 with a singing pen and listens to their song. 
 To their song and to the murmur of the 
 tall pines by his window he listens, then 
 looks into his heart and writes, this sweet- 
 souled magician, and craftily imprisons 
 between the covers of his books echoes 
 of bird and tree music, bits of blue sky, 
 glimpses of green landscape, winding 
 rivers, and idyls of the snow, all suffused 
 and interfused with a glowing atmosphere 
 of human and divine love. 
 
 One would think that even to so enthu 
 siastic a lover of nature as Whittier the sol- 
 
146 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 itude of Oak Knoll would prove irksome. 
 Neighbors are, indeed, few and far between. 
 But it will not perhaps be intruding upon 
 the privacies of home to hint that the mem 
 bers of the cultured household at Oak Knoll 
 find in their own happy circle abundant 
 compensation for the lack of general so 
 ciety. Three sisters dispense the hospital 
 ities of the house, and a little miss of some 
 fourteen years adds the charm of childhood 
 to the family life. 
 
 Readers of Whittier, who know how 
 deeply his writings are tinged with the 
 scenery, legendary lore, and folk-life of his 
 native Merrimack Valley, will not wonder 
 that a certain Heimweh, or home-sickness, 
 draws him northward, when 
 
 " Flows amain 
 The surge ot summer s beauty," 
 
 and 
 
 " Pours the deluge of the heat 
 Broad northward o er the land." 
 
 It is but one hour s ride by cars from 
 Danvers to Amesbury; and part of the time 
 in the latter place, and part of the time at 
 
LATER DAYS. 147 
 
 the Isles of Shoals, and in the beautiful 
 lake and mountain region of New Hamp 
 shire, Mr. Whittier passes the warm sea 
 son. For many years it was his custom to 
 spend a portion of each summer at the Bear- 
 camp River House, in West Ossipee, N. H., 
 some thirty miles north of Lake Winni- 
 piseogee. The hotel was situated on a slight 
 eminence, commanding, a view of towering 
 "Mount Israel" and of "Whittier Moun 
 tain," named after the poet. It is a region 
 full of noble prospects, being just in the out 
 skirts of the White Mountain group. Sev 
 eral of the poems of Whittier were inspired 
 by this scenery, notably "Among the Hills," 
 "Sunset on the Bearcamp," and "The Seek 
 ing of the Waterfall." In the first of these 
 we read how 
 
 "Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang," 
 
 and 
 
 "Above his broad lake Ossipee, 
 
 Once more the sunshine wearing, 
 Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
 His grim armorial bearing." 
 
 "Sunset on the Bearcamp" contains a 
 
148 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 stanza considered by some to be one of the 
 poet s finest: 
 
 " Touched by a light that hath no name, 
 
 A glory never sung, 
 Aloft on sky and mountain wall 
 
 Are God s great pictures hung. 
 How changed the summits vast and old ! 
 
 No longer granite-browed, 
 They melt in rosy mist ; the rock 
 
 Is softer than the cloud ; 
 The valley holds its breath ; no leaf 
 
 Of all its elms is twirled : 
 The silence of eternity 
 
 Seems falling on the world." 
 
 The Bearcamp River House (now no 
 more) was a hostelry whose site, antique 
 hospitality, and eminent guests were every 
 whit as worthy to be embalmed in lasting 
 verse as were those of the Wayside Inn of 
 Sudbury. Before the red, crackling flames 
 of its huge fireplace such literary characters 
 as Whittier, Gail Hamilton, Lucy Larcom, 
 and Hiram Rich used to gather on chill sum 
 mer evenings for the kind of talks that only 
 a wood fire can inspire. The Quaker poet 
 is a charming conversationalist, and can 
 tell a story as capitally as he can write one. 
 
LATER DAYS. 149 
 
 He has a goodly repertoire of ghost tales 
 and legends of the marvellous. One of his 
 best stories is about a scene that took place 
 in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, when 
 the court remanded a negro to slavery. The 
 poet says that an old sailor who was present 
 became so infuriated by the spectacle that he 
 made the air blue with oaths uttered in seven 
 different languages.* 
 
 December 17, 1877, was the poet s seven 
 tieth birthday, and the occasion was cele 
 brated in a twofold manner, namely, by a 
 Whittier Tribute in the Literary World, 
 and by a Whittier Banquet given at the 
 Hotel Brunswick, in Boston, by Messrs. 
 H. O. Houghton and Co., the publishers 
 of Whittier s works. The Literary World 
 tribute contained poems by Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, E. C. 
 Stedman, O. W. Holmes, William Lloyd 
 Garrison, and others. Mr. Longfellow s 
 poem, "The Three Silences," is one of un 
 usual beauty. 
 
 * For these details about days on the Bearcamp, the writer 
 is indebted to Dr. Robert R. Andrews, an acquaintance of 
 the poet. 
 
ISO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 THE THREE SILENCES OF MOLINOS. 
 
 " Three Silences there are : the first of speech, 
 The second of desire, the third of thought ; 
 This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught 
 With dreams and visions, was the first to teach. 
 
 These Silences, commingling each with each 
 Made up the perfect Silence, that he sought 
 And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught 
 Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach. 
 
 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 ! " 
 
 There were letters from the poet Bryant, 
 the historian George Bancroft, Colonel T. W. 
 Higginson, and Mrs. H. B. Stowe; and there 
 was a pleasant description of the Danvers 
 home by Charles B. Rice. Mr. Whittiers 
 ? Response " was published in the January 
 number of the paper: 
 
 " Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
 
 Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays 
 On word and work irrevocably done, 
 Life s blending threads of good and ill outspun, 
 
 I hear, O friends ! your words of cheer and praise, 
 Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
 Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 
 A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke." 
 
LATER DAYS. 15 1 
 
 The anniversary of the founding of the 
 Atlantic Monthly happening to be syn 
 chronous with Whittier s birthday, the pub 
 lishers determined to make a double festival 
 of the occasion. The gathering at the Hotel 
 Brunswick was a brilliant one, and the invi 
 tations were not limited by any clique or any 
 sectional lines. 
 
 In this same month the admirers of 
 Mr. Whittier in Haverhill, Newburyport, 
 and neighboring towns, formed a Whittier 
 Club, its annual meetings to be held on 
 December 17. 
 
 The ladies of Amesbury presented to 
 the poet on his birthday a richly finished 
 Russia-leather portfolio, containing four 
 teen beautiful sketches in water-colors of 
 scenes in and about Amesbury, by a tal 
 ented Amesbury artist. The subjects of the 
 sketches are those scenes which he has 
 immortalized in his poems, and include his 
 home, birthplace, the old school-house, 
 old Quaker Meeting-House, Rivermouth 
 Rocks, etc. The portfolio was presented 
 to him at Oak Knoll, accompanied by a 
 basket of exquisite flowers. 
 
 Since taking up his residence in Danvers, 
 
152 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITT1ER. 
 
 the poet has published * The Vision of 
 Echard, and Other Poems," including 
 the beautiful ballad, "The Witch of Wen- 
 ham," and "The King s Missive, and 
 Other Poems." 
 
PERSONAL. 153 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PERSONAL. 
 
 As a boy, Whittier grew up slender, 
 delicate, and shy, with dark hair and dark 
 eyes; his nature silent and brooding, 
 gentle, compassionate, religious, and sen 
 sitive to the beauty of the external world. 
 He is of the nervous temperament, and 
 his health has never been robust. Indeed, 
 in later life the state of his health has often 
 been precarious, and his plans for work 
 have been at the mercy of his nerves. As 
 a young man, and crowned Laureate of 
 Freedom, Whittier must have presented a 
 striking appearance, with his raven hair, and 
 glittering black eyes flashing with the inspi 
 ration of a great cause, Mr. J. Miller Mc- 
 Kim, a member with Whittier of the 
 famous Anti-Slavery Convention held in 
 Philadelphia in 1833, thus describes the 
 poet: 
 
154 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 
 
 " He wore a dark frock-coat with stand 
 ing collar, which, with his thin hair, dark 
 and sometimes flashing eyes, and black 
 whiskers, not large, but noticeable in 
 those unhirsute days, gave him, to my 
 then unpractised eye, quite as much of a 
 military as a Quaker aspect. His broad, 
 square forehead and well-cut features, 
 aided by his incipient reputation as a poet, 
 made him quite a noticeable feature in the 
 convention." 
 
 Frederika Bremer, in her "Sketches of 
 American Homes," gives an outline portrait 
 of Whittier as he appeared when forty 
 years of age: 
 
 "He has a good exterior, a figure slen 
 der and tall, a beautiful head with refined 
 features, black eyes full of fire, dark com 
 plexion, 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 
 
PERSONAL. 155 
 
 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 over- 
 exertion of the brain, requires, and how 
 persons who suffer therefrom ought to be 
 met and treated." 
 
 George W. Bungay, in his w Crayon 
 Sketches" of distinguished Americans, pub 1 
 lished in 1852, gives the following pict 
 ure of Whittier: "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, . . . those 
 starlike eyes flashing under such a magnifi 
 cent forehead." 
 
 A writer in the Democratic Review for 
 August, 1845, speaks of "the fine intel 
 lectual beauty of his expression, the blend 
 ing brightness and softness of the clear dark 
 
156 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 eye, the union of manly firmness and cour 
 age with womanly sweetness and tenderness 
 alike in countenance and character." 
 
 Mr. David A. Wasson says that Whittier 
 is of the Saracenic or Hebrew prophet type: 
 f The high cranium, so lofty, especially 
 in the dome, the slight and symmetrical 
 backward slope of the -whole head, the 
 powerful level brows, and beneath these the 
 dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed fire, 
 the Arabian complexion, the sharp-cut, 
 intense lines of the face, the light, tall, 
 erect stature, the quick, axial poise of the 
 movement," all these traits reveal the fiery 
 Semitic prophet. 
 
 The long backward and upward slope 
 of the head, alluded to by Mr. Wasson, is 
 very striking. It is the head of Walter 
 Scott or of Emerson. Whittier is now an 
 old man, somewhat hard of hearing, and 
 with the fixed sadness of time upon his 
 pleasant face. But ever and anon, as you 
 converse with him, his countenance is irra 
 diated by a sudden smile, sweet and strange 
 and full of benignity, like a waft of per- 
 
PERSONAL. 157 
 
 fume from a bed of white violets, or a glint 
 of rich sunlight on an April day. His is one 
 of those Emersonian natures that everybody 
 loves at first sight. The very mole under 
 the right eye seems somehow the birth-mark 
 or sign-manual of kindliness. The quaint 
 grammatical solecisms of the Quaker and the 
 New England farmer the "theeV-and the 
 omission of the ^* s from present participles 
 and other words ending in "ing" give 
 to the poet s conversation a certain slight 
 piquancy and picturesqueness.* About half- 
 past nine every morning, when at Amesbury, 
 Mr. Whittier walks down for the mail and 
 the news, and perhaps has a chat with some 
 neighbor on the street, or with the country 
 editor who is setting up in type his own 
 editorials while he grimly rolls his quid of 
 tobacco in his cheek. In the spring and 
 
 * The writer remembers once speaking with a laborer whom 
 Mr. Whittier had employed. The good fellow could not 
 conceal his admiration for the poet, "Why," he said, "you 
 wouldn t think it, would you, but he talks just like com 
 mon folks. We was talkin about the apples one day, and 
 he said, Some years they ain t wuth pickin , just like any 
 body, you know; ain t stuck up at all, and yet he s a great 
 man, you know. He likes to talk with farmers and common 
 folks ; he don t go much with the bigbugs ; one of the 
 nicest men, and liberal with his money, too." 
 
158 JOIhV GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 early summer the poet s dress will be after 
 this fashion: black coat and vest, gray pant 
 aloons, cinnamon-colored overcoat, drab tile 
 hat, and perhaps a small gray tippet around 
 his neck. As he walks, he salutes those 
 whom he meets with a little jerky bow. A 
 forty years residence in Amesbury has made 
 him acquainted with almost everybody, 
 and he might, therefore, very properly be 
 somewhat economical of exertion in his 
 salutations. But his abrupt bow is really 
 the expression of that unbending recti 
 tude and noble pride in individual free 
 dom that made him the reformer and the 
 poet of liberty. As a single instance of 
 Whittier s kind-heartedness, take the fol 
 lowing incident, narrated by an anonymous 
 writer in the Literary World for Decem 
 ber, 1877: rr When I was a young man 
 trying to get an education, I went about 
 the country peddling sewing-silk to help 
 myself through college; and one Satur 
 day night found me at Amesbury, a 
 stranger and without a lodging-place. It 
 happened that the first house at which I 
 called was Whittier s, and he himself came 
 to the door. On hearing my request he 
 
PERSONAL. 159 
 
 said he was very sorry that he could not 
 keep me, but it was quarterly meeting and 
 his house was full. He, however, took the 
 trouble to show me to a neighbor s, where 
 he left me; but that did not seem to wholly 
 suit his idea of hospitality, for in the course 
 of the evening he made his appearance, 
 saying that it had occurred to him that he 
 could sleep on a lounge, and give up his 
 own bed to me, which it is, perhaps, need 
 less to say, was not allowed. But this was 
 not all. The next morning he came again, 
 with the suggestion that I might perhaps 
 like to attend meeting, inviting me to go 
 with him; and he gave me a seat next to 
 himself. The meeting lasted an hour, during 
 which there was not a worcl spoken by any 
 one. We all sat in silence that length of 
 time, then all arose, shook hands and dis 
 persed; and I remember it as one of the 
 best meetings I ever attended." 
 
 Dom Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil, is a 
 reader of Mr. Whittier s poems, and an 
 ardent admirer of his genius. He has 
 exchanged letters with him, both in re 
 gard to poetry and to the emancipation of 
 
160 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 slaves. 45 When his Majesty was in this 
 country, in 1876, he expressed a wish to 
 meet Mr. Whittier, and on Wednesday 
 evening, June 14, a little reception was ar 
 ranged by Mrs. John T. Sargent at her 
 Chestnut Street home, a few prominent per 
 sons having been invited to be present. 
 When the Emperor arrived, the other 
 guests had already assembled. Sending up 
 his card, his Majesty followed it with the 
 quickness of an enthusiastic school-boy; and 
 his first question, after somewhat hastily 
 paying his greetings, was for Mr. Whittier. 
 The poet stepped forward to meet his im 
 perial admirer, who would fain have caught 
 him in his arms and embraced him warmly, 
 with all the enthusiasm of the Latin race. 
 The diffident Friend seemed somewhat 
 abashed at so demonstrative a greeting, but 
 with a cordial grasp of the hand drew Dom 
 Pedro to the sofa, where the two chatted 
 easily and with the familiarity of old 
 friends. 
 
 " The rest of the company allowed them 
 
 * The Emperor has translated Whittier s " Cry of a Lost 
 Soul" into Portuguese, and has sent to the poet several speci 
 mens of the Amazonian bird whose peculiar note suggested 
 the poem. 
 
PERSONAL. l6l 
 
 to enjoy their tete-a-tete for some half hour, 
 when they ventured to interrupt it, and the 
 Emperor joined very heartily in a .general 
 conversation. 
 
 As the Emperor was driving away, he 
 was seen standing erect in his open ba 
 rouche, and " waving his hat, with a seem 
 ing hurrah, at the house which held his 
 venerable friend."* 
 
 As a specimen of Mr. Whittier s genial 
 and winning epistolary style, it is permissi 
 ble to quote here a letter of his, addressed to 
 Mrs. John T. Sargent, and included by her 
 in her sketches of the Radical Club: 
 
 " AMESBURY, Wednesday Eve. 
 
 >r MY DEAR MRS. SARGENT, Few 
 stronger inducements could be held out to 
 me than that in thy invitation to meet Lu- 
 cretia Mott and Mary Carpenter. But I do 
 not see that T can possibly go to Boston this 
 week. None the less do I thank thee, my 
 dear friend, in thinking of me in connection 
 with their visit. 
 
 * Mrs. Sargent s " Sketches and Reminiscences of the 
 Radical Club," pp. 301, 302. 
 
l62 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 ff My love to Lucretia Mott, and tell her I 
 have never forgotten the kind welcome and 
 generous sympathy she gave the young 
 abolitionist at a time when he found small 
 favor with his orthodox brethren. What 
 a* change she and I have lived to see! I 
 hope to meet Miss Carpenter before she 
 leaves us. For this, and for all thy kind 
 ness in times past, believe me gratefully 
 
 thy friend, 
 
 "JOHN G. WHITTIER." 
 
 The modesty and shyness of the poet 
 have already been more than once alluded 
 to. They form his most distinctive per 
 sonal or constitutional peculiarity. It is 
 unnecessary to quote from his writings to 
 illustrate what is patent to everybody who 
 reads his books, or knows anything about 
 him. 
 
 The poet s personal friends know well 
 that he has a good deal of genial, mellow 
 humorousness in his nature. To get an 
 idea of it, read his charming prose sketches 
 of home and rural life, and such poems as 
 the whimsical, enigmatical "Demon of the 
 Study," as well as "The Pumpkin," "To My 
 
PERSONAL. 163 
 
 Old Schoolmaster," and the f Double- 
 Headed Snake of Newbury." These 
 poems almost equal Holmes s for rich and 
 riant humor. 
 
 It is not so well known as it ought to be 
 that the author of " Snow-Bound " has as 
 deep a love of children as had Longfellow. 
 Before the Bearcamp House was burned 
 to the ground in 1880, Mr. Whittier used 
 sometimes to come up from Amesbury with 
 a whole bevy of little misses about him, 
 and at the hotel the wee folk hailed him 
 as one of those dear old fellows whom they 
 always love at sight. It is said that Edward 
 Lear the friend of Tennyson, and author 
 of "Nonsense Verses" for children used 
 to make a hobby-horse of himself in the 
 castles of Europe, and treat his little friends 
 to a gallop over the carpet on his back. If 
 Mr. Whittier never got quite so far as this 
 in juvenile equestrianism, he has at least 
 equally endeared himself to the children 
 who have had the good fortune to look into 
 his loving eyes and enjoy the sunshine of 
 his smile. When sitting by the fireside, or 
 stretched at ease on the fragrant hay in the 
 barn or field, or walking among the hills, 
 
164 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 nothing pleases him better than to have an 
 audience of young folks eagerly listening to 
 one of his stories. If they are engaged in 
 a game of archery, he will take a hand in 
 the sport, and no one is better pleased than 
 he to hit the white. His unfailing kindness 
 in answering the many letters addressed 
 to him by young literary aspirants, or by 
 others who desire his advice and help, is 
 something admirable: no one knows how 
 to win hearts better than he. 
 
 To these notes of personal traits it only 
 remains to add a list of the offices of dig 
 nity and honor which have been held by 
 Mr. Whittier. Besides his various edito 
 rial, secretarial, and legislative positions, he 
 served as Overseer of Harvard College 
 from 1858 to 1863. Fie was a member of 
 the Electoral College from 1859 to J ^^3- 
 The degree of Master of Arts was be 
 stowed upon him by Harvard College in 
 1860, and the same degree by Haverford 
 College in the same year. He was elected 
 a resident member of the American Philo 
 sophical Society in 1864, but never accepted 
 the honor, notwithstanding the fact that his 
 
PERSONAL. 165 
 
 name appeared for two or three years on 
 the Society s roll. In 1871 he was made a 
 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts 
 and Sciences. 
 
PART II. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS. 
 
THE MAN. 169 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MAN. 
 
 by the page word-painted 
 Let life be banned or sainted : 
 Deeper than -written scroll 
 The colors of the soul" 
 
 MY TRIUMPH. 
 
 To analyze and describe the poetry of 
 Whittier is a comparatively easy task, for it 
 is all essentially lyrical or descriptive, and is 
 resolvable into a few simple elements. His 
 poetry is not profound; but it is sweet and 
 melodious, now flashing with the fire of 
 freedom and choked with passionate in 
 dignation, and now purling and rippling 
 through the tranquil meadows of legend and 
 song. Such a poem as Emerson s " Sphinx," 
 groaning with its weight of mystical mean 
 ing, Whittier never wrote, nor could write. 
 Neither is he dramatic, nor skilled in the 
 subtile harmonies of rhythm and metre. 
 As an artist he is easily comprehensible. 
 
I/O JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 But to fathom the man, to drop one s 
 plummet into the infinite depths of the 
 human mind, to peer about with one s little 
 candle among the dusty phantoms and spent 
 forces of the past, and through the end 
 lessly crossing and interblending meshes 
 trace confidently up all the greater and 
 the finer hereditary influences that have 
 moulded a human character, and then 
 discover and weigh the post-natal forces 
 that have acted upon that character through 
 a long and varied life, this is a very dif 
 ficult task, and demands in him who would 
 undertake it a union of historic imagina 
 tion with caution and modesty. 
 
 The moral in Whittier predominates 
 over the aesthetic, the reformer over the 
 artist. w I am a man, and I feel that I am 
 above all else a man." What is the great 
 central element in our poet s character, if 
 it is not that deep, never-smouldering moral 
 fervor, that unquenchable love of freedom, 
 that 
 
 " Hate of tyranny intense, 
 And hearty in its vehemence," 
 
 which, mixed with the beauty and melody 
 
THE MAN. 171 
 
 of his soul, gives to his pages a delicate 
 glow as of gold-hot iron; which crowns 
 him the Laureate of Freedom in his day, 
 and imparts to his utterances the manly 
 ring of the prose of Milton and Hugo and 
 the poetry of Byron, Swinburne, and 
 Whitman, all poets of freedom like him 
 self ? 
 
 And what is love of freedom but the 
 mainspring of Democracy? And what is 
 Democracy but the rallying-cry of the age, 
 the one word of the present, the one word 
 of the future, the word of all words, and 
 the w r hite, electric beacon-light of modern 
 life? 
 
 At the apex of modern Democracy stands 
 Jesus of Nazareth; at its base stand the 
 poets and heroes of freedom of the past 
 hundred years. Christian Democracy has 
 had its revolutions, its religious ferments 
 and revolts, and its emancipations of slaves. 
 Quakerism is one of its outcomes. Democ 
 racy produced George Fox; George Fox 
 produced Quakerism; Quakerism produced 
 Whittier; Whittier helped destroy slavery. 
 He could not help doing so, for with slavery 
 both Democracy and Quakerism are in- 
 
1/2 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 compatible. Whittier fought slavery as a 
 Quaker, he has lived as a Quaker, and writ 
 ten as a Quaker; he has never fully eman 
 cipated himself from the shackles of the 
 sect. To understand him, therefore, we must 
 understand his religion. 
 
 The principles of the sect are all summed 
 up in the phrases Freedom and the Inner 
 Light. Historically considered, Quaker 
 ism is a product of the ferment that fol 
 lowed the civil war in England two centu 
 ries ago. Considered abstractly, or as a 
 congeries of principles, it has a sociological 
 and a philosophical root, both of these 
 running back into the great tap-root, love 
 of freedom, whose iron-tough, writhen 
 fibres enwrap the dark foundation rocks of 
 human nature itself. 
 
 Sociologically speaking, Quakerism is 
 pure democracy, an exaltation of the maj 
 esty of the individual and of the mass of the 
 people. It is the pure precipitate of Chris 
 tianity. It is a protest against the hypoc 
 risy, formalism, tyranny, of priestcraft, king 
 craft, and aristocracy. 
 
