II. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER: 1807-1892.

December 17, 1807, -- the year in which Longfellow was born, -- occurred the birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, second in this group of New England poets and one whose memory stands next to that of Longfellow in the affection and reverence of the American people. Unlike Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Emerson, Whittier was neither city-born nor college-bred. In his preparation for life the academic element was entirely lacking. He was a country boy of the genuine New England stock; for one hundred and sixty years his stalwart ancestors had cultivated the Whittier farm, and the very house in which he was born had been built by the great-great-grandfather of the poet in 1688. The Birthplace.

The birthplace of Whittier lies a few miles from the busy little city of Haverhill, in the northeast corner of Massachusetts. It was and is a pleasant region, rather lonely, not so ruggedly romantic as that in which young Bryant learned to commune with nature, yet full of pastoral beauty. "Our old homestead nestled under a long range of hills," says Whittier; "it was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled and laughed down its rocky falls by our garden side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river took up and bore it down to the great sea."

The "great river" was the Merrimac, down which Thoreau made his interesting expedition. It was not far to the beaches of Salisbury, Rye, and Hampton, where the poet pitched his imaginary tent, with the great stretch of salt marsh to the westward, the limitless reach of the ocean in the foreground, the high bluff of Great Boar's Head to the north, and to the south the broad mouth of the Merrimac, with the ancient town of Newburyport just beyond. With these localities, Whittier has made his readers familiar. The Country Boy.

If one would catch a glimpse of Whittier's boyhood, he will find it sketched in The Barefoot Boy; if he would know the spirit of the household, he may find it in Snow-Bound. The farm itself was not a very profitable one; it was encumbered with debt, and strict economy was the law; yet it was a comfortable home, and the picture it left in the poet's memory is an inviting one. The "old rude-furnished room" with its "whitewashed wall and sagging beam," its "motley braided mat" upon the floor, and its ample fireplace ruddy with the flame of crackling logs, was a scene of contentment and homely cheer.

"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
... . .

"And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.

"What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow."

Here the winter evenings were passed with story-telling, or talk of guest, or poring over one of the scanty volumes -- perhaps the almanac, or the poems of the Quaker Ellwood, or the Journal of John Woolman, or

"The one harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes"--

a volume of Scott, read privily.

But one bright day the district schoolmaster brought a copy of Robert Burns into this country home and read aloud the songs of Scotland's peasant poet. The New England farmer's son, then fourteen, listened with delight, and felt his own soul kindled with poetic fire. He began to write rhymes of his own, and the verses were passed about and admired. He borrowed all the books that were available, especially poems; one of his first purchases was a copy of Shakespeare's plays. His parents were devout Quakers, and it was natural enough that oftener than any other volume, the Bible was in his hands. Meanwhile the youth was working hard at plow and scythe, steadily employed in the severe manual labor of the farm. District school he attended during the twelve weeks' session every winter. In Print.

Whittier's father was a subscriber to the Free Press, a weekly paper which young William Lloyd Garrison was then editing at Newburyport; and to this publication Mary Whittier, a sister two years older than the youthful poet, sent anonymously one of his early compositions. It was printed by the editor; and one day when the eighteen-year-old lad was mending fences the postman tossed him the weekly paper with his verses in the "Poet's Corner." Whittier could hardly believe his eyes. He stood dazed, reading the lines, scarcely comprehending the fact that one of his poems was actually in print. It was not long thereafter that Garrison himself drove over to have a look at his new contributor; and the lifelong friendship of these two men was begun. The visitor urged Mr. Whittier not to discourage the literary ambitions of his son, and advised that the youth be given an education. While not indifferent to his son's desires, Mr. Whittier was a hard-headed, hard-working practical man, upon whom the necessity of a livelihood pressed heavily. True to the poet's characterization of him in Snow-Bound,--

"A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted:"--

his terse response to this appeal was, "Sir, poetry will not give him bread!" The Academy.

