John Greenleaf Whittier Part 15

"Snow-Bound" was published in 1860, and was written, Mr. Whittier has said, "to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber." The poet has obeyed the canon of Lessing, and instead of giving us dead description wholly, has shown us his characters in action, and extended his story over three days and the two intervening nights,--that is to say, the main action covers that time: the whole time mentioned in the poem is a week. It is unnecessary to give here any further account of the idyl than has already been furnished in the account of Whittier's boyhood.

"The Tent on the Beach" is a cl.u.s.ter of ballads. In accordance with a familiar fiction, they are supposed to be sung, or told, by several persons, in this case three, namely, the poet himself, "a lettered magnate" (James T. Fields), and a traveller (Bayard Taylor). All of the poems are readable, and many of them are to be cla.s.sed among Whittier's best lyrics. "The Wreck of Rivermouth," "The Changeling," and "Kallundborg Church" are masterpieces in the line of ballads. In "The Dead Ship of Harpswell" we have the fine phrase,--

"O hundred-harbored Maine!"

Whittier has now become almost a perfect master of verbal melody.

Hearken to this:--

"Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day!

But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it's one to go, but another to come!'"

There is a light and piquant humor about some of the interludes of the "Tent on the Beach." The song in the last of these contains a striking and original stanza concerning the ocean:--

"Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels the human knee, Their white locks bowing to the sand, The priesthood of the sea!"

"Among the Hills" is a little farm-idyl, or love-idyl, of the New Hampshire mountain land, and bearing some resemblance to Tennyson's "Gardener's Daughter." It is an excellent specimen of the poems of Whittier that reach the popular heart, and engage its sympathies. In the remotest farm-houses of the land you are almost sure to find among their few books a copy of Whittier's Poems, well-thumbed and soiled with use.

The opening description of the prelude to "Among the Hills" could not be surpa.s.sed by Bion or Theocritus. In this poem a fresh interest is excited in the reader by the fact that the city woman falls in love with a manly farmer, thus happily reversing the old, old story of the city man wooing and winning the rustic beauty. The farmer accuses the fair city maid of coquetry. She replies:

"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man; And see you not, my farmer, How weak and fond a woman waits Behind this silken armor?

'I love you: on that love alone, And not my worth, presuming, Will you not trust for summer fruit The tree in May-day blooming?'

Alone the hangbird overhead, His hair-swung cradle straining, Looked down to see love's miracle,-- The giving that is gaining."

In "Lines on a Fly-Leaf," the author of "Snow-Bound" gives in his hearty adherence to that movement for the elevation of woman, and the securing of her rights as a human being, which is perhaps the most significant and important of the many agitations of this agitated age.

The poem "Miriam," like "The Preacher," is one of those long sermons, or meditations in verse, which Whittier loves to spin out of his mind in solitude. It contains in "Shah Akbar" a fine Oriental ballad.

The narrative poem called "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim," published in 1872, has no striking poetical merit, but is valuable and readable for the pleasant light in which it sets forth the doings of the quaint people of Germantown and the Wissahickon, near Philadelphia, nearly two hundred years ago. It introduces us to the homes and hearts of the little settlements of German Quakers under Francis Daniel Pastorius, the Mystics under the leadership of Magister Johann Kelpius, and the Mennonites under their various leaders. "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim" is a poem for Quakers, for Philadelphians who love their great park and its Wissahickon drives, and for antiquarian historical students. We may regret, if we choose, that the poet has not succeeded in embalming the memory of the Germantown Quakers in such felicitous verse as other poets have sung the virtues and ways of the Puritans, but we cannot deny that he has garnished with the flowers of poetry a dry historical subject, and so earned the grat.i.tude of a goodly number of students and scholars.

In "The King's Missive, and Other Poems," published in 1881, the most notable piece is "The Lost Occasion," a poem on Daniel Webster, finer even than the much-admired "Ichabod," published many years previously.

"The Lost Occasion" is pitched in a high, solemn, and majestic strain.

It is a superb eulogy, full of magnanimity and generous forgiveness.

Listen to a few stanzas:--

"Thou Whom the rich heavens did endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, With all the ma.s.sive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills,

Whose words, in simplest home-spun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon had,

Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In pa.s.sion, cool in argument, Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes As fell the Norse G.o.d's hammer blows,

Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy august head."

