INTRODUCTION WHEN, more than three years ago, my talented young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, came to me and submitted to my animadversions the first of his poems which he intended to commit to the more hazardous trial of a city newspaper, it never so much as entered my imagination to conceive that his productions would ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ushered into the august presence of the reading public by myself. So little are we shortsighted mortals able to predict the event! I confess that there is to me a quite new satisfaction in being associated (though only as sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a separate volume, those religious and godly-minded children (those Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first lie buried in an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapped with a score of others in a cheap binding, with no other mark of distinction than the word "Miscellaneous" printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I know myself, I am measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic phrase, is termed shut-eye) flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some touches of my own, here and there, may have led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from my larger experience of literature and authorship.1 I was at first inclined to discourage Mr. Biglow's attempts, as knowing that the desire to poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be not at once and with a bold hand applied, may become chronic, and render one, who might else have become in due time an ornament of the social circle, a painful object even to nearest friends and relatives. But thinking, on a further experience, that there was a germ of promise in him which required only culture and the pulling up of weeds from about it, I thought it best to set before him the acknowledged examples of English composition in verse, and leave the rest to natural emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to the assiduous study of which he promised to devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he brought me some verses written upon that model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated ear. The poem consisted of childish reminiscences, and the sketches which follow will not seem destitute of truth to those whose fortunate education began in a country village. 1 The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he can find them) to A sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day, An Artillery Election Sermon, A Discourse on the Late Eclipse, Dorcas, a Funeral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the late Experience Tidd, Esq., &c., &c. And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of the school-dame. "Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see The humble school-house of my A, B, C, Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce. "There young Devotion learned to climb with ease And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; "Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, Rewards of merit, too, full many a time, “Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye return! Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound twine, Shared with some dog, whose most beseeching tail The caper homeward, shortened if the cart - I praised the steed, how stanch he was and fleet, While the bluff farmer, with superior grin, Explained where horses should be thick, where thin, And warned me (joke he always had in store) To shun a beast that four white stockings wore. What a fine natural courtesy was his! His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss ; How did his well-thumbed hat, with ardor rapt, Its curve decorous to each rank adapt ! How did it graduate with a courtly ease The whole long scale of social differences, None thought his own was less, his neighbor's more ;. Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove." I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavored to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand. "Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. Biglow's, as, indeed, |