Whittier was twenty-four years old when he published his first volume. It is a thin little book entitled "Legends of New England" (Hartford: Hanmer and Phelps, 1831), and is a medley of prose and verse. The style is juvenile and extravagantly rhetorical, and the subject-matter is far from being massive with thought. The libretto has been suppressed by its author, and it would be ungracious as well as unjust to criticise it at any length, or quote more than a single morsel of its verses, which are inferior to the prose. But one may be pardoned for giving two or three specimens of the prose stories, for they are intrinsically interesting. In the preface we have a striking passage, which may be commended to those who accuse Whittier of hatred of the Puritan fathers, and undue partiality toward the Quakers. He says: "I have in many instances alluded to the superstition and bigotry of our ancestors, the rare and bold race who laid the foundation of this republic; but no one can accuse me of having done injustice to their memories. A son of New England, and proud of my birthplace, I would not willingly cast dishonor upon its founders. My feelings in this respect have already been expressed in language which I shall be pardoned, I trust, for introducing in this place:—
Oh!—never may a son of thine,
Where'er his wandering steps incline,
Forget the sky which bent above
His childhood like a dream of love,
The stream beneath the green hill flowing,
The broad-armed tree above it growing,
The clear breeze through the foliage blowing;
Or hear unmoved the taunt of scorn,
Breathed o'er the brave New England born;
Or mark the stranger's jaguar hand
Disturb the ashes of thy dead—
The buried glory of a land
Whose soil with noble blood is red,
And sanctified in every part,
Nor feel resentment, like a brand,
Unsheathing from his fiery heart!"
The flow of language in these prose pieces is smooth and easy, and the narratives are in the same vein and style as the "Twice Told Tales," or Irving's stories, only they are very much weaker than these, and more extravagant and melodramatic in tone. "The Midnight Attack" describes the adventure of Captain Harmon and thirty Eastern rangers on the banks of the Kennebec River in June, 1722. A party of sleeping Indians are surprised by them and all shot dead by one volley of balls. An idea of the style of the piece will be obtained from the following paragraphs. The men are waiting for the signal of Harmon:—
"'Fire!' he at length exclaimed, as the sight of his piece interposed full and distinct between his eye and the wild scalp-lock of the Indian. 'Fire, and rush on!'
"The sharp voice of thirty rifles thrilled through the heart of the forest. There was a groan—a smothered cry—a wild and convulsive movement among the sleeping Indians; and all again was silent.
"The rangers sprang forward with their clubbed muskets and hunting knives; but their work was done. The red men had gone to their audit before the Great Spirit; and no sound was heard among them save the gurgling of the hot blood from their lifeless bosoms."
It was one of the superstitions of the New England colonists that the rattlesnake had the power of charming or fascinating human beings. Whittier's story, "The Rattlesnake Hunter," is based upon this fact. An old man with meagre and wasted form is represented as devoting his life to the extermination of the reptiles among the hills and mountains of Vermont, the inspiring motive of his action being the death of his young and beautiful wife, many years previously, from the bite of a rattlesnake.
"The Human Sacrifice" relates the escape of a young white girl from the hands of the Matchit-Moodus, an Indian tribe formerly dwelling where East Haddam now stands. The Indians are frightened from their purpose of sacrificing the girl by a rumbling noise proceeding from a high hill near by. In his note on the story Mr. Whittier says: "There is a story prevalent in the neighborhood, that a man from England, a kind of astrologer or necromancer, undertook to rid the place of the troublesome noises. He told them that the sound proceeded from a carbuncle—a precious gem, growing in the bowels of the rock. He hired an old blacksmith shop, and worked for some time with closed doors, and at night. All at once the necromancer departed, and the strange noises ceased. It was supposed he had found the precious gem, and had fled with it to his native land." This story of the carbuncle reminds us of Hawthorne's story on the same subject.
The following remarks are prefixed to the poem, "The Unquiet Sleeper": "Some fifty or sixty years since an inhabitant of ——, N. H., was found dead at a little distance from his dwelling, which he left in the morning in perfect health. There is a story prevalent among the people of the neighborhood that, on the evening of the day on which he was found dead, strange cries are annually heard to issue from his grave! I have conversed with some who really supposed they had heard them in the dead of the night, rising fearfully on the autumn wind. They represented the sounds to be of a most appalling and unearthly nature."
"The Spectre Ship" is the versification of a legend related in Mather's "Magnalia Christi." A ship sailed from Salem, having on board "a young man of strange and wild appearance, and a girl still younger, and of surpassing beauty. She was deadly pale, and trembled even while she leaned on the arm of her companion." They were supposed by some to be demons. The vessel was lost, and of course soon reappeared as a spectre-ship.
Mr. Whittier's next work was the editing, in 1832, of the "Remains" of his gifted friend, J. G. C. Brainard. Students of Whittier's poems know that for many years the genius and writings of Brainard exercised a potent influence on his mind. Brainard undoubtedly possessed genius. He was at one time editor of the Connecticut Mirror. He died young, and his work can be considered as hardly more than a promise of future excellence. Whittier, in his Introduction to the "Remains," shows a nice sense of justice, and a delicate reserve in his eulogistic estimate of his dead brother-poet and friend. That he did not falsely attribute to him a rare genius will be evident to those who read the following portion of Brainard's spirited ballad of "The Black Fox":—
"'How cold, how beautiful, how bright
The cloudless heaven above us shines;
But 'tis a howling winter's night,—
'Twould freeze the very forest pines.