The misspelt scrawl, upon the wallBy 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 markThan a keel's furrow through the main.
O Chance and Change! our buzz's rangeIs 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 slateFame 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 youYears hence this yellowing leaf may see,And put to task, your memory askIn vain, 'This Lowell, who was he?'
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 possestBy 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 speakWhat they're sure to be sorry for all the next week;Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, to budInto eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood,As if the dull brain that you vented your spite onCould 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;) 20But to rise after dinner and look down the meetingOn a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of Eating,With a stomach half full and a cerebrum hollowAs the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo,Undercontract to raise anerithmon gelasmaWith 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, 30Swerving this way and that as the wave of the momentWashes out its slight trace with a dash of whim's foam on 't,And leaving on memory's rim just a senseSomething 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 vainAs the whisper of foam-beads on fresh-poured champagne,Since dinners were not perhaps strictly designedFor manoeuvring the heavy dragoons of the mind. 40When I hear your set speeches that start with a pop,Then wander and maunder, too feeble to stop,With a vague apprehension from popular rumorThere 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 menAs 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 dimpleWhose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek,And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek; 60Once fix it, 'tis naught, for the charm of it risesFrom the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.
I've tried to define it, but what mother's sonCould ever yet do what he knows should be done?My rocket has burst, and I watch in the airIts 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, 70And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf,I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself,Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to proposeA sentiment treading on nobody's toes,And give, in such ale as with pump-handleswebrew,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, 80The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungsOf 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.
An ass munched thistles, while a nightingaleFrom passion's fountain flooded all the vale.'Hee-haw!' cried he, 'I hearken,' as who knewFor 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.'
1.
In life's small things be resolute and greatTo keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when FateThy 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 hindThus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal JudgeDooms 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.'
I call as fly the irrevocable hours,Futile as air or strong as fate to makeYour lives of sand or granite; awful powers,Even as men choose, they either give or take.
The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drewSuch milk as bids remember whence we came;Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew,This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name.
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 monumentIn lives like theirs, at duty's summons spent.
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.
Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope,Who sure intended him to stretch a rope.
If I were the rose at your window,Happiest rose of its crew,Every blossom I bore would bend inward,They'dknow where the sunshine grew.
Full oft the pathway to her doorI've measured by the selfsame track,Yet doubt the distance more and more,'Tis so much longer coming back!
We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain,And I should hint sharp practice if I dared;For was not she beforehand sure to gainWho made the sunshine we together shared?
As life runs on, the road grows strangeWith faces new, and near the endThe milestones into headstones change,'Neath every one a friend.
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.
What know we of the world immenseBeyond the narrow ring of sense?What should we know, who lounge aboutThe house we dwell in, nor find out,Masked by a wall, the secret cellWhere the soul's priests in hiding dwell?The winding stair that steals aloofTo chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?
It lies about us, yet as farFrom sense sequestered as a star 10New launched its wake of fire to traceIn secrecies of unprobed space,Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spearsMight earthward haste a thousand yearsNor reach it. So remote seems thisWorld undiscovered, yet it isA neighbor near and dumb as death,So near, we seem to feel the breathOf its hushed habitants as theyPass us unchallenged, night and day. 20
Never could mortal ear nor eyeBy sound or sign suspect them nigh,Yet why may not some subtler senseThan those poor two give evidence?Transfuse the ferment of their beingInto our own, past hearing, seeing,As men, if once attempered so,Far off each other's thought can know?As horses with an instant thrillMeasure their rider's strength of will? 30Comes not to all some glimpse that bringsStrange sense of sense-escaping things?Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines?Approaches, premonitions, signs,Voices of Ariel that die outIn the dim No Man's Land of Doubt?
