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Connecticut (Connecticut, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
r calls him the poet of hatred rather than of love; certainly his reputation at the moment was won as a merciless satirist. The Hartford wits Freneau was a classmate of James Madison at Princeton. Contemporary with him were three men of Connecticut and Yale,--Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow, and Jonathan Trumbull. Like Freneau, these writers began by tentative experiments in prose and verse, and like him they were swept into the current of the Revolution and into the service of political satire. For a time these three writers, who came to be known as the Hartford wits, constituted a genuine literary centre in Connecticut. Literature of the Revolution. The period of their brief supremacy was a remarkable one. The year 1765 marks the end of the colonial period of American writing. Much was still to be uttered from the colonial point of view, but it could no longer go unchallenged. For the next twenty years little was written which did not concern itself in some way with
Brunswick, Me. (Maine, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
r moistening dews, In vestments for the chase array'd, The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer-a shade. Campbell has given this line a rich setting in O'Connor's child:--Now on the grass-green turf he sits, His tassell'd horn beside him laid; Now o'er the hills in chase he flits, The hunter and the deer a shade. There is also a line of Sir Walter Scott which has its origin in Freneau. In the introduction to the third canto of Marmion in the apostrophe to the Duke of Brunswick, we read:--Lamented chief — not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field, And snatch'd the spear but left the shield. In Freneau's poem on the heroes of Eutaw, we have this stanza:--They saw their injur'd country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field, Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear — but left the shield. An anecdote which the late Henry Brevoort was accustomed to relate of his visit to Scott, affords assu
Quebec (Canada) (search for this): chapter 3
n pamphlets. We know now what amazement was produced in Europe when the men who had been supposed to be ignorant backwoodsmen showered the world all at once with statements and arguments which really had dignity, nobility, and force. Such were those four documents sent out by the very first Continental Congress: (1) John Jay's Declaration of rights and Grievances; (2) Richard Henry Lee's Memorial to the inhabitants of the British colonies; (3) John Dickinson's Address to the inhabitants of Quebec; (4) Lee and Dickinson's Petition to the King's most excellent Majesty. These are to be classified not as literature, but rather as printed oratory. An opinion of their high quality does not rest on American judgment alone, but on the verdict given by Lord Chatham in the House of Lords, on Jan. 20, 1775 :-- When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, said Lord Chatham, when you consider their decency, firmness and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, an
Iris (South Carolina, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
rising that his early prose and verse are imitative in form. So is most of the prose and verse in any age. The fact remains to be insisted upon that if his essays and his verse are Addisonian and Butlerian, they have the unmistakable quality of literature. His Ode to sleep, written at about the close of his New Haven residence, owns a greater master than Pope or Butler:-- Descend, and graceful in thy hand, With thee bring thy magic wand, And thy pencil, taught to glow In all the hues of Iris' bow. And call thy bright, aerial train, Each fairy form and visionary shade, That in th' Elysian land of dreams, The flower-inwoven banks along, Or bowery maze that shades the purple streams, Where gales of fragrance breathe th' enamor'd song, In more than mortal charms array'd, People the airy vales and revel in thy reign. This was written at twenty-three, an age which may be expected to produce imitative work. In the mean time, during 1772 and 1773, Trumbull gave unmistakable ev
Eutaw (Alabama, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
on in the apostrophe to the Duke of Brunswick, we read:--Lamented chief — not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field, And snatch'd the spear but left the shield. In Freneau's poem on the heroes of Eutaw, we have this stanza:--They saw their injur'd country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field, Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear — but left the shield. An anecdote which the late Henry Brevoort was accustomed to rfords assurance that the poet was really indebted to Freneau, and that he would not, on a proper occasion, have hesitated to acknowledge the obligation. Mr. Brevoort was asked by Scott respecting the authorship of certain verses on the battle of Eutaw, which he had seen in a magazine, and had by heart, and which he knew were American. He was told that they were by Freneau, when he (Scott) remarked, The poem is as fine a thing as there is of the kind in the language. Mary S. Austin's Life o
