dent 1845-1849. The passed by Congress in 1850. 494. a. Franklin. Sir John Franklin died in the Arctic regions in 1847. During the following ten years thirty-nine relief expeditions were sent to find him. In 1857 Lady Franklin sent an expedition under Capt. McClintock which was able to find evidences of the total destruction of the Franklin party and their equipment. Fugitive-Slave Bill was 4. Grinnell, Henry, an American merchant fitted out at his own expense one of the expeditions which went in search of Franklin. 6. Mungo Park, explorer who died in Africa in 1806. Lewis and Clark, in charge of the exploring expeditions sent by the Government to explore the northwest of the United States., 1804-06. 7. Frobisher, English navigator, died 1594. 50. Symmes' Hole. An eccentric theory was propagated early in the century by one Symmes that the earth is hollow and can be entered at the poles. 495. a. 41. Extra-vagant, a play upon the etymology of the word,- Extra, Latin for beyond, and vagant from the Latin to wander. b. 26. Kabir, a Hindu religious reformer. His teachings were an interpretation of the older Hindu and Mussulman philosophies and were greatly influential. 497. a. 43. Tintinnabulum, from the Latin meaning bell. See Poe's The Bells, Line 11. WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS The Biglow Papers were introduced to the public by a subterfuge of the same general nature as that employed by Irving for his Knickerbocker's History of New York. The book purports to be poetic effusions sent by one Hosea Biglow, an illiterate Yankee youth, for publication in the Boston Courier. Before they were sent away, however, they were represented as being scrutinized by the learned minister of the young poet's town Jaalem, Parson Homer Wilber, A. M., who loads them with ponderous editorial explanations and learned notes. 501. b. 27. Tenues in auras, into thin air. 28. Longum iter, etc., through precept the road is long, through example short and efficient, or more freely, To teach by precept is a slow process, to teach by example is swift and sure. 502. a. 14. Aliquid sufflaminandus, erat, To some extent he should be restrained. 16. Aqua fortis, nitric acid. 23. Est ars etiam maledicendi, there is an art even in slandering, or in speaking evil. 1. Guvener B., George N. Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts 1844-1851. During the campaign of 1847, the campaign referred to in the poem, he ran on the Whig ticket against General Cushing who was then in Mexico. Briggs won by a majorty of 14,060. 5. John P. Robinson, 1799-1864, an influential member of the Whig party who made a great sensation in 1847 by going over to the Democratic side and supporting Cushing. 15. Gineral C. Caleb Cushing, Commander of Massachusetts troops in Mexico, and candidate for Governor on the Democratic ticket. 22. Goes in fer the war. The war with Mexico was opposed by the New England abolitionists. In the introduction to the second series of the Biglow Papers, 1866, Lowell wrote: 'Thinking the Mexican war, as I think it still, a national crime committed in behoof of slavery, our common sin, and wishing to put the feeling of those who thought as I did in a way that would tell, I imagined to myself such an up-country man as I had often seen at antislavery gatherings, capable of district-school English, but always instinctively falling back into the natural stronghold of his homely dialect when heated to the point of self. forgetfulness.' 503. a. 31. Patriae fumus, etc. The smoke of one's own fatherland is brighter than the flame in a foreign land. 34. Ubi libertas, ubi patria, where there is liberty there is my fatherland. b. 6. Quasi noverca, as a stepmother. THE COURTIN' This poem appeared originally in the first series of The Biglow Papers. The form that is usually printed is the version that appeared in the second series of the Biglow Papers, a version that expands the original eleven stanzas to twenty-four. It is profitable to compare the two versions. Are the additions an improvement? LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN ITALY 504. b. 8. Ne quid nimis, nothing to excess. 30. W. M. T. and A. H. C. William Makepeace Thackeray and Arthur Hugh Clough, the latter of whom was at one time a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for some months. 505. a. 24. Gradus ad Parnassum, the ascent to Parnassus, the mountain of the muses. Title of a text-book on Latin verse. 506. b. 19. Dire, redire, et me contredire, to say, to say again, and to contradict myself. 21. Montagna bruna, brown mountain, or dark mountain; see the Odyssey, Book V, 11. 484-495. 