THE CHOICEST HUMOROUS POETRY OF THE AGE,

THE

BIGLOW PAPERS,

BY

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

ALLUDED TO BY JOHN BRIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

t

LONDON

PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND GREENING, GRAYSTOKE PLACE,

FETTER LANE, HOLBORN.

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

AMONGST the many humorous classics that good and genial men have left behind them to cheer and delight society, not one is ever taken up with more pleasure, or quoted with greater delight, than our old friend The Ingoldsby Legends. It is one of those works that smooths down wrinkles, and keeps a healthy glow upon people's cheeks. It is a book for the winter of life, which we may place in the same category with merry friends, cheerful fires, and cozy corners. There is another work, or rather, series of works, less classical, but equally celebrated, which we never speak of without a smile of satisfaction-Sam Slick and the Sayings and Doings of the Clockmaker.

Along with these works, now a generation old, may be placed The Biglow Papers, a small book of point and humor, equal, Fraser's Magazine says, to the Ingoldsby Legends in fun and the Kabelaiesque of poetry;