In that remote period of history which is especially visited upon us in
our school-days, in expiation of the sins of our forefathers, there
nourished seven poets at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Royal favor
and amiable dispositions united them in a club: public applause and
self-appreciation led them to call it The Pleiades. In the middle of the
sixteenth century, Pierre Ronsard, emulous of Greek fame, took to him
six other poets more wretched than himself, and made up a second
Pleiades for France. The third rising of this rhythmical constellation
was seen in Connecticut a long time ago.
Connecticut is pleasant, with wooded hills and a beautiful river;
plenteous with tobacco and cheese; fruitful of merchants, missionaries,
sailors, peddlers, and singlewomen;--but there are no poets known to
exist there, unless it be that well-paid band who write the rhymed puffs
of cheap garments and cosmetics. The brisk little democratic State has
turned its brains upon its machinery. Not a snug valley, with a few
drops of water at the bottom of it, but rattles with the manufacture of
notions, great and small,--axes and pistols, carriages and clocks, tin
pans and toys, hats, garters, combs, buttons, and pins. You see that the
enterprising natives can turn out any article on which a profit may be
made,--except poetry. That product, you would say, was out of the
question. Nevertheless, the species poet, although extinct, did once
exist on that soil. The evidence is conclusive that palaeozoic
verse-makers wandered over those hills in bygone ages. Their moss-grown
remains, still visible here and there, are as unmistakable as the
footprints of the huge wading birds in the red sandstone of Middletown
and Chatham. _Où la poésie va-t'elle se nicher?_ How came the Muses to
settle in Connecticut?
Dr. Samuel Peters, in his trustworthy history of the Colony, gives no
answer to this question; but among the oldest inhabitants of remote
Barkhamstead, for whom it is said General Washington and the worthies of
his date still have a being in the flesh, there lingers a mythological
tradition which may explain this aberration of Connecticut character.
The legend runs thus.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, English readers were
entertained with elaborate allegories, in which the passions, the vices,
and even the habits of mankind were personified. Lighter ethical topics
were served up in letters from Philotryphus, Septimius, or others ending
in _us_, and in communications from Flirtilla, Jack Modish, and Co.
Eastern tales and apologues, meditations on human life, essays on
morality, inquiries as to whether the arts and sciences were serviceable
or prejudicial to the human race, dissertations on the wisdom and virtue
of the Chinese, were all the fashion in literature. The Genius of
authorship, or the Demon, if you prefer it, was so precise, refined,
exquisite in manner, and so transcendentally moral in ethics, that he
had become almost insufferable to his master, Apollo. The God was a
little tired, if the truth were known, with the monotonous chant of
Pope, in spite of his wit. He began to think that something more was
required, to satisfy the soul than polished periods and abstract
didactic morality,--and was not much surprised when he observed that
Prior, after dining with Addison and Co., liked to finish the evening
with a common soldier and his wife, and refresh his mind over a pipe and
a pot of beer. But Pope was dead, and so was Thomson, and Goldsmith not
yet heard from. There was a famine of literary invention in England. Out
of work and wages for himself and his _troupe_, "disgusted at the age
and clime, barren of every glorious theme," Phoebus Apollo determined to
emigrate. Berkeley had reported favorably of the new Western Continent:
it was a land of poetical promise to the Bishop.
"There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts;
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts."
Trusting in the judgment of a man who had every virtue under heaven, the
God of Song shipped with the tuneful Nine for America. Owing, perhaps,
to insufficiency of transportation, the Graces were left behind. The
vessel sailed past Rhode Island in a fog, and disembarked its precious
freight at New Haven, in the Colony of Connecticut. In the pleasant
summer weather, the distinguished foreigners travelled northward as far
as Litchfield Hill, and thence to Hartford, on the banks of the
beautiful river. They found the land well wooded and well watered; the
natives good-natured, industrious, and intelligent: but the scenery was
monotonous to the Pierian colonists, and the people distasteful. The
clipped hair and penitential scowl of the men made heavy the hearts of
the Muses; their daughters and wives had a sharp, harsh, pert "tang" in
their speech, that grated upon the ears of Apollo, who held with King
Lear as to the excellence of a low, soft voice in woman. Each native
seemed to the strangers sadly alike in looks, dress, manners, and
pursuits, to every other native. Of Art they were absolutely ignorant.
They built their temples on the same model as their barns. Poetry meant
Psalms sung through their noses to the accompaniment of a bass-viol. Of
other musical instruments, they knew only the Jews-harp for home
delectation, and the drum and fife for training-days. Doctrinal religion
furnished them with a mental relaxation which supplied the place of
amusement. Sandemanians, Adamites, Peterites, Bowlists, Davisonians, and
Rogereens, though agreeing mainly in essentials, found vast
gratification in playing against each other at theological dialectics.
