PURITAN RHYMESTERS. 33 works in London, and afterward by means of the few and meanly furnished presses along this coast. These folk were simply third-rate British rhymesters, who copied the pedantry of the tamest period known. The only marks of distinction between their prose and verse were that, while the former might be dull, the latter must be, and must pay a stilted regard to measure and rhyme. How hard for our amiable his- Death of torian to make poetical finds that can lighten the pages of his record! How he seizes upon some Ode on the Nathaniel 1676. 1716. Oakes: 1631-81. Anne 1612-72. The Bay Psalm Cam promising estray, - - like the anonymous ode on the John Nordeath of picturesque Nat. Bacon, like Norton's "Fu-ton: 1651– neral Elegy" upon Mistress Anne Bradstreet, or Urian Urian Oakes's upon Thomas Shepard, and makes the most of it! Surely a time that fed its imagination with the offerings of the "Tenth Muse," and expressed relig- Bradious exaltation in those measures of the Bay Psalm street: Book that seem to break from a cow's horn or a Roundhead's nose, and in the lyrical damnations of Michael Wigglesworth, such a time, from its begin- Book": ning with George Sandys even to the generation that bridge, founded hopes of a native drama upon the genius of 1640. Thomas Godfrey, had derived few creative impulses Wiggles from its own experience, and could give no real inti-worth: mation of a national future. This was a time which now seems more venerable to us than the daylight eras of ancient civilization, drearily old-fashioned, lator of like its town halls and college barracks, still remaining, all the older and mouldier because they are not antique. To its very close, when the different colo- Godfrey: nies began to move toward cohesion, the most of it seems to me night,— utter night. Its poetical relics period. are but the curios of a museum, the queer and ugly specimens of an unhistoric age. Michael 1631-1705. Sandys, Ovid: 1577-1644. Thomas 1736-63. A rayless Manifestly, and as at a later time, New England New Eng van. Chroni clers. land in the claimed the lead in whatsoever there was of thought, or wit, or fancy; and Cambridge even then had her poets, who accounted themselves true children of Parnassus. Tyler plainly shows how the feudal policy of dispersion, and a contempt for book-learning as compared with active life, placed a ban upon letters in Virginia; while the New England policy of numerical and intellectual concentration brought forward the learned men of that region, and made its colonists a literary people from the first. In spite of their moroseness, pedantry, asceticism, a lurking perception of beauty, an aesthetic sensibility, was to be found among them. But the manifest, the sincere genius of the colonies is diplayed elsewhere than in their laboThe Early rious verse. Noble English and a simple, heroic wonder give zest to the writings of the early chroniclers, the annals of discovery and adventure. Such traits distinguish the narratives of the gallant and poetic Captain John Smith, and of Strachey, whose picture of a storm and wreck in the Bermudas so roused the spirit that conceived "The Tempest." They pervade the memorials of Bradford and Winthrop, of Johnson and Gookin, of Francis Higginson and Winslow and William Wood. There are power and imagination in the discourses of the great preachers, Hooker, Cotton, Roger Williams, Oakes, — who founded a dominion of the pulpit that was not shaken until after the time of Edwards and Byles. Versemaking was but the foible of the colonial New Englanders; law, religious fervor, superstition, were then the strength of life; and the time that produced Increase and Cotton Mather fostered a progeny quite as striking and characteristic as the melodists of our late Arcadian morn. Histori ans. Divines. The Mid When the Middle Colonies began to have a litera REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 35 men of dle Colo nies. Period: Trumbull: 1750-1831. ture, it was natural that the chief writers the learned professions, busied in affairs, and already feeling that instinct of government which animates territorial centres - should be publicists, setting forth the principles of order, economy, and social weal. The colonial separation ended; the national movement began with stormy agitation, and progressed to union in council and war. With the Revolution came not only Revoluthe great orators, but an outburst, otherwise than tune- tionary ful, of patriotic ballads, songs, and doggerel satires, 1765-87. to all of which, at this distance, the sounds of the Continental fife and drum seem a fitting accompaniment. Nor did staid and learned personages disdain to pay homage to the precept of Andrew Fletcher, and to supplement the new-born national ardor by the aid of their muses. Trumbull's M'Fingal is a work John that will not go quite out of repute. It still speaks well for the character, wit, and facility of the