Mr. Lowell came to the aid of the despised Abolitionists at an early day. While it was still inviting social ostracism and public indignity to do so, he bravely lifted up his voice in their defence, and began lending his vigorous and powerful pen to the cause they represented. All the traditions of his life seemed to bind him to the conservative classes; but he broke away from them, and boldly faced their derision and their sneers, to do what seemed right in his own eyes. As far back as the publication of the "Fable for Critics," he had dared to praise Whittier, whom all the conservatives affected to despise,-- "For singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor." It still required bravery as well as kindliness to say of the despised Quaker:-- "All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard; Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave, When to look but a protest in silence was brave! All honor and praise to the women and men Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then!" And greater bravery still was required in those days to dare introduce the name of Parker into literature without denunciation or derision. Of the church which had put its ban upon "the Orson of parsons" he said:-- "They had formerly damned the Pontifical See, And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.; But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming, And cared (shall I say) not a d---- for their damning. So they first read him out of their church, and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it. But the ban was too small, or the man was too big; For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig (He don't look like a man who would _stay_ treated shabbily, Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais); He bangs and bethwacks them,--their backs he salutes With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots." He concluded his long description of the great arch-heretic in these words:-- "Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest. There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest, If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least; His gestures all downright, and some, if you will, As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill; But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak: You forget the man wholly, you're thankful to meet With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street; And to hear, you're not over particular whence, Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense."