A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 77 



We shall not do Mr. Edmund Quincy the wrong of 

 picking out in advance all the plums in his volume, leaving 

 to the reader only the less savoury mixture that held them 

 together a kind of filling unavoidable in books of this kind, 

 and too apt to be what boys at boarding-school call stick-jaw^ 

 but of which there is no more than could not be helped here, 

 and that light and palatable. But here and there is a pas 

 sage where we cannot refrain, for there is a smack of Jack 

 Horner in all of us, and a reviewer were nothing without it. 

 Josiah Ouincy was born in 1772. His father, returning from 

 a mission to England, died in sight of the dear New England 

 shore three years later. His young widow was worthy of 

 him, and of the son whose character she was to have so large 

 a share in forming. There is something very touching and 

 beautiful in this little picture of her which Mr. Quincy drew 

 in his extreme old age. 



* My mother imbibed, as was usual with the women 

 of the period, the spirit of the times. Patriotism was 

 not then a profession, but an energetic principle beating 

 in the heart and active in the life. The death of my father, 

 under circumstances now the subject of history, had over 

 whelmed her with grief. She viewed him as a victim in the 

 cause of freedom, and cultivated his memory with veneration, 

 regarding him as a martyr, falling, as did his friend Warren, 

 in the defence of the liberties of his country. These circum 

 stances gave a pathos and vehemence to her grief, which, 

 after the first violence of passion had subsided, sought con 

 solation in earnest and solicitous fulfilment of duty to the 

 representative of his memory and of their mutual affections. 

 Love and reverence for the memory of his father were early 

 impressed on the mind of her son, and worn into his heart 

 by her sadness and tears. She cultivated the memory of 

 my father in my heart and affections, even in my earliest 

 childhood, by reading to me passages from the poets, and 

 obliging me to learn by heart and repeat such as were best 

 adapted to her own circumstances and feelings. Among 

 others, the whole leave-taking of Hector and Andromache, 

 in the sixth book of Pope s Homer, was one of her favourite 

 lessons, which she made me learn and frequently repeat. Her 

 imagination probably found consolation in the repetition of 

 lines which brought to mind and seemed to typify her own 

 great bereavement. 