 Philosophically, its theory of the Inner 
 
THE MAN, 173 
 
 Light is identical with the doctrine of 
 idealism or innate ideas, held by Descartes, 
 Fichte, Schelling, Cousin. It means indi 
 vidualism, a return to the primal sanities of 
 the soul. "I think, therefore I am." My 
 thinking soul is the ultimate source of 
 ideas and truth. In that serene holy of 
 holies full-grown ideas leap into being, 
 subjective, a priori, needing no sense-per 
 ception for their genesis. 
 
 But Transcendentalism differed from 
 Quakerism in this: the former held that the 
 illumination of the mind was a natural pro 
 cess; but Quakerism maintains that it is a 
 supernatural process, the work of the "Holy 
 Ghost." And herein Quakerism is inferior 
 to Transcendentalism. But it is superior to 
 it in that it does not believe in the infalli 
 bility of individual intuitions, but considers 
 the true criterion of truth to be the universal 
 reason, the "consensus of the competent." 
 Yet the great danger that pertains to all 
 moonshiny, or subjective, systems of philos 
 ophy is that their individualism will spindle 
 out into wild extravagances of theory, and 
 foolish eccentricities of manner and dress; 
 and we shall find that, practically, Quaker- 
 
T/4 JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTTER. 
 
 ism has as Quixotic a record as Transcen 
 dentalism. To say that both systems have 
 performed noble and indispensable service 
 in the development of mind is but to utter 
 a truism. 
 
 We may now consider a little more 
 closely the peculiarities of doctrine and life 
 which characterize the Friends. The doc 
 trine of the Inner Light, or pure spiritual 
 ity, resulted in such tenets as these: the 
 freedom of conscience; the soul the foun 
 tain of all truth, worthlessness of tradition 
 and unsanctified learning ; the conscience 
 or voice within the judge of the Bible or 
 Written Word ; disbelief in witchcraft, 
 ghosts, and other superstitions; love of 
 friends and enemies, the potency of 
 moral suasion, moral ideas, and as a con 
 sequence the wickedness of war, and a 
 belief in human progress as the result of 
 peaceable industry; universal enfranchise 
 ment, every man and woman may be en 
 lightened by the Inner Light, hence 
 equality of privilege, no distinction between 
 clergy or laity or between sex and sex, 
 the right of woman to develop her entire 
 
THE MAX. 1/5 
 
 nature as she sees fit. In the principles 
 which define the attitude of the Quaker 
 toward social conventions, we find a queer 
 jumble of the doctrines of primitive Chris 
 tianity with the ideas of individual indepen 
 dence innate in the Germanic mind, and 
 especially in the popular mind.* The Chris 
 tian gospel of love forbids the Quakers -to 
 countenance war, capital punishment, im 
 prisonment for debt, slavery, suppressment 
 of the right of free speech and the right of 
 petition. Their doctrine of equality in vir 
 tue of spiritual illumination forbids them to 
 remove their hats in presence of any human 
 being, even a king; leads them to avoid the 
 use of the plural "you," as savoring of 
 man-worship, and to refuse to employ a 
 hired priesthood. Their doctrine of pure 
 spirituality is inconsistent with sacerdotal 
 
 * The same sterling material that went to the making of the 
 Quaker went also to the making of the Puritan farmer-and-arti- 
 san victors of Naseby, and Worcester, and Marston Moor. The 
 same faults characterized each class. In stiff-backed inde 
 pendence and scorn of the gilt-edged poetry of conventional 
 manners, and in the absurd extreme to which they carried 
 that independence and scorn, the Quaker and the Puritan 
 were alike. Only the Quaker out-puritaned the Puritan, 
 was much more consistent in his fanatical purism, scrawny 
 asceticism, and contempt for distinguished manners and the 
 noble imaginative arts. 
 
1 76 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 rites and mummeries, such as baptism, the 
 eucharist, forms of common prayer, etc. 
 Music, poetry, painting, and dancing also 
 have a worldly savor and tend to distract the 
 mind from its spiritual life. So do rich and 
 gaudy robes: we must therefore have sim 
 plicity of dress. Hear William Penn on 
 this subject: * 
 
 "I say, if sin brought the first coat, poor 
 Adam s offspring have little reason to be 
 proud or curious in their clothes. ... It 
 is all one as if a man w r ho had lost his 
 nose by a scandalous distemper, should take 
 pains to set out a false one, in such shape 
 and splendor as should give the greater 
 occasion for all to gaze upon him; as if he 
 would tell them he had lost his nose, for 
 fear they would think he had not. But 
 would a wise man be in love with a false 
 nose, though ever so rich, and however 
 finely made ? " 
 
 A natural corollary of the Friends doc 
 trine of inward supernatural illumination is 
 their habit of silent worship, or silent wait- 
 
 * In his work " No Cross, No Crown." 
 
THE MAN. 177 
 
 ing.* It is probable that this feature of 
 their religious gatherings has done much to 
 cultivate that peculiar tranquillity of de 
 meanor which distinguishes them.f They 
 meet the burdens, bereavements, and disap 
 pointments, of life with a placid equanimity 
 in strong antithesis to the often passionate 
 grief and rebellion of other classes of reli 
 gious people. Finally, we may add to the 
 list of their characteristics their great moral 
 sincerity. "With calm resoluteness they tell 
 you your faults face to face, and without 
 exciting your ill-will." 
 
 The objections to the Quakerism of our 
 day are that it is retractile, stationary, neg 
 ative; it is selfish, narrow, ascetic, tame; 
 it has no iron in its blood; it rarely adds 
 anything to the world s thought. The 
 Quakers are a hopelessly antiquated sect, 
 
 * Their ideas on this subject are very well stated in the 
 following words taken from a Quaker pamphlet by Mary 
 Brook : " Solomon saith. The preparations of the heart in 
 man, and the answer of the tongue, are from the Lord. If 
 the Lord alone can prepare the heart, stir it up, or incline it 
 towards unfeigned holiness, how can any man approach him 
 acceptably, till his heart be prepared by him? and how can 
 he know this preparation except he wait in silence to feel 
 it?" 
 
 f See Appendix I. 
 
1 78 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 a dying branch almost wholly severed from 
 connection with the living forces of the tree 
 of modern society. There are, it is true, 
 a goodly number of liberal Quakers, who, 
 in discarding the peculiar costume of the 
 time of Charles II., which ma ay of them 
 even yet wear, have also thrown off the 
 intellectual mummy-robes of the sect. 
 Many adopt the tenets of Unitarianism, 
 or make that religious body the stepping- 
 stone to complete emancipation frpm an 
 obsolete system of thought. But the mass 
 of them are immovable. They have been 
 characterized substantially in the following 
 words by Mr. A. M. Powell, himself a 
 Quaker by birth, and an unwilling witness 
 to the faults of a system of doctrines in 
 which he sees much to admire: 
 
 "Jn its merely sectarian aspect, Quaker 
 ism is as uninteresting, narrow, timid, self 
 ish, and conservative as is mere sectari 
 anism under any other name. The Quakers 
 have little comprehension of the meaning 
 of Quakerism beyond a blind observance of 
 the peculiarities of dress and speech and 
 the formality of the Meeting. They cling 
 to the now meaningless protests of the past. 
 
THE MAN. . 179 
 
 They are inaccessible to new conceptions of 
 truth. They have dishonored the impor 
 tant fundamental principle [of the Inner 
 Light] and tarnished the Society s good 
 name by subordinating it to narrow views 
 of religion, to commercial selfishness, and 
 to the prevalent palsying conservatism of 
 the outside world. "* 
 
 In all that is said in these pages by way 
 of criticism of the Quakers, reference is 
 had solely to their doctrines as a system 
 of thought. Of their sweet and beautiful 
 
 o 
 
 lives it is hardly necessary to speak at 
 length. Volumes might be filled with in- 
 
 O O 
 
 stances of their large-hearted benevolence 
 and personal self-sacrifice in care for others. 
 The loveliness of their lives is like a beau 
 tiful perfume in the societv in which they 
 move. As you see the Quaker women 
 of Philadelphia, with their pure, tranquil 
 faces, and plain, immaculate dress, moving 
 about among the greedy and vile-mannered 
 non-Quaker canaille of that democratic 
 city, they seem like Christian and Faithful 
 
 * Mrs. John T. Sargent s Sketches and Reminiscences of 
 the Radical Club." 
 
iXo JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 :imid the crowds of Vanity Fair. Their 
 laces are like a benediction, and you thank 
 heaven for them. The liberal Friends in 
 America have many great and noble names 
 on their roll of honor. And surely a sect 
 
 J 
 
 that has produced such characters as Lucre- 
 tia Mott, John Bright, and John G. Whittier, 
 must win our intellectual respect. But it is 
 only because these persons, like Milton, were 
 in most respects above their sect that we 
 admire them. There are proofs manifold, 
 however, throughout the prose and poetry 
 of Whittier that he has nominally remained 
 within the pale of Quakerism all his days. 
 Doubtless such a course was essential to the 
 very existence in him of poetic inspiration. 
 His genius is wholly lyrical. A song or lyric 
 is the outgushing of pure emotion. Espe 
 cially in the case of the religious and ethi 
 cal lyrist is faith life, and doubt death. 
 Doubt, in Whittier s case, would have meant 
 the cessation of his songs. To break away 
 entirely from the faith of his fathers w r ould 
 have chilled his inspiration. He has not, it 
 is true, escaped the conflict with doubt. As 
 we shall see, no man has had a severer strug 
 gle to reconcile his faith with the terror and 
 
THE MAN. I8l 
 
 mystery of life. But, although his religious 
 views have been liberalized by science, yet 
 he has never ceased to retain a hearty 
 sympathy with, and belief in, the Quaker 
 principles of the Inner Light, silent 
 waiting, etc. . 
 
 That he has remained within the pale of 
 Quakerism has been an injury to him as well 
 as a help. It makes him obtrude his sec 
 tarianism too frequently, especially in his 
 prose writings. He is too thin-skinned about 
 its faults, exhibits something of the nervous 
 irritability of an invalid in defending it 
 against the least assault. When he dons the 
 garb of the sectary, he becomes weak and 
 uninteresting. We see then that he is a 
 man hampered by a creed which forbids a 
 catholic sympathy with human nature. He 
 is shut up in the narrow field of sectarian 
 morals and religion. He cannot, for exam 
 ple, enter, by historical imagination, into 
 poetical sympathy with the gorgeous ritual 
 and dreamy beauty of a European cathedral 
 service. And yet so pure, gentle, and sweet 
 is his nature that it is hard to censure him 
 for this peculiarity. It is regret rather than 
 censure that we feel, regret that he has 
 
1 82 JOHN GREENLEAF W HITHER. 
 
 not had strength of body and mind to break 
 wholly away from hampering limitations, 
 and to be always, what he so often is, the 
 strong and sweet-voiced spokesman of the 
 heart of humanity. 
 
 Let us hear his gentle confessions of faith. 
 In the autobiographical poem, w My Name 
 sake/ we read: 
 
 " He worshipped as his fathers did. 
 
 And kept the faith of childish days, 
 And, howsoe er he strayed or slid, 
 He loved the good old ways. 
 
 The simple tastes, the kindly traits, 
 The tranquil air, and gentle speech, 
 
 The silence of the soul that waits 
 For more than man to teach." 
 
 In w The Meeting " he has given us an 
 "Apologia pro Vita Sua," a defence of his 
 religious habits. He says he is accustomed 
 to meet with the Friends twice a week in 
 the little Meeting" at Amesbury, chiefly for 
 two reasons: first, because in the silent, un 
 adorned house, with "pine-laid floor," his 
 religious communings are not distracted by 
 outward things as they would be if he wor 
 shipped always amid the solitudes of nature; 
 and, secondly, he finds in "The Meeting" a 
 
THE MAN. 183 
 
 heart-solace in the memories of dear ones 
 passed away, who once sat by his side 
 there. He says, in reference to the Quaker 
 service: 
 
 " I ask no organ s soulless breath 
 To drone the themes of life and death, 
 No altar candle-lit by day, 
 No ornate wordsman s rhetoric-play, 
 No cool philosophy to teach 
 Its bland audacities of speech, 
 
 No pulpit hammered by the fist 
 Of loud-asserting dogmatist." 
 
 In "Memories" he sas: 
 
 "Thine the Genevan s sternest creed, 
 While answers to my spirit s need 
 
 The Derby dalesman s simple truth. 
 For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 
 
 And holy day and solemn psalm ; 
 For me, the silent reverence where 
 
 My brethren gather slow and calm." 
 
 There are two epochs in the religious 
 or philosophical development of Whittier. 
 The first that of simple piety unclouded 
 by doubt, the epoch of unhesitating accept 
 ance of the popular mythology seems to 
 have lasted until about 1850, or the period 
 of early Darwinism and Spencerianism, 
 
1 84 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 the most momentous epoch in the religious 
 history of the world. This pivotal point 
 is very well marked by the publication, 
 in 1853, of "The Chapel of the Hermits" 
 and " Questions of Life." It is now that 
 harrowing doubt begins, and restless striv 
 ing to retain the faith amid new conditions 
 and a vastly widened mental horizon. Tran 
 scendentalism, too, had jusfpassecl the noon 
 meridian of its splendor. Emerson had 
 written many of his exquisite philosophical 
 poems, and Parker had blown his clear 
 bugle-call to a higher religious life. It is 
 evident that Whittier was -- as, indeed, he 
 could not help being profoundly moved 
 by the new spirit of the times. 
 
 With Transcendentalism he must have 
 had large sympathy, owing to the similarity 
 of its principles to those of Quakerism. 
 And that he was profoundly agitated by 
 the revelations of science his poetry shows. 
 In "My Soul and I" (a poem remarkable 
 for its searching subjective analysis), and 
 in the poem "Pollen," he had given expres 
 sion to religious doubt, over which, as al 
 ways in his case, faith was triumphant. 
 But it is in "The Chapel of the Hermits" 
 
THE MAN. 185 
 
 and succeeding poems that "he first gave 
 free and full utterance to the doubt and 
 struggle of soul that was not his alone, but 
 which was felt by all around him. In re 
 spect of doubt w My Soul and I" and rf Ques 
 tions of Life" resemble "Faust," as well 
 as Tennyson s fr Two Voices " and the " In 
 Memoriam." 
 
 " Life s mystery wrapped him like a cloud ; 
 
 He heard far voices mock his own, 
 The sweep of wings unseen, the loud, 
 Long roll of waves unknown. 
 
 The arrows of his straining sight 
 
 Fell quenched in darkness ; priest and sage, 
 
 Like lost guides calling left and right, 
 Perplexed his doubtful age. 
 
 Like childhood, listening for the sound 
 
 Of its dropped pebbles in the well, 
 All vainly down the dark profound 
 
 His brief-lined plummet fell." 
 
 My Namesake. 
 
 The w Questions of Life " are such as 
 these: 
 
 " I am : but little more I know ! 
 Whence came I ? Whither do I go ? 
 A centred self, which feels and is ; 
 A cry between the silences," 
 
1 86 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 "This conscious life, is it the same 
 Which thrills the universal frame ? " 
 
 " Do bird and blossom feel, like me, 
 Life s many-folded mystery, 
 The wonder which it is To Be ? 
 Or stand I severed and distinct, 
 From Nature s chain of- life unlinked?" 
 
 Such questions as these he confesses him 
 self unable to answer. He shrinks back 
 terrified from the task. He will not dare 
 to trifle with their bitter logic. He will 
 take refuge in faith; he will trust the Un 
 seen; let us cease foolish questioning, and 
 live wisely and well our present lives. He 
 comes out of the struggle purified and chas 
 tened, still holding by his faith in God and 
 virtue. A good deal of the old Quakerism 
 is gone, the belief in hell, in the Messianic 
 and atonement machinery, in local and 
 special avatars, etc. Again and again, in 
 his later poems, he asserts the humanity of 
 Christ and the co-equal divinity of all men: 
 see " Miriam," for example. His opin 
 ion about hell he embodies in the sweet 
 little poem, The Minister s Daughter/ 
 published in ? The King s Missive." In 
 short, his religion is a simple and trustful 
 
THE MAN. 187 
 
 theism. But there is no evidence that he 
 has ever incorporated into his mind the 
 principles of the development-science, - 
 the evolution of man, the correlation of 
 forces, the development of the universe 
 through its own inner divine potency; or, 
 in fine, any of the unteleological, unan- 
 thropomorphic explanations of things which 
 are necessitated by. science, and admitted 
 by advanced thinkers, both in and out of the 
 Churches. 
 
 As witnesses to his trustful attitude, we 
 may select such a cluster of stanzas as 
 this: 
 
 "Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight, 
 Through present wrong, the eternal right ; 
 And, step by step, since time began, 
 I see the steady gain of man ; 
 
 That all of good the past hath had 
 Remains to make our own time glad, 
 Our common daily life divine, 
 And every land a Palestine. 
 
 Through the harsh noises of our day 
 A low, sweet prelude finds its way; 
 Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, 
 A light is breaking calm and clear." 
 
 Chapel of the Hermits. 
 
1 88 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 " Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
 
 And tossed by storm and flood, 
 To one fixed stake my spirit clings ; 
 I know that God is good ! 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
 The Eternal Goodness. 
 
 " When on my day of life the night is falling, 
 
 And in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, 
 I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
 My feet to paths unknown, 
 
 Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, 
 
 Leave not its tenant when its walls decay ; 
 O love divine, O Helper ever present, 
 
 Be Thou my strength and stay ! " 
 
 At Last. 
 
 " Dear Lord and Father of mankind, 
 
 Forgive our foolish ways ! 
 Reclothe us in our rightful mind, 
 In purer lives thy service find, 
 In deeper reverence, praise." 
 
 The Brewing of Soma. 
 
 But Whittier is as remarkable for his faith 
 in man as for his faith in God. He is in the 
 highest degree patriotic, American. He 
 loves America because it is the land of free- 
 
THE MAN. 189 
 
 dom. It has been charged against him that 
 he is no true American poet, but a Quaker 
 poet. The American, it is said, is eager, 
 aggressive, high-spirited, combative; the 
 Quaker, subdued and phlegmatic. The 
 American is loud and boastful and daring 
 and reckless; the Quaker, cautious, timid, 
 secretive, and frugal. This is undoubtedly 
 true of the classes as types, but it is far 
 from being true of Whittier personally. 
 He has blood militant in him. He comes 
 of Puritan as well as Quaker stock. The 
 Greenleafs and the Batchelders were not 
 Quakers. The reader will perhaps remem 
 ber the Lieutenant Greenleaf, already men 
 tioned, who fought through the entire Civil 
 War in England.* But his writings alone 
 
 * Hear Whittier himself on the subject : 
 
 " Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable 
 ancestry for many generations, I have still strong suspicions 
 that somewhat of the old Norman blood, something of the 
 grim Berserker spirit, has been bequeathed to me. How else 
 can I account for the intense childish eagerness with which I 
 listened to the stories of old campaigners who sometimes 
 fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I, 
 in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, 
 to smite the garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the 
 tierce son of Nun against the cities of Canaan? Whv was 
 Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim s Progress, mv favorite character? 
 What gave such fascination to the grand Homeric encounter 
 
TQO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 furnish ample proof of his martial spirit. 
 The man and the Quaker struggle within 
 him for the mastery; and the man is, 
 on the whole, triumphant. Whenever his 
 Quakerism permits, he stands out a normal 
 man and a genuine American. As Lowell 
 says : 
 
 " There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart 
 Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart. 
 And reveals the live Man still supreme and erect 
 Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect." 
 
 If anybody will take the trouble to glance 
 over the complete works of Whittier, he or 
 she will find that one of the predominant 
 characteristics of his writings is their indi- 
 
 o 
 
 genous quality, their national spirit. Indeed, 
 this is almost too notorious to need men 
 tion. He, if any one, merits the proud title 
 of "A Representative American Poet/ Ilis 
 whole soul is on fire with love of country. 
 
 between Christian and Apollyon in the valley? Why did I 
 follow Ossian over Morven s battle-fields, exulting in the 
 vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen enemies? 
 Still, later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects 
 for hero-worship in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, 
 and Ypsilanti at the head of his knavish Greeks ? I can ac 
 count for it only on the supposition that the mischief was 
 inherited, an heirloom from the old sea-kings of the ninth 
 century." Prose Works, //., 390, 391. 
 
THE MAN. 191 
 
 As in the case of Whitman, his country is his 
 bride, and upon it he has showered all the 
 affectional wealth of his nature. The Qua 
 ker may be too obtrusive in his prose 
 writings, but it is not so in the greater and 
 better portion of his poetry. When the rush 
 and glow of genuine poetical inspiration 
 seize him, he invariably rises in spirit far 
 above the weltering and eddying dust- 
 clouds of faction and sect into the serene 
 atmosphere of genuine patriotism. Read 
 his " r Last Walk in Autumn," where he 
 says : 
 
 " Home of my heart ! to me more fair 
 
 Than gay Versailles or Windsor s halls, 
 The painted, shingly town-house where 
 The freeman s vote for Freedom falls ! " 
 
 Read his "Eve of Election": 
 
 "Not lightly fall 
 
 Beyond recall 
 The written scrolls a breath can float ; 
 
 The crowning fact, 
 
 The kingliest act 
 Of Freedom is the freeman s vote ! " 
 
 Or take "After Election," a poem that can 
 not be read without a thrill of the nerves and a 
 leaping of the heart. You have concentrated 
 
192 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTJER. 
 
 in that wild lyric burst the purest essence 
 of democratic patriotism, the trembling 
 anxiety and yearning of a mother-heart. It 
 is a poem celebrating a victory of peace with 
 all the fiery energy of a war-ode (a signifi 
 cant fact that the advocates of gory war, as 
 a source of poetic inspiration, would do well 
 to ponder) : 
 
 "The day s sharp strife is ended now. 
 Our work is done, God knoweth how ! 
 As on the thronged, un restful town 
 The patience of the moon looks down, 
 I wait to hear, beside the wire, 
 The voices of its tongues of fire. 
 
 Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first : 
 Be strong, my heart, to know the worst ! 
 Hark! there the Alleghanies spoke; 
 That sound from lake and prairie broke, 
 That sunset gun of triumph rent 
 The silence of a continent ! 
 
 That signal from Nebraska sprung, 
 
 This, from Nevada s mountain tongue ! 
 
 Is that thy answer, strong and free, 
 
 O loyal heart of Tennessee ? 
 
 What strange, glad voice is that which calls 
 
 From Wagner s grave and Sumter s walls ? 
 
 From Mississippi s fountain-head 
 A sound as of the bison s tread ! 
 
