feel that the laugher is no mere cynic; under his rough outside and his Quaker garb there bursts a touch of the true Tyrtæus or Körner fire. This distinguishes the Biglow Papers from the more recent exhibitions of what is called Yankee humour. The man must be straitlaced beyond all reasonable limits, who would refuse to laugh at some of the "goaks" of Artemus Ward or even of Mark Twain. But we laugh and have done with it. The fun of such writers is rapidly becoming a mere trick, and, to say the truth, a very offensive trick. The es them is always more or less in a false po- the Biglow Papers that even in the puresition; and, consequently, such poetry ly ludicrous parts-in the adventures, as that of the "Anti-Jacobin " is doomed for example, of Birdofredum Sawin — we to remain in the regions of satire, and can hardly rise into true poetry. Contempt for human misery, and even for humbug which trades upon misery, is not the raw material of which one can make an ode or a war-song. Hosea Biglow, on the other hand, has a most deep and genuine sentiment running through all his quaint and even riotous humour. His politics may strike some readers as fanatical, and his views of war as formed too much upon the Quaker model. But every line he writes contains a protest against hypocrisy, time-serving, and tyranny in the name of the noblest of human feel-sence of that mechanical product which ings. Justice to the poor and down- now calls itself Yankee humour is a simtrodden awakes his enthusiasm; and the ple cynicism which holds that there is demagogues whom he attacks are those something essentially funny in brutality who flatter the tyrant, not those who ap- or irreverence. A man fancies that he is peal, however erroneously, to his victims. a delicate humourist because he has Poetry is not necessarily the better be- learnt the art of talking of murders as cause its moral is sounder; and some of comic incidents, and mixing sacred feelthe dullest of all human beings have beenings with vulgarizing associations. The martyrs to the best of causes. But the mind which finds permanent pleasure in combination of deep and generous sym-travesties of all that has stirred the impathy with a keen perception of the ludi-aginations of mankind, in poking fun at crous is the substratum of the finest kind antiquity, and sticking a cigar in the of humour; and it is that which enables mouth of a Greek statue, is surely not Biglow to pass without any sense of dis-in an enviable condition. Some wisecord from pure satire into strains of gen- acres, it appears, found fault with the uine poetry. The first of his poems, Biglow Papers upon this score; and comcomposed after the parental Ezekiel had plained of such phrases as retired to bed, caused him, as we may remember, to stamp about his room, thrashin' round like a short-tailed bull in fly-time." And the attack on the "'cruitin' sargeant " passes naturally into a burst of strong patriotic feeling. Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' Insults on your fathers' graves; a Ef you take a sword and dror it God 'll send the bill to you. Mr. Lowell condescended to answer such criticisms in the introduction of the later series of Biglow Papers. We should have been sorry for the unnecessary apology were his motives not tolerably transparent. Mr. Lowell, in fact, as we shall presently see, is an enthusiastic lover of old literature, and he could not resist the temptation of quoting parand Dryden. The last is the closest apallel passages from St. Bernard, Latimer, proach to Biglow's phrase : Witewashed slaves an' peddlin' crew! If all humour means a subtle blending of serious with the comic, the poetical humour is that in which the groundwork is not mere shrewd sense but ennobling And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me! passion. And it is the special merit of says a character in "Don Sebastian." That blood is best which hath most iron in't, But we should be sorry that Mr. Lowell for human rights and a belief in a Provishould rely in such a matter upon the dential government of the world, passing authority of Dryden. The case is sim-into fanaticism and obscured by a grople enough, being in fact, one of those tesque shell of uncouth phraseology, in which, for a wonder, the proverb about and at times, it may be, justifying the extremes meeting is tolerably true. The aversion or the fear, but never the conintermixture of the divine with familiar tempt, of its adversaries. circumstances may imply either a habitual tendency to regard all common events as in some sense sacred, or to regard all sacred things as common and therefore fair game for the jester. The two sentiments, though verbally approximating, are at the opposite poles of thought. And the difference between Biglow's familiar use of sacred allusions and the profanity of many later American facetia is the difference between a genuine old Scotch peasant of the Davie Deans type; who believes that God is about his bed and about his path, and the rowdy at a New York drinking-bar, who breaks the third commandment twice in every sen tence. This, indeed, is the essence of Mr. Biglow and his little circle. Mr. Lowell wrote, as he tells us, in a mother-tongue, and was reviving "the talk of Sam and Job over their jug of blackstrap under the shadow of the ash-tree, which still dapples the grass whence they have been gone so long." Sam and Job were close