PREFACE Cowley, of Lowell, Mass., who found for me the unique file of the 6 Middlesex Standard and to many other kind friends and correspondents who have patiently borne my many ques tionings. From the mass of new and old material I have done my best to reconstruct the essential Whittier - the heritage, the environment, the temperament, the motives that constituted him and none other and I think I have been at least successful in determining, to an extent not before attained, the course of evolution of his literary art. If I am wrong in any of my generalizations, the fault will, I hope, be in some measure due to the comparative incompleteness of the material. Whittier was modest and reticent, carrying these virtues almost to an extreme but it would be strange if there did not somewhere exist very considerable bodies of letters and reminiscences that would aid us in tracillg further the development of his genius. On whoever holds any such precious and perishable material, whether in the form of written documents, of direct memories, or of oral tradition, I beg to urge the imperative duty of having it at once examined, and of taking proper measures to secure its use and preservation. G. R. C. September, 1903. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. BOYHOO1D8,0 7-1828 . . l 11. BOYHOO1D8,2 1-1828 . . . 25 111. THE YOUNGJ OURNALIS A T N D POLITICIAN, 1820-1832 . . 53 IV. THE Y OUNGA BOLITIONIS18T3, 3-IS40 . 103 V. REFORME A R N D MAN OF LETTERS1,8 40-1860 . . . 174 VI. POET, 1860-1892 . . 255 APPENDIX The portrait which forms the frontispiece to this volume is from an ambrotype taken about 1857, in the possession of Mr. Samuel T. Pickard. CHAPTER I BOYHOOD JOH G N R EENLEA W F HITTIER jo , u rnalist, politician, reformer, and poet, was born December 17, 1807, in the east parish of Haverhill, in Essex County, Iassachnsetts. In the early nineteenth century, New England, that part of the land in which intellectual and spiritual life among the common people had been most continuous and vigorous, was thoroughly fertilized, as it mere, by generations of mental activity, and was ready to bear the natural fruit of the vitalized soil, - the man of letters, the man who fashions, in visible speech and in the mysterious forms of the ima, gination, the latent ideals and aspirations of his dumb fellows... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.