not scruple to collect materials from all quarters. He will ransack the
newest foreign publications, and extract from them whatever can serve
his purpose. He will not forget that a work, which solicits the
attention of many readers, must build its claim on the variety as well
as copiousness of its contents.
"As to _domestic_ publications, besides extracting from them anything
serviceable to the public, he will give a critical account of them, and,
in this respect, make his work an American Review, in which the history
of our native literature shall be carefully detailed.
"He will pay particular attention to the history of passing events. He
will carefully compile the news, foreign and domestic, of the current
month, and give, in a precise and systematic order, that intelligence
which the common newspapers communicate in a vague and indiscriminate
way. His work shall likewise be a repository of all those signal
incidents in private life, which mark the character of the age, and
excite the liveliest curiosity.
"This is an imperfect sketch of his work, and to accomplish these ends,
he is secure of the liberal aid of many most respectable persons in this
city and New York. He regrets the necessity he is under of concealing
these names, since they would furnish the public with irresistible
inducements to read what, _when_ they had read, they would find
sufficiently recommended by its own merits.
"In an age like this, when the foundations of religion and morality have
been so boldly attacked, it seems necessary, in announcing a work of
this nature, to be particularly explicit as to the path which the editor
means to pursue. He, therefore, avows himself to be, without
equivocation or reserve, the ardent friend and the willing champion of
the Christian religion. Christian piety he reveres as the highest
excellence of human beings, and the amplest reward he can seek for his
labour is the consciousness of having, in some degree, however
inconsiderable, contributed to recommend the practice of religious
duties.
"As, in the conduct of this work, a supreme regard will be paid to the
interests of religion and morality, he will scrupulously guard against
all that dishonours or impairs that principle. Everything that savors of
indelicacy or licentiousness will be rigorously proscribed. His poetical
pieces may be dull, but they shall, at least, be free from
voluptuousness or sensuality, and his prose, whether seconded or not by
genius and knowledge, shall scrupulously aim at the promotion of public
and private virtue.
"As a political annalist, he will speculate freely on foreign
transactions; but in his detail of domestic events he will confine
himself as strictly as possible to the limits of a mere historian. There
is nothing for which he has a deeper abhorrence than the intemperance of
party, and his fundamental rule shall be to exclude from his pages all
personal altercation and abuse.
"He will conclude by reminding the public that there is not, at present,
any other monthly publication in America; and that a plan of this kind,
if well conducted, cannot fail of being highly conducive to amusement
and instruction. There are many, therefore, it is hoped, who, when such
a herald as this knocks at their door, will open it without reluctance,
and admit a visitant who calls only once a month; who talks upon every
topic; whose company may be dismissed or resumed, and who may be made to
prate or hold his tongue at pleasure; a companion he will be, possessing
one companionable property in the highest degree--that is to say, a
desire to please.--_Sep. 1, 1803_."
The contents of the magazine corresponded with the contents of the _Port
Folio_; there were the same abuse of Wordsworth, criticisms of Milton
and Shakespeare, and articles upon "literary resemblances." In November,
1803, Brown began to publish in the magazine his "Memoirs of Carwin, the
Biloquist." The following poem, written during the prevalence of the
yellow fever, in 1797, appeared in the _Literary Magazine_ for
September, 1806.
PHILADELPHIA--AN ELEGY.
Written during the prevalence of the Yellow Fever in 1797.
Imperial daughter of the West,
Why thus in widow'd weeds recline?
With every gift of nature blest,
The empire of a world was thine.
Late brighter than the star that beams
When the soft morning carol flows:
Now mournful as the maniac's dreams,
When melancholy veils his woes.
What foe, with more than Gallic ire,
Has thinned thy city's thronging way,
Bade the sweet breath of youth expire,
And manhood's powerful pulse decay?
No Gallic foe's ferocious band,
Fearful as fate, as death severe,
But the destroying angel's hand,
With hotter rage, with fiercer fear.
I saw thee in thy prime of days,
In glory rich, in beauty fair,
When many a patriot shar'd thy praise,
And nurs'd thee with maternal care.
Columbia's genius, veil thy brow,
Guardian of freedom, hither bend:
The prayer of mercy meets thee now,
With healing energy descend.
