A History of American Literature/Chapter 6
V.
THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION.
I. THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION.
The War of Independence, that struggle in the forests of a new world, so full of heroism, of romance and poetry, remained unsung for half a century after its close. "No poetry," says Stedman, "was begotten of the rage of that heroic strife; its humor, hatred, hope, suffering, prophecy, were feebly uttered, so far as verse was concerned, in the mode and language inherited years before from the coarsest English satirists."
But if there was a lack of poetry, there was certainly no lack of versifiers. Rhymed politics at great length burdened the weekly newspapers. Never before was the Muse so harnessed to the political chariot, never since have poems on so ambitious a scale been attempted. Three epics, each of them almost as long as the Iliad, are among the poetical products of the period. Says Professor Beers, "An effort was made to establish by tour de force a national literature of a bigness commensurate with the scale of American nature, and the destinies of the new republic."
But a literature cannot be made at will by sheer force. The ponderous epics, that so impressed their first readers, are now readable, as Leslie Stephen said of Johnson's Irene, "only by men in whom a sense of duty has been abnormally developed." In them one searches almost in vain for a touch of nature, for a bit of genuine poetry. Almost every line reveals its dependence on English models. The authors openly, even proudly, confessed their imitation. Timothy Dwight published "America, a Poem in the Style of Pope's Windsor Forest," and the same author declared in his poem "Greenfield Hill" that he designed "to imitate the manner of several British poets." When M'Fingal appeared, there echoed from all sides, as the highest praise that could be given, the verdict that it could hardly be told from Butler's Hudibras.
The Revolutionary rhymers were not fortunate in their models. It was a time when English poetry was at its lowest ebb. The artificial school of Pope had for a century and a half bound British verse1731–1800. Cowper.
1770–1850. Wordsmith.
1771–1832. Scott.
1772–1834. Coleridge.
1774–1843. Southey.
1779–1852. Moore.
1788–1824. Byron.
1792–1822. Shelly.
1795–1821. Keats. with its "ten-linked chain." All that was spontaneous and natural had been frowned upon. The last half of the Eighteenth Century found England without a poet of the first rank and with little promise for the future. The American imitators had to take as guides inferior versifiers like Darwin or Hayley, or go back to Pope and Goldsmith. The new natural school, led by Thomson, and Gray, and Cowper, had yet made little headway. Later, when the powerful voices of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey began to dominate the chorus of English verse, the Americans would not listen, since these poets were ardent democrats. The splendor of the day of Scott and Byron and Keats was yet to come.
Songs and Ballads. — (See Moore's Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, 1855; and G. C. Eggleston's American War Ballads and Lyrics, 1889.) Every war has its songs and ballads, little waifs that spring up almost spontaneously to die often as quickly. The early Colonial wars were the occasion of a few curious ballads; "The Song of Braddock's Men," a lively little lyric, commencing:
"To arms, to arms! my jolly grenadiers,"
survives from the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary struggle produced its full quota of verse. While the most of the songs that echoed about the camp-fires of Boston, and Morristown, and Valley Forge have passed into oblivion, they are well represented, perhaps, by such survivors as Jonathan Mitchell Sewall's "War and Washington," an ambitious lyric much sung during the war, and the anonymous "Yankee Doodle," that piece of rollicking doggerel which has become undeservingly famous.
Of ballads of the war large numbers have come down to us in the columns of contemporary newspapers. "The Taxation of America," written in 1778 by Peter St. John, tells at length the early history of the war. "The Ballad of Nathan Hale," the "Tale of John Burgoyne," and "Bold Hawthorne" — the surgeon's record of the cruise of the privateer, Fair American — were all famous in their day. From Philadelphia came the humorous ballad, "The Battle of the Kegs," written by the Francis Hopkinson whose name is signed to the Declaration of Independence. Joseph Hopkinson, a son of this early humorist, afterwards wrote the patriotic song, "Hail Columbia," a production of small literary merit, saved from oblivion only by the stirring music to which it is joined. On the Tory side, the unfortunate Major André created, with his "Cow Chase," a comical parody of the old ballad "Chevy Chase," much fun at the expense of "Mad" Anthony Wayne. The last stanza of this poem seems to have been almost prophetic:
In Boston, Robert Treat Paine, Jr., gained great contemporary fame and some seven hundred and fifty dollars in substantial cash, with a little poem entitled "Adams and Liberty," a production which seems dull enough, however, at the present day.
