Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/99

 JOHN FINLEY. John Finlet, author of "The Hoosier's Nest" — a poem which, without his name, has been published in a majority of the newspapers of America, and has been often quoted in England as a graphic specimen of backwoods literature — is a native of Vir- ginia. He was born at Brownsburg, Rockbridge county, on the eleventh of January, 1797. His father was a merchant. John was sent to a country school and there learned "to read and write, and cipher as far as the rule of three." He says ten years were required to teach him that much. He served an apprenticeship as a tanner and currier, and then came west. He was married at Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1826, to Rachel H. Knott. He was then a citizen of Richmond, "Wayne county, Indiana. His wife died and he was married a second time, at Indianapolis, April ninth, 1830, to Julia Hanson. That Mr. Finley chose wisely when he selected Richmond as his home is evinced in many tokens of public confidence which his fellow-citizens have manifested. He has been a member of the Indiana Legislature during three years, Enrolling Clerk of the State Senate three years. Clerk of the "Wayne county courts seven years, and Mayor of Richmond eight years — an office he now holds. He was also for several years editor and proprietor of the Richmond Palladium. "The Hoosier's Nest" formed a part of a New Year's Address, written in 1830, for the Indianapolis Journal. The lines "To Indiana," hereafter quoted, were also a part of that address. Its opening stanza expresses happily the poet's characteristics : Untaught the language of the schools, Nor versed in scientific rules, The humble bard may not presume The Literati to illume, Or classic cadences indite. Attuned " to tickle ears polite ;" Contented if bis strains may pass The ordeal of the common mass, And raise an anti-critic smile, The hour of labor to beguile. Mr. Finley's "Bachelor's Hall" has been very widely circulated in England, as well as in America, with Thomas Moore's name to it. In a note to the editor he says: "I have written nothing for publication for many years, and am more than half ashamed of the notoriety my scribblings have elicited, when I could have written much better. * * * I have prepared my manuscripts for a volume — ' The Hoosier's Nest and other Poems' — but as I have not preserved more than about enough pieces to make a book of one hundred pages, the presumption is against my ever publishing in book form." (83)