THE MAN. 193 
 
 There rustled freedom s Charter Oak ! 
 In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke ! 
 Cheer answers cheer from rise to set 
 Of sun. We have a country yet ! " 
 
 To sum up now our analysis of the poet s 
 character. We have seen that the central 
 trait of his mind is love of freedom. (Even 
 his religion, which is so profound an element 
 in his nature, and so all-pervasive in his 
 writings, will be found, on a deep analysis, 
 to *be a yearning for freedom from the trap 
 pings of sense and time, in order to attain to 
 a spiritual union with the Infinite. ) This 
 love of freedom, this hatred of oppression, 
 intensified by persecution, both ancestral and 
 personal, stimulated by contact with Puritan 
 democracy, as well as by the New England 
 Transcendental movement, and flowering out 
 luxuriantly in the long struggle against sla 
 very, this noble sentiment, and that long 
 self- sacrificing personal warfare in behalf of 
 the oppressed, form the true glory of Whit- 
 tier s character. Shy, timid, almost an in 
 valid, having a nervous horror of mobs and 
 personal indignities, he yet forgot himself in 
 his love of Man, overcame and underwent, 
 suffered social martyrdom for a quarter of a 
 
T94 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 century, never flinching, never holding his 
 peace for bread s sake or fame s sake, not 
 stopping to count the cost, taking his life in 
 his hand, and never ceasing to express his 
 high-born soul in burning invective and 
 scathing satire against -the oppressor, or in 
 words of lofty hope and cheer for the suffer 
 ing idealist and lover of humanity, whoever 
 and wherever he was. Whittier is a hero as 
 well as a poet. He will be known to pos 
 terity by a few exquisite poems, but chiefly 
 by his moral heroism and patriotism. As a 
 thinker and a poet he belongs, with Bryant 
 and Longfellow, to the pre-scientific age. 
 The poetry of the future (of the new era of 
 self-consciousness) will necessarily differ 
 widely from that of the first half of this cen 
 tury. It will not be distinctively the poetry 
 of Wordsworth, or Cowper, or Byron, or 
 Longfellow, or Whittier. When the present 
 materialistic and realistic temper of mind 
 disappears from literature, and really noble 
 ideal poetry returns, it will be vast in its 
 scope and range, robust in its philosophy, 
 unfettered by petty rhymes and classic 
 isms, but powerfully rhythmic and harmo 
 nious. The writings of Shakspere, Goethe, 
 
THE MAN. 195 
 
 Jean Paul, Hugo, Tennyson, Whitman, and 
 Emerson are the magnificent proem to it. 
 It will be built upon a scientific and religious 
 cosmism. It will not discuss Apollo and 
 Luna and Neptune, and the nymphs and 
 muses, but will draw its imagery from the 
 heaven-staining red-flames of the sun, the 
 gulfs of space, the miracles of organic and 
 inorganic life, and human society. It will 
 draw its inspiration not more from the storied 
 past than from the storied future foreseen by 
 its prophetic eye. It will idealize human 
 life and deify nature. It will fall in the era of 
 imagination. (After it will come another age 
 of criticism.) It will fall in the age of splen 
 did democracies. And in that age men will 
 look back with veneration, not so much, per 
 haps, to the scholar-poets as to the hero-poets, 
 like Whittier, who put faith in the rights of 
 man and woman, who did believe in divine 
 democracy, and were not ashamed of it, but 
 nursed it patiently through its puling infancy, 
 well assured of its undying grandeur when 
 it should come to man s estate. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ARTIST. 
 
 THE title of this chapter is almost a mis 
 nomer; for the style, or technique, of the 
 poet whose works we are considering is so 
 very simple and unoriginal that he can hardly 
 be said to have a distinctive style of his 
 own, unless a few persistent mannerisms 
 establish a claim to it. His diction, however, 
 is always pictorial, and glows with an in 
 tense Oriental fervor. Fused in this inte 
 rior vital heat, his thoughts do not sink, 
 like powerful Jinn, into the deep silence- 
 sphere of the mind, to fetch thence spark 
 ling treasures, rich and strange: rather, 
 they run to and fro with lightning swiftness 
 amid the million surface-pictures of the 
 intellect; rearranging, recombining, and 
 creatively blending its images, and finally 
 pouring them out along the page to charm 
 our fancy and feeling with old thoughts and 
 
THE ARTIST. 197 
 
 scenes painted in fresh colors and from new 
 points of view. There is more of fancy 
 than of creative imagination in Whittier. 
 
 The artistic quality, or tone, of his mind 
 is a fusion of that of Wordsworth and that 
 of Byron. In his best ballads and other 
 lyrics you have the moral sincerity of 
 Wordsworth and the sweet Wordsworthian 
 simplicity (with a difference) ; and in his 
 reform poems you have the Byronic indig 
 nation, and scorn of Philistinism and its 
 tyrannies. As a religious poet, he reveals 
 the quiet piety and devoutness of Cowper; 
 and his rural and folk poems show that he 
 is a debtor to Burns. 
 
 He has been a diligent reader, "a close- 
 browed miser of the scholar s gains," and 
 his writings are full of bookish allusions. 
 But, if the truth must be told, his doctor s 
 gown does not often sit gracefully upon his 
 shoulders. His readers soon learn to know 
 that his strength lies in his moral nature, 
 and in his power to tell a story melodiously, 
 simply, and sweetly. Hence it is, doubt 
 less, that they care little for his literary 
 
198 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 allusions, think, perhaps, that they are 
 rather awkwardly dragged in by the ears, 
 and at any rate hasten by them impatiently 
 that they may inhale anew the violet-fresh 
 ness of the poet s own soul. What has just 
 been said about bookish allusions does not 
 apply to the beautiful historical ballads pro 
 duced by Whittier in the mellow maturity 
 of his powers. These fresh improvisations 
 are as perfect works of art as the finest 
 Greek marbles. In them Whittier at length 
 succeeds in freeing himself completely from 
 the shackles of didacticism. Such ballads as 
 "The Witch s Daughter" and "Telling the 
 Bees" are as absolutely faultless productions 
 as Wordsworth s "We are Seven " and his 
 "Lucy Gray," or as Uhland s "Des Ganger s 
 Fluch," or William Blake s "Mary." There 
 is in them the confident and unconscious 
 ease that marks the work of the highest 
 genius. A shower of lucid water-drops falls 
 in no truer obedience to the law of perfect 
 sphericity than flowed from the pen of the 
 poet these delicate creations in obedience to 
 the law of perfect spontaneity. Almost all 
 of Whittier s lyrics have evidently been rap 
 idly written, poured forth in the first glow 
 
THE ARTIST. 199 
 
 of feeling, and not carefully amended and 
 polished as were Longfellow s works. And 
 herein he is at fault, as was Byron. But 
 the delicate health of Whittier, and his 
 toilsome early days, form an excuse for his 
 deficiency in this respect. His later crea 
 tions, the product of his leisure years, are 
 full of pure and flawless music. They have 
 no harmony or rhythmic volume of sound, 
 as in Tennyson, Swinburne, Milton, and 
 Shakspere; but they set themselves to sim 
 ple melodious airs spontaneously. As you 
 read them, your feet begin to tap time, 
 only the music is that of a good rural choir 
 rather than that of an orchestra. 
 
 The thought of each poem is generally 
 conveyed to the reader s understanding with 
 the utmost lucidity. There is no mysticism, 
 no obscurity. The story or thought unfolds 
 itself naturally, and without fatigue to our 
 minds. A great many poems are indeed 
 spun out at too great length ; but the central 
 idea to be conveyed is rarely lost sight of. 
 
 To the list of his virtues as an artist, it 
 remains to add his frequent surprising 
 
200 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 strength. This is naturally most marked in 
 the anti-slavery poems. When he wrote 
 these, he was in the flush of manhood, his 
 soul at a white heat of moral indignation. 
 He is occasionally nerved to almost super 
 human effort: it is the battle-axe of Richard 
 thundering at the gates of Front de Bceuf. 
 For nervous energy, there is nothing in the 
 Hebrew prophets finer than such passages 
 as these: 
 
 " Strike home, strong-hearted man ! 
 
 Down to the root 
 Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel." 
 
 To Range. 
 
 " Maddened by Earth s wrong and evil, 
 
 1 Lord ! I cried in sudden ire, 
 From thy right hand, clothed with thunder, 
 Shake the bolted fire ! " 
 
 What the Voice Said. 
 
 " Hands off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer ! play 
 
 No trick of priestcraft here ! 
 Back, puny lordling ! darest thou lay 
 
 A hand on Elliott s bier ? 
 Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, 
 
 Beneath his feet he trod : 
 He knew the locust-swarm that cursed 
 
 The harvest-fields of God. 
 
 " On these pale lips, the smothered thought 
 Which England s millions feel, 
 
THE ARTIST. 2OI 
 
 A fierce and fearful splendor caught, 
 
 As from his forge the steel. 
 Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire 
 
 His smitten anvil flung ; 
 God s curse, Earth s wrong, dumb Hunger s ire, 
 
 He gave them all a tongue ! " 
 
 Elliott. 
 
 " And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, 
 
 Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod, 
 Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God 
 The blasphemy of wrong." 
 
 The Rendition. 
 
 " All grim and soiled, and brown with tan, 
 
 I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, 
 Smiting the godless shrines of man 
 Along his path." 
 
 The Reformer. 
 
 As Whittier has grown older, and the 
 battles of his life have become (as he 
 expressed it to the writer) like " a re 
 membered dream," his genius has grown 
 mellow and full of graciousness. His art 
 culminated in w Home Ballads," " Snow- 
 Boimd," and "The Tent on the Beach." 
 He has kept longer than most poets the 
 lyric glow; only in his later poems it is 
 " emotion remembered in tranquillity." 
 
 If asked to name the finest poems of 
 Whittier, would not the following instinct- 
 
202 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 ively recur to the mind: " S now-Bound," 
 
 "Maud Muller," "Barbara Frietchie," "The 
 Witch s Daughter," "Telling the Bees/ 
 " Skipper Ireson s Ride," " King Volmer 
 and Elsie," and "The Tent on the Beach"? 
 To these one would like to add several 
 exquisite hymns and short secular lyrics. 
 But the poems mentioned would probably 
 be regarded by most critics as Whittier s 
 finest works of art. They merit this dis 
 tinction largely because they are not dis 
 figured (as most of his productions are) 
 by homiletical tail-pieces, or morals, and 
 by commonplace ejaculations of piety and 
 inopportune religious aspirations. 
 
 The foregoing remark must be our cue for 
 beginning to pass in review the artistic de 
 ficiencies of Whittier. He has three crazes 
 that have nearly ruined the mass of his 
 poetry. They are the reform craze, the 
 religious craze, and the rhyme craze. Of 
 course, as a man, he could not have a super 
 fluity of the first of these; but, as a poet, 
 they have been a great injury to him. We 
 need not deny that he has taken the manlier 
 course in subordinating the artist to the 
 
THE ARTIST. 203 
 
 reformer and preacher* but in estimating his 
 poetic merits we ought to regard his work 
 from an absolute point of view. Let us not 
 be misunderstood. It is gladly and freely 
 conceded that the theory that great poetry 
 is not necessarily moral, and that the aim of 
 poetry is only to please the senses, is a petty 
 and shallow one, and that the true function 
 of the great poet is also to bear witness to 
 the ideal and noble, to the moral and relig 
 ious. Let us heartily agree with Principal 
 Shairp when he says that the true end of 
 the poet ?? is to awaken men to the divine 
 side of things; to bear witness to the beauty 
 that clothes the outer world, the nobility 
 that lies hid, often obscured, in human 
 souls; to call forth sympathy for neglected 
 truths, for noble but oppressed persons, for 
 downtrodden causes, and to make men feel 
 that through all outward beauty and all pure 
 inward affection God himself is addressing 
 them." We may admit all this, and yet find 
 fault with the moralizations and homilies 
 of Whittier. The poetry of Dante and 
 Milton is full of ethical passion, and occa 
 sionally a little sermon is wedged in; yet 
 they do not treat us to endless broadsides 
 
204 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 of preaching, as Whittier does in his earlier 
 poems, and in some of his later ones. But 
 there is this distinction: the moral in Dante 
 and Milton and Shakspere and Emerson 
 is so garnitured with beauty that while our 
 souls are ennobled our imaginations are 
 gratified. But in many of Whittiers poems 
 we have the bare skeleton of the moral, 
 without the rounded contour and delicate 
 tints of the living body of beauty. His 
 reform poems have been called stump- 
 speeches in verse. His anti-slavery poems 
 are, w r ith a few exceptions, devoid of beauty. 
 They should have been written in the man 
 ner he himself commends in a review of 
 Longfellow s "Evangeline": he should have 
 
 O C5 
 
 depicted the truth strongly and attractively, 
 and left to the reader the censure and the 
 indignation. Mr. Whittier seems to know 
 his peculiar limitations as well as his critics. 
 He speaks of himself as one- 
 
 " Whose rhyme 
 
 Beat often Labor s hurried time, 
 Or Duty s rugged march through storm and strife," 
 
 and he has once or twice expressed himself 
 in prose in a way that seems to show that he 
 
THE ARTIST. 20^ 
 
 recognizes the artistic mistake in the con 
 struction of his earlier poems. The omis 
 sion of the moral V envoi from so many of his 
 maturer creations strengthens one in this sur 
 mise. In 1867 Whittier published the fol 
 lowing letter in the New York Nation: 
 
 "To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: 
 
 "I am very well aware that merely personal 
 explanations are not likely to be as interest 
 ing to the public as to the parties concerned; 
 but I am induced to notice what is either a 
 misconception on thy part, or, as is most 
 probable, a failure on my own to make my 
 self clearly understood. In the review of 
 The Tent on the Beach in thy paper of 
 last week, I confess I was not a little sur 
 prised to find myself represented as regret 
 ting my life-long and active participation in 
 the great conflict which has ended in the 
 emancipation of the slave, and that I had 
 not devoted myself to merely literary pur 
 suits. In the half-playful lines upon which 
 this statement is founded, if I did not feel 
 at liberty to boast of my anti-slavery labors 
 and magnify my editorial profession, I cer 
 tainly did not mean to underrate them, or 
 
2O6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 express the shadow of a regret that they 
 had occupied so large a share of my time 
 and thought. The simple fact is that I can 
 not be sufficiently thankful to the Divine 
 Providence that so early called my attention 
 to the great interests of humanity, saving 
 me from the poor ambitions and miserable 
 jealousies of a selfish pursuit of literary 
 reputation. Up to a comparatively recent 
 period my writings have been simply episodi 
 cal, something apart from the real object and 
 aim of my life; and whatever of favor they 
 have found with the public has come to me 
 as a grateful surprise rather than as an ex 
 pected reward. As I have never staked all 
 upon the chances of authorship, I have been 
 spared the pain of disappointment and the 
 temptation to envy those who, as men of 
 letters, deservedly occupy a higher place in 
 the popular estimation than I have ever 
 aspired to. 
 
 " Truly thy friend, 
 
 "JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " AMESBURY, 9th, 3d mo., 1867." 
 
 One is reminded by this letter that Words 
 worth once said to Dr. Orville Dewey, of 
 Boston,* that, "although he was known to 
 
THE ARTIST. 2O/ 
 
 the world only as a poet, he had given twelve 
 hours thought to the condition and prospects 
 of society for one to poetry." In a letter 
 read at the third decade meeting of the 
 American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadel 
 phia, Mr. Whittier said: r l am not insen 
 sible to literary reputation ; I -love, perhaps 
 too well, the praise and good-will of my 
 fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my 
 name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Dec 
 laration of 1833 than on the title-page of any 
 book." 
 
 In his earlier years our poet was wholly 
 ignorant of the fact that an artist should 
 love beauty for its own sake. The simple- 
 hearted Quaker and Puritan farmer-youth 
 thought it almost a sin to spend his time in 
 the cultivation of the beautiful. In his dedi 
 cation of the ^ Supernaturalism of New 
 England" to his sister, he says: 
 
 "And knowing how my life hath been 
 A weary work of tongue and pen, 
 A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men, 
 
 Thou wilt not chide my turning, 
 To con, at times, an idle rhyme, 
 To pluck a flower from childhood s clime, 
 Or listen, at Life s noon-day chime, 
 
 For the sweet bells of Morning ! " 
 
208 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEP. 
 
 Jf Poor fellow!" we say at first. And yet 
 there is something refreshing and noble in 
 such a spirit. It is with difficulty that the 
 Germanic mind can bring itself to the study 
 of the beautiful as something of co-equal 
 worth with the moral. Let us leave that, 
 says the Teuton, to the nation whose word 
 for love of art is w virtue." How Whittier 
 would have abhorred in his youth and early 
 manhood the following sentiment by one of 
 the Latin race: 
 
 ? The arts require idle, delicate minds, not 
 stoics, especially not Puritans, easily shocked 
 by dissonance, inclined to sensuous pleasure, 
 employing their long periods of leisure, their 
 free reveries, in harmoniously arranging, and 
 with no other object but enjoyment, forms, 
 colors, and sounds." (Taine s English .Lit 
 erature, II. 332.) Or the following from 
 the same work: 
 
 w The Puritan destroys the artist, stiffens 
 the man, fetters the writer, and leaves of 
 artist, man, writer, only a sort of abstract 
 being, the slave of a watchword. If a Mil 
 ton springs up among them, it is because, by 
 his wide curiosity, his travels, his compre 
 hensive education, and by his independence 
 
THE ARTIST. 2Og 
 
 of spirit, loftily adhered to even against the 
 sectarians, Milton passes beyond sectarian 
 ism." (I. 397, 398.) 
 
 Here is another passage from Whittier 
 which is very amusing. It is almost a pity 
 to give it, since the author has apparently 
 repudiated the sentiment by omitting the 
 lines from his complete works. In the intro 
 duction to "Supernaturalism of New Eng 
 land " he says: 
 
 "If in some few instances, like Burns in 
 view of his national thistle, I have 
 
 Turned my weecling-hook aside, 
 And spared the symbol dear, 
 
 I have been influenced by the comparatively 
 innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of 
 the traditions in question; yet not even for 
 the sake of poetry and romance would I 
 confirm in any mind a pernicious credulity, 
 or seek to absolve myself from that stern 
 duty which the true man owes to his genera 
 tion, to expose error whenever and wherever 
 he finds it." 
 
 One more instance. In one of his sketches 
 he is describing an old custom called "Pope 
 Night," which has been kept up in the Mer- 
 
210 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 rimack Valley in unbroken sequence from 
 the time of the Guy Fawkes plot. The plot 
 is commemorated by bonfires and effigies of 
 the Pope and others, and Whittier quotes 
 these lines of a song which is sung on the 
 occasion: 
 
 "Look here! from Rome 
 The Pope has come, 
 
 That fiery serpent dire ; 
 Here s the Pope that we have got, 
 The old promoter of the plot ; 
 We ll stick a pitchfork in his back, 
 
 And throw him in the fire." 
 
 Whittier thinks it will never do to allow 
 such a bloodthirsty sentiment as this to go 
 unrebuked, and accordingly treats us to a 
 long and solemn paragraph on the wicked 
 ness of religious hatred and intolerance as 
 
 o 
 
 well as cruelty! 
 
 Another of Whittier s mannerisms con 
 sists in his pietistic effusions. He is a 
 born preacher. But a preacher is not a 
 poet; and when a poet carries religion to 
 such a length that out of some five hun 
 dred poems he cannot write more than half 
 a dozen that do not contain more or less 
 (generally a profusion) of pious exhortation 
 
THE ARTIST. 211 
 
 V 
 
 or allusion, it not only becomes disagreeable 
 from its monotony, but reminds us of the 
 sighs and groans of revivalists, or the Ma 
 hometan s wearisome refrain of r God is 
 great, and Mahomet is his prophet." Many 
 of Whittier s purely religious poems are the 
 most exquisite and beautiful ever written. 
 The tender feeling, the warm-hearted trust 
 fulness, and the reverent touch of his hymns 
 speak directly to our hearts. The prayer- 
 hymn at the close of The Brewing of 
 Soma " ( f? Dear Lord and Father of man 
 kind," etc.), and such poems as rf At Last" 
 and f The Wish of To-day," are unsur 
 passed in sacred song. Some one has said 
 that in Whittiers books we rarely meet 
 with ideas expressed in such perfection and 
 idiosyncrasy of manner that ever afterward 
 the same ideas must recur to our minds in 
 the words of this author and no other; that is 
 to say, there are fe\v dicta, few portable and 
 universally-quoted passages in his writings. 
 But exception must be made in favor of his 
 best hymns. Their stanzas haunt the mind 
 with their beauty, and you are obliged to 
 learn them by heart before you can have 
 peace. It is needless to say that it is not 
 
212 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 with these purely religious productions that 
 we must quarrel; but it is with those other 
 poems in which the secular theme seems 
 to serve merely as a text for the preaching 
 of a little sermon; it is to these that refer 
 ence is made, as well as to those which might 
 be classed under the general head of re 
 ligious gush and sentimentality. The fault 
 we are considering, like the faults of every 
 other poet, seems more conspicuous when 
 one peruses the entire bulk of Whittiers 
 poetical productions in consecutive reading. 
 Now, there is only one poet in the world 
 whose works will not suffer by such read 
 ing, and that is Shakspere. Poetry should 
 be read solely for the refreshment and eleva 
 tion of the mind, and only when one s mood 
 requires it. Unquestionably, when so read, 
 the mannerisms of Whittier would not 
 appear so conspicuous. Still, no poet 
 needs more to have his work sifted, and 
 the finest productions rescued from the 
 mass of feeble writing in which they are 
 swallowed up. This is pre-eminently the 
 age of rechauffe, especially as regards 
 imaginative literature of the pre-Dar- 
 winian era. Doubtless Mr. Whittier will 
 
THE ARTIST 213 
 
 have at some future time his Matthew 
 Arnold. 
 
 Another of the mannerisms of our poet is 
 his dead set toward the four-foot line with 
 consecutive or alternate rhymes. Almost 
 all of Burns s poetry is written as just de 
 scribed; and it is evident that the Whittier 
 pendulum caught its tick and swing from 
 that of Burns, his early favorite. But see 
 saw rhyme has become unendurable to a 
 person whose ear has been educated by 
 Tennyson and the other Victorian poets. 
 To such a one the poetry of the Queen 
 Anne school is torture. We are pleased 
 when rhymes are so masked, so subtly inter 
 twined, and parted by intervening lines, that 
 each shall seem like a delicate echo of that 
 which preceded it, the assonance just re 
 membered, and no more. In this art Ten 
 nyson is the master. 
 
 A minor mannerism of Whittier is his 
 frequent use of the present participle in ing 
 with the verb to be; "is flowing," fp is 
 shining," etc. We had become disgusted 
 with this thing by its occurrence in the 
 gush of innumerable poetasters, and had 
 
214 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 often wondered whence it came. After 
 reading Whittier the mystery was solved: 
 we had previously been reading his imi 
 tators. Perhaps it would not seem so 
 odious if met with for the first time in his 
 own writings. The jingle of the ing evi 
 dently caught Whittier s rhyme-loving ear, 
 and sometimes it really has a very pretty 
 effect. 
 
 As to the originality of our poet there 
 is this to be said: He has a distinctively 
 national spirit or vision; he is democratic 
 in his feelings, and treats of indigenous 
 subjects. But his vehicle, his poetic forms 
 and handling, have no originality whatever. 
 He is democratic, not so powerfully and 
 broadly as Whitman, but more unaffectedly 
 and sincerely. He has not the magnificent 
 prophetic vision, or Vorstellungskraft^ of 
 Whitman, any more than he has the crush 
 ing mastodon-steps of Whitman s ponder 
 ous rhythm. But he has thrown himself, 
 with trembling ardor and patriotism, into 
 the life of his country. It is this fresh, 
 New-World spirit that entitles him to be 
 called original: he is non-European. He 
 
THE ARTIST. 215 
 
 has not travelled much, nor mingled in the 
 seething currents of Western and Southern 
 life; but his strong sympathy has gone forth 
 over the entire land. He also reflects faith 
 fully the quiet scenes of his own Merrimack 
 Valley. From his descriptions of these 
 scenes we receive the impression of fresh 
 ness and originality; but this is due rather 
 to new combinations than to new creations. 
 His descriptions are careful copies, but are 
 not so transfused with his own soul as to 
 have absolute originality. 
 