1. John Trumbull (1750–1831).
"The American Butler."
Life (see Moses Coit Tyler's Three Men of Letters, 1895; also S. C. Goodrich's Recollections of a Lifetime, 1857).
The representative literary product of the Revolu tionary Age, the one that, more than all others, breathesThe Progress of Dulness, a satire.
Elegy on the Times. 1774.
M'Fingal. 1775–1782.
Essays (with Dwight). forth the spirit of that heroic time, is Trumbull's long, self-styled epic, M'Fingal, a poem which deserves the high praise of being numbered among the forces that accomplished our independence. M'Fingal was written, so its author tells us, "to satirize the follies and extravagancies of my countrymen, as well as of their enemies." But the follies of his countrymen are lightly touched upon, while M'Fingal, who represents the Tories, is destined to defeat and disgrace in every encounter with his sturdy opponents. Utterly confounded by the logic of the Whig champion, with whom he attempts discussion, he is tarred and feathered and forced to flee for his life into the camp of General Gage at Boston. The poem is permeated through and through with a sly humor that was irresistible to its first readers. Like its great model, Hudibras it is full of epigram and couplets that provoke quotation.
Trumbull was a native of Connecticut and a member of the class of 1767, at Yale College. After serving as tutor for several years, he studied law with John. Adams in Boston, afterwards practising his profession in Hartford, where for eighteen years he was a judge of the Superior Court. His complete poetical works were first published in Hartford by S. C. Goodrich, in 1820.
Suggested Reading. — Tyler's Three Men of Letters.
2. Timothy Dwight (1752–1817)
Life (by W. B. Sprague in Sparks' American Biography, Vol. 14; also Memoir by his son, Sereno O. Dwight. See Goodrich's Recollections).The Conquest of Canaan. 1785
Greenfield Hill.
Theology Explained and Defended.
Travels in New England and New York. 4 vols.
Although the author of an epic in eleven books and of several other ambitious productions in heroic verse, Timothy Dwight, as might be expected of a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, is better known as a theologian, scholar, and educator than a poet. After his graduation at Yale, in 1769, he became successively a tutor in the college, a chaplain in the Continental Army, pastor at Northampton and Greenfield Hill, and, during the last twenty-two years of his life, the president of Yale College. His principal prose work, Theology Explained and Defended, was delivered in the form of sermons, one hundred and seventy-three in number, before the Yale students.
While in the Continental Army Dwight composed several patriotic songs, the one best known beginning
His long and dreary epic, The Conquest of Canaan, written in the rhymed couplets of Pope, is excessively unnatural and monotonous throughout. The same may be said of nearly all of his rhyming attempts, though Greenfield Hill contains here and there a true poetic touch. Several of his hymns still retain their place in the hymn books, the best known being his metrical version of the Söd Psalm:
His Travels in New England and New York, notes of vacation rambles, are full of keen observation and have a permanent value.
In scholarship and force of character, Dwight has had few superiors since Edwards.
3. Joel Barlow (1755–1812).
Life (by Charles B. Todd, 1886; also, Tyler's Three Men of Letters, 1895; and Everest's Poets of Connecticut).
Joel Barlow completes the somewhat remarkable trio of "epic poets" that made Connecticut prominent durThe Columbiad. 1808
Hasty Pudding.ing the Revolutionary period. His early history does not much differ from that of Trumbull and Dwight. Like them he entered Yale College, graduating in 1778; like Dwight he joined the Continental Army as chaplain, and like Trumbull he afterwards entered the legal profession. He had recited an ambitious poem at his graduation and nine years later had published by subscription The Vision of Columbus, but these and other poems from his pen he incorporated in his colossal epic, The Columbiad. This book, first published in 1808, with engravings executed in London, was the most magnificent specimen of book-making that had ever been attempted in America. From a literary point of view, however, it ranks among the curiosities of American literature. In ten books and over seven thousand lines it tells, in the metre of Pope, the entire history of America both real and imaginary. The poet represents Hesper as conducting Columbus to a lofty elevation, whence he shows him at a glance all the future kingdoms of the New World and the glory of them. The varied panorama of American history is unfolded before him and he is duly impressed with the tremendous possibilities open to the young republic. The theme is certainly broad enough for an epic, but unfortunately Barlow was not an epic poet. There are here and there beautiful passages, but the poem is unwieldy, full of digressions and curious expressions. Hawthorne declared that it should be dramatized and put upon the stage to the accompaniment of artillery and thunder and lightning.
