Ann Eliza Bleecker.

or two, and then settled at Tomhanick, "a beautiful solitary little village eighteen miles above Albany." Here they remained until the tidings of the expedition of Burgoyne from Canada reached them, when Mr. Bleecker repaired to Albany to provide a more secure residence for his family than their lonely rural retreat afforded. The morning after his departure news reached his wife that the enemy were within two miles of the village, "burning and murdering all before them." "Terrified beyond description she rose from the breakfast table, and taking her Arbella on her arm, and her other daughter (about four years old) by the hand, she set off on foot, with a young mulatto girl, leaving the house and furniture to the mercy of the approaching savages. The roads were crowded with carriages loaded with women and children, but none could afford her assistancedistress was depicted on every countenance, and tears of heartfelt anguish moistened every cheek. They passed on-no one spoke to another-and no sound but the dismal creaking of burdened wheels and the trampling of horses interrupted the mournful silence. After a tedious walk of four or five miles, she obtained a seat for the children. upon one of the wagons, and she walked on to Stony Arabia, where she expected to find many friends; but she was deceived-no door was open to her, whose house by many of them had been made use of as a home-she wandered from house to house, and at length obtained a place in the garret of a rich old acquaintance, where a couple of blankets, stretched upon some boards, were offered her as a bed; she, however, sat up all night, and the next morning, Mr. Bleecker coming from Albany, met with them and returned to that city, from whence they set off with several other families by water."* They descended the river as far as Red Hook, where they resided until the surrender of Burgoyne, when they returned to their rural home, the melancholy excursion having been further saddened by the Ideath of Mrs. Bleecker's eldest child, mother, and only surviving sister.

In 1781, Mr. Bleecker, while occupied in his fields, was captured and carried off with two of his laborers by a party from Canada. These occurrences were so frequent that the family were at no loss to account for his disappearance,

Life by Mrs. Faugères,

and Mrs. Bleecker again set off for Albany in quest of aid, "but by a wonderful train of events Mr. Bleecker was retaken by a party from Bennington, after having passed the last habitation on this side of the Green Mountains, and when his conductors for the first time had considered themselves as perfectly secure," and returned in safety at the end of six days.

In the spring of 1783 she visited New York, but time and the war had caused so many changes among her old associates, that the visit was productive of more pain than pleasure to her sensitive mind. She returned to Tomhanick, where she was soon after taken sick, and, her delicate frame offering feeble obstacles to the progress of disease, died on the twenty-third of November of the same year.

Mrs. Bleecker's poems were written as the occasion suggested them to her mind, without a view to publication. She possessed a pleasant vein of sportive fancy, and many of her compositions of this class were much admired by the few friends to whom she showed them; but in the frequent attacks of despondency to which her delicate organization was subject, she destroyed "all the pieces which were not melancholy as herself." Her graver compositions are upon topics suggested by her family bereavements, and are tenderly though somewhat formally expressed. Her lighter pieces and her correspondence (in which she evidently took great pleasure) are the most pleasing and characteristic of her literary productions.

Several of her poems were printed in the earlier numbers of the New York Magazine, and a collection of her stories and "poetics" in a volume, with a few of her letters, published in 1793 under the supervision of her daughter, Margaretta, who added a number of essays and verses from her own pen. This lady was born in the city of New York in 1771, and passed her early years in Tomhanick. After her mother's death, her father removed to New York, where, against her parent's wish, she married in 1791 Peter Faugères, a physician of that city. He was a worthless fellow, and in a few years dissipated her large fortune. After the death of her father in 1795, the pair were reduced to extreme destitution. Faugères died of the yellow fever in 1798, and the widow supported herself as a teacher until her death, January 9, 1801.

The

In 1795, Mrs. Faugères offered a tragedy entitled Belisarius to the John Street Theatre. management declined its production. It was afterwards published, and is of slight literary merit. Among her verses are the Birth-day of Columbia and an historical and patriotic descrip tion of the Hudson, in which New York is addressed,

Pride of Columbia! Eboracia fair!

TO MR. L***

Dear brother, to these happy shades repair,
And leave, Oh leave the city's noxious air:
I'll try description, friend-methinks I see
"Twill influence your curiosity.

Before our door a meadow flies the eye,
Circled by hills, whose summits crowd the sky;
The silver lily there exalts her head,
And op'ning roses balmy odours spread,
While golden tulips flame beneath the shade.

