THE CLOSING SCENE. 93 rebuke of fraud and oppression of whatever clime or race." labors. His prose labors were an outlet, constantly afforded His prose in his journalism, through which much of that energy escaped which otherwise would have varied the motives and increased the body of his song. On the whole, though he was without a philologist's equipment, there were few better writers of simple, nervous English. He made it for half a century the instrument of his every-day thought and purpose; as a leader-writer, a traveller and correspondent, an essayist and orator, a political disputant. His polemic vigor and acerbity were worked off in his middle-life editorials, and in defence of what he thought to be right. There he was, indeed, unyielding, and other pens recall the traditions of his political controversies. He never confused the distinct provinces of prose and verse. Refer to anything written by him, of the former kind, and you find plainness, well-constructed syntax, free from any cheap gloss of rhetoric or the " jingle of an effeminate rhythm." As in written prose and verse, so in speech and public offices. The long series of addresses on civic occasions closed with one which brought him to his death. Mastering his work to the very end, it was his lot at last to bow, as became a poet of Nature, before her own life-nurturing, life-destroying forces, and thus submit to her kindest universal law. The question of a passage in "An Evening Revery" was answered, and the prophecy fulfilled : "O thou great Movement of the Universe, w. C. B. died in New York, N. Y., June 12, 1878. I feel the mighty current sweep me on, He knows when they shall darken or grow bright; A CHAPTER IV. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. I. typical cans of his own time. PLEASANT story, that went the round shortly | His standafter the close of our Civil War, shows the char-ing with acter of Whittier's hold upon his countrymen. It was Amerisaid that one among a group of prominent men, when conversation on politics and finance began to lag, asked the question, Who is the best American poet? Horace Greeley, who was of the party, replied with the name of Whittier, and his judgment was instantly approved by all present. These active, practical Americans, patriots or demagogues, some of them, doubtless, of the "heated barbarian" type, - for once found their individual preferences thus expressed and in accord. At that climacteric time the Pleiad of our elder poets was complete and shining, not a star was lost. But the instinct of these stern, hard-headed men was in favor of the Quaker bard, the celibate and prophetic recluse; he alone appealed to the poetic side of their natures. We do not hold a press item to absolute exactness in its report of words. The epithet "best" may not have been employed by the questioner on that occasion; were it not for the likelihood that those to whom he spoke would not have laid much stress upon verbal distinctions, one might guess that he said the most national, or representative, or inborn, of our poets. The value of the incident remains; it was discovered English opinion: "Pall Mall Ga zette," Jan. 30, 1882. How far a national poet. that Whittier most nearly satisfied the various poetic needs of the typical, resolute Americans, men of his own historic generation, who composed that assemblage. With this may be considered the fact that it is the habit of compilers and brief reviewers, whose work is that of generalization, to speak of him as a "thoroughly American" poet. An English critic, in a notice marked by comprehension of our home-spirit, and with the honest effort of a delicate mind to get at the secret of Whittier's unstudied verse, and gain the best that can be gained from it, finds him to be the "most national" of our writers, and the most characteristic through his extraordinary fluency, narrow experience, and wide sympathy, -language which implies a not unfriendly recognition of traits which have been thought to be American,- loquacity, provincialism, and generosity of heart. In sentiments thus spoken and written there is a good deal of significance. But the words of the foreign verdict cannot be taken precisely as they stand. Has there been a time, as yet, when any writer could be thoroughly American? What is the meaning of the phrase, the most limited meaning which a citizen, true to our notion of this country's future, will entertain for a moment? Assuredly not a quality which is collegiate, like Longfellow's, or of a section, like Whittier's, or of a special and cultured class, which alone can enjoy Whitman's sturdy attempt to create a new song for the people before the accepted and accepting time. During the period of these men America scarcely has been more homogeneous in popular See pp. 5- characteristics than in climate and topography. I have discussed the perplexing topic of our nationalism, and am willing to believe that these States are blending 10. NEW ENGLAND'S BARD. into a country whose distinctions of race and tendency In fact, it is divergence that If his song was this divergence was greater than before, greater, 97 tively, land. The most discriminating précis is that which Mr. DistincParkman contributed at a gathering in honor of the Quaker bard. The exact eye of the author of "Frontenac saw the poet as he is: “The Poet of New England. His genius drew its nourishment from her soil; his pages are the mirror of her outward nature, and the strong utterance of her inward life." The gloss of this sentiment belonged to the occasion; its analysis is specifically correct, and this with full recognition of Whittier's most famous kinsmen in birth and song. The distinction has been well made, that the national poet is not always the chief poet of a nation. As a poet of New England, Whittier had little competition from the bookish Longfellow, except in the latter's sincere feeling for the eastern sea and shore, and artistic handling of the courtlier legends of the province. He certainly found a compeer in Lowell, whose dialect idyls prove that only genius is needed |