Are these Night's dusky birds? Are thesePhantasmas of the silencesOuter or inner?—rude heirloomsFrom grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40Who in unhuman Nature sawMisshapen foes with tusk and claw,And with those night-fears brute and blindPeopled 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 doubtWhether within us or without 50The spell of this illusion beThat witches us to hear and seeAs in a twi-life what it will,And hath such wonder-working skillThat what we deemed most solid-wroughtTurns a mere figment of our thought,Which when we grasp at in despairOur fingers find vain semblance there,For Psyche seeks a corner-stoneFirmer than aught to matter known. 60
Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? ShowMade of the wish to have it so?'Twere something, even though this were all:So the poor prisoner, on his wallLong gazing, from the chance designsOf crack, mould, weather-stain, refinesNew and new pictures without cease,Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece:But these are Fancy's common broodHatched in the nest of solitude; 70This is Dame Wish's hourly trade,By our rude sires a goddess made.Could longing, though its heart broke, giveTrances in which we chiefly live?Moments that darken all beside,Tearfully radiant as a bride?Beckonings of bright escape, of wingsPurchased with loss of baser things?Blithe truancies from all controlOf Hylë, outings of the soul? 80
The worm, by trustful instinct led,Draws from its womb a slender thread,And drops, confiding that the breezeWill waft it to unpastured trees:So the brain spins itself, and soSwings boldly off in hope to blowAcross some tree of knowledge, fairWith fruitage new, none else shall share:Sated with wavering in the Void,It backward climbs, so best employed, 90And, where no proof is nor can be,Seeks refuge with Analogy;Truth's soft half-sister, she may tellWhere 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,— 100Two 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 seeIn this their aimless industry,These errands nowhere and returnsGrave as a pair of funeral urns,This ever-seek and never-find,A mocking image of my mind. 110But not for this I bade you climbUp from the darkening deeps of time:Help me to tame these wild day-maresThat sudden on me unawares.Fish, do your duty, as did theyOf the Black Island far awayIn life's safe places,—far as youFrom all that now I see or do.You come, embodied flames, as whenI knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120Your gold renews my golden days,Your splendor all my loss repays.'Tis more than sixty years agoSince first I watched your to-and-fro;Two generations come and goneFrom silence to oblivion,With all their noisy strife and stressLulled in the grave's forgivingness,While you unquenchably surviveImmortal, almost more alive. 130I 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 lineNo hint of dispossession drewOn any map my simplesse knew;O golden age, not yet dethroned!What made me happy, that I owned; 140You 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, 150Where you have all a whale could wish,Happy as Eden's primal fish.Manna is dropt you thrice a dayFrom 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 exploreYour cloistered realm from shore to shore;Sometimes you trace its limits round,Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160Or hover motionless midway,Like gold-red clouds at set of day;Erelong you whirl with sudden whimOff to your globe's most distant rim,Where, greatened by the watery lens,Methinks no dragon of the fensFlashed 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, 170Like that of conscience in the dark,Seems to make me its single mark.What a benignant lot is yoursThat 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 thoughtOf such cross things as Must and Ought,—I too the happiest of boysTo 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 riseTo the fine sight behind the eyes,And, lo, you float and flash againIn the dark cistern of my brain.But o'er your visioned flames I broodWith other mien, in other mood;You are no longer there to please,But to stir argument, and tease 190My thought with all the ghostly shapesFrom which no moody man escapes.Diminished creature, I no moreFind Fairyland beside my door,But for each moment's pleasure payWith thequart d'heureof Rabelais!
I watch you in your crystal sphere,And wonder if you see and hearThose shapes and sounds that stir the wideConjecture of the world outside; 200In 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 deceitConfederate in deft Fancy's feat,And the fooled brain befools the eyesWith pageants woven of its own lies? 210Butarethey lies? Why more than thosePhantoms that startle your repose,Half seen, half heard, then flit away,And leave you your prose-bounded day?
The things ye see as shadows IKnow to be substance; tell me whyMy visions, like those haunting you,May not be as substantial too.Alas, who ever answer heardFrom fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220Your consciousness I half divine,But you are wholly deaf to mine.Go, I dismiss you; ye have doneAll 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 graveYour lives to mine a lesson gave;If lesson none, an image, then,Impeaching self-conceit in men 230Who put their confidence aloneIn what they call the Seen and Known.How seen? How known? As through your glassOur wavering apparitions passPerplexingly, then subtly wroughtTo some quite other thing by thought.Here shall my resolution be:The shadow of the mysteryIs haply wholesomer for eyesThat cheat us to be overwise, 240And I am happy in my rightTo love God's darkness as His light.
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 mainBy 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 glideCaressingly 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 ranThrough 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 bulkMust landlocked lie, a helpless hulk,To gather weeds in the regardless stream.
Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned airTo this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare,Shot-shattered to have met thy doomWhere 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 imposeGod'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 wrenchFrom thy supplanter's grimy clenchHis 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 FatesExpectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits,And the tired waves of Thought's insurgent sea.
