poets of antiquity, while Goldsmith furnishes a rather ludicrous instance in the well-known line,

"On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side,"

the locality of Pambamarca never having been precisely ascertained. In "The Bridal of Pennacook," Whittier, describing the Indian marriage feast, gives us the following tempting bill of fare:

"Steaks of the brown bear, fat and large,
From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon speared in the Contoocook;

"Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick,
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic;
And small wild hens, in reed snares caught,
From the banks of Sondagardee brought;

"Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,

And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog."

This introduction of proper names, generally felicitous in Whittier's writings, is in some instances overdone, and gives an air of stiffness and pedantry; as in the enumeration of nations in "The World's Convention."

As a consequence of the seeming haste in which many of these poems are written, the author is betrayed into occasional inaccuracies of grammar and rhyme. Many of these, which we had observed in his earlier volumes, we are glad to see corrected in the revised collection. But some still remain. Speaking of the tendency of youth to look on the best side of everything, he says:

"Turning, with a power like Midas,
All things into gold."

The first line is not in accordance with the idiom of the langage, and even if it should be corrected by the addition of an apostrophe after Midas, it would remain clumsy. An obyious improvement would be to substitute

"Turning with the power of Midas."

1854.]

JOHN G. WHITTIER AND HIS WRITINGS.

51

We have noticed several inadmissible rhymes,-"dawn" with "scorn," "curse" with us," "war" with "saw" and "draw," &c.

Instances of anything resembling the use of other people's thoughts are seldom to be found in Whittier's poems. The following, from "The Chapel of the Hermits," is hardly a plagiarism :

"That all of good the Past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad."

But Lowell's version is better:

"The Present moves attended

By all of brave and excellent and fair,
That made the old time splendid."

In closing our notice of Whittier's poetry, we forbear extended remark upon the great variety of his metres, and his unusual success and facility in the management of them.

Of his prose style we have already spoken at some length. It is classical, vigorous, and never dull, with a vein of humor running through it, which lacks abandon and seems somewhat inflexible and metallic. We subjoin, as favorable specimens of his humor, two anecdotes from "Supernaturalism of New England":

"Nearly opposite to my place of residence, on the south side of the Merrimack, stands a house which has long had a bad reputation for ghosts. One of its recent inmates avers most positively, that, having on one occasion ventured to sleep in the haunted room, she was visited by a child-ghost, which passed through the apartment with a most mournful and unbaby-like solemnity. Some of my unbelieving readers will doubtless smile at this, and deem it no matter of surprise that a maiden's slumbers should thus be haunted. As the old playwriter hath it:

'She blushed and smiled to think upon her dream

Of fondling a sweet infant (with a look

Like one she will not name) upon her virgin knees.'"

"There was a print of the enemy, which made no slight impression upon me when a boy; it was the frontispiece of an old, smoked, snuffstained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady (who had a fine col

lection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind enough to edify her young visitors), containing a solemn account of the fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent declaration that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly, without the power to suspend their exercise until their feet and legs were worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demon fiddler, and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in cotillions, jigs, strathspeys, and

reels."

In a different vein are his reflections upon the sight of a parson, showing his tendency to wander from the most commonplace suggestion into the remote regions of his favorite speculations:

"In certain states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within me. My imagination goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt,-I think of Jannes and Jambres, of the Persian Magi,- dim oak groves with Druid altars and priests and victims rise before me. For what is the priest even of our New England, but a living testimony to the truth of the Supernatural and the reality of the Unseen,― a man of mystery walking in the shadow of the ideal world, -by profession an expounder of spiritual wonders?"

Whittier is a writer whose sentiments are thoroughly American; not that he is always in harmony with the prevalent opinion of his countrymen, but that his productions are deeply imbued with the spirit of our institutions. They contain the genuine American doctrines of freedom and humanity, brought up to the latest and highest standard. His unmeasured sympathy for his kind has led him into a field new and entirely his own, and given him an unquestionable title to the name of an original author. It is the crowning and distinguishing glory of Wordsworth to have raised to notice the humblest objects of organic and inorganic life, and to have evolved from them latent beauties and significancies, which the many never could have discovered; and Whittier, by yielding to his own generous and ardent instincts, and following the slave, not in himself an inviting object, and with no claims upon the poet except those of a common humanity,

through the various vicissitudes of his sad lot, has enlarged the domain of our sympathies and won for himself the benediction,

"Blessings be on him and eternal praise,

Who gave us nobler hopes and nobler loves!"

ART. III.1. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. Printed by Order of the Legislature. Edited by NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF, M. D. Boston: From the Press of William White, Printer to the Commonwealth. 1853. 2.-Archæologia Americana. Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society. Vol. III. Part I. Cambridge: Printed for the Society. 1850.

THE publication of the early records of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay has been often urged upon the government of the State of Massachusetts; but the State has only just now completed it. Meanwhile, all students of her history, from Hubbard downward, had used the manuscripts. It was well known that they were full, drawn up with care, and comprising much valuable detail in illustration of the early history of New England.

The manuscript volumes themselves have been of late years very carefully preserved. But it has been certain, that, in the face of all possible care, their illegibility increased. And as long since as May 29, 1844, the American Antiquarian Society, finding that the State was not disposed to attempt the preservation of its own records, took measures to procure a careful copy of the first volume, and directed its publishing committee to publish it, with notes and illustrations.

In his valuable collection of works bearing on Massachusetts history, Dr. Young printed that part of the record which related to the operations of the Company in England, that is, as far as the period when the charter was brought to America by Winthrop, in 1630. In 1850 the publication by the An

tiquarian Society began. The text was printed with the original spelling, with illustrative notes, and with a very valuable introductory essay by Mr. S. F. Haven, to whose care the whole work had been intrusted by the Society. In this essay he gives the history of the "Origin of the Massachusetts Company"; and, after clearing up much which had been very obscure about the overlapping of the lines of patents, and the rights of successive companies, he traces, in some detail, as far as is possible, the lives of the several persons, nearly one hundred, who formed the original Massachusetts Company, under whose auspices the State of Massachusetts began to be. The first part of the Antiquarian Society's publication ended, like Dr. Young's, with the transfer of the charter to New England. The Society proposed to print the entire contents of the first volume, the whole of which had been copied for this purpose.

Before this was done, however, Governor Clifford having called the attention of the Council of the State to the decaying condition of its oldest original records, and, on the report of a committee of that body, sent a special message to the Legislature recommending earnestly that the first two volumes should be printed by the State, the Legislature passed a resolve in pursuance of his recommendation, on the 2d of May, 1853. The Secretary of State, who was intrusted with the superintendence of the work, committed it to the hands of Dr. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, certainly the most fit person, from the union of various essential qualifications, to carry it out promptly and thoroughly; and it was begun at once, and, with an expedition very unusual in such affairs, was completed before the end of the year. We shall have occasion, as we examine it, to speak of the singular accuracy and beauty with which it is printed.

This authentic and unabridged edition of the official records of the Company, and the invaluable Journal of Governor Winthrop, make up a mass of material for the early history of Massachusetts, complete to a degree almost without precedent. There are also several early letters, and other printed tracts, which furnish valuable illustrations and supply some deficiencies. If, then, the history of Massachusetts is not written, it