“raisings,” corn-huskings, and singing-schools, diversified with the making of maple sugar and cider. Education was confined to the three R's, though the children of wealthy parents were sent to colleges as they now are. It was not a genial social condition, it must be confessed, to which William Cullen Bryant was born, though it might have been worse but for his good father, who was in many respects superior to his rustic neighbors. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, proud of his strength, but his manners were gentle and reserved, his disposition serene, and he was fond of society. He was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives several times, afterward to the state senate, and associated with the cultivated circles of Boston both as legislator and physician.
We have the authority of the poet himself that his father taught his youth the art of verse. His first efforts were several clever “Enigmas,” in imitation of the Latin writers, a translation from Horace, and a copy of verses written in his twelfth year, to be recited at the close of the winter school, “in the presence of the master, the minister of the parish, and a number of private gentlemen.” They were printed on 18 March, 1807, in the “Hampshire Gazette,” from which these particulars are derived, and which was favored with other contributions from the pen of “C. B.” The juvenile poems of William Cullen Bryant are as clever as those of Chatterton, Pope, and Cowley; but they are in no sense original, and it would have been strange if they had been. There was no original writing in America at the time they were written; and if there had been, it would hardly have commended itself to the old-fashioned taste of Dr. Bryant, to whom Pope was still a power in poetry. It was natural, therefore, that he should offer his boy to the strait-laced muses of Queen Anne's time; that the precocious boy should lisp in heroic couplets; and that he should endeavor to be satirical. Politics were running high in the first decade of the present century, and the favorite bugbear in New England was President Jefferson, who, in 1807, had laid an embargo on American shipping, in consequence of the decrees of Napoleon, and the British orders in council in relation thereto. This act was denounced, and by no one more warmly than by Master Bryant, who made it the subject of a satire: “The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times” (Boston, 1808). The first edition was sold, and it is said to have been well received; but doubts were expressed as to whether the author was really a youth of thirteen. His friends came to his rescue in an “Advertisement,” prefixed to a second edition (1809), certifying to his age from their personal knowledge. They also certified to his extraordinary talents, though they preferred to have him judged by his works, without favor or affection, and concluded by saying that the printer was authorized to disclose their addresses.
The early poetical exercises of William Cullen Bryant, like those of all young poets, were colored by the books he read. Among these were the works of Pope, and, no doubt, the works of Cowper and Thomson. The latter, if they were in the library of Dr. Bryant, do not appear to have impressed his son at this time; nor, indeed, does any English poet except Pope, so far as we can judge from his contributions to the “Hampshire Gazette.” They were bookish and patriotic; one, written at Cummington, 8 Jan., 1810. being “The Genius of Columbia”; and another, “An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1812,” to the tune of “Ye Gentlemen of England.” These productions are undeniably clever, but they are not characteristic of their writer, nor of the nature that surrounded his birthplace, with which he was familiar, and of which he was a close observer.
He entered Williams college in his sixteenth year, and remained there one winter, distinguishing himself for aptness and industry in classical learning and polite literature. At the end of two years he withdrew, and began the study of law, first with Judge Howe, of Worthington, and afterward with William Baylies, of Bridgewater. So far he had written nothing but clever amateur verse; but now, in his eighteenth year, he wrote an imperishable poem. The circumstances under which it was composed have been variously related, but they agree in the main particulars, and are thus given in “The Bryant Homestead Book”: “It was here at Cummington, while wandering in the primeval forests, over the floor of which were scattered the gigantic trunks of fallen trees, mouldering for long years, and suggesting an indefinitely remote antiquity, and where silent rivulets crept along through the carpet of dead leaves, the spoil of thousands of summers, that the poem entitled ‘Thanatopsis’ was composed. The young poet had read the poems of Kirke White, which, edited by Southey, were published about that time, and a small volume of Southey's miscellaneous poems; and some lines of those authors had kindled his imagination, which, going forth over the face of the inhabitants of the globe, sought to bring under one broad and comprehensive view the destinies of the human race in the present life, and the perpetual rising and passing away of generation after generation who are nourished by the fruits of its soil, and find a resting-place in its bosom.” We should like to know what lines in Southey and Kirke White suggested “Thanatopsis,” that they might be printed in letters of gold hereafter.
When the young poet quitted Cummington to begin his law studies, he left the manuscript of this incomparable poem among his papers in the house of his father, who found it after his departure, “Here are some lines that our Cullen has been writing,” he said to a lady to whom he showed them. She read them, and, raising her eyes to the face of Dr. Bryant, burst into tears — a tribute to the genius of his son in which he was not ashamed to join. Blackstone bade his Muse a long adieu before he turned to wrangling courts and stubborn law; and our young lawyer intended to do the same (for poetry was starvation in America four-score years ago), but habit and nature were too strong for him. There is no difficulty in tracing the succession of his poems, and in a few instances the places where they were written, or with which they concerned themselves. “Thanatopsis,” for example, was followed by “The Yellow Violet,” which was followed by the “Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,” and the song beginning “Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow.” The exquisite lines “To a Waterfowl” were written at Bridgewater, in his twentieth year, where he was still pursuing the study of law, which appears to have been distasteful to him. The concluding stanza sank deeply into a heart that needed its pious lesson:
|
“He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.”
|
The lawyer-poet had a long way before him, but he did not tread it alone; for, after being admitted to the bar in Plymouth, and practising for a time in Plainfield, near Cummington, he removed to Great Barrington, in Berkshire, where he saw the
