NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
James Russell Lowell
[I have observed, reader (bene-or male-volent, as it may happen), that
it is customary to append to the second editions of books, and to the
second works of authors, short sentences commendatory of the first,
under the title of _Notices of the Press_. These, I have been given to
understand, are procurable at certain established rates, payment being
made either in money or advertising patronage by the publisher, or by an
adequate outlay of servility on the part of the author. Considering
these things with myself, and also that such notices are neither
intended, nor generally believed, to convey any real opinions, being a
purely ceremonial accompaniment of literature, and resembling
certificates to the virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, I conceived
that it would be not only more economical to prepare a sufficient number
of such myself, but also more immediately subservient to the end in view
to prefix them to this our primary edition rather than to await the
contingency of a second, when they would seem to be of small utility. To
delay attaching the _bobs_ until the second attempt at flying the kite
would indicate but a slender experience in that useful art. Neither has
it escaped my notice nor failed to afford me matter of reflection, that,
when a circus or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial step is
to send forward large and highly ornamented bills of performance, to be
hung in the bar-room and the post-office. These having been sufficiently
gazed at, and beginning to lose their attractiveness except for the
flies, and, truly, the boys also (in whom I find it impossible to
repress, even during school-hours, certain oral and telegraphic
communications concerning the expected show), upon some fine morning the
band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and with
noisy advertisement, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, makes the
circuit of our startled village streets. Then, as the exciting sounds
draw nearer and nearer, do I desiderate those eyes of Aristarchus,
'whose looks were as a breeching to a boy.' Then do I perceive, with
vain regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage of a pancratic or
pantechnic education, since he is most reverenced by my little subjects
who can throw the cleanest summerset or walk most securely upon the
revolving cask. The story of the Pied Piper becomes for the first time
credible to me (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners dating their legal
instruments from the period of his exit), as I behold how those strains,
without pretence of magical potency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor
leave to the pedagogic an entire self-control. For these reasons, lest
my kingly prerogative should suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless
commons, whom I follow into the street, chiefly lest some mischief may
chance befall them. After the manner of such a band, I send forward the
following notices of domestic manufacture, to make brazen proclamation,
not unconscious of the advantage which will accrue, if our little craft,
_cymbula sutilis_, shall seem to leave port with a clipping breeze, and
to carry, in nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. Nevertheless, I have
chosen, as being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently
objurgatory, that readers of every taste may find a dish to their
palate. I have modelled them upon actually existing specimens, preserved
in my own cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, I had
copied with tolerable exactness from a notice of one of my own
discourses, which, from its superior tone and appearance of vast
experience, I concluded to have been written by a man at least three
hundred years of age, though I recollected no existing instance of such
antediluvian longevity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author
to be a young gentleman preparing for the ministry under the direction
of one of my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom I had once
instinctively corrected in a Latin quantity. But this I have been
forced to omit, from its too great length.--H.W.]
* * * * *
_From the Universal Littery Universe_.
Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader.... Under a
rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to the
memory and engraven on the heart of every moral and social being.... We
consider this a _unique_ performance.... We hope to see it soon
introduced into our common schools.... Mr. Wilbur has performed his
duties as editor with excellent taste and judgment.... This is a vein
which we hope to see successfully prosecuted.... We hail the appearance
of this work as a long stride toward the formation of a purely
aboriginal, indigenous, native, and American literature. We rejoice to
meet with an author national enough to break away from the slavish
deference, too common among us, to English grammar and orthography....
Where all is so good, we are at a loss how to make extracts.... On the
whole, we may call it a volume which no library, pretending to entire
completeness, should fail to place upon its shelves.
* * * * *
_From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle_.
A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our
bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the
editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should
any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve
them!) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves of
Vallum-brozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the
combined heads of author and editor. The work is wretchedly got up....
We should like to know how much _British gold_ was pocketed by this
libeller of our country and her purest patriots.
* * * * *
_From the Oldfogrumville Mentor_.
We have not had time to do more than glance through this handsomely
printed volume, but the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr.
Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty for the worth of
its contents.... The paper is white, the type clear, and the volume of a
convenient and attractive size.... In reading this elegantly executed
work, it has seemed to us that a passage or two might have been
retrenched with advantage, and that the general style of diction was
susceptible of a higher polish.... On the whole, we may safely leave the
ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that
in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial
dialect and turns of expression, a dash of humor or satire might be
thrown in with advantage.... The work is admirably got up.... This work
will form an appropriate ornament to the centre table. It is beautifully
printed, on paper of an excellent quality.
* * * * *
_From the Dekay Bulwark_.
We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous
engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such
an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by
without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas!
too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask
of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all
the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common
humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and
senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the
respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to
the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and
infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of this
contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from
under the cloak (_credite, posteri!_) of a clergyman. It is a mournful
spectacle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new
ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred
precincts of the pulpit.... On the whole, we consider this volume as one
of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the
late French 'Revolution' (!)
* * * * *
_From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a try-weakly family
journal)_.
Altogether an admirable work.... Full of humor, boisterous, but
delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos
cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet
keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of 'mountain-mirth,'
mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to
admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author,
or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once
both objective and subjective.... We might indulge in some criticisms,
but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As
it is, he has a wonderful _pose_, which flits from flower to flower, and
bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede)
to the 'highest heaven of invention.' ... We love a book so purely
objective ... Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an
extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity.... In fine, we consider
this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We
know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to
which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the
Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the
star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds,
may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved
Europe.... We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks
of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving enduring
fame. Already we should be inclined to assign him a high position in the
bright galaxy of our American bards.
* * * * *
_From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom._
A volume in bad grammar and worse taste.... While the pieces here
collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of
obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as
the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must
expect the lash he so richly merits.... Contemptible slanders.... Vilest
Billingsgate.... Has raked all the gutters of our language.... The most
pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant
venom.... General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies....
The _Reverend_ Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth....
* * * * *
_From the World-Harmonic-Æolian-Attachment_.
Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance more Orphic than this.
While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works
continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those
who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph
God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed.... Under mask of
quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship-wracked)
soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate, but ever climbing hopefully
toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow.... Yes, thou poor,
forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this
life of ours has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity and
laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites-cloak,
we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, that is
in him. Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself
to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the 'nicer proprieties,' inexpert
of 'elegant diction,' yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears,
up there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy,
indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the
_Necessity of Creating_ somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not
Oedipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum
Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need)
a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He
shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him
also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine
Comedies,--if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay
all; for what truly is this which we name _All_, but that which we do
_not_ possess?... Glimpses also are given us of an old father Ezekiel,
not without paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown,
parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed,
we fancy, _queued_ perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful
September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest
Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no
more.... Of 'Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., Pastor of the First Church in
Jaalam,' we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his
Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the--blindness! A tolerably
caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite faculty of
sermonizing, muscularized by long practice and excellent digestive
apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small
private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own.
To him, there, 'Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,' our Hosea
presents himself as a quite inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich poverty
of Latin and Greek,--so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic
through horn-lensed editorial spectacles,--but naught farther? O
purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are
things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that
old bewildered head of thine that there was the _Possibility of the
Infinite_ in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped,
has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? 'Talented young
parishioner'? Among the Arts whereof thou art _Magister_, does that of
_seeing_ happen to be one? Unhappy _Artium Magister!_ Somehow a Nemean
lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad-howling
sand-wildernesses of a sufficiently rare spirit-Libya (it may be
supposed) has got whelped among the sheep. Already he stands
wild-glaring, with feet clutching the ground as with oak-roots,
gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of thy little fold. In
heaven's name, go not near him with that flybite crook of thine! In good
time, thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the appointed place of
departed Artillery-Election Sermons, Right-hands of Fellowship, and
Results of Councils, gathered to thy spiritual fathers with much Latin
of the Epitaphial sort; thou too, shalt have thy reward; but on him the
Eumenides have looked, not Xantippes of the pit, snake-tressed,
finger-threatening, but radiantly calm as on antique gems; for him paws
impatient the winged courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit; him
the starry deeps, the empyrean glooms, and far-flashing splendors await.