But Whittier yearned for an education. His health was delicate; indeed, it had already suffered from the hard labor of the farm, and it was evident that his physique could not endure the heavy demands of the agricultural life. It was not long after Garrison's visit, therefore, that young Whittier obtained his father's consent to his attendance at the academy in Haverhill, provided that he could earn the means. So the farm-boy learned how to make slippers and labored at the shoemaker's bench. Thus he paid his tuition for a six months' term in the Haverhill school. The next winter he taught in the country district and earned sufficient funds to secure another term at the academy. This was the extent of Whittier's scholastic training. A college course he was compelled to renounce for lack of funds, and a disinclination to accept assistance unearned. He had read a surprising number of books, -- sometimes walking miles to secure a coveted volume, -- had written a great deal of verse, and was locally known as a poet. He even planned to publish an edition of his poems, but the project failed.

The Journalist.

Under the circumstances, Whittier was fortunate in the opportunities which now offered for a career. In 1829, he became editor of a journal published in Boston called the American Manufacturer, which supported the idea of a protective tariff, and also contained literary matter. The position carried no particular distinction with it, and the salary was only nine dollars a week; but it served as a good school for a young writer. Whittier wrote regularly for his paper, both prose and verse, yet had considerable leisure for reading, and making acquaintance with the world. In August, his father's illness called him home, and he was kept busy in the management of the farm until his father's death. Early in 1830, he became editor of the Haverhill Gazette. This engagement continued for six months, when he assumed editorial charge of the New England Review, published in Hartford. That the young Quaker of Haverhill had already made some impression by his personality as well as by his pen is evident from the introduction now given him by George D. Prentice, the retiring editor of the Review.

"I cannot do less than congratulate my readers," said Prentice, "on the prospect of their more familiar acquaintance with a gentleman of such powerful energies and such exalted purity and sweetness of character. I have made some enemies among those whose good opinion I value, but no rational man can ever be the enemy of Mr. Whittier."

In Hartford.

For a year and a half, Whittier retained this position, developing rapidly in power and in professional reputation. He gave his support to Henry Clay and upheld the principle of the tariff. Whittier also enjoyed the society of the literary people more or less noted, who made their home in Hartford. Among the members of this interesting group were the poets James G. Percival and Mrs. Lydia Sigourney, whose writings were at this time widely read and admired. It was in Hartford that Whittier, in 1831, published his first book, Legends of New England, a volume of rather crude sketches, including some verse; they had already appeared in the New England Magazine. These Legends were not thought by Whittier worthy of permanent place in his Prose Works; and the same judgment was placed by him on most of his early experiments in fictitious narrative. Of his poems written previous to 1833, there are few which have survived. The spirited Song of the Vermonters, a product of his school-days, The Vaudois Teacher, and The Star of Bethlehem are selected by Professor Carpenter as the only ones of poetic value.

The Crisis.

From 1832 to 1836, Whittier was again upon the farm struggling to make a living for his mother, his sister, his aunt who lived with them, and himself. We may recall the situation at this period of the other writers whose lives have been already noted. It was in 1832 that Emerson resigned his pastorate in Boston and retired to Concord; Poe, recently discharged from West Point, was in Baltimore trying to support himself by hack-work for the magazines; Hawthorne was dreaming in the seclusion of his hermit-like existence in Salem; Longfellow was now settled in his professorship at Bowdoin. Bryant, of course, representative of the earlier generation, had emerged from his period of struggle, and had been for three years editor of the Post. For Whittier, now in his twenty-fifth year, the future was full of uncertainty. Politics seemed to offer the only field of promise, but this field he hesitated to enter; -- as he wrote to Mrs. Sigourney, "There is something inconsistent in the character of a poet and a modern politician." A year later he wrote to the same correspondent:--

"Of poetry I have nearly taken my leave, and a pen is getting to be something of a stranger to me. I have been compelled again to plunge into the political whirlpool, for I have found that my political reputation is more influential than my poetical."