 But enough of this analysis. One almost 
 regrets using a critical pen at all in discuss 
 ing such a writer. It would be ungracious 
 to call to a severe account one who places 
 the most modest estimate upon his own 
 work, and who has distinctly stated that, 
 up to "about the year 1865, his writings 
 were simply episodical, something apart 
 from the real object and aim of [his] life." 
 It is hard to criticise severely one who is 
 unjust to himself through excess of diffident 
 humility. In the exquisite Proem to his 
 complete poems he would fain persuade us 
 that he cannot breathe such notes as those 
 of 
 
216 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 " The old melodious lays 
 
 Which softly melt the ages through, 
 
 The songs of Spenser s golden days, 
 Arcadian Sidney s silvery phrase, 
 
 Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew." 
 
 But not so, O gentle minstrel of Essex! 
 There are poems of thine which thousands 
 prefer to the best of Spenser s or Sidney s, 
 and which will continue to exist as long 
 as beauty is its own excuse for being. Thou 
 too hast been in Paradise, to fetch thence 
 armfuls of dewy roses for our delight; not 
 mounting thither by the " stairway of sur 
 prise," but along the common highway of 
 daily duty and noble endeavor, unmindful 
 of the dust and heat and charing burdens, 
 but singing aloud thy songs of lofty cheer, 
 all magically intertwined with pictures of 
 wayside flowers, and the homely beauty of 
 lowliest things. 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 21 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POEMS SERIATIM. 
 
 AMONG the three or four critical papers 
 on Whittier that have up to this time been 
 published, there is one that is marked by 
 exceptional vigor; namely, the admirable 
 philosophical analysis by Mr. David A. 
 Wasson, published in the Atlantic Monthly 
 for Marclfc 1864. The author gladly ac 
 knowledges his indebtedness to this paper 
 for several things, chiefly for its keen 
 aper$u into the nature of Whittier s genius, 
 and the proper psychological grouping of 
 his poems. Mr. Wasson s classification can 
 hardly be improved upon in its general 
 features. He divides the literary life of the 
 poet into three epochs, The Struggle for 
 Life, The Culture Epoch, and The Epoch 
 of Poetic Realism; and between each of 
 these he places transitional periods. The 
 lines of his classification, however, are too 
 
21 S JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 sharply drawn, and the epochs seem too 
 minutely subdivided. Moreover, the pres 
 ent writer would add an introductory or 
 preparatory period; in other respects it 
 seems to him that the grouping is as correct 
 as such mathematical measurements of a 
 poet s development can be. Suppose we 
 group and name the poet s mental epochs 
 as follows: 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. INTRODUCTORY. 1830-1833. 
 
 During this quiet, purely literary epoch, 
 Whittier -published " Legends of Ne\v Eng 
 land" and "Moll Pitcher," and edited the 
 w Literary Remains of Brainard." 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. STORM AND STRESS. 1833-1853. 
 
 The beginning of this period was marked 
 by the publication of "Justice and Expedi 
 ency," and during its continuance were 
 written most of the anti-slavery productions, 
 the Indian poems, many legendary lays and 
 prose pieces, religious lyrics, and "Songs 
 of Labor." The latter, being partially free 
 from didacticism, leads naturally up to the 
 third period. 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 219 
 
 THIRD PERIOD. TRANSITION. 1853-1860 
 This Mr. Wasson calls the epoch of cul 
 ture and religious doubt, the central poems 
 of which are " Chapel of the Hermits " and 
 " Questions of Life." We now begin to 
 see a love of art for art s sake, and there 
 are fewer moral stump-speeches. The in 
 dignation of the reformer is giving place 
 to the calm repose of the artist. And such 
 ballads as "Mary Garvin " and "Maud 
 Muller" form the introduction to the cul 
 minating (or fourth) epoch in the poet s 
 creative life. 
 
 FOURTH PERIOD. RELIGIOUS AND ARTISTIC REPOSE. 
 1860- 
 
 During this time have been written nearly 
 all the author s great works, namely, his 
 beautiful ballads, as well as "Snow-Bound" 
 and "The Tent on the Beach." The liter 
 ary style is now mature. The beautiful is 
 sought for its own sake, both in nature and 
 
 o / 
 
 in lowly life. It is a season of trust and 
 naive simplicity. 
 
 The works produced during the Intro 
 ductory period have already been discussed 
 in the biographical portion of this volume. 
 
220 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Before passing rapidly in review some of 
 the more important detached poems of the 
 three latter periods (reserving a number of 
 poems for consideration by groups), we 
 must be allowed to offer a few criticisms 
 on the earlier poems in general, meaning 
 by this the ones published previous to the 
 w Songs of Labor " in 1850. These earlier 
 productions are to be commended chiefly 
 for two things: (i) the subjects are drawn 
 from original and native sources, and (2) the 
 slavery poems are full of moral stamina 
 and fiery indignation at oppression. There 
 are single poems of great merit and beauty. 
 But the style of most of them is unoriginal, 
 being merely an echo of that of the English 
 Lake School. Whittier s poetical develop 
 ment has been a steady growth. His genius 
 matured late, and in his early poems there 
 is little promise of the exquisite work of 
 his riper years, unless it is a distinct indi 
 cation of his rare power of telling a story 
 in verse. It must be remembered that 
 when Whittier began to write, American 
 literature had yet to be created. There 
 was not a single great American poem, with 
 the exception of Bryant s " Thanatopsis." 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 221 
 
 The prominent poets of that time Percival, 
 Brainard, Trumbull, Joel Barlow, Hillhouse, 
 Pierpont, Dana, Sprague are all forgotten 
 now. The breath of immortality was not 
 upon anything they wrote. A national litera 
 ture is a thing of slow growth. Every writer 
 is insensibly influenced by the intellectual 
 tone of his neighbors and contemporaries. 
 Judged in the light of his early disadvan 
 tages, and estimated by the standard of that 
 time, Whittiers first essays are deserving 
 of much credit, and they have had a distinct 
 aesthetic and moral value in the develop 
 ment of American literature and the Ameri 
 can character. But their deficiencies are 
 very grave. There is a good deal of com 
 monplace, and much extravagance of rhet 
 oric. There are a great many "Lines" 
 called forth by circumstances not at all 
 poetical in their suggestions. Emotion and 
 rhyme and commonplace incident are not 
 enough to make a poem. One cannot em 
 balm the memory of all one s friends in 
 verse. In casting about for an explanation 
 of the circumstance that our poet has so 
 often chosen tame and uninspiring themes 
 for his poems, we reach the conclusion that 
 
222 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 it is due to his solitary and uneventful life, 
 and to the subdued and art-chilling atmos 
 phere of his Quaker religion. You get, at 
 any rate, the impression of intellectual flac- 
 ciclity from many of the productions of the 
 period we are considering: the theme is 
 too weak to support the poetical structure 
 reared upon it. The poems and essays are 
 written by one untoughened and unvitalized 
 by varied and cheerful intercourse with men 
 and affairs. There is occasional bathos, 
 also. The poet enters upon the treatment 
 of a slight facetious theme with all the 
 earnestness and dignity of historical illus 
 tration that we have been used to find in his 
 serious poems, when, bump! we stumble 
 upon a pumpkin, or Fox s leathern breeches, 
 or washing-day, or something similarly 
 bathetic. 
 
 A minor fault of this period is the too fre 
 quent interruption of explanatory notes. We 
 find the same blemish in Longfellow s early 
 work. A prose explanation of a poem 
 always injures it. 
 
 At the opening of the complete poetical 
 works of Whittier stand two long Indian 
 
POEMS SERF A TIM. 22$ 
 
 poems, with their war-paint and blood, 
 like scarlet maples at the entrance of an 
 aboriginal forest. The first of these poems, 
 r Mogg Megone," is every way inferior to 
 the second, or " The Bridal of Pennacook." 
 " Mogg Megone " was published in 1836, 
 and "The Bridal of Pennacook" in 1848. 
 Mr. Whittier half apologizes for retaining 
 the former of these in his complete works. 
 It is a pity that he spared it. Its strength 
 is frenzy; its rhetoric, fustian and extrava 
 ganza; its juvenility unredeemed by any 
 thing except a certain fresh and realistic 
 diction, or nomenclature. It is picturesque, 
 in portions somewhat dramatic, and as thrill 
 ing as a play by Buffalo Bill and his troupe 
 of stage braves. In style it is an echo of 
 Scott s " Lady of the Lake " or "Marmion." 
 The bathos of the toothache scene is very 
 ludicrous. 
 
 In ff The Bridal of Pennacook " we have 
 an Indian idyl of unquestionable power and 
 beauty, a descriptive poem full of the cool, 
 mossy sweetness of mountain landscapes, 
 and although too artificial and subjective 
 for a poem of primitive life, yet saturated 
 \vith the imagery of the wigwam and the 
 
224 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 forest. A favorite article of food with the 
 Indians of Northern Ohio was dried bear s- 
 meat dipped in maple syrup. There is a 
 savor of the like ferity and sweetness in this 
 poem. It is almost wholly free from the 
 melodrama and fustian of "Mogg Megone," 
 and (that test of all tests) it is pleasant 
 reading. Its two cardinal defects are lack 
 of simplicity of treatment, and tenuity or 
 triviality of the subject, or plot. The story 
 is lost sight of in a jungle of verbiage and 
 description. In contrasting such a poem 
 with " Hiawatha," we see the wisdom of 
 Longfellow in choosing an antique vehicle, 
 or rhythmic style. Aborigines never talk 
 as do Whittier s sachems. The sentences 
 of an Indian brave are as abrupt and sharp 
 as the screams of an eagle. The set speeches 
 of the North American Indians are always 
 full of divers stock metaphors about natural 
 scenery, wild animals, totems, and spirits, 
 and are so different from those of civil 
 ized life that an expert can instantly detect 
 a forgery or an imitation. The incongruity 
 of the poem in attributing the complex and 
 refined emotions of civilized life to the sav 
 age is so ludicrous as seriously to mar the 
 pleasure of the reader. 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 22$ 
 
 In plan the poem is like the rr Decam 
 eron," the " Princess," the " Canterbury 
 Tales," and "Tales of a Wayside Inn." 
 The different portions are supposed to be 
 related by live persons, a lawyer, a clergy 
 man, a merchant and his daughter, and the 
 poet, who are all sight-seeing in the White 
 Mountains. The opening description, in 
 blank verse, conveys a vague but not very 
 powerful impression of sublimity. The 
 musical nomenclature of the red aborigines 
 is finely handled, and such words as Penna- 
 cook, Babboosuck, Contoocook, Bashaba, 
 and Weetamoo chime out here and there 
 along the pages with as silvery a sweetness 
 as the Tuscan words in Macaulay s" " Lays." 
 At the wedding of Weetamoo we have 
 
 " Pike and perch from the Stmcook taken, 
 Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, 
 Cranberries picked from the Squamscot bog, 
 And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog : 
 
 And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands 
 In the river scooped by a spirit s hands, 
 Garnished with spoons of shell and horn, 
 Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn." 
 
 The following stanza on the heroine, 
 Weetamoo, is a fine one: 
 
226 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 " Child of the forest ! strong and free, 
 
 Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair, 
 She swam the lake, or climbed the tree, 
 
 Or struck the flying bird in air. 
 O er the heaped drifts of winter s moon 
 
 Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter s way ; 
 And, dazzling in the summer noon, 
 The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of 
 spray i " 
 
 The ? < Song of Indian Women," at the 
 close of ff The Bridal of Pennacook," is ad 
 mirable for melody, weird and wild beauty, 
 and naturalness. It is a lament for the lost 
 Weetamoo, who, unfortunate in her married 
 life, has committed suicide by sailing over 
 the rapids in her canoe : 
 
 "The Dark Eye has left us, 
 
 The Spring-bird has flown ; 
 On the pathway of spirits 
 
 She wanders alone. 
 
 The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore, 
 Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We hear it no more ! 
 
 O mighty Sowanna ! 
 
 Thy gateways unfold, 
 From thy wigwams of sunset 
 
 Lift curtains of gold ! 
 
 Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o er, 
 Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We see her no more ! " 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 22/ 
 
 There are two minor Indian poems by 
 Whittier that have the true ring; namely, 
 the * Truce of Piscataqua" and "Funeral 
 Tree of the Sokokis." The latter well- 
 known poem is pitched "in as high and sol 
 emn a key as Platen s "Grab im Busento," 
 a poem similar in theme to Whittier s: 
 
 " They heave the stubborn trunk aside, 
 The firm roots from the earth divide, 
 The rent beneath yawns dark and wide. 
 
 And there the fallen chief is laid, 
 In tasselled garbs of skins arrayed, 
 And girded with his wampum-braid." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 " In der wogenleeren Hohlung wiihlten sie empor die 
 
 Erde, 
 Senkten tief hinein den Leichnam, mit der Riistung 
 
 auf dem Pferde. 
 Deckten dann mit Erde wieder ihn und seine siolze 
 
 Habe." 
 
 Platen. 
 
 In the empty river-bottom hurriedly they dug the death- 
 pit, 
 
 Deep therein they sank the hero with his armor and his 
 war-steed, 
 
 Covered then with earth and darkness him and all his 
 splendid trappings. 
 
228 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 When the reader, who has worked gloom 
 ily along through Whittier s anti-slavery and 
 miscellaneous poems, reaches the " Songs 
 of Labor," he feels at once the breath of a 
 fresher spirit, as a traveller who has been 
 toiling for weary leagues through sandy 
 deserts bares his brow with delight to the 
 coolness and shade of a green forest through 
 whose thick roof of leaves the garish sun 
 light scarcely sifts. We feel that in these 
 poems a new departure has been made. 
 The wrath of the reformer has expended 
 itself, and the poet now returns, with mind 
 elevated and more tensely keyed by his 
 moral warfare, to the study of the beautiful 
 in native themes and in homely life. Jr The 
 Shipbuilders," "The Shoemakers," "The 
 Fishermen," and "The Huskers " are genu 
 ine songs: and more shame to the crafts- 
 
 o / 
 
 men celebrated if they do not get them 
 set to music, and sing them while at their 
 work. One cannot help feeling that Walt 
 Whitman s call for some one to make 
 songs for American laborers had already 
 been met in a goodly degree by these 
 spirited " Songs of Labor." What work 
 man would not be glad to carol such 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 229 
 
 stanzas as the following, if they were set to 
 popular airs? 
 
 " Hurrah ! the seaward breezes 
 
 Sweep down the bay amain ; 
 Heave up, my lads, the anchor ! 
 
 Run up the sail again ! 
 Leave to the lubber landsmen 
 
 The rail-car and the steed : 
 The stars of heaven shall guide us, 
 
 The breath of heaven shall speed." 
 
 The Fishermen. 
 
 " Ho ! workers of the old time styled 
 
 The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 
 Young brothers of the ancient guild, 
 
 Stand forth once more together ! 
 Call out again your long array, 
 
 In the olden merry manner ! 
 Once more, on gay St. Crispin s day, 
 
 Fling out your blazoned banner ! 
 
 Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 
 
 How falls the polished hammer ! 
 Rap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 
 
 A quick and merry clamor. 
 Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 
 
 The glossy vamp around it, 
 And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 
 
 Whose gentle fingers bound it ! " 
 
 The Shoemakers. 
 
 The publication of " The Chapel of the 
 Hermits" and r? Questions of Life," in 1853, 
 
230 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 marks (as has been said) the period of cul 
 ture and of religious doubt, doubt which 
 ended in trust. In this period we have 
 such genuine undidactic poems as w The 
 Barefoot Boy." 
 
 " Blessings on thee, little man, 
 Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! 
 With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
 And thy. merry whistled tunes ; 
 With thy red lip, redder still 
 Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 
 With the sunshine on thy face, 
 Through thy torn brim s jaunty grace." 
 
 Also, such fine poems as " Flowers in Win 
 ter" and "To My Old Schoolmaster;" as 
 well as the excellent ballads, "Maud Mul- 
 ler," " Kathleen," and " Mary Garvin." 
 
 The period in Whittier s life from about 
 1858 to 1868 we may call the Ballad Dec 
 ade,* for within this time were produced most 
 of his immortal ballads. We say immor 
 tal, believing that if all else that he has 
 written shall perish, his finest ballads will 
 carry his name down to a remote posterity. 
 
 * The beginning of this decade nearly coincides with the 
 fourth or final period in our classification, upon the consider 
 ation of which we shall now enter. 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 231 
 
 "The Tent on the Beach" is mainly a series 
 of ballads; and "Snow-Bound," although 
 not a- ballad, is still a narrative poem closely 
 allied to that species of poetry, the differ 
 ence between a ballad and an idyl being 
 that one is made to be sung and the other 
 to be read: both narrate events as they 
 occur, and leave to the reader all sentiment 
 and reflection. 
 
 The finest ballads of Whittier have the 
 power of keeping us in breathless sus 
 pense of interest until the denouement or 
 the catastrophe, as the case may be. The 
 popularity of " Maud Muller " is well de 
 served. What a rich and mellow translu- 
 cence it has! How it appeals to the 
 universal heart ! And yet "The Witch s 
 Daughter " and " Telling the Bees " are 
 more exquisite creations than " Maud Mul 
 ler": they have a spontaneity, a subtle 
 pathos, a sublimated sweetness of despair 
 that take hold of the very heart-strings, and 
 thus deal with deeper emotions than such 
 light, objective ballads as "Maud Muller" 
 and " Skipper Ireson s Ride." But the sur 
 face grace of the two latter have of course 
 
232 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 made them the more popular, just as the 
 " Scarlet Letter " finds greater favor with 
 most people than does "The House of the 
 Seven Gables, although Hawthorne rightly 
 thought the "Seven Gables" to be his finest 
 and subtlest work. 
 
 Mark the Chaucerian freshness of the 
 opening stanzas of " The Witch s Daugh 
 ter": 
 
 " It was the pleasant harvest time, 
 
 When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
 And garrets bend beneath their load, 
 
 And the old swallow-haunted barns 
 Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
 Through which the moted sunlight streams. 
 
 And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
 The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
 
 And the loose hay-mow s scented locks 
 
 Are filled with summer s ripened stores, 
 Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
 From their low scaffolds to their eaves." 
 
 A companion ballad to The Witch s 
 Daughter" is "The Witch of Wenham," 
 a poem almost equal to it in merit, and like 
 it ending happily. These ballads do not 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 233 
 
 quite attain the almost supernatural sim 
 plicity of Wordsworth s " Lucy Gray " and 
 ? We are Seven"; but they possess an 
 equal interest, excited by the same poetical 
 qualities. r Telling the Bees," however, 
 seems to the writer as purely Words- 
 worthian as anything Wordsworth ever 
 wrote : 
 
 " Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 
 Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 
 
 How the tears spring to the eyes in read 
 ing this immortal little poem! The bee 
 hives ranged in the garden, the sun "tan 
 gling his wings of fire in the trees." the 
 
 o o O * 
 
 dog whining low, the old man "with his 
 cane to his chin," we all know the scene: 
 its every feature appeals to our sympathies 
 and associations. 
 
 "The Double-headed Snake of Newbury" 
 is a whimsical story, in which the poet 
 waxes right merry as he relates how 
 
 " Far and wide the tale was told, 
 Like a snowball growing while it rolled. 
 The nurse hushed with it the baby s cry ; 
 And it served, in the worthy minister s eye, 
 To paint the primitive serpent by. 
 
234 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Cotton Mather came galloping down 
 
 All the way to Newbury town, 
 
 With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, 
 
 And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; 
 
 Stirring the while in the shallow pool 
 
 Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, 
 
 To garnish the story, with here a streak 
 
 Of Latin, and there another of Greek : 
 
 And the tales he heard and the notes he took, 
 
 Behold ! are they not in his Wonder-Book ? " 
 
 A word about Whittier s " Prophecy of 
 Samuel Sewall." It seems that old Judge 
 Sewall made the prophecies of the Bible his 
 favorite study. One of his ideas was that 
 America was to be the site of the New Jeru 
 salem. Toward the end of his book entitled 
 "Phenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica; . . . 
 or ... a Description of the New Heaven 
 as it makes to those who stand upon the 
 New Earth" (1697), he gives utterance to 
 the triumphant prophecy that forms the sub 
 ject of Whittier s poem. His language is 
 so quaint that the reader will like to see the 
 passage in SewalPs own words: 
 
 "As long as Plum Island shall faithfully 
 keep the commanded post, notwithstanding 
 all the hectoring words and hard blows of 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 235 
 
 the proud and boisterous ocean; as long as 
 any salmon or sturgeon shall swim in the 
 streams of Merrimac, or any perch or pick 
 erel in Crane Pond; as long as the sea-fowl 
 shall know the time of their coming, and 
 not neglect seasonably to visit the places 
 of their acquaintance; as long as an} cattle 
 shall be fed with the grass growing in 
 the meadows, which do humbly bow down 
 themselves before Turkey Hill; as long as 
 any sheep shall walk upon Old-Town Hills, 
 and shall from thence pleasantly look down 
 upon the River Parker, and the fruitful 
 marshes lying beneath; as long as any free 
 
 and harmless doves shall find a white oak 
 
 
 
 or other tree within the township, to perch, 
 or feed, or build a careless nest upon, and 
 shall voluntarily present themselves to per 
 form the office of gleaners after barley-har 
 vest; as long as Nature shall not grow old 
 and dote, but shall constantly remember to 
 give the rows of Indian corn their educa 
 tion by pairs; so long shall Christians be 
 born there, and being first made meet, shall 
 from thence be translated to be made par 
 takers of the inheritance of the saints in 
 
 light- 
 
236 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Moses Coit Tyler, in his " History of 
 American Literature," II., p. 102 (note), 
 says: Whittier speaks of Newbury as 
 Sewall s native town, but Sewall was 
 born at Horton, England. He also de 
 scribes Sewall as an c old man, propped on 
 his staff of age when he made this proph 
 ecy; but Sewall was then forty-five years 
 ofd." 
 
 There are two or three other ballads in 
 which Whittier is said to have made histori 
 cal blunders. It really does not seem of 
 much importance whether he did or did not 
 get the precise facts in each case. The 
 important point is that he made beautiful 
 ballads. But it will be right to give, in 
 brief, the objections that have been brought 
 against ff Skipper Ireson s Ride " and " Bar 
 bara Frietchie." "The King s Missive" 
 will be discussed in another place. 
 