Chase far the fiend whose burning tread
Consumes the fairest flower that blows;
Bends the sweet lily's bashful head,
And fades the blushes of the rose.
E'en now ill-omened birds of prey
Through the unpeopled mansions rove:
Quench'd is that eye's inspiring ray,
And lost the breezy lip of love.
Yet guard the FRIEND, who wandering near
Haunts which the loitering Schuylkill laves,
Bestows the tributary tear,
Or fans with sighs the drowsy waves.
And while his mercy-dealing hand
Feeds many a famished child of care,
Wave round his brow thy saving wand,
And breathe thy sweetness through the air;
'Till borne on Health's elastic wing,
Aloft the rapid whirlwind flies;
The coldest gale of Zembla bring,
And brace with frost the dripping skies.
Yet bring the naiads, bring their urns,
Haste, and the marble fount unclose,
Through streets where Syrian summer burns,
'Till all the cool libation flows
Cool as the brook that bathes the heath
When noon unfolds his silent hours,
Refreshing as the morning's breath
Adown the cleansing streamlet pours.
Imperial daughter of the West,
No rival wins thy wreath away;
In all the wealth of nature drest,
Again thy sovereign charms display;
See all thy setting glories rise,
Again thy thronging streets appear;
Thy mart a hundred ports supplies,
Thy harvests feed thy circling year.
The magazine lived five years and made eight volumes octavo.
In 1806 Brown began to edit and John Conrad to publish the _American
Register_. It contained abstracts of laws and public proceedings,
reviews of literature and of foreign and domestic scientific
intelligence, American and foreign State papers, etc. After five volumes
had been published, Charles Brockden Brown died in his house at Eleventh
and George Streets, on the 19th of February, 1810. It was in this house,
which was _not_ upon the east side of Eleventh Street, as Neal asserted
in _Blackwood's Magazine_, nor was it "a low, squalid, two-story house,"
that Thomas Sully saw him, and said: "I saw him a little before his
death. I had never known him--never heard of him--never read any of his
works. He was in a deep decline. It was in the month of November--our
Indian summer, when the air is full of smoke. Passing a window one day,
I was caught by the sight of a man with a remarkable physiognomy,
writing at a table in a dark room. The sun shone directly upon his head.
I never shall forget it. The dead leaves were falling then--it was
Charles Brockden Brown."
Of the obscure ground in which the body of this literary pioneer was
laid George Lippard wrote in the _Nineteenth Century_ (p. 27):
"The time has come when the authors of America, the men who view with
pride the growth of a pure and elevated National literature, should go
to the Quaker graveyard and bear the bones of Brockden Brown to that
Laurel Hill which he loved in his boyhood; yes, let the remains of the
martyr author sleep beneath the shadow of some dark pine, whose
evergreen boughs, swaying to the winter wind, bend over the rugged cliff
and sweep the waters of the Schuylkill as it rolls on amid its hilly
shores, like an image of the rest which awaits the blessed in a better
world. Then a solitary column of white marble, rising like a form of
snow among the green boughs, shall record the neglect and woe and glory
of the author's life, in a single name--Charles Brockden Brown."
"Wieland," the most powerful of Brown's novels, was published in
Philadelphia in 1798. It was followed by "Ormond, or the Secret Witness"
(1799), "Arthur Mervyn" (1799), "Edgar Huntley, or the Memoirs of a
Sleep-Walker" (1801), "Clara Howard" and "Jane Talbot" (1801). All these
romances dealt with sombre and mysterious or terrible subjects.
"Wieland" was a story of monstrous crime occasioned through the agency
of ventriloquism. "Arthur Mervyn" contained vivid descriptions of the
yellow fever pestilence in Philadelphia in 1793. "Edgar Huntley"
followed the fortunes of a somnambulist in the mountain fastnesses of
Western Pennsylvania.
When Brown began to write "the churchyard romance" was in fashion, and
novelists revelled in tales of horror and of terror, dwelling long and
painfully upon the most loathsome details of some ghastly bit of fancy.