Stood the tall Archangel weighingAll 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 eyesBackward searched for Paradise,And, instead, the flame-blade sawOf 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 wellThey 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 ManSince the power of choice began,In the world, of good or ill.'Then I waited and was still.
In one scale I saw him placeAll 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, vainTo make men as gods again.
In the other scale he threwThings regardless, outcast, few,Martyr-ash, arena sand,Of St Francis' cord a strand,Beechen cups of men whose needFasted that the poor might feed,Disillusions and despairsOf young saints with, grief-grayed hairs,Broken hearts that brake for Man.
Marvel through my pulses ranSeeing then the beam divineSwiftly on this hand decline,While Earth's splendor and renownMounted light as thistle-down.
Let others wonder what fair faceUpon their path shall shine,And, fancying half, half hoping, traceSome maiden shape of tenderest graceTo be their Valentine.
Let other hearts with tremor sweetOne secret wish enshrineThat Fate may lead their happy feetFair Julia in the lane to meetTo be their Valentine.
But I, far happier, am secure;I know the eyes benign,The face more beautiful and pureThan fancy's fairest portraitureThat 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 beMy happy Valentine.
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 surpriseIn sick men's chambers, with its glowing breathPlants 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 skyBy 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 flowersScattered in haste, were seen so sudden fineAs she in various mood, on whom the powersOf happiest stars in fair conjunction smiledTo bless the birth, of April's darling child.
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 brinkWhence too easy 'tis to fallWhither's no return at all;Have a care, half-hearted lover,Thought would only push her over!
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 notShall transfigure me where'er I go.
Let me be your thrall! However lowlyBe 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 fashionSuch an icy mistress well beseems.'Women say, 'Could we deserve such passion,We might be the marvel that he dreams.'
Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please,For those same notes in happier days I heardPoured by dear hands that long have never stirredYet now again for me delight the keys:Ah me, to strong illusions such as theseWhat are Life's solid things? The walls that girdOur senses, lo, a casual scent or wordLevels, and it is the soul that hears and sees!Play on, dear girl, and many be the yearsEre some grayhaired survivor sit like meAnd, for thy largess pay a meed of tearsUnto another who, beyond the seaOf Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hearsA music in this verse undreamed by thee!
In good old times, which means, you know,The time men wasted long ago,And we must blame our brains or moodIf that we squander seems less good,In those blest days when wish was actAnd fancy dreamed itself to fact,Godfathers used to fill with guineasThe cups they gave their pickaninnies,Performing functions at the chrismNot mentioned in the Catechism.No millioner, poor I fill upWith wishes my more modest cup,Though had I Amalthea's hornIt should be hers the newly born.Nay, shudder not! I should bestow itSo brimming full she couldn't blow it.Wishes aren't horses: true, but stillThere 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 vextFrom this world to a better next,Where the full glow of God puts outPoor reason's farthing candle, Doubt.I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise,What more can godfather devise?But since there's room for countless wishesIn these old-fashioned posset dishes,I'll wish her from my plenteous storeOf those commodities two more,Her father's wit, veined through and throughWith tenderness that Watts (but whew!Celia's aflame, I mean no strictureOn his Sir Josh-surpassing picture)—I wish her next, and 'tis the soulOf all I've dropt into the bowl,Her mother's beauty—nay, but twoSo 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 beA sample of Heredity,Enjoying to the full extentLife's best, the Unearned IncrementWhich Fate her Godfather to floutGavehimin legacies of gout.Thus, then, the cup is duly filled;Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.
Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] lawsThat 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 causeThat wallows in the sea-trough and seems lost,Drifting in danger of the reefs and sandsOf shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost,Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strandsThey twist the cable shall the world hold fastTo where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.
Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was heWho helped us in our need; the eternal lawThat who can saddle OpportunityIs God's elect, though many a mortal flawMay minish him in eyes that closely see,Was verified in him: what need we sayOf 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 vanNe'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man.
A face all prose where Time's [benignant] hazeSoftens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fairWith 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 lightAccents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams,Yet vindicates some pristine natural rightO'ertopping that hereditary graceWhich 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 ledNearer for that and costlier to the foe,New moulders of old forms, by nature bredThe exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to show,Let but the ploughshare of portentous timesStrike 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 abateThe utmost due manhood could claim of fate.
