As a consequence he described the homely beauties that surrounded him, recorded the traditions of the region, and quite unconsciously, as his rimes often prove, wrote in its dialect (see p. 263). His sense of the reality of his state’s division into counties is best indicated in the stirring roster which he calls in “Massachusetts to Virginia” (ll. 67–80).
Two other fundamental conditions prevailed in Essex County, though no more strongly than throughout the entire state. It was a time and place of splendid opportunities. In the colonial centuries, hardly more than completed when Whittier was born, pioneer America had barely coped with the elementary problems of settlement. There still remained almost everything that had to do with the alleviations of life—with the nicer refinements, material, intellectual, and æsthetic. For any young man who could combine the will to do with some degree of action, the chance for achievement was exhilarating,—as the Essex boys Garrison and Whittier were to prove. The religious impulse of the day was closely related to these other stimulating conditions. It had the momentum of the generations behind it and the stir of the nineteenth century in it. It was old like the country and new like the period. It was dedicated to a high purpose, but its purpose was more than the personal salvation of the communicant; it was the salvation of Church and State, the bringing of God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Whittier grew up, then, in simple and unlettered surroundings, comparable to those of Carlyle, much more propitious than those of Lincoln. Like many another boy of the time when “child hygiene” was undreamed of, he probably suffered from insufficient clothing, unsuitable food, and undue exertion on the farm. At any rate his vigor was impaired and he matured, as often has happened, with just the fragility of health that responded to enforced care and resulted in long life. The reading supplied at home was arid,—a few narratives of frontier adventure, a few religious books, “the Bible towering o’er the rest,” and a number of biographies.
The Lives of Franklin and of Penn,
Of Fox and Scott, all worthy men.
The Lives of Pope, of Young, and Prior,
Of Milton, Addison and Dyer;
Of Doddridge, Fénelon and Gray,
Armstrong, Akenside and Gay.
The Life of Burroughs, too, I’ve read,