I

At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages

A spirited cross of romantic and grand,

All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages,

And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land;

But ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster,

The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf,

And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster,

When Middle-Age stares from one's glass at oneself!

II

Do you twit me with days when I had an Ideal,

And saw the sear future through spectacles green?

Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all

These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen;

Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel

Who've paid a perruquier for mending our thatch,

Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our Fate pick a quarrel,

If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent a dear scratch?

III

We called it our Eden, that small patent-baker,

When life was half moonshine and half Mary Jane;

But the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker!--

Did Adam have duns and slip down a back-lane?

Nay, after the Fall did the modiste keep coming

With the last styles of fig-leaf to Madam Eve's bower?

Did Jubal, or whoever taught the girls thrumming,

Make the patriarchs deaf at a dollar the hour?

IV

As I think what I was, I sigh _Desunt nonnulla!_

Years are creditors Sheridan's self could not bilk;

But then, as my boy says, 'What right has a fullah

To ask for the cream, when himself spilt the milk?'

Perhaps when you're older, my lad, you'll discover

The secret with which Auld Lang Syne there is gilt,--

Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and lover,--

That cream rises thickest on milk that was spilt!

V

We sailed for the moon, but, in sad disillusion,

Snug under Point Comfort are glad to make fast,

And strive (sans our glasses) to make a confusion

'Twixt our rind of green cheese and the moon of the past.

Ah, Might-have-been, Could-have-been, Would-have-been! rascals,

He's a genius or fool whom ye cheat at two-score,

And the man whose boy-promise was likened to Pascal's

Is thankful at forty they don't call him bore!

VI

With what fumes of fame was each confident pate full!

How rates of insurance should rise on the Charles!

And which of us now would not feel wisely grateful,

If his rhymes sold as fast as the Emblems of Quarles?

E'en if won, what's the good of Life's medals and prizes?

The rapture's in what never was or is gone;

That we missed them makes Helens of plain Ann Elizys,

For the goose of To-day still is Memory's swan.

VII

And yet who would change the old dream for new treasure?

Make not youth's sourest grapes the best wine of our life?

Need he reckon his date by the Almanac's measure

Who is twenty life-long in the eyes of his wife?

Ah, Fate, should I live to be nonagenarian,

Let me still take Hope's frail I.O.U.'s upon trust,

Still talk of a trip to the Islands Macarian,

And still climb the dream-tree for--ashes and dust!

AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL

JANUARY, 1859

I

A hundred years! they're quickly fled,

With all their joy and sorrow;

Their dead leaves shed upon the dead,

Their fresh ones sprung by morrow!

And still the patient seasons bring

Their change of sun and shadow;

New birds still sing with every spring,

New violets spot the meadow.

II

A hundred years! and Nature's powers

No greater grown nor lessened! 10

They saw no flowers more sweet than ours,

No fairer new moon's crescent.

Would she but treat us poets so,

So from our winter free us,

And set our slow old sap aflow

To sprout in fresh ideas!

III

Alas, think I, what worth or parts

Have brought me here competing,

To speak what starts in myriad hearts

With Burns's memory beating! 20

Himself had loved a theme like this;

Must I be its entomber?

No pen save his but's sure to miss

Its pathos or its humor.

IV

As I sat musing what to say,

And how my verse to number,

Some elf in play passed by that way,

And sank my lids in slumber;

And on my sleep a vision stole.

Which I will put in metre, 30

Of Burns's soul at the wicket-hole

Where sits the good Saint Peter.

V

The saint, methought, had left his post

That day to Holy Willie,

Who swore, 'Each ghost that comes shall toast

In brunstane, will he, nill he;

There's nane need hope with phrases fine

Their score to wipe a sin frae;

I'll chalk a sign, to save their tryin',--

A hand ([Illustration of a hand]) and "_Vide infra!_"' 40

VI

Alas! no soil's too cold or dry

For spiritual small potatoes,

Scrimped natures, spry the trade to ply

Of _diaboli advocatus_;

Who lay bent pins in the penance-stool

Where Mercy plumps a cushion,

Who've just one rule for knave and fool,

It saves so much confusion!

VII

So when Burns knocked, Will knit his brows,

His window gap made scanter, 50

And said, 'Go rouse the other house;

We lodge no Tam O'Shanter!'

'_We_ lodge!' laughed Burns. 'Now well I see

Death cannot kill old nature;

No human flea but thinks that he

May speak for his Creator!

VIII

'But, Willie, friend, don't turn me forth,

Auld Clootie needs no gauger;

And if on earth I had small worth,

You've let in worse I'se wager!' 60

'Na, nane has knockit at the yett

But found me hard as whunstane;

There's chances yet your bread to get

Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane.'

IX

Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en

Their place to watch the process,

Flattening in vain on many a pane

Their disembodied noses.

Remember, please, 'tis all a dream;

One can't control the fancies 70

Through sleep that stream with wayward gleam,

Like midnight's boreal dances.

X

Old Willie's tone grew sharp 's a knife:

'_In primis_, I indite ye,

For makin' strife wi' the water o' life,

And preferrin' _aqua vitæ!_'

Then roared a voice with lusty din,

Like a skipper's when 'tis blowy,

'If _that's_ a sin, _I_'d ne'er got in,

As sure as my name's Noah!' 80

XI

Baulked, Willie turned another leaf,--

'There's many here have heard ye,

To the pain and grief o' true belief,

Say hard things o' the clergy!'

Then rang a clear tone over all,--

'One plea for him allow me:

I once heard call from o'er me, "Saul,

Why persecutest thou me?"'

XII

To the next charge vexed Willie turned,

And, sighing, wiped his glasses: 90

'I'm much concerned to find ye yearned

O'er-warmly tow'rd the lasses!'

Here David sighed; poor Willie's face

Lost all its self-possession:

'I leave this case to God's own grace;

It baffles _my_ discretion!'

XIII

Then sudden glory round me broke,

And low melodious surges

Of wings whose stroke to splendor woke

Creation's farthest verges; 100

A cross stretched, ladder-like, secure

From earth to heaven's own portal,

Whereby God's poor, with footing sure,

Climbed up to peace immortal.

XIV

I heard a voice serene and low

(With my heart I seemed to hear it,)

Fall soft and slow as snow on snow,

Like grace of the heavenly spirit;

As sweet as over new-born son

The croon of new-made mother, 110

The voice begun, 'Sore tempted one!'

Then, pausing, sighed, 'Our brother!

XV

'If not a sparrow fall, unless

The Father sees and knows it,

Think! recks He less his form express,

The soul his own deposit?

If only dear to Him the strong,

That never trip nor wander,

Where were the throng whose morning song

Thrills his blue arches yonder? 120

XVI

'Do souls alone clear-eyed, strong-kneed,

To Him true service render,

And they who need his hand to lead,

Find they his heart untender?

Through all your various ranks and fates

He opens doors to duty,

And he that waits there at your gates

Was servant of his Beauty.

XVII

'The Earth must richer sap secrete,

(Could ye in time but know it!) 130

Must juice concrete with fiercer heat,

Ere she can make her poet;

Long generations go and come,

At last she bears a singer,

For ages dumb of senses numb

The compensation-bringer!

XVIII

'Her cheaper broods in palaces

She raises under glasses,

But souls like these, heav'n's hostages,

Spring shelterless as grasses: 140

They share Earth's blessing and her bane,

The common sun and shower;

What makes your pain to them is gain,

Your weakness is their power.

XIX

'These larger hearts must feel the rolls

Of stormier-waved temptation;

These star-wide souls between their poles

Bear zones of tropic passion.

He loved much!--that is gospel good,

Howe'er the text you handle; 150

From common wood the cross was hewed,

By love turned priceless sandal.

XX

'If scant his service at the kirk,

He _paters_ heard and _aves_

From choirs that lurk in hedge and birk,

From blackbird and from mavis;

The cowering mouse, poor unroofed thing,

In him found Mercy's angel;

The daisy's ring brought every spring

To him love's fresh evangel! 160

XXI

'Not he the threatening texts who deals

Is highest 'mong the preachers,

But he who feels the woes and weals

Of all God's wandering creatures.

He doth good work whose heart can find

The spirit 'neath the letter;

Who makes his kind of happier mind,

Leaves wiser men and better.

XXII

'They make Religion be abhorred

Who round with darkness gulf her, 170

And think no word can please the Lord

Unless it smell of sulphur,

Dear Poet-heart, that childlike guessed

The Father's loving kindness,

Come now to rest! Thou didst his hest,

If haply 'twas in blindness!'

XXIII

Then leapt heaven's portals wide apart,

And at their golden thunder

With sudden start I woke, my heart

Still throbbing-full of wonder. 180

'Father,' I said, ''tis known to Thee

How Thou thy Saints preparest;

But this I see,--Saint Charity

Is still the first and fairest!'

XXIV

Dear Bard and Brother! let who may

Against thy faults be railing,

(Though far, I pray, from us be they

That never had a failing!)

One toast I'll give, and that not long,

Which thou wouldst pledge if present, 190

To him whose song, in nature strong,

Makes man of prince and peasant!

IN AN ALBUM

The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall

By some Pompeian idler traced,

In ashes packed (ironic fact!)

Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced,

While many a page of bard and sage,

Deemed once mankind's immortal gain,

Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more mark

Than a keel's furrow through the main.

O Chance and Change! our buzz's range

Is scarcely wider than a fly's;

Then let us play at fame to-day,

To-morrow be unknown and wise;

And while the fair beg locks of hair,

And autographs, and Lord knows what,

Quick! let us scratch our moment's match,

Make our brief blaze, and be forgot!

Too pressed to wait, upon her slate

Fame writes a name or two in doubt;

Scarce written, these no longer please,

And her own finger rubs them out:

It may ensue, fair girl, that you

Years hence this yellowing leaf may see,

And put to task, your memory ask

In vain, 'This Lowell, who was he?'

AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866

IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE SMITH PROFESSOR

I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know,

With the impromptu I promised you three weeks ago,

Dragged up to my doom by your might and my mane,

To do what I vowed I'd do never again:

And I feel like your good honest dough when possest

By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast.

'You must rise,' says the leaven. 'I can't,' says the dough;

'Just examine my bumps, and you'll see it's no go.'

'But you must,' the tormentor insists, ''tis all right;

You must rise when I bid you, and, what's more, be light.' 10

'Tis a dreadful oppression, this making men speak

What they're sure to be sorry for all the next week;

Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, to bud

Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood,

As if the dull brain that you vented your spite on

Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, to Brighton.

They say it is wholesome to rise with the sun,

And I dare say it may be if not overdone;

(I think it was Thomson who made the remark

'Twas an excellent thing in its way--for a lark;) 20

But to rise after dinner and look down the meeting

On a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of Eating,

With a stomach half full and a cerebrum hollow

As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo,

Undercontract to raise anerithmon gelasma

With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with the asthma,

And jokes not much younger than Jethro's phylacteries,

Is something I leave you yourselves to characterize.

I've a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech,

Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach, 30

Swerving this way and that as the wave of the moment

Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim's foam on 't,

And leaving on memory's rim just a sense

Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense;

Not poetry,--no, not quite that, but as good,

A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would.

'Tis a time for gay fancies as fleeting and vain

As the whisper of foam-beads on fresh-poured champagne,

Since dinners were not perhaps strictly designed

For manoeuvring the heavy dragoons of the mind. 40

When I hear your set speeches that start with a pop,

Then wander and maunder, too feeble to stop,

With a vague apprehension from popular rumor

There used to be something by mortals called humor,

Beginning again when you thought they were done,

Respectable, sensible, weighing a ton,

And as near to the present occasions of men

As a Fast Day discourse of the year eighteen ten,

I--well, I sit still, and my sentiments smother,

For am I not also a bore and a brother? 50

And a toast,--what should that, be? Light, airy, and free,

The foam-Aphrodite of Bacchus's sea,

A fancy-tinged bubble, an orbed rainbow-stain,

That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and brain;

A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught,

And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought.

Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple;

Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple

Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek,

And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek; 60

Once fix it, 'tis naught, for the charm of it rises

From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.

I've tried to define it, but what mother's son

Could ever yet do what he knows should be done?