The poem of "The King's Missive" calls for such extended discussion that a brief chapter shall be devoted to it.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KING'S MISSIVE.

"_Under the great hill sloping bare To cove and meadow and Common lot, In his council chamber and oaken chair, Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott._"

So run the opening lines of the historical poem contributed by Whittier to the first volume of the Memorial History of Boston (1880). While the governor is thus sitting, in comes Clerk Rawson with the unwelcome news that banished Quaker Shattuck, of Salem, has returned from abroad. The choleric governor swears that he will now hew in pieces the pestilent, ranting Quakers. Presently Shattuck is ushered in: "Off with the knave's hat," says the governor. As they strike off his hat he smilingly holds out the Missive, or mandamus, of Charles II. The governor immediately asks him to cover, and humbly removes his own hat. The king's letter commands him to cease persecuting the Quakers. After consultation with the deputy governor, Bellingham, he obeys, and the then imprisoned Quakers file out of jail with words of praise on their lips.

The poem fascinates us, for the incident is dramatic, and focusses in a single picturesque situation all the features of that little historical episode of two hundred years ago, _i. e._, the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritan Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts. A brief setting forth of the facts connected with this persecution will not only be full of intrinsic interest, but is indispensable to a right understanding of the Quaker poet's inherited character, as well as to a comprehension of his prose and poetry. One whose ancestors have been persecuted for generations will inherit a loathing of oppression, as Whittier has done.

And this hatred of tyranny will be intensified in the case of one who is thoroughly read in the literature of that persecution, and is in quick and intimate sympathy with the victims, as Whittier is.

But first a word more about the "King's Missive." Joseph Besse, in his "Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers" (a sort of "Fox's Book of Martyrs," in two huge antique volumes), says [II., p.

226] that the princ.i.p.al instrument in procuring the royal mandamus (styled by Whittier the King's Missive) was Edward Burroughs,[28] who went to the king and told him that "There was a Vein of innocent Blood open'd in his Dominions, which if it were not stopt might over-run all.

To which the king replied, 'But I will stop that Vein.'" Accordingly, in the autumn of 1661, Samuel Shattuck was selected to bear a letter to America. The London Friends hired Ralph Goldsmith, also a Friend, to convey Shattuck to his destination. They paid him 300 for the service.

The ship entered Boston Harbor on a Sunday in the latter part of November, 1661.

[Footnote 28: "There is a story," says Dr. George E. Ellis, "that Burroughs got access to the king out of doors, while his Majesty was playing tennis. As Burroughs kept on his hat while accosting the king, the latter gracefully removed his plumed cap and bowed. The Quaker, put to the blush, said, 'Thee need'st not remove thy hat.' 'Oh,' replied the king, 'it is of no consequence, only that when the king and another gentleman are talking together it is usual for one of them to take off his hat.'"]

"The Townsmen," says Besse, "seeing a Ship with _English_ Colours, soon came on board, and asked for the Captain? _Ralph Goldsmith_ told them, _He was the Commander_. They asked, _Whether he had any Letters_? He answered, _Yes_. But withal told them, _He would not deliver them that Day_. So they returned on sh.o.r.e again, and reported, that _There were many_ Quakers _come, and that_ Samuel Shattock (who they knew had been banished on pain of Death) _was among them_. But they knew nothing of his Errand or Authority. Thus all was kept close, and none of the Ship's Company suffered to go on sh.o.r.e that Day. Next morning _Ralph Goldsmith_, the Commander, with _Samuel Shattock_, the King's Deputy, went on sh.o.r.e, and sending the Boat back to the Ship, they two went directly through the Town to the Governour's House, and knockt at the Door: He sending a Man to know their Business, they sent him Word, that _Their Message was from the King of_ England, _and that they would deliver it to none but himself_. Then they were admitted to go in, and the Governour came to them, and commanded _Samuel Shattock's_ Hat to be taken off, and having received the Deputation and the _Mandamus_, he laid off his own Hat; and ordering Shattock's Hat to be given him again, perused the Papers, and then went out to the Deputy-Governour's, bidding the King's Deputy and the Master of the Ship to follow him: Being come to the Deputy-Governour, and having consulted him, he returned to the aforesaid two Persons and said, _We shall obey his Majesty's Command_.