Nothing Ideal, a plain-people's manAt the first glance, a more deliberate kenFinds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ranSuch blood as quelled the dragon In his den,Made harmless fields, and better worlds began:He came grim-silent, saw and did the deedThat was to do; in his master-gripOur sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breedSuch sure conviction as that close-clamped lip;He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knewHe had done more than any simplest man might do.Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steelWhere steel opposed, prove soft in civil sway;The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to feelThe world's base coin, and glozing knaves made preyOf 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 diedVictor 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.
[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 thatwewhich 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 merepatois, 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, thatIwas 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 valueIcould 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 intodiction, 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 apottedliterature, 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 intoeternity.
When the halter When the fatalwas put round noose was adjustedhis neck. about theneck of the unfortunatevictimof his own unbridledpassions.
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 wasprecipitated.
A horse and wagon A valuable horseran against. attached to a vehicle driven byJ.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 magistratecity in a short of the metropolis, in well-speech welcomed. chosen and eloquentlanguage, frequentlyinterrupted by theplaudits of thesurging multitude,officially tendered thehospitalities.
I shall say a few I shall, with yourwords. permission, begleave to offersome 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 thescionof ahousein the act ofthrowing itselfupon agerm of sentimenttoraise 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'sGedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter, we are told that the wordhumbugis 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 phrases'orienterand 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 wasabout 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 'edgeof battle' but a doing into English of the Latinacies? 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 apatois/, 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 calledpatois, while I should be half inclined to name the Yankee alingorather than a dialect. It has retained a few words now fallen into disuse in the mother country, like totarry, toprogress,fleshy,fall, and some others; it has changed the meaning of some, as infreshet; and it has clung to what I suspect to have been the broad Norman pronunciation ofe(which Molière puts into the mouth of his rustics) in such words assarvant,parfect,vartoo, and the like. It maintains something of the French sound ofaalso in words likechămber,dănger(though the latter had certainly begun to take its present sound so early as 1636, when I find it sometimes speltdainger). 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 tosleeve. Tosleevesilk means to divide or ravel out a thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomesfloss. (A.S.sléfan, tocleave=divide.) This, I think, explains the 'sleevelesserrand' 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 acarry, aone-horse affair, aprairie, tovamose. 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, betweenministeriumandmétier, orsapiensandsachant, than betweendruvanddroveoraginandagainst, which last is plainly an arrant superlative. Our rusticcoverlidis 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, andcucumber. Of these the first, which is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality ofconcombre. Lord Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and Voltaire tells his countrymen thathandkerchiefwas pronouncedhankercher. 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 forkercherincouverturerather than incouvrechef? And what greater phonetic vagary (which Dryden, by the way, calledfegary) in ourlingua rusticathan thiskerforcouvre? 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 ingenteelandjaunty, which I find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering betweengenteelandjantee. It is usual in America to drop theuin words ending inour—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 inmusique,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 haveriches'andcounsel', in Bishop Hallcomet',chapëlain, in Donnepictures',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 writesbaptime. 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 havecreator'andcrëature'side by side with the moderncreatorandcreature.E'nvyande'nvyingoccur in Campion (1602), and yetenvy'survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to the French, as inrev'enueforreven'ue, I had been so used to hearingimbecilepronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I was surprised to findimbec'ilein a verse of Wordsworth. The dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and he declared forimbeceel'. 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 thanblasphem'ous, to which our Yankee clings, following in this the usage of many of the older poets.Amer'icanis easier thanAmeri'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 theuin some words, such asrule,truth(sometimes also pronouncedtrŭth, nottrooth), while he saysnoofornew, and gives toviewandfewso 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 pronouncetrueas if it rhymed withview, and this is the sound our rustics give to it. Spenser writesdeow(dew) which can only be pronounced with the Yankee nasality. Inrulethe least sound ofaprecedes theu. I findreulein Pecock's 'Repressor.' He probably pronounced itrayoolë, as the old French word from which it is derived was very likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its originalregula. Tindal hasreuler, and the Coventry Plays havepreudent. In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I findreule. As fornoo, may it not claim some sanction in its derivation, whether fromnouveauorneuf, the ancient sound of which may very well have beennoof, as nearernovus?Beefwould seem more like to have come frombuffethan fromboeuf, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxonfewmay have caught enough from its French cousinpeuto claim the benefit of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrasea few(as 'I licked him a few') may well appeal toun peufor sense and authority. Nay, might notlickitself turn out to be the good old wordlamin an English disguise, it the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he fairly might, from the Latinlambere? The New Englandferceforfierce, andperceforpierce(sometimes heard asfairceandpairce), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme ofverse and piercein Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Ourpairlousforperilousis of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare'sparlousthan 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 forjoint,employ,royal, we havejynt,emply,r[)y]le, the last differing only fromrile(roil) in a prolongation of theysound. I findroyalso pronounced in the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' In Walter de Biblesworth I findsolivesEnglished bygistes. This, it is true, may have been pronouncedjeests, but the pronunciationjystesmust have preceded the present spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was forgotten, as analogical with other words inoi. In the same way after Norman-French influence had softened thelout ofwould(we already findwoudforveutin N.F. poems),shouldfollowed the example, and then anlwas foisted intocould, 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 witheysterforoysteras early as the fourteenth century. I findviagein Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist,bileforboilin Donne and Chrononhotonthologos,lineforloinin Hall,ryallandchyse(for choice)dystryefordestroy, in the Coventry Plays. In Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint ofemployforimply, 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 saidnaisefornoisejust as our rustics still do. Ourcornish(which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better thancornicedoes. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping thegfrom the end of the present participle, the Yankee now and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words ending inn. 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 beingkepp'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 findburding,garding, andcousing, and in the State Trialsuncertingused by a gentleman. I confess that I like thenbetter thanng.