Barlow's humorous little poem Hasty Pudding, written in France in 1793 and dedicated to Martha Washington, is his best claim to remembrance. As a statesman and diplomatist Barlow holds a high place in American history. He was consul to Algiers and to France, besides being sent at different times on many important foreign missions.
Suggested Reading. — Hasty Pudding, Canto I.
"The Hartford Wits." — With Trumbull, Dwight, and Barlow as leaders, Yale became for a time the intellectual centre and Hartford the literary capital of America. About these gathered a really brilliant little band of ephemeral versifiers who lent their aid to the Federalist party, and with their spicy satirical poems gave picturesqueness to the controversy of the times. First appeared The Anarchiad (1786–87), a long poem written in concert by Barlow, Trumbull, David Humphreys, and Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, and published in the New Haven Gazette. Afterwards followed The Echo, and The Political Greenhouse, from the pens of Richard Alsop, Hopkins, Theodore Dwight, a son of Timothy Dwight, and others. But the brilliancy of these "Pleiades of Connecticut" was only a passing phenomenon.
4. Philip Freneau (1752–1832).
Life (by E. A. Duyckink, with Poems of Philip Freneau, 1865). Although Trumbull, the laureate of the age, made the grand prophecy that
"The Wild Honeysuckle"
"To a Honey Bee"
"The House of Night"
"The Indian Burying Ground"
"The Indian Student"
"The Parting Glass"the fame of all these poets has vanished. with their generation, while a contemporary, an unpretentious scribbler of newspaper verse, who shared nothing in the prophecy, has become immortal simply because he forgot once or twice the lifeless. rules and models of his age and sang spontaneously of Nature.
Philip Freneau was born in New York City, of French parentage, in 1752. He received his education at Princeton, New Jersey, where he was a classmate and roommate of James Madison, but before he had settled down to the study of his chosen profession of law, the Revolution changed his plans. During the struggle his burlesques and patriotic lyrics were very popular with the patriots, and after its close he continued to pour out a surprising amount of political verse, the most of it written in support of Jefferson and his party. In 1790 he became editor of the New York Advertiser. Later he was appointed translator in the State Department at Philadelphia, then the seat of government, serving in the meantime as editor of the National Gazette. In 1797, after editing for a time the Jersey Chronicle, he started in New York The Timepiece and Literary Chronicle, which had, however, but a brief existence. During the last years of his life he was the commander of a coasting vessel plying between southern ports and the West Indies.
No less than twelve editions of single poems and collections of poems, some of which bore the imprint of their author, appeared during Freneau's lifetime. But while the most of these are no better than the average newspaper verses of his day, among them there is to be found here and there a thing of beauty. "The Wild Honeysuckle," a little lyric of four stanzas, is the first bud of that branch of literature which reached its full flower in Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow. Professor Greenough White declares it "the first stammer of poetry in America." As such, it deserves to be quoted entire:
The American Landscape. — As yet the wonderful beauties of the American landscape had been unsung. The glories of the autumn woods, the dreamy haze of the Indian Summer, the dainty wild flowers all new to the botanist, with a language and mythology as yet unknown; the pensive beauties of the springtime; the deer-haunted forest; the little nameless lake afar in the hemlock woods with its legend all untold; the broad prairies; the fading race of red men, — all these were full of wonderful poetic possibility and awaiting their laureate. Freneau little knew of the possibilities of the wonderland in which he was the pioneer. In his "Indian Burying Ground," his "Indian Student," and other pieces he struck the first poetic note with the Indian for a theme. To the early Americans the Indian had been anything but a poetic creature. He had been looked upon by eyes distorted with terror. In Puritan New England he had been considered an agent of Satan himself. But as he had vanished from his old hunting-grounds the romantic mist that is wont to involve a fading race, no matter how ugly, had begun to enfold him. Freneau was the first to perceive this new light in its literary bearings, and, though he caught it but imperfectly, he deserves praise as the first pioneer in a new literary field.
Frencau's "House of Night," a sombre poem suggesting Coleridge, is the first note in the weird chorus soon. swelled by Brown, Poe, and Hawthorne.
Required Reading. — "The House of Night;" "To a Honey Bee;" "The Indian Student."