After this, the Master of the Ship gave Liberty to his Pa.s.sengers to come on sh.o.r.e, which they did, and had a religious Meeting with their Friends of the Town, where they returned Praises to G.o.d for his Mercy manifested in this wonderful Deliverance."

The persecution, it is true, only ceased for about a year (the next recorded whipping-order bearing date of December 22, 1662). But the Quakers were greatly encouraged by the interposition in their favor.

In an address before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, Dr. George E.

Ellis, of Boston, read a paper criticising Mr. Whittier's "King's Missive." This address was published in the Proceedings of the Society for March, 1881. In the "Memorial History of Boston" [I., p. 180] he a.s.serts that the Quakers were all "of low rank, of mean breeding, and illiterate." He says that they courted persecution, and that they were a pestilent brood of ranters, disturbers of the public peace, and dreaded by the leaders of the infant Commonwealth as they would have dreaded the cholera. He quotes Roger Williams, who wrote of the Quakers that they were "insufferably proud and contentious," and advised a "due and moderate restraint of their incivilities." Dr. Ellis, it is true, takes the theoretical ground of "the equal folly and culpability of both parties in the tragedy," but seems entirely to nullify this statement by his apparently unbia.s.sed, but really partisan treatment of the subject.

When you have finished his paper you perceive that the impression left on your mind is that the really bitter and unrelenting Puritan persecutors were long-suffering, angelic natures, while their victims, the Quakers, were mere gallows' dogs. His theoretical position is summed up in the following words:--

"The crowning folly or iniquity in the course of the Puritans was in following up their penal inflictions, through banishments, imprisonments, fines, scourgings, and mutilations, to the execution on the gallows of four martyr victims. But what shall we say of the persistency, the exasperating contemptuousness and defiance, the goading, maddening obstinacy, and reproaching invectives of those who drove the magistrates, against their will, to vindicate their own insulted authority, and to stain our annals with innocent blood?"--Memorial History of Boston, I., 1882.

Dr. Ellis is right in holding that some of the Quakers were gadflies of obstinacy, and full of self-righteous pride; but he fails to tell us of the patience, Christian sweetness, and meekness of character of the majority of them; and it is only when we turn to the pages of Fox and Besse that we see the inadequate character of such a picture as that drawn by Dr. Ellis. In the plain, _nave_ annals of Besse, the hard-heartedness and haughty pride of the Puritan magistrates (traits still amply represented in their descendants) are thrown into the most striking relief. They glower over their victims like tigers; they are choked with their pa.s.sions; they spurn excuses and palliatives; they demand blood.

In the _Boston Daily Advertiser_ for March 29, 1881, Mr. Whittier published a long reply to Dr. Ellis, in which he fortified the positions taken by him in his ballad, showing that he did not mean to hold up Charles II. as a consistent friend of toleration, and that there must have been a general jail delivery in consequence of the receipt of the mandamus. He says:--

"The charge that the Quakers who suffered were 'vagabonds' and 'ignorant, low fanatics,' is unfounded in fact. Mary Dyer, who was executed, was a woman of marked respectability. She had been the friend and a.s.sociate of Sir Henry Vane and the ministers Wheelwright and Cotton. The papers left behind by the three men who were hanged show that they were above the common cla.s.s of their day in mental power and genuine piety. John Rous, who, in execution of his sentence, had his right ear cut off by the constable in the Boston jail, was of gentlemanly lineage, the son of Colonel Rous of the British army, and himself the betrothed of a high-born and cultivated young English lady. Nicholas Upsall was one of Boston's most worthy and substantial citizens, yet was driven in his age and infirmities, from his home and property, into the wilderness."

Mr. Whittier further remarks:--

"Dr. Ellis has been a very generous, as well as ingenious defender of the Puritan clergy and government, and his labors in this respect have the merit of gratuitous disinterestedness. Had the very worthy and learned gentleman been a resident in the Ma.s.sachusetts colony in 1660, one of his most guarded doctrinal sermons would have brought down upon him the wrath of clergy and magistracy. His Socinianism would have seemed more wicked than the 'inward light' of the Quakers; and, had he been as 'doggedly obstinate' as Servetus at Geneva (as I do him the justice to think he would have been), he might have hung on the same gallows with the Quakers, or the same shears which clipped the ears of Holder, Rous, and Copeland might have shorn off his own."