"O strange New World, thet yit wast never young, Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay In spite of parlor-anarchists, hyphenates, Bolshevists, and other traitors these last lines may still be read with confident assurance. To-day, better than we could a few years ago, we understand the tender pathos of these lines in which the love of winter beauty is overshadowed with an irrepressible longing for the dear, old, far-off days of peace: "Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer. "Snowflakes come whisperin' on the pane, "Or up the slippery knob I strain An' see a hundred hills like islan's It is not minimizing Lowell to say that he is by no means one of the great figures in the world's literature. But he has made contributions to our American letters without which we would be immeasurably poorer. It can also be said of him that no other writer has written in dialect lines so pathetically beautiful and enchantingly melodious. But some of the pithiest lines in the two series are found detached from any other outstanding thought or expression. Consequently, many of them are all but lost to a very large proportion of modern readers. Yet these scintillating epigrams are replete with suggestions and homely common sense. Their name is legion, and the examples given are typical rather than inclusive: "Democ'acy gives every man The right to be his own oppressor." "My gran❜ther's rule was safer'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy-onless ye know." "(Why I'd give more for one bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink.)" "Now don't go off half-cock; folks never gains By usin' pepper-sarse instid o' brains." "It's no use buildin' wut's a-goin to fall." Here are two lines which each new generation needs to remember: "Young folks are smart, but all ain't good thet's new; I guess the gran'thers they knowed sunthin' tu." Few other writers could have expressed the following thought without falling into banality or irreverence: "An' you've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God." In one of his satiric congressional speeches two thoughts highly worthy of quotation are sententiously expressed: "But The'ry is jes' like a train on the rail, Thet, weather or no, puts her thru without fail, While Fac's the old stage thet gits sloughed in the ruts, An' hez to allow for your darned efs an' buts, An' folks don't want Fourth o' July t' interfere It would be hard to find an apter comment Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du, Ez stiddily ez though 't wuz a redoubt." Hume cynically remarked that the Puritans hated bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the people. This falsehood contained just enough truth to make it effective. Lowell's lines express the truth of the aphorism of the Scottish historian, but are without that which made Hume's witticism palpably unjust. More than once has the New England satirist in this fashion packed whole chapters of social psychology into a few pregnant sentences. Another example of this is found in the following lines from which no real student of humanity will think of dissenting: "An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay While book-froth seems to wet your hunger; For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt Humbug's eyes ther's few can metch it, An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet." In speaking of the Biglow Papers Charles Sumner said, "It's a pity that they are not written in the English language." Sumner represented that group of would-be superintellectuals to whom writing in dialect is the committing of a sin against the most sacred literary conventionalities. Lowell's use of the Yankee dialect in the Biglow Papers enhanced their literary value because it gave them a closer contact with life. They are rooted in the very soil of New England. They give expression to the philosophy of an unHosea Biglow is not a type but an individual. He has all of Lowell's own brilliancy and penetration. This was not true of every Yankee farmer, but it was true of some. The fact that Lowell had the dramatic power to express himself through such a rugged personality is not the least of the evidences of his title to a literary preeminence. This Harvard professor and exemplar of a rich cosmopolitan culture never lost his contact with the common things of life. common common man. Lowell, like most of the towering figures of literature, again and again stressed certain |