staunch and acute ́author, and shows genuine originality although written after a model. Not even Hudibras more aptly seizes upon the ludicrous phases of a turbulent epoch. In New York, bluff Captain Freneau, Philip mariner, journalist, and poet, proved himself the ready laureate of the war. Read the story of his impetuous life, and look through the collection of his ditties and poems, with their pretentious defects and unwittingly clever touches. A strange and serio-comic medley they are, and no less a varied representation of the poetic standards reached in America a hundred years ago. Among the relics which I call to mind of the jin- Rhymegling verse produced in quantity by Treat Paine and his contemporaries, there is scarcely a lyric that breathes what we now recognize as the essential poetic spirit, excepting five or six of Frèneau's, such as "The Wild Honeysuckle," "The Parting Glass," 66 Freneau: 1752-1832. sters of his time. Royall Tyler: 1757-1826. William Dunlap: 1766-1839. 1787-1815. Timothy Dwight: 1752-1817. Foel Bar 1812. "To a Honey Bee" (which last is good enough to be Landor's), and a delicate little song, by John Shaw, of Maryland, entitled "Who has Robbed the Ocean Cave?" Practical efforts, however, were made in the composition and production of native dramas, by Tyler and Dunlap, our earliest playwrights, — in Boston and New York respectively. After the close of the Revolution, and until the War of 1812, the genius of our people was devoted to the establishment, through peaceful labor, of the security and resources which should be the first-fruits of a conflict for independence. Writers occupied themselves with analyzing the science of government, its principles and practice. No American library, however, was complete without copies of Dr. Dwight's historico-didactic masterpiece, Greenfield Hill, and Joel low: 1755- Barlow's quarto epic, The Columbiad. The popular ear was content with patriotic songs, among them "Hail Columbia," which owed their general adoption, like a successor, "The Star-Spangled Banner," to the music that carried them and to an early possession of the field. It was not until peace, for a second time, became a habit that the imagination of a young people, assured of nationality, slowly found expression upon the written page. In view of the conditions already described, what traits might we reasonably expect would characterize poetic effort at this stage of development? Patriotic ditties. A natural course of develop ment. First, and although the form and ideal of American verse still should correspond, like all our early fashions, to the modes prevailing in England, .it would seem that, gradually, poets should appear, hampered by this instinct of correspondence, and not quite knowing or daring to be original, yet possessing graces and thoughts of their own, and looking at things, after PIERPONT. — DANA.—ALLSTON. 37 all, in a different way from the English; that they should seek for home themes, and study their surroundings, most likely in a doubtful and groping manner; that a diversity of subject, thought, and language Differentishould be observed in the distinct sections of the re- ation. public, the poets of the South being more courtly and romantic, and those of the Middle States more national and more upon the search for aboriginal and historical flavor; that local successes should be marked where there was the least inflow of new foreign elements, the sincerest faith, the most intelligent thought; that poetry should be the more learned, the more subtle and earnest, in the scholarly region of the East, and that poets should thrive best there, where the practice of literature had long obtained, since all Earliest forms of art require more time for growth than other promise of products of national organization. ant, a HomeSchool, 1815 John Pier pont: Richard ton All Somewhat after this wise, in fact, as we recur to the earliest promise of an American school, we find that it began with the second quarter of this century. 1785-1866. Imaginative youths, born and educated in the new Henry republic, discovered that they were poets, and strove Dana: to express the spirit of their birth and training. 1787-1879. Among them, Pierpont, Dana, Allston, Sprague, Bry- Washing the gentle stars of the East, began to show ston: 1779their light, and offered their tender or patriotic lyrics, 1843. their meditative verse, their placid monographs on the phases of American scenery and tradition. Of these, 1791-1875. Bryant was the one whose genius had the elements Bryant. that give permanence to the work of poets. In the Richard Henry South, a few scattered minstrels, such as Wilde and Wilde: Pinkney, sang their Lovelace lyrics. Their type has 1789-1847. survived, almost to our day. Throughout the swift Edward development of the Northern States, the South-agri- Pinkney: cultural, feudal, provincial- loyally clung to its eight Charles Sprague: Coate 1802-28. |