Robert Williams Buchanan

“ I am not generally appreciated in my own country, because I frequently change my views about religion, art, architecture, poetry, and things in general. Most of my early writings are twaddle, but my present opinions are all valuable. I think this poem, with its nervous Saxon Diction, its subtle humour, its tender pathos and piteousness, the noblest specimen of narrative verse of modern times; and, indeed, I know not where to look, out of the pages of Chaucer, for an equally successful blending of human laughter and ethereal mystery. ”

“ And the oaths of pioneers, and the ways of the unwashed,
large, undulating, majestic, virile, strong of scent, all
these content me.
4 Utah contents me;
The City by the margin of the great Salt Lake contents me;
And to have many wives contents me;
Blessed is he who has a hundred wives, and peoples the
solitudes of these States.
5 Great is Brigham;
Great is polygamy, great is monogamy, great is polyandry,
great is license, great is right, and great is wrong ”

“ If the author of a 'Tale of Salt Lake City' be not a new poet, he is certainly a writer of exceedingly clever and effective verses. They have the ring of originality, and they indicate ability to produce something still more remarkable than this very remarkable little piece. It merits a place among works which every one reads with genuine satisfaction. It is a piece which subserves one of the chief ends of poetry, that of telling a tale in an unusually forcible and pleasant way.... ”

“ Abe went through numerous editions in a very short space of time.
To one familiar with the process of book-reviewing, and aware of the curious futility of even honest literary judgments, there is nothing extraordinary in the facts which I have just stated. Printed cackle about books will always be about as valuable as spoken cackle about them, and the history of literature is one long record of the march of genius through regions of mountainous stupidity. ”

“ It is thoroughly American, now rising into a true imaginative intensity, but oftener falling into a satirical vein, dealing plainly enough with the plague-spots of Salt Lake society and its wily, false prophets.... Like most men capable of humour, the author has command of a sweeter and more harmonious manner. Indeed, the beautiful descriptive and lyrical fragments stand in vivid and reflecting relief to the homely staple of the poem. ”

“ Well, Sister Annie look'd at me, her inmost
heart revealing
(Women are very weak, you see, inferior, full of
feeling) ,
Then, thro' her tears outshining bright, "I'll
never never leave you!
"O Abe," she said, "my love, my light, why
should I pain or grieve you?
I do not love the way of life you have so sadly
chosen,
I'd rather be a single wife than one in half a
dozen ”

“ The titanic humour of the Conception does not blind me to the radical falseness of the Teaching, wherein, as I shall show you presently, you somewhat resemble the miserable Homunculi of our I own literary Wagners; for, if I rightly conceive, you would tacitly and by inference urge that it is expressly part of the Divine Thought that the Ewigweibliche, or Woman-Soul, should be happy. Now Woman's mundane unhappiness, as I construe, comes of her inadequacy; it is the stirring within her of the Infinite against the Finite, a struggle of the spark upward, of the lower to the higher Symbol. ”

“ I've seen the question morn and eve within your
eyes unspoken,
You're slow and nervous I perceive, but now—the
ice is broken.
Here is a guardian and a guide to bless a man
and grace him;"
And then I to Tabitha cried, "Go in, old gal-
embrace him!"
STRANGER. Why, that was acting fresh and fair;—but Abe,
was he as hearty?
BISHOP JOSS. We...ll! Abe was never anywhere against a
female party! ”

“ From the "ILLUSTRATED REVIEW."
"The tale, however, is not to be read from reviews.... The variety of interest, the versatility of fancy, the richness of description with which the different lays and cantos are replete, will preclude the possibility of tediousness. To open the book is to read it to the end. It is like some Greek comedy in its shifting scenes, its vivid pictures, its rapidly passing 'dramatis personae' and supernumeraries.. .. The author of 'St. Abe,' who can write like this, may do more if he will, and even found a new school of realistic and satirical poetry." ”

“ Although in a striking address to Chaucer the author intimates an expectation that Prudery may turn from his pages, and though his theme is certainly a delicate one, there is nothing in the book that a modest man may not read without blinking, and therefore, we suppose, no modest woman. On the other hand, the whole poem is marked with so much natural strength, so much of the inborn faculties of literature— (though they are wielded in a light, easy, trifling way) —that they take possession of our admiration as of right. ”

“ If, furthermore, as I have ever held, the test of clearness of intellect and greatness of soul be Success, at any price and under any circumstances, none but a transcendental Windbag or a pedantic Baccalaureus will doubt my assertion that Young is a stupendous intellectual, ethical, and political Force—a Master-Spirit—a Colossal Being, a moral Architect of sublime cunning—as such to be reverenced by every right-thinking Man under the Sun. ”

“ A City where the streets are broad and clean and well-watered, the houses surrounded by gardens full of fruit and flowers; where the children, with shining, clean-washed faces, curtsey to the Philosophers in the public places; where there are no brothels and no hells; where life runs fresh, free, and unpolluted,—such a City, I say, can hardly be the symbol of feminine degradation. ”

“ After perusing this subtle study, who can doubt that Free Love is the natural human condition? The utter selfishness of the wretched monogamist-hero repels and sickens us; nor can we look with anything but disgust on the obtusity of the heroine, in whom the author vainly tries to awaken interest. It is quite clear that the reconstruction of Utah on O————a C———k principles would yet save the State from the crash which is impending. ”

“ BISHOP JOSS. ... That gal was fourteen years of age, and sly
with all her meekness;
It put the fam'ly in a rage, for well they knew
Abe's weakness.
But Abe (a cuss, as I have said, that any fool
might sit on)
Was stubborn as an ass's head, when once he
took the fit on!
And, once he fixed the gal to take, in spite of
their vexation,
Not all the rows on earth would break his firm
determination. ”

