We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas! too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of this contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from under the cloak (_credite, posteri!_) of a clergyman. It is a mournful spectacle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred precincts of the pulpit.... On the whole, we consider this volume as one of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the late French 'Revolution' (!)
_From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a try-weakly family journal)_.
Altogether an admirable work.... Full of humor, boisterous, but delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of 'mountain-mirth,' mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once both objective and subjective.... We might indulge in some criticisms, but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As it is, he has a wonderful _pose_, which flits from flower to flower, and bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede) to the 'highest heaven of invention.' ... We love a book so purely objective ... Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity.... In fine, we consider this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds, may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved Europe.... We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving enduring fame. Already we should be inclined to assign him a high position in the bright galaxy of our American bards.