sages, that the young dramatist had read Shake speare. FROM THE PRINCE OF PARTHIA. Glad Ctes'phon Pours forth her numbers, like a rolling deluge, Gotazes. The spacious streets, which lead up to the temple, Are strew'd with flow'rs; each, with frantic joy, Thy matchless worth, and be a shining joy! The following lines are happily expressed :- Had given her order up to gen'ral ruin; Fain would I cast this tiresome being off, Like an old garment worn to wretchedness. How sweet the eloquence of dying men! With a license to be matched nowhere out of Thomas Heywood and a few other early English dramatists, he has introduced, amidst his Persian scenes, a song to Phillis. Among his miscellanies is what may be called a patriotic version of the first Psalın. Its opening stanza is Blest is the man who never lent He also wrote A Pastoral to the Memory of General Wolfe, and an ambitious poem on Victory, which contains some forcible imagery. POESY FROM THE COURT OF FANCY. Sweet Poesy was seen their steps behind, With golden tresses sporting in the wind; In careless plaits did her bright garments flow, SONG. Young Thyrsis with sighs often tells me his tale, And on each fair poplar hangs sonnets of love. can, Since wealth and not manners, 'tis now makes the man. But should I fail here, and my hopes be all past, Thus Delia enliven'd the grove with her strain, A DITHYRAMBIC ON WINE I. Come! let Mirth our hours employ, The rosy juice our bosom fires, See, great Bacchus now descending, In smiling state- Let Echo resound The joyful news all around. II. Fond Mortals come, if love perplex, Who'd whine for woman's giddy sex If beauty's bloom thy fancy warms, Cloth'd in superior charms; More lovely than the blushing morn, When first the op'ning day Bedecks the thorn, And makes the meadows gay. See and adore; confess her all divine, The Queen of Love and Joy Heed not thy Chloe's scorn J Jaine Thomas Paine was born of Quaker parentage, the son of a stay-maker, at Thetford, in the county of Norfolk, England, January 29, 1736. He received a grammar-school education in his native town, and early developed a taste for poetry, which his parents discouraged, confining him at the age of thirteen, for the next five years, to his father's uninteresting and laborious calling. In his twentieth year, young Paine went to London, where he worked at his trade, relieving its monotony by a cruise in a privateer. In 1758 he is stay-maker again at Dover, and in 1759, in the same occupation at Sandwich, where he married the daughter of an exciseman, who died the following year. The occupation of his father-inlaw opened a new prospect for him, and he abandoned his trade for an office in the excise, which he attained after some preliminary training in his home at Thetford, at the age of twenty-five. His business of exciseman was varied by employment as teacher in two London academies, a position which enabled him to acquire some philosophical knowledge from the lectures delivered in the metropolis. In 1768 he became established at Lewes, in Sussex, as exciseman, where he married the daughter of a grocer and tobacconist recently deceased, to whose trade he succeeded. He belonged to a club of the place, where he maintained his stiff Whig opinions with pertinacity and elegance of expression. He wrote at Lewes his ode lished in the Gentleman's Magazine. on the Death of General Wolfe, which was pub His business as a grocer seems to have led him into some unwarrantable smuggling practices, for which he was dismissed the service in 1774, when he went to London as an adventurer, having previously parted with his wife by mutual agreement. He was fortunate in procuring a letter to Benjamin Franklin from a commissioner of the excise, who had been impressed with the ability with which Paine had urged an increase of salary for the officers of that body, in a pamphlet which he had drawn up in their behalf. Franklin advised him to go to America, whither he set off immediately, reaching Philadelphia in the beginning of the year 1775, on the eve of the actual outbreak of the Revolution. He was at once employed by Aitken,* a bookseller of that city, with a salary of £25 currency a year, as editor of the Pennsylvanian Magazine, for which he wrote the introduction, a felicitous sentence of which has been noticed by his biographers. Alluding to the season, January, and the quite as chilling nature of such enterprises in those times, he says: "Thus encompassed with difficulties, this first number of the Pennsylvanian Magazine entreats a favorable reception; of which we shall only say, that like the early snowdrop it comes forth in a barren season, and contents itself with foretelling the reader that choicer flowers are preparing to appear." Dr. Rush, who was attracted by his clever conduct of the Magazine, formed his acquaintance in Aitken's bookstore, and suggested to him the preparation of a popular book to meet the objections to separation from the mother country. This was the origin of the famous pamphlet Common Sense.‡_Paine thought of calling it "Plain Truth," when Rush suggested the title which it bears. Its influence upon the American cause was very great. Rush says it was published "with an effect which has been rarely produced by types and paper in any age or country." "I think this pamphlet," says Ashbel Green, of Princeton, in his autobiography, "had a greater run than any other ever published in our country. It was printed anonymously, and it was a considerable time before its author was known or suspected. In the meantime large editions were frequently issued; and in newspapers, at taverns, and at almost every place of public resort, it was advertised, and very generally in these words: Common Sense, for eighteen-pence.' I lately looked Robert Aitken was a Scotchman who came to Philadelphia in 1769, and was a bookseller and printer. In the Revofution he sided with the American interest, and narrowly escaped a residence in the prison ships of New York. He published the Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum, from Jan. 1775, to June 1776. It had Francis Hopkinson and Witherspoon for contributors. Aitken died in 152, at the age of sixty-eight.