. One year course in English and American literature; an introduction to the chief authors in English and American literature, with reading lists and references for further study. poems, and later came Shakespeare and Scott, thoughhis Quaker conscience at firsttroubled him as to whether heought to read these books. It was Burns that made Whit-tier a poet. He was a boy offourteen when he first readBurns; he had never dreamedthat poetry could be written bya farmers boy, and on thehomely subjects that Burnschose. If it was possible inScotland, why not in Massachu-setts ? So he wrote verses ofhis
. One year course in English and American literature; an introduction to the chief authors in English and American literature, with reading lists and references for further study. poems, and later came Shakespeare and Scott, thoughhis Quaker conscience at firsttroubled him as to whether heought to read these books. It was Burns that made Whit-tier a poet. He was a boy offourteen when he first readBurns; he had never dreamedthat poetry could be written bya farmers boy, and on thehomely subjects that Burnschose. If it was possible inScotland, why not in Massachu-setts ? So he wrote verses ofhis own, which his sister sent toa newspaper. The editor, who was William Lloyd Gar-rison, thought so well of the poems that he came to seethe author. He found a blushing, shy, country boy, towhom he talked kindly, urging him to get some boy managed to get a years schooling at an academy,paying his way by making slippers. Aided by Mr. Garri-son, he then secured a place on a newspaper in Boston, andlater held editorial positions in Hartford and had written enough poetry by this time to fill a smallvolume, but little of this early work is JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 177 About 1833, however, he found a subject that calledforth all his powers. This was the anti-slavery took courage to be an abolitionist in those days, andWhittiers advocacy of the cause at once closed the columnsof many periodicals to his poems. When he was editingThe Freeman in Philadelphia, his office was sacked andburned by a mob and his life threatened. But week afterweek he sent forth poems which roused the conscience ofthe nation. His Expostulation, Summons to the North,Massachusetts to Virginia, — burning lyrics, as Lowellcalls them, —entitle him to be called the poet of freedom. In 1840 his health obliged him to give up his work onThe Freeman, and he removed to Amesbury, Mass., whichwas henceforth his home. He never married, but thecompanionship of his sister
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