The magazine appeared about the first of November, and on the 19th Lowell wrote to Emerson: “You have seen, no doubt, how the Philistines have been parodying your ‘Brahma,’ and showing how they still believe in their special god Baal, and are unable to arrive at a conception of an omnipresent Deity. I have not yet met with a single clever one or I would have sent it to you for your amusement. Meanwhile, they are advertising the Atlantic in the very best way, and Mr. Underwood tells me that the orders for the second number are doubling on those for the first. I think you will find the second an improvement.... Your poem [“Two Rivers”] is to go into No. 3, simply as a matter of housewifery, because we had already three articles at $50. I think I told you which I chose—‘Musketaquit.’ The ‘Solitude and Society’ [published in No. 2] has only one fault, that it is not longer, but had it been only a page, there would have been enough in it. Did you use the word daysman[119] deliberately? It has a technical meaning, and I suppose you used it in that sense. Mr. Nichols (the vermilion pencil) was outraged, and appealed to me. I answered that you had a right to use any word you liked till we found some one who wrote better English to correct you. Or did you mean the word to be merely the English of journeyman?
“I hope you will be able to give us something more for No. 3 before you go off to lecture. The number promises well thus far, but I wish to make it a decided advance. You have no notion how hard bestead we are. Out of 297 manuscripts only at most six accepted. I begin to believe in the total depravity of contributions.
“Let me thank you in especial for one line in ‘Brahma,’ which abides with me as an intimate—
‘When me they fly, I am the wings.’
You have crammed meaning there with an hydraulic press. Will not Thoreau give us something from Moosehead?”
Fourteen years earlier Lowell had welcomed Whittier as a contributor to the Pioneer, and now he renewed the old relation. He printed “Tritemius” in the first number and “Skipper Ireson’s Ride” in the second. Indeed, the Atlantic came into existence most fortunately for Whittier, whose fortunes it helped distinctly, as it gave him a medium for the publication of his purely literary poems, and thus not only filled his pocket but helped materially to place him before the public in another guise than that of an ardent reformer. Lowell’s letter upon receipt of “Skipper Ireson’s Ride” is interesting both for its cordiality and for the contrast in tone to his manner of addressing Emerson. It may not unfairly be said that Emerson was the only one of his contemporaries whom Lowell addressed as if he were profoundly conscious of his relation to him as a pupil to his master. Lowell’s letter to Whittier is dated 4 November, 1857.[120]
“I thank you heartily for the ballad, which will go into the next number. I like it all the better for its provincialism,—in all fine pears, you know, we can taste the old puckers. I know the story well. I am familiar with Marblehead and its dialect, and as the burthen is intentionally provincial I have taken the liberty to print it in such a way as shall give the peculiar accent, thus:—
‘Cap’n Ireson for his horrd horrt
Was torred and feathered and corried in a corrt.’
That’s the way I’ve always ‘horrd it,’—only it began ‘Old Flud Ireson.’ What a good name Ireson (son of wrath) is for the hero of such a history!
“You see that ‘Tritemius’ is going the rounds! I meant to have sent you the proofs, and to have asked you to make a change in it where these four rhymes come together (assonances I mean),—‘door,’ ‘poor,’ ‘store,’ ‘more.’ It annoyed me, but I do not find that any one else has been troubled by it, and everybody likes the poem. I am glad that the Philistines have chosen some verses of mine[121] for their target, not being able to comprehend the bearing of then. I mean I am glad that they did it rather than pick out those of any one else for their scapegoat. I shall not let you rest till I have got a New England pastoral out of you. This last is cater-cousin to it, at least, being a piscatorial.