relations of John Brown, whose soul went marching on to such startling effect through four years of deadly civil war. Mr. Lowell did not take up the language of malice aforethought with a view to literary effect, but his thoughts when heated to a certain degree of fervour ran spontaneously into that mould. He loves the dialect as a patriot, not as a professor with a theory about the advantages of the "Anglo-Saxon element" in the language. If he wished to burn anybody, it would be the first newspaper correspondent who instead of saying that a man was hanged, reported that he was launched into eternity. Such a villain is poisoning the wells of pure vernacular, and deserves no quarter. Hosea Big says Mr. Lowell elsewhere, and of that material, at any rate, there was no lack sides. The difficulty, however, of elevating a vernacular dialect, however pithy and rich in compressed imagination, into a literary expression, is enormously great, if we may judge from the in the descendants of Cromwell's Iron number of successful attempts. The the greatest master, and in which Engterse, masculine style, of which Swift is lish literature is incomparably rich, has generally been written by men of considerable cultivation. The uneducated man, whose talk delights you in a village inn, or at the side of a fishing-stream, generally thinks it necessary to cramp his sturdy fist in kid gloves before he takes a pen in hand. Here and there a Burns may be found who dares to keep mainly to his own language, though he blunders terribly when he aims at being literary; or a Cobbett, who can be simple and masculine, till he strains his voice in the good old pithy phrase disappears spouting on platforms. But as a rule, along with some other good things, as civilization advances. As the noble savage becomes a drunken vagrant, and the native art of half-civilized countries is ousted by imitations of Manchester the vulgar; for a genuine patois we have goods, so the vernacular is superseded by a barbarous slang, and the penny-a-liner is the chosen interpreter of popular feeling. An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way, Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; For puttin' in a downright lick low and the excellent Mr. Wilbur are 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther's few can Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet. But alas! it is gone, and we may be thankful that before the true old country phrase of New England had been quite shut out by the intrusion of the Brummagem slang of modern cities, a writer appeared to whom it was a native dialect, and who had yet the fine taste to feel its power, and took the opportunity to turn it to the best account. A man can hardly hope to repeat such a success as that of the Biglow Papers. They are vigorous jets of song, evolved by an excitement powerful enough to fuse together many heterogeneous elements. Strong sense, grotesque humour, hatred for humbug, patriotic fervour, and scorn of tyranny predominate alternately. It is only when an electric flash of emotion is passing through a nation that such singular products of spiritual chemistry are produced. Even if a similar combination | of external conditions recurs, the poet has probably changed. His mind has grown more rigid; his intellect is more separate from his emotions; his humour has perhaps mastered his imagination; and the inevitable self-consciousness may deprive a second attempt of the essential spontaneity. And therefore perhaps it is that many of the best patriotic songs as, for example, the "Marseillaise," or the "Burial of Sir John Moore" - have been written by men who have done nothing else. In the first series of Biglow Papers, however, there was at least one plain indication of powers applicable to poetry of a different order. The little fragment, called "The Courtin'," which, as Mr. Lowell informs us, was struck off to fill up a blank page, is simply perfect in its kind. We need only quote the first verses to refresh our readers' mem ory. Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, The ole queen's-arm that Grand'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. Ez th' apples she wuz peelin'. We need not continue, and still less quote the head and tail which Mr. Lowell added to his poem in the later series. "Most likely," he says, "I have spoiled it." We do not say that he has; but, it may be from old association, we are at least glad that both forms are preserved, so that readers may choose that which they prefer. In the old shape, and possibly in the new, it is a charming example of a very rare form of excellence. It is as dainty as an English song of the seventeenth century; and the Yankee dialect gives it the true rustic flavour, in place of the old spice of pastoral affectation. The most obvious comparison in modern times is to some of Mr. Barnes's Dorsetshire poems; but we confess to preferring the rather stronger flavour of the American humour. Unluckily, these few verses remain almost unique; though Mr. Lowell has approached the same tone of sentiment in some of the later Biglow Papers; and we can fully sympathize with Clough's desire for some more Yankee pastorals. Before the Biglow Papers, Mr. Lowell had already published some serious poetry. He showed a different kind of power in another contemporary performance. In the "Fable for Critics,” he strung together, on a very