is none other than the renowned proprietor, imploring to be 'saved from his friends!' But out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh,' and the pen as well; and herein must rest our apology.
FROM a well-known contributor, whose reappearance in our pages has been clamorously demanded from numerous quarters of late, we have received the subjoined:
TO THE READERS OF 'OLLAPOD'SALUTATION.
FRIENDS! It has been notified unto me, that infatuated individuals are an-hungered for that trifling manna of the pen, aforetime ministered by me, and with strangeness of taste have besought for more, in sundry letters addressed to the KNICKERBOCKER, at various times and from divers places. Verily, this should be like a trumpet-call to my poor wits, and invest me in the panoply of labor; but alas! I lack the bestirring impulse. Those influences which awoke me to love, to mirth, to inspiration, no long time ago, have paused within and around me. Death has been busy with ties of my heart, and they are broken; he smote them, and they severed, as flax in the flame. A while, to live was as it were a bitter labor; vagueness, a half-realized sense of loss, fond doting over faded hours, and features dear and familiar, were alone appointed to me: and the cloud and the vision are with me still:
The shadows of grief o'er my path have been sweeping,
There is one who has loved me, debarred from the day;
The marble is pale where in peace she is sleeping,
And on wings of remembrance my soul is away!
It is lost to the glow of a present existence,
It hears from the past a funereal strain;
And it eagerly turns to that high-seeming distance,
Where the parted on earth are united again!
WHEN Hamlet deemed the brave firmament, and the goodly frame of earth, a collection of vapors, he was akin with me. Sometimes, as I sit watching the blue wreaths of smoke from my thought provoking cigar, my hopes seem vanishing with that cerulean film; voices, where nothing lives 'twixt them and silence, speak to me from the chambers of the past, and the far-off pavilions of eternity. As the spring-time draws on, I ask, will it give to me again the gladness that aforetine glowed upward from its flashing waters, or that spirit-light, which warmeth from woodlands of gold-and-green? There was one who has felt their gladness with me, whose step its air made more elastic, her voice more musical, her brow the brighter, her smile more sweetly prodigal of light. I ask, and am answered. She slumbers in silence, 'debarred from the day;' and a spirit, which speaks from the azure depths of empyreal immensity, secins to breathe to my heart, that though the worms feed sweetly on her precious dust, adored but yesterday, and still beloved, yet her better part is in blessedness, where the soul can watch without weariness, and walk without weeping; — and then I feel that I am not all alone!
In the hush of the night, when the stars gem the sea,
Or alone with the breeze on the hill,
Fair thoughts of her presence are ever with me,
And my hopes of reunion fulfil.
SOMETIMES, indeed, I run over the stray leaves of my corpulent port-folio, and as the prattler at my knee or about my table tosses his golden locks, or pours upon me the sheen of his deep blue eyes in the wintry sunshine, I find symptoms of strength in resolution, and inspiring promptings, the which, reader, I have determined shall fructify anon into performance. Uttering this gage of communion with you, I trust to meet you soon again, with pen in hand, 'armed and equipped' as the laws of taste and inner inspiration shall command; being thine, as ever,
We may hope, hereafter, to welcome the occasional aid of 'OLLAPOD' in the editors' department, in which his labors have necessarily been, for a long period, wholly inter
mitted. Our readers will extend a cordial hand to HOLMES, SPRAGUE, PIERPONT, and HILLHOUSE, as well as to two or three other eminent American writers, whose communications will make their hearts to leap for joy, but whose names, for good reasons, we for the present suppress. Articles are filed for insertion from the pens of Hon. GOVERNOR SEWARD, JOHN SANDERSON, Esq., author of 'The American in Paris,' etc., HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, Esq., Rev. HENRY B. BASCOM, J. N. REYNOLDS, Esq., Rev. Dr. BETHUNE, Philadelphia, SAMUEL Ward, JR., Esq., and the author of "The Circus,' the 'Kushow Property,' etc. The first number of 'Brandrethiana,' after the manner of 'Warreniana,' and the second of the 'Letters from Modern Palmyra,' are promised to be soon forthcoming. Hon CALEB CUSHING, of Massachusetts, has kindly favored us with a series of interesting original papers on Holland, founded on notes taken in 1829 and 1830, during two separate visits to that country. They will form appropriate and acceptable matter to all KNICKERBOCKERS, containing, as they do, vivid sketches of their father-land. And now let us bid our readers 'good morning,' for it is one o'clock, and probably none of them are awake!
