here and there, may have led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from my larger experience of literature and authorship.* I was, at first, inclined to discourage Mr. Biglow's attempts, as knowing that the desire to poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be not at once and with a bold hand applied, may become chronic, and render one, who might else have become in due time an ornament of the social circle, a painful object even to nearest friends and relatives. But thinking, on a further experience, that there was a germ of promise in him which required only culture and the pulling up of weeds from around it, I thought it best to set before him the acknowledged examples of English compositions in verse, and leave the rest to natural emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to the assiduous study of which he promised to devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he brought me some verses written upon that model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated car. The poem consisted of childish reminiscences, and the sketches which follow will not seem destitute of truth to those whose fortunate education began in a country village. And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of the schooldame. "Propt on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see And, to our wonder, could divine at once Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce. There young Devotion learned to climb with ease Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired; * The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he can find them) to “A Sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day," "An Artillery Election Sermon,' ‚""A Discourse on the Late Eclipse," "Dorcas, a Funeral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the late Experience Tidd, Esq.," &c., &c. Each name was called as many various ways And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough, Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces burn! The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds; The impromptu pinbent hook, the deep remorse O'er the chance captured minnow's inchlong corse; The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, Nor satiate yet could manage to confine Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound twine, Shared with the dog, whose most beseeching tail I praised the steed, how staunch he was and fleet, What a fine natural courtesy was his ! His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss ; None thought his own was less, his neighbor's more; Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove." I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavoured to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand. "Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad His slow artillery up the Concord road, Had hammer'd stone for life in Concord jail." I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. Biglow's, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that my file had left nothing of his in them. I should not, perhaps, have felt entitled to take so great liberties with them, had I not more than suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, a very near ancestor having written a Latin poem in the Harvard Gratulatio on the accession of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,-that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all,—and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not what, to the effect that the sweet-water would only be the more disfigured by having its leaves starched and ironed out, and that Pegasus (so he called him) hardly looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other such opinions I did not long strive to eradicate, attributing them rather to a defective education and senses untuned by too long familiarity with purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. I was the more inclined to this leniency since sufficient evidence was not to seek, that his verses, as wanting as they certainly were in classic polish and point, had somehow taken hold of the public ear in a surprising manner. So, only setting him right as to the quantity of the proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow the bent of his natural genius. Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the tutelage of the pagan (which, literally interpreted, signifies village) muse without yet a farther effort for his conversion, and to this end I resolved that whatever of poetic fire yet burned in myself, aided by the assiduous bellows of correct models, should be put in requisition. Accordingly, when my ingenious young parishioner brought to my study a copy of verses which he had written touching the acquisition of territory resulting from the Mexican war, and the folly of leaving the question of slavery or freedom to the adjudication of chance, I did myself indite a short fable or apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, to the end that he might see how easily even such subjects as he treated of were capable of a more refined style and more elegant expression. Mr. Biglow's production was as follows: THE TWO GUNNERS, A FABLE. Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe, So'st no one wouldn't be about Joe didn't want to go a mite; He felt ez though 'twarnt skeercely right, An' then arubbin' on it in, Till Joe, less skeered o' doin' wrong Past noontime they went trampin' round They leaned their guns agin a tree, An' jest ez they wuz settin' down To take their noonin', Joe looked roun' And see (across lots in a pond That warn't more'n twenty rod beyond), Isrel he ups and grabs his gun; Sez he, "By ginger, here's some fun! " I've sighted an' I'll let her went ;' |