Preussen (search for this): chapter 3
ter and the deer-a shade. Campbell has given this line a rich setting in O'Connor's child:--Now on the grass-green turf he sits, His tassell'd horn beside him laid; Now o'er the hills in chase he flits, The hunter and the deer a shade. There is also a line of Sir Walter Scott which has its origin in Freneau. In the introduction to the third canto of Marmion in the apostrophe to the Duke of Brunswick, we read:--Lamented chief — not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field, And snatch'd the spear but left the shield. In Freneau's poem on the heroes of Eutaw, we have this stanza:--They saw their injur'd country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field, Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear — but left the shield. An anecdote which the late Henry Brevoort was accustomed to relate of his visit to Scott, affords assurance that the poet was really indebted to Freneau, and that he would not, on a proper occasion,
Plum Island (Wisconsin, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
r to get up to the wretched bed that lay on it; on which having stretched my tired limbs, and laid my head on a sad-colored pillow, I began to think on the transactions of the past day. Samuel Sewall. Contemporary with Madam Knight was Judge Samuel Sewall, one of the raciest autobiographers since Pepys. He will be remembered mainly for his diary, but not seldom struck a genuine literary note elsewhere; as when he describes the farms and marshes on the Merrimac :-- As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the commanded post, notwithstanding all the hectoring words and hard blows of the proud and boisterous ocean; as long as any salmon or sturgeon shall swim in the streams of Merrimac, or any perch or pickerel in Crane Pond; as long as the sea-fowl shall know the time of their coming, and not neglect seasonably to visit the places of their acquaintance; as long as any cattle shall be fed with the grass growing in the meadows, which do humbly bow down themselves before
United States (United States) (search for this): chapter 3
in the earlier stages of their national life little moved by any kind of poetical imagination. Cicero expressly points out in his Tusculan Disputations that poets came late to Rome but orators early. All this is singularly true of the United States of America as compared with European states. America had astonished Europe with oratory and statesmanship before its literature was born. If it has been often asserted that there was no book published in America, before 1800, which retains a plar genius. He looks gloomily upon the future, however, as regards America, and predicts only a social and political ruin, out of which literature may yet revive amid the ruins of freedom. He goes on to say:-- But the condition of the United States is changing. Luxury is sure to introduce want; and the great inequalities between the very rich and the very poor will be more conspicuous, and comprehend a more formidable host of the latter. The rabble of great cities is the standing army
Rhode Island (Rhode Island, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
ated man could attain. So deep-rooted was this pessimism among them that in talking in my youth with the survivors of the old Federalists, I was never really able to trace a ray of light among them, or even a word of vivacity, in their days of defeat, except one reported to me as uttered, I am happy to say, by my grandfather, who was one of what were called the Essex Junto by Jefferson, and who probably wrote the once noted Laco letters, attacking John Hancock. Mr. James Richardson of Rhode Island, perhaps the last survivor of that circle, has testified that once, in George Cabot's house in Brookline, there was a general moaning among these leaders of a lost cause, and it became a serious question how to treat the victorious Democrats. All were in favor of going down with their colors flying and treating all Democrats as criminals, with sternness only; until Stephen Higginson said, Gentlemen, if you have to live in the house with a cat, you cannot always call her cat, sometimes y
Dedham (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
am Sarah Kemble Knight, who was born in Boston in 1666, taught school there, was reputed excellent as a teacher of English composition, and in 1706 was the instructor of Benjamin Franklin. Her account of a journey on horseback from Boston to New Haven gives us an excellent impression of rustic Colonial life on its homely side. It began on Monday, October 2, 1704, and occupied five days; and the amusing diary was written at odd moments during the journey. A kinsman rode with her as far as Dedham, where she went, as was apparently the custom in that period, to the minister's house to wait for the stage. She declined to stay there over night, but was escorted by Madam Belcher, the minister's wife, to the tavern to seek for a guide. The tavernkeeper's son offered his services, and she thus proceeds:-- Upon this, to my no small surprise, son John arose [the landlord's son], and gravely demanded what I would give him to go with me? Give you? says I, are you John? Yes, says he,
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