 Apropos of Skipper Ireson, Mr. John W. 
 Chadwick has spoken as follows in Har 
 per s Monthly for July, 1874: 
 
 " In one of the queerest corners of the 
 town [Marblehead], there stands a house 
 
POEMS S.ERIATIM. 237 
 
 as modest as the Lee house was magnifi 
 cent. So long as he lived it was the home 
 of f Old Flood Oirson, whose name and 
 fame have gone farther and fared worse 
 than any other fact or fancy connected with 
 his native town. Plain, honest folk don t 
 know about poetic license, and I have often 
 heard the poet s conduct in the matter of 
 Skipper Ireson s ride characterized with 
 profane severity. He unwittingly departed 
 from the truth in various particulars. The 
 wreck did not, as the ballad recites, contain 
 any of his own town s-people. Moreover, 
 the most of those it did contain ivere saved 
 by a whale-boat from Provincetown. It was 
 off Cape Cod, and not in Chaleur Bay, that 
 the wreck was deserted; and the desertion 
 was in this wise: It was in the night that 
 the wreck was discovered. In the darkness 
 and the heavy sea it was impossible to give 
 assistance. When the skipper went below, 
 he ordered the watch to lie by the wreck 
 till doming ; but the watch wilfully dis 
 obeyed, and afterward, to shield them 
 selves, laid all the blame upon the skipper. 
 Then came the tarring and feathering. The 
 women, whose role in the ballad is so strik- 
 
238 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 ing, had nothing to do with it. The vehicle 
 was not a cart, but a dory; and the skipper, 
 instead of being contrite, said, ? I thank you 
 for your ride. I asked one of the skippers 
 contemporaries what the effect was on the 
 skipper. Cowed him to death, said he, 
 cowed him to death. He went skipper 
 again the next year, but never afterward. 
 He had been dead only a year or two when 
 Whittier s ballad appeared. His real name 
 was not Floyd, as Whittier supposes, but Ben 
 jamin, Flood being one of those nicknames 
 that were not the exception, but the rule, in 
 the old fishing-days. For many years before 
 his death the old man earned a precarious 
 living by dory-fishing in the bay, and selling 
 his daily catch from a wheelbarrow. When 
 old age and blindness overtook him, and his 
 last trip was made, his dory was hauled up 
 into the lane before his house, and there 
 went to rot and ruin. . . . The hoarse re 
 frain of Whittier s ballad is the best-known 
 example of the once famous Marblehead 
 dialect, and it is not a bad one. To what 
 extent this dialect was peculiar to Marble- 
 head it might be difficult to determine. 
 Largely, no doubt, it was inherited from 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 239 
 
 English ancestors. Its principal delight 
 consisted in pronouncing o for a, and a 
 for o. For example, if an old-fashioned 
 Marbleheader wished to say he ? was born 
 in a barn, he would say, ? I was barn in a 
 born. The e was also turned into a, and 
 even into o, and the v into iv. That ves 
 sel s stern became that wessel s starn, or 
 f storn. I remember a schoolboy declaim 
 ing from Shakspere, ( Thou little walliant, 
 great in willany. There was a great deal 
 of shortening. The fine name Crownin- 
 shield became Grounsel, and Florence be 
 came Flurry, and a Frenchman named 
 Blancpied found himself changed into 
 Blumpy. Endings in une and ing were 
 alike changed into in. Misfortune was mis- 
 fartin , and fishing was always fishin . There 
 were words peculiar to the place. One of 
 these was planchment for ceiling. Crim 
 was another, meaning to shudder with cold, 
 and there was an adjective, crimmy. Still 
 another was ditch, meaning to stick badly, 
 surely an onomatopoetic word that should 
 be naturalized before it is too late. Some 
 of the swearing, too, was neither by the 
 throne nor footstool, such as Dahst my 
 
240 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 eyes! and c Godfrey darmints. The ancient 
 dialect in all its purity is now seldom used 
 It crops out here and there sometimes where 
 least expected, and occasionally one meets 
 with some old veteran whose speech has 
 lost none of the ancient savor." 
 
 Now for "Barbara Frietchie." The inci 
 dent of the poem was given to Whittier by 
 the novelist, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth. 
 The philanthropist, Dorothea Dix, investi 
 gated the case in Frederick, and she says 
 that Barbara did wave the flag, etc. An 
 army officer also made affidavit of the truth 
 of the lines. A young Southern soldier has 
 declared that he was present, and that his 
 was one of the shots that hit the flagstaff! 
 
 On the other side are Samuel Tyler and 
 Jacob Engelbrecht, the latter an old and 
 greatly respected citizen of Frederick, and 
 living directly opposite Barbara s house. 
 Jacob wrote to the Baltimore Sun, saying 
 that Stonewall Jackson s corps marched 
 through another street, and did not approach 
 Dame Frietchie s house at all. Lee s column 
 did pass it, he says; but he, who stood 
 watching at his window, saw no flag what- 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 24! 
 
 ever at her window. He says that when 
 ten days later General McClellan passed 
 through the town she did exhibit a flag. 
 
 Finally, General Jubal Early comes upon 
 the witness stand, and testifies that as the 
 Southern troops passed through Frederick, 
 there were only two cases of waving of 
 Union flags; one of these was by a little 
 girl, about ten years old, who stood on the 
 platform of a house and waved incessantly 
 a little " candy flag," and cried in a dull, 
 monotonous voice: "Hurrah for the Stars 
 and Stripes! Down with the Stars and 
 Bars!" No one molested her. The other 
 case was that of a coarse, slovenly-looking 
 woman, who rushed up to the entrance of 
 an alley and waved a dirty United States 
 flag. 
 
 Such is the testimony In re "Barbara 
 Frietchie," and if the reader thinks it worth 
 while to puzzle over the matter, he has 
 before him all the criteria he is likely to 
 get. 
 
 "The Pipes at Lucknow" is a poem full 
 of martial fire and lyric rush, the subject 
 a capital one for a poet. A little band of 
 
242 JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTIER. 
 
 English, besieged in a town in the heart of 
 India, and full of despair, hear in the dis 
 tance the sweetest sound that ever fell upon 
 their ears, i. ., the shrill pibroch of the Mac- 
 Gregor Clan; and 
 
 " When the far-off dust-cloud 
 To plaided legions grew, 
 . Full tenderly and blithesomely 
 The pipes of rescue blew ! " 
 
 Another group of ballads comprises "Cob 
 bler Keezars Vision," "Amy Wentworth," 
 and "The Countess." In the first of these, 
 old Cobbler Keezar, of the early Puritan 
 times, by virtue of a mystic lapstone, sees a 
 vision of our age of religious tolerance, and 
 wonders greatly thereat : 
 
 " Keezar sat on the hillside 
 Upon his cobbler s form, 
 With a pan of coals on either hand 
 To keep his waxed-ends warm. 
 
 And there, in the golden weather, 
 
 He stitched and hammered and sung; 
 
 In the brook he moistened his leather, 
 In the pewter mug his tongue." 
 
 The ballad of "Amy Wentworth" treats 
 of the same subject as "Among The Hills," 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 243 
 
 namely, a superior woman, of the white- 
 handed caste, falling in love w r ith and mar 
 rying a broad-shouldered, brown-handed 
 hero, with a right manly heart and brain. 
 
 Many and many a poem of Whittier s is 
 spoiled by its too great length, a thing 
 that is fatal in a lyric. The long prelude 
 to "Amy Wentworth " should have been 
 omitted. 
 
 The scene of the lovely poem entitled 
 " The Countess " is laid in Rocks Village, 
 a part of East Haverhill, and lying on the 
 Merrimack, where 
 
 " The river s steel-blue crescent curves 
 
 To meet, in ebb and flow, 
 The single broken wharf that serves 
 For sloop and gundelow. 
 
 With salt sea-scents along its shores 
 
 The heavy hay-boats crawl, 
 The long antennae of their oars 
 
 In lazy rise and fall. 
 
 Along the gray abutment s wall 
 
 The idle shad-net dries ; 
 The toll-man in his cobbler s stall 
 
 Sits smoking with closed eyes." 
 
 Whittier dedicates his poem to his father s 
 
244 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 family physician, Elias Weld, of Rocks 
 Village. The story which forms the subject 
 of the poem is a romantic one, and exqui 
 sitely has our poet embalmed it in verse. 
 From a sketch by Rebecca I. Davis, of East 
 Ilaverhill, the following facts relating to the 
 personages that figure in the poem have 
 been culled : 
 
 The Countess was Miss Mary Ingalls, 
 daughter of Henry and Abigail Ingalls, of 
 Rocks Village. She was born in 1786, 
 and is still remembered by a few old inhab 
 itants as a young girl of remarkable beauty. 
 She was of medium height, had long golden 
 curls, violet eyes, fair complexion, and rosy 
 cheeks, and was exceedingly modest and 
 lovable. It was in the year 1806 that a little 
 company of French exiles fled from the 
 Island of Guadaloupe on account of a blood} 7 
 rebellion or uprising of the inhabitants. 
 Among the fugitives were Count Francis de 
 Vipart and Joseph Rochemont de Poyen. 
 The company reached Newburyport. The 
 two gentlemen just mentioned settled at 
 Rocks Village, and both married there. 
 Mary Ingalls was only a laborer s daughter, 
 and of course her marriage with the count 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 245 
 
 created a sensation in the simple, rustic 
 community. The count was a pleasant, 
 stately man, and a fine violinist. The bridal 
 dress, says Miss Davis, was of a pink satin, 
 with an overdress of white lace; her slip 
 pers also were of white satin. The count 
 delighted to lavish upon her the richest ap 
 parel, yet nothing spoiled the sweet modesty 
 of her disposition. After one short year of 
 happy married life the lovely wife died. 
 Assiduous attention to a sick mother had 
 brought on consumption. In the village 
 God s-acre her gray tombstone is already 
 covered with moss. 
 
 The count returned to his native island 
 overwhelmed with grief. In after years, 
 however, he married again. When he died 
 he was interred in the family burial-place 
 of the De Viparts at Bordeaux. He left 
 several children. 
 
 Mr. Stedman, in his fine synthetic survey of 
 American poetry, published in The Century, 
 has remarked that most of our early poetry 
 and painting is full of landscape. The 
 loveliest season in America is the autumn, 
 when, as Whittier beautifully says, the woods 
 
246 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 "wear their robes of praise, the south winds 
 softly sigh," 
 
 " And sweet, calm days in golden haze 
 Melt down the amber sky." 
 
 We have plenty of idyls of autumn color, 
 like Buchanan Read s w Closing Scene," an d 
 portions of Longfellow s " Hiawatha." But 
 American winter landscapes are as poetical 
 as those of autumn.* It is probable that 
 
 * What is the subtle fascination that lurks in such bits of 
 winter poetry as the following, collected by the writer out 
 of his reading? 
 
 " Yesterday the sullen year 
 Saw the snowy whirlwind fly." Gray. 
 
 " All winter drives along the darkened air." Thomson. 
 
 " High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached 
 The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch ; 
 Mute hangs the hooded bell ; the tombs lie buried." Grahame. 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! thou snow-smitten wood of 
 Troy, and mountains of Ida." Sophocles. 
 
 " O hard, dull bitterness of cold." Whittier. 
 
 " And in the narrow house o death / 
 
 Let winter round me rave." Burns. 
 
 " The mesmerizer, Snow, 
 With his hand s first sweep 
 Put the earth to sleep." Robert Browning. 
 
 " And the caked snow is shuffled 
 From the plough-boy s heavy shoon." Keats. 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 247 
 
 the scarcity of snow-idyls hitherto is due to 
 the supposed cheerlessness of the snow. 
 But with the rapid multiplication of winter 
 comforts, our nature-worship is cautiously 
 broadening so as to include even the stern 
 beauty of winter. There are already a good 
 many signs of this in literature. We have 
 had, of late, lovely little snow-and-winter 
 vignettes in prose by John Burroughs of New 
 York, and Edith Thomas of Ohio; and there 
 is plenty of room for further study of winter 
 in other regions of the United States. The 
 most delicate bit of realistic winter poetry in 
 literature is Emerson s w Snow-Storm." Mr. 
 Whittier is an ardent admirer of that writer 
 as what poet is not? and his own pro 
 ductions show frequent traces of Emersonian- 
 isms. He has prefixed to " Snow-Bound " 
 a quotation from the w Snow-Storm," and 
 there can scarcely be a doubt that to the 
 countless obligations we all owe Emerson 
 must be added this: that he inspired the 
 writing of Whittier s finest poem, and the 
 best idyl of American rural life. It is too 
 complex and diffusive fully to equal in 
 artistic purity and plastic proportion the 
 "Cotter s Saturday Night" of Burns; but it 
 
248 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 is much richer than that poem in felicitous 
 single epithets, which, like little wicket 
 doors, open up to the eye of memory many 
 a long-forgotten picture of early life. 
 
 "Snow-Bound" was published in 1860, 
 and was written, Mr. Whittier has said, "to 
 beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber." 
 The poet has obeyed the canon of Lessing, 
 and instead of giving us dead description 
 wholly, has shown us his characters in action, 
 and extended his story over three days and 
 the two intervening nights, that is to say, 
 the main action covers that time: the whole 
 time mentioned in the poem is a week. It 
 is unnecessary to give here any further 
 account of the idyl than has already been 
 furnished in the account of Whittier s boy 
 hood. 
 
 "The Tent on the Beach " is a cluster of 
 ballads. In accordance with a familiar 
 fiction, they are supposed to be sung, or told, 
 by several persons, in this case three, namely, 
 the poet himself, " a lettered magnate " (James 
 T. Fields), and a traveller (Bayard Taylor). 
 All of the poems are readable, and many of 
 them are to be classed among Whittier s 
 best lyrics, "The Wreck of Rivermouth," 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 249 
 
 "The Changeling," and " Kallundborg 
 Church " are masterpieces in the line of 
 ballads. In " The Dead Ship of Harpswell " 
 we have the fine phrase, 
 
 " O hundred-harbored Maine ! " 
 
 Whittier has now become almost a perfect 
 master of verbal melody. Hearken to this : 
 
 " Oho ! " she muttered, " ye re brave to-day ! 
 But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 
 The broth will be cold that waits at home ; 
 For it s one to go, but another to come ! 
 
 There is a light and piquant humor about 
 some of the interludes of the "Tent on the 
 Beach." The song in the last of these 
 contains a striking and original stanza 
 concerning the ocean: 
 
 " Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 
 
 As kneels the human knee, 
 Their white locks bowing to the sand, 
 The priesthood of the sea ! " 
 
 "Among the Hills" is a little farm-idyl, 
 or love-idyl, of the New Hampshire moun 
 tain land, and bearing some resemblance to 
 Tennyson s " Gardener s Daughter." It is 
 an excellent specimen of the poems of 
 
250 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Whittier that reach the popular heart, and 
 engage its sympathies. In the remotest 
 farm-houses of the land you are almost sure 
 to find among their few books a copy of 
 Whittier s Poems, well-thumbed and soiled 
 with use. The opening description of the 
 prelude to "Among the Hills " could not be 
 surpassed by Bion or Theocritus. In this 
 poem a fresh interest is excited in the reader 
 by the fact that the city woman falls in love 
 with a manly farmer, thus happily reversing 
 the old, old story of the city man wooing 
 and winning the rustic beauty. The farmer 
 accuses the fair city maid of coquetry. She 
 replies: 
 
 " Nor frock nor tan can hide the man ; 
 
 And see you not, my farmer, 
 How weak and fond a woman waits 
 Behind this silken armor ? 
 
 1 love you : on that love alone, 
 
 And not my worth, presuming, 
 Will you not trust for summer fruit 
 The tree in May-day blooming ? 
 
 Alone the hangbird overhead, 
 His hair-swung cradle straining, 
 
 Looked down to see love s miracle, 
 The giving that is gaining." 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 251 
 
 In w Lines on a Fly-Leaf," the author of 
 w Snow-Bound " gives in his hearty adherence 
 to that movement for the elevation of woman, 
 and the securing of her rights as a human 
 being, which is perhaps the most significant 
 and important of the many agitations of this 
 agitated age. 
 
 The poem w Miriam," like w The Preacher," 
 is one of those long sermons, or meditations 
 in verse, which Whittier loves to spin out 
 of his mind in solitude. It contains in 
 " Shah Akbar " a fine Oriental ballad. 
 
 The narrative poem called "The Penn 
 sylvania Pilgrim," published in 1872, has no 
 striking poetical merit, but is valuable and 
 readable for the pleasant light in which it 
 sets forth the doings of the quaint people 
 of Germantown and the Wissahickon, near 
 Philadelphia, nearly two hundred years ago. 
 It introduces us to the homes and hearts of the 
 little settlements of German Quakers under 
 Francis Daniel Pastorius, the Mystics under 
 the leadership of Magister Johann Kelpius, 
 and the Mennonites under their various 
 leaders. The Pennsylvania Pilgrim" is 
 
252 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 a poem for Quakers, for Philadelphians who 
 love their great park and its Wissahickon 
 drives, and for antiquarian historical students. 
 We may regret, if we choose, that the poet 
 has not succeeded in embalming the memory 
 of the Germantown Quakers in such felicitous 
 verse as other poets have sung the virtues 
 and ways of the Puritans, but we cannot 
 deny that he has garnished with the flowers 
 of poetry a dry historical subject, and so 
 earned the gratitude of a goodly number of 
 students and scholars. 
 
 In *The King s Missive, and Other 
 Poems," published in 1881, the most notable 
 piece is " The Lost Occasion," a poem on 
 Daniel Webster, finer even than the much- 
 admired "Ichabod," published many years 
 previously. " The Lost Occasion " is pitched 
 in a high, solemn, and majestic strain. It 
 is a superb eulogy, full of .magnanimity and 
 generous forgiveness. Listen to a few 
 stanzas : 
 
 " Thou 
 
 Whom the rich heavens did endow 
 With eyes of power and Jove s own brow, 
 With all the massive strength that fills 
 Thy home-horizon s granite hills, 
 
POEMS SERIATIM. 2$$ 
 
 Whose words, in simplest home-spun clad, 
 The Saxon strength of Caedmon had, 
 
 Sweet with persuasion, eloquent 
 
 In passion, cool in argument, 
 
 Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes 
 
 As fell the Norse god s hammer blows, 
 
 Too soon for us, too soon for thee, 
 Beside thy lonely Northern sea, 
 Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, 
 Laid wearily down thy august head." 
 
 The poem of ff The King s Missive " calls 
 for such extended discussion that a brief 
 chapter shall be devoted to it. 
 
254 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE KING S MISSIVE. 
 
 " Under the great hill sloping bare 
 
 To cove and meadow and Common lot, 
 In his council chamber and oaken chair, 
 Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott" 
 
 So run the opening lines of the histor 
 ical poem contributed by Whittier to the 
 first volume of the Memorial History of 
 Boston (1880). While the governor is thus 
 sitting, in comes Clerk Rawson with the un 
 welcome news that banished Quaker Shat- 
 tuck, of Salem, has returned from abroad. 
 The choleric governor swears that he will 
 now hew in pieces the pestilent, ranting 
 Quakers. Presently Shattuck is ushered in: 
 "Off with the knave s hat," says the gov 
 ernor. As they strike off his hat he smil 
 ingly holds out the Missive, or mandamus, 
 of Charles II. The governor immediately 
 asks him to cover, and humbly removes his 
 own hat. The king s letter commands him 
 
THE KINGS MISSIVE. 2$$ 
 
 to cease persecuting the Quakers. After 
 consultation with the deputy governor, Bel- 
 iingham, he obeys, and the then imprisoned 
 Quakers file out of jail with words of praise 
 on their lips. 
 
 The poem fascinates us, for the incident 
 is dramatic, and focusses in a single pictur 
 esque situation all the features of that little 
 historical episode of two hundred years ago, 
 /. ., the persecution of the Quakers by the 
 Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
 A brief setting forth of the facts connected 
 \vith this persecution will not only be full 
 of intrinsic interest, but is indispensable 
 to a right understanding of the Quaker 
 poet s inherited character, as well as to a 
 comprehension of his prose and poetry. 
 One whose ancestors have been persecuted 
 for generations will inherit a loathing of 
 oppression, as Whittier has done. And this 
 hatred of tyranny will be intensified in the 
 case of one who is thoroughly read in the 
 literature of that persecution, and is in quick 
 and intimate sympathy with the victims, 
 as Whittier is. 
 
 But first a word more about the ff King s 
 Missive." Joseph Besse, in his " Collection 
 
256 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 of the Sufferings of the People called Qua 
 kers " (a sort of " Fox s Book of Martyrs," 
 in two huge antique volumes), says [II., 
 p. 226] that the principal instrument in pro 
 curing the royal mandamus (styled by 
 Whittier the King s Missive) was Edward 
 Burroughs,* who went to the king and told 
 him that "There was a Vein of innocent 
 Blood open d in his Dominions, which if it 
 were not stopt might over-run all. To 
 which the king replied, But I will stop that 
 Vein." : Accordingly, in the autumn of 1661, 
 Samuel Shattuck was selected to bear a let 
 ter to America. The London Friends hired 
 Ralph Goldsmith, also a Friend, to convey 
 Shattuck to his destination. They paid him 
 300 for the service. The ship entered 
 Boston Harbor on a Sunday in the latter 
 part of November, 1661. 
 
 "The Townsmen," says Besse, "seeing a 
 
 * " There is a story," says Dr. George E. Ellis, " that Bur 
 roughs got access to the king out of doors, while his Majesty 
 was playing tennis. As Burroughs kept on his hat while 
 accosting the king, the latter gracefully removed his plumed 
 cap and bowed. The Quaker, put to the blush, said, Thee 
 need st not remove thy hat. Oh, replied the king, it is of 
 no consequence, only that when the king and another gentle 
 man are talking together it is usual for one of them to take 
 off his hat. " 
 
THE KINGS MISSIVE. 
 
 Ship with English Colours, soon came on 
 board, and asked for the Captain? Ralph 
 Goldsmith told them, He was the Com 
 mander. They asked, Whether he had any 
 Letters f He answered, Yes. But withal 
 told them, He would not deliver them that 
 Day. So they returned on shore again, 
 and reported, that There were many Quakers 
 come, and that Samuel Shattock (who they 
 knew had been banished on pain of Death) 
 was among them. But they knew nothing 
 of his Errand or Authority. Thus all was 
 kept close, and none of the Ship s Company 
 suffered to go on shore that Day. Next 
 morning Ralph Goldsmith, the Commander, 
 with Samuel Shattock, the King s Dep 
 uty, went on shore, and sending the Boat 
 back to the Ship, they two went directly 
 through the Town to the Governour s House, 
 and knockt at the Door: He sending a Man 
 to know their Business, they sent him Word, 
 that Their Message was from the King of 
 England, and that they would deliver it to 
 none but himself. Then they were ad 
 mitted to go in, and the Governour came to 
 them," and commanded Samuel Shattoctfs 
 Hat to be taken off, and having received the 
 
258 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Deputation and the Mandamus, he laid off 
 his own Hat; and ordering Shattock s Hat to 
 be given him again, perused the Papers, and 
 then went out to the Deputy-Governour s, 
 bidding the King s Deputy and the Master 
 of the Ship to follow him: Being come to 
 the Deputy-Governour, and having consulted 
 him, he returned to the aforesaid two Per 
 sons and said, We shall obey his Majesty s 
 Command. After this, the Master of the 
 Ship gave Liberty to his Passengers to come 
 on shore, which they did, and had a religious 
 Meeting with their Friends of the Town, 
 where they returned Praises to God for his 
 Mercy manifested in this wonderful Deliver 
 
 ance." 
 