On one cardinal point of discipline only--the necessity of administering
creature comfort to the sinful body--did all sects zealously unite. They
offered copious, though coarse, libations to Bacchus, in the
spirit-stirring rum of their native land.[B]
After careful observation, the nine ladies conferred together, and
decided that in this part of the world their sphere of usefulness was
limited and their mission a failure. Polymnia, Urania, and Clio might
get into good society, but Thalia and Terpsichore were sure to be set in
the stocks; and what was poor Erato to expect, but a whipping, in a
commonwealth that forbade its women to uncover their necks or to expose
their arms above the wrists? They made up their minds not to "locate";
packed up barbiton and phorminx, mask and cothurn, took the first ship
bound to Europe, and quietly sailed away. Their stay was short, but they
left their mark. To this day Phoebes are numerous in Connecticut, and
nine women to one man has become the customary proportion of the sexes.
As Greece had Parnassus, Helicon, and Pindus, Connecticut had New Haven,
Hartford, and Litchfield Hill,--halting-places of the illustrious
travellers. There they scattered the seeds of poetry,--seeds which fell
upon stony places, but, warmed by the genial influence of the Sun-God,
sprang up and brought forth such fruit as we shall see.
John Trumbull was born in Watertown, A.D. 1750; two years later, in
Northampton, came Timothy Dwight: both of the best New England breed:
Dwight, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards; Trumbull, cousin to kind old
Governor Trumbull, (whose pompous manner in transacting the most
trifling public business amused Chastellux and the Hussar officers at
Windham,) and consequently second cousin to the son of the Governor,
Colonel John Trumbull, whose paintings might possibly have added to the
amusement of the gay Frenchmen, had they stayed in America long enough
to see them. Cowley, Milton, and Pope lisped in numbers; but the
precocity of Trumbull was even more surprising. He passed his college
examination at the age of eight, in the lap of a Dr. Emmons; but was
remanded to the nursery to give his stature time to catch up with his
acquirements. Dwight, too, was ready for college at eight, and was
actually entered at thirteen.
About this time there were symptoms of an æsthetical thaw in
Connecticut. There had been no such word as play in the dictionary of
the New-Englanders. They worked hard on their stony soil, and read hard
in their stony books of doctrine. That stimulant to the mind, outside of
daily routine, which the human race must have under all circumstances,
(we call it excitement nowadays,) was found by the better sort in
theological quarrels, by the baser in New England rum,--the two things
most cheering to the spirit of man, if Byron is to be believed.
Education meant solid learning,--that is to say, studies bearing upon
divinity, law, medicine, or merchandise; and to peruse works of the
imagination was considered an idle waste of time,--indeed, as partaking
somewhat of the nature of sin. But the growing taste of Connecticut was
no longer satisfied with Dr. Watts's moral lyrics, whose jingle is still
so instructive and pleasant to extreme youth. Milton and Dryden, Thomson
and Pope, were read and admired; "The Spectator" was quoted as the
standard of style and of good manners; and daring spirits even ventured
upon Richardson's novels and "Tristram Shandy."
While in this literary revival all Yale was anxious, young Dwight and
Trumbull were indulging in hope. Smitten with the love of verse, Dwight
announced his rising genius (these are the words of the "Connecticut
Magazine and New Haven Gazette") by versions of two odes of Horace, and
by "America," a poem after the manner of Pope's "Windsor Forest." At the
age of nineteen he invoked the venerable Muse who has been called in as
the "Poet's Lucina," since Homer established her professional
reputation, and dashed boldly at the epic,--"the greatest work human
nature is capable of." His great work was "The Conquest of Canaan."
Trumbull, more modest, wrote "The Progress of Dulness," in three cantos.
To these young men of genius came later two other nurslings of the
Muses,--David Humphreys from Derby, and Joel Barlow from Reading. They
caught the poetical distemper. Barlow, fired by Dwight's example, began
"The Vision of Columbus." The four friends, young and hopeful,
encouraging and praising each other, gained some local reputation by
fugitive pieces in imitation of English models, published "Spectator"
essays in the New Haven papers, and forestalled all cavillers by damning
the critics after the method used by Dryden and Pope against Settle and
Cibber.
Trumbull chose the law as a profession, and went to Boston to finish his
studies in 1773. A clerk in the office of John Adams, who lodged with
Gushing, Speaker of the Massachusetts House, could have read but little
law in the midst of that political whirlwind which was driving men of
every trade and profession into revolution. Boston stubbornly persevered
in the resolution not to consume British goods, notwithstanding the
efforts of the Addressers and Protesters and Tories generally, who
preached their antiquated doctrines of passive obedience and divine
right, and painted in their darkest colors the privation and suffering
caused by the blockade. Trumbull joined the Whigs, pen in hand, and laid
stoutly about him both in prose and verse. Then came the skirmish at
Lexington, and all New England sprang to arms. Dwight joined the army as
chaplain. Humphreys volunteered on Putnam's staff. Barlow served in the
ranks at the Battle of White Plains; and then, after devoting his mind
to theology for six weeks, accepted the position of chaplain in a
Massachusetts regiment. The little knot of poets was broken up. One of
them asked in mournful numbers,--
"Amid the roar of drums and guns,
When meet again the Muses' sons?"
