The seriousness of Whittier’s temper and mind was relieved by a keen sense of humor which found expression in many engaging ways. His letters written in young manhood are at times almost boisterously mirthful. His humor grew subdued as he became older, but it never lost its charm. Those who were nearest him realized how much it contributed to making him the most companionable of men. III THE LITERARY CRAFTSMAN ‘I have left one bad rhyme ... to preserve my well known character in that respect,’ says Whittier in a letter to Fields, his publisher. The charge of laxity in rhymes was the one most often brought against him. He labored under two capital disadvantages; he was self-taught and he wrote always for a moral purpose. His objection to reprinting _Mogg Megone_ grew out of the feeling, not that it was bad poetry,--though he had no delusions about its artistic value,--but that it was not calculated to do good. Ethics, rather than art, were uppermost in his thought. There has never been question of his native power. He could be exquisitely felicitous, but, having acquired the habit of writing for a cause, of sacrificing nicety of phrase for vigor of thought and rapidity of utterance, being eager always to strike a blow at the critical moment, he found it difficult to write with a dominant artistic motive. He wrote better (technically speaking) the older he grew. It is difficult to realize as we listen to the rich strains of his later years that Whittier could have been as inharmonious as he often was in the first period of his poetic life. He confessed his defect. To Fields he once said: ‘It’s lucky that other folks’ ears are not so sensitive as thine.’ His variety of metres, if not great, was sufficiently ample to preclude the feeling of sameness. His verse never comes laden with scholarly suggestion in rhythm or thought, with the faint sweet echoes of old-time poetry, as does Longfellow’s. Whittier was not ‘literary,’ though he made a noble addition to the literature of his country. Whittier’s prose has been ignored rather than underestimated. It is clear and forceful, often impassioned, and sometimes eloquent. Whether a reputation could be based on it is another matter. Certainly it has not been accorded the popular favor it deserves. Among a thousand readers, for example, who know _Snow-Bound_ there are possibly two or three who have read _Margaret Smith’s Journal_. Of the seven prose sketches in _Legends of New England_ not one was thought by the author worth preserving. He also suppressed much of the contents of the two volumes published some fifteen years after the _Legends_. Both these later books, _The Stranger in Lowell_ and _The Supernaturalism of New England_, ought to be reprinted as they came first from Whittier’s hand.