I spose it's time now I should give my thoughts upon the plan, Thet chipped the shell at Buffalo, o' settin' up ole Van. I used to vote fer Martin, but, I swan, I'm clean disgusted, He aint the man thet I can say is fittin' to be trusted; He aint half antislav'ry 'nough, nor I aint sure, ez some be, He'd go in fer abolishin' the Deestrick o' Columby; An', now I come to racollec', it kin' o' makes me sick 'z A horse, to think o' wut he wuz in eighteen thirty-six. An' then, another thing;- I guess, though mebby I am wrong, This Buff'lo plaster aint agoin' to dror almighty strong; Some folks, I know, hev gut th' idee thet No'thun dough 'll rise, Though, 'fore I see it riz an' baked, I would n't trust my eyes; 'T will take more emptins, a long chalk, than this noo party 's gut, To give sech heavy cakes ez them a start, I tell ye wut. But even ef they caird the day, there would n't be no endurin' Ez fer the niggers, I've ben South, an' thet hez changed my min'; A lazier, more ongrateful set you could n't nowers fin'. You know I mentioned in my last thet I should buy a nigger, Ef I could make a purchase at a pooty mod'rate figger; So, ez there's nothin' in the world I'm fonder of 'an gunnin', I closed a bargain finally to take a feller runnin'. I shou❜dered queen's-arm an' stumped out, an' wen I come t' th' swamp, 'T worn't very long afore I gut upon the nest o' Pomp; I come acrost a kin' o' hut, an', playin round the door, Some little woolly-headed cubs, ez many 'z six or more. I leave it ware our fathers did, a privit State consarn.) Soon 'z they see me, they yelled an' run, but Pomp wuz out ahoein' A leetle patch o' corn he hed, or else there aint no knowin' He would n't ha' took a pop at me; but I hed gut the start, An' wen he looked, I vow he groaned ez though he 'd broke his heart; He done it like a wite man, tu, ez natʼral ez a pictur, The imp'dunt, pis'nous hypocrite! wus 'an a boy constrictur. "You can't gum me, I tell ye now, you need n't try, an' so I'xpect my eye-teeth every mail, so jest shet up," sez I. "Don't go to actin' ugly now, or else I'll let her strip, You'd best draw kindly, seein' 'z how I've gut ye on the hip; Besides, you darned ole fool, it aint no gret of a disaster To be benev❜lently druv back to a contented master, Ware you hed Christian priv❜ledges you don't seem quite aware on, Or you'd ha' never run away from bein' well took care on; Ez fer kin' treatment, wy, he wuz so fond on ye, he said He'd give a fifty spot right out, to git ye, live or dead; Wite folks aint sot by half ez much; 'mem ber I run away, Wen I wuz bound to Cap'n Jakes, to Mattysqumscot Bay; Don' know him, likely? Spose not; wal, the mean old codger went An' offered wut reward, think? Wal, it worn't no less 'n a cent." Wal, I jest gut 'em into line, an' druv 'em on afore me; The pis'nous brutes, I'd no idee o' the illwill they bore me; We walked till som'ers about noon, an' then it grew so hot I thought it best to camp awile, so I chose out a spot Jest under a magnoly tree, an' there right down I sot; Then I unstrapped my wooden leg, coz it begun to chafe, An' laid it down 'longside o' me, supposin' all wuz safe; I made my darkies all set down around me in a ring, An' sot an' kin' o' ciphered up how much the lot would bring; But, wile I drinked the peaceful cup of a pure heart an' min' (Mixed with some whiskey, now an' then), Pomp he snaked up behin', An' creepin' grad'lly close tu, ez quiet ez a mink, Jest grabbed my leg, an' then pulled foot, quicker 'an you could wink, An', come to look, they each on 'em hed gut behin' a tree, An' Pomp poked out the leg a piece, jest so ez I could see, An' yelled to me to throw away my pistils an' my gun, Or else thet they 'd cair off the leg, an' fairly cut an' run. I vow I did n't b'lieve there wuz a decent alligatur Thet hed a heart so destitoot o' common human natur; However, ez there worn't no help, I finally give in An' heft my arms away to git my leg safe back agin. Pomp gethered all the weapins up, an' then he come an' grinned, He showed his ivory some, I guess, an' sez, "You're fairly pinned; Jest buckle on your leg agin, an' git right come, up 'T wun't du fer fammerly men like me to be so long frum hum." At fust I put my foot right down an' swore I would n't budge. "Jest ez you choose," sez he, quite cool, "either be shot or trudge." So this black-hearted monster took an' act❜lly druv me back Along the very feetmarks o' my happy mornin' track, An' kep' me pris'ner 'bout six months, an' worked me, tu, like sin, Till I hed gut his corn an' his Carliny taters in; He made me larn him readin', tu (although the crittur saw How much it hut my morril sense to act agin the law), So'st he could read a Bible he'd gut; an' axed ef I could pint The North Star out; but there I put his nose some out o' jint, Fer I weeled roun' about sou'west, an', lookin' up a bit, Picked out a middlin' shiny one an' tole him thet wuz it. Fin❜lly he took me to the door, an' givin' me a kick, Sez, "Ef you know wut's best fer ye, be off, now, double-quick; The winter-time 's a comin' on, an' though I gut ye cheap, No, not though all the crows thet flies to BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. [Here, patient reader, we take leave of each other, I trust with some mutual satisfaction. I say patient, for I love not that kind which skims dippingly over the surface of the page, as swallows over a pool before rain. By such no pearls shall be gathered. But if no pearls there be (as, indeed, the world is not without example of books wherefrom the longest-winded diver shall bring up no more than his proper handful of mud), yet let us hope than an oyster or two may reward adequate perseverance. If neither pearls nor oysters, yet is patience itself a gem worth diving deeply for. It may seem to some that too much space has been usurped by my own private lucubrations, and some may be fain to