Pickard, S. L., "Life and Letters of Whittier." Boston, 1894, Hough. ton, Mifflin & Co., 2 volumes, v. index. Wendell, B., Stelligeri." New York, 1893, Scribner, 146-202. Poetical Works." Boston, 1890, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 134, 135, and 450. Mitford, Miss M. R., "Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, Harper, 1851, 334-340. Griswold, R. W., "The Poets of America." New York, 1872, James Miller, 389-406. May, S. J., "Some Recollections." Boston, 1869, Fields, 258-267. Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes," etc. 319-323. Bungay, G. W., "Off-hand Takings." v. index. New York, 1885, Crowell, New York, 1854,, Dewitt, Gilder, J. L. and J. B., "Authors at Home." New York, 1888, Cas sell, 343-355. Claflin, M. B., Personal Recollections of Whittier." New York, 1893, Crowell, v. index. Chautauquan, 16: 299-301 (J. V. Cheney). Century, 23: 363-368 (E. S. Phelps); 8: 38-50 (E. C. Stedman). McClure's Magazine, 2: 125-129 (C. F. Bates); 7: 114-121 (E. S. New England Magazine, 7: 275-293 (W. S. Kennedy). New World, 2: 88-103 (J. W. Chadwick). Good Words, 28: 29-34 (F. H. Underwood). Atlantic Monthly, 70: 642-648 (G. E. Woodberry) Critic, 18: 221, 222 (O. W. Holmes); 81: 307, 308 (J. H. Morse). Harper's Magazine, 86: 338-357 (A. Fields); 68: 177-188 (H. P. Spofford). Arena, 15: 376–384 (M. B. Claflin); 10: 153-168 (W. H. Savage). Scribner's Monthly, 18: 569-583 (R. H. Stoddard). Lakeside Monthly, 5: 365-367 (R. Collyer). Independent, 49: 1258, 1259 (S. L. Pickard). PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. I. Idyllic Flavor-Homely Beauty. Of our leading poets, Whittier was almost the only one who learned Nat ure by working with her at all seasons, under the sky and in the wood and field. . While chanting in behalf of every patriotic or human effort of his time, he has been the truest singer of our homestead or wayside life, and has rendered all the legends of his region into familiar verse. . . . As a bucolic poet of his own section, rendering its pastoral life and aspect, Whittier surpasses all rivals. .. To read his verse was to recall the scent of the clover and apple-bloom, to hear again the creak of the well-pole, the rattle of bars in the lane the sights and freshness of youth passing for a moment, a vision of peace over their battle-field."-E. C. Stedman. "Whittier, on the whole, has lived nearer the homely heart and life of his northern countrymen than any other American poet save Longfellow. . . Unvexed by literary envy and oblivious to mere fame, he became the laureate of the ocean beach, the inland lake, the little wood flower, and the divine sky."-C. F. Richardson. "It is not without perfect justice that Snow-Bound' takes rank with The Cotter's Saturday Night' and The Deserted Village; ' it belongs in this group as a faithful picture of humble life. . . . All his affection for the soil on which he was born went into it; and no one ever felt more deeply that attachment to the region of his birth which is the great spring of patriotism. It is the New England home entire, with its characteristic scenes, its incidents of household life, its Christian virtues."-G. E. Woodberry. "Like Burns and Cowper, Whittier is distinctively a rustic poet. . . His idyllic poetry savors of the soil and is full There are trees and trees at Oak The house is of wood. of local allusions. Knoll. . . In front a luxuriant vine clusters about the eaves. On the front porch a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the green silence with gushes of melody: and near at hand, in his study in the wing of the building, sits one with a singing pen and listens to their song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by his window he listens, then looks into his heart and writesthis sweet-souled magician-and craftily imprisons between the covers of his books echoes of bird and tree music, bits of blue sky, glimpses of green landscape, winding rivers, and idyls of the snow-all suffused and interfused with a glowing atmosphere of human and divine love."-W. S. Kennedy. "Throughout the work of his sixty-seven years one feels with growing admiration a constant simplicity of feeling and of phrase, as pure as the country air he loved to breathe." -Barrett Wendell. "So far as flavor of the soil went, he was far beyond Longfellow or Holmes or Lowell."-T. W. Higginson. "The poet himself calls the scenes in 'Snow-Bound' Flemish pictures; and it is true they have much of the homely fidelity of Teniers, but they are far more than literal representations. The scenes glow with ideal beauty-all the more for their bucolic tone. The works and ways of the honest people are almost photographically revealed."-F. H. Underwood. "The birds which carolled over his head, the flowers which grew under his feet, were as poetic as those to which the Scottish ploughman had given perennial interest. Burns taught him to detect the beautiful in the common."—E. P. Whipple. "This exquisite poem ["Snow-Bound"] has no prototype in English literature, unless Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" be one, and it will be long, I fear, before it has a companionpiece. It can be fully appreciated only by those who are New England born and on whose heads the snows of fifty or sixty winters have fallen."-R. H. Stoddard. "There is no custom of the country, common and simple as it may be, sugar-camp and sleigh-ride, husking, apple-paring, and the telling of the bees, that he does not fling his charm about it."-Harriet Prescott Spofford. ILLUSTRATIONS. "It was the pleasant harvest-time, -The Witch's Daughter. "We fished her little trout-brook, knew Beneath the gray November cloud."-Snow-Bound. "Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. "There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, "There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun; Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, -Telling the Bees. 2. Moral Energy - Vehemence - Intensity. — At first, the reader is inclined to think vehemence the most essential quality of Whittier's style; but a more careful reflection will convince him that the critics are right in maintaining that his idyls will live long after his trumpet-blasts against slavery have been forgotten. "What is the great central element in our poet's character, if it is not that deep, never-smouldering moral fervor, that unquenchable love of freedom, that 'Hate of tyranny, intense And hearty in its vehemence,' which, mixed with the beauty and melody of his soul, gives to his pages a delicate glow as of gold-hot iron; which crowned him the laureate of freedom in his day, and imparts to his utterances the manly ring of the prose of Milton and Hugo and the poetry of Byron, Swinburne, and Whitman-all poets of freedom like himself? He is occasionally nerved to almost superhuman effort; it is the battle-axe of Richard thundering at the gates of Front de Bœuf. . . Never ceasing to express his high-born soul in burning invective and scathing satire against the oppressor. .. Another powerful group of these anti-slavery poems is constituted by the scornful mock-congratulatory productions; such as the Hunters of Men,' Clerical Oppressors,' 'The Yankee Girl,' 'A Sabbath Scene,' 'Lines suggested by Reading a State Paper wherein the Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower One,' and The Pastoral Letter.' The sentences in these stanzas cut like knives and sting like shot."-W. S. Kennedy. "Whittier had always lived in a region of moral ideas, and this anti-slavery inspiration inflamed his moral ideas into moral passion and moral wrath. If Garrison may be considered the prophet of anti-slavery and Phillips its orator and Mrs. Stowe its novelist and Sumner its statesman, there can be no doubt that Whittier was its poet. Quaker as he |