They met again after the thunder and lightning were over, but in another
place. New Haven saw the rising of the constellation; its meridian
brilliancy shone upon Hartford. At the close of the war, the four
poetical luminaries, as they were called by the "Connecticut Magazine
and New Haven Gazette," hung up the sword in Hartford and grasped the
lyre. The epidemic of verse broke out again. The four added to their
number Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, a physician, Richard Alsop, a gentleman of
much cultivation, and Theodore Dwight, a younger brother of Timothy.
There were now seven stars of the first magnitude. Many other aspirants
to a place in the heavens were necessarily excluded; among them, two are
worthy of notice,--Noah Webster, who was already then and there
meditating his method for teaching the American people to _mispel_, and
Oliver Wolcott, afterward Secretary of the Treasury. Bound by the sweet
influences of the Pleiades, Wolcott wrote a poem,--"The Judgment of
Paris." His biographer, who has read it, has given his critical opinion
that "it would be much worse than Barlow's epic, were it not much
shorter."
The year 1783 brought peace with England, but it found matters in a
dangerous and unsettled state at home. After seven years of revolution
it takes some time to bring a people down to the safe and sober jog-trot
of every-day life. The lower classes were demoralized by the license and
tumult of war, and by poverty; they were surly and turbulent, and showed
a disposition to shake off yokes domestic as well as foreign,--the yoke
of taxation in particular: for every man of them believed that he had
already done more, suffered more, and paid more, than his fair share.
The calamity of a worthless paper legal-tender currency added to the
general discontent. Hence any public measure involving further
disbursements met with angry opposition. Large arrears of pay were due
to soldiers, and bounties had been promised to induce them to disband
peacefully, and to compensate them for the depreciation of the currency.
Congress had also granted five years' extra pay to officers, in lieu of
the half-pay for life which was first voted. The army, in consequence,
became very unpopular. A great clamor was raised against the Cincinnati
Society, and factious patriots pretended to see in it the foundation of
an hereditary aristocracy. The public irritability, excited by pretexts
like these, broke out into violence. In Connecticut, mobs collected to
prevent the army officers from receiving the certificates for the five
years' pay, and a convention was assembled to elect men pledged to
non-payment. Shay and Shattuck headed an insurrection in Massachusetts.
There were riots at Exeter, in New Hampshire. When Shay's band was
defeated and driven out of the State, Rhode Island--then sometimes
called Rogue's Island, from her paper-money operations--refused to give
up the refugee rebels. The times looked gloomy. The nation, relieved
from the foreign pressure which had bound the Colonies together, seemed
tumbling to pieces; each State was an independent sovereignty, free to
go to ruin in its own way. The necessity for a strong central government
to replace English rule became evident to all judicious men; for, as one
Pelatiah Webster remarked, "Thirteen staves, and ne'er a hoop, cannot
make a barrel." The Hartford Wits had fought out the war against King
George; they now took up the pen against King Mob, and placed themselves
in rank with the friends of order, good government, and union. Hence the
"Anarchiad." An ancient epic on "the Restoration of Chaos and
Substantial Blight" was dug up in the ruins of an old Indian fort, where
Madoc, the mythical Welsh Columbus, or some of his descendants, had
buried it. Colonel Humphreys, who had read the "Rolliad" in England,
suggested the plan; Barlow, Hopkins, and Trumbull joined with him in
carrying it out. Extracts from the "Anarchiad" were prepared when
wanted, and the verses applied fresh to the enfeebled body politic. They
chanted the dangers and difficulties of the old Federation and the
advantages of the new Constitution. Union was the burden of their song;
and they took a prophetic view of the stormy future, if thirteen
independent States should divide this territory between them.
"Shall lordly Hudson part contending powers,
And broad Potomac lave two hostile shores?
Must Alleghany's sacred summits bear
The impious bulwarks of perpetual war?
His hundred streams receive your heroes slain,
And bear your sons inglorious to the main?"
We, _miserrimi_, have lived to see it, and to see modern Shayites vote
to establish such a state of things forever.
When the new government was firmly settled and found to work well, the
same class of men who had opposed the Union formed the Anti-Federal,
Democratic, or French party. The Hartford school were Federalists, of
course. Theodore Dwight and Alsop, assisted by Dr. Hopkins, published in
the local papers "The Political Greenhouse" and "The Echo,"--an
imitation of "The Anti-Jacobin,"--"to check the progress of false taste
in writing, and to stem the torrent of Jacobinism in America and the
hideous morality of revolutionary madness." It was a place and time
when, in the Hartford vocabulary,
"Patriot stood synonymous with rogue";
and their versified squibs were let off at men rather than at measures.
As a specimen of their mode of treatment, let us take Matthew Lyon,
first an Irish redemptioner bought by a farmer in Derby, then an
Anti-Federal champion and member of Congress from Vermont; once famous
for publishing Barlow's letter to Senator Baldwin,--for his trial under
the Alien and Sedition Act,--for the personal difficulty when
"He seized the tongs
To avenge his wrongs,
And Griswold thus engaged."