507. b. 243. Hortus siccus, a dry garden. HOME BALLADS AND POEMS 508. b. 27. Ancora ci raccappriccia! He still terrifies us. MASON AND SLIDELL 511. 13. Middlesex, Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts, are in Middlesex County. 16. John Bull's Run, an allusion to the disastrous battle of Bull Run which had taken place some six months before the poem was written. 35. Seward. William H. Seward, Secretary of State under Lincoln. 512. 81. Envys, envoys. In August, 1861, James M. Mason was appointed by the Confederate states as Commissioner to Great Britain, and John Slidell as Commissioner to France. After much difficulty they secured passage on the British mail steamer Trent. On November 8, 1861, Commodore Wilkes of the U. S. sloop of war San Jacinto halted the Trent, took off the ambassadors and their secretaries, and transferred them to the Federal prison at Boston. The event caused great excitement in England and the British government demanded that immediate liberation of the four men together with a suitable apology for the aggression could alone satisfy the British nation. The men were accordingly liberated, but no apology was offered. The action was explained in the words of a contemporary editorial in Harper's Weekly: they were surrendered because it was infinitely better that we should endure a certain amount of humiliation at the hands of Great Britain than that we should jeopard the great cause of the Union by throwing the naval power of England into the rebel scale.' 516. 373. Vattel, 1714-1767, Swiss diplomat, author of The Law of Nations, a famous treatise on international law. 413. Abram thought 't was right. Lincoln acknowledged that the seizure of Mason and Slidell was a violation of the rights of Great Britain as a neutral, and on the first of January, 1862, released the commissioners.' 445. Fibre o' cotton. The blockade of the Southern ports stopped the shipment of cotton to England and caused great distress in the manufac turing centers of the kingdom. It was largely on account of the cotton that the working people of England were inclined to sympathize with the South. COMMEMORATION ODE 518. Lowell read this poem at the memorial exercises held July 21, 1865, to commemorate, in Lowell's words, the ever sweet and shining memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College who died for their country in the war of nationality.' 519. 147. Stanza VI was not read at the commemoration exercises but was written and added shortly afterwards. 520. 236. Thinking of dear ones. In a privately printed edition of the Ode, 1865, Lowell gives the names of eight of his relatives who were among the dead: General Charles Russell Lowell, Lieutenant James Jackson Lowell, and Captain William Lowell Putnam were of the poet's own family. 262. Section IX, as it is usually printed in the later editions of the poem, did not appear in the Atlantic Monthly which is the text most nearly like that actually read by Lowell at the original occasion. 48. An Elzevir, a book printed by the celebrated Dutch firm of Elzivir in the seventeenth century. Copies are now rare and valuable. 55. Anthology, literally a collection of flowers, but now used as the name of a collection of the finest things of literature. 56. alai, an exclamation of extreme grief or horror found in Greek tragedy. 533. a. 2. Bruyère, born 1645, a French moralist. 535. b. 22. Cervantes, hero of Don Quixote, perhaps the supreme idealist of all literature. 536. b. 49. Hervey, undoubtedly James Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, 1745, a work very popular during the eighteenth century. b. 57. Seneca was a stoic; Voltaire's view of life was cynical. 537. a. 7. Martial, born 43 A. D., is known chiefly for his biting epigrams. DICKENS READING 551. The Easy Chair was begun in Harper's Magazine by D. G. Mitchell in October, 1851, and was conducted by him until it was taken over by Curtis in 1854. Except during two months in 1875 when he was sick and when T. B. Aldrich wrote the papers so completely in Curtis's style that no one suspected any change, the genial Howadji had full control of the department until his death in 1892. The Chair was then discontinued for eight years. In December, 1900, W. D. Howells brought back the Chair and up to the present time (1919) has occupied it with rare grace and wisdom. Dickens was twice in America. He came over in January 1842, returning the following July, and he came again in November, 1867, read in most of the larger cities and returned early the next May. 551. b. 21. Schnuspel. In Book II. ch. 3, Carlyle wrote: O, if all Yankee-land follow a small good "schnuspel the distinguished Novelist" with blazing torches, dinner-invitations, universal hep-hep-hurrah, feeling that he, though small, is something; how might all Angle-land once follow a heromartyr and great true son of Heaven!' 