But in 1833, Whittier's vocation was made clear. It was the turning-point in his life. The poet found inspiration in an unexpected theme.

The Abolitionist.

The anti-slavery movement, which five years earlier had enlisted the extreme energies of the radical and lion-hearted Garrison, had already appealed to the humanitarian spirit of Whittier. He was as strong an idealist as any transcendentalist of Boston or Concord, and could not be otherwise than strongly sympathetic with the ultimate purpose of the movement. At twenty-six, therefore, the poet allied himself for better or for worse with the abolitionists. For twenty-seven years Whittier was one of the foremost among those identified with this cause. He was a delegate to the first National Anti-Slavery Convention at Philadelphia in 1833, and signed its Declaration. Two years later he was mobbed in Concord, New Hampshire, while traveling with an anti-slavery agitator. He was threatened in Boston. In 1838, he took charge of the organ of the Society, the Pennsylvania Freeman, published in Philadelphia, and again encountered a mob, which sacked and burned his office. Throughout this turbulent experience, his courage and zeal knew no limit. The shy and gentle Quaker had become the fearless advocate of an unpopular crusade. In 1833, he published at his own expense a pamphlet, Justice and Expediency, which exerted a wide influence. The verses which he wrote rang like the voice of a trumpet through the land. Randolph of Roanoke, Massachusetts to Virginia, To Faneuil Hall, The Slave-Ships, The Hunter of Men, Clerical Oppressors, The Pastoral Letter: these poems illustrate various phases of the poet's utterance during these momentous years. When we compare Whittier's Voices of Freedom (1846) with Longfellow's Poems on Slavery (1842), we feel at once the difference in the spirit of the two men in this matter. Longfellow's verses are "literary"; Whittier's are the vehement utterances of emotion and conviction.

"They were written," said the poet, "with no expectation that they would survive the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart, forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress."

It is interesting to see how loyal Whittier remained to the ideals and inspirations of this period, the distinctive epoch in his life. "The simple fact is," he wrote to E.L. Godkin, "that I cannot be sufficiently grateful to the Divine Providence that so early called my attention to the great interests of humanity, saving me from the poor ambitions and miserable jealousies of a selfish pursuit of literary reputation." The poet himself never regretted the fact that this alliance had placed these limitations upon his verse; he rather saw in it the real inspiration of his life, the true birth of poetical power. "My lad, if thee would win success, join thyself to some unpopular but noble cause," said he in after years to a youth who came to him for counsel.

Politics and Journalism.

In 1835, Mr. Whittier was elected as representative in the Massachusetts legislature, and at the close of the term was reëlected; but ill health prevented further service. In 1836, the homestead at East Haverhill was sold and the adjoining town of Amesbury became the poet's residence, his mother and his younger sister, Elizabeth, making his home. For a time he was again associated with one or another local newspaper; and from 1847 to 1860, he was corresponding editor of the New Era, published in Washington, the mouthpiece of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. It was in this paper that a number of Whittier's poems were first printed, including Ichabod,that most effective utterance of scorn and grief, inspired by the Seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster.

Literary Work.

But meanwhile Whittier's pen had not been employed exclusively on writings for the cause. In 1836, his narrative poem Mogg Megone had been published-afterward a thorn in the poet's flesh, for to his mature taste it did not appear deserving of a permanent place in his works. He said that it reminded him of "a big Indian in his war paint, strutting about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid." In 1843, Whittier published Lays of My Home The Songs of Labor appeared in 1850; The Chapel of the Hermits, and Other Poems, in 1853; The Panorama, and other Poems, in 1856; and Home Ballads, in 1860. In these collections Whittier was taking his position as distinctively the poet of New England. Here are nature poems: Hampton Beach , Lakeside, and Summer by the Lakeside, April, and The Last Walk in Autumn; narrative poems embodying old New England legends: Cassandra Southwick, Skipper Ireson's Ride, and The Garrison of Cape Ann; idylls of the farm: Maud Muller, The Barefoot Boy; and in deeper vein, the exquisite ballad, Telling the Bees, quaintly reminiscent of the New England setting, like the rest. Here, too, we find the strongly personal poems, My Psalm, Memories, and My Playmate. While Whitter's prose works have never attracted much attention, we may note the publication during this period of the following volumes: The Stranger in Lowell (1845), a series of sketches written while the writer was editing for a brief period a newspaper in the city named; The Supernaturalism of New England (1847); Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal (1849), an attractive study of life in the Massachusetts Bay Province, realistically presented and worthy of a wider reading; Old Portraits and Modern Sketches (1850), and Literary Recreations and Miscellanies (1854), both volumes made up of essays and studies which had appeared in the Era.

