moved” in tribute to the bard. The Amesbury house has been acquired by the “Whittier Home Association,” so that the building and grounds are guarded as he left them, and form a shrine to which there is a constant pilgrimage. The Haverhill homestead, memorized in Snow-Bound, is also held by trustees “to preserve the natural features of the landscape,” and to keep the buildings and furniture somewhat as they were in their minstrel's boyhood.
It would be unjust to consider Whittier's genius from an academic point of view. British lovers of poetry—except John Bright and others of like faith or spirit—have been slow to comprehend his distinctive rank. As a poet he was essentially a balladist, with the faults of his qualities; and his ballads, in their freedom, naïveté, even in their undue length, are among the few modern examples of unsophisticated verse. He returned again and again to their production, seldom labouring on sonnets and lyrics of the Victorian mould. His ear for melody was inferior to his sense of time, but that his over-facility and structural defects were due less to lack of taste than to early habit, Georgian models, disassociation from the schools, is indicated by his work as a writer of prose. In Margaret Smith's Journal an artistic, though suppositive, Colonial style is well maintained. Whittier became very sensible of his shortcomings; and when at leisure to devote himself to his art he greatly bettered it, giving much of his later verse all the polish that it required. In extended composition, as when he followed Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn with his own Tent on the Beach, he often failed to rival his graceful brother poet. In American balladry he was pre-eminent; such pieces as “The Swan Song of Parson Avery,” “Marguerite,” “Barclay of Ury,” “Skipper Ireson's Ride,” “In the 'Old South,'” hold their place in literature. It is necessary above all to consider the relation of a people's years of growth and ferment to the song which represents them; for in the strains of Whittier, more than in those of any other 19th-century lyrist, the saying of Fletcher of Saltoun as to the ballads and laws of a nation finds a historic illustration. He was the national bard of justice, humanity and reform, whose voice went up as a trumpet until the victory was won. Its lapses resembled those of Mrs Browning, who was of his own breed in her fervour and exaltation. To the last it was uncertain whether a poem by Whittier would “turn out a sang,” or “perhaps turn out a sermon”; if the latter, it had deep sincerity and was as close to his soul as the other. He began as a liberator, but various causes employed his pen; his heart was with the people, and he was understanded of them; he loved a worker, and the Songs of Labor convey the zest of the artisan and pioneer. From 1832 to 1863 no occasion escaped him for inspiring the assailants of slavery, or chanting paeans of their martyrdom or triumph. No crusade ever had a truer laureate than the author of “The Virginia Slave Mother,” “The Pastoral Letter” one of his stinging ballads against a time-serving Church—“A Sabbath Scene,” and “The Slaves of Martinique.” “Randolph of Roanoke” is one of the most pathetic and most elevated of memorial tributes. “Ichabod” and “The Lost Occasion,” both evoked by the attitude of Webster, are Roman in their condemnation and “wild with all regret.”
The green rusticity of Whittier's farm and village life imparted a bucolic charm to such lyrics as “In School Days,” “The Barefoot Boy,” “Telling the Bees,” “Maud Muller,” and “My Schoolmate.” His idyllic masterpiece is the sustained transcript of winter scenery and home-life, Snow-Bound, which has had no equal except Longfellow's “Evangeline” in American favour, but, in fact, nothing of its class since “The Cottar's Saturday Night” can justly be compared with it. Along with the Quaker poet's homing sense and passion for liberty of body and soul, religion and patriotism are the dominant notes of his song. His conception of a citizen's prerogative and duty, as set forth in “The Eve of Election,” certainly is not that of one whose legend is “our country, right or wrong.” Faith, hope and boundless charity pervade the “Questions of Life,” “Invocation,” and “The Two Angels,” and are exquisitely blended in “The Eternal Goodness,” perhaps the most enduring of his lyrical poems. “We can do without a Church,” he wrote in a letter; “we cannot do without God, and of Him we are sure.” The inward voice was his inspiration, and of all American poets he was the one whose song was most like a prayer. A knightly celibate, his stainless life, his ardour, caused him to be termed a Yankee Galahad; a pure and simple heart was laid bare to those who loved him in “My Psalm,” “My Triumph” and “An Autograph.” The spiritual habit abated no whit of his inborn sagacity, and it is said that in his later years political leaders found no shrewder sage with whom to take counsel. When the question of primacy among American poets was canvassed by a group of the public men of Lincoln's time, the vote was for Whittier; he was at least one whom they understood, and who expressed their feeling and convictions. Parkman called him “the poet of New England,” but as the North and West then were charged with the spirit of the New England states, the two verdicts were much the same. The fact remains that no other poet has sounded more native notes, or covered so much of the American legendary, and that Whittier's name, among the patriotic, clean and true, was one with which to conjure. He was revered by the people cleaving to their altars and their fires, and his birthdays were calendared as festivals, on which greetings were sent to him by young and old.