bring against me that old jest of him who preached all his hearers out of the meeting-house save only the sexton, who, remaining for yet a little space, from a sense of official duty, at last gave out also, and, presenting the keys, humbly requested our preacher to lock the doors, when he should have wholly relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in the self act of preaching, nor do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily believe that the Gospel of Saint John, which Jacques Cartier ordered to be read in the Latin tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first meeting with them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For the earnestness of the preacher is a sermon appreciable by dullest intellects and most alien ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many to his opinions, who yet understood not the language in which he discoursed. The chief thing is that the messenger believe that he has an authentic message to deliver. For counterfeit messengers that mode of treatment which Father John de Plano Carpini relates to have prevailed among the Tartars would seem effectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough. For my own part, I may lay claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom as would have led me to go into banishment with those clergymen whom Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal drave out of his kingdom for refusing to shorten their pulpit eloquence. It is possible, that, having been invited into my brother Biglow's desk, I may have been too little scrupulous in using it for the venting of my own peculiar doctrines to a congregation drawn together in the expectation and with the desire of hearing him. I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of mental organization which impels me, like the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run backward for a short distance in order to obtain a fairer start. I may compare myself to one fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high, who, misinterpreting the suction of the undertow for the biting of some larger fish, jerks suddenly, and finds that he has caught bottom, hauling in upon the end of his line a trail of various alga, among which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the disappointment of the angler. Yet have conscientiously endeavored to adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pygmies. For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in print, the endless spinal column of divisions and subdivisions can be likened to nothing so exactly as to the vertebræ of the saurians, whence the theorist may conjecture a race of Anakim proportionate to the withstanding of these other monsters. I say Anakim rather than Nephelim, because there seem reasons for supposing that the race of those whose heads (though no giants) are constantly enveloped in clouds (which that name imports) will never become extinct. The attempt to vanquish the innumerable heads of one of those afore-mentioned discourses may supply us with a plausible interpretation of the second labor of Hercules, and his successful experiment with fire affords us a useful precedent. But while I lament the degeneracy of the age in this regard, I cannot refuse to succumb to its influence. Looking out through my studywindow, I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in gathering his Baldwins, of which, to judge by the number of barrels lying about under the trees, his crop is more abundant than my own, - by which sight I am admonished to turn to those orchards of the mind wherein my labors may be more prospered, and apply myself diligently to the preparation of my next Sabbath's discourse.-H. W.] "Multos enim, quibus loquendi ratio non desit, invenias, quos curiose potius loqui dixeris quam Latine; quomodo et illa Attica anus Theophrastum, hominem alioqui disertissimum, annotata unius affectatione verbi, hospitem dixit, nec alio se id deprehendisse interrogata respondit, quam quod nimium Attice loqueretur." QUINTILIANUS. "Et Anglice sermonicari solebat populo, sed secundum linguam Norfolchie ubi natus et nutritus erat." -CRONICA JOCELINI. "La politique est une pierre attachée au cou de la littérature, et qui en moins de six mois la submerge. Cette politique va offenser mortellement une moitié des lecteurs, et ennuyer l'autre qui l'a trouvée bien autrement spéciale et énergique dans le journal du matin."- HENRI BEYLE. THE best introduction to the Second Series of the Biglow Papers is to be found in Lowell's prose papers on political topics contributed to the Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review from 1858 to 1860, some of which have been reprinted in the fifth volume of the Riverside edition of his Writings. Just before Mr. Lincoln's election in 1860 he wrote: "We are approaching a crisis in our domestic policy more momentous than any that has arisen since we became a nation." The crisis arrived, and during 1861 his political sagacity, his ardent patriotism, his moral genius were displayed in a series of essays which did much to enlighten and confirm the roused spirit of the Northern people. But more was wanting of him. His verse could reach more ears than his or any other writer's prose. He was urged to write fresh Biglow Papers, and in a letter dated the last day of the year 1860, Lowell wrote: "As for new Biglow Papers, God knows how I should like to write them, if they would only make me as they did before. But I am so occupied and bothered that I have no time to brood, which with me is as needful a preliminary to hatching anything as with a clucking hen. However, I am going to try my hand, and see what comes of it." It was a year, however, before the first of the new series appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, and he wrote of it to Miss Norton: "I have been writing a