The weekly American banner. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 1855-18??, 1856-06-27


behind which he recognizes the real offender.
whom he drags into the blaze of the fiery indig-
nation of the literary world after this wise:
81 can see him in vision
Laughing till he cracks his jaw-bones,
Laughing in his wild derision,
Like another cruel ''saw bones.''
can read him as lawyer
Reads an old and dusty vellum,-
"Tallboy," alias Bob Sawyer!- !
And may soon his "cerebellum''
Suffer from ga comminuted
Yes compound comminuted,
And complicated ssfracture'
For his venomous carucature
Ofthe very undisputed
Greatest modern gem noetic
Whether prosy or poetic!"
1t is due to Mr.. Pundit to state that, in a
note he apologies to the literary public for the
orthepecal violence which, hurried away by the
impetuous torrent of the wrath poetic, and con
strained by the necessities of both rhyme and
RHYTHM" he has done to the word car-icature,
which he begs his courteous readers, for this
once to pronounce as if it were spelled earadure'
with the accent on the antepenultmate;"- re-
quest 80 reasonable thatwe cannot doubt, it will
be generally complied with.
But we must hasten to give examples of the
erudite and valuable annotations of Mr.. Pundit,
selected almost at random. AS our readers have
not probably secured copies of his edition of
Hiawatha, which we may with peculiar propriety
of phrase characterize as an illuminated edi.
tion," we will make our references to the pages
of the edition, published by Ticknor and Fields,
the paging of the two being necessarily very
different, since in the latter the poem occupies
the entire page, while in the former the poem is
like rill, ripping through an extensive meadow
of curious and learned annotations. For the
convenience of readers who may not be so fortu-
nate as to possess either edition, will first quote
the text, and then the remarks of the able CON-
mentator, Mr.. Pundit.
.From the full moon fell Nakomis." (p 36).
Such is the Indian of the fall of Lucifer, ''son
of the morning. alluded to by Isaiah (14;l2);
though the Indian tradition changes the sex Of
the unfortunate decadent. To the same source
we trace the story Of Vulcan, whom his father
Jupiter, cast down frem Olympus, with coup
de pied, for intermedling ip domestic feud be
tween him and Juno.
i In Ausonian land
Men call'd him Mulciber; and how he fell
From Heaven they tabled, thrown by angry Jov'
Sheer DER the crystal battlements: from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summers day; and with the setting sun
, Dropp'd from the zenith like falling star.
On Lemnos the Egean Isle." Par. Lost B.
Thus, also, our poet tells US that 'Nokomis fel
afrighted downward thro' the evening twilight
and that the people said, 'From the sky star
falling" Vulcan's fall produced a acrural fracture
which, from want of surgical skill, resulted il
lameness for life; but athe beautiful Nokomis
sustained no injury whatever owing, no doubt
to the height Of the prairie grass at that seaso
of the year; for the poet tells us that she fell go
the Muskoday, the meadow, On the prairie Of blos
sons"
"Once a warrior, very angry,
Seized his grandmother and threw her
Up into the sky at midnight;
Right against the moon he threw her;
'ris her body that you see there" (p. 42).
This was an act of shocking impiety, altogeth'
unworthy Of a gentleman and soldier, but its ma
ration was necessary to inform the reader that Il
fall Of Of Nokomis effected an equilibrium; or
woman having been cast from Earth to Lun'
> another was sent from Luna to Earth. We migl
incline to doRbt the accuracy Of this theory, ha
ing imbibed, during our adolescence, that il is
a .aroman, but "man in the moon" But
Nokomis was herself native of that sphere,
behoves rs, mere sublunary and gcotic beings,
defer to her superior Information.
S y 40, beware Of Mudjekeewis." tp. 3s).
Ut Such was the warning given By Nokomis to
dit daughter, who had not as yet formed the acqua
ci- tanoe Of Mudjekeewis, the West Wind. Int
in the wisdom which characterized Nokomis \
ci- for once at fault. She might have known q
'se the tendency Of this premature warning woald
on to set the young head Of Wenonah running
OF this Mudiekeewis She should have borne
'ys mind the aphorisn Of Chauccr. Forbid : 10
lit is ten times as wode.''