My rocket has burst, and I watch in the air

Its fast-fading heart's-blood drop back in despair;

Yet one chance is left me, and, if I am quick,

I can palm off, before you suspect me, the stick.

Now since I've succeeded--I pray do not frown--

To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical gown, 70

And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf,

I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself,

Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose

A sentiment treading on nobody's toes,

And give, in such ale as with pump-handles _we_ brew,

Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew,--

A toast that to deluge with water is good,

For in Scripture they come in just after the flood:

I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir,

Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor, 80

The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs

Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues;

And a name all-embracing I couple therewith,

Which is that of my founder--the late Mr. Smith.

A PARABLE

An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale

From passion's fountain flooded all the vale.

'Hee-haw!' cried he, 'I hearken,' as who knew

For such ear-largess humble thanks were due.

'Friend,' said the wingèd pain, 'in vain you bray,

Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my lay;

None but his peers the poet rightly hear,

Nor mete we listeners by their length of ear.'

V. EPIGRAMS

SAYINGS

1.

In life's small things be resolute and great

To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate

Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee,

'I find thee worthy; do this deed for me'?

2.

A camel-driver, angry with his drudge,

Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind

Thus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal Judge

Dooms not his work, but ours, the crooked mind.'

3.

Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark?--he borrows a lantern;

Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his steps by the stars.

4.

'Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who governs the Faithful?'

'Thither my footsteps are bent: it is where Saadi is lodged.'

INSCRIPTIONS

FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY

I call as fly the irrevocable hours,

Futile as air or strong as fate to make

Your lives of sand or granite; awful powers,

Even as men choose, they either give or take.

FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH, SET UP IN ST. MARGARET'S,

WESTMINSTER, BY AMERICAN CONTRIBUTORS

The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew

Such milk as bids remember whence we came;

Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew,

This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name.

PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON

To those who died for her on land and sea,

That she might have a country great and free,

Boston builds this: build ye her monument

In lives like theirs, at duty's summons spent.

A MISCONCEPTION

B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth,

'Twixt participle and noun no difference feeling,

In office placed to serve the Commonwealth,

Does himself all the good he can by stealing.

THE BOSS

Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope,

Who sure intended him to stretch a rope.

SUN-WORSHIP

If I were the rose at your window,

Happiest rose of its crew,

Every blossom I bore would bend inward,

_They'd_ know where the sunshine grew.

CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

Full oft the pathway to her door

I've measured by the selfsame track,

Yet doubt the distance more and more,

'Tis so much longer coming back!

WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER

We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain,

And I should hint sharp practice if I dared;

For was not she beforehand sure to gain

Who made the sunshine we together shared?

SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY

As life runs on, the road grows strange

With faces new, and near the end

The milestones into headstones change,

'Neath every one a friend.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

In vain we call old notions fudge,

And bend our conscience to our dealing;

The Ten Commandments will not budge,

And stealing will continue stealing.

LAST POEMS

HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES

What know we of the world immense

Beyond the narrow ring of sense?

What should we know, who lounge about

The house we dwell in, nor find out,

Masked by a wall, the secret cell

Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell?

The winding stair that steals aloof

To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?

It lies about us, yet as far

From sense sequestered as a star 10

New launched its wake of fire to trace

In secrecies of unprobed space,

Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears

Might earthward haste a thousand years

Nor reach it. So remote seems this

World undiscovered, yet it is

A neighbor near and dumb as death,

So near, we seem to feel the breath

Of its hushed habitants as they

Pass us unchallenged, night and day. 20

Never could mortal ear nor eye

By sound or sign suspect them nigh,

Yet why may not some subtler sense

Than those poor two give evidence?

Transfuse the ferment of their being

Into our own, past hearing, seeing,

As men, if once attempered so,

Far off each other's thought can know?

As horses with an instant thrill

Measure their rider's strength of will? 30

Comes not to all some glimpse that brings

Strange sense of sense-escaping things?

Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines?

Approaches, premonitions, signs,

Voices of Ariel that die out

In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt?

Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these

Phantasmas of the silences

Outer or inner?--rude heirlooms

From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40

Who in unhuman Nature saw

Misshapen foes with tusk and claw,

And with those night-fears brute and blind

Peopled the chaos of their mind,

Which, in ungovernable hours,

Still make their bestial lair in ours?

Were they, or were they not? Yes; no;

Uncalled they come, unbid they go,

And leave us fumbling in a doubt

Whether within us or without 50

The spell of this illusion be

That witches us to hear and see

As in a twi-life what it will,

And hath such wonder-working skill

That what we deemed most solid-wrought

Turns a mere figment of our thought,

Which when we grasp at in despair

Our fingers find vain semblance there,

For Psyche seeks a corner-stone

Firmer than aught to matter known. 60

Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show

Made of the wish to have it so?

'Twere something, even though this were all:

So the poor prisoner, on his wall

Long gazing, from the chance designs

Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines

New and new pictures without cease,

Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece:

But these are Fancy's common brood

Hatched in the nest of solitude; 70

This is Dame Wish's hourly trade,

By our rude sires a goddess made.

Could longing, though its heart broke, give

Trances in which we chiefly live?

Moments that darken all beside,

Tearfully radiant as a bride?

Beckonings of bright escape, of wings

Purchased with loss of baser things?

Blithe truancies from all control

Of Hylë, outings of the soul? 80

The worm, by trustful instinct led,

Draws from its womb a slender thread,

And drops, confiding that the breeze

Will waft it to unpastured trees:

So the brain spins itself, and so

Swings boldly off in hope to blow

Across some tree of knowledge, fair

With fruitage new, none else shall share:

Sated with wavering in the Void,

It backward climbs, so best employed, 90

And, where no proof is nor can be,

Seeks refuge with Analogy;

Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell

Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well,

With metaphysic midges sore,

My Thought seeks comfort at her door,

And, at her feet a suppliant cast,

Evokes a spectre of the past.

Not such as shook the knees of Saul,

But winsome, golden-gay withal,-- 100

Two fishes in a globe of glass,

That pass, and waver, and re-pass,

And lighten that way, and then this,

Silent as meditation is.

With a half-humorous smile I see

In this their aimless industry,

These errands nowhere and returns

Grave as a pair of funeral urns,

This ever-seek and never-find,

A mocking image of my mind. 110

But not for this I bade you climb

Up from the darkening deeps of time:

Help me to tame these wild day-mares

That sudden on me unawares.

Fish, do your duty, as did they

Of the Black Island far away

In life's safe places,--far as you

From all that now I see or do.

You come, embodied flames, as when

I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120

Your gold renews my golden days,

Your splendor all my loss repays.

'Tis more than sixty years ago

Since first I watched your to-and-fro;

Two generations come and gone

From silence to oblivion,

With all their noisy strife and stress

Lulled in the grave's forgivingness,

While you unquenchably survive

Immortal, almost more alive. 130

I watched you then a curious boy,

Who in your beauty found full joy,

And, by no problem-debts distrest,

Sate at life's board a welcome guest.

You were my sister's pets, not mine;

But Property's dividing line

No hint of dispossession drew

On any map my simplesse knew;

O golden age, not yet dethroned!

What made me happy, that I owned; 140

You were my wonders, you my Lars,

In darkling days my sun and stars,

And over you entranced I hung,

Too young to know that I was young.

Gazing with still unsated bliss,

My fancies took some shape like this:

'I have my world, and so have you,

A tiny universe for two,

A bubble by the artist blown,

Scarcely more fragile than our own, 150

Where you have all a whale could wish,

Happy as Eden's primal fish.

Manna is dropt you thrice a day

From some kind heaven not far away,

And still you snatch its softening crumbs,

Nor, more than we, think whence it comes.

No toil seems yours but to explore

Your cloistered realm from shore to shore;

Sometimes you trace its limits round,

Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160

Or hover motionless midway,

Like gold-red clouds at set of day;

Erelong you whirl with sudden whim

Off to your globe's most distant rim,

Where, greatened by the watery lens,

Methinks no dragon of the fens

Flashed huger scales against the sky,

Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy,

And the one eye that meets my view,

Lidless and strangely largening, too, 170

Like that of conscience in the dark,

Seems to make me its single mark.

What a benignant lot is yours

That have an own All-out-of-doors,

No words to spell, no sums to do,

No Nepos and no parlyvoo!

How happy you without a thought

Of such cross things as Must and Ought,--

I too the happiest of boys

To see and share your golden joys!' 180

So thought the child, in simpler words,

Of you his finny flocks and herds;

Now, an old man, I bid you rise

To the fine sight behind the eyes,

And, lo, you float and flash again

In the dark cistern of my brain.

But o'er your visioned flames I brood

With other mien, in other mood;

You are no longer there to please,

But to stir argument, and tease 190

My thought with all the ghostly shapes

From which no moody man escapes.

Diminished creature, I no more

Find Fairyland beside my door,

But for each moment's pleasure pay

With the _quart d'heure_ of Rabelais!

I watch you in your crystal sphere,

And wonder if you see and hear

Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide

Conjecture of the world outside; 200

In your pent lives, as we in ours,

Have you surmises dim of powers,

Of presences obscurely shown,

Of lives a riddle to your own,

Just on the senses' outer verge,

Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge,

Where we conspire our own deceit

Confederate in deft Fancy's feat,

And the fooled brain befools the eyes

With pageants woven of its own lies? 210

But _are_ they lies? Why more than those

Phantoms that startle your repose,

Half seen, half heard, then flit away,

And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I

Know to be substance; tell me why

My visions, like those haunting you,

May not be as substantial too.

Alas, who ever answer heard

From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220

Your consciousness I half divine,

But you are wholly deaf to mine.

Go, I dismiss you; ye have done

All that ye could; our silk is spun:

Dive back into the deep of dreams,

Where what is real is what, seems!

Yet I shall fancy till my grave

Your lives to mine a lesson gave;

If lesson none, an image, then,

Impeaching self-conceit in men 230

Who put their confidence alone

In what they call the Seen and Known.

How seen? How known? As through your glass

Our wavering apparitions pass

Perplexingly, then subtly wrought

To some quite other thing by thought.

Here shall my resolution be:

The shadow of the mystery

Is haply wholesomer for eyes

That cheat us to be overwise, 240

And I am happy in my right

To love God's darkness as His light.

TURNER'S OLD TÉMÉRAIRE

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE CHURCH

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things;

The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy wings,

And, patient in their triple rank,

The thunders crouched about thy flank,

Their black lips silent with the doom of kings.

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy pines,

And swell thy vans with breath of great designs;

Long-wildered pilgrims of the main

By thee relaid their course again,

Whose prow was guided by celestial signs.

How didst thou trample on tumultuous seas,

Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched at ease,

Let the bull-fronted surges glide

Caressingly along thy side,

Like glad hounds leaping by the huntsman's knees!

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod,

In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod,

While from their touch a fulgor ran

Through plank and spar, from man to man,

Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God.

Now a black demon, belching fire and steam,

Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream,

And all thy desecrated bulk

Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk,

To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air

To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare,

Shot-shattered to have met thy doom

Where thy last lightnings cheered the gloom,

Than here be safe in dangerless despair.

Thy drooping symbol to the flag-staff clings,

Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings,

Thy thunders now but birthdays greet,

Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet,

Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind brings.

Thou a mere hospital, where human wrecks,

Like winter-flies, crawl, those renowned decks,

Ne'er trodden save by captive foes,

And wonted sternly to impose

God's will and thine on bowed imperial necks!

Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame,

A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name.

And with commissioned talons wrench

From thy supplanter's grimy clench

His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke and flame?

This shall the pleased eyes of our children see;

For this the stars of God long even as we;

Earth listens for his wings; the Fates

Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits,

And the tired waves of Thought's insurgent sea.

ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER

Stood the tall Archangel weighing

All man's dreaming, doing, saying,

All the failure and the pain,

All the triumph and the gain,

In the unimagined years,

Full of hopes, more full of tears,

Since old Adam's hopeless eyes

Backward searched for Paradise,

And, instead, the flame-blade saw

Of inexorable Law.