Biglow Paper, and I feel as nervous about it as a young author not yet weaned of public favor. It was clean against my critical judgment, for I don't believe in resuscitations, -we hear no good of the posthumous Lazarus, but I may get into the vein and do some good." The first of the series was published in January, 1862, and the stimulus Lowell needed came quickly in the Trent affair, which drew out of him at once Mason and Slidell: a Yankee Idyll, which appeared in February. "If I am not mistaken," he wrote to Mr. Fields on sending it, "it will take." The third followed in March, and Lowell wrote again to Mr. Fields: "As for the Biglow-glad you like it. If not so good as the others, the public will be sure to. I think well of the Fable and believe there is nothing exotic therein. I am going to kill Wilbur before long, and give a 'would-have-been' obituary on him in the American style. That is, for example, 'he wrote no epic, but if he had, he would have been,' etc. I don't know how many of these future-conditional geniuses we have produced many score, certainly. ... Good-by-yours-with a series of Biglows rising, like the visionary kings before Macbeth, to destroy all present satisfaction." Lowell did not kill Parson Wilbur immediately. Three more numbers followed, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, in April, May, and June. Then there was an interval when the rustic muse refused to come at a call. "It's no use," the poet wrote June 5, 1862, to Fields, who had evidently been asking for the July portion; “I reverse the gospel difficulty, and while the flesh is willing enough the spirit is weak. My brain must lie fallow a spell- there is no superphosphate for those worn-out fields. Better no crop than small potatoes. I want to have the passion of the thing on me again and beget lusty Biglows. I am all the more dejected because you have treated me so well. But I must rest awhile. My brain is out of kilter." Mr. Fields returned to the attack the next month, and Lowell wrote him a humorous letter in which he expressed his amazement at having kept his word about the six already written, and had some hopes that two ideas he cherished might come to something. At last he seems to have fallen back on his scheme for putting Parson Wilbur to death, and made it an excuse for the seventh paper, Latest Views of Mr. Biglow, which appeared in The Atlantic for February, 1863. Other occupations at this time engrossed him, and he again wrote to Mr. Fields, October 18, 1864: Firstly, whar's Biglow? Let echo repeat her customary observation, adding only that I began one, but it would not go. I had idees in plenty, but all I could do, they would not marry themselves to immortal worse. Not only did I wish to write, for there was a chance of a thousand, but I wanted money -so there can be no doubt I was in earnest." It was not till peace was imminent that he wrote again, the moving tenth satire, which was published in April, 1865. The final paper, called out by the Johnson retrograde movement, was published in The Atlantic for May, 1866. The papers numbered VIII. and IX. did not appear in print until the book was published in the fall of the same year. Lowell more than once spoke of this second series of Biglow Papers as in his judgment better than the first. In a letter to Thomas Hughes twenty years after the book appeared, he wrote as follows: "Pray, who is F. T.,' who has been writing about me in so friendly a way in the Cornhill? He is a little out now and then, but strikes me as in the main judicious. He is wrong about the second part of the Biglow Papers. I think had he read these first, he would have seen they had more permanent qualities than their predecessors, less fun and more humor perhaps. And pray what natural scenery would he have me describe but my own? If you know him, tell him I think two European birds beat any of ours, the nightingale and the blackbird. The lark beats any of them also by sentiment and association, though not vocally. I suppose I should have been a more poetical poet if I had not been a profes sor. A poet should feed on nothing but poetry as they used to say a drone could be turned into a queen-bee by a diet of bee-bread." When the book appeared it bore a dedication to E. R. Hoar, and was introduced by the essay on the Yankee form of English speech, which, as we have seen, he had long ago proposed writing. This Introduction is so distinctly an essay that it has been thought best to print it as an appendix to this volume, rather than allow it to break in upon the pages of verse. There is, however, one passage in it which may be repeated here, since it bears directly upon the poem which serves as a sort of prelude to the series. "The only attempt I had ever made at anything like a pastoral (if that may be called an attempt which was the result almost of pure accident) was in The Courtin'. While the introduction to the First Series was going through the press, I received word from the printer that there was a blank page left which must be filled. I sat down at once and improvised another fictitious' notice of the press,' in which, because verse would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was filled. Presently I began to receive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the balance of it. I had none, but to answer such demands, I patched a conclusion upon it in a later edition. Those who had only the first continued to importune me. Afterward, being asked to write it out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which I infused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters and making a connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly importunings." THE COURTIN' GOD makes sech nights, all white an' still Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm f'om floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look |