Page 85 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

humor, but the poems were provided with an elaborate introduction, notes
and comments, by the learned pastor of the church at Jaalam, Homer

Wilbur. His notes and introduction are filled with Latin quotations, and he
appears as much a scholar as Hosea Biglow does a natural. He says he tried

to teach Hosea better English, but decided to let him work out his own
ideas in his own way. Still, he endorses Hosea's principles, and is in every
way thoroughly his friend.

This Parson Wilbur is almost as much of a character in the book as Hosea

himself, and his prose, printed at the beginning and end of each poem in
small type, is almost as clear and effective and interesting as Hosea's
poems. We are always tempted to skip anything printed in small type, and

placed in brackets; but in this case that would be a great mistake.

Speaking of "What Mr. Robinson Thinks," Parson Wilbur says, "A bad
principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction,
nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is printed in that large

type which all men can read at sight, namely the life and character, the
sayings and doings, of particular persons....

"Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be
severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and as Truth and Falsehood

start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little
way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to

show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the
reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more
be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that

continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He
becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends.

He may put on his boxing gloves, and yet forget that the older they grow,
the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of
contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry

tinsel glitters through the dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of
simple leaves."