Waking, I beheld him there,

With his fire-gold, flickering hair,

In his blinding armor stand,

And the scales were in his hand:

Mighty were they, and full well

They could poise both heaven and hell.

'Angel,' asked I humbly then,

'Weighest thou the souls of men?

That thine office is, I know.'

'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so;

But I weigh the hope of Man

Since the power of choice began,

In the world, of good or ill.'

Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place

All the glories of our race,

Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast,

Gems, the lightning of the East,

Kublai's sceptre, Cæsar's sword,

Many a poet's golden word,

Many a skill of science, vain

To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw

Things regardless, outcast, few,

Martyr-ash, arena sand,

Of St Francis' cord a strand,

Beechen cups of men whose need

Fasted that the poor might feed,

Disillusions and despairs

Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs,

Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran

Seeing then the beam divine

Swiftly on this hand decline,

While Earth's splendor and renown

Mounted light as thistle-down.

A VALENTINE

Let others wonder what fair face

Upon their path shall shine,

And, fancying half, half hoping, trace

Some maiden shape of tenderest grace

To be their Valentine.

Let other hearts with tremor sweet

One secret wish enshrine

That Fate may lead their happy feet

Fair Julia in the lane to meet

To be their Valentine.

But I, far happier, am secure;

I know the eyes benign,

The face more beautiful and pure

Than fancy's fairest portraiture

That mark my Valentine.

More than when first I singled, thee,

This only prayer is mine,--

That, in the years I yet shall see.

As, darling, in the past, thou'll be

My happy Valentine.

AN APRIL BIRTHDAY--AT SEA

On this wild waste, where never blossom came,

Save the white wind-flower to the billow's cap,

Or those pale disks of momentary flame,

Loose petals dropped from Dian's careless lap,

What far fetched influence all my fancy fills,

With singing birds and dancing daffodils?

Why, 'tis her day whom jocund April brought,

And who brings April with her in her eyes;

It is her vision lights my lonely thought,

Even as a rose that opes its hushed surprise

In sick men's chambers, with its glowing breath

Plants Summer at the glacier edge of Death.

Gray sky, sea gray as mossy stones on graves;--

Anon comes April in her jollity;

And dancing down the bleak vales 'tween the waves,

Makes them green glades for all her flowers and me.

The gulls turn thrushes, charmed are sea and sky

By magic of my thought, and know not why.

Ah, but I know, for never April's shine,

Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her flowers

Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden fine

As she in various mood, on whom the powers

Of happiest stars in fair conjunction smiled

To bless the birth, of April's darling child.

LOVE AND THOUGHT

What hath Love with Thought to do?

Still at variance are the two.

Love is sudden, Love is rash,

Love is like the levin flash,

Comes as swift, as swiftly goes,

And his mark as surely knows.

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow,

Weighing long 'tween yes and no;

When dear Love is dead and gone,

Thought comes creeping in anon,

And, in his deserted nest,

Sits to hold the crowner's quest.

Since we love, what need to think?

Happiness stands on a brink

Whence too easy 'tis to fall

Whither's no return at all;

Have a care, half-hearted lover,

Thought would only push her over!

THE NOBLER LOVER

If he be a nobler lover, take him!

You in you I seek, and not myself;

Love with men's what women choose to make him,

Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf:

All I am or can, your beauty gave it,

Lifting me a moment nigh to you,

And my bit of heaven, I fain would save it--

Mine I thought it was, I never knew.

What you take of me is yours to serve you,

All I give, you gave to me before;

Let him win you! If I but deserve you,

I keep all you grant to him and more:

You shall make me dare what others dare not,

You shall keep my nature pure as snow,

And a light from you that others share not

Shall transfigure me where'er I go.

Let me be your thrall! However lowly

Be the bondsman's service I can do,

Loyalty shall make it high and holy;

Naught can be unworthy, done for you.

Men shall say, 'A lover of this fashion

Such an icy mistress well beseems.'

Women say, 'Could we deserve such passion,

We might be the marvel that he dreams.'

ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM

Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please,

For those same notes in happier days I heard

Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred

Yet now again for me delight the keys:

Ah me, to strong illusions such as these

What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird

Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word

Levels, and it is the soul that hears and sees!

Play on, dear girl, and many be the years

Ere some grayhaired survivor sit like me

And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears

Unto another who, beyond the sea

Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears

A music in this verse undreamed by thee!

VERSES

INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882

In good old times, which means, you know,

The time men wasted long ago,

And we must blame our brains or mood

If that we squander seems less good,

In those blest days when wish was act

And fancy dreamed itself to fact,

Godfathers used to fill with guineas

The cups they gave their pickaninnies,

Performing functions at the chrism

Not mentioned in the Catechism.

No millioner, poor I fill up

With wishes my more modest cup,

Though had I Amalthea's horn

It should be hers the newly born.

Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it

So brimming full she couldn't blow it.

Wishes aren't horses: true, but still

There are worse roadsters than goodwill.

And so I wish my darling health,

And just to round my couplet, wealth,

With faith enough to bridge the chasm

'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm,

And bear her o'er life's current vext

From this world to a better next,

Where the full glow of God puts out

Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt.

I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise,

What more can godfather devise?

But since there's room for countless wishes

In these old-fashioned posset dishes,

I'll wish her from my plenteous store

Of those commodities two more,

Her father's wit, veined through and through

With tenderness that Watts (but whew!

Celia's aflame, I mean no stricture

On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture)--

I wish her next, and 'tis the soul

Of all I've dropt into the bowl,

Her mother's beauty--nay, but two

So fair at once would never do.

Then let her but the half possess,

Troy was besieged ten years for less.

Now if there's any truth in Darwin,

And we from what was, all we are win,

I simply wish the child to be

A sample of Heredity,

Enjoying to the full extent

Life's best, the Unearned Increment

Which Fate her Godfather to flout

Gave _him_ in legacies of gout.

Thus, then, the cup is duly filled;

Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.

ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws

That sway this universe, of none withstood,

Unconscious of man's outcries or applause,

Or what man deems his evil or his good;

And when the Fates ally them with a cause

That wallows in the sea-trough and seems lost,

Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands

Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost,

Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands

They twist the cable shall the world hold fast

To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was he

Who helped us in our need; the eternal law

That who can saddle Opportunity

Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw

May minish him in eyes that closely see,

Was verified in him: what need we say

Of one who made success where others failed,

Who, with no light save that of common day,

Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed,

But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate van

Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man.

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze

Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair

With the beguiling light of vanished days;

This is relentless granite, bleak and bare,

Roughhewn, and scornful of æsthetic phrase;

Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams,

The Present's hard uncompromising light

Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams,

Yet vindicates some pristine natural right

O'ertopping that hereditary grace

Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race.

So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so,

Not in the purple born, to those they led

Nearer for that and costlier to the foe,

New moulders of old forms, by nature bred

The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to show,

Let but the ploughshare of portentous times

Strike deep enough to reach them where they lie;

Despair and danger are their fostering climes,

And their best sun bursts from a stormy sky:

He was our man of men, nor would abate

The utmost due manhood could claim of fate.

Nothing Ideal, a plain-people's man

At the first glance, a more deliberate ken

Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ran

Such blood as quelled the dragon In his den,

Made harmless fields, and better worlds began:

He came grim-silent, saw and did the deed

That was to do; in his master-grip

Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed

Such sure conviction as that close-clamped lip;

He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew

He had done more than any simplest man might do.

Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steel

Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil sway;

The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to feel

The world's base coin, and glozing knaves made prey

Of him and of the entrusted Commonweal;

So Truth insists and will not be denied.

We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame,

As if in his last battle he had died

Victor for us and spotless of all blame,

Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk,

One of those still plain men that do the world's rough work.

APPENDIX

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES OF BIGLOW PAPERS

[Lowell took occasion, when collecting in a book the several numbers of

the second series of 'Biglow Papers,' which had appeared In the

'Atlantic Monthly,' to prefix an essay which not only gave a personal

narrative of the origin of the whole scheme, but particularly dwelt upon

the use in literature of the homely dialect in which the poems were

couched. In this Cabinet Edition it has seemed expedient to print the

Introduction here rather than in immediate connection with the poems

themselves.]

Though prefaces seem of late to have fallen under some reproach, they

have at least this advantage, that they set us again on the feet of our

personal consciousness and rescue us from the gregarious mock-modesty or

cowardice of that _we_ which shrills feebly throughout modern literature

like the shrieking of mice in the walls of a house that has passed its

prime. Having a few words to say to the many friends whom the 'Biglow

Papers' have won me, I shall accordingly take the freedom of the first

person singular of the personal pronoun. Let each of the good-natured

unknown who have cheered me by the written communication of their

sympathy look upon this Introduction as a private letter to himself.

When, more than twenty years ago, I wrote the first of the series, I had

no definite plan and no intention of ever writing another. Thinking the

Mexican war, as I think it still, a national crime committed in behoof

of Slavery, our common sin, and wishing to put the feeling of those who

thought as I did in a way that would tell, I imagined to myself such an

up-country man as I had often seen at antislavery gatherings capable of

district-school English, but always instinctively falling back into the

natural stronghold of his homely dialect when heated to the point of

self-forgetfulness. When I began to carry out my conception and to write

in my assumed character, I found myself in a strait between two perils.

On the one hand, I was in danger of being carried beyond the limit of my

own opinions, or at least of that temper with which every man should

speak his mind in print, and on the other I feared the risk of seeming

to vulgarize a deep and sacred conviction. I needed on occasion to rise

above the level of mere _patois_, and for this purpose conceived the

Rev. Mr. Wilbur, who should express the more cautious element of the New

England character and its pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should serve for its

homely common-sense vivified and heated by conscience. The parson was to

be the complement rather than the antithesis of his parishioner, and I

felt or fancied a certain humorous element in the real identity of the

two under a seeming incongruity. Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of

Latin, though drawn from the life, I adopted deliberately to heighten

the contrast. Finding soon after that I needed some one as a mouth-piece

of the mere drollery, for I conceive that true humor is never divorced

from moral conviction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little

puppet-show. I meant to embody in him that half-conscious _un_morality

which I had noticed as the recoil in gross natures from a puritanism

that still strove to keep in its creed the intense savor which had long

gone out of its faith and life. In the three I thought I should find

room enough to express, as it was my plan to do, the popular feeling and

opinion of the time. For the names of two of my characters, since I have

received some remonstrances from very worthy persons who happen to bear

them, I would say that they were purely fortuitous, probably mere

unconscious memories of sign-boards or directories. Mr. Sawin's sprang

from the accident of a rhyme at the end of his first epistle, and I

purposely christened him by the impossible surname of Birdofredum not

more to stigmatize him as the incarnation of 'Manifest Destiny,' in

other words, of national recklessness as to right and wrong, than to

avoid the chance of wounding any private sensitiveness.

The success of my experiment soon began not only to astonish me, but to

make me feel the responsibility of knowing that I held in my hand a

weapon instead of the mere fencing-stick I had supposed. Very far from

being a popular author under my own name, so far, indeed, as to be

almost unread, I found the verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere; saw

them pinned up in workshops; I heard them quoted and their authorship

debated; I once even, when rumor had at length caught up my name in one

of its eddies, had the satisfaction of overhearing it demonstrated, in

the pauses of a concert, that _I_ was utterly incompetent to have

written anything of the kind. I had read too much not to know the utter

worthlessness of contemporary reputation, especially as regards satire,

but I knew also that by giving a certain amount of influence it also had

its worth, if that influence were used on the right side. I had learned,

too, that the first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and

definite purpose, whether æsthetic or moral, and that even good

writing, to please long, must have more than an average amount either of

imagination or common-sense. The first of these falls to the lot of

scarcely one in several generations; the last is within the reach of

many in every one that passes; and of this an author may fairly hope to

become in part the mouthpiece. If I put on the cap and bells and made

myself one of the court-fools of King Demos, it was less to make his

majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal ears for certain

serious things which I had deeply at heart. I say this because there is

no imputation that could be more galling to any man's self-respect than

that of being a mere jester. I endeavored, by generalising my satire, to

give it what value _I_ could beyond the passing moment and the immediate

application. How far I have succeeded I cannot tell, but I have had

better luck than I ever looked for in seeing my verses survive to pass

beyond their nonage.