553. a. 50. Dickens' American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, written after his first tour, had been not at all flattering to Americans. b. 31. The speedy end. Dickens died June 9, 1870. The hardships and exposures which he endured during the severe winter which he passed in America undoubtedly shortened his life. RIP VAN WINKLE 554. Joseph Jefferson's dramatization of Rip Van Winkle was made in 1859 and long was one of the most popular of American plays. Emerson died April 27, 1882. 556. a. 27. George Herbert, an English poet, 15831633, author of many pieces of religious verse. 40. Memory Somewhat Failed. Emerson in his last years was afflicted with the disease aphasia, a partial loss of the memory. 558. a. 20. Dartmouth College address, on July 24, 1838, Emerson delivered the Phi Beta Kappa address at Dartmouth, taking as his subject 'Literary Ethics.' 39. Eulogy on Adams, delivered in 1826. Adams and Jefferson both died on the same day, July 4, 1826. THE LECTURE LYCEUM 559. a. 51. Purchase of Mount Vernon, Everett with his oration on George Washington, delivered in every part of America, earned over one hundred thousand dollars, all of which he gave to the Mount Vernon fund which made of the Washington estate a national possession forever. ON A BUST OF DANTE 563. The text is from Poems by William Thomas Parsons. 1854. 11. Beatrice should be given here the Italian pronunciation, Bay-ar-tráy-che. She was the lady immortalized by Dante in his Divine Comedy. b. 13. Ghibeline's. Dante belonged to the aristocratic party in Italy and was opposed to the Guelfs or popular and papal party. 17. Cumae, a town ten miles from Naples sup. posed to be the location of the cave of the fabled Cumaean sybil.' 32. It is told of Dante that, when he was roaming over Italy, he came to a certain monastery, where he was met by one of the friars, who blessed him, and asked what was his desire; to which the weary stranger simply answered, pace."-Author's Note. " 564. 1. O frate mio! O brother of mine, each one is a citizen of a true city. THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME In 1915 The Library of Congress published a complete Catalogue of First Editions of Stephen C. Foster. It is noted in the preface that it is sig nificant that Foster was born on the Fourth of July, since his best music is still a living force in our national life.' FAREWELL ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS 571. It was a stormy morning [February 11, 1861] which served to add gloom and depression to their spirits. The leave-taking presented a scene of subdued anxiety, almost of solemnity. Mr. Lincoln took a position in the waiting-room, where his friends filed past him, often merely pressing his hand in silent emotion. The half-finished ceremony was broken in upon by the ringing bells and rushing train. The crowd closed about the railroad car into which the President-elect and his party made their way. Then came the central incident of the morning. The bell gave notice of starting; but as the conductor paused with his hand lifted to the bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln appeared on the platform of the car, and raised his hand to command attention. The bystanders bared their heads to the falling snowflakes, and standing thus, his neighbors heard his voice for the last time, in the city of his home, in a farewell address so chaste and pathetic, that it reads as if he already felt the tragic shadow of forecasting fate.'-Nicolay and Hay. FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS Only the last six paragraphs of the address are given here, or about one-sixth of the entire address. ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG 572. The orator of the day was Edward Everett who was regarded as the most finished and scholarly speaker of his generation in America. He spoke for nearly two hours. 