In short, not iris with her painted bow,
Nor varied tints an evening sun can show,
Can the gay colours of the flow'rs exceed,
Whose glowing leaves diversify this mead:
And when the blooms of Flora disappear,
The weighty fruits adorn the satiate year:
Here vivid cherries bloom in scarlet pride,
And purple plums blush by the cherries' side;
The sable berries bend the pliant vines,
And smiling apples glow in crimson rinds;
Ceres well pleas'd, beholds the furrowed plain,
And show'rs her blessings on th' industrious swain;
Plenty sits laughing in each humble cot;
None wish for that which heaven gives them not.
But sweet Contentment still with sober charms,
Encircles us within her blissful arms;
Birds unmolested chaunt their early notes,
And on the dewy spray expand their throats;
Before the eastern skies are streak'd with light,
Or from the arch of Heaven retreats the night,
The musical inhabitants of air,

To praise their Maker, tuneful lays prepare.
Here by a spring, whose glassy surface moves
At ev'ry kiss from Zephyr of the groves,
While passing clouds look brighter in the stream,
Your poet sits and paints the rural scene.

TO MISS CATHARINE TEN EYCK.

Come and see our habitation,
Condescend to be our guest;
Tho' the veins of warring nations
Bleed, yet here secure we rest.
By the light of Cynthia's crescent,
Playing thro' the waving trees;
When we walk, we wish you present
To participate our bliss.

Late indeed, the cruel savage

Here with looks ferocious stood;
Here the rustic's cot did ravage,
Stain'd the grass with human blood.

Late their hands sent conflagration
Rolling thro' the blooming wild,
Seized with death, the brute creation
Mourn'd, while desolation smil'd.

Spiral flames from tallest cedar

Struck to heav'n a heat intense;

They cancell'd thus with impious labour, Wonders of Omnipotence.

But when Conquest rear'd her standard,
And the Aborigines were fled,

Peace, who long an exile wander'd,
Now returned to bless the shade.

Now Eolus blows the ashes

From sad Terra's blacken'd brow,

While the whistling swain with rushes
Roofs his cot, late levell'd low.

From the teeming womb of Nature
Bursting flow'rs exhale perfume;
Shady oaks, of ample stature,
Cast again a cooling gloom.

Waves from each reflecting fountain,
Roll again unmixed with gore,
And verging from the lofty mountain,
Fall beneath with solemn roar.

Here, embosom'd in this Eden,

Cheerful all our hours are spent: Here no pleasures are forbidden, Sylvan joys are innocent.

PHILLIS WHEATLEY.

THE poems of Phillis Wheatley were published in London in 1773, in a thin duodecimo volume, with a copper-plate portrait, from which our engraving is taken, and with the full title, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England. The dedication to the Right Honorable the Countess of Huntingdon bears date, Boston, June 12, 1773, when she was about to visit London with a member of her master's family, and points to the influential Methodist connexion by which she was lionized on her arrival in that city.* A Preface puts forward the old plea, which, under the circumstances, looks like a jest, of the poems being "written originally for the amusement of the author, as they were the products of her leisure moments. She had no intention ever to have published them; nor would they now have made their appearance, but at the importunity of many of her best and most generous friends." A letter, sent by the author's master to the publisher," follows, in which John Wheatley, dating Boston, November 14, 1772, states that "Phillis was brought from Africa to America, in the year 1761, between seven and eight years of age, without any assistance from school education, and by only what she was taught in the family, she, in sixteen months' time from her arrival, attained the English language, to which she was an utter stranger before, to such a degree, as to read any, the most difficult parts of the Sacred writings, to

62

the great astonishment of all who heard her. As to her writing, her own curiosity led her to it; and this she learned in so short a time, that in the year 1765 she wrote a letter to the Rev. Mr. Occom, the Indian minister, while in England. She has a great inclination to read the Latin tongue, and has made some progress in it." To certify still further the authority of the book, an "attestation" is added, addressed "to the public," from "the most respectable characters in Boston," at the head of whom is his Excellency Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, with such fellow-witnesses as John Hancock, the Rev. Mather Byles, and the Rev. Mr. Samuel Mather, who testify their full belief that the poems were written by Phillis, and state the additional fact that "she has been examined by some of the best judges, and is thought qualified to write them."

To these biographical facts, we may add, from the Memoir prefixed to an edition of the Poems published in Boston in 1834, written by "a collateral descendant of Mrs. Wheatley, who has been familiar with the name and fame of Phillis from her childhood," that the future poetess was bought in the slave-market of Boston, where she was selected by Mrs. Wheatley for her delicate appearance. She was taught to read and write by one of this lady's daughters, in the family, and grew up as a pet of the household-her accomplishments reflecting honor on the associations. It does not appear that she was ever formally manumitted. The only recollection which she retained of her life in Africa was a poetical reminiscence of her mother pouring out water before the sun at his rising-a trait of natural devotion in a heathen land. When she was sixteen, in 1770, Phillis became a member of Dr. Sewall's congregation in the Old South Meeting.

