Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/133

 1830-40.] HARVEY D. LITTLE. 117 ]Mr. Little was born in Weathersfield, Connecticut, in the year 1803, of honest and respectable, but poor parents. In 1815 or '16, the family emigrated to the West, and pitched their tents in Franklin county, Ohio, then mostly a wilderness. The young poet was compelled to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, but yet found time, or rather rnade it, to advance his very limited education, and improve his mind by various reading. At a proper age, he was called upon to make choice of a trade. The print- ing business had before struck his fancy, by reason of its intellectual character, and the facilities it afforded a young and active mind to acquire general knowledge, and he readily pitched upon it. He was apprenticed to a printer in Columbus ; and by the time he had reached his twenty-first year, had managed, besides faithfully and diligently serving his master, and becoming a proficient in his business, to give him- self an excellent English education, and to acquire a very general acquaintance with English literature. Beside the beautiful rivers of the West, and in the depths of her mighty forests, he had studied likewise the Book of Nature, and enrolled himself on the list of her awed and inspired worshipers. Her lessons sank deeply into his heart, and her beauty, and vastness, and subhmity, fired liis imagination. Though learning was not his, nor wealth, nor power, nor the encouraging approval of influen- tial friends, mind was his dower ; and the inspired ones of the Old World, here in the solitude and silence of the mighty wildernesses of the New, were his companions and guides. Thus prompted, his young muse gave birth to a number of effusions, while he was yet in his minority, that bespeak the poet, the philanthropist, and the Christian. They are generally of a reflective cast, and though marked by the blemishes common to the productions of budding intellect, are in every sense creditable to juvenile per- formances. The tinge of melancholy, wdiich was one of the charms of Mr. Little's later writings, is observable in these eai'ly manifestations of his poetical capacity. This was no doubt constitutional in part, and in part the result of his habits of life in youth. It has nowhere the appearance of affectation ; and to one who knew him, as I did, though but a few years before his death — devoid of art, simple almost to childliness, zealous as a Christian, warm as a friend, faithful and devoted as a husband and a father, ambitious more to win a name for goodness than for greatness, himible and gentle and benevolent — it will touch the heart with painful interest. Mr. Little was connected with several newspaper establishments, as editor and co-pubhsher, within a few years after having attained to his majority. He found the business unprofitable, however, in every instance, and at the age of twenty-five or six, having in the mean time been admitted to the bar, and espoused an amiable lady, a daughter of Doctor Horton Howard of Columbus, he abandoned it entirely, with the intention of devoting himself to the practice of his new profession. His first efforts at the bar inspired confidence in his talents and energy, and, for the first time in his life, success appeared on the eve of crowning his efforts. But, alas ! how unstable are the determinations of man. Domestic considerations induced Mr. Little to aban- don the law for a time, and again take upon himself the editorial charge of a period- ical publication. In this he was engaged when, in August of the year 1833, his career was suddenly arrested by the hand of death. He fell a victim to the Asiatic I