-Thomas's Hist. of Printing, ii. 76. The ode on Wolfe and some spirited Reflections on Lord Clive, from his pen, printed in the Magazine, were noticeable articles for the time. The original edition of "Common Sense" was published in Philadelphia by Robert Bell, with whom it is said that Paine was then employed as a clerk.-Notes on the Provincial Hist. of Penn. by T. J. Wharton. Penn. Hist. Soc. Memoirs, 1825, p. 151, where some amusing details are given of Bell. He was a Scotsman, who came to Philadelphia in 1766. He had been a partner as a bookseller in Dublin with the facetious George Alexander Stevens. He was first an auctioneer, and afterwards a bookseller in Philadelphia, where he published Blackstone's Commentaries by subscription in 1772, "a stupendous enterprise for the time." The Revolution broke up his business, and he turned auctioneer again and peddler, dying at Richmond, in Virginia, in 1784. He headed his auction announcements, "Jewels and diamonds to be sold or sacrificed by Robert Bell, humble provedore to the sentimentalists," and sought subscribers to Blackstone with the invitation, "Intentional encouragers who wish for a participation of this sentimental banquet, are requested to send their names to Robert Bell," into a copy of this pamphlet, and was ready to wonder at its popularity, and the effect it produced when originally published. But the truth is, it struck a string which required but a touch to make it vibrate. The country was ripe for independence, and only needed somebody to tell the people so, with decision, boldness, and plausibility. Paine did this recklessly, having nothing to do whether his suggestions were received favorably or unfavorably, while wiser and better men than he were yet maturing their minds by reflection, and looking well to every step which they took or advised. Paine's talent, and he certainly possessed it eminently, was, to make a taking and striking appeal to popular feelings, when he saw it tending towards a point to which he wished to push it, whether for good or for evil."* "I sent you from New York," writes John Adams to his wife, Philadelphia, February 18, 1776, "a pamphlet intituled Common Sense, written in vindication of doctrines which there is reason to expect that the further encroachments of tyranny and depredations of oppression will soon make the common faith; unless the cunning ministry, by proposing negotiations and terms of reconciliation, should divert the present current from its channel."† No copyright was taken out; it was printed to the number of a hundred thousand, and its author, in the midst of success, was in debt to his printer for the work. Paine's subsequent pretensions to priority in his Common Sense in setting the ball of revolution in motion were simply absurd. He arrived a foreigner under difficulties, a few months before the battle of Lexington. John Adams, in a letter to Rush, May 1, 1807, seriously notices these vaporings. The fact is that Paine, admitting his merits to the full, was a humble though useful servant of the cause, never its master. The University of Pennsylvania made him Master of Arts, and the legislature voted him the substantial honor of five hundred pounds. In 1776 he served as a volunteer in the army, and was with Washington in his retreat before Howe to the Delaware. To arouse the spirit of the people and soldiery he commenced the publication of the series of patriotic tracts, The Crisis, the first number of which appeared December 19, 1776, and the last on the attainment of peace, April 19, 1783. There were eighteen numbers in all. Number one is now before us, as it may have been read to the corporal's guard in the camp-eight small octavo pages, in neat pica, and on very dingy paper. Its first stirring sentence is still familiar as a proverb:-"These are the times that try men's souls: the summer soldier *Life of Ashbel Green, 46. The following lines appear in Carey's American Museum, i. 167:— American Indeperd 'nce. When pregnant Nature strove relief to gain, The infant, Independence, scarce began To be, ere he had ripen'd into man. John Adams, in his diary of 1779, tells us that on his arrival in France in that year, he was greeted as the famous Adams on the strength of the authorship of this pamphlet, which was translated into French, having been ascribed to him.-Works, iii. 189. Works, ix. 591. and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." The rest was as good; sarcasm for the enemy, eulogy for Washington, and a picturesque account of the camp scenes in which he had been engaged. After this, as Cheetham remarks: "Paine's pen was an appendage almost as necessary to the army of independence, and as formidable, as its cannon;" and he attributes "much of the brilliant little affair" which in the same month followed at Trenton, to the confidence inspired by this first number. Paine wrote a second on that victory; a third at Philadelphia in April, 1777, in which month he was elected by Congress Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a post which he held till 1779, when he was dismissed from the office for a violation of confidence in publishing a delicate statement affecting the loan or gift from France in opposition to the claim of the negotiator Silas Deane. The remaining numbers of the Crisis were occupied, as occasion arose, with war or finance, the encouragement of the army at home, and witty disparagement of the enemy in America and in Parliament. General Sir William Howe and Lord North were particular objects of his invective. Of the honors paid to the former, he says: "There are knights of various orders, from the knight of the