 The persecution, it is true, only ceased 
 for about a year (the next recorded whip 
 ping-order bearing date of December 22, 
 1662). But the Quakers were greatly en 
 couraged by the interposition in their favor. 
 
 In an address before the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, Dr. George E. Ellis, of 
 Boston, read a paper criticising Mr. Whit- 
 tier s "King s Missive." This address was 
 published in the Proceedings of the Society 
 for March, 1881. In the "Memorial History 
 
THE KING S MISSIVE. 259 
 
 of Boston " [I., p. 1 80] he asserts that the 
 Quakers were all rf of low rank, of mean 
 breeding, and illiterate." He says that they 
 courted persecution, and that they were a 
 pestilent brood of ranters, disturbers of the 
 public peace, and dreaded by the leaders of 
 the infant Commonwealth as they would 
 have dreaded the cholera. He quotes Roger 
 Williams, who wrote of the Quakers that 
 they were " insufferably proud and conten 
 tious," and advised a " due and moderate 
 restraint of their incivilities." Dr. Ellis, it 
 is true, takes the theoretical ground of "the 
 equal folly and culpability of both parties in 
 the tragedy," but seems entirely to nullify 
 this statement by his apparently unbiassed, 
 but really partisan treatment of the subject. 
 When you have finished his paper you per 
 ceive that the impression left on your mind 
 is that the really bitter and unrelenting Pu 
 ritan persecutors were long-suffering, angelic 
 natures, while their victims, the Quakers, 
 were mere gallows dogs. His theoretical 
 position is summed up in the following 
 words: 
 
 f? The crowning folly or iniquity in the 
 course of the Puritans was in following up 
 
260 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 their penal inflictions, through banishments, 
 imprisonments, fines, scourgings, and mutila 
 tions, to the execution on the gallows of four 
 martyr victims. But what shall we say of 
 the persistency, the exasperating contempt- 
 uousness and defiance, the goading, madden 
 ing obstinacy, and reproaching invectives of 
 those who drove the magistrates, against 
 their will, to vindicate their own insulted 
 authority, and to stain our annals with inno 
 cent blood.? " Memorial History of Boston, 
 I., 1882. 
 
 Dr. Ellis is right in holding that some of 
 the Quakers were gadflies of obstinacy, and 
 full of self-righteous pride; but he fails to 
 tell us of the patience, Christian sweetness, 
 and meekness of character of the majority 
 of them; and it is only when w r e turn to the 
 pages of Fox and Besse that we see the in 
 adequate character of such a picture as that 
 drawn by Dr. Ellis. In the plain, naive 
 annals of Besse, the hard-heartedness and 
 haughty pride of the Puritan magistrates 
 (traits still amply represented in their de 
 scendants) are thrown into the most strik 
 ing relief. They glower over their victims 
 like tigers \ they are choked with their 
 
THE KING S MISSIVE. 26 1 
 
 passions; they spurn excuses and palliatives; 
 they demand blood. 
 
 In the Boston Daily Advertiser for March 
 29, 1881, Mr. Whittier published a long 
 reply to Dr. Ellis, in which he fortified the 
 positions taken by him in his ballad, show 
 ing that he did not mean to hold up Charles 
 II. as a consistent friend of toleration, and 
 that there must have been a general jail 
 delivery in consequence of the receipt of the 
 mandamus. He says: 
 
 t? The charge that the Quakers who suf 
 fered were vagabonds and ? ignorant, low 
 fanatics, is unfounded in fact. Mary Dyer, 
 who was executed, was a woman of marked 
 respectability. She had been the friend and 
 associate of Sir Henry Vane and the minis 
 ters Wheelwright and Cotton. The papers 
 left behind by the three men who were 
 hanged show that they were above the com 
 mon class of their day in mental power and 
 genuine piety. John Rous, who, in execu 
 tion of his sentence, had his right ear cut off 
 by the constable in the Boston jail, was of 
 gentlemanly lineage, the son of Colonel 
 Rous of the British army, and himself the 
 betrothed of a high-born and cultivated 
 
262 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 young English lady. Nicholas Upsall was 
 one of Boston s most worthy and substantial 
 citizens, yet was driven in his age and in 
 firmities, from his home and property, into 
 the wilderness." 
 
 Mr. Whittier further remarks: 
 
 r Dr. Ellis has been a very generous, as 
 well as ingenious defender of the Puritan 
 clergy and government, and his labors in 
 this respect have the merit of gratuitous dis 
 interestedness. Had the very worthy and 
 learned gentleman been a resident in the 
 Massachusetts colony in i56o, one of his 
 most guarded doctrinal sermons would have 
 brought down upon him the wrath of clergy 
 and magistracy. His Socinianism would have 
 seemed more wicked than the in ward light 
 of the Quakers; and, had he been as r dog 
 gedly obstinate as Servetus at Geneva (as 
 I do him the justice to think he would have 
 been), he might have hung on the same gal 
 lows with the Quakers, or the same shears 
 which clipped the ears of Holder, Rous, and 
 Copeland might have shorn off his own." 
 
 Let us look a little more closely at the 
 evidence on both sides. 
 
 In the fourth chapter of the seventh book 
 
THE KING S MISSIVE. 263 
 
 of Cotton Mather s " Magnalia " we have a 
 specimen of Quaker rant. After stating that 
 he is opposed to the capital punishment of 
 Quakers, but advises shaving of the head, or 
 blood-letting, the proud and scornful old 
 doctor concludes as follows: 
 
 " Reader, I can foretell what usage I shall 
 rind among the Quakers for this chapter of 
 our church-history} for a worthy man that 
 writes of them has observed, for pride and 
 hypocrisie, and hellish reviling against 
 the painful ministers of Christ, I know no 
 people can match them. Yea, prepare, 
 friend Mather, to be assaulted with such 
 language as Fisher the Quaker, in his pam 
 phlets, does bestow upon such men as Dr. 
 Given; t ho u fiery fighter and green-headed 
 trumpeter; thou hedgehog and grinning 
 dog; thou bastard that tumbled out of the 
 mouth of the Babilonish bawd; thou mole; 
 thou tinker; thou lizzard; thou bell of no 
 metal, but the tone of a kettle; thou wheel- 
 barrow; thou whirlpool; thou whirlegig. 
 O thou firebrand; thou adder and scor 
 pion; thou louse; thou cow-dung; thou 
 moon-calf; thou ragged tatterdemallion; 
 thou Judas; thou livest in philosophy and 
 
264 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 logick which are of the devil. And then 
 let Penn the Quaker add, Thou gorman 
 dizing Priest, one of the abominable tribe; 
 thou bane of reason, and beast of the earthy 
 thou best to be spared of mankind; thou 
 mountebank priest. These are the very 
 words, (I wrong them not!) which they 
 .vomit out against the best men in the Eng 
 lish nation, that have been so hardy as to 
 touch their light within: but let the quills 
 of these porcupines fly as fast as they will, 
 I shall not feel them! Yea, every stone that 
 these Kildebrands throw at me, I will wear 
 as a pearl" 
 
 As an offset to this quaint and amusing 
 tirade, and to the charges of Dr. Ellis, one 
 may read the following words of Whittier, 
 and, by striking a general average between 
 all the speakers, get a tolerable approxima 
 tion to the exact truth. Mr. Whittier says : - 
 
 "Nor can it be said that the persecution 
 grew out of the ? intrusion, * indecency, and 
 ? effrontery of the persecuted. 
 
 "It owed its origin to the settled purpose 
 of the ministers and leading men of the col 
 ony to permit no difference of opinion on 
 religious matters. They had banished the 
 
THE KING S MISSIVE. 265 
 
 Baptists, and whipped at least one of them. 
 They had hunted down Gorton and his 
 adherents; they had imprisoned Dr. Child, 
 an Episcopalian, for petitioning the Gen 
 eral Court for toleration. They had driven 
 some of their best citizens out of their 
 jurisdiction, with Ann Hutchinson, and the 
 gifted minister, Wheelwright. Any dissent 
 on the part of their own fellow-citizens 
 was punished as severely as the heresy of 
 
 strangers. 
 
 "The charge of f indecency comes with 
 ill-grace from the authorities of the Massa 
 chusetts Colony. The first Quakers who 
 arrived in Boston, Ann Austin and Mary 
 Fisher, were arrested on board the ship 
 before landing, their books taken from them 
 and burned by the constable, and they them 
 selves brought before Deputy Governor Bel- 
 lingham, in the absence of Endicott. This as- 
 
 O f 
 
 tute magistrate ordered them to be stripped 
 naked and their bodies to be carefully 
 examined, to see if there was not the DeviPs 
 mark on them as witches. They were then 
 sent to the jail, their cell window was 
 boarded up, and they were left without 
 food or light, until the master of the vessel 
 
266 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 that brought them was ordered to take them 
 to Barbadoes. When Endicott returned, he 
 thought they had been treated too leniently, 
 and declared that he would have had them 
 whipped. 
 
 "After this, almost every town in the 
 province was favored with the spectacle of 
 aged and young women stripped to the mid 
 dle, tied to a cart-tail and dragged through 
 the streets and scourged without mercy by 
 the constable s whip. It is not strange that 
 these atrocious proceedings, in two or three 
 instances, unsettled the minds of the victims. 
 Lydia Wardwell of Hampton, who, with 
 her husband, had been reduced to almost 
 total destitution by persecution, was sum 
 moned by the church of which she had been 
 a member to appear before it to answer to 
 the charge of non-attendance. She obeyed 
 the call by appearing in the unclothed con 
 dition of the sufferers whom she had seen 
 under the constable s whip. For this she 
 was taken to Ipswich and stripped to the 
 waist, tied to a rough post, which tore her 
 bosom as she writhed under the lash, and 
 severely scourged to the satisfaction of a 
 crowd of lookers-on at the tavern. One, 
 
THE KING S MISSIVE. 267 
 
 and only one, other instance is adduced in 
 the person of Deborah Wilson of Salem. 
 She had seen her friends and neighbors 
 scourged naked through the street, among 
 them her brother, who was banished on pain 
 of death. She, like all Puritans, had been 
 educated in the belief of the plenary inspi 
 ration of Scripture, and had brooded over 
 the strange signs and testimonies of the 
 Hebrew prophets. It seemed to her that 
 the time had arrived for some similar demon 
 stration, and that it was her duty to walk 
 abroad in the disrobed condition to which 
 her friends had been subjected, as a sign 
 and warning to the persecutors. Whatever 
 of ? indecency there was in these cases was 
 directly chargeable upon the atrocious per 
 secution. At the door of the magistrates 
 and ministers of Massachusetts must be laid 
 the insanity of the conduct of these unfortu 
 nate women. 
 
 " But Boston, at least, had no voluntary 
 Godivas. The only disrobed women in its 
 streets were made so by Puritan sheriffs and 
 constables, who dragged them amidst jeer 
 ing crowds at the cart-tail, stripped for tl^e 
 lash, which in one instance laid open with 
 
268 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 a ghastly gash the bosom of a young 
 mother! " * 
 
 We may conclude this discussion by giv 
 ing a few instances of Quaker persecutions, 
 in addition to those mentioned by Mr. Whit- 
 tier. In England the members of the sect 
 suffered a" whole Jeremiad of woes: they 
 were dragged through the streets by the 
 hair of the head, incarcerated in loathsome 
 dungeons, beaten over the head with muskets, 
 pilloried, whipped at the cart s-tail, branded, 
 their tongues bored with red-hot irons, and 
 their property confiscated to the State. One 
 First Day, George Fox went into the "steeple- 
 house " of Tickhill. "I found," he says in 
 his Journal, "the priest and most of the 
 chief of the parish together in the chancel. 
 I went up to them and began to speak; but 
 they immediately fell upon me; the clerk up 
 with his Bible, as I was speaking, and struck 
 me in the face with it, so that my face 
 
 * Mr. Whittier stated to a member of the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society that it was his intention "at some time to 
 prepare a full and exhaustive history of the relations of Puri 
 tan and Quaker in the seventeenth century." It may be added 
 that the newspaper articles quoted above, with the several 
 replications of their authors, may all be found in the Proceed 
 ings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1880-81 (see 
 the index of that volume). 
 
THE KING^S MISSIVE. 269 
 
 gushed out with blood, and I bled exceed 
 ingly in the steeple-house. The people 
 cried, Let us have him out of the church. 
 When they had got me out, they beat me 
 exceedingly, threw me down, and threw me 
 over a hedge. They afterwards dragged 
 me through a house into the street, stoning 
 and beating me as they dragged me along; 
 so that I was all over besmeared with blood 
 and dirt. They got my hat from me, which 
 I never had again." Fox was at various 
 times thrust into dungeons filled ankle-deep 
 with ordure, and was shot at, beaten with 
 stones and clubs, etc. 
 
 One evening he passed through Cam 
 bridge: "When I came into the town,, the 
 scholars, hearing of me, were up and ex 
 ceeding rude. I kept on my horse s back, 
 and rode through them in the Lord s power; 
 but they unhorsed Amor Stoddart before he 
 could get to the inn. When we were in the 
 inn, they were so rude in the courts and in 
 the streets, that the miners, colliers, and 
 carters could never be ruder. The people 
 of the house asked us what we would have 
 for supper. f Supper! said I, * were it not 
 that the Lord s power is over them, these 
 
270 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 rude scholars look as if they would pluck us 
 in pieces and make a supper of us. The} 
 knew I was so against the trade of preach 
 ing, which they were there as apprentices to 
 learn, that they raged as bad as ever Diana s 
 craftsmen did against Paul." 
 
 In the declaration made by the Quakers to 
 Charles II. it appears that in New England, 
 up to that time, "thirty Quakers had been 
 whipped; twenty-two had been banished on 
 pain of death if they returned; twenty-five 
 had been banished upon the penalty of being 
 whipped, or having their ears cut, or being 
 branded in the hand if they returned; three 
 had their right ears shorn off by the hang 
 man ; one had been branded in the hand 
 with the letter H; many had been impris 
 oned; many fined; and three had been put 
 to death, and one (William Leddra) was 
 soon after executed." 
 
 Besse, in his w Sufferings of the Quakers," 
 states that one William Brand, a man in 
 years, was so brutally whipped by an in 
 furiated jailer, in Salem, that " His Back and 
 Arms were bruised and black, and the Blood 
 hanging as it were in Bags under his Arms, 
 and so into one was his Flesh beaten that the 
 
THE KING S MISSIVE. 2/1 
 
 Sign of a particular Blow could not be seen." 
 And the surgeon said that rf His Flesh would 
 rot from off his Bones e er the bruized Parts 
 would be brought to digest." To all this must 
 be added the humiliating fact that four persons 
 were hanged on Boston Common for the 
 crime of being Quakers. Their names were 
 Marrnaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, 
 William Leddra, and Mary Dyer. 
 
2/2 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 POEMS BY GROUPS. 
 
 BESIDES w The King s Missive," Whittier 
 has written numerous other Quaker poems, 
 the finest of which are "Cassandra South- 
 wick," "The Old South," and the spirited, 
 ringing ballad of "The Exiles." In the first 
 two of these the poet shows a delicate intui 
 tion into the feelings that might have 
 prompted the Quaker women who witnessed 
 for the truth in Boston two hundred years 
 
 ago. 
 
 There is nothing in American literature, 
 unless it be the anti-slavery papers of 
 Thoreau, which equals the sevenfold-heated 
 moral indignation of Whittier s poems on 
 slavery, a wild melody in them like that 
 of Highland pibrochs; now plaintively and 
 piteously pleading, and nowburningwith pas 
 sion, irony, satire, scorn; here glowing with 
 
POEMS BY GROUPS. 2/3 
 
 tropical imagery, as in " Toussaint L Ouver- 
 ture," and " The Slaves of Martinique," and 
 there rising into lofty moral atmospheres of 
 faith when all seemed dark and hopeless. 
 Every one knows the power of a " cry " (a 
 song like "John Brown s Body," or a pithy 
 sentence or phrase) in any great popular 
 movement. There can be no doubt that 
 Whittier s poems did as much as Garrison s 
 editorials to key up the minds of people to 
 the point required for action against slavery. 
 Some of these anti-slavery pieces still pos 
 sess great intrinsic beauty and excellence, 
 as, for example, "Toussaint L Ouverture," 
 "The Farewell," "The Slave Ships," and 
 " The Slaves of Martinique." In these four 
 productions there is little or none of the 
 dreary didacticism of most of the anti-slavery 
 poems, but a simple statement of pathetic, 
 beautiful fact, which is left to make its own 
 impression. Another powerful group of 
 these slavery poems is constituted by the 
 scornful, mock-congratulatory productions, 
 such as " The Hunters of Men," " Clerical 
 Oppressors," " The Yankee Girl," " A Sab 
 bath Scene," " Lines suggested by Reading 
 a State Paper wherein the Higher Law is 
 
2/4 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Invoked to Sustain the Lower One," and 
 fr The Pastoral Letter." * The sentences in 
 these stanzas cut like knives and sting like 
 shot. The poltroon clergy, especially, looks 
 pitiful, most pitiful, in the light of Whittier s 
 noble scorn and contempt. 
 
 " Randolph of Roanoke " is a noble tribute 
 to a political enemy by one who admired in 
 him the man. The long poem, "The Pano 
 rama," must be considered a failure, poetically 
 speaking. Its showman s pictures and 
 preachings do not get hold of our sympathies 
 very strongly. 
 
 The Tyrtaean fire in Whittier was so 
 thoroughly kindled by the anti-slavery con 
 flict that it has never wholly gone out. . All 
 through his life his hand has instinctively 
 sought the old war-lyre whenever a voice was 
 to be raised in honor of Freedom. The formal 
 close of the anti-slavery period with him 
 may be said to be marked by " Laus Deo," 
 a triumphant, almost ecstatic shout of joy 
 uttered on hearing the bells ring when the 
 Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery 
 was passed. 
 
 * "The Pastoral Letter" was an idiotic manifesto of the 
 clergy of Massachusetts aimed at the Grimke" sisters. 
 
POEMS BY GROUPS. 2/5 
 
 Naturally, the war poems of a Quaker 
 and even of our martial Whittier could 
 not be equal to his peace poems. Still there 
 are many strong passages in the lyrics writ 
 ten by Whittier during the civil war of 1861 
 65. At first he counsels that we allow dis 
 union rather than kindle the lurid fires of 
 fratricidal war: 
 
 " Let us press 
 
 The golden cluster on our brave old flag 
 In closer union, and, if numbering less, 
 Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain." 
 
 A Word for the Hour. 
 
 So he wrote in January, 1861. But 
 afterward he becomes a pained but sadly 
 approving spectator of the inevitable con 
 flict: 
 
 " Then Freedom sternly said : I shun 
 No strife nor pang beneath the sun, 
 When human rights are staked and won. 
 
 The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
 Through Jersey snows the march I led, 
 My voice Magenta s charges sped. " 
 
 The Watchers. 
 
 As a Friend, he and his brethren could 
 not personally engage in war. But they 
 
2/6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 could minister to the sick and dying, and 
 care for the slave. 
 
 " THE SLAVE IS OURS ! " 
 
 he says, 
 
 " And we may tread the sick-bed floors 
 
 Where strong men pine, 
 And, down the groaning corridors, 
 Pour freely from our liberal stores 
 The oil and wine." 
 
 Anniversary Poem. 
 
 "Barbara Frietchie" is, of course, the 
 best of these war lyrics. The "Song of the 
 Negro Boatmen " was set to music and sung 
 from Maine to California during the war 
 days : 
 
 " De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 
 
 We ll hab de rice an corn ; 
 O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear 
 De driver blow his horn ! " 
 
 After "Voices of Freedom," in the com 
 plete edition of Whittier s poems, come 
 a cluster of Biblical, or Old Testament 
 poems, " Palestine," " Ezekiel," " The 
 Wife of Manoah to her Husband," "The 
 Cities of the Plain," "The Crucifixion," 
 and " The Star of Bethlehem." The best 
 of these, perhaps, are " Cities of the Plain," 
 
POEMS BY GROUPS. 2/7 
 
 and "Crucifixion," the former intense and 
 thrilling in style, and suggesting the " Sen 
 nacherib " and "Waterloo" of Byron; the 
 latter a high, solemn chant, and well calcu 
 lated to touch the religious heart. Whittier 
 has drawn great refreshment and inspiration 
 from the thrice- winnowed wheat and the liv 
 ing-water wells of Old Testament literature. 
 
 Allusion has already been made to the 
 hymns of our poet. Hymn-book makers 
 have had in his poems a very quarry to 
 work. The hymn tinkers, too, have not 
 spared Whittier even while he was alive, 
 and many of his sacred lyrics have been 
 " adapted " after the manner of hymn-book 
 makers. Dr. Martineau s " Hymns of 
 Praise" (1874) contains seven of Whittier s 
 religious songs; the " Unitarian Hymn and 
 Tune Book" (1868) also has seven; the 
 Plymouth Collection (1855) has eleven, and 
 Longfellow and Johnson s " Hymns of the 
 Spirit" (1864) has twenty-two. 
 
 The Essex minstrel has written quite a 
 number of children s poems, such as "The 
 Robin," "Red Riding Hood," and "King 
 Solomon and the Ants." He has also com 
 piled two books of selections for children, 
 as has already been mentioned. 
 
278 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Like many authors, Whittier has been at 
 tracted, in the autumn of his life, to the rich 
 rields of Oriental literature. His Oriental 
 poems show careful and sympathetic study 
 of eastern books. r? The Two Rabbis " and 
 " Shah Akbar " are especially fine. The 
 little touch in the former of "the small 
 weeds that the bees bow with their weight" 
 is a very pretty one. In " The King s Mis 
 sive " we have a few " Oriental Maxims," 
 being paraphrases of translations from the 
 Sanscrit. "The Dead Feast of the Kol- 
 Folk," and "The Khan s Devil," are also 
 included in the same volume. 
 
 The Oriental vein was not worked by Mr. 
 Whittier until after the appearance of Mr. 
 D. A. Wasson s article, in which the idea 
 of the poet s resemblance to the Semitic 
 type was presented, and it is possible that 
 this suggested to him that he ought to 
 browse a little in those scented pastures of 
 the morning land. Mr. Whittier has also 
 made successful studies in Norse litera 
 ture, for which his beautiful ballads, the 
 Dole of Jarl Thorkell," " Kallundborg 
 Church," and "King Volmer and Elsie" 
 are vouchers. 
 