It was the time of Lewis's "Tales of Terror," of Walpole's "Castle of
Otranto," of Beckford's "Vathek," and of Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of
Udolpho" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein." William Godwin, too, wrote
ghostly stories of crime and supernatural agencies, and from Godwin,
Charles Brockden Brown caught his style. The influence of Godwin is
noticeable in Brown's first work, "Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of
Women" (1797). Godwin's "Falkland" and "Caleb Williams" are the models
of "Wieland" and "Ormond."
It is interesting to find young Percy Bysshe Shelley confessing his
obligations to the Philadelphia novelist, and saying that Brown's novels
had influenced him beyond any other books. Traces of "Wieland" are to be
found deeply stamped upon "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne." It is a singular
chapter of literary history that records the progress of William
Godwin's social theories and tales of horror across the Atlantic to an
obscure house in Philadelphia and their return in a new literary form
into the hands of William Godwin's son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
himself a poet of American descent.
The British magazines of 1804 contain flattering notices of Brown, and
his novels were reprinted and read with interest and critical approval
in England. At home he has fallen into undeserved oblivion, and the
attempts in 1857 and 1887 to revive the interest in his works proved
fruitless. His style had in it no elements of permanent life, but he was
the first to discover the capabilities of romance in America, and used
in all his books American characters and scenery.
Sir Walter Scott so greatly admired the works of the American novelist
that he named the hero of Guy Mannering after him and gave to another of
the characters of the same story the familiar name of "Arthur Mervyn."
Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), a nephew of David Rittenhouse, and
the successor of Benjamin Rush as professor of the theory and practice
of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, edited the _Philadelphia
Medical and Physical Journal_ from November 1, 1804, to May, 1807. It
was published irregularly by J. Conrad and Co.
The _Evening Fireside, or Literary Miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1805-1806,
was established by a literary club, and published by Joseph Rakestraw.
The second volume, which began January 4, 1806, completed the work.
DRAMATIC MAGAZINES.
Notes on the stage and criticism of the drama had frequently been given
place in the _Port Folio_, and Brown's _Literary Magazine_ had published
a farcical account of a "Theatrical Campaign" by Dick Buckram (Vol. I,
p. 222), but the first magazine in America that attempted to take the
theatre for its province was the _Theatrical Censor_, By a Citizen,
first published in Philadelphia, December 9, 1805, and continued until
November 17, 1806.
It was succeeded by the _Theatrical Censor and Critical Miscellany_, by
Gregory Gryphon, Esq., Philadelphia, Saturday, October 11, 1806. Both
these periodicals were issued during the theatrical season only, and the
latter one was published in the interest of the theatres of
Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston. It was published on
Saturdays, and made sixteen pages octavo.
The second _Theatrical Censor_ was followed by the _Thespian Mirror_, in
New York, edited by John Howard Payne, then a youth of fourteen years.
Still later came the _Boston Magazine_ and the _Polyanthus_.
Matthew Carey introduced the third theatrical journal to the
Philadelphians. It was the _Thespian Monitor and Dramatick Miscellany_,
by Barnaby Bangbar, Esq. (1809). It was begun Saturday, November 25,
1809. There is but a single issue of this publication in the British
Museum, and its contents are almost entirely biographical. This copy was
the property of John Howard Payne.
In 1810 Samuel T. Bradford was the most enterprising publisher in
Philadelphia. With his partner, Inskeep, he printed in 1812 the _Port
Folio_. With the same partner he issued in January, 1810, the _Mirror of
Taste and Dramatic Censor_. The editor was Stephen Cullen Carpenter, an
Irishman, who had entered the East India service, where he remained
fourteen years, retired with the rank of major, and returned to England.
He wrote political pamphlets at the commencement of the French
Revolution, and was made reporter of Debates in Commons by Edmund Burke.
He reported the trial of Hastings, and came to America about 1800, and
edited a magazine in South Carolina until he was engaged by Bradford and
Inskeep to conduct the _Mirror of Taste_.
The magazine was of small octavo size, each number contained about one
hundred pages, and was illustrated with a fine portrait of an actor or
actress. The regular performances at the theatres were criticised with a
good deal of pungency and acumen. It is said in the preface that "London
boasts several periodical publications founded on the _Drama_ alone. In
America there has not yet been one of that description." In January,
1811, the magazine changed hands, and was published by Thomas Barton
Zantzinger & Co., in the Shakespeare Buildings at Sixth and Chestnut
Streets.