slight thread, and in a hand-gallop of loose verses, which show a faculty for queer rhymes, resembling that of Barham, a series of criticisms upon contemporary American poets. We may say, as the poet or the critic pretty frankly avows, that the number of native poets destined to enduring reputation at that period was not excessive. But the poem-we should rather call it the rhymed critique was a proof that Mr. Lowell possessed in a high degree a rather dangerous faculty. He is an incisive critic; but, in the saying which Mr. Disraeli did not originate, a critic is a poet who has failed. The statement may be taken to mean that indulgence in criticism is a dangerous habit for a poet. When a man begins to talk about the principles of art, it is generally a proof that the spontaneous impulse is failing in him. We can hardly fancy Mr. Hosea Biglow in an editorial chair. The essence of his poetry is that he trusts to his impulses, and cares nothing for the pol ished gentlemen who calmly analyze the sources of his power, and are always tempted to prune away the eccentric growths of his queer idiosyncrasy. Mr. Lowell, it is true, has the merit as a critic of fully appreciating, or rather of heartily loving, whatever is racy of the soil. He enjoys good homely language all the more if it breaks Priscian's head; and is, if anything, too contemptuous towards the spirited people were troubling thempedantry of æsthetical philosophy. His selves about the surrender of Burfavourite maxim is, be simple; that is, be goyne, Mr. White was rejoicing over the yourself. Mr. Wilbur informed Hosea discovery that the odd tumbling of rooks Biglow that the "sweetest smell on in the air may be explained by their turnairth" was fresh air. "Thet's wut I call ing over to scratch themselves with one natur' in writin', and it bathes my lungs claw. Mr. Lowell shares White's tastes and washes 'em sweet whenever I get a in a great degree; though we do not whiff on't." Now fresh air is not gener-imagine that the most critical event in ally to be found in a lecture-room, and the life even of a bobolink would have Mr. Lowell cannot help being more or diverted Mr. Lowell's attention from the less a professor of Yankeeisms. And, Trent affair or the attack on Fort Sumter. moreover, it is so delicate a material that A humorous tinge is given to his natural it seems instinctively to elude any one history by his patriotic sentiment. He who deliberately seeks for it. What is is jealous of the honour of the native more hopeless than to say I will be per- American fauna. He is righteously infectly unconscious? Mr. Lowell relishes dignant with the versifiers who betrayed the true Yankee twang so keenly that he their want of originality by calmly annexrecognizes it even when it comes from ing the whole vocabulary of English dehis own lips. A writer of less vigorous scriptive poetry, and summarily naturalsense would have yielded to temptation, ized larks, nightingales, primroses, and and tried to imitate his own fresh work other conventional imagery in defiance of by stale reproduction. Mr. Lowell resisted physical geography, and with shameful temptation until the war made it over-disregard of the legitimate claims of bobpowering; but it was at the price of olinks and mocking-birds. “It strikes leaving the vein which he had opened the beholders," Mr. Lowell says to his entirely unworked. Possibly the Celtic countrymen, invasion which has gone near to swamp shoulders. . ing the old New England population has You've a mental and physical stoop in your made the pastoral muse of the country rather shy. The place of Job and Sam under the ash-tree has been taken by Pat, and Pat in his new home is rather a spouting than a singing animal. Though you brag of the New World you And as much of the Old as is possible weave. don't half believe in it, in it. But Mr. Lowell is too genuine a humourist not to express his character in And secondhand allusions to the rural more methods than one. The prose scenery of England are parts of the essays which have been collected in two livery still worn by American writers. volumes bear in their way the stamp of Your true Hosea Biglow doesn't steal his authorship as plainly as any of his from the classics when he wants to depoetic utterances. They show that the scribe his own farm-yard; and we are University of Harvard has one of the certain that there is not a line in Mr. most accomplished of living English Lowell's descriptions which has not the scholars for professor of modern litera- merit of being founded on direct obserture. Our ancient poets, and indeed vation. The bobolink, we suspect, is in those of France and Italy, have evidently his mind symbolic of the true old New been to him the objects not of a mere England spirit; a lark is a mere convencursory study, but of a lover-like devo- tionality in America; the eagle has been tion. He enjoys our old dramatists as spoilt by blatant stump oratory. sincerely as Charles Lamb, though with a Franklin proposed the turkey for the less extravagant devotion; and has stud-national emblem as a good, peaceful, ied the minutia of language as accurate- Quaker-like bird, Mr. Lowell would take ly as the most persistent of Dryasdusts a bobolink ; “a poor thing" possibly, but without becoming a pedant. In truth, if his own. His heart warms in presence we may say so, he reminds us occasion-of the humblest products of the native