* * * * *
_From the Onion Grove Phoenix._
A talented young townsman of ours, recently returned from a Continental
tour, and who is already favorably known to our readers by his sprightly
letters from abroad which have graced our columns, called at our office
yesterday. We learn from him, that, having enjoyed the distinguished
privilege, while in Germany, of an introduction to the celebrated Von
Humbug, he took the opportunity to present that eminent man with a copy
of the 'Biglow Papers.' The next morning he received the following note,
which he has kindly furnished us for publication. We prefer to print it
_verbatim_, knowing that our readers will readily forgive the few errors
into which the lllustrious writer has fallen, through ignorance of our
language.
'HIGH-WORTHY MISTER!
'I shall also now especially happy starve, because I have more or less a
work of one those aboriginal Red-Men seen in which have I so deaf an
interest ever taken full-worthy on the self shelf with our Gottsched to
be upset.
'Pardon my in the English-speech un-practice!
'Von Humbug.'
He also sent with the above note a copy of his famous work on
'Cosmetics,' to be presented to Mr. Biglow; but this was taken from our
friend by the English custom-house officers, probably through a petty
national spite. No doubt, it has by this time found its way into the
British Museum. We trust this outrage will be exposed in all our
American papers. We shall do our best to bring it to the notice of the
State Department. Our numerous readers will share in the pleasure we
experience at seeing our young and vigorous national literature thus
encouragingly patted on the head by this venerable and world-renowned
German. We love to see these reciprocations of good-feeling between the
different branches of the great Anglo-Saxon race.
[The following genuine 'notice' having met my eye, I gladly insert a
portion of it here, the more especially as it contains one of Mr.
Biglow's poems not elsewhere printed.--H.W.]
_From the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss._
... But, while we lament to see our young townsman thus mingling in the
heated contests of party politics, we think we detect in him the
presence of talents which, if properly directed, might give an innocent
pleasure to many. As a proof that he is competent to the production of
other kinds of poetry, we copy for our readers a short fragment of a
pastoral by him, the manuscript of which was loaned us by a friend. The
title of it is 'The Courtin'.'
Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown,
An' peeked in thru the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.
Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung,
An' in amongst 'em rusted
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back frum Concord busted.
The wannut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An' leetle fires danced all about
The chlny on the dresser.
The very room, coz she wuz in,
Looked warm frum floor to ceilin',
An' she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez th' apples she wuz peelin'.
She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu,
Araspin' on the scraper,--
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the seekle;
His heart kep' goin' pitypat,
But hern went pity Zekle.
An' yet she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work
Ez ef a wager spurred her.
'You want to see my Pa, I spose?'
'Wall, no; I come designin'--'
'To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es
Agin to-morrow's i'nin'.'
He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on tother,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He couldn't ha' told ye, nuther.
Sez he, 'I'd better call agin;'
Sez she,'Think likely, _Mister;_'
The last word pricked him like a pin,
An'--wal, he up and kist her.
When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kind o'smily round the lips
An' teary round the lashes.
Her blood riz quick, though, like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they wuz cried
In meetin', come nex Sunday.
SATIS multis sese emptores futuros libri professis, Georgius Nichols,
Cantabrigiensis, opus emittet de parte gravi sed adhuc neglecta
historiæ naturalis, cum titulo sequente, videlicet:
_Conatus ad Delineationem naturalem nonnihil perfectiorem Scarabæi
Bombilatoris, vulgo dicti_ HUMBUG, ab HOMERO WILBUR, Artium Magistro,
Societatis historico-naturalis Jaalamensis Præside (Secretario,
Socioque (eheu!) singulo), multarumque aliarum Societatum eruditarum
(sive ineruditarum) tam domesticarum quam transmarinarum Socio--forsitan
futuro.