In choosing the Yankee dialect, I did not act without forethought. It

had long seemed to me that the great vice of American writing and

speaking was a studied want of simplicity, that we were in danger of

coming to look on our mother-tongue as a dead language, to be sought in

the grammar and dictionary rather than in the heart, and that our only

chance of escape was by seeking it at its living sources among those who

were, as Scottowe says of Major-General Gibbons, 'divinely illiterate.'

President Lincoln, the only really great public man whom these latter

days have seen, was great also in this, that he was master--witness his

speech at Gettysburg--of a truly masculine English, classic, because it

was of no special period, and level at once to the highest and lowest of

his countrymen. I learn from the highest authority that his favorite

reading was in Shakespeare and Milton, to which, of course, the Bible

should be added. But whoever should read the debates in Congress might

fancy himself present at a meeting of the city council of some city of

Southern Gaul in the decline of the Empire, where barbarians with a

Latin varnish emulated each other in being more than Ciceronian. Whether

it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or

for whatever reason, it is certain that very few American writers or

speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and

force that are common as the day in the mother country. We use it like

Scotsmen, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove that

we belonged to it, by showing our intimacy with its written rather than

with its spoken dialect. And yet all the while our popular idiom is racy

with life and vigor and originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word)

to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere graft by sending up new

suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in

the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with

fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows

ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as

unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. That we should

all be made to talk like books is the danger with which we are

threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave

the minds and memories of his victims to what he esteems the best models

of English composition, that is to say, to the writers whose style is

faultily correct and has no blood-warmth in it. No language after it has

faded into _diction_, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices

secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth

a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass

from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and

the lips suppled by downright living interests and by passion in its

very throe. Language is the soil of thought, and our own especially is a

rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed foliage of feeling,

fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the

vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living

green. There is death in the dictionary; and, where language is too

strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is

limited also; and we get a _potted_ literature, Chinese dwarfs

instead of healthy trees.

But while the schoolmaster has been busy starching our language and

smoothing it flat with the mangle of a supposed classical authority, the

newspaper reporter has been doing even more harm by stretching and

swelling it to suit his occasions. A dozen years ago I began a list,

which I have added to from time to time, of some of the changes which

may be fairly laid at his door. I give a few of them as showing their

tendency, all the more dangerous that their effect, like that of some

poisons, is insensibly cumulative, and that they are sure at last of

effect among a people whose chief reading is the daily paper. I give in

two columns the old style and its modern equivalent.

_Old Style._ _New Style._

Was hanged. Was launched into

eternity.

When the halter When the fatal

was put round noose was adjusted

his neck. about the

neck of the unfortunate

victim

of his own unbridled

passions.

A great crowd A vast concourse

came to see. was assembled to

witness.

Great fire. Disastrous conflagration.

The fire spread. The conflagration

extended its devastating

career.

House burned. Edifice consumed.

The fire was got The progress of

under. the devouring

element was arrested.

Man fell. Individual was

precipitated.

A horse and wagon A valuable horse

ran against. attached to a vehicle driven by

J.S., in the employment of J.B.,

collided with.

The frightened The infuriated animal.

horse.

Sent for the doctor. Called into requisition

the services of the family

physician.

The mayor of the The chief magistrate

city in a short of the metropolis, in well-

speech welcomed. chosen and eloquent

language, frequently

interrupted by the

plaudits of the

surging multitude,

officially tendered the

hospitalities.

I shall say a few I shall, with your

words. permission, beg

leave to offer

some brief observations.

Began his answer. Commenced his rejoinder.

Asked him to dine. Tendered him a banquet.

A bystander advised. One of those omnipresent

characters who, as if

in pursuance of some

previous arrangement,

are certain to be

encountered in the

vicinity when an accident

occurs, ventured

the suggestion.

He died. He deceased, he passed

out of existence, his

spirit quitted its

earthly habitation,

winged its way to

eternity, shook off

its burden, etc.

In one sense this is nothing new. The school of Pope in verse ended by

wire-drawing its phrase to such thinness that it could bear no weight of

meaning whatever. Nor is fine writing by any means confined to America.

All writers without imagination fall into it of necessity whenever they

attempt the figurative. I take two examples from Mr. Merivale's 'History

of the Romans under the Empire,' which, indeed, is full of such. 'The

last years of the age familiarly styled the Augustan were singularly

barren of the literary glories from which its celebrity was chiefly

derived. One by one the stars in its firmament had been lost to the

world; Virgil and Horace, etc., had long since died; the charm which the

imagination of Livy had thrown over the earlier annals of Rome had

ceased to shine on the details of almost contemporary history; and if

the flood of his eloquence still continued flowing, we can hardly

suppose that the stream was as rapid, as fresh, and as clear as ever.' I

will not waste time in criticising the bad English or the mixture of

metaphor in these sentences, but will simply cite another from the same

author which is even worse. 'The shadowy phantom of the Republic

continued to flit before the eyes of the Cæsar. There was still, he

apprehended, a germ of sentiment existing, on which a scion of his own

house, or even a stranger, might boldly throw himself and raise the

standard of patrician independence.' Now a ghost may haunt a murderer,

but hardly, I should think, to scare him with the threat of taking a new

lease of its old tenement. And fancy the _scion_ of a _house_ in the act

of _throwing itself_ upon a _germ of sentiment_ to _raise a standard!_ I

am glad, since we have so much in the same kind to answer for, that this

bit of horticultural rhetoric is from beyond sea. I would not be

supposed to condemn truly imaginative prose. There is a simplicity of

splendor, no less than of plainness, and prose would be poor indeed if

it could not find a tongue for that meaning of the mind which is behind

the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England

there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere

convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as

algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy

national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in

part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of

expressing feeling, but in part also, it is to be feared, from a growing

distrust, one might almost say hatred, of whatever is super-material.

There is something sad in the scorn with which their journalists treat

the notion of there being such a thing as a national ideal, seeming

utterly to have forgotten that even in the affairs of this world the

imagination is as much matter-of-fact as the understanding. If we were

to trust the impression made on us by some of the cleverest and most

characteristic of their periodical literature, we should think England

hopelessly stranded on the good-humored cynicism of well-to-do

middle-age, and should fancy it an enchanted nation, doomed to sit

forever with its feet under the mahogany in that after-dinner mood which

follows conscientious repletion, and which it is ill-manners to disturb

with any topics more exciting than the quality of the wines. But there

are already symptoms that a large class of Englishmen are getting weary

of the dominion of consols and divine common-sense, and to believe that

eternal three per cent. is not the chief end of man, nor the highest and

only kind of interest to which the powers and opportunities of England

are entitled.

The quality of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of

American character, and especially o£ American humor. In Dr. Petri's

_Gedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter_, we are told that the word

_humbug_ is commonly used for the exaggerations of the North-Americans.

To be sure, one would be tempted to think the dream of Columbus half

fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West a nearer way to

Orientalism, at least in diction. But it seems to me that a great deal

of what is set down as mere extravagance is more fitly to be called

intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms ol the imaginative faculty in

full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw and

formless material in which poetry is to work. By and by, perhaps, the

world will see it fashioned into poem and picture, and Europe, which

will be hard pushed for originality erelong, may have to thank us for a

new sensation. The French continue to find Shakespeare exaggerated

because he treated English just as our country-folk do when they speak

of a 'steep price,' or say that they 'freeze to' a thing. The first

postulate of an original literature is that a people should use their

language instinctively and unconsciously, as if it were a lively part of

their growth and personality, not as the mere torpid boon of education

or inheritance. Even Burns contrived to write very poor verse and prose

in English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Mr.

Horace Mann, in one of his public addresses, commented at some length on

the beauty and moral significance ol the French phrase _s'orienter_ and

called on his young friends to practise upon it in life. There was not a

Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out

what was _about east_, and to shape his course accordingly. This charm

which a familiar expression gains by being commented, as it were, and.

set in a new light by a foreign language, is curious and instructive. I

cannot help thinking that Mr. Matthew Arnold forgets this a little too

much sometimes when he writes of the beauties of French style. It would

not be hard to find in the works of French Academicians phrases as

coarse as those he cites from Burke, only they are veiled by the

unfamiliarity of the language. But, however this may be, it is certain

that poets and peasants please us in the same way by translating words

back again to their primal freshness, and infusing them with a

delightful strangeness which is anything but alienation. What, for

example, is Milton's '_edge_ of battle' but a doing into English of the

Latin _acies? Was die Gans gedacht das der Schwan vollbracht_, what the

goose but thought, that the swan full brought (or, to de-Saxonize it a

little, what the goose conceived, that the swan achieved), and it may

well be that the life, invention, and vigor shown by our popular speech,

and the freedom with which it is shaped to the instant want of those who

use it, are of the best omen for our having a swan at last. The part I

have taken on myself is that of the humbler bird.

But it is affirmed that there is something innately vulgar in the Yankee

dialect. M. Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness: '_Je définis un

patois une ancienne langue qui a eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue

toute jeune st qui n'a pas fait fortune._' The first part of his

definition applies to a dialect like the Provençal, the last to the

Tuscan before Dante had lifted it into a classic, and neither, it seems

to me, will quite fit a _patois/_, which is not properly a dialect, but

rather certain archaisms, proverbial phrases, and modes of

pronunciation, which maintain themselves among the uneducated side by

side with the finished and universally accepted language. Norman French,

for example, or Scotch down to the time of James VI., could hardly be

called _patois_, while I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a

_lingo_ rather than a dialect. It has retained a few words now fallen

into disuse in the mother country, like to _tarry_, to _progress_,

_fleshy_, _fall_, and some others; it has changed the meaning of some,

as in _freshet_; and it has clung to what I suspect to have been the

broad Norman pronunciation of _e_ (which Molière puts into the mouth of

his rustics) in such words as _sarvant_, _parfect_, _vartoo_, and the

like. It maintains something of the French sound of _a_ also in words

like _chămber_, _dănger_ (though the latter had certainly begun to

take its present sound so early as 1636, when I find it sometimes spelt

_dainger_). But in general it may be said that nothing can be found in

it which does not still survive in some one or other of the English

provincial dialects. There is, perhaps, a single exception in the verb

to _sleeve_. To _sleeve_ silk means to divide or ravel out a thread of

silk with the point of a needle till it becomes _floss_. (A.S. _sléfan_,

to _cleave_=divide.) This, I think, explains the '_sleeveless_ errand'

in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously

darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that

cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, and therefore bootless?

I am not speaking now of Americanisms properly so called, that is, of

words or phrases which have grown into use here either through

necessity, invention, or accident, such as a _carry_, a _one-horse

affair_, a _prairie_, to _vamose_. Even these are fewer than is

sometimes taken for granted. But I think some fair defence may be made

against the charge of vulgarity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the

thought, and not in the word or the way of pronouncing it. Modern

French, the most polite of languages, is barbarously vulgar if compared

with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian.

There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between

_ministerium_ and _métier_, or _sapiens_ and _sachant_, than between

_druv_ and _drove_ or _agin_ and _against_, which last is plainly an

arrant superlative. Our rustic _coverlid_ is nearer its French original

than the diminutive cover_let_, into which it has been ignorantly

corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen

at different times three diverse pronunciations of a single

word,--_cowcumber_, _coocumber_, and _cucumber_. Of these the first,

which is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality of _concombre_. Lord

Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and

Voltaire tells his countrymen that _handkerchief_ was pronounced

_hankercher_. I find it so spelt in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity

the Yankee still persists in, and as there is always a reason for such

deviations from the sound as represented by the spelling, may we not

suspect two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor for _kercher_

in _couverture_ rather than in _couvrechef_? And what greater phonetic

vagary (which Dryden, by the way, called _fegary_) in our _lingua

rustica_ than this _ker_ for _couvre_? I copy from the fly-leaves of my

books, where I have noted them from time to time, a few examples of

pronunciation and phrase which will show that the Yankee often has

antiquity and very respectable literary authority on his side. My list

might be largely increased by referring to glossaries, but to them every

one can go for himself, and I have gathered enough for my purpose.