The poems themselves show as marked indications of the feeding-grounds of the readers and imitators of verse in the eighteenth century, as do those of Mistress Ann Bradstreet in the seventeenth. What in the earlier day was quaint, rude, and daring, in the latter is sinooth, sounding and fluent. The formal muse of Pope, and the herd of victims whom he impaled in the Dunciad, had succeeded in the American colonies to the twisted efforts of Du Bartas. Phillis Wheatley is a very respectable echo of the Papal strains. In the first poem of the volume, addressed To Macenas, she writes of Homer with an eloquence evidently derived from the glowing translation of the bright-eyed little man at Twickenham :

While Homer paints, lo! circumfus'd in air,
Celestial Gods in mortal forms appear;
Swift as they move hear each recess rebound,
Heav'n quakes, earth trembles, and the shores re-
sound.

Great Sire of verse, before my mortal eyes,
The lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies;
And, as the thunder shakes the heav'nly plains,
A deep-felt horror thrills thro' all my veins.
When gentler strains demand thy graceful song,
The length'ning line moves languishing along.
When great Patroclus courts Achilles' aid,
The grateful tribute of my tears is paid;
Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love,
And stern Pelides tend'rest passions move.

One of the few allusions which we have found

in the poems to her birth and condition of slavery is among these verses. She gracefully recalls the African Terence :

The happier Terence all the choir inspir'd,
His soul replenish'd, and his bosom fir'd;
But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace,
To one alone of Afric's sable race;
From age to age, transmitting thus his name
With the first glory in the rolls of fame?

The longest piece of classicality in the volume is a paraphrase of the story of Niobe and her Children, from Ovid, in which there is one line, at least, which would do honor to any pen. Apollo is preparing the slaughter of the sons in the race-course, the moment before that arrowy devastation:

With clouds incompass'd glorious Phoebus stands;
The feather'd vengeance quiv'ring in his hands.

This is not a translation of anything in Ovid, for that writer has neglected so striking a position for his Deity. Apollo, in the Metamorphoses, goes to work at once in the most business-like manner, and covers the field with the slain in the shortest possible time. Another touch of the poetic flight of the arrow is added to the original text in the death of Sipylus :

Then didst thou, Sipylus, the language hear
Of fate portentous whistling in the air.

Certainly, even with the assistance of a master, it was a most generous acquisition for a female African slave to appreciate that fine classic story in this way.

The remaining poems are far from mediocrity. A large number of them belong to the class of occasional verses addressed to her friends on various family afflictions; so that she was for the time a kind of poet-laureate in the first domestic circles of Boston. Nor is the University of Cainbridge, in New England, forgotten. The earnest religious feeling of the Methodists is everywhere visible. The lines, To S. M., a Young African Painter, on seeing his works, refer to Scipio Moorhead, a servant of the Rev. John Moorhead, of Boston, who exhibited some talent for drawing. The initials of the lady to whom the Farewell to America is addressed, belong to Mrs. Susanna Wright, a lady of some note for her skill in waxwork. By the favor of Mr. S. F. Haven, of Worcester, to whom we are indebted for the last two items of information, we have before us the original manuscript of two of the poems, To the University of Cambridge, and the lines On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewall, written in the author's remarkably round neat hand. The earliest verses dated in the collection are those addressed To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, marked 1768. From this manuscript it appears that the lines on Harvard were written in 1767.

On her return from England, after the publication of the poems, the Wheatley family was broken up by death, and Phillis married a colored man, who seems to have been a showy fellow, passing, according to one account, as a lawyer, another as a grocer, and a third a barber. He fell into poverty during the Revolution, and his wife suffered with him till she died in Boston, Dec. 5, 1784. It was one thing dreaming with Ovid, and another living with "Doctor Peters."

The poems of Phillis Wheatley having been published in a volume eleven years before her death, and that edition of 1773 having been followed in subsequent ones,* the occasional verses which she published afterwards yet remain to be collected. Of these we present several to our readers. The most important of them are the lines to General Washington, in 1775, which follow with the letter that accompanied them.†

SIR:

Phillis Wheatley to Gen. Washington.

