Whittier’s Critical Creed 49
than anyone else and for over ten years (1824-1834) the poetry
of the unsophisticated Quaker mirrored the disillusioned, anti-
social attitudes of the Byronic hero. “The Exile’s Departure”
expresses the Weltschmerz of an outcast warrior as he leaves
his country; “The Fratricide” shows the downfall of a rebel
against the moral code; “Life’s Pleasures” reflects the disillusion-
ment of a young man; and “Lines,” written after reading Byron’s
account of a tempest in the Alps, glory in the storm and gran-
deur of the landscape. These last three poems are found in Pray,
op. cit., which contains many other examples.
7. In Pray, op. cit., poems like “Night,” “Lyre,” “Ocean,” follow the
loose poetical phrasing and rhetorical exaggerations of Mrs.
Sigourney; while there are over a dozen poems (like “The Dec-
laration”) which attempt the sophisticated, lightly romantic tone
of Willis’ love poetry.
8. Pray, op. cit., p. 239.
9. Ibid., p. 242.
10. In a letter quoted by Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 96-97, Whittier says:
“I am haunted by an immedicable ambition—perhaps a very
foolish desire of distinction, of applause, of fame, of what die
world calls immortality.”
11. Pray, op. cit., p. 193.
12. In 1831 he published “To William Lloyd Garrison,” praising him
for his “steadfast strength of truth” and “martyr’s zeal.”
13. Carpenter, op. cit., p. 118.
14. The fervid, moralistic tone of this poem is typical of over two-
thirds of Whittier’s poetry written from 1833-1850. Titles like
“The Slave-ships,” “The Hunters of Men,” “Clerical Oppressors,”
and “The Moral Warfare” indicate how engrossed Whittier had
become in his abolitionist work.
15. See Works, VI, 201, 218-219, 221-222, 225-256; VII, 344-345.
16. Whittier’s taste is far wider than one might imagine and his ap-
preciation of different styles is more catholic. He admired four
main types of writing and tried to emulate them: the poetic,
sentimental school which abounded in vague, romantic descrip-
tions, as seen in Grace Greenwood and John Neal; the dramatic,
often theatrical, appeal of writers like Charles Brockden Brown
and Harriet B. Stowe; the forceful, balanced style found in
Milton and Burke; and the plain, simple style of Bunyan or
Woolman.
17. The scene described here is an exact duplication of the path the
boy Whittier often took from Job’s Hill, west of the birthplace,
through a break in the cemetery wall, continuing on down by
the brook to his home.