The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell

moral, and intellectual being, and that there is no apage Sathanas! so potent as ridicule. But it is a kind of weapon that must have a button of good-nature on the point or it.

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

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

form so prominent a portion of the creed of that party. I confess, that, in some discussions which I have had with him on this point in my study, he has displayed a vein of obstinacy which I had not hitherto detected in his composition. He is also (horresco referens) infected in no small measure with the peculiar notions of a print called the Liberator, whose heresies I take every proper opportunity of combating. and of which, I thank God, I have never read a single line.

"I did not see Mr. B.'s verses until they appeared in print, and there is certainly one thing in them which I consider highly improper. allude to the personal references to myself by name. To confer notoriety on an humble individual who is laboring quietly in his vocation, and who keeps his cloth as free as he can from the dust of the political arena (though we mini si non evangelizavero), is no doubt an indecorum. The sentiments which he attributes to me I will not deny to be mine. They were embodied, though in a different form, in a discourse preached upon the last day of public fasting, and were acceptable to my entire people (of whatever political views), except the I observe postinaster, who dissented ex officio that you sometimes devote a portion of your paper to a religious summary. I should be well pleased to furnish a copy of my discourse for insertion in this department of your instructive journal. By omitting the advertisements, it might easily be got within the limits of a single number, and I venture to insure you the sale of some scores of copies in this town. I will cheerfully render myself responsible for ten. It might possibly be advantageous to issue it as an extra. But perhaps you will not esteem it an object, and I will not press it. My offer

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pil- does not spring from any weak desire of seeing lage.

"If the Post maintains the converse of this proposition, it can hardly be considered as a safe guide-post for the moral and religions por tions of its party, however many other excellent qualities of a post it may be blessed with. There is a sign in London on which is painted,

The Green Man.' It would do very well as a portrait of any individual who would support so unseriptural a thesis. As regards the language of the line in question, I am bold to say that He who readeth the hearts of men will not account any dialect unseemly which conveys a sound and pious sentiment. I could wish that such sentiments were more common, however uncouthly expressed. Saint Ambrose affirms, that veritas a quocunque (why not, then, quomodocunque ? dicatur, a spiritu sancto est. Digest also this of Baxter: The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest matters.'

my name in print; for I can enjoy this satis-
Catalogue of the University, where it also pos
faction at any time by turning to the Triennial
those of my calling are distinguished.
sesses that added emphasis of Italics with which

"I would simply add, that I continue to fit ingenuous youth for college, and that I have two spacious and airy sleeping apartments at this moment unoccupied. Ingenuas didicisse,

&c.

Terms, which vary according to the cir cumstances of the parents, may be known on In all application to me by letter, post-paid. cases the lad will be expected to fetch his own towels. This rule, Mrs. W. desires me to add, has no exceptions.

"Respectfully, your obedient servant,

"HOMER WILBUR, A M.

"P. S. Perhaps the last paragraph may look like an attempt to obtain the insertion of my circular gratuitously. If it should appear to "When the paragraph in question was shown you in that light, I desire that you would erase to Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed it, or charge for it at the usual rates, and deto give him any dissatisfaction was that which duct the amount from the proceeds in your classed him with the Whig party. He says, hands from the sale of my discourse, when it that, if resolutions are a nourishing kind of shall be printed. My circular is much longer diet, that party must be in a very hearty and and more explicit, and will be forwarded withflourishing condition; for that they have qui-out charge to any who may desire it. etly eaten more good ones of their own baking than he could have conceived to be possible without repletion. He has been for some years past (I regret to say) an ardent opponent of those sound doctrines of protective policy which

It has

been very neatly executed on a letter sheet, by a very deserving printer, who attends upon my ministry, and is a creditable specimen of the typographic art. I have one hung over my mantel-piece in a neat frame, where it makes a

beautiful and appropriate ornament, and balauces the profile of Mrs. W., cut with her toes by the young lady born without arms.

"H. W."

No. IV.

REMARKS OF INCREASE D. O'PHACE, ES-
QUIRE, AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN
STATE STREET, REPORTED BY MR. H.
BIGLOW.

