The Biglow Papers | Page 8

the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new
ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred
precincts of the pulpit.... On the whole, we consider this volume as one
of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the
late French "Revolution"(!).
* * * * *
From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a tryweakly
family journal).

Altogether an admirable work.... Full of humour, boisterous, but
delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos
cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet
keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of "mountain-mirth,"
mischievous as Puck and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to
admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author,
or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once
both objective and subjective.... We might indulge in some criticisms,
but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As
it is, he has a wonderful pose, which flits from flower to flower, and
bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede)
to the "highest heaven of invention." ... We love a book so purely
objective.... Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an
extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity.... In fine, we consider
this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We
know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to
which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the
Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the
star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds,
may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved
Europe.... We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher
walks of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving
enduring fame. Already we should be inclined to assign him a high
position in the bright galaxy of our American bards.
* * * * *
From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom.
A volume in bad grammar and worse taste.... While the pieces here
collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of
obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but,
as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he
must expect the lash he so richly merits.... Contemptible slanders....
Vilest Billingsgate.... Has raked all the gutters of our language.... The
most pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his
malignant venom.... General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile

calumnies.... The Reverend Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth....
* * * * *
From the World-Harmonic-Æolian-Attachment.
Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance more Orphic than this.
While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works
continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those
who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph
God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed.... Under mask of
quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh shipwracked)
soul, thunder-scarred, semiarticulate, but ever climbing hopefully
toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow.... Yes, thou poor,
forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this
life of ours has not been without its aspect of heavenliest pity and
laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse
Thersites-cloak, we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing,
world-clasping, that is in him. Bravely he grapples with the
life-problem as it presents itself to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of
the "nicer proprieties," inexpert of "elegant diction," yet with voice
audible enough to whoso hath ears, up there on the gravelly side-hills,
or down on the splashy, Indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam.
To this soul also the Necessity of Creating somewhat has unveiled its
awful front. If not [OE]dipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in
God's name Birdofredum Sawins! These also shall get born into the
world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank,
omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen
will not sit to him. Yet in him also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and
Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine Comedies,--if only once he could
come at them! Therein lies much, nay all; for what truly is this which
we name All, but that which we do not possess?... Glimpses also are
given us of an old father Ezekiel, not without paternal pride, as is the
wont of such. A brown, parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or
bucolic species, gray-eyed, we fancy, queued perhaps, with much
weather-cunning and plentiful September-gale memories, bidding fair
in good time to become the Oldest Inhabitant. After such hasty

apparition, he vanishes and is