I will take first those cases in which something like the French sound

has been preserved in certain single letters and diphthongs. And this

opens a curious question as to how long this Gallicism maintained itself

in England. Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has given as two

words with different meanings, as in _genteel_ and _jaunty_, which I

find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering

between _genteel_ and _jantee_. It is usual in America to drop the _u_

in words ending in _our_--a very proper change recommended by Howell two

centuries ago, and carried out by him so far as his printers would

allow. This and the corresponding changes in _musique_, _musick_, and

the like, which he also advocated, show that in his time the French

accent indicated by the superfluous letters (for French had once nearly

as strong an accent as Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of

French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have

_riches'_ and _counsel'_, in Bishop Hall _comet'_, _chapëlain_, in Donne

_pictures'_, _virtue'_, _presence'_, _mortal'_, _merit'_, _hainous'_,

_giant'_, with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The

two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected

of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes _baptime_. The tendency to throw the

accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and

perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's 'Albion's England' we

have _creator'_ and _crëature'_ side by side with the modern _creator_

and _creature_. _E'nvy_ and _e'nvying_ occur in Campion (1602), and yet

_envy'_ survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to

the French, as in _rev'enue_ for _reven'ue_, I had been so used to

hearing _imbecile_ pronounced with the accent on the first syllable,

which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I

was surprised to find _imbec'ile_ in a verse of Wordsworth. The

dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and

he declared for _imbeceel'_. In general it may be assumed that accent

will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and

therefore quickness of utterance. _Blas'-phemous_, for example, is more

rapidly pronounced than _blasphem'ous_, to which our Yankee clings,

following in this the usage of many of the older poets. _Amer'ican_ is

easier than _Ameri'can_, and therefore the false quantity has carried

the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so

late as Cowley.

To come back to the matter in hand. Our 'uplandish man' retains the soft

or thin sound of the _u_ in some words, such as _rule_, _truth_

(sometimes also pronounced _trŭth_, not _trooth_), while he says

_noo_ for _new_, and gives to _view_ and _few_ so indescribable a

mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be

called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire says that the English pronounce

_true_ as if it rhymed with _view_, and this is the sound our rustics

give to it. Spenser writes _deow_ (_dew_) which can only be pronounced

with the Yankee nasality. In _rule_ the least sound of _a_ precedes the

_u_. I find _reule_ in Pecock's 'Repressor.' He probably pronounced it

_rayoolë_, as the old French word from which it is derived was very

likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original

_regula_. Tindal has _reuler_, and the Coventry Plays have _preudent_.

In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find _reule_. As for _noo_, may it not

claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from _nouveau_ or _neuf_,

the ancient sound of which may very well have been _noof_, as nearer

_novus_? _Beef_ would seem more like to have come from _buffe_ than from

_boeuf_, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon _few_

may have caught enough from its French cousin _peu_ to claim the benefit

of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase _a few_ (as 'I

licked him a few') may well appeal to _un peu_ for sense and authority.

Nay, might not _lick_ itself turn out to be the good old word _lam_ in

an English disguise, it the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he

fairly might, from the Latin _lambere_? The New England _ferce_ for

_fierce_, and _perce_ for _pierce_ (sometimes heard as _fairce_ and

_pairce_), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of _verse

and pierce_ in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a

Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our _pairlous_ for

_perilous_ is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's _parlous_

than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our

pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it

is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with

English lips. Thus for _joint_, _employ_, _royal_, we have _jynt_,

_emply_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a

prolongation of the _y_ sound. I find _royal_ so pronounced in the

'Mirror for Magistrates.' In Walter de Biblesworth I find _solives_

Englished by _gistes_. This, it is true, may have been pronounced

_jeests_, but the pronunciation _jystes_ must have preceded the present

spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was

forgotten, as analogical with other words in _oi_. In the same way after

Norman-French influence had softened the _l_ out of _would_ (we already

find _woud_ for _veut_ in N.F. poems), _should_ followed the example,

and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to

satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and

even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with

_eyster_ for _oyster_ as early as the fourteenth century. I find _viage_

in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne

and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_

(for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, in the Coventry Plays. In

Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of _employ_ for _imply_, fairly

inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this

pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the

elegant Gray said _naise_ for _noise_ just as our rustics still do. Our

_cornish_ (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better

than _cornice_ does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in

dropping the _g_ from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now

and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words

ending in _n_. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common,

though it may formerly have been more so. _Capting_, for instance, I

never heard save in jest, the habitual form being _kepp'n_. But at any

rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, 'Ane

Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,' in which I know not

whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more

charming, I find _burding_, _garding_, and _cousing_, and in the State

Trials _uncerting_ used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the _n_

better than _ng_.

Of Yankee preterites I find _risse_ and _rize_ for _rose_ in Beaumont

and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, _clim_ in Spenser, _chees_ (_chose_)

in Sir John Mandevil, _give_ (_gave_) in the Coventry Plays, _shet_

(_shut_) in Golding's Ovid, _het_ in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs,

_thriv_ and _smit_ in Drayton, _quit_ in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and

_pled_ in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. _Rid_

for _rode_ was anciently common. So likewise was _see_ for _saw_, but I

find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's

_seie_ and Gower's _sigh_ were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded.

_Shew_ is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden,

and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like _snew_,

_thew_, and even _mew_, are not without example. I find _sew_ for

_sewed_ in 'Piers Ploughman.' Indeed, the anomalies in English

preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred _flew_ from

_flow_ (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to _fly_ because we

had another preterite in _fled_. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains

_growed_, _blowed_, for which he has good authority, and less often

_knowed_. His _sot_ is merely a broad sounding of _sat_, no more

inelegant than the common _got_ for _gat_, which he further degrades

into _gut_. When he says _darst_, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.

The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the _a_ in such

words as _axe_, _wax_, pronouncing them _exe_, _wex_ (shortened from

_aix_, _waix_). He also says _hev_ and _hed_ (_hāve_, _hād_ for

_have_ and _had_). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In

_aix_ for _axle_ he certainly does. I find _wex_ and _aisches_ (_ashes_)

in Pecock, and _exe_ in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with

_wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden

rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's

teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites _hez_ for _hath_ as peculiar to

Lincolnshire. I find _hayth_ in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of

Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so

wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote _belcony_. Our _fect_ is only the

O.F. _faict_. _Thaim_ for _them_ was common in the sixteenth century. We

have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb

_thrash_, _thresh_. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say

_instead_ for _instid_ (commonly _'stid_ where not the last word in a

sentence), he changes the _i_ into _e_ in _red_ for _rid_, _tell_ for

_till_, _hender_ for _hinder_, _rense_ for _rinse_. I find _red_ in the

old interlude of 'Thersytes,' _tell_ in a letter of Daborne to

Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great

Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single

verse of the Chester Plays,

'_Tell_ the day of dome, _tell_ the beames blow.'

From the word _blow_ (in another sense) is formed _blowth_, which I

heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it

as meaning 'a blossom.' With us a single blossom is a _blow_, while

_blowth_ means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there

was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland

and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes _hinder_ with

_slender_, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have _renched_ for _rinsed_. In

'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is _sence_ for _since_;

Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes _since_ with

_Amiens_ and _patïence_, Bishop Hall and Otway with _pretence_, Chapman

with _citizens_, Dryden with _providence_. Indeed, why should not

_sithence_ take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has _tell_

for _till_, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes _seche_ for _such_,

and our _ef_ finds authority in the old form _yeffe_.

_E_ sometimes takes the place of _u_, as _jedge, tredge, bresh_. I find

_tredge_ in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' _bresh_ in a citation by

Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century,

and _resche_ for _rush_ (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume

of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. _Resce_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon

forms of the word in Bosworth's A.-S. Dictionary. Golding has _shet_.

The Yankee always shortens the _u_ in the ending _ture_, making _ventur,

natur, pictur_, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of

the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once

universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile _vencher,

naycher, pickcher_, that have taken its place, sounding like the

invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce

Penniless' has _ventur_, and so spells it, and I meet it also in

Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has

_tort'rest_, which can be contracted only from _tortur_ and not from

_torcher_. Quarles rhymes _nature_ with _creator_, and Dryden with

_satire_, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of

_satyr_. Quarles has also _torture_ and _mortar_. Mary Boleyn writes

_kreatur_. I find _pikter_ in Izaak Walton's autograph will.

I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under

any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with _kiver_ for

_cover_, and _ta_, for _to_. The Yankee pronounces both _too_ and _to_

like _ta_ (like the _tou_ in _touch_) where they are not emphatic. When

they are, both become _tu_. In old spelling, _to_ is the common (and

indeed correct) form of _too_, which is only _to_ with the sense of _in

addition_. I suspect that the sound of our _too_ has caught something

from the French _tout_, and it is possible that the old _too too_ is not

a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same

word (_toute_) as anciently pronounced, with the _e_ not yet silenced.

Gill gives a Northern origin to _geaun_ for _gown_ and _waund_ for

_wound_ (_vulnus_). Lovelace has _waund_, but

there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who _borealised_

in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of _geaun!_ And yet some

delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of

_ge-ard_ for _guard_, and _ge-url_ for _girl_. Sir Philip Sidney

(_credite posteri!_) wrote _furr_ for _far_. I would hardly have

believed it had I not seen it in _facsimile_. As some consolation, I

find _furder_ in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymes _far_ with

_cur_. The Yankee, who omits the final _d_ in many words, as do the

Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in _geound_. The purist does not

feel the loss of the _d_ sensibly in _lawn_ and _yon_, from the former

of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in

_laundry_), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we

make of _git, yit_, and _yis_? I find _yis_ and _git_ in Warner's

'Albion's England,' _yet_ rhyming with _wit, admit_, and _fit_ in Donne,

with _wit_ in the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, with

_writ_ in Dryden, and latest of all with _wit_ in Sir Hanbury Williams.

Prior rhymes _fitting_ and _begetting_. Worse is to come. Among others,

Donne rhymes _again_ with _sin_, and Quarles repeatedly with _in_. _Ben_

for _been_, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of

Sackville, 'Gammer Gurton' (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and

many more, though _bin_ seems to have been the common form. Whittier's

accenting the first syllable of _rom'ance_ finds an accomplice in

Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is analogous with

_Rom'ans_. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which

I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writes _sowdiers (sogers,

soudoyers)_, and Chapman and Gill _sodder_. This absorption of the _l_

is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes

also _biyende_, and the authors of 'Jack Jugler' and 'Gammer Gurton'

_yender_. The Yankee includes '_yon_' in the same catagory, and says

'hither an' yen,' for 'to and fro.' (Cf. German _jenseits_.) Pecock and

plenty more have _wrastle_. Tindal has _agynste, gretter, shett, ondone,

debyte_, and _scace_. 'Jack Jugler' has _scacely_ (which I have often

heard, though _skurce_ is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make

_great_ rhyme with _set_. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find

_ynd_ for _end_, which the Yankee more often makes _eend_, still using

familiarly the old phrase 'right anend' for 'continuously.' His 'stret

(straight) along' in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I

find in Pecock. Tindal's _debytë_ for _deputy_ is so perfectly Yankee

that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the

First Parish at Jaalam Centre. 'Jack Jugler' further gives us _playsent_

and _sartayne_. Dryden rhymes _certain_ with _parting_, and Chapman and

Ben Jonson use _certain_, as the Yankee always does, for _certainly_.

The 'Coventry Mysteries' have _occapied, massage, nateralle, materal

(material),_ and _meracles_,--all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre

fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] is _vertus_ for _virtuous_. Thomas Fuller called

_volume vollum_, I suspect, for he spells it _volumne_. However, _per

contra_, Yankees habitually say _colume_ for _column_. Indeed, to

prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the

Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need

only to cite the words _scriptur_, _Israll_, _athists_, and

_cherfulness_ from Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote

them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce

them. Brampton Gurdon writes _shet_ in a letter to Winthrop. _Purtend_

(_pretend_) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty

Devices;' _purvide_, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of

course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler

has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in 'To which these

_carr'ings-on_ did tend.' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of

the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently

tried to spell phonetically, makes _sorrows_ into _sororz_. Herrick

writes _hollow_ for _halloo_, and perhaps pronounced it (_horresco

suggerens_!) _holló_, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from _holà_?