PROSE WRITINGS. 279 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
 IT is to be feared that the greater portion 
 of the prose writings of Whittier will be 
 caviare to many readers of this day. He 
 himself almost admits as much in the pref 
 atory note to the second volume of the com 
 plete edition of his essays. That many of 
 the papers are entertaining reading, and that 
 they are written often in a light and genial 
 and vivacious style, is true; and, as he him 
 self hints, they will at least be welcomed 
 and indulgently judged by his personal 
 friends and admirers. His prose work was 
 done in a time seething with moral ideas; 
 the air was full of reforms; the voice of 
 duty sounded loud in men s consciences, 
 and the ancestral buckler called 
 
 (t Self-clanging, from the walls 
 In the high temple of the soul ! " 
 
 Lowell, 
 
280 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 That particular era is now passed. The 
 great secular heart is now in its diastole, or 
 relaxation. Hence it is that the philan 
 thropic themes discussed by Mr. Whittier 
 thirty years ago (and most of his essays are 
 of a philanthropic character) possess but a 
 languid interest for the present reading pub 
 lic. The artistic essays, however, are 
 charming, and possess permanent interest. 
 Let us except from these the long pro 
 ductions, " Margaret Smith s Journal " and 
 "My Summer with Dr. Singletary." Some 
 have thought these to be the best papers 
 in the collection. But to many they must 
 appear frigid and old-fashioned in the ex 
 treme. They seem aimless and sprawling, 
 mere esquisses^ tentative work in a field 
 in which the author was doubtful of his 
 powers. They would ordinarily be classed 
 under the head of Sunday-school literature. 
 It has been suggested that the idea of "Mar 
 garet Smith s Journal " might have been 
 derived from the " Diary of Lady Wil- 
 loughby," which appeared about the same 
 time. "The Journal is a reproduction of 
 the antique in style and" atmosphere, and is 
 said to be very successful as far as that 
 
PROSE WRITINGS. 281 
 
 goes. But certainly the iteration of the 
 archaism, w did do," w did write," etc., gets 
 to be very wearisome. The "Journal " pur 
 ports to be written by a niece of Edward 
 Rawson, Secretary of Massachusetts from 
 1650-1686. The scene is laid in Newbury, 
 where Rawson settled about 1636. We 
 have pleasant pictures of the colonial life of 
 the day, of the Quakers and Indians and 
 Puritans, and, on the whole, the sketch is 
 well worth reading by historical students. 
 
 "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches" 
 consists chiefly of newspaper articles on 
 modern reformers. They were originally 
 contributed to the National Era. The 
 portraits drawn are those of John Bun van, 
 Thomas Ellwood, James Nayler, Andrew 
 Marvell, John Roberts, Samuel Hopkins, 
 Richard Baxter, and, among Americans, 
 William Leggett and Nathaniel Peabody 
 Rogers, both anti-slavery reformers and 
 journalists; and, lastly, Robert Dinsmore, 
 the rustic Scotch-American poet of Haver- 
 hill. The last three papers mentioned are 
 the best. 
 
 The second volume of Mr. Whittier s 
 prose writings bears the title w Literary 
 
282 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 Recreations and Miscellanies," and consists 
 of various reviews, thumb-nail essays, and 
 indigenous folk-and-nature studies, made in 
 the region of the Merrimack. These last 
 are of most interest, and indicate the field 
 which Mr. Whittier would have cultivated 
 with most success. In the reviews of the 
 volume the newspapery tone and journalist 
 diction are rather unpleasantly conspicuous. 
 As a critic, our poet is not very successful, 
 because he is too earnest a partisan, too 
 merciless and undistinguishing in his invec 
 tive or too generous in his praise. For 
 example, what he says about Carlyle, in 
 reviewing that author s infamous "Discourse 
 on the Negro Question," is true as far as it 
 goes. But of the elementary literary canon, 
 that the prime function of the critic is to put 
 himself in the place of the one he is criti 
 cising, of this law Mr. Whittier has not, 
 practically, the faintest notion. He con 
 siders everything from the point of view of 
 the Quaker or of the reformer. 
 
 Numerous specimens of Mr. Whittier s 
 prose have already been given in various parts 
 of this volume, but for the sake of illustration 
 we may add two more. For an example of 
 
PROSE WRITINGS. 283 
 
 his serious style take the following from 
 "Scottish Reformers": "He who under 
 takes to tread the pathway of reform who, 
 smitten with the love of truth and justice, 
 or, indignant in view of wrong and insolent 
 oppression, is rashly inclined to throw him 
 self at once into that great conflict which the 
 Persian seer not untruly represented as a 
 war between light and darkness would do 
 well to count the cost in the outset. If he 
 can live for Truth alone, and, cut off from 
 the general sympathy, regard her service as 
 its own r exceeding great reward ; if he can 
 bear to be counted a fanatic and crazy 
 visionary; if, in all good nature, he is ready 
 to receive from the very objects of his solici 
 tude abuse and obloquy in return for dis 
 interested and self-sacrificing efforts for their 
 welfare; if, with his purest motives mis 
 understood and his best actions perverted 
 and distorted into crimes, he can still hold 
 on his way and patiently abide the hour 
 when the whirligig of Time shall bring 
 about its revenges ; if, on the whole, he is 
 prepared to be looked upon as a sort of 
 moral outlaw or social heretic under good 
 society s interdict of food and fire; and if he 
 
284 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 is well assured that he can, through all this, 
 preserve his cheerfulness and faith in man, 
 let him gird up his loins and go forward 
 in God s name. He is fitted for his voca 
 tion y he has watched all night by his armor. 
 . . . Great is the consciousness of right. 
 Sweet is the answer of a good conscience. 
 He who pays his whole-hearted homage to 
 truth and duty, who swears his life-long 
 fealty on their altars, and rises up a Nazarite 
 consecrated to their service, is not without 
 his solace and enjoyment when, to the eyes 
 of others, he seems the most lonely and 
 miserable. He breathes an atmosphere 
 which the multitude know not of; ? a serene 
 heaven which they cannot discern rests over 
 him, glorious in its purity and stillness. 
 
 For a specimen of our author s vein of 
 pleasantry take the following bit of satire 
 on "The Training": * What s now in the 
 wind? Sounds of distant music float in at 
 my window on this still October air. Hurry 
 ing drum-beat, shrill fife-tones, wailing bugle- 
 notes, and, by way of accompaniment, 
 hurrahs from the urchins on the crowded 
 sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, 
 each martial foot beating up the mud of 
 
PROSE WRITINGS. 285 
 
 yesterday s storm with the slow, regular, 
 up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned 
 churn-dasher. Keeping time with the feet 
 below, some threescore of plumed heads 
 bob solemnly beneath me. Slant sunshine 
 glitters on polished gun-barrels and tinselled 
 uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, 
 as if duly impressed with a sense of the deep 
 responsibility of their position as self-con 
 stituted defenders of the world s last hope, 
 the United States of America, and possibly 
 Texas. They look out with honest, citizen 
 faces under their leathern vizors (their feroc 
 ity being mostly the work of the tailor and 
 tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment 
 as innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder 
 worthy tiller of the Tewksbury Hills, who 
 sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples 
 and turnips without so much as giving a 
 glance at the procession. Probably there is 
 not one of them who would hesitate to divide 
 his last tobacco-quid with his worst enemy. 
 Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon- 
 hearing, Sabbath-keeping Christians; and 
 yet, if we look at the fact of the matter, these 
 very men have been out the whole afternoon 
 of this beautiful day, under God s holy sun- 
 
286 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 shine, as busily at work as Satan himself 
 could wish in learning how to butcher their 
 fellow-creatures, and acquire the true scien 
 tific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican 
 on a bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile 
 in the brain of some unfortunate Briton, 
 urged within its range by the double in 
 centive of sixpence per day in his pocket 
 and the cat-o -nine tails on his back!" 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
APPENDIX /. 289 
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 A QUAKER MEETING. 
 
 As an illustration of Quaker life in America, the 
 author ventures to give here a description of a 
 Quaker meeting published by him some time ago 
 in a family newspaper : 
 
 "On entering the Meeting the first thing that 
 impressed the mind was the severe simplicity of the 
 interior. There was absolutely no ornament ; the 
 seats had no cushions ; there was no musical instru 
 ment, and no pulpit or rostrum. The high-backed 
 pews were unpainted ; the dusty, empty tiers of 
 seats in the galleries were inclined at an almost 
 fearfully steep angle, and the general effect was 
 barn-like. 
 
 " When the subdued rustling noise of the enter 
 ing congregation had at last wholly ceased, the 
 silence that ensued seemed, at first, a little painful, 
 and you wondered how they could possibly sit 
 there for a whole hour without speaking (as some 
 times happens). There was a ludicrous feeling of 
 want of adequate reason for being there. It seemed 
 exquisitely absurd to see those old fellows, with 
 
290 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 broad-brimmed hats on their heads, sitting there 
 upon one side of the house, and the old women, 
 in their huge drab bonnets, on the other side, and 
 all solemnly engaged in looking at each other. 
 They looked like seated, voiceless statues of 
 Serenity, or like deaf-mutes in an asylum. I 
 thought that they would surely break out into 
 a laugh soon, unless some one rose to speak. But 
 I was never more mistaken ; not a facial muscle 
 moved. The majority of the congregation were 
 young people, too, in the conventional dress of 
 society. It was evident that, whatever my feelings 
 might be, they saw nothing in the occasion calcu 
 lated to excite their risibilities ; and, so far as they 
 were concerned, my feeling of pity and embarrass 
 ment was entirely thrown away. After a while 
 I found myself getting used to the silence, and 
 even hoping that it would last for the entire hour. 
 I began to understand that Quaker meetings have 
 a wholly sufficient raison d etre, i. e., that the 
 people may indulge in delightful dreamy dozes and 
 naps. The old men of the congregation were not 
 so interesting as the old ladies. In every com 
 munity the women are more sincerely and more 
 poetically religious than the men. These solid 
 and substantial Quaker men had a worldly, half- 
 insincere air. They were undoubtedly highly moral 
 and philanthropic, and frugal as well. But their 
 Quakerism seemed to sit lightly upon them, to be 
 only a Sunday affair. But of this nothing was to be 
 
APPENDIX /. 291 
 
 discerned in the faces of the five venerable women 
 in gray and drab who occupied the front pews 
 set apart for the aged, and for those distinguished 
 by their oratorical powers. Upon one of these 
 women my attention had been riveted from the 
 moment of my entrance into the church. Her 
 face was one of unusual beauty, long, with reg 
 ular features : high forehead, large drooping eye 
 lids, elevated eyebrows, corners of the mouth just 
 perceptibly depressed, but the whole face show 
 ing, by its firm and classical lines, a character of 
 unusual power and moral stamina. The eyes were 
 cast down and closed in meditation, and upon 
 the face there shone an expression of unutterable 
 peace and tranquillity. Her raiment was immac 
 ulately pure, white neck-handkerchief, brown 
 dress and gloves, and drab bonnet. In the same 
 seat were four other aged women, similarly 
 dressed, and with broad, open brows, and square, 
 massive, and rather expressionless features. All 
 four seemed sunk in a most blissful doze, hands 
 folded, eyes closed, and heads gently inclined upon 
 the breast. But, unfortunately, it would not 
 do to depart wholly into the Land of Nod 
 before the eyes of a whole congregation. So there 
 was an occasional rally, an opening of the eyes, 
 and a piously dignified using of the snowy hand 
 kerchief. There was one charming and sweet- 
 faced old (very old) lady, who showed dangerous 
 symptoms of going off into a profound slumber, 
 
292 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 and perhaps snoring (who knows?). The corners 
 of the mouth of this old lady were so depressed 
 as to give it an exact semi-circular shape. Poor 
 old body ! She had weathered a good many 
 storms. I wished she might be allowed to sleep to 
 her heart s content, and almost resented the con 
 stant watchfulness and the warning nudges of the 
 sister who sat by her side. 
 
 " Presently who should rise to speak but the very 
 woman whose remarkable face had previously caught 
 my attention ! It seemed a pity at first to have 
 the silence broken, but the specimen of Quaker 
 oratory presented could ill have been spared. The 
 speaker rose in her place with dignity, took off her 
 bonnet and handed it to a neighbor, laid her snow- 
 white, half-unfolded pocket-handkerchief on the 
 varnished rail in front of her, and began to speak. 
 Her voice was disenchanting ; it was high-pitched, 
 mechanical, and nasal. Her speech was character 
 ized by sound sense, good ethics, with many 
 flashes of keen womanly insight and poetry. Her 
 grammar was pretty bad, though quaint, as will 
 appear. Her eyes were closed, and she rocked 
 slowly to and fro, keeping time to the high bar 
 baric chant or rude rhythmic song, into which she 
 passed soon after beginning her address. She was 
 evidently the Deborah of the little congregation, 
 and her exhortation was an impassioned, poetical 
 ecstasy of speech, ceaseless and incoherent, re 
 minding one very much of the preaching of the 
 
APPENDIX L 293 
 
 negroes. Here are some of the more quaint and 
 beautiful of the sentences, which I guiltily and 
 stealthily jotted down by holding pencil and paper 
 in my hat : * It is a good thing to be still. We 
 must be resigned to the known and certain will of 
 God. I have thought that, as there are two mir 
 rors, one pure and shining, without a speck upon 
 it, and the other all dusty and blurred ; so are the 
 people : they are divided into two such classes. 
 How important to lay a good foundation of right 
 living ; for, in this mortal life, there are so many 
 adverse winds, and our vessel is so tossed with clouds 
 of dismay, that we can with difficulty see to 
 steer into port. But when the breeze of faith fills 
 the sails we steer safely into the haven of rest, 
 and realize the glorious prospect of immortal life. 
 Here she rose into a wild chant. And, as the 
 shepherd gathers up the weak cf his flock, so will 
 the Father gather up his chil-dern. We shall be 
 able to tread on scorpions, as it ware! Those 
 who go through the furnaces, these become the 
 chil-dern of God. Let us draw water from the 
 well of Salvation. We must go to the school of 
 Christ and learn our lessons there. We must be 
 on the watch-tower continually. We must take 
 up our little faults and mend them, as we take up 
 stitches in a stock-ing ; we must not let these little 
 stitches drop. Here she stopped, but, after a hard, 
 dry, unpoetical talk by one of the brethren, she 
 rose again (although she had already spoken too 
 
294 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 long for the comfort of the audience). She ngain 
 alluded to the fact that we love silence/ being in 
 this matter a little like Carlyle, who was always 
 decrying speech (from everybody except himself). 
 Here are a few sentences from her second 
 speech : 
 
 " As cow-catchers clear the pathway, so do 
 good examples ; they clear the road for after- 
 comers. Our business is with this life. No man 
 never did, and no man never will, return from the 
 other world. That world belongs to the Infinite;- 
 we have nothing to do with it ; let us not speculate, 
 but work. Young people are continually slip 
 ping through the trap-doors of life! We should 
 be like clay in the hands of the potter and come 
 under the mouldering hand of the Eternal. 
 
 When she sat down the audience seemed 
 instinctively aware that the meeting was at an 
 end, and all rose at once and began to move from 
 their places. Then instantly a cheerful hum of 
 voices arose, cordial greetings were given and 
 received, and hands shaken. It was gratifying to 
 see such hearty, cordial manners, such unusual 
 freedom from superstitious gloom, or the cold and 
 heartless selfishness which often characterizes fash 
 ionable church people. It was this atmosphere of 
 cheerful, sunshiny faith and honesty that formed 
 the most attractive feature of the speaking of the 
 hour, and fitly supplemented the other excellent 
 feature of tranquillity and silence." 
 
APPENDIX II. 395 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 WHITTIER AND BURNS. 
 
 At the Burns festival in Washington, 1869, the 
 following letter from John G. Whittier was read : 
 " AMESBURY, ist month, i8th day, 1869. 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND, I thank the club represented 
 by thee for remembering me on the occasion of its 
 annual festival. Though I have never been able 
 to trace my ancestry to the Land o Cakes, I have 
 and I know it is saying a great deal a Scotch 
 man s love for the poet whose fame deepens and 
 broadens with years. The world has never known 
 a truer singer. We may criticise his rustic verse 
 and compare his brief and simple lyrics with the 
 works of men of longer scrolls and loftier lyres ; 
 but after rendering to Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
 Browning the homage which the intellect owes to 
 genius, we turn to Burns, if not with awe and rev 
 erence, [yet] with a feeling of personal interest and 
 affection. We admire others ; we love him. As 
 the day of his birth comes round, I take down his 
 well-worn volume in grateful commemoration, and 
 feel that I am communing with one whom living I 
 
296 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 could have loved as much for his true manhood and 
 native nobility of soul as for those wonderful songs 
 of his which shall sing themselves forever. 
 
 "They know little of Burns who regard him as 
 an aimless versifier the idle singer of an idle 
 lay. Pharisees in the Church, and oppressors in 
 the State, knew better than this. They felt those 
 immortal sarcasms which did not die with the 
 utterer, but lived on to work out the divine com 
 mission of Providence. In the shout of enfran 
 chised millions, as they lift the untitled Quaker of 
 Rochdale into the British Cabinet, I seem to hear 
 the voice of the Ayrshire poet : 
 
 " * For a that and a that, 
 It s comin yet for a that ; 
 That man to man the world o er 
 Shall brothers be for a that. 
 
 "With hearty sympathy and kind greetings for 
 the Burns Club of Washington, 
 
 "I am, very truly, thy friend, 
 
 "JOHN G. WHITTIER." 
 
APPENDIX III. 297 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Published Works to date. 
 
 LEGENDS OF NEW ENGLAND. Hartford : Hanmer 
 
 &Phelps. 1831. 
 THE LITERARY REMAINS OF J. G. C. BRAINARD. 
 
 [Edited.] Hartford: P. B. Goodsell. 1832. 
 MOLL PITCHER. 1831 or 1832. 
 
 A poem on the famous witch of Nahant. 
 
 JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY; OR, SLAVERY CON 
 SIDERED WITH A VIEW TO ITS RlGHTFUL AND 
 
 EFFECTUAL REMEDY, ABOLITION. Haverhill : 
 C. P. Thayer & Co. 1833. 
 
 MOGG MEGONE. Boston : Light & Stearns, No. i 
 Cornhill. 1836. 
 
 There is a copy of this tiny 321110 of 69 pages in the Harvard College 
 Library. It was presented to the Library in 1847 by the Massachusetts 
 Anti-Slavery Society of Boston. 
 
 VIEWS OF SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION; from 
 " Society in America," by Harriet Martineau. 
 [Edited.] New York : Piercy & Reed, Printers, 
 No. 7 Theatre Alley. 1837. 
 
 LETTERS FROM JOHN QUINCY ADAMS TO HIS CON 
 STITUENTS, [Edited.] Boston : Isaac Knapp. 
 1837- 
 
298 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 LAYS OF MY HOME, and Other Poems. 1843. 
 THE STRANGER IN LOWELL. Boston : Waite, 
 Pierce & Co., No. I Cornhill. 1845. 
 
 THE SUPERNATURALISM OF NEW ENGLAND. New 
 
 York and London : Wiley & Putnam. 1847. 
 
 THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 1848. 
 
 LEAVES FROM MARGARET SMITH S JOURNAL, IN 
 THE PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1678-9. 
 Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1849. 
 
 THE VOICES OF FREEDOM. Philadelphia: Mus- 
 sey & Co. 1849. Illustrations by Billings. 
 
 SONGS OF LABOR, and Other Poems. Boston : 
 Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850. 
 
 OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES. Bos 
 ton : Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850. 
 
 These sketches first appeared in the National Era, a Washington 
 literary and anti-slavery paper, in the columns of which Mrs. Stowe s 
 " Uncle Tom s Cabin " first appeared. 
 
 LITTLE EVA ; UNCLE TOM S GUARDIAN ANGEL. 
 Boston and Cleveland. 1852. 4to, pp. 4. 
 "Words by J. G. Whittier ; music by Emilio 
 Manuel." 
 
 The poem now appears in Whittier s complete works under the title 
 "Eva." 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. Boston : Ticknor, 
 
 Reed & Fields. 1853. 
 A SABBATH SCENE. Boston : John P. Jewett 
 
 & Co. 1854. 
 
 A slender volume, illustrated by Baker, Smith, and Andrew. 
 
 LITERARY RECREATIONS AND MISCELLANIES. Bos 
 ton : Ticknor & Fields. 1854. 
 
APPENDIX III. 299 
 
 THE PANORAMA, and Other Poems. Boston : Tick- 
 nor & Fields. 1856. 
 
 HOME BALLADS, and Other Poems. Boston : Tick- 
 nor & Fields. 1860. 
 
 IN WAR TIME, and Other Poems. Boston : Ticknor 
 & Fields. 1863. 
 
 SNOW-BOUND. A Winter Idyl. Boston: Ticknor 
 & Fields. 1866. 
 
 THE TENT ON THE BEACH, and Other Poems. 
 Boston : Ticknor & Fields. 1867. 
 
 AMONG THE HILLS, and Other Poems. Boston : 
 Fields, Osgood & Co. 1868. 
 
 MIRIAM, and Other Poems. Boston : Fields, 
 Osgood & Co. 1870. 
 
 CHILD-LIFE : A Collection of Poems. [Edited.] 
 Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1871. 
 
 THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM, and Other Poems. 
 Boston : James R. Osgood & Co. ^872. 
 
 THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WOOLMAN. [Edited.] Bos 
 ton : James R. Osgood & Co. 1873. 
 
 CHILD-LIFE IN PROSE. [Edited.] Boston : Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co. 1873. 
 
 Contains, among its stories of the childhood of eminent people, a little 
 narrative by Mr. Whittier about " A Fish I Didn t Catch." 
 
 MABEL MARTIN. Boston. Illustrated. 1874. 
 HAZEL BLOSSOMS. Boston : James R. Osgood & 
 
 Co. 1875. 
 SONGS OF THREE CENTURIES. [Edited.] Boston : 
 
 James R. Osgood & Co. Illustrated. 1875. 
 
 This is a rich and careful selection of lyrics and hymns of the last 
 three centuries. 
 
300 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 THE VISION OF ECHARD, and Other Poems. Bos 
 ton : Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1878. 
 
 THE KING S MISSIVE, and Other Poems. Boston : 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1881. 
 
 LETTERS OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD. [Edited.] 
 Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1882. 
 
 Introduction by Whittier ; appendix by Wendell Phillips. 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 The first collection of Whittier s poems was 
 published by Joseph Healy, Philadelphia, 1838. 
 The volume is dedicated to Henry B. Stanton. It 
 contains twenty-four anti-slavery poems and twenty 
 six poems of a miscellaneous nature, mostly 
 religious. On the title-page appear the following 
 noble words of Samuel T. Coleridge : " There is 
 a time to keep silence/ saith Solomon ; but when I 
 proceeded to the first verse of the fourth chapter 
 of the Ecclesiastes, and considered all the oppres 
 sions that are done under the sun, and beheld the 
 tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no 
 comforter ; and on the side of the oppressors there 
 was power ; I concluded this was not the time to 
 keep silence ; for Truth should be spoken at all 
 times, but more especially at those times when to 
 speak Truth is dangerous." A copy of this first 
 collection may be seen in the Newburyport Public 
 Library. 
 
 The first complete edition of the poems was 
 published in Boston in 1857. Houghton, Mifflin 
 
APPENDIX III. 301 
 
 & Co. now publish seven complete editions. The 
 complete prose works were published at Boston in 
 two volumes in the year 1866. Editions de luxe 
 of "The River Path " and of "Mabel Martin" have 
 been published. In 1881 Elizabeth S. Owen pub 
 lished a "Whittier Birthday Book." "Barbara 
 Frietchie" has been translated into German by 
 J. J. Sturtz [Berlin, 1865]. "The Cry of a Lost 
 Soul " has been translated into Portuguese by Dom 
 Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil. " Snow-Bound " 
 has been translated in the " Zwei Amerikanische 
 Idyllen " of Karl Knortz of New York, under the 
 title " Eingeschneit." 
 