windmill to the knight of the post," and proposes as a final substitute for the Egyptian method of embalming the more frugal American plan: "In a balmage, sir, of humble tar, you will be as secure as Pharaoh, and in a hieroglyphic of feathers rival in finery all the mummies of Egypt." In 1780, Paine was appointed clerk to the Assembly in Pennsylvania. In 1781, he accompanied Col. Laurens in his mission to France, to obtain a loan. They set out in February, and returned in August with two millions and a half of specie. In 1782, he had published at Philadelphia his Letter to the Abbé Raynal; a neat production, correcting erroneous statements touching the Revolution, in which he shows his own skill in rhetoric at the expense of the foreign writer. Paine's services during the war time were properly acknowledged by the government. When Washington was about resigning his commission to Congress, and was at Rocky Hill in the neighborhood of Princeton, he sent a letter to Paine at Bordentown, acknowledging his services, offering to impress them upon Congress, and inviting him to his table. In 1785, Congress discharged the obligation by a grant of three thousand dollars; Pennsylvania presented him five hundred pounds, and New York conferred upon him a handsome estate at New Rochelle, confiscated from a Royalist, which embraced three hundred acres of land. In 1787, Paine returned to Europe, carrying with him the model of an iron bridge, which he made some stir with in England. Finding his mother in want, he settled upon her a stated payment for her support. When Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution appeared, he published his reply, the Rights of Man, the first part in 1791; the second in 1792. It has been generally acknowledged to be a work of ability. Many of its points of attack upon the British constitution are strongly taken, and held with success. Its views of hereditary Kingcraft and of Democratic representations, have passed, in this country at least, into truisms. One passage is very felicitous in expression, where he is picturing in terms equal to the language of the great writer whom he is answering, that orator's oversight of the victims of despotism in his poetical commiseration for the fate of its royal perpetrators. "Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection, that I can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who lingered out the most wretched of lives, a life without hope, in the most miserable of prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand that hath purloined him from himself, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero, or his heroine, must be a tragedy victim expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of misery sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon." A state prosecution was on foot against him when a French deputation called him to France, to sit in Convention for the department of Calais. His reception on his arrival there in 1792 was sufficiently gratifying to his vanity. In the Convention, though he voted for the trial of the king, he endeavored to preserve his life by a speech, in which he recommended banishment to America. "Let," said he, "the United States be the safeguard and asylum of Louis Capet. There, hereafter, far removed from the miseries and crimes of royalty, he may learn, from the constant aspect of public prosperity, that the true system of government consists in fair equal, and honorable representation." He was engaged in Constitutionmaking with Condorcet. He attracted the ill will of the extreme party, and was arrested and sent to prison by Robespierre, on the plea of being a foreigner, by the same vote which consigned famous Anacharsis Clootz to a dungeon and the guillotine. Paine escaped the latter fate by an accident. He was imprisoned (he writes in one of his letters) on a corridor of the Luxembourg, the door of his room opening outwards. While in this position it was marked by the officers for its supply of victims. When they came round the door was shut and the mark on the inside; so Paine was not guillotined; and the tyrant falling shortly after, Monroe, the American ambassador, reclaimed him and took him to his house. His imprisonment lasted eleven months, from Dec. 1793 to Nov. 1794. A first part of his infidel work, The Age of Reason, was published while Paine was in prison. The second part appeared in 1796. In the same year with the completion of this wretched publication, Paine sent forth in Paris his Letter to George Washington, whom he charged with neglecting to use the influence of government for his release as an American citizen, and not content with this discussion, depreciated for the lack of qualities which he had expressly attributed to him in his American publications.* Paine gave vent to his feelings in the following epigram. He had now by these writings made enemies of every friend of religion and his country (for patriotism was identical with respect for Washington), and when he returned to America in 1802, it was to fall rapidly in public estimation, with the additional incumbrance of the personal neglect and vices of intemperance and avarice into which he fell in his old age. That the former had anticipated his return to America is proved by the Paris correspondence of Gouverneur Morris, who writes of him June 25, 1793, as "a little more drunk than usual," and the following year, March 6, "in the best of times he had a larger share of every other sense than of common sense, and lately the intemperate use of ardent spirit has, I am told, considerably impaired the sinall stock which he originally possessed." He visited Jefferson at Washington, who, remembering his early position, had agreed to his request to bring him home in a national vessel; but the most ardent political reminiscences could not compensate for Paine's personal habits, and the popular contempt into which he had fallen. His friend and biographer Rickman takes Barlow to task for omitting any mention of him among the heroes of the American war in the Columbiad, and proposes to give him a snug place between Washington and Franklin in the fifth book of that poem. Ilis last days at New Rochelle and New York have been ruthlessly brought to the gaze of the world by his American biographer, Cheetham, who sometimes forgets the decencies due even to drunkenness, and always to old age.