'Mr. Everett ended in a brilliant peroration, the echoes of which were lost in the long and hearty plaudits of the great multitude, and then President Lincoln arose to fill the part assigned him in the programme. It was a trying ordeal to fittingly crown with a few brief sentences the ceremonies of such a day and such an achievement in oratory; finished, erudite, apparently exhaustive of the theme, replete with all the strength of scholastic method and the highest graces of literary culture. If there arose in the minds of any discriminating listener on the platform a passing doubt whether Mr. Lincoln would or could properly honor the unique occasion, that doubt vanished with his opening sentence; for then and there the President pronounced an address of dedication so pertinent, so brief yet SO comprehensive, so terse yet so eloquent, linking the deeds of the present to the thoughts of the future, with simple words, in such living, original, yet exquisitely molded, maxim-like phrases that the best critics have awarded it an unquestioned rank as one of the world's masterpieces in rhetorical art.' -Nicolay and Hay. SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS The entire address is given. RESPONSE TO A SERENADE 573. Lincoln was elected November 8, 1864. He received notice that on the night of the tenth of November the various Republican clubs in the District of Columbia would serenade him. Not wishing to speak extempore on an occasion where his words would receive so wide a publication, he sat down and wrote a speech which, while it has not received the world-wide fame of certain other of his utterances, is one of the weightiest and wisest of all his discourses. He read it at the window which opens on the north portico of the Executive Mansion, a secretary standing beside him lighting the page with a candle. Not very graceful,' he said, 'but I am growing old enough not to care much for the manner of doing things.' There was certainly never an equal compliment paid a serenading crowd. The innermost philosophy of Repub. lican government was in the President's little speech.'-Nicolay and Hay. THE MEXICAN WAR 576. b. 20. In Taylor's command. General Grant served through the entire war. In September 1845 he went with his regiment to join the forces of General Taylor in Mexico; there he took part in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca da la Palma and Monterey, and, after his transfer to General Scott's army, which he joined in March 1847, served at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and at the storming of Chapultepec. He was breveted first lieutenant for gallantry at Molino del Rey and captain for gallantry at Chapultepec.' THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD 580. This poem, written by Theodore O'Hara, a native of Kentucky and a.soldier of the Mexican war, was read by its author at the commemoration ceremonies attending the removal to their native state of the remains of Kentucky soldiers who had fallen at Buena Vista. It may be included among the poems of the Civil War since a part of its first stanza is inscribed over several national cemeteries. MY MARYLAND 581. Written by a native of Baltimore who in 1861 was professor of English literature in Poydras College, Louisiana. On reading the news of the attack upon Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore, he was so stirred that he wrote the poem almost at a sitting. It was first published in the New Orleans Delta, and, quickly copied by all the other southern papers, was soon adapted to an old college air and soon became the Marseillaise of the South.' Among the names mentioned in the poem, are Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Eager Howard, a soldier of the Revolution, Samuel Ringgold, William Henry Watson, Enoch Lewis Lowe, and Charles Augustus May, distinguished soldiers in the Mexican war. 38. Sic semper, a part of the Latin slogan, Thus ever with tyrants. THE PICKETT GUARD 582. The authorship of this lyric has been long disputed. It is said to have appeared unsigned in a northern paper October 21, 1861. It was republished in Harper's Weekly, November 30, 1861, signed E. L. B. It has generally been ascribed to Ethen Lynn Beers, a New Englander. Later evidence, however, seems to point to Thaddeus Oliver, of Georgia, as the author. See Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. VIII, pp. 255-260. THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM Written by George F. Root, an instructor of music in Boston and later in New York, after President Lincoln's second call for troons. DIXIE 583. The original Dixie was written by Daniel Decatur Emmett, a member of the Virginia Minstrels' in 1859. It was the tune rather than the words that gave the song its vogue at first. The first stanza has some merit: I wish I was in de land ob cotton, Old times dar am not forgotten, Look away! Look away! Look away! In Dixie land where I was born in Look away! Look away! Look away! I wish I was in Dixie, away, away! Away, away, away down South in Dixie.' The rest of the song, however was inferior. To remedy this, several revisions were made, the best of which is that by General Pike, whose early lyrics, notably his To the Mocking Bird, are to be found in the larger anthologies. JOHN BROWN It is not known just how the John Brown song came to be written. It was probably put