Of Yankee preterites I findrisseandrizeforrosein Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden,climin Spenser,chees(chose) in Sir John Mandevil,give(gave) in the Coventry Plays,shet(shut) in Golding's Ovid,hetin Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs,thrivandsmitin Drayton,quitin Ben Jonson and Henry More, andpledin the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor.Ridforrodewas anciently common. So likewise wasseeforsaw, but I find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer'sseieand Gower'ssighwere, as I am inclined to think, so sounded.Shewis used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, likesnew,thew, and evenmew, are not without example. I findsewforsewedin 'Piers Ploughman.' Indeed, the anomalies in English preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferredflewfromflow(as the preterite of which I have heard it) toflybecause we had another preterite infled. Of weak preterites the Yankee retainsgrowed,blowed, for which he has good authority, and less oftenknowed. Hissotis merely a broad sounding ofsat, no more inelegant than the commongotforgat, which he further degrades intogut. When he saysdarst, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.
The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of theain such words asaxe,wax, pronouncing themexe,wex(shortened fromaix,waix). He also sayshevandhed(hāve,hādforhaveandhad). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. Inaixforaxlehe certainly does. I findwexandaisches(ashes) in Pecock, andexein the Paston Letters. Golding rhymeswaxwithwexeand spellschallengechelenge. Chaucer wrotehendy. Dryden rhymescanwithmen, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's teacher, in his 'Logonomia' citeshezforhathas peculiar to Lincolnshire. I findhaythin Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrotebelcony. Ourfectis only the O.F.faict.Thaimforthemwas common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verbthrash,thresh. While the New Englander cannot be brought to sayinsteadforinstid(commonly'stidwhere not the last word in a sentence), he changes theiintoeinredforrid,tellfortill,henderforhinder,renseforrinse. I findredin the old interlude of 'Thersytes,'tellin 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,
'Tellthe day of dome,tellthe beames blow.'
From the wordblow(in another sense) is formedblowth, 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 ablow, whileblowthmeans 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 rhymeshinderwithslender, and Shakespeare and Lovelace haverenchedforrinsed. In 'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' issenceforsince; Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymessincewithAmiensandpatïence, Bishop Hall and Otway withpretence, Chapman withcitizens, Dryden withprovidence. Indeed, why should notsithencetake that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) hastellfortill, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writessecheforsuch, and oureffinds authority in the old formyeffe.