In War Time.

During the years of civil war, Whittier published two volumes, In In War Time (1864) and National Lyrics (1865), which included the poems inspired by the events of this exciting period. Like the earlier songs born of the movement against slavery, these compositions lack art and finish; they were written in the ardor of conflict and sent immediately into print without the opportunity to meditate and correct. Waiting and The Watchers are among the best of these war lyrics; while in Barbara Frietchie the poet produced what is often described as the finest ballad of the struggle, although the story told in the poem is now discredited. Laus Deo, the most stirring of these lyrics, has an interesting history. It was composed while the poet was sitting in the Friends' Meeting-House in Amesbury, at the regular Fifth Day meeting, listening to the bells of jubilation which announced the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, January 31, 1865.

"It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down."

"All sat in silence, but on his return to his home, he recited a portion of the poem, not yet committed to paper, to his housemates in the garden room. `It wrote itself, rather sang itself, while the bells rang,' he wrote to Lucy Larcom."

Snow-Bound.

In 1866, Whittier published his masterpiece, Snow-Bound, a Winter Idyl. This beautiful poem is a thoroughly realistic picture of the farm in the grasp of a New England winter. The family circle grouped in homely comfort about the roaring fireplace is that of the poet's own frugal home, but it is typical of rural life in the New England of the sixties; and the portraits are representative of the sturdy class to which the poet's family belonged. Snow-Bound takes its legitimate place beside Goldsmith's Deserted Village and Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night. In Whittier's poem, the personal element is strong. The devoted sister, Elizabeth, "our youngest and our dearest," had died in 1864; perhaps it was this event which had stirred the poet's memories of childhood -- certainly it was the inspiration of the tenderest passage in the poem. Snow-Bound brought its author his first substantial pecuniary returns. The sales were very large; from the first edition he received $10,000, and the financial burden of many years was permanently removed.

The Tent on the Beach.

The large success of Snow-Bound was repeated a twelvemonth later, when the collection of narrative poems entitled The Tent on the Beach appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. When the latter poems were published in book form they began to sell at the rate of a thousand copies a day. "This will never do," wrote the poet in humorous self-depreciation to his publisher, James T. Fields; "the swindle is awful; Barnum is a saint to us." The comrades of the Beach were the poet himself, Mr. James T. Fields, and the noted traveler as well as all-around man of letters, Bayard Taylor. The poems thus grouped in the manner of Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), are sombre in tone, sad stories of ill-fated ships and legends of the days of delusion; no one of them has gained a strong hold on popular favor. The descriptions of the sea, and the familiar portrait of the poet--

"And one there was, a dreamer born,
   Who, with a mission to fulfil,
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
   The crank of an opinion-mill"--

these are the happiest touches in the work.

Successive volumes of his verse continued to appear at frequent intervals during the remainder of Whittier's life. He was an old man in his eighty-fifth year, universally venerated, when the final volume was published.

At Sun-down.

During these latter years the poet lived a retired and peaceful life, impelled thereto by delicate health and the natural shyness of his disposition. Yet he never lost interest in public affairs or his active sympathy with the ultimate results of that cause which had enlisted his energies in youth. The education of the freedmen in the South, the assistance of individuals who had made their way to the North, were matters of vital interest to him. He continued to make his home in Amesbury, but visited with friends in Hampton Falls, or with relatives at Oak Knoll in Danvers. There was a quiet corner in the White Mountains where he loved to sojourn for a few weeks in the heat of summer; and the artistic home of Celia Thaxter at the Isles of Shoals was also a favorite retreat.

