Слике страница
PDF
ePub

couraged the arms of Papists, not to speak of Echetlæus at Marathon and those Dioscuri (whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times captained the pagan Roman soldiery, it is strange that our first American crusade was not in some such wise also signalized. Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Do we not know from Josephus, that, careful of His decree, a certain river of Judæa abstained from flowing on the day of Rest? Or has that day become less an object of His especial care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence occurred to Mr. William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he and all on shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily, "which was enough to serve 'em; only on Saturdays they still catched a couple, and on the Lord's Days they could catch none at all"? Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as Cape Cod Clergymen.

It has been a refreshment to many nice consciences to know that our Chief Magistrate would not regard with eyes of approval the (by many esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own myself to be so far of that mind, that I could not but set my face against this Mexican Polka, though danced to the Presidential piping with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country should be seized with another such mania pro propaganda fide, I think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirtynine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary.

I have seen lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated punctiliousness of Walton, secure pickerel, taking their unwary siesta beneath the lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. Why not, then, since gunpowder was unknown in the time of the Apostles (not to enter here upon the question whether it were discovered before that period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to the age in which we live, and say shooters as well as fishers of men?

I do much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as we have neighbor Naloths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,

I

Fewer

mean those who protested against it. they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is No to us all. There is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against e corde cordium. And by what College of Cardinals is this our God'svicar, our binder and looser, elected? Very like, by the sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that we must all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the editor's pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha. According to that sentence fathered upon Solon, Ouтw Enμóσov KaKÒV έρχεται οίκαδ ̓ ἑκάστῳ. This unclean spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under the semblance of a wealthy member of iny congregation. It were a great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy,-"Our country, right or wrong," by tracing its original to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles. - H. W.]

No. III.

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.

In

[A FEW remarks on the following verses will not be out of place. The satire in them was not meant to have any personal. but only a general, application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they were intended as a commentary Mr. Biglow had never heard, till he saw the letter itself. The position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he would not have chosen, had the election been left to himself. attacking bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated tenues in auras. For what says Seneca? Longum iter per præcepta, breve et efficace per exempla. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is printed in that large type which all men can read at sight, namely, the life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular persons. It is one of the cunningest fetches of Satan, that he never exposes himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to wound him through them, if at all. He holds our affections as hostages, the while he patches up a truce with our conscience.

Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so

brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language.

He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my young

He's ben true to one party,- an' thet
is himself;
So John P.
Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud;

Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,

But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an'
blood?
So John P.
Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand We were gittin' on nicely up here to our

laid on his arm, -aliquid sufflaminandus erat. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants of reform with aqua fortis, yet, where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage a whole day's war with an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden-walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will wither them up. Est ars etiam maledicendi, says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing to say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb merges in downright sheepishness. We may conclude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that "one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing general affronts to goodness they are asses which are not lions."- H. W.]

GUVENER B. is a sensible man;

He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes ; But John P. Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du? We can't never choose him o' course, -thet 's flat;

Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)

An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;

Fer John P.

Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;

But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,

village,

With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint,

We kind o'

An' thet

thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,

eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;

[blocks in formation]

Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his | Our true country is bounded on the north and

life

Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife,

To git some on 'em office, an' some on
'em votes ;
But John P.
Robinson he

Sez they did n't know everythin'
down in Judee.

Wal, it's a marcy we 've gut folks to tell us

The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,

God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers,

To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough;

Fer John P.

Robinson he

the south, on the east and the west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible boundary

line by so much as a hair's-breadth, she ceases

to be our mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon quasi noverca. That is a hard choice when our earthly love of country calls upon us to tread one path and our duty points us to another. We must make as noble and becoming an election as did Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her.

Shortly after the publication of the foregoing poem, there appeared some comments upon it in one of the public prints which seemed to call for animadversion. I accordingly addressed to Mr. Buckingham, of the Boston Courier, the following letter.

"JAALAM, November 4, 1847. "To the Editor of the Courier:

"RESPECTED SIR, - Calling at the post-office this morning, our worthy and efficient postmaster offered for my perusal a paragraph in the Boston Morning Post of the 3d instant, wherein certain effusions of the pastoral muse are attributed to the pen of Mr. James Russell Low

Sez the world 'll go right, ef he hol- ell. For aught I know or can affirm to the

"

lers out Gee!