Esometimes takes the place ofu, asjedge, tredge, bresh. I findtredgein the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,'breshin a citation by Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century, andrescheforrush(fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright.Resceis one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in Bosworth's A.-S. Dictionary. Golding hasshet. The Yankee always shortens theuin the endingture, makingventur, 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 vilevencher, naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce Penniless' hasventur, and so spells it, and I meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser hastort'rest, which can be contracted only fromtorturand not fromtorcher. Quarles rhymesnaturewithcreator, and Dryden withsatire, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form ofsatyr. Quarles has alsotortureandmortar. Mary Boleyn writeskreatur. I findpikterin 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 withkiverforcover, andta, forto. The Yankee pronounces bothtooandtoliketa(like thetouintouch) where they are not emphatic. When they are, both becometu. In old spelling,tois the common (and indeed correct) form oftoo, which is onlytowith the sense ofin addition. I suspect that the sound of ourtoohas caught something from the Frenchtout, and it is possible that the oldtoo toois not a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same word (toute) as anciently pronounced, with theenot yet silenced. Gill gives a Northern origin togeaunforgownandwaundforwound(vulnus). Lovelace haswaund, but there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (whoborealisedin his pastorals) of having ever been guilty ofgeaun!And yet some delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism ofge-ardforguard, andge-urlforgirl. Sir Philip Sidney (credite posteri!) wrotefurrforfar. I would hardly have believed it had I not seen it infacsimile. As some consolation, I findfurderin Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymesfarwithcur. The Yankee, who omits the finaldin many words, as do the Scotch, makes up for it by adding one ingeound. The purist does not feel the loss of thedsensibly inlawnandyon, from the former of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained inlaundry), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we make ofgit, yit, andyis? I findyisandgitin Warner's 'Albion's England,'yetrhyming withwit, admit, andfitin Donne, withwitin the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, withwritin Dryden, and latest of all withwitin Sir Hanbury Williams. Prior rhymesfittingandbegetting. Worse is to come. Among others, Donne rhymesagainwithsin, and Quarles repeatedly within.Benforbeen, 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, thoughbinseems to have been the common form. Whittier's accenting the first syllable ofrom'ancefinds an accomplice in Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is analogous withRom'ans. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writessowdiers (sogers, soudoyers), and Chapman and Gillsodder. This absorption of thelis common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes alsobiyende, 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. Germanjenseits.) Pecock and plenty more havewrastle. Tindal hasagynste, gretter, shett, ondone, debyte, andscace. 'Jack Jugler' hasscacely(which I have often heard, thoughskurceis the common form), and Donne and Dryden makegreatrhyme withset. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I findyndforend, which the Yankee more often makeseend, 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'sdebytëfordeputyis 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 usplaysentandsartayne. Dryden rhymescertainwithparting, and Chapman and Ben Jonson usecertain, as the Yankee always does, forcertainly. The 'Coventry Mysteries' haveoccapied, massage, nateralle, materal (material),andmeracles,—all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] isvertusforvirtuous. Thomas Fuller calledvolume vollum, I suspect, for he spells itvolumne. However,per contra, Yankees habitually saycolumeforcolumn. 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 wordsscriptur,Israll,athists, andcherfulnessfrom Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce them. Brampton Gurdon writesshetin 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 thesecarr'ings-ondid 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, makessorrowsintosororz. Herrick writeshollowforhalloo, and perhaps pronounced it (horresco suggerens!)holló, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes fromholà? I findffelaschyppe(fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and his queen neither of them scrupled to writeafore, and the former feels no inelegance even inchawandidee.'Forewas common till after Herrick. Dryden hasdo'sfordoes, and his wife spellsworsewosce.Afearedwas once universal. Warner haseryforever 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 notilly? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive thatillis itself an adverb, without the terminationly,' 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 thatillwas an adjective, the shortened form ofevil, out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to makeevilly. This slurredevilis 'the dram ofeale' in 'Hamlet.' I find,illyin Warner. The objection toillyis not an etymological one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,—a very sufficient reason.Illas an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the rustic's when he says, 'I was treatedbad.' 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 sayill-ly,well-ly, and it is to be observed that we have avoidedsmally[26] andtallyin the same way, though we addishto them without hesitation insmallishandtallish. We have, to be sure,dullyandfully, but for the one we preferstupidly, and the other (though this may have come from eliding theybefore _a_s) is giving way tofull. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make adverbs when they will by addingliketo all manner of adjectives. We have hadbigcharged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman would now usegreat. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish between them, allowing tobiga 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 thebiggestexample.' 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'syesandno, 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 thetinchestnut? how many saypentiseforpenthouse, 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 itboon. This is one of the cases where thedis surreptitious, and has been added in compliment to the verbbind, 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), thedhas no more right there than at the end ofgone, 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., writesworlefor world. Chapman haswanforwand, andlawnhas rightfully displacedlaund, 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 formexpoun', which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a barbarousdtacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite to this, like ourgowndforgown, and the London cockney'swindforwine, I finddrowndfordrownin 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 saybehīndandhīnder(comparative) and yet tohĭnder. Shakespeare pronouncedkindkĭnd, or what becomes of his play on that word andkinin 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it?) drop the finaldas the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the same way onkindredandkindness.