I have in the foregoing letter mentioned General Scott in connection with the Presidency, because I have been given to understand that he has blown to pieces and otherwise caused [THE ingenious reader will at once understand to be destroyed more Mexicans than any other that no such speech as the following was ever commander. His claim would therefore be de- totidem verbis pronounced. But there are simservedly considered the strongest. Until accu-pler and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of rate returns of the Mexicans killed, wounded, which such an explanation may be needful, and maimed be obtained, it will be difficult to For there are certain invisible lines, which as settle these nice points of precedence. Should Truth successively overpasses, she becomes it prove that any other officer has been more Untruth to one and another of us, as a large meritorious and destructive than General S., river, flowing from one kingdom into another, and has thereby rendered himself more worthy sometimes takes a new name, albeit the waters of the confidence and support of the conserva- undergo no change, how small soever. There tive portion of our community, I shall cheer- is, moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious fully insert his name, instead of that of General than the truth of fact, as that of the Poet, S.. in a future edition. It may be thought, like- which represents to us things and events as wise, that General S. has invalidated his claims they ought to be, rather than servilely copies by too much attention to the decencies of ap- them as they are imperfectly imaged in the parel, and the habits belonging to a gentleman. crooked and smoky glass of our mundane affairs. These abstruser points of statesmanship are be- It is this which makes the speech of Antonius, yond my scope. I wonder not that successful though originally spoken in no wider a forum military achievement should attract the admi- than the brain of Shakespeare, more historiration of the multitude. Rather do I rejoice cally valuable than that other which Appian with wonder to behold how rapidly this senti- has reported, by as much as the understanding ment is losing its hold upon the popular mind. of the Englishman was more comprehensive It is related of Thomas Warton, the second of than that of the Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in that honored name who held the office of Poe- the present instance, has only made use of a try Professor at Oxford, that, when one wished license assumed by all the historians of antiqto find him, being absconded, as was his wont, uity, who put into the mouths of various charin some obscure alehouse, he was counselled to acters such words as seem to them most fitting traverse the city with a drum and fife, the to the occasion and to the speaker. If it he sound of which inspiring music would be sure objected that no such oration could ever have to draw the Doctor from his retirement into been delivered, I answer, that there are few the street. We are all more or less bitten with assemblages for speech-making which do not this martial insanity. Nescio qua dulcedine better deserve the title of Parliamentum Indoecunctos ducit. I confess to some infec- torum than did the sixth Parliament of Henry tion of that itch myself. When I see a Briga- the Fourth, and that men still continue to have dier-General maintaining his insecure elevation as much faith in the Oracle of Fools as ever in the saddle under the severe fire of the train- Pantagruel had. Howell, in his letters, reing-field, and when I remember that some mil- counts a merry tale of a certain ambassador of itary enthusiasts, through haste, inexperience, Queen Elizabeth, who, having written two letor an over-desire to lend reality to those ficti- ters, one to her Majesty, and the other to his tions combats, will sometimes discharge their wife, directed them at cross-purposes, so that ramrods, I cannot but admire, while I deplore, the Queen was beducked and bedeared and rethe mistaken devotion of those heroic officers.quested to send a change of hose, and the wife Semel insanirimus omnes. I was myself, during the late war with Great Britain, chaplain | of a regiment, which was fortunately never called to active military duty. I mention this circumstance with regret rather than pride, Had I been summoned to actual warfare, I trust that I might have been strengthened to hear myself after the manner of that reverend father in our New England Israel, Dr. Benjamin Colman, who, as we are told in Turell's life of him, when the vessel in which he had taken passage for England was attacked by a French privateer, "fought like a philosopher and a Christian, . . . . and prayed all the while he charged and fired." As this note is already long, I shall not here enter upon a discussion | of the question, whether Christians may law-erto well enough content. For in Presidential fully be soldiers. I think it sufficiently evident, that, during the first two centuries of the Christian era, at least, the two professions were esteemed incompatible. Consult Jortin on this head.-H. W.]

was beprincessed and otherwise unwontedly besuperlatived, till the one feared for the wits of her ambassador, and the other for those of her husband. In like manner it may be presumed that our speaker has misdirected some of his thoughts, and given to the whole theatre what he would have wished to confide only to a select auditory at the back of the curtain. For it is seldom that we can get any frank utterance from men, who address, for the most part, a Buncombe either in this world or the next. As for their audiences, it may be truly said of our people, that they enjoy one political institution in common with the ancient Athe nians: I mean a certain profitless kind of ostracism, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem hith

elections, and other affairs of the sort, whereas I observe that the oysters fall to the lot of comparatively few, the shells (such as the privileges of voting as they are told to do by the ostripuri aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public meetings)

belly can,

So, wen one's chose to Congriss, ez soon ez he 's in it,

A collar grows right round his neck in a minnit,

An' sartin it is thet a man cannot be strict

In bein' himself, wen he gits to the Deestrict,

Fer a coat thet sets wal here in ole Massachusetts,

An' bring 'em up ready fer use like the Wen it gits on to Washinton, somehow

pelican,

askew sets.

and from our Milton, who says: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run He

tem satis est, quasi artem aliquam, nisi utare,

for, not without dust and heat."- Areop.

had taken the words out of the Roman's mouth, without knowing it, and might well exclaim with Austin (if a saint's name may stand sponsor for a curse), Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint!- H. W.

Resolves air a thing we most gen'ally | Wen they 're on'y jest changin' the

keep ill,