diction, weeding out the Latin polysyllables wherever he could, and so attained a stronger, more vital style. Still, it remained the "grand style," modeled after the classic masters whom he loved, more orotund and formal than is the fashion to-day. The one word which best describes his style, as it does his personality, is massive. Aside from the literary value of his orations, one can never lose sight of the dominant strain of nationalism that runs through them. His emphasis on nationality is his greatest contribution to American political history. Webster had a passion for the larger union of American sentiment, and he "stands to-day as the preeminent champion and exponent of nationality." JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892) His Life. In the farmhouse at Haverhill, Massachusetts, occupied for generations by his ancestors, John Greenleaf Whittier was born on December 17, 1807. He belonged to good, sturdy English Quaker stock. As a boy he worked on the farm, but he was not strong physically. Indeed, the hard work of these early years told permanently upon his health. He attended the district school and then, for two terms, the Haverhill Academy. Unlike the other New England poets, Whittier did not go to college, nor did he have academic ancestry. At home he had access to few books; among these, however, were the Bible, of which he was a diligent and devout reader, and the poems of Gray, Cowper, and Burns, to say nothing of the lives of eminent Quakers. When he was about fourteen the village schoolmaster read some of Burns's poems to him, and from that hour he was a lover of the Scotch poet. He wrote poetry for the local newspaper, of which William Lloyd Garrison was then editor, and thus attracted the attention of that ardent abolitionist. After doing a little hackwork on a Boston paper, Whittier returned to Haverhill and carried on the farm as well as the editorial work of the Haverhill Gazette. In 1830 he became editor of the New England Review at Hartford, Connecticut, resigning his position the next year on account of continued ill-health. About this time he seems to have thought of entering politics, in which his newspaper work had caused him to become interested; but in 1833 he decided to give himself unreservedly to the abolition cause, and this decision interfered with both his political and his literary, ambitions. In those years the abolitionists were a small and generally despised body of idealists, whom many of their fellow-citizens regarded as opponents of law and order.. In the agitation which the anti-slavery party was carrying on politically and socially Whittier became an active worker. He was a delegate to the convention in Philadelphia, which in 1833 founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1835 and the following year he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and he might have gone to Congress had his health and inclination permitted. He preferred, however, to fight his battles outside of the political arena. From this time to the beginning of the war he aided the abolitionist party in word and deed: he worked for anti-slavery measures in the legislature, was instrumental in the nomination of Charles Sumner for the Senate, edited several abolitionist papers, and wrote many vigorous and impassioned poems against the institution to the overthrow of which he had dedicated his energies. Meanwhile Whittier had moved to Amesbury, a village not far from Haverhill, and there he wrote much of his best poetry. After his partisan struggle was over, he settled down to the uneventful life of a country poet. "Snow-Bound," his best-known long poem, perfectly reflects the serenity and quiet joy of his surroundings. The peacefulness of his later years is in pleasing contrast to the troubled agitation of his earlier life, when, in notable contradiction to Quaker traditions, he was penning fiery philippics. He never married, but lived, after his mother's death, with his sister Elizabeth, to whom he was tenderly devoted; after her death in 1864, he lived with a niece and then with three cousins at Danvers. His summers were spent in New Hampshire in that wonderfully beautiful region about Lake Winnipesaukee and Lake Asquam, which he has celebrated in a number of poems and where the memory of him abides among the people. They treasure the old pine tree under which he was accustomed to read and write and they have ancedotes to tell of the simple, democratic ways of the old Quaker poet. He died in 1892, and was buried at Amesbury, Massachusetts. His Personality.-The prevailing characteristics of Whittier, as one may infer from reading his poetry, are sincerity, simplicity, and a strong moral and religious sensibility. He was entirely democratic in his manner and feeling, but along with his modesty there went the courage born of conviction. Among his neighbors he was the kindly, unaffected man, interested in the little daily concerns of life, conversing with them in their provincial forms of speech-"talking just like other folks," as one of them remarked. He clung to the "thou" and "thee" of his Quaker bringing up. To a stranger who asked for his autograph, handing him a blank card, the old poet said in his direct way: "What dost thee want with it?" Then, after writing his name, he added with a touch of quiet humor: "Friend, it will not do thee any good at the bank." The intensity of Whittier's moral nature is shown in a piece of advice he gave as an old man to a boy of fifteen: "My lad, if thou wouldest win success, join thyself to some unpopular but noble cause." This is the utterance of an idealist, whose words and acts throughout life sprang from an intense moral conviction. His poems on slavery show this; to his Quaker instincts any abridgment of human liberty was little short of a crime. Of all the New England poets he had the most uncompromising views on individual freedom. His Poetry. Although Whittier wrote much prose-the product in the main of his editorial labors-only his poetry need be considered here. For the sake of convenience this may be roughly divided into (1) Abolition Poems, (2) Descriptive Nature Poems, (3) Narrative, or Ballad, Poetry, (4) Personal Lyrics, and (5) Religious Verse. This is, of course, not an exhaustive classification, for these divisions frequently overlap. The poems on abolition belong for the most part to the first half of Whittier's life when he was battling with tongue and pen for that cause. In his fight on slavery he repeatedly asserted that his enmity was against the institution and not against individuals. After the war he did all he could toward the reconciliation of the sections. Replying to the charge that he was an enemy of the South, he once wrote: "I was never an enemy to the South or the holders of slaves. I inherited from my Quaker ancestry a hatred of slavery, but not of slaveholders." Of the anti-slavery poems the most noteworthy, perhaps, are "Randolph of Roanoke," in which the Virginia statesman is glowingly commended for freeing his slaves; "Massachusetts to Virginia," a spirited protest from the Bay State to the Old Dominion; and "Ichabod," a scathing denunciation of Daniel Webster for his compromise sentiments as voiced in the famous "Seventh of March" speech (1850). With this last poem should be read "The Lost Occasion," in which is expressed a juster view of Webster. The anti-slavery poems are not particularly interesting to-day and, save for the fact that they reveal one side of Whittier's character, may quickly be passed over. He would never consent to their omission from his works, however; and of all verse written on that once absorbing theme, they are undoubtedly the most impassioned. More essentially poetic and more abiding are the pieces dealing with nature in New England. Among these are "Summer by the Lakeside," "The Merrimac," "Hampton Beach," "Among the Hills," and, above all, "Snow-Bound." "Snow-Bound" (1866) is one of the greatest, as it is one of the most popular, American poems. It depicts the Whittier household as the poet knew it in his boyhood. The persons introduced include his father, mother, brother, his two sisters, his uncle and aunt, besides the village schoolmaster and several friends. The homely scene, with its wintertime diversions and labors, is vividly described-the family around the blazing hearth, the piled-up snow without, the storm, the story-telling, the spinning. This is varied with a character sketch of the schoolmaster-suggestive of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village"touches of local and foreign legend, and a tender tribute to the memory of his sister Elizabeth in lines almost Wordsworthian: I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak Yet following me where'er I went |