It is not merely that political interests absorbed the energy which would otherwise have gone to letters; the knowledge of life acquired might have compensated and more than compensated for less writing, and, indeed, he wrote too much as it was. The difficulty is rather that "the pledged philanthropy of earth" somehow militates against art, as Whittier himself felt. Not only the poems actually written to forward the propaganda are for the most part dismal reading, but something of their tone has crept into other poems, with an effect to-day not far from cant. Twice the cry of the liberator in Whittier rose to noble writing. But in both cases it is not the mere pleading of reform but a very human and personal indignation that speaks. In _Massachusetts to Virginia_ this feeling of outrage calls forth one of the most stirring pieces of personification ever written, nor can I imagine a day when a man of Massachusetts shall be able to read it without a tingling of the blood, or a Virginian born hear it without a sense of unacknowledged shame; in _Ichabod_ he uttered a word of individual scorn that will rise up for quotation whenever any strong leader misuses, or is thought to misuse, his powers. Every one knows the lines in which Webster is pilloried for his defection: Of all we loved and honoured, naught Save power remains; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled; When faith is lost, when honour dies, The man is dead! Then pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! It is instructive that only when his note is thus pierced by individual emotion does the reformer attain to universality of appeal. Unfortunately most of Whittier's slave songs sink down to a dreary level--down to the almost humorous pathos of the lines suggested by _Uncle Tom's Cabin_: Dry the tears for holy Eva, With the blessed angels leave her....