In his age the poet revised his works, classifying them for a definitive edition, in seven volumes, published at Boston, 1888. Their metrical portion, annotated by Horace E. Scudder, can be found in the one-volume “Cambridge Edition,” (Boston, 1894). Whittier's Life and Letters, prepared by his kinsman and literary executor, Samuel T. Pickard, also appeared in 1894.
See also G. R. Carpenter, John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston, 1903) in the “American Men of Letters” series; a life (1907) by Bliss Perry and B. Wendell, Stelligeri (New York, 1893, pp. 149-201). (E. C. S.)
WHITTINGHAM, CHARLES (1767-1840), English printer, was born on the 16th of June 1767, at Caludon or Calledon, Warwickshire, the son of a farmer, and was apprenticed to a Coventry printer and bookseller. In 17S9 he set up a small printing press in a garret off Fleet Street, London, with a loan obtained from the type founding firm of William Caslon, and by 1707 his business had so increased that he was enabled to move into larger premises. An edition of Gray's Poems, printed by him in 1799, secured him the patronage of all the leading publishers. Whittingham inaugurated the idea of printing cheap, handy editions of standard authors, and, on the bookselling trade threatening not to sell his productions, took a room at a coffee house and sold them by auction himself. In 1809 he started a paper-pulp factory at Chiswick, near London, and in 1811 founded the Chiswick Press. From 1810 to 1815 he devoted his chief attention to illustrated books, and is credited with having been the first to use proper overlays in printing woodcuts, as he was the first to print a fine, or “Indian Paper” edition. He was one of the first to use a steam-engine in a pulp mill, but his presses he preferred to have worked by hand. He died at Chiswick on the 5th of January 1840.
His nephew, Charles Whittingham (1795-1876), who from 1824 to 1828 had been in partnership with his uncle, in 1838 assumed control of the business. He already had printing works at Took's Court, Chancery Lane, London, and had printed various notable books, specially devoting himself to the introduction of ornamental initial letters, and the artistic arrangement of the printed page. The imprint of the Chiswick press was now placed on the productions of the Took's Court as well as of the Chiswick works, and in 1852 the whole business was removed to London. Under the management of the younger Whittingham the Chiswick Press achieved a considerable reputation. He died on the 21st of April 1876.
WHITTINGHAM, WILLIAM (c. 1524-1579), English scholar, who belonged to a Lancashire family, was born at Chester. Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, he became a fellow of All Souls' College and a senior student of Christ Church, and later he visited several universities in France and Germany. A strong Protestant, he returned to England in 1553, but soon found it expedient to travel again to France. In 1554 he was a leading member of the band of English Protestant exiles who were assembled at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and in the controversies which took place between them concerning the form of service to be adopted, Whittingham strongly supported the Calvinistic views propounded by John Knox. These opinions, however, did not prevail, and soon the Scottish reformer and his follower were found at Geneva; in 1559 Whittingham succeeded Knox as minister of the English congregation in that city, and here he did his most noteworthy work, that of making an English translation of the Bible. He was probably responsible for the English translation of the New Testament which appeared in 1557, and he h»d certainly a large share in the translation of both the Old and the New Testaments which is called the Genevan or Breeches Bible. This was printed at Geneva in 1560 and enjoyed a remarkable popularity (see Bible, English). He also made a metrical translation of some of the Psalms. Having returned to England in 1560, Whittingham went to France in the train of Francis Russell, 2nd earl of Bedford, and a little later he acted as minister of the English garrison at Havre, being in this place during its siege by the French in 1562. In the following year he was made dean of Durham. He attended well to the duties of his office, but his liking for puritan customs made