II. THE ROMANCE.
[For definition, see preface to Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables; consult also Richardson, II., 336–340.] Toward the close of the Eighteenth Century the novel of real life, as Fielding wrote it, gave way to the romance, and soon Mrs. Radcliffe was the most popular English writer of fiction. A school of followers immediately arose, which soon carried this form of fiction beyond bounds that could be tolerated. The field of this school1717–1797. Horace Walpole.The Castle of Otranto.
1760–1844. William Beckford. Vathek.
1764–1833. Ann Radcliffe. The Mysteries of Udolpho.
1756–1836. William Godwin. Caleb Williams.
1755–1818. M. G. Lewis. The Monk.
Tales of Terror.
1717–1797. Mrs. Shelley. Frankenstein.
is well indicated by the titles of the books that it produced. Its most gifted member was Godwin, whose Caleb Williams is a powerful though unwholesome romance. The strong, healthful village tales of Jane Austen, and the sturdy romances of Scott, put to flight these pestilent night mists, but not before they had made a lasting impression upon our literature.
Lack of Background in America. — (Stedman. Ch. I., 3; Richardson, II., 282-281.) Prose fiction in America is of a comparatively recent date. Romance, with an American background, was hard to make in the early years of the republic when the Colonial and Revolutionary periods seemed as yet too near for romantic perspective. "Everything," wrote Prescott, "wore a spick-and-span new aspect, and lay in the broad garish sunshine of everyday life." Even in recent years we find Hawthorne complaining of the difficulties that attended his work:
"No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow." — Preface to The Marble Faun.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810).
"They [Brown's novels] are the historical beginning of all imaginative prose literature in America; and it is impossible to understand its development without having read them." — Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Life (by William Dunlap, with the 1815 edition of Brown's novels; by W. II. Prescott inWieland.
Ormond.
Arthur Mervyn.
Edgar Huntly.
Clara Howard.
June Talbot. Sparks' American Biography; by Charles J. Stevenson. An elegant edition of Brown's novels appeared in 1887).
Brown was born in Philadelphia, of Quaker ancestry, Jan. 17, 1771. Of retiring habits and delicate health, he received much of his education at home, where, left largely to himself, he became an omnivorous reader. At the age of sixteen he had, as was the fashion of his day, planned three epic poems, none of which, fortunately, ever came to maturity. Shortly afterwards he began the study of law, but soon abandoning the profession for which he was in no way fitted, he gave himself wholly to literary work. In 1798, while living in New York City, he published Wieland, his first romance, and following this in rapid succession, five others, completing the series upon which his fame depends.
In 1799, Brown established in New York the Monthly Magazine and American Review, which died, however, before the year was out. Nothing daunted, he established in Philadelphia the Literary Magazine and American Register, which continued with considerable success for five years. During the last of his life Brown wrote many political pamphlets and several excellent. biographies.
Wieland, the first of Brown's romances, is a wild, improbable story abounding in stilted description and ghastly incident. The hero, induced by voices that he believes to be from heaven, but which prove to have proceeded from a ventriloquist, deliberately sacrifices with his own hand his wife and children. Arthur Mervyn, a vivid picture of the yellow fever scourge in Philadelphia in 1793, written from actual experience, is, for faithfulness of description, almost the equal of Defoe's Journal of the Great Plague. Edgar Huntley; or the Memoirs of a Sleep Walker is without doubt Brown's strongest work. Its scenes are laid in the wild and almost inaccessible recesses of the early Pennsylvania forests. Aside from the morbid element pervading the book, it might have been written by Cooper. It introduces the Indian, and portrays with rare skill the scenery and life of the woods.
His Style. — (Prescott's essay on Charles Brockden Brown Richardson, II., 286-289.) Brown took as his master the English novelist Godwin, and, as a result, his books belong on the same shelf as Caleb Williams and The Mysteries of Udolpho. Judged by the standards set by Poe and Hawthorne, his work is crude and defective in art. The story is at times tediously spun out; character is dissected with disgusting minuteness; the plots are glaringly improbable; the characters either monsters or angels. Ile is not even a "clumsy Poe," as some have called him, so vastly inferior is his art to his who produced the "Fall of the House of Usher."
Brown's excellencies are his graphic portrayals of action and his descriptions of wild nature. He had the art of stimulating expectation; it is hard to lay down one of his romances unfinished; one reads on and on in a sort of ghastly dream until at length the end of the book completes the hideous nightmare.
Suggested Reading — Prescott's essay on Charles Brockden Brown.