together by a quartette from the second Massachusetts battalion, and it was sung by the regiment as it marched through New York City July 24, 1861. It has been attributed to H. H. Brownell of Hartford. Additional stanzas were improvised as the song spread through the army, and several versions resulted. Undoubtedly it was the most popular marching song of the war. BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 584. Mrs. Howe visited Washington in December, 1861, and while there saw much of the regiments quartered about the city. She heard the John Brown song everywhere sung, and impressed by the inadequacy of the words, even as Pike had been impressed by the inferiority of the early version of Dixie, she wrote before she left the city what she called The Battle-Hymn of the Republic. It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1862, and has now taken its place as The American Battle Hymn. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE First printed in the New York Evening Post, July 16, 1862, and as it was anonymous, attributed to William Cullen Bryant, who settled all conjecture as to its authorship by revealing the name of its author. It was written immediately following Lincoln's call for three hundred thousand volunteers. STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY Written while the battle of Antietam was in progress, September 17, 1862. 585. 14. Banks, Gen. N. P. Banks, commander of a corps in the Shenandoah in 1862. 22. In forma pauperis, like a poor man. 27. Hill, the Confederate general A. P. Hill. 38. Pope, the Federal general John Pope. 38. Stuart, General Jeb.' Stuart, the Confederate cavalry leader. 39. Ashby, General Turner Ashby, killed at the battle of Cross Keys, Va. LITTLE GIFFIN 586. The poet Ticknor did take into his home a stricken young Confederate soldier just as the poem records and all the details of the story are literally true. THE CONQUERED BANNER 588. First published in Father Ryan's paper, The Banner of the South, in 1868. THE BLUE AND THE GRAY 589. First published in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1867. To this first appearance of the poem was prefixed a quotation from the New York Tribune: The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alke on the graves of the Confederate and of the National heroes.' Finch was a native of Ithaca, N. Y., and was long prominently identified with Cornell University. EUROPE 590. The poem deals with the revolution of 1848 in France which overthrew the corrupt Louis Philippe. The revolution as a whole. was a failure. After insurrection and turmoil, gradually the monarchial forces gained control until by August, 1849, the old system had been completely restored. FRANCE 591. Modern France was born from the French Revolution which is the subject of this poem. MANAHATTA 592. Manhattan Island, or New York City. 17. Trottoirs, French word for pavements. CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN 594. This poem and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd are without doubt the finest of all the elegiac verse called out by the death of Lincoln. O STAR OF FRANCE 602. The poem was written during the dark days of the Franco-Prussian war, after the French armies had been crushingly defeated on the frontier and the commune had taken possession of Paris. THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD 603. This poem was read by Whitman before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, June 26, 1872, and published the same year in pamphlet form. In 1876 it was included in Leaves of Grass. To the earlier edition were added later what are now the first thirteen lines of the poem in its present form, besides many other additions and changes. I have followed the latest text. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS 606. In 1871, Whitman issued what unquestionably is his most notable prose work, Democratic Vistas. It is pitched in major key: it swells O'Con nor's piping note into a trumpet blast. Boldly and radically it called for a new school of literature. The old is outgrown, it cried; the new is upon us; make ready for the great tide of democratic poetry and prose that even now is sweeping away the old landmarks. To the new era it was what Emerson's American Scholar was to the period that had opened in the thirties. It was our last declaration of literary independence.'- American Literature Since 1870. 607. a. 1. Promulge, coined by Whitman. Promulgate is the proper word. 609. b. 36. Haut ton, high tone. 614. b. 30. Con amore, with love. THE PRAYER OF COLUMBUS 615. In the Preface to the poem in the collected edition of 1876, Whitman explained: 'It was near 24 ལ 准 |