L. E. LANDON, MRS. M'LEAN. - Since our last number, the death of this daughter of genius has been confirmed. There is, if we may judge from the reports in the London journals, but little doubt that she either committed suicide, from loneliness and unhappiness, in a moment of temporary delirium, or was murdered by a half-caste wife, pro tempore, of her husband. Doubtless the circumstances will soon be more thoroughly investigated. A bright literary light has been extinguished in her death, and the music of a lyre always deftly discoursed, is stilled for ever. From personal correspondence, the verdict of intimate friends, who have brought us letters of introduction from her hand, and the unanimous testimony of the London press, we are convinced that Miss LANDON was a most artless, confiding, affectionate woman. Indeed, she associated something of endearment, of friendship, or of love, with every poetical object in nature. To the last, she preserved this characteristic trait, so beautifully indicated in one of her contributions to the KNICKERBOCKER, which the reader will readily recall, from the annexed stanzas:
Think of me, when the languid night
Closes around the weary hours;
When far-off stars are pale with light,
And the sweet air is filled with flowers.
Think of me, when the earliest rose
Melts gradual in the summer skies;
And the glad birds their wings unclose,
While light and music bid them rise.'
In the same vein are all the latest productions of her pen, "The Polar Star,' Nights at Sea,' etc. We do not envy the present emotions of a writer in the 'New-York Mirror,' who not long since grossly slandered the private character of this gifted and lovely woman, throwing dirt upon her name, while the mould was heaped upon her body. Happily, her ear is deaf to all evil report. 'After life's fitful fever, she sleeps well,' in her lonely grave on a foreign shore. To adopt her own beautiful language, she has
'won a long repose,
Where the bruised spirit finds at last,
A balm for all its woes;
Where lowly grief, and lordly pride,
Lie down, like brothers, side by side!
The breath of SLANDER cannot come,
To break the calm that lingers there;
There is no dreaming in the tomb,
No waking to despair;
Unkindness cannot wound her more,
And all life's bitterness is o'er!'
JOEL BARLOW: HASTY PUDDING. In our last number, we presented several extracts from an original elegiac tribute, by JOEL BARLOW, author of 'The Columbiad.' From the same kind hand whence we received it, we have been favored with another and more elaborate poem, which was presented to our correspondent by the author, more than forty years ago. It contains a series of country pictures, which will strike the 'knowing ones' as eminently faithful to nature. No reader, after perusing it attentively, will refuse the writer an honorable niche among the old-time poets of this good republic. A vein of unaffected humor, a style easy and flowing, with numerous lifelike sketches, are its prominent features. But 'the proof of the pudding' is in the poem itself, which we submit, without farther comment:
YE Alps audacious, through the heav'ns that rise,
To cramp the day and hide me from the skies;
Ye Gallic flags, that o'er their heights unfurled,
Bear death to kings, and freedom to the world,
I sing not you. A softer theme I choose,
A virgin theme, unconscious of the muse,
But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire
The purest frenzy of poetic fire.
Despise it not, ye bards to terror steeled,
Who hurl your thunders round the epic field;
Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing
Joys that the vineyard and the still-house bring;
Or on some distant fair your notes employ,
And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy.
I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning incense, and my evening meal,
The sweets of HASTY-PUDDING! Come, dear bowl,
Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine,
Its substance mingled, inarried in with thine,
Shall cool and temper thy superior heat,
And save the pains of blowing while I eat.
Oh! could the smooth, the emblematic song.
Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime,
And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme,
No more thy awkward unpoetic name
Should shun the muse, or prejudice thy fame;
But rising grateful to the accustomed ear,
All bards should catch it, and all realms revere!
Assist me first with pious toil to trace
Through wrecks of time thy lineage and thy race;
Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore,
Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore,
First gave thee to the world; her works of fame
Have lived indeed, but lived without a name.
Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days, [maize.
First learned with stones to crack the well-dried
Through the rough sieve to shake the golden
In boiling water stir the yellow flour; [shower,
The yellow flour, bestrewed and stir'd with haste
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.
Could but her sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise like her labors, to the son of song,
To her, to them, I'd consecrate my lays,
And blow her pudding with the breath of praise.