* Paine's vanity was wounded by the neglect into which he had fallen; his early habits of neatness, when he was painted by Romney, and "looked altogether like a gentleman of the old French school," could not be detected in the filth into which he had fallen. His intemperance was notorious. Ilis treatment of Madame Bonneville, whom he had induced to follow him from Paris, not without scandal, was cruel. He was arraigned in court for a petty debt, and exposed by his servants: one of whom is said to have attempted his life in revenge for his ill treatment. Jarvis, the painter, tolerated his presence in his bachelor's quarters, and has left us a melancholy memorial of his appearance in the plaster bust which is preserved in the rooms of the New York Historical Society. While the artist was at work matic direction to the sculptor who should make the statue of Washington: Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone, It needs no fashion, it is Washington; But if you chisel, let your strokes be rude, And on his breast engrave INGRATITUDE. Cheetham's revised private copy of the Life of Paine is in the New York Historical Society; the corrections in his own handwriting and intended for a second edition. In the preliminary address to Clinton, the strong animadversions on the despotism of Jefferson's democracy, and his fears of the duration of the Republic, are mitted." The style is generally improved by slight verbal alterations. In the description of his first interview with Paine in the Preface, the comparison of the philosopher's nose to Bardolph's, as described by Falstaff, is stricken out. Cheetham was an English radical from Manchester, who edited in New York the American Citizen, holding a trenchant pen for a newspaper. At first he was the friend of Paine. Paine has had numerous biographers, including Francis Oldys, a fictitious name on a partisan pamphlet, written by the refugee loyalist, the author of the Political Annals, George Chalmers. Paine's name is spelt Pain throughout this production. There is a volume of Memoirs by W. T. win, London, 1819; by Thomas Clio Rickman, of the date; and a later voluine by G. Vale, New York. 1841. upon it, he exclaimed, "I shall secure him to a nicety, if I am so fortunate as to get plaster enough for his carbuncled nose."* He would lodge at different places about town as opportunity served, his habits rendering frequent changes of lodging inevitable. One of his tenements, in not the most agreeable locality, he shared with a show of wild beast. Death approaching, he desired, in recollection of his Quaker parentage, to be interred in the cemetery of that body, but this consolation was refused him,—a circumstance which is said to have affected him deeply. In his closing days he was visited by clergymen and others to convert him from his irreligion or testify to his infidelity. to his infidelity. He died quietly in New York, June 8, 1809. His remains were taken to New Rochelle where he was interred on his farın, with an inscription on a stone, "Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense." In 1819, ten years afterwards, when Cobbett wished to create a sensation, he absurdly rifled the grave of the bones, which he carried to England. The merit of Paine's style as a prose writer is very great. He had the art of saying a familiar thing in a familiar way, and at the same time imparting to it great spirit and freshness. He could sometimes introduce an apposite story almost as well as Franklin. His wit was ready, and generally pungent enough. After his return to America in 1802, he writes, “Some of John Adams' loyal subjects, I see, have been to present him with an address on his birth-day; but the language they use is too tame for the occasion. Birth-day addresses, like birth-day odes, should not creep along like drops of dew down a cabbage leaf, but roll in a torrent of poetical metaphor."† To Franklin's saying, "Where liberty is, there is my country," his retort was, "Where liberty is not, there is my country." A minister of a new sect came to him to explain the Scriptures, asserting that the key had been lost these four thousand years, and they had found it. "It must have been very rusty, then," was his reply. Some of his sentences are felicitous as Sheridan's for neatness and point. Thus in his letter to the Earl of Shelburne, of the loss of reputation: "There are cases in which it is as impossible to restore character to life, as it is to recover the dead. It is a phoenix that can expire but once, and from whose ashes there is no resurrection;" and to the same nobleman on obedience to outlandish authority: "For a thousand reasons England would be the last country to yield it to. She has been treacherous, and wo know it. Her character is gone, and we have seen the funeral." To the Abbé Raynal he says, holding Britain to account for keeping the world ir disturbance and war: "Is life so very long thet it is necessary, nay even a duty, to shake the sand and hasten out the period of duration?" "Science," he says, "the partisan of no country, but the benevolent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosopher of another: he takes his seat in the * Francis's Reminiscences of Printers, Authors, &c. There was an old couplet sung by the boys in the streets :Tom Paine is come from far, from far, His nose is like a blazing star! + Second Letter to the Citizens of the U. S. Nov. 19, 1802, in the Nat. Intell. |