springing from pious English stock, in a family that belonged to the
Society of Friends. A minute and animated picture of his home and its
inmates is given in “Snow Bound.” Whittier’s opportunities for regular
schooling were slender. Though he did not inherit the rugged strength
of his ancestors, his help was required on the farm; and his father,
without absolutely discouraging the lad’s effort to win an education,
was reluctant to see him busied with a useless or dangerous plaything
such as their sect generally regarded poetry. The boy attended district
school, read the few books that were in his home, and even managed to
obtain copies of Burns and Shakespeare, and a novel, perused in secret,
of Scott. His mother was inwardly gratified by the lines which he wrote
under the inspiration of Burns. When his sister clandestinely forwarded
one of his poems to _The Free Press_ of Newburyport, and thus paved
the way for an acquaintance between Whittier and the editor, William
Lloyd Garrison, the trend of the young man’s life was determined.
Thanks to the influence of Garrison, and by the strictest husbanding
of his own means, Whittier was able to pass, in all, a year at the new
Haverhill Academy. “Thus ended his school-days,” says his biographer,
Pickard; “but this was only the beginning of his student life. By
wide and well-chosen reading, he was constantly adding to his stores
of information. While revelling in the fields of English literature,
he became familiar through translations with ancient and current
literature of other nations, and kept abreast of all political and
reformatory movements.” In the development of his thought, he owed most
to the Bible, to the tracts of the Friends, and to the poetry of Burns.
The mainspring of his activity, whether as student, poet, politician,
or anti-slavery agitator, was an intense desire to be useful to his
kind, coupled with a burning belief in the sacredness of individual
liberty. During his early manhood, he continued to write verse,
sending it to various New England periodicals; and he became editor,
successively of a Boston trade journal, of _The Haverhill Gazette_, and
of _The New England Magazine_. Journalism helped him to enter politics,
and in 1832 the Whigs of his native place seemed ready to elect him
to Congress. After careful deliberation, he renounced his political
aspirations, not without an inward struggle, and decided to lend his
energies to the abolition of negro slavery, to assist the discredited
and obscure band led by Garrison. “My lad,” so in after years he
counselled a youth of fifteen, “if thou wouldst win success, join
thyself to some unpopular but noble cause.” With all his idealism--let
us rather say, on account of his thoroughgoing idealism--Whittier was
thoroughly practical. He had keen insight into the characters of men,
and knew how to turn their motives, both good and bad, to account;
his political sagacity, which, with his untiring industry, made him
one of the most capable workers on the side of Abolition, was largely
responsible for the rise of Charles Sumner to a position of beneficent
influence. Ever frail in health, yet labouring on, and subjected more
than once to personal violence at the hands of opponents, Whittier had
the satisfaction of seeing the movement which he championed emerge from
persecution into triumph. Regarded superficially, his devotion delayed
his own progress as an artist, and his best poetry came late. In a
deeper sense, he could not have developed into the poet that he became
without living the life that he did.
