"This beast within a few short years
Was purchased for a yoke of steers;
But now the wise Vermonters say
He's worth six hundred cents a day."
Other leaders of the Anti-Federal party fare no better. Mr. Jefferson's
literary and scientific whims came in for a share of ridicule.
"Great sire of stories past belief;
Historian of the Mingo chief;
Philosopher of Indians' hair;
Inventor of a rocking-chair;
The correspondent of Mazzei,
And Banneker, less black than he," _et seq._
The paper containing this paragraph had the felicity of being quoted in
Congress by the Honorable John Nicholas, of Virginia, to prove that
Connecticut wished to lead the United States into a war with France. The
honorable gentleman read on until he came to the passage,--
"Each Jacobin began to stir,
And sat as though on chestnut-burr,"
when he stopped short. Mr. Dana of Connecticut took up the quotation and
finished it, to the great amusement of the House.
The last number was published in 1805. As we look over the "Echo," and
find nothing in it but doggerel,--generally very dull doggerel,--we
might wonder at the applause it obtained, if we did not recollect how
fiercely the two great parties engaged each other. In a riot, any stick,
stone, or ignoble fragment of household pottery is valuable as a missile
weapon.
While the constellation was shining resplendent over Connecticut, each
bright star had its own particular twinkle. Trumbull had his "Progress
of Dulness," in three cantos,--an imitation, in manner, of Goldsmith's
"Double Transformation." The title is happy. The decline of Miss Harriet
Simper from bellehood to an autumnal marriage, in Canto III., is more
tiresome than the progress of Tom Brainless from the plough-tail to the
pulpit, in Canto I. The Reverend Mr. Brainless, when called and
settled,--
"On Sunday in his best array
Deals forth the dulness of the day."
These two lines, descriptive, unfortunately, of too many ministrations,
are all that have survived of the three cantos. Trumbull's _chef
d'oeuvre_ is "McFingal," begun before the war and finished soon after
the peace. The poem covers the whole Revolutionary period, from the
Boston tea-party to the final humiliation of Great Britain: Lord North
and General Gage, Hutchinson, Judge Oliver, and Treasurer Gray; Doctors
Sam. Peters and Seabury; passive obedience and divine right; no taxation
without representation; Rivington the printer, Massachusettensis, and
Samuel Adams; Yankee Doodle; who began the war? town-meetings,
liberty-poles, mobs, tarring, feathering, and smoking Tories; Tryon,
Galloway, Burgoyne, Prescott, Guy Carleton; paper-money, regulation, and
tender; in short, all the men and topics which preserve our
polyphilosophohistorical societies from lethargic extinction. "McFingal"
hit the taste of the times; it was very successful. But although thirty
editions were sold in shops or hawked about by peddlers, there was no
copyright law in the land, and Trumbull took more praise than solid
pudding by his poetry. It was reprinted in England, and found its way to
France. The Marquis de Chastellux, an author himself, took an especial
interest in American literature. He wrote to congratulate Trumbull upon
his excellent poem, and took the opportunity to lay down "the conditions
prescribed for burlesque poetry." "These, Sir, you have happily seized
and perfectly complied with.... I believe that you have rifled every
flower which that kind of poetry could offer.... Nor do I hesitate to
assure you that I prefer it to every work of the kind,--even to
Hudibras." Notwithstanding the opinion of the pompous Marquis, nobody
reads "McFingal." Time has blotted out most of the four cantos. There
are left a few lines, often quoted by gentlemen of the press, and
invariably ascribed to "Hudibras":--
"For any man with half an eye
What stands before him can espy;
But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen."
"But as some muskets so contrive it
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aimed at duck or plover,
Bear wide and kick their owners over."
"No man e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law."
The last two verses have passed into immortality as a proverb. Perhaps a
few other grains of corn might be picked out of these hundred and
seventy pages of chaff.
Dr. Dwight staked his fame on "The Conquest of Canaan," an attempt to
make an Iliad out of the Old Testament. Eleven books; nine thousand six
hundred and seventy-two dreary verses, full of battles and
thunderstorms; peopled with Irad, Jabin, Hanniel, Hezron, Zimri, and
others like them, more colorless and shadowy than the brave Gyas and the
brave Cloanthus. Not a line of this epic has survived. Shorter and much
better is "Greenfield Hill," a didactic poem, composed, the author said,
to amuse and to instruct in economical, political, and moral sentiments.
Greenfield was, for a time, the scene of the Doctor's professional
labors. His descriptions of New England character, of the prosperity and
comfort of New England life, are accurate, but not vivid. The book is
full of good sense, but there is little poetry in it. True to the
literary instincts of the Pleiads, he shines with reflected light, and
works after Thomson and Goldsmith so closely that in many passages
imitation passes into parody.