The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,084 pages of information about The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell.

The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,084 pages of information about The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell.
Mr. Sawin to be) that they do not put their Maker away far from them, or interpret the fear of God into being afraid of Him.  The Talmudists had conceived a deep truth when they said, that ’all things were in the power of God, save the fear of God;’ and when people stand in great dread of an invisible power, I suspect they mistake quite another personage for the Deity.  I might justify myself for the passages criticised by many parallel ones from Scripture, but I need not.  The Reverend Homer Wilbur’s note-books supply me with three apposite quotations.  The first is from a Father of the Roman Church, the second from a Father of the Anglican, and the third from a Father of Modern English poetry.  The Puritan divines would furnish me with many more such.  St. Bernard says, Sapiens nummularius est Deus:  nummum fictum non recipiet; ’A cunning money-changer is God:  he will take in no base coin.’  Latimer says, ’You shall perceive that God, by this example, shaketh us by the noses and taketh us by the ears.’  Familiar enough, both of them, one would say!  But I should think Mr. Biglow had verily stolen the last of the two maligned passages from Dryden’s ’Don Sebastian,’ where I find

  ‘And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me!’

And there I leave the matter, being willing to believe that the Saint, the Martyr, and even the Poet, were as careful of God’s honor as my critics are ever likely to be.

II.  GLOSSARY TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS

Act’lly, actually
Air, are
Airth, earth
Airy, area
Aree, area
Arter, after
Ax, ask.

Beller, bellow
Bellowses, lungs
Ben, been
Bile, boil
Bimeby, by and by
Blurt out, to speak bluntly
Bust, burst
Buster, a roistering blade; used also as a general superlative.

Caird, carried
Cairn, carrying
Caleb, a turncoat
Cal’late, calculate
Cass, a person with two lives
Close, clothes
Cockerel, a young cock
Cocktail, a kind of drink; also, an ornament peculiar to
  soldiers

Convention, a place where people are imposed on; a juggler’s show
Coons, a cant term for a now defunct party; derived, perhaps, from
  the fact of their being commonly up a tree
Cornwallis, a sort of muster in masquerade; supposed to have had
  its origin soon after the Revolution, and to commemorate the surrender
  of Lord Cornwallis.  It took the place of the old Guy Fawkes procession. 
Crooked stick, a perverse, froward person
Cunnle, a colonel
Cus, a curse; also, a pitiful fellow.

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The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.