I find _ffelaschyppe_ (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and

his queen neither of them scrupled to write _afore_, and the former

feels no inelegance even in _chaw_ and _idee_. _'Fore_ was common till

after Herrick. Dryden has _do's_ for _does_, and his wife spells _worse_

_wosce_. _Afeared_ was once universal. Warner has _ery_ for _ever a_;

nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by

persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English

literature. And why not _illy_? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by

writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that _ill_ is

itself an adverb, without the termination _ly_,' and quotes Dr. Mosser,

President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you

say '_welly_?' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own

question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still

remembered that _ill_ was an adjective, the shortened form of _evil_,

out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to

make _evilly_. This slurred _evil_ is 'the dram of _eale_' in 'Hamlet.'

I find, _illy_ in Warner. The objection to _illy_ is not an etymological

one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very sufficient

reason. _Ill_ as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the

rustic's when he says, 'I was treated _bad_.' May not the reason of this

exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to

pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were

distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to

say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided

_smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them

without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure,

_dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other

(though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving

way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make

adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We

have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman

would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish

between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as

for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in

his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose

spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_

example.' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting

instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still

is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I

am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I

shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain

terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is

one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are

like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges

of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less

badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more

painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an

Englishman's _yes_ and _no_, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same

monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the

dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor

do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that

inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How

many educated men pronounce the _t_ in _chestnut_? how many say

_pentise_ for _penthouse_, as they should. When a Yankee skipper says

that he is "boun' for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave of the

Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old

ballad-singer, though they would have pronounced it _boon_. This is one

of the cases where the _d_ is surreptitious, and has been added in

compliment to the verb _bind_, with which it has nothing to do. If we

consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race

has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its

speech), the _d_ has no more right there than at the end of _gone_,

where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the

sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its

processes. Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII., writes _worle_ for world.

Chapman has _wan_ for _wand_, and _lawn_ has rightfully displaced

_laund_, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells

us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by

Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as '_Dear Husban_.' The old form

_expoun'_, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a

barbarous _d_ tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite

to this, like our _gownd_ for _gown_, and the London cockney's _wind_

for _wine_, I find _drownd_ for _drown_ in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur'

(1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind

which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a

totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say _behīnd_

and _hīnder_ (comparative) and yet to _hĭnder_. Shakespeare

pronounced _kind_ _kĭnd_, or what becomes of his play on that word

and _kin_ in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it?)

drop the final _d_ as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the

same way on _kindred_ and _kindness_.

But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes _bounds_ with

_crowns_, _grounds_ with _towns_, _text_ with _sex_, _worst_ with

_crust_, _interrupts_ with _cups_; Drayton, _defects_ with _sex_;

Chapman, _amends_ with _cleanse_; Webster, _defects_ with _checks_; Ben

Jonson, _minds_ with _combines_; Marston, _trust_ and _obsequious_,

_clothes_ and _shows_; Dryden gives the same sound to _clothes_, and has

also _minds_ with _designs_. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears

may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by

no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated

any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the

rhyme _first_ and _trust_, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady.

Swift has _stunted_ and _burnt_ it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no

doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of

_burned_. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock _after_ and _matter_, thus

seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to

find _after_ and _daughter_. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old

Plays we have _onions_ rhyming with _minions_,--I have tears in my eyes

while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal _Misses_

(_Mrs._) for _Mistress_? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries

of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays

by Collier),

'To make my young _mistress_

Delighting in _kisses_,'

is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say _Injun_ for _Indian_.

The tendency to make this change where _i_ follows _d_ is common. The

Italian _giorno_ and French _jour_ from _diurnus_ are familiar examples.

And yet _Injun_ is one of those depravations which the taste challenges

peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes

'_Indies_' with '_cringes_'--and four English lexicographers, beginning

with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say _invidgeous_. Yet after all it is no worse

than the debasement which all our terminations in _tion_ and _tience_

have undergone, which yet we hear with _resignashun_ and _payshunce_,

though it might have aroused both _impat-i-ence_ and _in-dig-na-ti-on_

in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon

be dull,

'God takes a text and preacheth patience,'

the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the

longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of

Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in _o-ce-an_, and

Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second

of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,--

'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder

The tumbling ruins of the oceän.'

Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our

modern _oshun_ sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison. Some

other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them. _More 'n_ for

_more than_, as one of the worst, may stand for a type of such. Yet our

old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly

be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of

_whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of

_smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I

forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has

Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would

use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had

ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has

not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of

a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_.' And I do not believe it,

for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the

commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover,

_raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it

mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in

Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in

Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words

_rather than_ make a monosyllable;--

'What furie is't to take Death's part

And rather than by Nature, die by Art!'

The contraction _more'n_ I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a

verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond

doubt,--

'A golden crown whose heirs

More than half the world subdue.'

It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld.' It is

unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'--

'It were but folly,

Dear soul, to boast of _more than_ I can perform.'

Is our _gin_ for _given_ more violent than _mar'l_ for _marvel_, which

was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has

_gin_ (spelling it _gen_), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us

likewise in preferring _chimly_ to _chimney_.

I will now leave pronunciation and turn to words or phrases which have

been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped

stitch, in the pronunciation of the word _súpreme_, which I had thought

native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a

word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of

authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant

suddenly cut down by the verb _to wilt_. It is, of course, own cousin of

the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and

my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives _welhèn_,

_marcescere_, and refers to _weih_ (_weak_), and conjecturally to A.-S,

_hvelan_. The A.-S. _wealwian_ (_to wither_) is nearer, but not so near

as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its

ancestry,--_velgi_, _tepefacere_, (and _velki_, with the derivative)

meaning _contaminare_. _Wilt_, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as

it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the

imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is

a true Americanism. _Wilt_ occurs in English provincial glossaries, but

is explained by _wither_, which with us it does not mean. We have a few

words such as _cache_, _cohog_, _carry_ (_portage_), _shoot_ (_chute_),

_timber_ (_forest_), _bushwhack_ (to pull a boat along by the bushes on

the edge of a stream), _buckeye_ (a picturesque word for the

horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into

the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant

it when he said, '_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut_ MAIZ _et_

CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the

French, German, Spanish, or Indian.[28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great

Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. _Bogus_, in the sense of

_worthless_, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a

corruption of the French _bagasse_ (from low Latin _bagasea_), which

travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the

refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of

some words. We use _freshet_ in the sense of _flood_, for which I have

not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient

Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to

mean a _current_, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I

therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. _Crick_ for _creek_ I

find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy

Warre,' and _run_, meaning a _small stream_, in Waymouth's 'Voyage'

(1605). _Humans_ for _men_, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his

'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his

translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath

lost his Pearl.' _Dogs_ for _andirons_ is still current in New England,

and in Walter de Biblesworth I find _chiens_ glossed in the margin by

_andirons_. _Gunning_ for _shooting_ is in Drayton. We once got credit

for the poetical word _fall_ for _autumn_, but Mr. Bartlett and the last

edition of Webster's Dictionary refer us to Dryden. It is even older,

for I find it in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has _autumn fall_. Middleton

plays upon the word: 'May'st thou have a reasonable good _spring_, for

thou art like to have many dangerous foul _falls_.' Daniel does the

same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. Gray uses the archaism _picked_

for _peaked_, and the word _smudge_ (as our backwoodsmen do) for a

smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than

even Sidney, the last _preux chevalier_) has 'the Emperor's folks' just

as a Yankee would say it. _Loan_ for _lend_, with which we have hitherto

been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so

long ago as in 'Albion's England.' _Fleshy_, in the sense of _stout_,

may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in

Francklin's 'Lucian.' _Chore_ is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined

to prefer it to _chare_ and _char_, because I think that I see a more

natural origin for it in the French _jour_--whence it might come to mean

a day's work, and thence a job--than anywhere else.[29] _At onst_ for _at

once_ I thought a corruption of our own, till I found it in the Chester

Plays. I am now inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but only an

erratic and obsolete superlative _at onest_. _To progress_ was flung in

our teeth till Mr. Pickering retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth prógress

down thy cheeks.' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer,

because the accent was different, and because the word might here be

reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his

dictionary above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from Ford's

'Broken Heart.' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent

unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he

'cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not.' It

certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the

'Alchemist,' had this verse,

'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,'

and Sir Philip Sidney,

'Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place.'

Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our English cousins will forgive

us, since we have cleared ourselves from any suspicion of originality in

the matter! Even after I had convinced myself that the chances were

desperately against our having invented any of the _Americanisms_ with

which we are _faulted_ and which we are in the habit of _voicing_, there

were one or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an accent as to

stagger me a little. One of these was 'the biggest _thing out_.' Alas,

even this slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has

'So harde an herte was none _oute_,'

and

'That such merveile was none _oute_.'

He also, by the way, says 'a _sighte_ of flowres' as naturally as our

up-country folk would say it. _Poor_ for _lean_, _thirds_ for _dower_,

and _dry_ for _thirsty_ I find in Middleton's plays. _Dry_ is also in

Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce

thinks it needful to explain the phrase _I can't tell_ (universal in

America) by the gloss _I could not say_. Middleton also uses _sneeked_,

which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of

course, only another form of _snatch_, analogous to _theek_ and _thatch_

(cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), _break_ (_brack_) and

_breach_, _make_ (still common with us) and _match_. _'Long on_ for

_occasioned by_ ('who is this 'long on?') occurs constantly in Gower and

likewise in Middleton. _'Cause why_ is in Chaucer. _Raising_ (an English

version of the French _leaven_) for _yeast_ is employed by Gayton in his

'Festivous Notes on Don Quixote.' I have never seen an instance of our

New England word _emptins_ in the same sense, nor can I divine its

original. Gayton has _limekill_; also _shuts_ for _shutters_, and the

latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson.'

Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have _chist_ for _chest_,

and it is certainly nearer _cista_, as well as to its form in the

Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound

from _cist_, but _chest_ is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says _wropt_ for

_wrapt_. 'Musicianer' I had always associated with the militia-musters

of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own,

but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as

1642 by an extract in Collier. 'Not worth the time of day,' had passed

with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's 'Pericles.' For

_slick_ (which is only a shorter sound of _sleek_, like _crick_ and the

now universal _britches_ for _breeches_) I will only call Chapman and

Jonson. 'That's a sure card!' and 'That's a stinger!' both sound like

modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of

'Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. 'Right here,' a favorite

phrase with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns

up _passim_ in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found

something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism _right

away_. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly

suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'--

'Lyght it and bring it _tite away_.'

But _tite_ is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but

another form of _straightway_? _Cussedness_, meaning _wickedness,

malignity_, and _cuss_, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases

as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have

been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously

indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But

neither is our own. _Cursydnesse_, in the same sense of malignant

wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and _cuss_ may perhaps claim

to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French.

Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbé

Dubois, he says, 'Qui étoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais françois appelle

un _sacre_, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement.' 'Not worth a

cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption,

since 'not worth a _cress_' is in 'Piers Ploughman.' 'I don't see it,'

was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the

soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband.' _Green sauce_ for

_vegetables_ I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our

rustic pronunciation _sahce_ (for either the diphthong _au_ was

anciently pronounced _ah_, or else we have followed abundant analogy in

changing it to the latter sound, as we have in _chance, dance_, and so

many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its

ancestor _salsa_. _Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now

peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as

we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too

(compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in

the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_

for _that_ I might say _passim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an

Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton

together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love.' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in

another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its

origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.S.

_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better

yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kód_), meaning _resin_ and

_glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit

cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to

_beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently

obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land,

receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I

mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have

lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of

Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put!_ for

_Begone!_ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the

French _se mettre à la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,

Dante has a verse,

'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _già messo per lo sentiero_,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of

international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant

eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years

ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political

purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous

virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's

Edward IV.;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'

Valentine says,

'Will you go drink,

And let the world slide?'

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide.'

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a

gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,

for Chaucer writes,

'Well nigh all other curës _let he slide_.'

Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare

Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.' _In his tracks_ for _immediately_ has

acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but

is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin _e

vestigio_, or at best the Norman French _eneslespas_, both which have

the same meaning? _Hotfoot_ (provincial also in England), I find in the

old romance of 'Tristan,'

'_Si s'en parti_ CHAUT PAS'

_Like_ for _as_ is never used in New England, but is universal in the

South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (_ego sum

rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam_), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This

were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel.

_Them_ was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P.

Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any

passage adduced where _guess_ was used as the Yankee uses it. The word

was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade

of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like _rather

think_, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he

says, 'I guess I _du!_' There are two examples in Otway, one of which

('So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve

our purpose, and Coleridge's

'I guess 'twas fearful there to see'

certainly comes very near. But I have a higher authority than either in

Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first

inventor of them (I _guess_ you dislike not the addition) was one

Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted.'

Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes

Cloth-breeches say, 'but I _gesse_ your maistership never tried what

true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning

precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as

prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions,

with 'well.' Put before such a phrase as 'How d'e do?' it is commonly

short, and has the sound of it _wul_, but in reply it is deliberative,

and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of

intonation, and by prolonging or abbreviating, I should vainly attempt

to describe. I have heard _ooa-ahl_, _wahl_, _ahl_, _wal_ and something

nearly approaching the sound of

the _le_ in _able_. Sometimes before 'I' it dwindles to a mere _l_, as

''l _I_ dunno.' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though

I displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most

exquisite of humorists, J.H.?) told me that he once heard five 'wells,'

like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land.

The first was the ordinary _wul_, in deference to custom; the second,

the long, perpending _ooahl_, with a falling inflection of the voice;

the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a

conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, _wulh_, ending

in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp _wal_,

showing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form

in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it

represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the

interjection.

A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so

curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines

to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I

mean the use of _allow_ in the sense of _affirm_, as 'I allow that's a

good horse.' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in

Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the

Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live by

eating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same,

_allowing_ theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be

the increase of theyr strength.' That is, they undervalued our strength,

and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another

passage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of

approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration,

said.' Ducange quotes Bracton _sub voce_ ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to

admit as proved,' and the transition from this to 'affirm,' is by no

means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault _allows_ waterfrogs to be good

meat,' and here the word is equivalent to _affirms_. At the same time,

when we consider some of the meanings of _allow_ in old English, and of

_allouer_ in old French, and also remember that the verbs _prize_ and

_praise_ are from one root, I think we must admit _allaudare_ to a share

in the paternity of _allow_. The sentence from Hakluyt would read

equally well, 'contemning our strengthe, ... and praising (or valuing)

their great eating of flesh as the cause of their increase in strength.'

After all, if we confine ourselves to _allocare_, it may turn out that

the word was somewhere and somewhen used for _to bet_, analogously to

_put up, put down, post_ (cf. Spanish _apostar_), and the like. I hear

boys in the street continually saying, 'I bet that's a good horse,' or

what not, meaning by no means to risk anything beyond their opinion in

the matter.

The word _improve_, in the sense of to 'occupy, make use of, employ,' as

Dr. Pickering defines it, he long ago proved to be no neologism. He

would have done better, I think, had he substituted _profit by_ for

_employ_. He cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had never, so

far as he knew, been used in New England before he left it in 1723,

except in Dr. Mather's 'Bemarkable Providences,' which he oddly calls a

'very old book.' Franklin, as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was

mistaken.

Mr. Bartlett in his 'Dictionary' merely abridges Pickering. Both of them

should have confined the application of the word to material things, its

extension to which is all that is peculiar in the supposed American use

of it. For surely 'Complete Letter-Writers' have been '_improving_ this

opportunity' time out of mind. I will illustrate the word a little

further, because Pickering cites no English authorities. Skelton has a

passage in his 'Phyllyp Sparowe,' which I quote the rather as it

contains also the word _allowed_ and as it distinguishes _improve_ from

_employ:_--

'His [Chaucer's] Englysh well alowed,

So as it is _emprowed_

For as it is employd,

There is no English voyd.'

Here the meaning is to _profit by_. In Fuller's 'Holy Warre' (1647), we

have 'The Egyptians standing on the firm ground, were thereby enabled to

_improve_ and enforce their darts to the utmost.' Here the word might

certainly mean _to make use of_. Mrs. Hutchison (Life of Colonel H.)

uses the word in the same way: 'And therefore did not _emproove_ his

interest to engage the country in the quarrel.' Swift in one of his

letters says: 'There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half

its advantage; yet it is better _improved_ than the people.' I find it

also in 'Strength out of Weakness' (1652), and Plutarch's

'Morals'(1714), but I know of only one example of its use in the purely

American sense, and that is 'a very good _improvement_ for a mill' in

the 'State Trials' (Speech of the Attorney. General in the Lady Ivy's

case, 1864). In the sense of _employ_, I could cite a dozen old English

authorities.

In running over the fly-leaves of those delightful folios for this

reference, I find a note which reminds me of another word, for our abuse

of which we have been deservedly ridiculed. I mean _lady,_ It is true I

might cite the example of the Italian _donna_[30] (_domina_), which has

been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as _lady_ among

us, by the uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in the

half-democratic republics of Italy in the same way and for the same

reasons as with us. But I admit that our abuse of the word is

villainous. I know of an orator who once said in a public meeting where

bonnets preponderated, that 'the ladies were last at the cross and first

at the tomb'! But similar sins were committed before our day and in the

mother country. In the 'Harleian Miscellany' (vol. v. p. 455) I find

'this _lady_ is my servant; the hedger's daughter Ioan.' in the 'State

Trials' I learn of 'a _gentlewoman_ that lives cook with' such a one,

and I hear the Lord High Steward speaking of the wife of a waiter at a

bagnio as a _gentlewoman_! From the same authority, by the way, I can

state that our vile habit of chewing tobacco had the somewhat unsavory

example of Titus Oates, and I know by tradition from an eye-witness that

the elegant General Burgoyne partook of the same vice. Howell, in one of

his letters (dated 26 August, 1623), speaks thus of another

'institution' which many have thought American: 'They speak much of that

boisterous Bishop of Halverstadt (for so they term him here), that,

having taken a place where ther were two Monasteries of Nuns and Friers,

he caus'd divers feather-beds to be rip'd, and all the feathers to be

thrown in a great Hall, whither the Nuns and Friers were thrust naked

with their bodies oil'd and pitch'd, and to tumble among the feathers.'

Howell speaks as if the thing were new to him, and I know not if the

'boisterous' Bishop was the inventor of it, but I find it practised in

England before our Revolution.

Before leaving the subject, I will add a few comments made from time to

time on the margin of Mr. Bartlett's excellent 'Dictionary,' to which I

am glad thus publicly to acknowledge my many obligations. 'Avails' is

good old English, and the _vails_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds's porter are

famous. Averse _from_, averse _to_, and in connection with them the

English vulgarism 'different _to_;' the corrupt use of _to_ in these

cases, as well as in the Yankee 'he lives to Salem,' 'to home,' and

others, must be a very old one, for in the one case it plainly arose

from confounding the two French prepositions _à_, (from Latin _ad_ and

_ab_), and in the other from translating the first of them. I once

thought 'different to' a modern vulgarism, and Mr. Thackeray, on my

pointing it out to him in 'Henry Esmond,' confessed it to be an

anachronism. Mr. Bartlett refers to 'the old writers quoted in

Richardson's Dictionary' for 'different to,' though in my edition of

that work all the examples are with _from_. But I find _to_ used

invariably by Sir R. Hawkins in Hakluyt. _Banjo_ is a negro corruption

of O.E. _bandore_. _Bind-weed_ can hardly be modern, for _wood-bind_ is

old and radically right, intertwining itself through _bindan_ and

_windan_ with classic stems. _Bobolink_: is this a contraction for Bob

o' Lincoln? I find _bobolynes_, in one of the poems attributed to

Skelton, where it may be rendered _giddy-pate_, a term very fit for the

bird in his ecstasies. _Cruel_ for _great_ is in Hakluyt.

_Bowling-alley_ is in Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse.' _Curious_, meaning

_nice_, occurs continually in old writers, and is as old as Pecock's

'Repressor.' _Droger_ is O.E. _drugger_. _Educational_ is in Burke.

_Feeze_ is only a form of _fizz_. _To fix_, in the American sense, I

find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675,

'their arms well _fixed_ and fit for service.' _To take the foot in the

hand_ is German; so is to _go under_. _Gundalow_ is old; I find

_gundelo_ in Hakluyt, and _gundello_ in Booth's reprint of the folio

Shakespeare of 1623. _Gonoff_ is O.E. _gnoffe_. _Heap_ is in 'Piers

Ploughman' ('and other names _an heep_'), and in Hakluyt ('seeing such a

_heap_ of their enemies ready to devour them'). _To liquor_ is in the

'Puritan' ('call 'em in, and liquor 'em a little'). _To loaf_: this, I

think, is unquestionably German. _Laufen_ is pronounced _lofen_ in some

parts of Germany, and I once heard one German student say to another,

_Ich lauf_ (lofe) _hier bis du wiederkehrest_, and he began accordingly

to saunter up and down, in short, to _loaf_. _To mull_, Mr. Bartlett

says, means 'to soften, to dispirit,' and quotes from

'Margaret,'--'There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on

among the doctors,'--where it surely cannot mean what he says it does.

We have always heard _mulling_ used for _stirring, bustling_, sometimes

in an underhand way. It is a metaphor derived probably from _mulling_

wine, and the word itself must be a corruption of _mell_, from O.F.

_mesler_. _Pair_ of stairs is in Hakluyt. _To pull up stakes_ is in

Curwen's Journal, and therefore pre-Revolutionary. I think I have met

with it earlier. _Raise_: under this word Mr. Bartlett omits 'to raise a

house,' that is, the frame of a wooden one, and also the substantive

formed from it, a _raisin'_. _Retire_ for _go to bed_ is in Fielding's

'Amelia.' _Setting-poles_ cannot be new, for I find 'some _set_ [the

boats] with long _poles_' in Hakluyt. _Shoulder-hitters_: I find that

_shoulder-striker_ is old, though I have lost the reference to my

authority. _Snag_ is no new word, though perhaps the Western application

of it is so; but I find in Gill the proverb, 'A bird in the bag is worth

two on the snag.' Dryden has _swop_ and _to rights_. _Trail_: Hakluyt

has 'many wayes _traled_ by the wilde beastes.'

I subjoin a few phrases not in Mr. Bartlett's book which I have heard.

_Bald-headed_: 'to go it bald-beaded;' in great haste, as where one

rushes out without his hat. _Bogue_: 'I don't git much done 'thout I

_bogue_ right in along 'th my men.' _Carry_: a _portage_. _Cat-nap_: a

short doze. _Cat-stick_: a small stick. _Chowder-head_: a muddle-brain.

_Cling-john_: a soft cake of rye. _Cocoanut_; the head. _Cohees_:

applied to the people of certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania,

from their use of the archaic form _Quo' he_. _Dunnow'z I know_: the

nearest your true Yankee ever comes to acknowledging ignorance.

_Essence-pedler_: a skunk. _First-rate and a half_. _Fish flakes_, for

drying fish: O.E. _fleck_ (_cratis_). _Gander-party_: a social gathering

of men only. _Gawnicus_: a dolt. _Hawkin's whetstone_: rum; in derision

of one Hawkins, a well-known temperance-lecturer. _Hyper_: to bustle: 'I

mus' _hyper_ about an' git tea.' _Keeler-tub_: one in which dishes are

washed. ('And Greasy Joan doth _keel_ the pot.') _Lap-tea_: where the

guests are too many to sit at table. _Last of pea-time_: to be hard-up.