[The attentive reader will doubtless have perceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that pernicious sentiment, -"Our country, right or wrong." It is an abuse of language to call a certain portion of land, much more, certain personages, elevated for the time being to high station, our country. I would not sever nor loosen a single one of those ties by which we are united to the spot of our birth, nor minish by a tittle the respect due to the Magistrate. I love our own Bay State too well to do the one, and as for the other, I have myself for nigh forty years exercised, however unworthily, the function of Justice of the Peace, having been called thereto by the unsolicited kindness of that most excellent man and upright patriot, Caleb Strong. Patrice fumus igne alieno luculentior is best qualified with this, - -Ubi libertas, ibi patria. We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a double, but not a divided allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from this their original intendment. When, therefore, one would have us to fling up our caps and shout with the multitude, - Our country, however bounded!" he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth.

[ocr errors]

contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very deserving person and a youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his which I could never rightly understand); and if he be such, he, I am certain, as well as I, would be free from any proclivity to appropriate to himself whatever of credit (or discredit) may honestly belong to another. I am confident, that, in penning these few lines, I am only forestalling a disclaimer from that young gentleman, whose silence hitherto, when rumor pointed to himward, has excited in my bosom mingled emotions of sorrow and surprise. Well may my young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, exclaim with the poet,

⚫ Sic vos non vobis,' &c.;

though, in saying this, I would not convey the impression that he is a proficient in the Latin tongue, the tongue, I might add, of a Horace and a Tully.

"Mr. B. does not employ his pen, I can safely say, for any lucre of worldly gain, or to be exalted by the carnal plaudits of men, digito monstrari, &c. He does not wait upon Providence for mercies, and in his heart mean merces. But I should esteem myself as verily deficient in my duty (who am his friend and in some unworthy sort his spiritual fidus Achates, &c.), if I did not step forward to claim for him whatever measure of applause might be assigned to him by the judicious.

"If this were a fitting occasion, I might venture here a brief dissertation touching the manner and kind of my young friend's poetry. But I dubitate whether this abstruser sort of speculation (though enlivened by some apposite instances from Aristophanes) would sufficiently interest your oppidan readers. As regards their satirical tone, and their plainness of speech, I will only say, that, in my pastoral experience, I have found that the Arch-Enemy loves nothing better than to be treated as a religious,

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 of 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 indi vidual 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 vợ mihi si non evangelizavero), is no doubt an indecoruin. 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 postinaster, who dissented ex officio. I observe 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 advantageons 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 religious portions 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 should support so unscriptural 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.

"When the paragraph in question was shown to Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed to give him any dissatisfaction was that which classed him with the Whig party. He says, that, if resolutions are a nourishing kind of diet, that party must be in a very hearty and flourishing condition; for that they have quietly 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

my name in print; for I can enjoy this satisfaction at any time by turning to the Triennial Catalogue of the University, where it also posthose 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. Ingenius didicisse,

&c. Terms, which vary according to the eircumstances of the parents, may be known on application to me by letter, post-paid. In all cases the lad will be expected to fetch his own towels. This rule, Mrs. W. desires me to add,

has no exceptions.

[ocr errors]

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 you in that light, I desire that you would erase it, or charge for it at the usual rates, and deduct the amount from the proceeds in your hands from the sale of my discourse, when it shall be printed. My circular is much longer and more explicit, and will be forwarded without charge to any who may desire it. 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 balances 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 veracions 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 antiq to 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 be 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 Indoc.. cunctos 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 tious 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 insanivimus omnes. I was myself, dur- was beprincessed and otherwise unwontedly ing the late war with Great Britain, chaplain besuperlatived, till the one feared for the wits of a regiment, which was fortunately never of her ambassador, and the other for those of called to active military duty. I mention this her husband. In like manner it may be precircumstance with regret rather than pride. sumed that our speaker has misdirected some Had I been summoned to actual warfare, I of his thoughts, and given to the whole theatre trust that I might have been strengthened to what he would have wished to confide only to bear myself after the manner of that reverend a select auditory at the back of the curtain. father in our New England Israel, Dr. Benja- For it is seldom that we can get any frank utmin Colman, who, as we are told in Turell's life terance from men, who address, for the most of him, when the vessel in which he had taken part, a Buncombe either in this world or the passage for England was attacked by a French next. As for their audiences, it may be truly privateer, fought like a philosopher and a said of our people, that they enjoy one political Christian, and prayed all the while he institution in common with the ancient Athecharged and fired." As this note is already nians: I mean a certain profitless kind of ostralong, I shall not here enter upon a discussion cism, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem hithof 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.j

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 ostrivori aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public meetings)

« ПретходнаНастави »