Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/322

296 All things considered, the most amusing political effort in this field between the Revolution and the war of 1812 was the "Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times. A satire by a youth of Thirteen. Boston, 1808. Printed for the purchasers." This met with so much success that it was issued in a second edition in the following year. The youth of thirteen lived to be the boy of eighteen who wrote "Thanatopsis," and who was the earliest American poet to transmute into his verse the beauty of nature here in America. Bryant lived to be not a little annoyed when he was reminded of his youthful indiscretion, for with the flight of time he outgrew the political opinions he had taken over from his father and from his father's Federalist friends. Bryant came to have a high regard for the character and for the public services and even for most of the political theories of the Jefferson whom the youth of thirteen had ignorantly berated:

Beyond all question the best American political satire is Lowell's "Biglow Papers," the first series being written during the Mexican war and the second during the civil war. Although either series may seem fragmentary, each has a real unity of its own; the aim and intent is ever the same. And the unforgettable figure of Hosea Biglow dominates both sets of satiric lyrics. Lowell was at once a Puritan by descent, a poet by gift of nature, and a wit by stroke of fate; and in the "Biglow Papers" we have revealed the Puritan poet who could not help being witty. He could not help preaching, for, as he said, "all New England was a meeting-house" when he was young; and a satirist must be a preacher in his own way. He had enlisted for the war, and he was ever fighting the good fight. When he was at work on the "Biglow Papers" he wanted to bring his message home, and he waited until he had found a catching rhythm and a refrain that would sing itself into the memory. And so we cannot forget, even if we would, that

and that

The two refrains quoted are, one of them from the first series, and the other from the second; and this reminds us that Lowell succeeded as well the second time he chose Hosea Biglow for his mouthpiece as he did the first time. The motive that impelled the poet was even stronger during the civil war than it had been fifteen years earlier; and the wit was no less keen nor the humor less contagious.

In the third division of satire—the purely literary—we find Lowell again the chief figure with the "Fable for Critics," published in 1848, the same year that he sent forth the first series of the "Biglow Papers," and also the more purely poetic "Vision of Sir Launfal." But the "Fable for Critics" was preceded by another formal and elaborate attempt at literary satire, called "Truth," published in 1832; and it was followed by yet another, entitled "Parnassus in Pillory," issued in 1851. Neither of these attains to the level of Lowell's brilliant skit; and they soon faded out of remembrance. Yet each of them has an interest of its own, and calls for cursory consideration here.

"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," by William J. Snelling, seems to have achieved a certain success, sufficient at least to