Dear Hasty-Pudding, what unpromised joy
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
Doom'd o'er the world thro'devious paths to roam,
Each clime mycountry, and each house my home,
My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end,
I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend.
For thee through Paris, that corrupted town,
How long in vain I wandered up and down,
VOL. XIII.
Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching
hoard,
Cold from his cave usurps the morning board.
London is lost in smoke and steeped in tea;
No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee;
The uncouth word, a libel on the town,
Would call a proclamation from the crown.*
For climes oblique, that fear the sun's full rays,
Chill'd in their fogs,exclude the generous maize:
A grain whose rich luxuriant growth requires
Short gentle showers, and bright ethereal fires.
But here, though distant from our native shore,
With mutual glee we meet and laugh once more.
The same! I know thee by that yellow face,
That strong complexion of true Indian race,
Which time can never change, nor soil impair,
Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid air;
For endless years, through every mild domain,
Where grows the maize, there thou art sure to
reign.
But man, more fickle, the bold license claims,
In different realms to give thee different names.
Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant
Polanta call, the French of course Polante;
Even in thy native regions, how I blush
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!
On Hudson's banks, while men of Belgic spawn,
Insult and eat thee by the name suppawn.
All spurious appellations, void of truth;
I've better known thee from my earliest youth;
Thy name is HASTY-PUDDING! thus our sires
Were wont to greet thee fuming from their fires;
With logic clear, they thus explained the sense:
And while they argued in thy just defence,
In haste the boiling cauldron o'er the blaze,
Receives and cooks the ready-powdered maize,
In haste 't is served, and then in equal haste,
With cooling milk, we make the sweet repast.
No carving to be done, no knife to grate
The tender ear, and wound the stony plate;
But the smooth spoon, just fitted to the lip,
And taught with art the yielding mass to dip,
By frequent journeys to the bowl well stored,
Performs the hasty honors of the board.'
Such is thy name, significant and clear,
A name, a sound, to every Yankee dear.
There are who strive to stamp with disrepute
The luscious food, because it feeds the brute;
In tropes of high-strained wit, while gaudy prigs
Compare thy nursling man to pampered pigs;
With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest,
Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast.
What though the generous cow gives me to quaff
The milk nutritious; am I thence a calf?
Or can the genius of the noisy swine, [mine?
Though nursed on pudding, thence lay claim to
A certain king, at the time when this was written, was publishing proclamations to prevent American principles from being propagated in his country.
Sure the sweet song I fashion to thy praise, Runs more melodious than the notes they raise.
My song resounding in its grateful glee,
No merit claims; I praise myself in thee.
My father loved thee through his length of days:
For thee his fields were shaled o'er with maize:
From thee what health, what vigor he possessed,
Ten sturdy free men sprung from him attest;
Thy constellation ruled my natal morn,
And all my bones were made of Indian corn.
Delicious grain! whatever form it take,
To roast or boil, to smother or to bake,
In every dish 't is welcome still to me,
But most, my HASTY-PUDDING! most in thee!
Let the green succatash with thee contend,
Let beans and corn their sweetest juices blend.
Let butter drench them in its yellow tide,
And a long slice of bacon grace their side;
Not all the plate, how famed soe'er it be,
Can please my palate like a bowl of thee.
Some talk of hoe-cake, fair Virginia's pride,
Rich Johnny-cake this mouth has often tried;
Both please me well,their virtues much the same;
Alike their fabric, as allied their fame,
Except in dear New-England, where the last
Receives a dash of pumpkin in the paste,
To give it sweetness and improve the taste.
But place them all before me, smoaking hot,
The big round dumpling rolling from the pot;
The pudding of the bag, whose quivering breast,
With suet lined, leads on the Yankee feast;
The Charlotte brown, within whose crusty sides
A belly soft the pulpy apple hides;
The yellow bread, whose face like amber glows,
And all of Indian that the bake-pan knows;
Ye tempt me not; my favorite greets my eyes,
To that loved bowl my spoon by instinct flies.
TO MIX the food by vicious rules of art,
To kill the stomach and to sink the heart,
To make mankind to social virtue sour,
Cram o'er each dish, and be what they devour;
For this the kitchen muse first framed her book;
Commanding sweets to stream from every cook;
Children no more their antic gambols tried,
And friends to physic wondered why they died.
