No More Learning

A good life behind him is the
best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every
breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old
man to feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of
these latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a
less inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily
more and more our own wisdom (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap
ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment), do reconcile ourselves
with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might
have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon
Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the
part of the publick (as I have reason to know from several letters of
inquiry already received), but would also, as I think, have largely
increased the circulation of your Magazine in this town. _Nihil humani
alienum_, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbors which
is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more
fitting season.

As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might
be profitably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pastoral Poetry, and
concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from
Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest authour I
know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in the
time of a Civil War worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it
may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of
serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of
present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has
adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the
name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase (for, though
the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by
Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its
capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments
and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and
manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question
(which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my
correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as
the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is
little better than [Greek: kapnou skias onar]. The plot was, as I
believe, suggested by the 'Twa Brigs' of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet
of the last century, as that found its prototype in the 'Mutual
Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey' by Fergusson, though, the metre of
this latter be different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps the Two Dogs
of Cervantes gave the first hint. I reminded my talented young
parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the
edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there
was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose the reader had no
fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into
activity, it were _better_ to be in for the whole sheep than the
shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book,--an expression
questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is
not more familiar than with the printed page.
In proof of what he
affirmed, he showed me some verses which with others he had stricken
out as too much delaying the action, but which I communicate in this
place because they rightly define 'punkin-seed' (which Mr. Bartlett
would have a kind of perch,--a creature to which I have found a rod or
pole not to be so easily equivalent in our inland waters as in the books
of arithmetic) and because it conveys an eulogium on the worthy son of
an excellent father, with whose acquaintance (_eheu, fugaces anni! _) I
was formerly honoured.

'But nowadays the Bridge ain't wut they show,
So much ez Em'son, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau.
I know the village, though; was sent there once
A-schoolin', 'cause to home I played the dunce;
An' I 've ben sence a visitin' the Jedge,
Whose garding whispers with the river's edge,
Where I 've sot mornin's lazy as the bream,
Whose on'y business is to head upstream,
(We call 'em punkin-seed,) or else in chat
Along 'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat
More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense
Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence. '

Concerning the subject-matter of the verses. I have not the leisure at
present to write so fully as I could wish, my time being occupied with
the preparation of a discourse for the forthcoming bicentenary
celebration of the first settlement of Jaalam East Parish. It may
gratify the publick interest to mention the circumstance, that my
investigations to this end have enabled me to verify the fact (of much
historick importance, and hitherto hotly debated) that Shearjashub
Tarbox was the first child of white parentage born in this town, being
named in his father's will under date August 7th, or 9th, 1662. It is
well known that those who advocate the claims of Mehetable Goings are
unable to find any trace of her existence prior to October of that year.
As respects the settlement of the Mason and Slidell question, Mr. Biglow
has not incorrectly stated the popular sentiment, so far as I can judge
by its expression in this locality. For myself, I feel more sorrow than
resentment: for I am old enough to have heard those talk of England who
still, even after the unhappy estrangement, could not unschool their
lips from calling her the Mother-Country. But England has insisted on
ripping up old wounds, and has undone the healing work of fifty years;
for nations do not reason, they only feel, and the _spretae injuria
formae_ rankles in their minds as bitterly as in that of a woman. And
because this is so, I feel the more satisfaction that our Government has
acted (as all Governments should, standing as they do between the people
and their passions) as if it had arrived at years of discretion. There
are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any
language (and I suspect they were no easier before the confusion of
tongues), but which no man or nation that cannot utter can claim to have
arrived at manhood. Those words are, _I was wrong;_ and I am proud that,
while England played the boy, our rulers had strength enough from the
People below and wisdom enough from God above to quit themselves like
men.