The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell LowellLowell, James Russell
General
The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell
Lowell, James Russell
American poetry
under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a
great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular
sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly
upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent
fallacy,--'Our country, right or wrong,'--by tracing its original to a
speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles.--H.W.]
No. III
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS
[A few remarks on the following verses will not be out of place. The
satire in them was not meant to have any personal, but only a general,
application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they were intended as a
commentary Mr. Biglow had never heard, till he saw the letter itself.
The position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he would not have
chosen, had the election been left to himself. In attacking bad
principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself
their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what
he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated _tenues in auras._ For
what says Seneca? _Longum iter per præcepta, breve et efficace per
exempla_. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues
to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till
it is printed in that large type which all men can read at sight,
namely, the life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular
persons. It is one of the cunningest fetches of Satan, that he never
exposes himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this
neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to wound him through them, if
at all. He holds our affections as hostages, the while he patches up a
truce with our conscience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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