_Lose-laid_ (_loose-laid_): a weaver's term, and probably English;

weak-willed. _Malahack_: to cut up hastily or awkwardly. _Moonglade_: a

beautiful word: for the track of moonlight on the water. _Off-ox_: an

unmanageable, cross-grained fellow. _Old Driver, Old Splitfoot_: the

Devil. _On-hitch_: to pull trigger (cf. Spanish _disparar_). _Popular_:

conceited, _Rote_: sound of surf before a storm. _Rot-gut_: cheap

whiskey; the word occurs in Heywood's 'English Traveller' and Addison's

'Drummer,' for a poor kind of drink. _Seem_: it is habitual with the

New-Englander to put this verb to strange uses, as 'I can't _seem_ to be

suited,' 'I couldn't _seem_ to know him.' _Sidehill_, for _hillside_.

_State-house_: this seems an Americanism, whether invented or derived

from the Dutch _Stad-huys_, I know not. _Strike_ and _string_; from the

game of ninepins; to make a _strike_ is to knock down all the pins with

one ball, hence it has come to mean fortunate, successful. _Swampers_:

men who break out roads for lumberers. _Tormented_: euphemism for

damned, as, 'not a tormented cent.' _Virginia fence, to make a_: to walk

like a drunken man.

It is always worth while to note down the erratic words or phrases which

one meets with in any dialect. They may throw light on the meaning of

other words, on the relationship of languages, or even on history

itself. In so composite a language as ours they often supply a different

form to express a different shade of meaning, as in _viol_ and _fiddle_,

_thrid_ and _thread_, _smother_ and _smoulder_, where the _l_ has crept

in by a false analogy with _would_. We have given back to England the

excellent adjective _lengthy_, formed honestly like _earthy, drouthy_,

and others, thus enabling their journalists to characterize our

President's messages by a word civilly compromising between _long_ and

_tedious_, so as not to endanger the peace of the two countries by

wounding our national sensitiveness to British criticism. Let me give

two curious examples of the antiseptic property of dialects at which I

have already glanced. Dante has _dindi_ as a childish or low word for

_danari_ (money), and in Shropshire small Roman coins are still dug up

which the peasants call _dinders_. This can hardly be a chance

coincidence, but seems rather to carry the word back to the Roman

soldiery. So our farmers say _chuk, chuk_, to their pigs, and _ciacco_

is one of the Italian words for _hog_. When a countryman tells us that

he 'fell _all of a heap_,' I cannot help thinking that he unconsciously

points to an affinity between our word _tumble_, and the Latin

_tumulus_, that is older than most others. I believe that words, or even

the mere intonation of them, have an astonishing vitality and power of

propagation by the root, like the gardener's pest, quitch-grass,[31]

while the application or combination of them may be new. It is in these

last that my countrymen seem to me full of humor, invention, quickness

of wit, and that sense of subtle analogy which needs only refining to

become fancy and imagination. Prosaic as American life seems in many of

its aspects to a European, bleak and bare as it is on the side of

tradition, and utterly orphaned of the solemn inspiration of antiquity,

I cannot help thinking that the ordinary talk of unlettered men among us

is fuller of metaphor and of phrases that suggest lively images than

that of any other people I have seen. Very many such will be found in

Mr. Bartlett's book, though his short list of proverbs at the end seem

to me, with one or two exceptions, as un-American as possible. Most of

them have no character at all but coarseness, and are quite too

long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always 'takes off

its coat to it,' as a Yankee would say. There are plenty that have a

more native and puckery flavor, seedlings from the old stock often, and

yet new varieties. One hears such not seldom among us Easterners, and

the West would yield many more. 'Mean enough to steal acorns from a

blind hog;' 'Cold as the north side of a Jenooary gravestone by

starlight;' 'Hungry as a graven image;' 'Pop'lar as a hen with one

chicken;' 'A hen's time ain't much;' 'Quicker 'n greased lightnin';'

'Ther's sech a thing ez bein' _tu_' (our Yankee paraphrase of [Greek:

maeden agan]); hence the phrase _tooin' round_, meaning a supererogatory

activity like that of flies; 'Stingy enough to skim his milk at both

eends;' 'Hot as the Devil's kitchen;' 'Handy as a pocket in a shirt;'

'He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon;' 'All deacons are good,

but there's odds in deacons' (to _deacon_ berries is to put the largest

atop); 'So thievish they hev to take in their stone walls nights;'[32]

may serve as specimens. 'I take my tea _barfoot_,' said a backwoodsman

when asked if he would have cream and sugar. (I find _barfoot_, by the

way, in the Coventry Plays.) A man speaking to me once of a very rocky

clearing said, 'Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that land,' and I

overheard a guide in the woods say to his companions who were urging him

to sing, 'Wal, I _did_ sing once, but toons gut invented, an' thet spilt

my trade.' Whoever has driven over a stream by a bridge made of _slabs_

will feel the picturesque force of the epithet _slab-bridged_ applied to

a fellow of shaky character. Almost every county has some good

die-sinker in phrase, whose mintage passes into the currency of the

whole neighborhood. Such a one described the county jail (the one stone

building where all the dwellings are of wood) as 'the house whose

underpinnin' come up to the eaves,' and called hell 'the place where

they didn't rake up their fires nights.' I once asked a stage-driver if

the other side of a hill were as steep as the one we were climbing:

'Steep? chain lightnin' couldn' go down it 'thout puttin' the shoe on!'

And this brings me back to the exaggeration of which I spoke before. To

me there is something very taking in the negro 'so black that charcoal

made a chalk-mark on him,' and the wooden shingle 'painted so like

marble that it sank in water,' as if its very consciousness or its

vanity had been overpersuaded by the cunning of the painter. I heard a

man, in order to give a notion of some very cold weather, say to another

that a certain Joe, who had been taking mercury, found a lump of

quicksilver in each boot, when he went home to dinner. This power of

rapidly dramatizing a dry fact into flesh and blood and the vivid

conception of Joe as a human thermometer strike me as showing a poetic

sense that may be refined into faculty. At any rate there is humor here,

and not mere quickness of wit,--the deeper and not the shallower

quality. The _tendency_ of humor is always towards overplus of

expression, while the very essence of wit is its logical precision.

Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had any humor, deceived,

perhaps, by their gravity of manner. But this very seriousness is often

the outward sign of that humorous quality of the mind which delights in

finding an element of identity in things seemingly the most incongruous,

and then again in forcing an incongruity upon things identical. Perhaps

Captain Hall had no humor himself, and if so he would never find it. Did

he always feel the point of what was said to himself? I doubt it,

because I happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The

Captain was walking up and down the veranda of a country tavern in

Massachusetts while the coach changed horses. A thunder-storm was going

on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in

condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so

conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty

heavy thunder you have here.' The other, who had divined at a glance his

feeling of generous concession to a new country, drawled gravely, 'Waal,

we _du_, considerin' the number of inhabitants.' This, the more I

analyze it, the more humorous does it seem. The same man was capable of

wit also, when he would. He was a cabinet-maker, and was once employed

to make some commandment-tables for the parish meeting-house. The

parson, a very old man, annoyed him by looking into his workshop every

morning, and cautioning him to be very sure to pick out 'clear mahogany

without any _knots_ in it.' At last, wearied out, he retorted one day:

'Wal, Dr. B., I guess ef I was to leave the _nots_ out o' some o' the

c'man'ments, 't'ould soot you full ez wal!'

If I had taken the pains to write down the proverbial or pithy phrases I

have heard, or if I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms I met

with in my reading, I might have been able to do more justice to my

theme. But I have done all I wished in respect to pronunciation, if I

have proved that where we are vulgar, we have the countenance of very

good company. For, as to the _jus et norma loquendi_, I agree with

Horace and those who have paraphrased or commented him, from Boileau to

Gray. I think that a good rule for style is Galiani's definition of

sublime oratory,--'l'art de tout dire sans être mis à la Bastille dans

un pays où il est defendu de rien dire.' I profess myself a fanatical

purist, but with a hearty contempt for the speech-gilders who affect

purism without any thorough, or even pedagogic knowledge of the

engendure, growth, and affinities of the noble language about whose

_mésalliances_ they profess (like Dean Alford) to be so solicitous. If

_they_ had their way--! 'Doch es sey,' says Lessing, 'dass jene

gotbische Höflichkeit eine unentbehrliche Tugend des heutigen Umganges

ist. Soll sie darum unsere Schriften eben so schaal und falsch machen

als unsern Umgang?' And Drayton was not far wrong in affirming that

'Tis possible to climb,

To kindle, or to slake,

Although in Skelton's rhyme.'

Cumberland in his Memoirs tells us that when, in the midst of Admiral

Rodney's great sea-fight, Sir Charles Douglas said to him, 'Behold, Sir

George, the Greeks and Trojans contending for the body of Patroclus!'

the Admiral answered, peevishly, 'Damn the Greeks and damn the Trojans!

I have other things to think of.' After the battle was won, Rodney thus

to Sir Charles, 'Now, my dear friend, I am at the service of your Greeks

and Trojans, and the whole of Homer's Iliad, or as much of it as you

please!' I had some such feeling of the impertinence of our

pseudo-classicality when I chose our homely dialect to work in. Should

we be nothing, because somebody had contrived to be something (and that

perhaps in a provincial dialect) ages ago? and to be nothing by our very

attempt to be that something, which they had already been, and which

therefore nobody could be again without being a bore? Is there no way

left, then, I thought, of being natural, of being _naïf_, which means

nothing more than native, of belonging to the age and country in which

you are born? The Yankee, at least, is a new phenomenon; let us try to

be _that_. It is perhaps a _pis aller_, but is not _No Thoroughfare_

written up everywhere else? In the literary world, things seemed to me

very much as they were in the latter half of the last century. Pope,

skimming the cream of good sense and expression wherever he could find

it, had made, not exactly poetry, but an honest, salable butter of

worldly wisdom which pleasantly lubricated some of the drier morsels of

life's daily bread, and, seeing this, scores of harmlessly insane people

went on for the next fifty years coaxing his buttermilk with the regular

up and down of the pentameter churn. And in our day do we not scent

everywhere, and even carry away in our clothes against our will, that

faint perfume of musk which Mr. Tennyson has left behind him, or worse,

of Heine's _patchouli_? And might it not be possible to escape them by

turning into one of our narrow New England lanes, shut in though it were

by bleak stone walls on either hand, and where no better flowers were to

be gathered than goldenrod and hardhack?

Beside the advantage of getting out of the beaten track, our dialect

offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to

state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had

said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper

deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what

I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen

innern guten Eigenschaften kommt die behagliche naive Sprache sehr zu

statten. Man findet mehrere sinnlich bedeutende and wohlklingende Worte

... von einem, zwei Buchstaben, Abbreviationen, Contractionen, viele

kurze, leichte Sylben, neue Reime, welches, mehr als man glaubt, ein

Vortheil für den Dichter ist. Diese Elemente werden durch glückliche

Constructionen und lebhafte Formen zu einem Styl zusammengedrängt der zu

diesem Zwecke vor unserer Büchersprache grosse Vorzüge hat.' Of course I

do not mean to imply that _I_ have come near achieving any such success

as the great critic here indicates, but I think the success is _there_,

and to be plucked by some more fortunate hand.

Nevertheless, I was encouraged by the approval of many whose opinions I

valued. With a feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed with any

vanity, I mention as one of these the late A.H. Clough, who more than

any one of those I have known (no longer living), except Hawthorne,

impressed me with the constant presence of that indefinable thing we

call genius. He often suggested that I should try my hand at some Yankee

Pastorals, which would admit of more sentiment and a higher tone without

foregoing the advantage offered by the dialect. I have never completed

anything of the kind, but, in this Second Series, both my remembrance of

his counsel and the deeper feeling called up by the great interests at

stake, led me to venture some passages nearer to what is called poetical

than could have been admitted without incongruity into the former

series. The time seemed calling to me, with the old poet,--

'Leave, then, your wonted prattle,

The oaten reed forbear;

For I hear a sound of battle,

And trumpets rend the air!'

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 fused 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.

As I have seen extracts from what purported to be writings of Mr.

Biglow, which were not genuine, I may properly take this opportunity to

say, that the two volumes now published contain every line I ever

printed under that pseudonyme, and that I have never, so far as I can

remember, written an anonymous article (elsewhere than in the 'North

American Review' and the 'Atlantic Monthly,' during my editorship of it)

except a review of Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing,' and, some twenty

years ago, a sketch of the antislavery movement in America for an

English journal.