The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-17
WRITER'S BIRTHDAY.


Of the birth of Whittier. The venerable
Quaker poet is living in the utmost retire
meat in bis home in Amesbury, Mass. He
has finished his literary career, laid down
his pen, spends most of his time in his
library with his three household pets
two dogs and parrot.
Whittier and Holmes are the last sur
vivors of the group of eminent American
poets that fourished in the first half of
the nineteenth century, and included Bry-
ant, Longfellow, Emerson, Poe, Halleck,
Drake and Lowell. Whittier was a
writer as early as 1929. and ten years later
was editor.of an anti-slayery paper that
was burned and sacked by the mob. In
1881 he first appeared as a poet, and for
sixty years has been justly regarded as
more peculiarly American than any other
singer of equal fame. HIS birthday will be
observed in many parts of the country by
appropriate exercises in the public schools
and by meetings in his honor by literary
men in all the great cities of the land.
Whittier is dear to the American heart
as our foremost poet of freedom and pat
riotisnl. Alone of our eminent poets
Whittier rose, like Garrison, Lincoln and
Grant, from the common people. Behind
him was no ancestral wealth or culture.
Even as the Methodist and Baptist
churches, always the democratic denomi-
nations nearest the popular heart, were
the first TO protest against slavery, so
Whittier, child of the common people and
the common school, was quicker to pro-
test against slavery than our other great
poets, who were all children of compare
tive ease, culture and colleges
Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes were
all anti-sayery in feeling, but were too
strongly welded to poetic art to be ever
anti-slavery poets. Lowell was by nature
so conservative and aristocratic that his
first verses were in ridicule of the anti
slavery party, bu: he fell in love with
radical anti-slavery woman and she con-
verted him, but after her death Lowell
lost interest in the cause. and his war
bugle notes for the Union were walked by
the love. sympathy and family pride with
which he followed the career and fate of
v.
With their death and the close of the war
Lowell as the poet of American freedom
and patriotism became silent, for his muse
of patriotism and freedom always needed
personal appeal like that of his anti
slavery wife and his soldier kin.
Whittier wrote the songs of freedom and
equality at tho expense of his fame as
literary poetic artist, but it is because of
these songs that he won the love and adj
miration of the American common people
and retains il today as no other man of
American letters has done in our history.
''The Songs of Freedom" and "The Voices
OF Labor" were written by Whittier, not
because he was not q true artist. but because
it seemed To him a nobler thing TO speak
for humanity than to seek fame As 4 pure
poet. His turning aside from the quiet
communion with Nature, which his gentle
spirit loved best, has been compared
to Milton's leaving the clustered walks
Of scholarship for the tuinult of the
English revolution. Milton obeyed the
call of duty. or patriotism and imperiled
freedom and let his fame rs an artistic
poet take care of itself Whittier did like
wise, when he would have preferred to o
artistic poetic work like "Snowbound"
and the Tent on the Beach,"
Because Of the poetic fruit of this sacr fee
the American common people love Whittier
oest Of oil our American poets; they love
him because he cared more about being a
true man than about being a true
poet. y man of devout spirit and
religious insight, he is easily our best
writer of hymns that breathe the devo-
tionai spirit We find in those of Mont
gomery, Cowper, keble, Faber, Newman
and Bonar. His religion was that sub
limated and ethereaiized New England
Calvinism that reached its highest modern
expression in Emerson. Among his later
utteranees is his declaration that the
longer he lived the less he cared about
creeds; and defined his own as little be-
yond al unfaltering trust in the goodness.
wisdom and mercy Of God.
In our judgment Whittier is our great
est American poet, and. If we EXCEPT
LowelI's Yankee dialect poems, he is our
only genuine Amsricaa poet. American
scenery and legend live in his poetry as do
the American patriotism and passionate
love of freedom and equality. Whittier
by his own confession wrote too much,
and in his old age was prone 10 repeat
himself but rs the author of "Tchabod"
he reached Miltonie solemnity and
grandeur that Lowell never reached, and
only Holmes in his Army Hymn even
approached.
About 81 per cent. of the land surface
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