Not so the Yankee; his abundant feast,
With simples furnished, and with plainness drest,
A numerous offspring gathers round the board,
And cheers alike the servant and the lord;
Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous
And health attends them from the short repast.
While the full pail rewards the milk-maid's toil.
The mother sees the morning cauldron boil;
To stir the pudding next demands their care,
To spread the table and the bowls prepare;
To feed the children, as their portions cool,
And comb their heads, and send them off to school.
Yet may the simplest dish some rules impart,
For nature scorns not all the aids of art.
Even Hasty-Pudding, purest of all food,
May still be bad, indifferent, or good,
As sage experience the short process guides,
Or want of skill, or want of care presides.
Whoe'er would form it on the surest plan,
To rear the child and long sustain the man;
To shield the morals while it mends the size,
And all the powers of every food supplies.
Attend the lessons that the muse shall bring,
Suspend your spoons, and listen while I sing.
When now the ox, obedient to thy call,
Repays the loan that filled the winter stall,
Pursue his traces o'er the furrowed plain,
And plant in measured hills the golden grain.
But when the tender germ begins to shoot,
And the green spire declares the sprouting root,
Then guard your nursling from each greedy foe.
The insidious worm, the all-devouring crow.
A little ashes, sprinkled round the spire,
Soon steeped in rain, will bid the worm retire;
The feathered robber with his hungry maw
Swift flies the field before your man of straw,
A frightful image, such as school boys bring
When met to burn the Pope, or hang the King.
Thrice in the season, through each verdant row
Wield the strong plow-share and the faithful hoe;
The faithful hoe, a double task that takes,
To till the summer corn, and roast the winter
cakes.
Slow springs the blade, while checked by chilling
Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains: [rains,
But when his fiercest fires emblaze the land,
Then start the juices, then the roots expand;
Then, like a column of Corinthian mould,
The stalk struts upward, and the leaves unfold;
The bushy branches all the ridges fill,
Entwine their arms, and kiss from hill to hill.
Here cease to vex them, all your cares are done;
Leave the last labors to the parent sun;
Beneath his genial smiles the well-drest field,
When autumn calls, a plenteous crop shall yield.
Now the strong foliage bears the standards high,
And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky;
The suckling ears their silky fringes bend,
And pregnant grown, their swelling coats distend;
The loaded stalk, while still the burthen grows,
O'erhangs the space that runs between the rows;
High as a hop-field waves the si ent grove,
A safe retreat for little thefts of love,
When the pledged roasting ears invite the maid,
To meet her swain beneath the new-formed
shade;
His generous hand unloads the cumbrous hills,
And the green spoil her ready basket fills;
Small compensation for the two-fold bliss,
The promised wedding and the present kiss.
Slight depredations these; but now the moon
Calls from his hollow tree the sly raccoon;
And while by night he bears his prize away,
The bolder squirrel labors through the day.
Both thieves alike, but provident of time,
A virtue rare, that almost hides their crime.
Then let them steal the little stores they can,
And fill their graineries from the toils of man;
We've one advantage where they take no part,
With all their wiles they ne'er have found the art
To boil the Hasty-Pudding; here we shine
Superior far to tenants of the pine;
This envyed boon to man shall still belong,
Unshared by them in substance or in song.
At last the closing season browns the plain.
And ripe October gathers in the grain;
Deep loaded carts the spacious corn-house fill,
The sack distended marches to the mill;
The laboring mill beneath the burthen groans,
And showers the future pudding from the stones;
Till the glad house-wife greets the powdered
And the new crop exterminates the old. (gold,
THE days grow short; but though the falling sun
To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done,
Night's pleasing shades his various task prolong
And yield new subjects to my various song.
For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home,
The invited neighbors to the husking come;
A frolic scene, where work, and mirth, and play,
Unite their charms, to chase the hours away.
Where the huge heap lies centered in the hall,
The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall,
Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-hand-
ed beaux,
Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows,
Assume their seats, the solid mass attack;
The dry husks rustle, and the coru-cobs crack;
The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound,
And the sweet cider trips in silence round.
The laws of husking every wight can tell :
And sure no laws he ever keeps so well:
For each red ear a general kiss he gains,
With each smut ear she smuts the luckless swains;
But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast,
Red as her lips, and taper as her waist,
She walks the round, and culls one favored beau,
Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow.
Various the sport, as are the wits and brains
Of well pleased lasses and contending swains :
Till the vast mound of corn is swept away,
And he that gets the last ear, wins the day.
Meanwhile the house-wife urges all her care,
The well-earned feast to hasten and prepare.
The sifted meal already waits her hand,
The milk is strained, the bowls in order stand,
The fire flames high; aud, as a pool that takes
The headlong stream that o'er the mill-dam
breaks,
Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils,
So the vex cauldron rages, roars, and boils.
First with clean salt she seasons well the food,
Then strews the flour, and thickens all the flood,
Long o'er the simmering fire she lets it stand :
To stir it well demands a stronger hand; [round
The husband takes his turn; and round and
The ladle flies; at last the toil is crowned;
When to the board the thronging huskers pour,
And take their seats as at the corn before.
I leave them to their feast. There still belong
More copious matters to my faithful song.
For rules there are, though ne'er unfolded yet,
Nice rules and wise, how pudding should be ate.
Some with molasses line the luscious treat,
And mix, like bards, the useful with the sweet.
A wholesome dish, and well deserving praise,
A great resource in those bleak wintry days,
When the chilled earth lies buried deep in snow,
And raging boreas drives the shivering cow.
Blest cow! thy praise shall still my notes employ,
Great source of health, the only source of joy;
How oft thy teats these pious hands have prest!
How oft thy bounties prove my only feast!
How oft I've fed thee with my favorite grain!
And roared like thee, to find thy children slain!
Ye swains who know her various worth to prize,
Ah! house her well from winter's angry skies,
Potatoes, pumpkins, should her sadness cheer,
Corn from your crib, and mashes from your beer;
When spring returns, she 'll well acquit the loan,
And nurse at once your infants and her own.
Milk then with pudding I should always choose;
To this in future I confine my muse,
Till she in haste some farther hints unfold,
Well for the young, nor useless to the old.
First in your bowl the milk abundant take,
Then drop with care along the silver lake
Your flakes of pudding; these at first will hide
Their little bulk beneath the swelling tide;
But when their growing mass no more can sink,
When the soft island looms above the brink,
Then check your hand: you've got the portion's
due,
So taught our sires, and what they taught is true.
There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear
The nice distinction, yet to me 't is clear;
The deep bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to
scoop
In ample draughts the thin diluted soup,
Performs not well in those substantial things,
Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings;
Where the strong labial muscles must embrace,
The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space.
With ease to enter and discharge the freight,
A bowl less concave but still more dilate,
Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the size,
A secret rests unknown to vulgar eyes,
Experienced feeders can alone impart
A rule so much above the lore of art.
These tuneful lips, that thousand spoons have
tried,
With just precision could the point decide,
Though not in song; the muse but poorly shines
In cones, and cubes, and geometric lines.
Yet the true form, as near as she can tell,
Is that small section of a goose egg shell,
Which in two equal portions shall divide
The distance from the centre to the side.
Fear not to slobber;' 't is no deadly sin,
Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin
Suspend the ready napkin; or, like me,
Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee;
Just in the zenith your wise head project,
Your full spoon, rising in a line direct,
Bold as a bucket, heeds no drops that fall,
The wide mouth'd bowl will surelycatch them all.
'CRITICISM: ITS USE AND ABUSE.'- An admirable essay, thus entitled, from the pen of SAMUEL F. GLENN, Esq., of Washington, has been sent us by the publisher. The writer seems to have been led into his train of reflection and reasoning, by two criticisms of 'Burton, or the Sieges,' one of which pronounced the highest eulogiums on that production, while the other from the pen of a gentleman of high literary authority - 'regretted that the editor had misspent his time in bestowing even a hasty glance upon the work.' Our author cites this as an evidence of 'varied taste.' This, we may assure him, is an error, and one well understood by too many conductors of literary periodicals. The lamented Colonel KNAPP, in an elaborate article in an early number of this Magazine, entitled 'Uses and Abuses of Criticism,' regarded this important subject in its proper light. We are glad to believe, with Mr. GLENN, that the light of intelligence is increasing rapidly in this country, and that soon the solid and the natural will be hidden no more beneath the labored and artificial; and that secondrate poetasters and miscalled novelists, without imagination or genius, wit or learning, 'will ere long play the part of the peacock described by the elder PLINY, who, in morti. fication for having lost his tail, sought to hide himself.'
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