In a general way his work may be divided into two parts--that produced
during his more active interest in journalism and politics, and that
produced after his retirement. In 1831 he published his “Legends of
New England in Prose and Verse,” a pamphlet, and in 1832, another
pamphlet, “Moll Pitcher,” neither of them of much interest save in
comparison with his better choice of subjects and better handling
at a later date. A third pamphlet, “Justice and Expediency” (1833),
published at his own expense and with a full consciousness of its
probable effect, was the document that severed him from the dominant
party and openly leagued him with the Abolitionists. “Mogg Megone”
(1836), his first bound volume, which he afterward vainly tried to
suppress, was published after he became a secretary of the American
Anti-Slavery Society. The next year (1837), Isaac Knapp, without
consulting Whittier, issued a collection of “Poems Written during the
Progress of the Abolition Movement in America.” It was followed in 1838
by an authorised collection. The poet represented Haverhill in the
Massachusetts Legislature in 1835; ill-health prevented his finishing
a second term. In 1837 he went to Philadelphia to aid “the venerable
anti-slavery pioneer Benjamin Lundy, who was editing _The National
Enquirer_,” afterward called _The Pennsylvania Freeman_. In 1840 he
retired to Amesbury, Massachusetts, taking up his abode with his mother
and his sister Elizabeth. He never married. At Amesbury and at Danvers,
in the same county, he spent the remainder of his life in quiet. The
record is one of domestic peace and literary endeavour, whose first
fruits were “Lays of my Home, and Other Poems” (1843). With this
volume Whittier’s writings began to be remunerative. Some of the more
noteworthy subsequent dates in his life are as follows: Of his prose
works, “The Stranger in Lowell” appeared in 1845, “Supernaturalism
in New England” in 1847, “Literary Recollections” in 1854. From the
founding of _The Atlantic Monthly_, in 1857, Whittier was a most
welcome contributor. He also edited John Woolman’s _Journal_, and in
other ways displayed interest in the writings of the Friends. “Voices
of Freedom” (1849) was the first comprehensive edition of his poems.
He published “Songs of Labour” in 1850, “A Sabbath Scene” in 1853,
“Home Ballads” in 1860, “National Lyrics” in 1865. After the war,
his most important publications included “Snow Bound” (1866), “Maud
Muller” (1867), “Ballads of New England” (1869), “Miriam and Other
Poems” (1871), “Mabel Martin” (1874), “Hazel Blossoms” (1875), “Poems
of Nature” (1885), “St. Gregory’s Quest, and Recent Poems” (1886). His
last collection, “At Sundown” (1890), was dedicated to E. C. Stedman,
and closed with a valediction to Dr. Holmes. Many of Whittier’s poems
were first published in magazines; “Maud Muller” appeared in _The
National Era_, in 1854.
Whittier’s personality was one of indescribable attractiveness. He was
gentle, yet full of repressed fire, an ardent nature that had steadily
submitted to the Christian spirit of self-control. He had the inward
beauty that springs from generous impulses under the habitual guidance
of principle and forethought. Toward his opponents he showed no
rancour; he strove against parties, not individuals; and he commanded
the respect of his adversaries. If he had a foible, it was his delight
in playful teasing. He never visited a theatre or a circus in his
life. He is described in his early manhood as “tall, slight, and very
erect,” of a distinguished presence, yet bashful--but never awkward.
His eye was brilliant and expressive. In maturity, his face in repose
was almost stern, but a smile would light up his entire countenance.
“His voice in reading was of a quality entirely different from that in
conversation--much fuller and deeper.” In later years, “while retaining
a lively interest in all literary and political matters and keeping
abreast of current events, he dwelt most intently ... upon the great
spiritual and eternal realities of God. By the open fire in the evening
he would talk for hours upon sacred themes, ever grateful for the rich
blessings of his life and looking with reverent curiosity towards the
future.... There was not the shadow of a doubt in his mind concerning
the immortality of the soul.” He died after a stroke of paralysis, on
September 7, 1892, and was buried at Amesbury.
In a recent and praiseworthy volume of “The Chief American Poets,” Dr.