“ The inner life of Mormondom is portrayed with a caustic humour equal to anything in 'The Biglow Papers'; and were it not for the exquisite elegance of the verse we should think that some parts of the poem were written by Robert Browning. The hero of the poem is a Mormon, who fares so badly as a polygamist that he elopes with one of his seven wives—the one whom he really loves; and the story is a most effective exposure of the evils which necessarily attach to polygamy. ”

“ Will Woman's Rights Agitators, and Monogamy, and Political Tomfoolery, do what Millinery has failed to do, and waken one Female to the sense of divine Function? It is not happiness I solicit for the Woman-Soul, but Identity; and the prerogative of Identity is great work, Adequacy, pre-eminent fulfilment of the Function; woman, in this country of rags and shams, being buried quick under masses of Sophistication and Upholstery, oblivious of her divine duty to increase the population and train the young masculine Idea starward. ”

“ In this very epoch, at this very day, poetry has been secreting itself silently and surely, and suddenly the whole ocean of human thought is illumined by the accumulated phosphoresence of a subtle and startling poetic life.. . . Your work is the story of Polygamy written in colossal cipher the study of all forthcoming ages. ”

“ Such vigorous, racy, determined satire has not been met with for many a long day. It is at once fresh and salt as the sea.... The humour is exquisite, and as regards literary execution, the work is masterly. ”

“ Besides its pure tone deserves warm recognition. The humour is never coarse. There is a high delicacy, which is sufficient to colour and sweeten the whole, as the open spring breeze holds everything in good savour."
From the "SPECTATOR."
We believe that the new book which has just appeared, 'St. Abe and His Seven Wives,' will paralyze Mormon resistance far more than any amount of speeches in Congress or messages from President Grant, by bringing home to the minds of the millions the ridiculous-diabolic side of the peculiar institution. ”

“ Polygamy is abolished in America, but a far fouler evil, Prostitution, flourishes, in both public and private life. The Mormons crushed this evil and obliterated it altogether, and if they substituted Polygamy, they only did openly and politically what is done, and must be done, clandestinely, in every country, under the present conditions of our civilisation.
The present is the first cheap edition of the book, and the first which bears the author's name on the title page. It will be followed by a cheap edition of White Rose and Red. ”

“ The air was far too close;—at length
The Storm is breaking in all its strength.
III—PROMENADE—MAIN STREET, UTAH. THE STRANGER. Along the streets they're thronging, walking,
Clad gaily in their best and talking,
Women and children quite a crowd;
The bright sun overhead is blazing,
The people sweat, the dust they're raising
Arises like a golden cloud.
Still out of every door they scatter,
Laughing and light. Pray what's the matter.
That such a flock of folks I see?
A LOUNGER They're off to hear the Prophet patter,
This yer's a day of jubilee. ”

“ Truly, if America has more than one writer who can write in such a rich vein of satire, humour, pathos, and wit, as we have here, England must look to her laurels.... This is poetry of a high order. Would that in England we had humourists who could write as well. But with Thackeray our last writer of humour left us."
From the "WESTMINSTER REVIEW."
"'Saint Abe and his Seven Wives' may lay claim to many rare qualities. The author possesses simplicity and directness. To this he adds genuine humour and interposes dramatic power. ”

“ Shufflebotham.
We don't go croaking east and west, afraid of
women's faces,
We bless and we air truly blest in our domestic
places;
We air religious, holy men, happy our folds to
gather,
Each is a loyal citizen, also a husband—rather.
But now with talk you're dry and hot, and
weary with your ride here.
Jest come and see my fam'ly lot,—they're waiting
tea inside here.
WITHIN THE CITY.—SAINT ABE AND THE SEVEN. Sister Tabitha, thirty odd,
Rising up with a stare and a nod ”

“ Abe to the Polygamists,' with its humorous narrative of the way in which the Saint, sealed to seven wives, fell in love with one, and thenceforward could not abide the jealousy felt by the other six, will do more to weaken the last defence of Mormonism—that after all, the women like it—than a whole ream of narratives about the discontent in Utah. ”

“ None who read about Saint Abe and his Seven Wives can fail to be amused and to be gratified alike by the manner of the verse and the matter of the tale."
From the "SCOTSMAN."
"This book does not need much commendation, but it deserves a great deal. The author of 'The Biglow Papers' might have written it, but there are passages which are not unlike Bret Harte; and him we suspect. The authorship, however, may be left out of notice. Men inquire who has written a good book, that they may honour him; but if his name never be heard, the book is none the less prized. ”

“ One of the last of the true Bohemians, a man of undoubted genius, he never learned the trick of wearing fine linen and touting for popularity; but those who value good work hold him in grateful remembrance, and I am proud to think that so great a master in black and white honoured me by associating himself with a book of mine.
Robert Buchanan.
ORIGINALLY PREFACED TO SAINT ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES. TESTIMONIES OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.
I. From P—————t G———t, U.S. Smart. Polygamy is Greek for Secesh. ”

“ Abe.' As to its form, it shows that Mr. Lowell has been making advances in the poetic art; and the substance of it is as strong as anything in the entire range of English satirical literature."
From the "BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW."
"The writer has an easy mastery over various kinds of metre, and a felicity of easy rhyming which is not unworthy of our best writers of satire..., The prevailing impression of the whole is of that easy strength which does what it likes with language and rhythm. .... The style is light and playful, with admirable touches of fine discrimination and rich humour ”