 NOTE. After this work had been electrotyped, the dis 
 covery of a file of the Free Press revealed the fact, before 
 unknown to Mr. Whittier himself, that his first published 
 poem appeared a fortnight before "The Deity." But this 
 fact is of small consequence, since neither of the poems is 
 absolutely his first production. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abolitionists, 86; persecution of, 
 
 98, 99, 100; joined by Whittier, 98, 
 
 99, 100; meetings, in, 112, 116; 
 attitude of Quakers toward, 120, 
 121. 
 
 Abram Morrison, poem on, 124. 
 Academy of Haverhill, 79, 85. 
 Adams, John Quincy, Letters of, 
 
 edited by Whittier, 119. 
 Advertiser, The Boston Daily, 261. 
 " After Election," 191, 193. 
 Amesbury, 22, 23, 24, 26, 50, 158; 
 
 description of, 123; removal to, 
 
 123; Whittier s residence de 
 scribed, 124, 128. 
 "Among the Hills," 147, 250. 
 Andrews, Dr. Robert R., 149 (note). 
 Anti-slavery poems reviewed, 272- 
 
 274. 
 Anti-slavery Society, the American, 
 
 organized at Philadelphia, 103-110; 
 
 Whittier secretary of, 118. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 213. 
 Artistic development and traits, 
 
 see Style. 
 
 Atkinson, town of, 36. 
 Atlantic Monthly, The, 105; banquet 
 
 of the publishers of, in honor of 
 
 Whittier, 151. 
 "Attack, The Midnight," by Cap- 
 
 tain Harmon and his rangers, 88, 
 
 89. 
 Austin, Ann, 265. 
 
 Autumn, idyls of, in American 
 literature, 246. 
 
 Bachelder (Bachelor, Bachiler), 
 
 Rev. Stephen, 18, 19, 21, 22. 
 Bachiler, Theodate, 21. 
 Batchelder, Rev. William, 19. 
 Bailey, Dr. Gamaliel, 128. 
 Ballad Decade, 230, 231. 
 Ballads, characterized, 198, 230, 233. 
 Baltimore, 100* 
 Bancroft, George, 150. 
 Bantum the conjurer, 30. 
 Barbadoes, 266. 
 " Barbara Frietchie," controversy 
 
 about, 240, 241. 
 " Barefoot Boy, The," 230. 
 Barlow, Joel, 221. 
 Bearcamp River House, 163; site, 
 
 147 ; eminent guests of, 148. 
 Beaver Brook, 142. 
 Bellingham, Deputy Gov., 255, 258, 
 
 265. 
 
 Benezet, 107. 
 Bennington, Vt., 78. 
 Berwick, Me., 30. 
 Besse, Joseph, his " Sufferings," 
 
 etc., quoted, 255-258, 260, 270. 
 Biblical poems, 276, 277. 
 Birney, Jas. G., 101. 
 Birthday, Whittier s seventieth, 
 
 celebrated in a twofold manner, 
 
 149-151. 
 
306 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Birthplace, 36-45, 127. 
 
 Black Art, the, 31. 
 
 Books read in boyhood, 61-64, 71, 72. 
 
 Boston, Whittier in, as editor, 83. 
 
 Brainard, J. G. C., " Remains " of, 
 edited by Whittier, 92-95 ; editor 
 Connecticut Mirror, 92. 
 
 Brand, William, brutally whipped, 
 270, 271. 
 
 Bremer, Frederika, pen portrait of 
 Whittier, 154. 
 
 " Bridal of Pennacook, The," fore 
 shadowed, 185; reviewed, 223- 
 226. 
 
 Brixham, 15. 
 
 Brook, Mary, 177. 
 
 Bryant, his " Thanatopsis," 75. 
 
 Bungay, George W., description of 
 the poet, 155. 
 
 Burlington, N. J., 137. 
 
 Burns, 43; influence on Wliittier, 64 ; 
 first reading of, 64, 65 ; songs of, 
 sung by wandering Scotchman, 
 65, 66; " Cotter s Saturday Night," 
 247; letter of Whittier on, Ap 
 pendix II. 
 
 Burroughs, Edward, 256. 
 
 Burroughs, John, prose Snow-Idyl 
 b Y> 257. 
 
 Bust of Whittier, 25. 
 
 Cambridge, Eng., 269. 
 
 Canterbury, Conn., 100. 
 
 Carbuncle, story about, 90. 
 
 Carlyle, 43 ; " Discourse on the Ne 
 gro question," 282. 
 
 Century , The, 245. 
 
 Charles II., 254, 270. 
 
 Child, Dr., 265. 
 
 Child, Lydia Maria, 101. 
 
 Children, love of, 163, 164. 
 
 Children s poems, 277. 
 
 Civil war, poems inspired by, 275, 
 276. 
 
 Clay, Henry, 85. 
 
 Coat-of-arms, of the Greenleafs, 15. 
 
 Coates, Lindley, 109. 
 
 Coffin, Joshua, 19, no; poetical 
 
 epistle to, 55. 
 
 Common, the Boston, 254, 271. 
 Convention, the Philadelphia, 103- 
 
 110; description of, by Whittier, 
 
 105-110; Quakers attending, 105 
 
 (note). 
 
 Countess, story of the, 243-245. 
 Crandall, Prudence, 100. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 17. 
 Crosby, Mrs., 20. 
 
 Dana, the poet, 221. 
 
 Dancing party, the wicked, 68. 
 
 Danvers, 141, 146. 
 
 Davis, Miss Rebecca I., 52, 244, 245. 
 
 De but as a poet, 79. 
 
 Declaration of American Anti-slav 
 ery Society, 104, 105, and 105 
 (note). 
 
 "The Deity," Whittier s first poem, 
 
 74. 75- 
 
 Democracy, Christian, 171, 195. 
 
 Democratic Review, 155. 
 
 Demon Fiddler, The, 72. 
 
 Dempster, 66. 
 
 Diction, 196. 
 
 Dinsmore, Robert, the farmer poet 
 of Windham, 80; poem on Spar 
 row, 80; Elegy by, 81; described 
 by Whittier, 81, 82. 
 
 Dix, Dorothea, 240. 
 
 Dom Pedro II., 159-161. 
 
 Dorking in Surrey, 21. 
 
 " Double-headed Snake of New- 
 bury," 233, 234. 
 
 Doubts of the poet, 180, 184, 186. 
 
 Dress, the poet s, 158. 
 
 Duston, Hannah, statue to, 25. 
 
 Dyer, Mary, 261, 271. 
 
 Early, Gen. Jubal, 241. 
 
 Early poems criticised, 220-222. 
 
 Editor and author, 83 fF. 
 
 Ellis, Dr. George E., criticises " The 
 
 King s Missive," 258-260. 
 Ellwood, 62-64; " Davideis," 62. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 307 
 
 Emerson, " Nature," 95 ; " Sphinx," 
 169; " Snow-Storm," 247; admired 
 by Whittier, 247. 
 
 Emerson, name of an early school 
 master of the poet, 55. 
 
 Emersonianisms in Whittien s writ 
 ings, 247. 
 
 P^ndicott, Governor, 254 ff., 265, 266. 
 
 Engelbrecht, Jacob, 240. 
 
 Enquirer, The National, 118. 
 
 Episodical character of liis writings, 
 205, 215. 
 
 Era, The National, 128, 131. 
 
 Essex, County of, 24, 127. 
 
 Evans, Mercy, 12, 21. 
 
 Fields, James T., 248. 
 
 Finest poems, 201, 202. 
 
 First poem, 73-77. 
 
 Fisher, Mary, 265. 
 
 Fisher, the Quaker, 263. 
 
 " Flood Oirson," 237, 238. 
 
 Flowers, basket of, presented to the 
 
 poet, 151. 
 
 Fox, George, persecuted, 268, 270. 
 " Fox, The Black," ballad of, 92,93. 
 Frail health, 153. 
 Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, and the 
 
 three sages, 139. 
 Free Democratic party, 86. 
 Freeman, The Pennsylvania, 118, 
 
 123. 
 Free Press, The, edited by Garrison, 
 
 74- 
 
 Friend Street, 124. 
 " Funeral Tree of the Sokokis," 227. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 79, 107, 
 108, 149; editor Free Press, 74, 77 ; 
 editor Journal of the Times, 78; 
 rooms with Whittier, 78; editor 
 Liberator, 97; imprisoned in Bal 
 timore, loo ; chairman of committee 
 in Philadelphia, 104, 105; sends 
 for Whittier to go to Philadelphia, 
 105; mobbed, 116, 117. 
 
 Gazette, The Essex, 84. 
 
 Gazette, The Haverhill, 79. 
 Georgia, Legislature of, 100. 
 Goldsmith, Ralph, 256, 257. 
 Great Pond (same as Kenoza), 38. 
 Green, Beriah, 103. 
 Greene, Colonel W. B., 18-20. 
 Greenleaf, Edmund, 15, 17. 
 Greenleaf, Jonathan, 16. 
 Greenleaf, Professor Simon, 16, 17. 
 Grouping of Whittier s poems, 217-- 
 
 210. 
 
 " Gundelow," 27. 
 Guy Fawkes Plot, 210. 
 
 Hampton Beach, 27. 
 
 Hampton, N. H., 18, 21, 22, 266. 
 
 Hartford, 84, 86. 
 
 Haverhill, 84 ; description of, 25, 26; 
 History of, by Whittier, 84 ; anti- 
 slavery societies in, no, m; mob 
 in, in, 112. 
 
 Haverhill, East, no. 
 
 Hawthorne, 90. 
 
 Higginson, T. W., 150. 
 
 Hillhouse, 321. 
 
 History read by Whittier, 79. 
 
 Holly, Mount, in N.Jersey, 134, 135. 
 
 Holmes, O. W., 149. 
 
 Humor, 162, 163. 
 
 Huguenots, 14. 
 
 Hussey, Abigail, mother of the poet, 
 
 12. 
 
 Hussey, Christopher, 18, 21. 
 Hussey, John, preacher to Quakers, 
 
 22. 
 
 Hussey, Joseph, 12, 21. 
 Hussey, Mercy E., 49. 
 Hymns of Whittier, 277. 
 
 Ingalls, Miss Mary (the "Count 
 ess"), 244, 245. 
 Ipswich, 19, 266, 
 Isles of Shoals, 28, 46, 147. 
 Israel, Mount, 147. 
 
 Johnson, Oliver, author of a Life of 
 William Lloyd Garrison, 77. 
 
308 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, " Hymns of the 
 Spirit," 277. 
 
 "Justice and Expediency," publica 
 tion of, 98, 101-103, 107. 
 
 Kennebec River, 88. 
 
 Kenoza Lake, description of, 36-38; 
 
 story about, 38, 39. 
 Kent, Mr., 113. 
 Kindness to strangers, 158. 
 
 Laborer, the, conversation with, 
 about Whittier,. 157 (note). 
 
 Landlord, story about, 114, 115. 
 
 Landscape in our early literature, 
 245 ; in our later literature, 246, 247. 
 
 Latin school, 79. 
 
 Lawrence, Mass., 36. 
 
 Lay, Benjamin, 136-139. 
 
 Lear, Edward, 163. 
 
 Leddra, William, 270, 271. 
 
 " Legends of New England," S6-SS. 
 
 Legislature, Whittier in the State, 
 117. 
 
 Liberator, 100; contributed to by 
 Whittier, 78. 
 
 Liberty party, the, 86. 
 
 Literary World, tribute of, to Whit 
 tier, 149, 150; quoted, 158, 159. 
 
 Livermore, Harriet, 52-55. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W., 17, 194, 199; 
 poem on Whittier, 150. 
 
 " Lost Occasion, The," 252. 
 
 Lundy, Benjamin, 100, 101, 118. 
 
 Lynn, Mass., 21, 22. 
 
 Manufacturer, The Boston, 83, 84. 
 Marblehead, 236-240. 
 Marbleheaders, remarks on their 
 
 dialect by John W. Chadwick, 
 
 himself a native of Marblehead, 
 
 236-240. 
 Martineau, Harriet, her " Views of 
 
 Slavery and Emancipation," edited 
 
 by Whittier, 120. 
 Martineau, Dr. James, " Hymns of 
 
 Praise," 277. 
 
 Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 258, 268. 
 
 Matchit-Moodus Indians, 90. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 131 ; " Magnalia " 
 quoted, 262, 264. 
 
 May, Rev. Samuel J., 101, 108, in, 
 112, 116, 117. 
 
 McKim, J. Miller, his description of 
 Wliittier, 154. 
 
 " Meeting," the Friends , in Ames- 
 bury, 23, 46, 124, 151. 
 
 Memorial History of Boston, 254, 
 258, 260. 
 
 Merrimack River, 21, 22, 26, 123, 127, 
 146. 
 
 Merrimack Valley, legends of, 28. 
 
 Milton and Ellwood, 62. 
 
 Mob in Haverhill, in, 112; in Con 
 cord, N. H., 112-115; in Boston, 
 115-117. 
 
 " Mogg Megone," 118; foreshad 
 owed, 95; reviewed, 223. 
 
 " Moll Pitcher," 96. 
 
 Monadnock, 36. 
 
 Moore, Esther, no. 
 
 Morse, Aunt, story about, 32. 
 
 Mother, the poet s, 1 2 ; portrait of, 22 ; 
 lovable nature, 46; kind-hearted 
 ness to stragglers, 47-49. 
 
 Mott, Lucretia, 101, 104, no, 162. 
 
 Mountain region of New Hampshire 
 frequented by Whittier, 147. 
 
 National Republican Party, the, 86. 
 Nation, The New York, letter of 
 
 Whittier s in, 205, 206. 
 Newburyport, 26, 28. 
 Newcastle, Del., 22. 
 New England Historic-Genealogical 
 
 Society, 20. 
 New England Weekly Review, T/ie, 
 
 85, 86, 96. 
 
 Nichols, Dr. J. R., residence of, 36. 
 Norse studies, 278. 
 
 Oak Knoll, 1^7; description of, 141- 
 146, 151- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 309 
 
 Offices of dignity and honor, 164, 165. 
 Oriental studies, 278. 
 Originality, 214, 215. 
 Ossipee, 147. 
 Ossipee, West, 147. 
 Owen, Dr., 263. 
 
 " Paradise Lost," and " Regained," 
 
 62. 
 
 Parson B., 70-71. 
 Passaconaway, Indian chief, 25. 
 Pastoral letter, the, 274 (note). 
 Patriotism, 188, 193, 194; poems on 
 
 election day, 191, 192; "A Repre 
 sentative American Poet," 190. 
 Peasley, Joseph, 14. 
 Pemigewasset, the, 103 (note). 
 Penn, William, 264; quoted, 176. 
 Pennacooks, the, 25. 
 Pennsylvania Hall, 118. 
 Pentucket (same as Haverhill), 25. 
 Percival, the poet, 221. 
 Personal appearance, 153-158. 
 Playmate at school, 56-61. 
 Plum Island, 27, 234. 
 Plummer, Jonathan, 68-70. 
 Philadelphia, 84; beggars shipped 
 
 to, 49 . 
 Philanthropist, The, merged with 
 
 National Era, 128, 131. 
 Pickard, S. T., associate editor 
 
 Portland Transcript, 74. 
 Pierpont, the poet, 221. 
 " Pilgrim s Progress " read by 
 
 Whittier, 71. 
 Piscataqua River, 46. 
 Platen, his " Grab im Busento " 
 
 quoted, 227. 
 
 " Plymouth Collection," 277. 
 Poem, first, 73-77. 
 Poems, early, criticised, 220-222; 
 
 finest, 201,202. 
 Pope Night, 209. 
 
 Portfolio presented to the poet, 151. 
 Portland Transcript, 74. 
 Portraits of the poet s mother, 22; 
 
 of his sister, 50. 
 
 Postman, the, 74, 76. 
 
 Powwow River, 26. 
 
 Poyen, Joseph Rochemont de, 244. 
 
 Prentice, George D., 85. 
 
 " Prophecy of Samuel Sewall," 234- 
 
 236; Moses Coit Tyler s correction 
 
 of points in, 236. 
 Puritans honored by Whittier, 87. 
 
 Quakerism, origin of, 171 ; analysis 
 of, 170, 179; has a double root, 172; 
 means individualism, 173; com 
 pared with Transcendentalism, 
 173; Inner Light of, 172, 174; nar 
 rowness of, 177, 178. 
 
 Quakers, the, Whittier s attitude 
 towards as respects slavery, 121, 
 122; dress, 178, 179; beautiful 
 lives of, 179, 180; in Philadelphia, 
 179, 180; the Quakers and the 
 " King s Missive," 254, 271; their 
 sufferings in New England and in 
 England, 14, 254-271 ; rant of, 263, 
 264; women stripped and flagel 
 lated, 265-268; one of their meet 
 ings described, Appendix I. 
 
 " Quaker Whycher," 46. 
 
 Rattlesnake hunter, the, 89, 90. 
 
 Rawson, Clerk, 254. 
 
 Read, Buchanan, " Closing Scene," 
 246. 
 
 Religion of Whittier, 180; remains 
 within the pale of Quakerism, 180, 
 183; attending " the Meeting," 182, 
 183 ; two epochs in development of, 
 183, 184; his relation to science, 
 184; doubts, 184-186; disbelief in 
 hell, 186; trustful attitude, 187, 
 188; art-chilling, 222. 
 
 Resources, the poetical, of America 
 (quotation from Whittier), 94, 95. 
 
 Rhymes and rhythms, 64. 
 
 Rice, Charles B., 150. 
 
 Ritchie, Mrs., 15. 
 
 Rivermouth Rocks, 151. 
 
 Robinson, William, 37. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Rocks Village, 243, 244; old woman 
 
 of, 29, 30. 
 
 Rogers, Nathaniel P., 103. 
 Rollinsford, N. H., 12. 
 Rous, John, 261. 
 
 " Sacrifice, The Human," 90. 
 
 Sailor, story about a swearing, 147. 
 
 Salem, jailer of, 270. 
 
 Salisbury Beach, 27, 28. 
 
 Sandwich Notch, 147. 
 
 Sargent, Mrs. Jbhn T., reception to 
 Dom Pedro, 160, 161 ; letter to, by 
 the poet, 161, 162. 
 
 School-house, the old brown, 55-60. 
 
 Scotch poetry, 64-66; composed by 
 Whittier, 64, 79. 
 
 Secretary of the Philadelphia Con 
 vention, 103. 
 
 Sewall, Samuel E., 105. 
 
 Shattuck, the Quaker, 254-258. 
 
 Shipley, Thomas, 109. 
 
 " Ship, The Spectre," legend of, in 
 Mather, 91. 
 
 Shyness of the poet, 83. 
 
 Sidney, 216. 
 
 " Skipper Ireson," John W. Chad- 
 wick on, 236-240. 
 
 " Sleeper, The Unquiet," 9. 
 
 " Smith s, Margaret, Journal," 280, 
 281. 
 
 Somersworth, N. H., 12, 30, 46. 
 
 " Snow-Bound," see Chapter III., 
 passim, reviewed, 247, 248. 
 
 "Songs of Labor," 132; reviewed, 
 228, 229. 
 
 " Songs of Three Centuries," 139, 
 140. 
 
 Southworth, Mrs. E. D. E. N., 240. 
 
 Sparrow, poem on, by Robert Dins- 
 more, So. 
 
 Spenser, 216. 
 
 Spoffords, home of the, 26. 
 
 Sprague, the poet, 221. 
 
 Standard, The New Bedford^ letter 
 by Whittier in, 121. 
 
 Stanhope, Lady Hester, 52-55. 
 
 Stedman, E. C., 149, 245. 
 
 Stephenson, Marmaduke, 271. 
 
 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 150. 
 
 Strafford, 36. 
 
 " Stranger in Lowell," 128. 
 
 Study of the poet at Amesbury, 127, 
 128. 
 
 Style, Whittier s, 196, 197; bookish 
 lore, 197, 198; beautiful ballads, 
 198; spontaneity, 198; strength, 
 199, 200; culmination of his art, 
 201 ; his crazes, 202; the moral too 
 conspicuous, 202-204; aware of his 
 limitations, 204, 207; the beautiful 
 versus the moral, 207-210; liking 
 for the four-foot line, 213; "is 
 flowing," "is shining," 213, 214; 
 originality, 214, 215. 
 
 Sun, The Baltimore, 240. 
 
 " Supernaturalism of New Eng 
 land," 95, 131 ; extracts from, 29- 
 34- 
 
 Taine, quoted, 208. 
 
 Tappan, Lewis, 103. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, 149, 248. 
 
 " Telling the Bees," 33. 
 
 " Tent on the Beach, The," 248, 249. 
 
 Thaxter, Celia, 28. 
 
 Thomas? Edith, 247. 
 
 Thompson, George, 161 ; mobbed, 
 
 112-115. 
 
 Tickhill, " steeple-house " of, 268. 
 Titles, 9. 
 
 Tombstones of Whittier family, 13. 
 Training, The, 284. 
 Trumbull, 221; his " MacFingall," 
 
 106. 
 Tyler, Samuel, 240. 
 
 " Uncle Moses " Whittier, 43, 49, 76. 
 " Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book," 
 
 277. 
 Upsall, Nicholas, 262. 
 
 Vipart, Count Francis de, 244, 245. 
 " Voices of Freedom," 132. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Wardwell, Lydia, 266. 
 
 Warlike spirit, inherited, 189, 190 
 
 (note). 
 
 Washington, D. C., 128. 
 Wasson, David A., describes Whit- 
 
 tier s head, 156; his article in The 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 217. 
 Wayside Inn, 148, 225. 
 Webster, Daniel, ancestry, 1 8, 19, 20; 
 
 " The Lost Occasion," 252, 253. 
 Weetamoo, 225, 226. 
 W T eld, Elias, 244. 
 Whitman, Walt, 24; poet of the sea 
 
 and the infinite, 42, 43; first quarto, 
 
 95 ; call for American songs, 228. 
 Whitson, Thomas, 109. 
 Whittier Club, founded, 151. 
 Whittier College, in Iowa, 133. 
 Whittier, Daniel Bodwell, 10, 18. 
 Whittier, Elizabeth Hussey, sister 
 
 of poet, 13, 112, 116, 117; crayon 
 
 sketch of at Amesbury, 50; literary 
 
 accomplishments and saintly char 
 acter of, 49-52. 
 
 Whittier, John, father of poet, 12, 20; 
 his Wanderjahre, 46. 
 
 Whittier, Matthew Frarikiin, 13, 49. 
 
 Whittier Mountain, 147. 
 
 Whittier, spellings of the name, 10. 
 
 Whittier, Thomas, 10-12. 
 
 Willoughby, Diary of Lady, 280. 
 
 Wilson, Deborah, 267. 
 
 Wilson, Henry, 101. 
 
 Winnipiseogee Lake, 147. 
 
 Winter, in poetry, 246, 247. 
 
 " Witch s Daughter, The," 232*- 
 
 Woolman,John, 100, 107; " Journal" 
 of, 133; life and work, $33-135. 
 
 Wordsworth on the poetic art, 95. 
 
 Wright, Elizur, no. 
 
 " Yankee Gypsies," extracts from, 
 47. 48, 65-71. 
 
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