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these were the themes which, with much rhetoric and personification, were handled by the minstrel in his teens.
Diffuse thy charms, Benevolence!
was the cry, or more elaborately:--
Hail, heavenly gift within the human breast!
Germ of unnumber'd virtues!
This was the prevailing tone which had previously reached its climax in that humbler poet in
England, whose appeal began with:--
Inoculation! heavenly maid.
Coleridge and the rest of his circle went through this period of impassioned declamation, and
Whittier could not hope to escape it.
At the dinners of the
Atlantic Club, during the first few years of the magazine, I can testify that
Whittier appeared as he always did, simple, manly, and unbecomingly shy, yet reticent and quiet.
If he was overshadowed in talk by
Holmes at one end and by
Lowell at the other, he was in the position of every one else, notably
Longfellow; but he had plenty of humour and critical keenness and there was no one whose summing up of the affairs afterward was better worth hearing.
On the noted occasion,--the parting dinner given to
Dr.Stowe and
Mrs. Stowe,--the only one where wine was excluded save under disguise, I remember
Whittier's glances of subdued amusement while
Lowell at the end of the table was urging upon
Mrs. Stowe the great superiority of “
Tom Jones” to all other novels, and
Holmes at the other end was demonstrating to
the Rev. Dr. Stowe that all swearing really began in the