Personal Traits.

Whittier was the only one of this group of New England writers who never went abroad. Indeed, after the poet settled in the home at Amesbury, he seldom ventured far from his own fireside. The society of his kindred and of a few intimate friends he dearly loved; but he was too diffident to enjoy large companies, and he shrank from all publicity. The farmer of East Haverhill was most at home with common folks, understanding them perfectly and talking with them in a language they could understand. He used the pronoun "thee," the Quaker form of address, and always remained heartily loyal to the simple manners of the Friends. The militant spirit of his antislavery poems wholly disappeared with the war, and only gentleness, universal good-will, and a beautiful simplicity of religious faith characterized his later verse.

The popularity of Whittier increased among all classes of readers. His birthday, like that of Longfellow, was observed with noteworthy tributes of esteem. Upon his eightieth anniversary, the Governor of Massachusetts with other distinguished citizens visited the poet at Oak Knoll to present the congratulations of his native state. Upon one of these anniversary occasions, Whittier was deeply touched by a telegram sent by the Southern Forestry Congress assembled in Florida:--

"In remembrance of your birthday, we have planted a liveoak tree to your memory, which, like the leaves of the tree, will be forever green."

Together with his gentle dignity of bearing and his modest shyness of manner, Whittier possessed a keen sense of humor and had a homely wit that flashed out in conversation with his friends. Among these there were a number of distinguished women: Mrs. Stowe, Lucy Larcom, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Sarah Orne Jewett, Celia Thaxter, and Mrs. James T. Fields. With Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes, Whittier had a pleasant but not an intimate acquaintance. In personal appearance the poet was tall and spare; his eyes were unusually brilliant, large, and dark; his smile was wonderfully benignant. Although he suffered much from ill health, he was patient, cheerful, and sweettempered. His final illness was brief. He died at Hampton, September 7, 1892. Almost his last words were, "Love -- love to all the world." The funeral services were held in the little garden of the home at Amesbury, and the poet was buried in the village cemetery in the family lot.

Whittier's Place in Literature.

In comparison with our other American poets, Whittier must be recognized as essentially provincial. Aside from the fact that a large body of his verse, the anti-slavery poems, was necessarily of temporary value, we must remember also that the best portion of his work belongs wholly to New England. It is nevertheless true that while this circumstance places a limitation upon its scope, it does not detract from the strength and value of his poetry. While the poet has never received, like Longfellow and Poe, the recognition of other peoples than our own, this restriction of his field, with the fidelity and vividness of his interpretation, is precisely what gives to Whittier his chief distinction here at home. Nor was he in the larger sense a great poet. No one recognized the technical faults of his verse more frankly than Whittier himself. "I should be hung for my bad rhymes anywhere south of Mason and Dixon's line," he wrote to Mr. Fields. That he did not hold a place with the men of profound insight, the "seers," he knew equally well. His own modest estimate of his poetic gifts he has expressed in stanzas of unusual beauty, which to some extent are themselves a contradiction of the statement:

   "The rigor of a frozen clime,
The harshness of an untaught ear,
   The jarring words of one whose rhyme
   Beat often Labor's hurried time,
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

   "Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies;
   Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
   Or softer shades of Nature's face,
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

   "Nor mine the seer-like power to show
The secrets of the heart and mind;
   To drop the plummet-line below
   Our common world of joy and woe,
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find."

The fine artistic taste of Longfellow Whittier lacked, as he lacked the culture of broad reading and of travel; but he possessed the genuine love of nature and humanity; he had the virility of a strong character, free from all artificiality, the ardor of the truest patriotism, and, at the outset of his career, the inestimable advantage of consecration to an uplifting cause.

Suggestions for Reading.

