BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN.
James Russell Lowell
[Here, patient reader, we take leave of each other, I trust with some
mutual satisfaction. I say _patient_, for I love not that kind which
skims dippingly over the surface of the page, as swallows over a pool
before rain. By such no pearls shall be gathered. But if no pearls there
be (as, indeed the world is not without example of books wherefrom the
longest-winded diver shall bring up no more than his proper handful of
mud), yet let us hope that an oyster or two may reward adequate
perseverance. If neither pearls nor oysters, yet is patience itself a
gem worth diving deeply for.
It may seem to some that too much space has been usurped by my own
private lucubrations, and some may be fain to bring against me that old
jest of him who preached all his hearers out of the meeting-house save
only the sexton, who, remaining for yet a little space, from a sense of
official duty, at last gave out also, and, presenting the keys, humbly
requested our preacher to lock the doors, when he should have wholly
relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in the
self act of preaching, nor do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown
away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily
believe that the Gospel of Saint John, which Jacques Cartier ordered to
be read in the Latin tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first
meeting with them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For the
earnestness of the preacher is a sermon appreciable by dullest
intellects and most alien ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many
to his opinions, who yet understood not the language in which he
discoursed. The chief thing is that the messenger believe that he has an
authentic message to deliver. For counterfeit messengers that mode of
treatment which Father John de Plano Carpini relates to have prevailed
among the Tartars would seem effectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough.
For my own part, I may lay claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom
as would have led me to go into banishment with those clergymen whom
Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal drave out of his kingdom for refusing to
shorten their pulpit eloquence. It is possible, that, I having been
invited into my brother Biglow's desk, I may have been too little
scrupulous in using it for the venting of my own peculiar doctrines to a
congregation drawn together in the expectation and with the desire of
hearing him.
I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of mental organization
which impels me, like the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run
backward for a short distance in order to obtain a fairer start. I may
compare myself to one fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high,
who, misinterpreting the suction of the undertow for the biting of some
larger fish, jerks suddenly, and finds that he has _caught bottom_,
hauling in upon the end of his line a trail of various _algæ_, among
which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the
disappointment of the angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavored to
adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more
and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the
catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to
two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pygmies.
For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in
print, the endless spinal column of divisions and subdivisions can be
likened to nothing so exactly as to the vertebræ of the saurians,
whence the theorist may conjecture a race of Anakim proportionate to the
withstanding of these other monsters. I say Anakim rather than Nephelim,
because there seem reasons for supposing that the race of those whose
heads (though no giants) are constantly enveloped in clouds (which that
name imports) will never become extinct. The attempt to vanquish the
innumerable _heads_ of one of those aforementioned discourses may supply
us with a plausible interpretation of the second labor of Hercules, and
his successful experiment with fire affords us a useful precedent.
But while I lament the degeneracy of the age in this regard, I cannot
refuse to succumb to its influence. Looking out through my study-window,
I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in gathering his Baldwins, of which,
to judge by the number of barrels lying about under the trees, his crop
is more abundant than my own,--by which sight I am admonished to turn to
those orchards of the mind wherein my labors may be more prospered, and
apply myself diligently to the preparation of my next Sabbath's
discourse.--H.W.]