History of the United States During Thomas Jefferson's Administrations (Complete 4 Volumes). Henry Adams
uttered in still stronger words the prevailing feeling of the literary class:—
"We know that in this land, where the spirit of democracy is everywhere diffused, we are exposed as it were to a poisonous atmosphere, which blasts everything beautiful in nature, and corrodes everything elegant in art; we know that with us 'the rose-leaves fall ungathered,' and we believe that there is little to praise and nothing to admire in most of the objects which would first present themselves to the view of a stranger."
Yet the American world was not unsympathetic toward Cliffton and his rivals, though they strained prose through their sieves of versification, and showed open contempt for their audience. Toward President Dwight the public was even generous; and he returned the generosity with parental love and condescension which shone through every line he wrote. For some years his patriotism was almost as enthusiastic as that of Joel Barlow. He was among the numerous rivals of Macaulay and Shelley for the honor of inventing the stranger to sit among the ruins of St. Paul's; and naturally America supplied the explorer who was to penetrate the forest of London and indulge his national self-complacency over ruined temples and towers.
"Some unknown wild, some shore without a name,
In all thy pomp shall then majestic shine
As silver-headed Time's slow years decline.
Not ruins only meet th' inquiring eye;
Where round yon mouldering oak vain brambles twine,
The filial stem, already towering high,
Erelong shall stretch his arms and nod in yonder sky."
From these specimens of President Dwight's poetry any critic, familiar with the time, could infer that his prose was sensible and sound. One of the few books of travel which will always retain value for New Englanders was written by President Dwight to describe his vacation rambles; and although in his own day no one would have ventured to insult him by calling these instructive volumes amusing, the quaintness which here and there gave color to the sober narrative had a charm of its own. How could the contrast be better expressed between volatile Boston and orthodox New Haven than in Dwight's quiet reproof, mixed with paternal tenderness? The Bostonians, he said, were distinguished by a lively imagination, ardor, and sensibility; they were "more like the Greeks than the Romans;" admired where graver people would only approve; applauded or hissed where another audience would be silent; their language was frequently hyperbolical, their pictures highly colored; the tea shipped to Boston was destroyed,—in New York and Philadelphia it was stored; education in Boston was superficial, and Boston women showed the effects of this misfortune, for they practised accomplishments only that they might be admired, and were taught from the beginning to regard their dress as a momentous concern.
Under Dwight's rule the women of the Connecticut Valley were taught better; but its men set to the Bostonians an example of frivolity without a parallel, and they did so with the connivance of President Dwight and under the lead of his brother Theodore. The frivolity of the Hartford wits, as they were called, was not so light as that of Canning and the "Anti-Jacobin," but had it been heavier than the "Conquest of Canaan" itself, it would still have found no literary rivalry in Boston. At about the time when Dwight composed his serious epic, another tutor at Yale, John Trumbull, wrote a burlesque epic in Hudibrastic verse, "McFingal," which his friend Dwight declared to be not inferior to "Hudibras" in wit and humor, and in every other respect superior. When "Hudibras" was published, more than a hundred years before, Mr. Pepys remarked: "It hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty." After the lapse of more than another century, the humor of neither poem may seem worth imitation; but to Trumbull in 1784 Butler was a modern classic, for the standard of taste between 1663 and 1784 changed less than in any twenty years of the following century. "McFingal" was a success, and laid a solid foundation for the coming school of Hartford wits. Posterity ratified the verdict of Trumbull's admirers by preserving for daily use a few of his lines quoted indiscriminately with Butler's best:—
"What has posterity done for us?"
"Optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen."
"A thief ne'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law."
Ten years after the appearance of "McFingal," and on the strength of its success, Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, Richard Alsop, Theodore Dwight, Joel Barlow, and others began a series of publications, "The Anarchiad," "The Echo," "The Guillotine," and the like, in which they gave tongue to their wit and sarcasm. As Alsop described the scene,—
"Begrimed with blood where erst the savage fell,
Shrieked the wild war-whoop with infernal yell,
The Muses sing; lo, Trumbull wakes the lyre.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Majestic Dwight, sublime in epic strain,
Paints the fierce horrors of the crimson plain;
And in Virgilian Barlow's tuneful lines
With added splendor great Columbus shines."
Perhaps the Muses would have done better by not interrupting the begrimed savage; for Dwight, Trumbull, Alsop, and Hopkins, whatever their faults, were Miltonic by the side of Joel Barlow. Yet Barlow was a figure too important in American history to be passed without respectful attention. He expressed better than any one else that side of Connecticut character which roused at the same instant the laughter and the respect of men. Every human influence twined about his career and lent it interest; every forward movement of his time had his sympathy, and few steps in progress were made which he did not assist. His ambition, above the lofty ambition of Jefferson, made him aspire to be a Connecticut Mücenas and Virgil in one; to patronize Fulton and employ Smirke; counsel Jefferson and contend with Napoleon. In his own mind a figure such as the world rarely saw,—a compound of Milton, Rousseau, and the Duke of Bridgewater,—he had in him so large a share of conceit, that tragedy, which would have thrown a solemn shadow over another man's life, seemed to render his only more entertaining. As a poet, he undertook to do for his native land what Homer had done for Greece and Virgil for Rome, Milton for England and Camoens for Portugal,—to supply America with a great epic, without which no country could be respectable; and his "Vision of Columbus," magnified afterward into the "Columbiad," with a magnificence of typography and illustration new to the United States, remained a monument of his ambition. In this vision Columbus was shown a variety of coming celebrities, including all the heroes of the Revolutionary War:—
"Here stood stern Putnam, scored with ancient scars,
The living records of his country's wars;
Wayne, like a moving tower, assumes his post,
Fires the whole field, and is himself a host;
Undaunted Stirling, prompt to meet his foes,
And Gates and Sullivan for action rose;
Macdougal, Clinton, guardians of the State,
Stretch the nerved arm to pierce the depth of fate;
Moultrie and Sumter lead their banded powers;
Morgan in front of his bold riflers towers,
His host of keen-eyed marksmen, skilled to pour
Their slugs unerring from the twisted bore;
No sword, no bayonet they learn to wield,
They gall the flank, they skirt the battling field,
Cull out the distant foe in full horse speed,
Couch the long tube and eye the silver bead,
Turn as he turns, dismiss the whizzing lead,
And lodge the death-ball in his heedless head."
More than seven thousand lines like these furnished constant pleasure to the reader, the more because the "Columbiad" was accepted by