C. H. Page has included a longer list of selections from Whittier than
from Longfellow, although the contributions representing Whittier
occupy less space. This is significant. Whittier was mainly a writer
of short poems. In the ballad he had a form suited to the general
taste, and to his aim of stinging a sluggish populace into revolt
against slavery. He painted that institution in its most repellent
aspects, seeing nought of the glamour which Southern writers have
shed over plantation life as it existed before the war. Living in
the North, he saw something of escaping and recaptured negroes. His
glance was very direct; he described matters simply; he accomplished
the task that he set himself. Among his lyrics of the war, “Barbara
Frietchie” is altogether the best known--not with complete justice
to others, for example “The Watchers.” To his treatment of tales and
legends of colonial New England Whittier brought an inveterate hatred
of persecution and oppression in every shape. Accordingly, many of his
narratives, like “Cassandra Southwick,” touch on wrongs attempted or
inflicted upon the early Quakers. As an interpreter of colonial life
Whittier comes second only to Hawthorne. As a herald of the beauty
in flower and hill and stream, in “The Trailing Arbutus,” “Among the
Hills,” “The Merrimac,” he is second to none in America. True, he does
not always refrain from what Ruskin has called the pathetic fallacy,
so that he descries in the face of nature moods that are really in the
heart of man; but he does this more rarely than his contemporaries. In
his revelation of humble and rustic types, “Maud Muller,” “The Barefoot
Boy,” “The Huskers,” he is almost the equal of Burns or Wordsworth. He
is not their rival in perfection of style. More frequently than they
he suffers from a bad line; and his rhymes are often defective. Yet
one must not conclude that he was inattentive to technique. On the
contrary, Whittier was a born artist. But the nice discipline of the
ear which so many English poets have owed to the cultivation of Greek
and Latin prosody was not vouchsafed to him; and for his manner he
missed the advantage of rigorous criticism. The positive excellence of
Whittier’s verse is due to the harmonious blending and interworking in
him of varied powers. His senses were alert and sure, his humour was
fine, his intellect strong, his pathos firm. He was not afraid of a
theme that was tragic. His realism might be compared to that of Crabbe,
but it is more hopeful. In his religious poems there is a belief more
satisfying than transcendental pantheism; and there is a quality of
personal joy and optimism which, as we have previously observed, is not
typical of American literature.
Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
Earth’s noblest tributes to thy name belong.
A lifelong record closed without a stain,
A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.
Such was Holmes’ eulogy of Whittier. With it we may take leave of New
England.
_Bayard Taylor._--A Quaker poet of a different stamp was the meteoric
Bayard Taylor (1825-78). His boyhood was distinguished by a passion
for roving and for collecting objects of natural history. His devotion
to books and his distaste for labour on a Pennsylvania farm did not
always please his father, who laughed boisterously, however, when a
phrenologist said of the son: “You will never make a farmer of him to
any great extent: you will never keep him home; that boy will ramble
around the world, and furthermore, he has all the marks of a poet.”
At the age of nineteen, having just published “Ximena: or The Battle
of Sierra Morena, and Other Poems,” and armed with some introductions
from N. P. Willis, Taylor engaged in a Byronic pilgrimage on the
Continent. A half-year at Heidelberg rendered him fluent in German. By
a circuitous route through northern Germany and Austria he proceeded
on foot to Italy, and from Italy through France back to England,
supporting himself by correspondence which he sent to _The New York
Tribune_, _The Saturday Evening Post_, and _The United States Gazette_,
and which on his return to America he collected in “Views Afoot”
(1846). Our account of his life thus far gives a faint impression
of his physical and mental activity. No adequate narrative may here
be essayed of his wandering and eventful career throughout. “Views
Afoot” made his reputation. By 1848 he had become head of the literary
department of _The New York Tribune_. In 1849, as correspondent
for _The Tribune_, he spent five months with the gold-diggers in
California. In 1850 he married Miss Mary Agnew, who was dying of
consumption, and who survived her wedding but two months. In 1851-53
he travelled in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, Spain, India, and
China. In 1856 he broke down from overwork in America--lecturing and
writing--and he went to Europe again. In Germany (1857) he married the
daughter of an eminent astronomer, P. A. Hansen. In 1857-58 he visited
Greece. Two years later, at an expense of $17,000, he had built a
home, near his birthplace, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, calling his
estate “Cedarcroft.” To settle down in affluence had been his cherished
ambition; but this dream, and his haste to realise it, embarrassed him
financially, cost him much peace of mind, and eventually cost him his
life. He never succeeded in resting. In 1862-63 he was Secretary of
the Legation at St. Petersburg. During other intervals, he lectured
in America. Among his lectures may be mentioned those delivered at
Cornell University in 1870, 1871, 1875, and 1877. A large part of his
correspondence is at present housed in the Cornell University Library.