The student will read, of course, the more noted of the Anti-Slavery Poems, including those mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. The Shoemakers and The Huskers will serve as good examples of The Songs of Labor. The group of Personal Poems contains Ichabod and The Lost Occasion, the two impressive compositions based upon the career of Daniel Webster, and also noteworthy tributes to his friends and associates, Garrison and Sumner. Here, likewise, are interesting verses inscribed to fellow poets: Bryant, Halleck, Bayard Taylor, Longfellow (The Poet and the Children), Lowell, and Holmes; most happy of all, the poem entitled Burns. Among the Narrative and Legendary Poems are some of the most familiar of Whittier's compositions: The Vaudois Teacher, Barclay of Ury (one of several which deal with Quaker themes), The Angels of Buena Vista, Maud Muller, Skipper Ireson's Ride, Telling the Bees, My Playmate, and Among the Hills. The Poems of Nature deserve some study in detail, and should be compared with those of Longfellow and Bryant. Here we find descriptive passages of simple yet compelling beauty. Such is this stanza from Sunset on the Bearcamp:--

"Touched by a light that hath no name,
   A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
   Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
   No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
   Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
   Of all its elms is twirled:
The silence of eternity
   Seems falling on the world."

The following afford good illustrations of the poet's descriptive power: April, Summer by the Lakeside, The Last Walk in Autumn, The River Path, and The Trailing Arbutus. It will be quickly noted that Whittier is always the subjective, the reflective poet; that, like Bryant, he reads a lesson in the scene. Thus, when wandering in the dusk of twilight along the river path, he comes upon a sudden opening in the hills through whose green gates streams the "long, slant splendor" of the setting sun, bridging "the shaded stream with gold," he thinks of the river of death -- "the river dark"; and prays:--

"So let the hills of doubt divide,
So bridge with faith the sunless tide!"

And when, under dead boughs, amid dry leaves and moss, he finds the perfumed arbutus, he says:--

"As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
   Which yet find room,
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day,
   And make the sad earth happier for their bloom."

Of the Religious Poems, one stands forth preëminent; no other American poem has ever touched with its message of trustfulness the hearts of devout Christians more universally than The Eternal Goodness,--

"I know not where His islands lift
   Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
   Beyond His love and care."

The poem Our Master is also full of the deep religious feeling so characteristic of the Quaker poet, and from its stanzas have been arranged five of Whittier's best-known hymns.

Special attention should be given to a few of the poems classified as Subjective and Reminiscent. Here we find The Barefoot Boy, In School-Days, and Memories, poems which, besides affording intimate glimpses of the poet's child-life, are to be recognized as among his best compositions. To these must finally be added Snow-Bound, most intimately personal of all his works, and yet artistically his masterpiece. The more this little "classic" is read, the more its reader is impressed with its simple strength and beauty. The apt phrasing, the vivid portraiture, the happy touch of "local coloring," the easy movement of its simple measure, its idyllic atmosphere of domestic affection, of serene and untroubled faith -- these are the qualities which give the poem its place with the best in our literature.

Authorities.

The Complete Works of Whittier are published in seven volumes by Houghton Mifflin Company, also the Cambridge Edition of the Poems, in one volume. Snow-Bound and The Tent on the Beach, together with other poems, are published in two numbers of the Riverside Literature Series. The Life and Letters of John G. Whittier (2 vols.), by Samuel T. Pickard, is the standard biography. The best brief biography is the Whittier in the American Men of Letters Series, by G. R. Carpenter. The little book Whittier: Notes of his Life and of his Friendships, by Mrs. Annie Fields, is a charming study of the man. Whittier-Land, by S. T. Pickard, is also valuable. In criticism, consult Stedman's Poets of America, Vincent's American Literary Masters, and the histories of American literature by Richardson and Trent. John Greenleaf Whittier, by Bliss Perry (a brief study of the poet), and Whittier for To-day, by the same writer, in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1907, are appreciative memorials of the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth.