published without hearing some one humming or reciting,

Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

School children shouted it everywhere, people on the street repeated
it as they met, and the funny rhyme was heard even in polite
drawing-rooms, amid roars of laughter. Mr. Robinson went abroad, but
scarcely had he landed in Liverpool before he heard a child crooning
over to himself,

Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

In Genoa, Italy, it was a parody, telling what John P.--Robinson
he--would do down in Judee.

CHAPTER VIII

PARSON WILBUR

In the course of time the "Biglow Papers" were published in book form.
Not only was Lowell's name not yet connected publicly with the Yankee
humor, but the poems were provided with an elaborate introduction,
notes and comments, by the learned pastor of the church at Jaalam,
Homer Wilbur. His notes and introduction are filled with Latin
quotations, and he appears as much a scholar as Hosea Biglow does a
natural. He says he tried to teach Hosea better English, but decided
to let him work out his own ideas in his own way. Still, he endorses
Hosea's principles, and is in every way thoroughly his friend.

This Parson Wilbur is almost as much of a character in the book as
Hosea himself, and his prose, printed at the beginning and end of each
poem in small type, is almost as clear and effective and interesting
as Hosea's poems. We are always tempted to skip anything printed in
small type, and placed in brackets; but in this case that would be a
great mistake.

Speaking of "What Mr. Robinson Thinks," Parson Wilbur says, "A bad
principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an
abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is
printed in that large type which all men can read at sight, namely the
life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular persons....

"Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not
to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and as Truth and
Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along
together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the
latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at
the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so
brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous
than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, tha