At the close of the first year of the magazine a dramatic event occurred
that caused unusual excitement in Philadelphia, and led to important
consequences. The great tragedian, George Frederick Cooke, whom Edmund
Kean pronounced "the greatest of all actors, Garrick alone excepted,"
arrived in New York and appeared on 21st October, 1810, as _Richard III_
before two thousand spectators in the Park Theatre.
It was then that he requested the great audience to stand while "God
Save the King" should be played, and during the storm that followed
calmly took snuff until the audience acceded to his demand.
From New York he proceeded to Philadelphia. No such acting had been seen
in America. The excitement among play-going people was extraordinary.
"He was to play _Richard_ on a Monday night, and on Sunday evening the
steps of the theatre were covered with groups of porters, and other men
of the lower orders, prepared to spend the night there, that they might
have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take
their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning
the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the
theatre was impassable. When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up
and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the
door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the
crowd into the theatre. Some of these fellows were hired by gentlemen to
secure places, and others took boxes on speculation, sure of selling
them at double or treble the regular prices. When the time came for
opening the doors in the evening, the crowd was so tumultuous that it
was evident there was little certainty that the holders of box tickets
would obtain their places, and for ladies the attempt would be
dangerous. A placard was therefore displayed, stating that all persons
who had tickets would be admitted at the stage door before the front
doors were opened. This notice soon drew such a crowd to the back of the
theatre that when Cooke arrived he could not get in. He was on foot with
Dunlap, one of the New York managers, and he was obliged to make himself
known before he could be got through the press. 'I am like the man going
to be hanged,' he said, 'who told the crowd they would have no fun
unless they made way for him.'"
The writer of these lines was Charles Robert Leslie, who, on the night
in question, occupied a place in the flies, and from that aerial station
"first saw George Frederick Cooke, the best _Richard_ since Garrick, and
who has not been surpassed even by Edmund Kean" (Autobiography of C. R.
Leslie, p. 18). Soon after this memorable night Leslie made a likeness
of Cooke which attracted Bradford's attention, and a fund was speedily
raised by subscription to enable the young artist to study painting two
years in Europe. Armed with letters to English artists, Leslie sailed
from New York on the 11th of November, 1811, in company with Mr.
Inskeep. So slight a circumstance gained for him an introduction into
the great world of West and Allston, and Landseer and Fuseli, and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, and gave to England and the world the treasures of the
Vernon and the Sheepshank's collections.
In the preface to the _Mirror of Taste_ (Vol. IV) the editors recognize
the importance to them of the visit of Cooke. The magazine "rose into
estimation just at that singular crisis when a great theatrical
character unexpectedly visiting this country held a new light to the
stage, and, pointing out the true dramatic representation, opened to our
people a new train of thought, gave to the public mind a new spring, and
imparted an impulse before unfelt, with a just and elegant direction to
the general taste, roused the feelings and perceptions from listlessness
and sloth, and infused into the best bosoms of the nation a generous
spirit, which gave new life to the arts, quickened them into action and
effect, called forth the infant genius of a LESLIE to the public view,
and bade breathing portraits start from the canvas of a Sully."[19]
[19] Sully's painting of Cooke as _Richard III_ in the Philadelphia
Academy of the Fine Arts.
The father of Charles Robert Leslie was Robert Leslie, who had been a
watchmaker at Elktown, Md., and had removed to Philadelphia in 1786. He
was a member of the American Philosophical Society and a friend of Rush
and Barton and Wistar and Physick. It was while residing in London that
Charles Robert was born, October 19, 1794. An elder sister, Eliza, was
born in 1787 in Philadelphia. She won a prize for a story, "Mrs.
Washington Potts," in _Godey's Lady's Book_, and afterwards edited the
_Gift_, an annual, and _Miss Leslie's Magazine_, a monthly publication
(1843).
_Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1824 congratulated America on C. R. Leslie's
success. He never lost his profound respect and affection for Samuel
Bradford, and named his second son after him. In the second year (1813)
of Leslie's residence in London, Washington Allston's health became
seriously affected, and he resolved to visit Bristol. Coleridge, who was
affectionately attached to Allston, followed him thither. "The house was
so full," writes Leslie, in his autobiographical recollections, "that
the poet was obliged to share a double-bedded room with me. We were kept
up late in consequence of the critical condition of Allston, and when we
retired Coleridge, seeing a copy of Knickerbocker's History of New York
which I had brought with me, lying on the table, took it up and began
reading. I went to bed, and think he must have sat up the greater part
of the night, for the next day he had nearly got through Knickerbocker.
This was many years before it was published in England, and the work
was, of course, entirely new to him. He was delighted with it" (p. 23).
THE ANALECTIC.--Washington Irving, who had met Allston in Rome in 1804,
and who was for a time almost swerved from his literary purpose by his
desire to become a painter, and with whose first literary triumph
Coleridge thus became familiar, was also a Philadelphia editor. In 1809
E. Bronson and others began to print upon their Lorenzo press _The
Select Reviews and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines_, edited by Samuel
Ewing. The magazine was bought by Moses Thomas, in 1812, who changed its
name to the _Analectic_. Irving was its editor in 1813-14. He
contributed to it some of the essays of the "Sketch Book," "Traits of
Indian Character," and "Philip of Pokanoket." He reviewed Robert Treat
Paine, E. C. Holland, Paulding and Lord Byron, and wrote for it
biographies of Lawrence, Burrows, Perry and Porter.[20]
[20] It is not a little remarkable that the list of Washington Irving's
contributions to the _Analectic Magazine_ should have come to me in an
Athenian newspaper.
+Tô 1813 ho Erbing anelabe tên syntaxin tou periodikou
"Anakletik', hekdidomenou kata mêna en Philadelpheia. En aunô egrapse
pollas biographias tôn periphanesterôn andrôn, hôn hai kyriôterai eisin
hai tôn Amerikanon Pôrter kai Mporrôs kai tôn Anglôn poiêtôn Byrônos,
Mouar kai Kampellou."--EBLOMAS.+ December 1, 1890.
Paulding and Verplanck wrote for the magazine, signing their articles
"P." and "V."
William Darlington (1782-1863), Pennsylvanian, after whom was named the
Darlingtonica California (a species of pitcher-plant), went to India as
ship's surgeon in 1806, and published in the _Analectic Magazine_ a
sketch of his voyage called "Letters from Calcutta."
The _Analectic_ contains a number of valuable portraits. The first
lithograph ever made in America is in this magazine for July 1819. It
represents a woodland scene--a flowing stream and a single house upon
the bank. It was made by Bass Otis, who followed the suggestions of
Judge Cooper and Dr. Brown, of Alabama. The drawing was made upon a
stone from Munich, presented to the American Philosophical Society by
Mr. Thomas Dobson, of Philadelphia. The _Analectic Magazine_ was finally
converted into the _Literary Gazette_ and died one year later (December,
1821).[21]
[21] "I observe," said a gentleman at the Athenæum, "that the form of
the _Analectic Magazine_ was changed on the first of this month." "No,"
replied his friend, "it has been _weakly_ for some time past."
WITTY AND SATIRICAL MAGAZINES.
The _Tickler_ was edited by George Helmbold, and was first issued,
September 16, 1807, under the pen-name of "Toby Scratch 'Em." It had for
its motto:
"Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear."--_Pope._
It was to be issued every Wednesday morning, at the price of four
dollars per annum, from 131 South Front Street. The first volume of
fifty-two numbers was not completed until February 8, 1809. Helmbold
enlisted in the army and was promoted to a lieutenancy at Lundy's Lane.
After the war he kept the Minerva Tavern at Sixth and Sansom Streets. He
afterward edited the _Independent Balance_.
The _Trangram, or Fashionable Trifler_, by "Christopher Crag, Esq., his
Grandmother and Uncle," was published in Philadelphia by George E. Blake
in 1809. It foreshadowed its wit and its satire in its introductory
parody of _Macbeth_:
"How now, ye cunning, sharp and secret wags,
What is't ye do?
A deed with a double name."