“If ‘W,’ at Haverhill, will continue to favor us with pieces as
beautiful as the one inserted in our poetical department to-day,
we shall esteem it a favor.” This note appeared in the _Free
Press_, of Newburyport, Mass., June 8, 1826. The “W” referred
to was John G. Whittier, then in his nineteenth year, and the
editor of the _Free Press_ was William Lloyd Garrison,
then in his twenty-first. “W” did continue to “favor us” with
pieces quite as beautiful as the one inserted in the _Free
Press_ in 1826; indeed, with pieces more and more beautiful,
of a wider and deeper application to American life, until he was
recognized--tho not till after many years--as the chief of the
purely American poets, indebted to America and its life in the
highest degree for his equipment in song.
The first piece of “original poetry”--we are told by the sons of
Mr. Garrison, in their admirable life of their father--was found
lying near the door in the office of the _Free Press_. The
editor, having a strong tendency to tear “original” sin--verse
or otherwise--to pieces, says he had a momentary impulse to
dispose of this in that way, without reading it; but summoning
the resolution so needful in an editor, he read the poem and
published it. He had the courage, moreover, to inquire about
the writer, and found him to be a “Quaker lad who was daily at
work on the shoemaker’s bench, with hammer and lapstone, at
East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time,” says
the editor, “in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who
came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to
speak, and blushing like a maiden.” The parents of the lad were
poor, “unable to give him a suitable education,” and unwilling,
as being unable to, let him indulge in the unprofitable but
delightful pursuit of verse-making. “Poetry will not give him
bread,” they said, as many a father has had to say. But the
poet, proverbially “born, not made,” is not easily unmade, since
nature presides at the birth and fosters her own.--_Journal of
Education._
(2396)
=Poetry and Religion=--See RELIGION AND POETRY.