Page 87 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

printer to break off when the page was filled. This the printer did, and the
stanzas which were not put in type were lost, as Lowell had kept no copy.

This piece became so popular that friends urged the poet to finish the story,
and he wrote a few more stanzas. Then he wrote still others. In the course

of time it developed into the long poem printed with the second series of
"Biglow Papers," under the title of "The Courtin'."

This is the way it runs in the first version; but you will want to read it also
in its complete form:

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown, An' peeked in thru the winder, An' there
sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender.

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle, His heart kep'

goin' pitypat, But hern went pity Zekle.

He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on tother, An' on

which one he felt the wust He could n't ha' told ye, nuther.

Sez he, "I'd better call agin;" Sez she, "Think likely, _Mister_;" The last
word pricked him like a pin, An'--wal, he up and kist her.

When in the course of the publication of the second series of "Biglow
Papers," twenty years after the first, it was announced that Parson Wilbur

was dead, people who had read the first series felt very much as though
they had lost a personal friend. The public had learned to love the pedantic,
vain old man as if he were a real human being. Lowell had created in him a

great character of fiction, almost as if he were a novelist instead of a poet.

CHAPTER IX

A FABLE FOR CRITICS

Lowell's next attempt in the satirical and humorous line was a long poem

written somewhat after the style of the old Latin fable writers, and hence