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And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's-
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
(1819- .)

THE author of the highly popular "Biglow Papers" is a native of Boston. He studied at Harvard College, and adopted the profession of the law; but soon devoted himself to literature. În 1841 he published "A Year's Life," a volume of miscellaneous poems; in 1844 a second volume; and in 1848 a third volume. In 1848 also appeared the "Biglow Papers," a series of satirical poems, commenting on political questions, and written in the Yankee dialect. These are clever, pungent, and witty verses, forming, as an American critic says, a repository of the dialectic peculiarities of New England, and of its tone of thought and mode of viewing political affairs, such as the Mexican war and slavery. We give one short specimen.

FROM THE BIGLOW PAPERS.

I DU believe the people want
A tax on teas an' coffees,
Thet nothin' aint extravygunt—
Purvidin' I'm in office;

Fer I hev loved my country sence
My eye-teeth filled their sockets,
An' Uncle Sam I reverence,
Partic❜larly his pockets.

I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press's freedom,
To pint the people to the goal
An' in the traces lead 'em ;
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes
At my fat contracts squintin',
An' withered be the nose thet pokes
Inter the gov'ment printin'!

I du believe thet I should give
Wut's his'n unto Cæsar,

Fer it's by him I move an' live,

Frum him my bread an' cheese air;

I du believe thet all o' me

Doth bear his souperscription

Will, conscience, honour, honesty,

An' things o' thet description.

THE HEAVY REVIEWER.

589

THE HEAVY REVIEWER.

"I would be endless to tell you the things that he knew,
All separate facts, undeniably true,

But with him, or each other, they'd nothing to do:
No power of combining, arranging, discerning,
Digested the masses he learned into learning.

There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for
(And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for),
Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter,
Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter.
When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits
In compiling the journals' historical bits-

Of shops broken open, men falling in fits,

Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers,
And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters-
Then, rising by industry, knack, and address,
Got notices up for an unbiassed press,

With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for
Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for ;
From this point his progress was rapid and sure,
To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.

And here I must say, he wrote excellent articles
On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles;
They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for,
And nobody read that which nobody cared for.
If any old book reached a fiftieth edition,

He could fill forty pages with safe erudition;

He could guage the old books by the old set of rules,
And his very old nothings pleased very old fools;
But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart,
And you put him at sea without compass or chart-
His blunders aspired to the rank of an art;

For his lore was ingraft, something foreign that grew in him,
Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him,

So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him,
Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite
New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet. . .
Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it,
And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it,
Without the least malice-his record would be
Profoundly æsthetic as that of a flea,

Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes,
Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes,

Or, borne by an Arab guide, ventured to render a
General view of the ruins at Denderah.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

(1809- .)

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A PHYSICIAN, as well as poet and lively prose writer, Mr. Holmes occupies a considerable position in American society and literature. He is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and holds the office of Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Dartmouth College. In 1836 Mr. Holmes published a collected edition of his poems; in 1843 Terpsichore," a poem; in 1846 "Urania ;" and in 1850 "Astrea." In 1858 appeared The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," a volume of humorous and fanciful essays, which has been well received on both sides of the Atlantic. The following is a specimen of his descriptive poetical style:

SPRING.

THEN bursts the song from every leafy glade,
The yielding season's bridal serenade;
Then flash the wings returning summer calls
Through the deep arches of her forest halls;
The blue-bird breathing from his azure plumes
The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms;
The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down,
Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown;

The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire
Rent by the whirlwind from a blazing spire.
The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat,
Repeats, staccato, his peremptory note;

The crack-brained boblink courts his crazy mate
Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight;
Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings,
Feels the soft air and spreads his idle wings.
Thus to my heart its wonted tides return,
When sullen Winter breaks his crystal urn,
And o'er the turf in wild profusion showers
Its dewy leaflets and ambrosial flowers.
In vacant rapture for a while I range
Through the wide scene of universal change,
Till, as the statue in its nerves of stone
Felt the new senses wakening one by one,
Each long-closed inlet finds its destined ray
Through the dark curtain Spring has rent away.
I crush the buds the clustering lilacs bear--
The same sweet fragrance that I loved is there-
The same fresh hues each opening disk reveals-
Soft as of old each silken petal feels;
The birch's rind its flavour still retains,

Its boughs still ringing with the self-same strains

SPRING.

Above, around, rekindling nature claims
Her glorious altars wreathed in living flames;
Undimmed, unshadowed, far as morning shines,
Feeds with fresh incense her eternal shrines.
Lost in her arms, her burning life I share,
Breathe the wild freedom of her perfumed air,
From heaven's fair face the long-drawn shadows roll,
And all its sunshine floods my opening soul!

591

There are various other American poets whom our limits forbid us noticing as Sprague, Percival, Whittier, Brainard, Willis, Griffin, Morris, Hoffman, Tuckerman, etc. ladies have also cultivated the Muses with some success; and American the works of Mariah Brooks, Hannah Gould, Mrs. Hale, the sisters Davidson, and others, enjoy considerable popularity. Collections of specimens of the "Female Poets of America" have been published, and most of them display refined sentiment and cultivated taste, though without any marked novelty of subject or style.

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