I have taken the freedom to address your Excellency in the enclosed Poem, and entreat your acceptance, though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies. Your being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress to be Generalissimo of the armies of North America, together with the fame of your virtues, excite sensations not easy to suppress. Your generosity, therefore, I presume, will pardon the attempt. Wishing your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously engaged in, I am

Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, PHILLIS WHeatley.

Providence, Oct. 26, 1775.

HIS EXCELLENCY GEN. WASHINGTON.

Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light.
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!

The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel binds her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates How pour her armies through a thousand gates, As when Eolus heaven's fair face deforms, Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms; Astonish'd ocean feels the wild uproar, The refluent surges beat the sounding shore; Or thick as leaves in Autumn's golden reign, Such, and so many, moves the warrior's train. In bright array they seek the work of war, Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air. Shall I to Washington their praise recite? Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight. Thee, first in place and honours, we demand The grace and glory of thy martial band. Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more, Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore! One century scarce perform'd its destined round, When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;

Besides the Boston edition, published by G. W. Light, to which we have alluded, we have before us one reprinted from the London edition by Barber and Southwick, for Thomas Spencer, bookseller, Market street, Albany, in 1793. A separate brief memoir, by B. B. Thatcher, was also issued at Boston, by Light, in 1834.

+ Washington mentions coming across Phillis Wheatley's and letter,in searching over a parcel of papers," in a Petter to Joseph Read. Camb.. Feb. 10, 1776. Mr. Sparks says he has not been able to find the poem and letter among Washington's papers, and that "they have doubtless been lost. It might be curious," he adds, "to see in what manner she would eulogize liberty and the rights of man, while herself, nominally at least, in bondage."-Washington's Writings, iii. 299. The poem and letter were probably given by Washington to the printer.

VOL. 1.-24

And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom's heaven-defended race!
Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia's state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev'ry action let the goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, Washington! be thine.
This was Washington's reply:-

MISS PHILLIS:

Cambridge, February 2d, 1776.

Your favour of the 26th October did not reach my hands till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honour of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints. If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near head-quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favoured by the muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great respect, your obedient humble servant,

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

The lines and letter of Phillis Wheatley were published in the Pennsylvania Magazine or American Monthly Museum for April, 1776.

In Jan., 1784, the year of her death, she wrote an Elegy of fifty-two lines, To the Memory of that Great Divine, the Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper, a copy of which is preserved in the Boston Athenæum. It is dedicated To the Church and Congregation assembling in Brattle street, by their Obedient Humble Servant, Phillis Peters. We have also met with the following of the same year, in the American Antiquarian Society, in four small quarto pages printed at Boston by Warden and Russell :

LIBERTY AND PEACE

Lo freedom comes. Th' prescient muse foretold,
All eyes th' accomplish'd prophecy behold:
Her port describ'd, "She moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel bind her golden hair.”
She, the bright progeny of Heaven, descends,
And every grace her sovereign step attends;
For now kind Heaven, indulgent to our prayer,
In smiling peace resolves the din of war.
Fix'd in Columbia her illustrious line,
And bids in thee her future councils shine.
To every realm her portals open'd wide,
Receives from each the full commercial tide.
Each art and science now with rising charms,
Th' expanding heart with emulation warms..

E'en great Britannia sees with dread surprise,
And from the dazzling splendors turns her eyes.
Britain, whose navies swept th' Atlantic o'er,
And thunder sent to every distant shore;
E'en thou, in manners cruel as thou art,
The sword resign'd, resume the friendly part.
For Gallia's power espous'd Columbia's cause,
And new-born Rome shall give Britannia laws,
Nor unremember'd in the grateful strain,
Shall princely Louis' friendly deeds remain;
The generous prince th' impending vengeance eyes,
Sees the fierce wrong and to the rescue flies.
Perish that thirst of boundless power, that drew
On Albion's head the curse to tyrants due.
But thou appeas'd submit to Heaven's decree,
That bids this realm of freedom rival thee.
Now sheathe the sword that bade the brave atone
With guiltless blood for madness not their own.
Sent from th' enjoyment of their native shore,
Ill-fated-never to behold her more.
From every kingdom on Europa's coast
Throng'd various troops, their glory, strength, and
boast.

