They might have answered once, but Fate To turn now to other matters, there are two things upon which it should seem fitting to dilate somewhat more largely in this place,the Yankee character and the Yankee dialect. And, first, of the Yankee character, which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies in the persons of those unskilful painters who have given to it that hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspective, which, in truth, belonged, not to their subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful pencil. New England was not so much the colony of a mother country, as a Hagar driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-exiled band which came hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold, but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his Thermopyla, where three hundred men fell in resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more invincible storge that drew them back to the green island far away. These found no lotus growing upon the surly shore, the taste of which could make them forget their little native Ithaca; nor were they so wanting to themselves in faith as to burn their ship, but could see the fair west-wind belly the homeward sail, and then turn unrepining to grapple with the terrible Unknown. As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress themselves against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud be long in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the old warfare were long a-healing, and an eastwind of hard times puts a new ache into every one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in their horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean finger of the hard schoolmistress, Necessity. Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add two hundred years' influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary result of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of expedients, half-master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old enemy Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is best as for what will do, with a clasp to his purse and a button to his pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as in old countries, but against sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the world with no Tоû σTŵ but his own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such castiron-enthusiasm, such sour-faced-humor, such close-fisted - generosity. This new Græculus esuriens will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterward. In cœlum, jusseris, ibit, or the other way either, it is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very much fattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen. To move John you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will do for Jonathan. TO THE INDULGENT READER My friend, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, having been seized with a dangerous fit of illness, before this Introduction had passed through the press, and being incapacitated for all literary exertion, sent to me his notes, memoranda, &c., and requested me to fashion them into some shape more fitting for the general eye. This, owing to the fragmentary and disjointed state of his manuscripts, I have felt wholly unable to do; yet being unwilling that the reader should be deprived of such parts of his lucubrations as seemed more finished, It remains to speak of the Yankee dialect. And, first, it may be premised, in a general way, that any one much read in the writings of the early colonists need not be told that the far greater share of the words and phrases now esteemed peculiar to New England, and local there, were brought from the mother country. A person familiar with the dialect of certain portions of Massachusetts will not fail to recognize, in ordinary discourse, many words now noted in English vocabularies as archaic, the greater part of which were in common use about the time of the King James translation of the Bible. Shakespeare stands less in need of a glossary to most New-Englanders than to many a native of the Old Country. The peculiarities of our speech, however, are rapidly wearing out. As there is no country where reading is so universal and newspapers are so multitudinous, so no phrase remains long local, but is transplanted in the mail-bags to every remotest corner of the land. Consequently our dialect approaches nearer to uniformity than that of any other nation. The English have complained of us for coining new words. Many of those so stigmatized were old ones by them forgotten, and all make now an unquestioned part of the currency, wherever English is spoken. Undoubtedly, we have a right to make new words, as they are needed by the fresh aspects under which life presents itself here in the New World; and, indeed, wherever a language is alive, it grows. It might be questioned whether we could not establish a stronger title to the ownership of the English tongue than the mother-islanders themselves. Here, past all question, is to be its great home and centre. And not only is it already spoken here by greater numbers, but with a far higher popular average of correctness than in Britain. The great writers of it, too, we might claim as ours, were ownership to be settled by the number of readers and lovers. As regards the provincialisms to be met with in this volume, I may say that the reader will not find one which is not (as I believe) either native or imported with the early settlers, nor one which I have not, with my own ears, heard in familiar use. In the metrical portion of the book, I have endeavored to adapt the spelling as nearly as possible to the ordinary mode of pronunciation. Let the reader who deems me over-particular remember this caution of Martial: "Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus; Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus." A few further explanatory remarks will not be impertinent. I shall barely lay down a few general rules for the reader's guidance. 1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the r when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel. 2. He seldom sounds the final g, a piece of self-denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the final d, as han' and stan' for hand and stand. 3. The h in such words as while, when, where, he omits altogether. 4. In regard to a, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, as hev for have, hendy for handy, ez for as, thet for that, and again giving it the broad sound it has in futher, as hânsome for hand wreaths; Eour breused arms hung up fer monimunce; An' neow, instid o' mountin' barebid steeds 6. Au, in such words as daughter and slaughter, he pronounces ah. 7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl ad libitum. [Mr. Wilbur's notes here become entirely fragmentary.-C. N.] a. Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Biglow, I thought the curious reader might be gratified with a sight of the editorial effigies. And here a choice between two was offered,the one a profile (entirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait painted by a native artist of much promise. The first of these seemed wanting in expression, and in the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs has been heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of force on the part of the artist) into too close an approach to actual strabismus. This slight divergence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary model however I may have been taught to regard it in the light of a mercy rather than a cross, since it enabled me to give as much of directness and personal application to my discourses as met the wants of my congregation, without risk of offending any by being supposed to have him or her in my eye (as the saying is) seemed yet to Mrs. Wilbur a sufficient objection to the engraving of the aforesaid painting. We read of many who either absolutely refused to allow the copying of their features, as especially did Plotinus and Agesilaus among the ancients, not to mention the more modern instances of Scioppius, Palæottus, Pinellus, Velserus, Gataker, and others, or were indifferent thereto, as Cromwell. 8. Concerning Mr. Biglow's pedigree. Tolerably certain that there was never a poet among his ancestors. An ordination hymn attributed to a maternal uncle, but perhaps a sort of production not demanding the creative faculty. His grandfather a painter of the grandiose or Michael Angelo school. Seldom painted objects smaller than houses or barns, and these with uncommon expression. e. Of the Wilburs no complete pedigree. The crest said to be a wild boar, whence, perhaps, the name. (?) A connection with the Earls of Wilbraham (quasi wild boar ham) might be made out. This suggestion worth following up. In 1677, John W. m. Expect had issue, 1. John, 2. Haggai, 3. Expect, 4. Ruhamah, 5. Desire. "Hear lyes y bodye of Mrs Expect Wilber, Y stream of Jordan sh' as crost ore Her earthlye yeeres were forty and nine." This is unquestionably the same John who afterward (1711) married Tabitha Hagg or Ragg. But if this were the case, she seems to have died early; for only three years after, namely, 1714, we have evidence that he married Winifred, daughter of Lieutenant Tipping. 66 one unin He seems to have been a man of substance, for we find him in 1696 conveying divided eightieth part of a salt-meadow" Yabbok, and he commanded a sloop in 1702. Those who doubt the importance of genealogical studies fuste potius quam argumento erudiendi. I trace him as far as 1723, and there lose him. In that year he was chosen selectman. No gravestone. Perhaps overthrown when new hearse-house was built, 1802. He was probably the son of John, who came from Bilham Comit. Salop. circa 1642. This first John was a man of considerable importance, being twice mentioned with the honorable prefix of Mr. in the town records. Name spelt with two l-s. "Hear lyeth y bod [stone unhappily broken.] Mr. Ihon Willber [Esq.] [I inclose this in brackets as doubtful. To me it seems clear.] Ob't die [illegible; looks like xviii.] [prob. 1693.] .... paynt deseased seinte : 222 A friend and [fath]er untoe all ye opreast, Hee gave y wicked familists noe reast, When Satan bllewe his Antinomian blaste, Wee clong to [Willber as a steadf]ast maste. [A] gaynst y horrid Qua[kers] . . . . It is greatly to be lamented that this curious epitaph is mutilated. It is said that the sacrilegious British soldiers made a target of the stone during the war of Independence. How odious an animosity which pauses not at the grave! How brutal that which spares not the monuments of authentic history! This is not improbably from the pen of Rev. Moody Pyram, who is mentioned by Hubbard as having been noted for a silver vein of poetry. If bly be recovered. his papers be still extant, a copy might possi THE BIGLOW PAPERS No. I A LETTER FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, INCLOSING A POEM OF HIS SON, MR. HOSEA BIGLOW JAYLEM, june 1846. MISTER EDDYTER :- Our Hosea wuz down to Boston last week, and he see a cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a drummin and fifin arter him like all nater. the sarjunt he thout Hosea hed n't gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo's though he'd jest com down, so he cal❜lated to hook him in, but Hosy wood n't take none o' his sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder out on. wal, Hosea he com home considerabal riled, and arter I'd gone to bed I heern Him a thrashin round like a short-tailed Bull in fli-time. The old Woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our Hosee 's gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, don't you Bee skeered, ses I, he's oney amakin pottery 1 ses i, he's ollers on hand at that ere busynes like Da & martin, and shure enuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint aney grate shows o' book larnin himself, bimeby he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle tickled with 'em as i hoop you will Be, and said they wuz True grit. Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em hisn now, cos the parson kind o' slicked off sum o' the last varses, but he told Hosee he didn't want to put his ore in to tetch to the Rest on 'em, bein they wuz verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind o' didn't hear him, for I never hearn o' nobody o' that name in this villadge, and 1 Aut insanit, aut versos facit. H. W. 182 your "Taint your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; 'Taint afollerin' bell-wethers Will excuse ye in His sight; Ef you take a sword an' dror it, An' go stick a feller thru, Guv'ment aint to answer for it, God 'll send the bill to you. Want to tackle me in, du ye? I expect you'll hev to wait; Jest go home an' ask our Nancy guess you'd fancy Take them editors thet 's crowin' Like a cockerel three months old, Don't ketch any on 'em goin', Though they be so blasted bold; Aint they a prime lot o' fellers ? 'Fore they think on 't guess they'll sprout (Like a peach thet 's got the yellers), With the meanness bustin' out. Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' Bigger pens to cram with slaves, Help the men thet 's ollers dealin' Insults on your fathers' graves; Help the strong to grind the feeble, Help the many agin the few, Help the men thet call your people Witewashed slaves an' peddlin' crew! Massachusetts, God forgive her, She 's akneelin' with the rest, She, thet ough' to ha' clung ferever In her grand old eagle-nest; She thet ough' to stand so fearless W'ile the wracks are round her hurled, Holdin' up a beacon peerless To the oppressed of all the world! Ha'n't they sold your colored seamen ? Come, I'll tell ye wut I'm thinkin' They'd ha' done 't ez quick ez winkin' |