We crave the reader’s indulgence for this disfigurement of our page, and wish with all our heart it had been possible to fill it with more worthy matter.
Longfellow, breathing the same air as Whittier, the disciple of a faith commonly supposed to be less mild and sweetly loving than a Quaker’s, has found the tenderest thoughts, the noblest images, and the highest forms of character in the church which our poet cannot even think of without raving.
But possibly we should be wrong to complain that the mystic beauty which has in all ages appealed with irresistible power of fascination to the highest and most richly-gifted natures should fail to impress one all of whose thoughts are cast in a straitened and unyielding mould. Whittier has not the far-glancing eye of the poet to which all beauty appeals like the light itself. The partisan habit of an inveterate abolitionist has stiffened and hardened a disposition which was never plastic. It was so long his official duty to write anti-slavery campaign verses that, in treating subjects which should inspire higher thoughts, he is still held captive to the lash of the slave-driver, hears the clanking of chains and the groans of the fettered; and these sights and sounds drive him into mere rant and rhetoric.
We willingly bear testimony to the moral tone and purity which
pervade Whittier’s verse. There is nothing to offend the most delicate ear; nothing to bring a blush to a virgin’s cheek. He lacks the power to portray passion, and was not tempted into doubtful paths. He delights in pictures of home, with its innocent joys and quiet happiness; sings of friendship and the endearing ties that bind the parent to the child; or, if he attunes his harp to love, he does it in numbers so sadly sweet that we only remember that the fickle god has wreathed his bowers with cypress boughs and made his best interpreter a sigh.
What could be more harmless than the little scene between Maud Muller and the judge—though Heaven only knows what the judge, and above all the American judge, can have done that he should be condemned to play the rôle of a lover. Possibly it may have been the judicious nature of the love that induced the poet to think such a deus ex machinâ not out of place. At all events, nothing could be more inoffensive.
“She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up
And filled for him her small tin cup.
‘Thanks!’ said the judge; ‘a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.’”