ally of some appreciative remarks of his soil. We will not deny that in some inown about White of Selborne. That ex- stances this patriotic fervour is a little cellent clergyman rode a hobby with ad- too prominent. Mr. Lowell has got rid mirable persistency. To him, as Mr. of the stoop in his shoulders by taking Lowell says, the fall of an empire was of an attitude rather too consciously erect. less importance than "the natural term The thoughtful poem called "The Catheof a hog's life;" and whilst public- 'dral," for example, is to our minds dis As figured by the discordant insertion of a to the surface as an Americanism, we rather commonplace caricature of the feel certain that his heart would open to British tourist. But at worst his patriot- us at once. No thin varnish of cosmoism is not the ignorant bluster of vicari- politan sentiment would impress him so ous self-conceit which usurps the name forcibly as a good vigorous prejudice in all countries, but a love of his own cognate though hostile to his own patriotpeople and home, deep enough to afford ism. A stubborn preference of the Brita smile at its own exaggeration. His ish blackbird might make us worthy in Biglowism, if we may coin such a phrase Mr. Lowell's estimation of an introducwithout offence, tinges his strongest feel- to a tobolink or a catbird. Hosea Bigings with humour and quenches any lows are a breed sturdy enough to like gush of sentimentalism. When a man those best who can hold their own in a thus caresses a pet prejudice, if preju- bargain, in a rustic repartee, or in a fine dice be not too hard a word, we seem to healthy dogmatic strength of antagonistic be admitted into his intimacy. Nobody prejudices. We cannot say whether this is a hypocrite in his choice of a hobby. cunning diplomacy would succeed in real Whenever he mounts it, the conventional life. Luckily, when a man puts himself ice of literary decorum is for the time into his books, he cannot keep his unbroken, and we recognize the real man known friends at a distance. We can behind the judicious critic who substi- drink tea with Johnson, or luxuriate in tuets a personal "I" for the bland edito-sucking-pig with Charles Lamb, without rial "we." And, therefore, though with the awkward ceremonies of an introducsome fear and trembling, we admit that, tion; and by help of a similar magic, we in reading Mr. Lowell's books, we always have frequently introduced ourselves into fancy ourselves seated side by side with Mr. Lowell's study without the smallest the author "under the willows " or compunction. Especially we have been "amongst his books - to appropriate there on a winter night, when the chimthe characteristic titles of two of his vol-neys are roaring and the windows shakumes. In such a dream we fancy that ing, and the frost of a New England by some dexterous management we have winter is whirling the snow-drifts outsurmounted that spirit of armed neutral- side. We have joined in the fire-worship ity towards all persons not boasting of which he celebrates in more than one Yankee blood which breathes in the arti- poem with an enthusiasm specially graticle on a "certain condescension in for-fying in a native of a land cursed, as eigners." We should apologize, indeed, for the purely imaginary liberty which we are taking. Doubtless, if we may judge from that manifesto, the task of disarm- Parson Wilbur would not have objected ing Mr. Lowell's superficial suspicions to a certain scent of tobacco mixing with would not be altogether an easy one. A the fresh air; and we somehow fancy thoughtless person would show his want of appreciation by patronizing America, and condescending to recognize in it some modifying mixture of the true English blood and a claim to some share in the glory of Shakespeare and Chaucer. Not such would be our scheme. We should introduce ourselves to Mr. Lowell as penetrated to the core by true British John-Bull sentiment. We would bring prominently forward any vestiges of the good old prejudices with which we might happen to be provided. We would swear that one Englishmen was as good as three Frenchmen, hint that Washington was a rebel, and, if possible, flavour our language with some provincial archaism. If, by good fortune, we happened to stumble upon one of those phrases which still survived in corners of English counties and crossed the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers, to come again travellers tell us, by the use of that abomination, the close stove. He worships, too, the nymph Nicotia. that Mr. Lowell holds the scenery which reveals itself to musing eyes in the flames of a hickory fire to be equal to anything outside the shutters. The company is generally much better in an interior. His favourite old poets can step down from their shelves to join in the conversation. They may put in a word or two even in the fields or the mountain-side; but deliberate quotation in open-air intercourse is formal and pedantic. It is only when the old dog's-eared volumes can be turned over in the firelight, and piled into careless chaos upon the carpet, that they yield up their true fragrance. When the winter is raving outside, it is luxurious to ruminate over the various attempts of the ancient masters to draw his portrait, and compare them with the blustering original at our doors. Mr. Lowell perhaps loves Wordsworth best among modern poets, though he flouts now and then |