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Poems of James Russell Lowell; With Illustrations From Original Paintings and Engravings by Celebrated Artists
Poems of James Russell Lowell With Illustrations From Original Paintings and Engravings by Celebrated Artists Author:James Russell Lowell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1900 Original Publisher: Burt Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select fro... more »m more than a million books for free. Excerpt: No. IV. REMARKS OF INCREASE D. O'PHACB, ESQUIRE, AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN STATE STREET, REPORTED BJ MR. H. BIGLOW. [THE ingenious reader will at once understand that no such speech as the following was ever tolidem verbis pronounced. But there are simpler and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which such an explanation may be needful. For there are certain invisible lines, which as Truth successively overpasses, she becomes Untruth to one and another, of us, as a large river, flowing from one kingdom into another, sometimes takes a new name, albeit the waters undergo no change, how small soever. There is, moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious than the truth of fact, as that of the Poet, which represents to us things and events as they ought to be, rather than servilely copies them as they are imperfectly imaged in the crooked and smoky glass of our mundane affairs. It is this which makes the speech of Antonins, though originally spoken in no wider a forum than the brain of Shakspeare, more historically valuable than that other which Appian has reported, by as much as the understanding of the Englishman was more comprehensive than that of the Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in the present instance, has only made use of a license assumed by all the historians of antiquity, who put into the mouths of variouscharacters such words as seem to them most fitting to the occasion and to the speaker. If it be objected that no such oration could ever have been delivered, I answer, that there are few assemblages for speech-making which do not better deserve the title of Parliamen- ...« less