His translation of Goethe’s “Faust,” Part First, appeared in 1870;
nearly all of the first edition was sold in one day. The Second Part
came out in 1871. Excessive labour, an irregular and not abstemious
way of life, and, more especially, financial worry told upon his
constitution. He was destined never to finish his projected “Life of
Goethe.” He had barely entered upon his duties as Minister to Germany
when the collapse came. His last words were, “I must be away.”
“Taylor,” says Albert H. Smyth, “wrote with such rapidity that he
could complete a duodecimo volume in a fortnight.... In a night and a
day, he read Victor Hugo’s voluminous ‘La Légende des Siècles,’ and
wrote for _The Tribune_ a review of it which fills eighteen pages of
his ‘Essays and Literary Notes,’ and contains five considerable poems
that are translations in the metre of the original.” His powers of
memory are said to have been prodigious. He could repeat not only from
his favourite authors but from the futile compositions of poetasters
whose manuscripts he had read as an editor and rejected. He was in
the habit of carrying his own poetry in his head until the process of
correction was ended. Accordingly, the perfection of his “copy,” which
was written in the neatest hand imaginable, has led various critics
into the error of thinking that he did not revise. His poetry was much
more carefully worked out than his prose, upon which he had no thought
of building a reputation. He would spend hours on the chiselling of a
single couplet. His style resounds with echoes of word and phrase from
Byron and Shelley, indeed from the whole circle of his reading in both
English and German. Nor is it deficient in individuality. Taylor has
a pronounced cadence of his own. Nevertheless his poetry wants some
quality or other that would make it lasting. Although in 1896 there was
a cult of younger men that studied and imitated him, his immense vogue
as a prose writer had already waned; and his eclipse as a poet is now
almost complete. In the history of American literature there is nothing
stranger than this eclipse. Taylor’s learning was wide and substantial.
He shrank from no drudgery of preparation. At the age of fifty he was
willing to begin the study of Greek. And it was not merely that he
was in touch with his time on all sides, and able by brilliant arts to
snare the popular fancy. When he wrote, he knew what he was talking
about. His “Poems of the Orient” (1854), containing the Shelley-like
“Bedouin Song,” show deep sympathy with the customs and passions of
the East. “Ross Browne’s Syrian dragoman, when he listened to the
reading of ‘Hassan to his Mare,’ ‘sprang up with tears in his eyes,
and protested that the Arabs talked just that way to their horses.’”
Taylor had the suffrages of educated critics too. “The Picture of St.
John” (1866) Longfellow reckoned “a great poem”; while Lowell said
that, except “The Golden Legend,” no American poem could match it
in finish and sustained power. “The Masque of the Gods” (1872), an
endeavour to combine the ideals of Christianity and Hellenism, also
pleased Longfellow. “Lars, a Pastoral Poem” (1873), is a curious tale,
with some historical basis; the unwonted background of Norwegian fiords
makes part of the setting for a tragic romance among the Quakers. Of
Taylor’s dramatic poems we shall hazard no discussion; besides “The
Masque of the Gods,” he published “The Prophet” (1874), whose scene
is laid among the Mormons, and “Prince Deukalion” (1877), a piece of
symbolism in which the author tried to objectify his total conception
of human life both here and hereafter. He felt as sure of the other
world as of this. In such assurance he possessed the most vitalising
belief that can inspire a poetic soul. Why, then, is his poetry now
disregarded? Why is it that the production for which the present age is
most ready to thank him is his version of Goethe’s “Faust”? A tentative
explanation is this. Taylor’s life was full of disquiet. He never
enjoyed the solitude necessary to the maturing of poetic sentiment.
He was betrayed by temporal ambition into posting over land and ocean
without rest. He was too determined to achieve fame. There are times
for action, and there are times for a wise passiveness. They also
serve who only stand and wait.