Mexican War, 1846-1848 -- Poetry; Slavery -- United States -- Poetry
advantage which will accrue, if our little craft, _cymbula sutilis_,
shall seem to leave port with a clipping breeze, and to carry, in
nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. Nevertheless, I have chosen, as
being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently objurgatory,
that readers of every taste may find a dish to their palate. I have
modelled them upon actually existing specimens, preserved in my own
cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, I had copied with
tolerable exactness from a notice of one of my own discourses, which,
from its superior tone and appearance of vast experience, I concluded to
have been written by a man at least three hundred years of age, though I
recollected no existing instance of such antediluvian longevity.
Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author to be a young gentleman
preparing for the ministry under the direction of one of my brethren in
a neighbouring town, and whom I had once instinctively corrected in a
Latin quantity. But this I have been forced to omit, from its too great
length.--H. W.]
* * * * *
_From the Universal Littery Universe._
Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader.... Under a
rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to
the memory and engraven on the heart of every moral and social
being.... We consider this a _unique_ performance.... We hope to see
it soon introduced into our common schools.... Mr. Wilbur has
performed his duties as editor with excellent taste and judgment....
This is a vein which we hope to see successfully prosecuted.... We
hail the appearance of this work as a long stride toward the
formation of a purely aboriginal, indigenous, native, and American
literature. We rejoice to meet with an author national enough to
break away from the slavish deference, too common among us, to
English grammar and orthography.... Where all is so good, we are at
a loss how to make extracts.... On the whole, we may call it a
volume which no library, pretending to entire completeness, should
fail to place upon its shelves.
* * * * *
_From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle._
A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever
our bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and
the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language,
but should any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity
Heaven preserve them,) they will find reasons for it thick as the
leaves of Vallumbrozer, or, to use a still more expressive
comparison, as the combined heads of author and editor. The work is
wretchedly got up.... We should like to know how much _British gold_
was pocketed by this libeller of our country and her purest
patriots.
* * * * *
_From the Oldfogrumville Mentor._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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