With heart-felt pity fair Hibernia saw
Columbia menac'd by the Tyrant's law:
On hostile fields fraternal arms engage,
And mutual deaths, all dealt with mutual rage:
The muse's ear hears mother earth deplore
Her ample surface smoke with kindred gore:
The hostile field destroys the social ties,
And everlasting slumber seals their eyes.
Columbia mourns, the haughty foes deride,
Her treasures plunder'd and her towns destroy'd:
Witness how Charlestown's curling smokes arise,
In sable columns to the clouded skies.
The ample dome, high-wrought with curious toil,
In one sad hour the savage troops despoil.
Descending peace the power of war confounds;
From every tongue celestial peace resounds:
As from the cast th' illustrious king of day,
With rising radiance drives the shades away,
So freedom comes array'd with charms divine,
And in her train commerce and plenty shine.
Britannia owns her independent reign,
Hibernia, Scotia and the realms of Spain;
And great Germania's ample coast admires
The generous spirit that Columbia fires.
Auspicious Heaven shall fill with fav'ring gales,
Where e'er Columbia spreads her swelling sails:
To every realm shall peace her charms display,
And heavenly freedom spread her golden ray.

The two following are printed from the author's manuscript:

TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, WROTE IN 1767.
While an intrinsic ardor bids me write,
The muse doth promise to assist my pen.
"Twas but ere now I left my native shore,
The sable land of error's darkest night;

There, sacred Nine! no place for you was found:
Parent of mercy, 'twas thy powerful hand
Brought me in safety from the dark abode.

To you, bright youths, he points the heights of heav'n,

To you the knowledge of the depths profound,
Above, contemplate the ethereal space,
And glorious systems of revolving worlds.

Still more, ye sons of science! you've received
The pleasing sound by messengers from heav'n,
The Saviour's blood for your Redemption flows:
See him with hands stretched out upon the cross,
Divine compassion in his bosom glows;

He hears revilers with oblique regard-
What condescension in the Son of God?
When the whole human race by sin had fall'n;
He deigned to die, that they might rise again,
To live with him beyond the starry sky,
Life without death and glory without end.
Improve your privileges while they stay:
Caress, redeem each moment, which with haste
Bears on its rapid wing eternal bliss.
Let hateful vice, so baneful to the soul,
Be still avoided with becoming care;
Suppress the sablé monster in its growth.
Ye blooming plants of human race divine
An Ethiop tells you 'tis your greatest foe,
It present sweetness turns to endless pain,
And brings eternal ruin on the soul.

ON THE DEATH of the Rev. Dr. SEWALL, 1769.
Ere yet the morning heav'd its orient head,
Behold him praising with the happy dead.
Hail! happy saint, on the immortal shore,
We hear thy warning and advice no more;
Then let each one behold with wishful eyes
The saint ascending to his native skies,
From hence the prophet wings his rapturous way
To mansions pure, to fair celestial day.

Then begging for the spirit of his God,
And panting eager for the bless'd abode,
Let ev'ry one with the same vigour soar
To bliss and happiness unseen before;
Then be Christ's image on our minds impress'd,
And plant a Saviour in each glowing breast,
Thrice happy thou, arrived at joy at last,
What compensation for the evil past!
Thou Lord, incomprehensible, unknown
To sense, we bow at thy exalted throne!
While thus we beg thy excellence to feel,
Thy sacred spirit in our hearts reveal,
And make each one of us that grace partake,
Which thus we ask for the Redeemer's sake.
"Sewall is dead," swift pinion'd fame thus cry'd.
Is Sewall dead? my trembling heart reply'd.
O what a blessing in thy flight deny'd!
But when our Jesus had ascended high,
With captive bands he led captivity;
And gifts received for such as knew not God,
Lord, send a pastor for thy churches' good.
O ruined world! bereft of thee, we cry'd
(The rocks, responsive to the voice, reply'd),
How oft for us this holy prophet pray'd;
But ah! behold him in his clay-cold bed,
By duty urged my weeping verse to close,
I'll on his Tomb an Epitaph compose.

Lo! here a man bought with Christ's precious blood,
Once a poor sinner, now a saint with God;
Behold! ye rich and poor, and fools and wise,
Nor let this monitor your hearts surprise!
I'll tell you all what this great saint has done,
Which makes him brighter than the glorious sun:
Listen, ye happy, from your seats above,
I speak sincerely, and with truth and love;
He sought the paths of virtue and of truth;
"Twas this which made him happy in his youth,
In blooming years he found that grace divine,
Which gives admittance to the sacred shrine.
Mourn him, ye indigent, whom he has fed;
Seek yet more earnest for the living Bread-
E'en Christ, your Bread, what cometh from above-
Implore his pity, and his grace and love.
Mourn him, ye youth, whom he hath often told
God's bounteous mercy from the times of old.
I, too, have cause this mighty loss to mourn,
For this my monitor will not return.