Mr. Whittier's next work was the editing, in 1832, of the "Remains" of his gifted friend, J. G. C. Brainard. Students of Whittier's poems know that for many years the genius and writings of Brainard exercised a potent influence on his mind. Brainard undoubtedly possessed genius. He was at one time editor of the _Connecticut Mirror_. He died young, and his work can be considered as hardly more than a promise of future excellence. Whittier, in his Introduction to the "Remains," shows a nice sense of justice, and a delicate reserve in his eulogistic estimate of his dead brother-poet and friend. That he did not falsely attribute to him a rare genius will be evident to those who read the following portion of Brainard's spirited ballad of "The Black Fox":-- "'How cold, how beautiful, how bright The cloudless heaven above us shines; But 'tis a howling winter's night,-- 'Twould freeze the very forest pines. 'The winds are up while mortals sleep; The stars look forth while eyes are shut; The bolted snow lies drifted deep Around our poor and lonely hut. 'With silent step and listening ear, With bow and arrow, dog and gun, We'll mark his track, for his prowl we hear, Now is our time--come on, come on.' O'er many a fence, through many a wood, Following the dog's bewildered scent, In anxious haste and earnest mood, The Indian and the white man went. The gun is cock'd, the bow is bent, The dog stands with uplifted paw; And ball and arrow swift are sent, Aim'd at the prowler's very jaw. --The ball, to kill that fox, is run Not in a mould by mortals made! The arrow which that fox should shun Was never shap'd from earthly reed! The Indian Druids of the wood Know where the fatal arrows grow-- They spring not by the summer flood, They pierce not through the winter snow!"[12] [Footnote 12: Mr. Whittier quotes this fine ballad in Vol. II. p. 243 of his prose works, but with numerous changes of punctuation and phrase. The differences between the poem as it there appears and as it is given in his own edition of Brainard, published in 1832, seem to show that he has amended the ballad and punctuated it to suit himself, or else has quoted it from memory, or at third or fourth remove. It must be admitted that the changes are all improvements, however they were made. The ballad is quoted above, however, as it appears in Brainard's Poems.] Whittier's Introduction to Brainard's poems reveals a mind matured by much reading and thought. We hardly recognize in the author and editor of Hartford the shy girlish boy we so recently left on the farm at Haverhill. There has evidently been a good deal of midnight oil burned since then.