History of the United States During Thomas Jefferson's Administrations (Complete 4 Volumes). Henry Adams

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Dwight's rule the women of the Connecticut Valley were taught better; but its men set to the Bostonians an example of frivolity without a paral­lel, and they did so with the connivance of President Dwight and under the lead of his brother Theodore. The frivolity of the Hartford wits, as they were called, was not so light as that of Canning and the "Anti-­Jacobin," but had it been heavier than the "Conquest of Canaan" itself, it would still have found no literary rivalry in Boston. At about the time when Dwight composed his serious epic, another tutor at Yale, John Trumbull, wrote a burlesque epic in Hudibrastic verse, "McFingal," which his friend Dwight declared to be not inferior to "Hudibras" in wit and humor, and in every other respect superior. When "Hudibras" was published, more than a hundred years before, Mr. Pepys remarked: "It hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty." After the lapse of more than another century, the humor of neither poem may seem worth imitation; but to Trumbull in 1784 Butler was a modern classic, for the standard of taste between 1663 and 1784 changed less than in any twenty years of the following century. "McFingal" was a success, and laid a solid foundation for the coming school of Hartford wits. Posterity ratified the verdict of Trumbull's admirers by preserving for daily use a few of his lines quoted indiscriminately with Butler's best:—

      "What has posterity done for us?"

      "Optics sharp it needs, I ween,

      To see what is not to be seen."

      "A thief ne'er felt the halter draw

      With good opinion of the law."

      Ten years after the appearance of "McFingal," and on the strength of its success, Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, Richard Alsop, Theodore Dwight, Joel Bar­low, and others began a series of publications, "The Anarchiad," "The Echo," "The Guillotine," and the like, in which they gave tongue to their wit and sarcasm. As Alsop described the scene,­—

      "Begrimed with blood where erst the savage fell,

      Shrieked the wild war-whoop with infernal yell,

      The Muses sing; lo, Trumbull wakes the lyre.

      * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

      Majestic Dwight, sublime in epic strain,

      Paints the fierce horrors of the crimson plain;

      And in Virgilian Barlow's tuneful lines

      With added splendor great Columbus shines."

      Perhaps the Muses would have done better by not interrupting the begrimed savage; for Dwight, ­ Trumbull, Alsop, and Hopkins, whatever their faults, were Miltonic by the side of Joel Barlow. Yet Barlow was a figure too important in American history to be passed without respectful attention. He expressed better than any one else that side of Connecticut character which roused at the same instant the laugh­ter and the respect of men. Every human influence twined about his career and lent it interest; every forward movement of his time had his sympathy, and few steps in progress were made which he did not assist. His ambition, above the lofty ambition of Jefferson, made him aspire to be a Connecticut Mücenas and Virgil in one; to patronize Fulton and employ Smirke; counsel Jefferson and contend with Napoleon. In his own mind a figure such as the world rarely saw,—a compound of Milton, Rousseau, and the Duke of Bridgewater,—he had in him so large a share of conceit, that tragedy, which would have thrown a solemn shadow over another man's life, seemed to render his only more entertaining. As a poet, he undertook to do for his native land what Homer had done for Greece and Virgil for Rome, Milton for England and Camoens for Portugal,—to supply America with a great epic, without which no country could be respectable; and his "Vision of Columbus," magnified afterward into the "Columbiad," with a magnificence of typogra­phy and illustration new to the United States, remained a monument of his ambition. In this vision Columbus was shown a variety of coming celebrities, including all the heroes of the Revolutionary War:—

      "Here stood stern Putnam, scored with ancient scars,

      The living records of his country's wars;

      Wayne, like a moving tower, assumes his post,

      Fires the whole field, and is himself a host;

      Undaunted Stirling, prompt to meet his foes,

      And Gates and Sullivan for action rose;

      Macdougal, Clinton, guardians of the State,

      Stretch the nerved arm to pierce the depth of fate;

      Moultrie and Sumter lead their banded powers;

      Morgan in front of his bold riflers towers,

      His host of keen-eyed marksmen, skilled to pour

      Their slugs unerring from the twisted bore;

      No sword, no bayonet they learn to wield,

      They gall the flank, they skirt the battling field,

      Cull out the distant foe in full horse speed,

      Couch the long tube and eye the silver bead,

      Turn as he turns, dismiss the whizzing lead,

      And lodge the death-ball in his heedless head."

      More than seven thousand lines like these fur­nished constant pleasure to the reader, the more be­cause the "Columbiad" was accepted by the public in a spirit as serious as that in which it was com­posed. The Hartford wits, who were bitter Federal­ists, looked upon Barlow as an outcast from their fold, a Jacobin in politics, and little better than a French atheist in religion; but they could not deny that his poetic garments were of a piece with their own. Neither could they without great ingratitude repudiate his poetry as they did his politics, for they themselves figured with Manco Capac, Montezuma, Raleigh, and Pocahontas before the eyes of Columbus; and the world bore witness that Timothy Dwight, "Heaven in his eye and rapture on his tongue," tuned his "high harp" in Barlow's inspired verses. Europe was as little disposed as America to cavil; and the Abbé Grégoire assured Barlow in a printed letter that this monument of genius and typography would immortalize the author and silence the criticisms of Pauw and other writers on the want of talent in America.

      That the "Columbiad" went far to justify those criticisms was true; but on the other hand it proved something almost equivalent to genius. Dwight, Trumbull, and Barlow, whatever might be their differences, united in offering proof of the bound­less ambition which marked the American character. Their aspirations were immense, and sooner or later such restless craving was sure to find better expres­sion. Meanwhile Connecticut was a province by it­self, a part of New England rather than of the United States. The exuberant patriotism of the Revolution was chilled by the steady progress of democratic prin­ciples in the Southern and Middle States, until at the election of Jefferson in 1800 Connecticut stood almost alone with no intellectual companion except Massachusetts, while the breach between them and the Middle States seemed to widen day by day. That the separation was only superficial was true; but the connection itself was not yet deep. An extreme Federalist partisan like Noah Webster did not cease working for his American language and literature because of the triumph of Jeffersonian principles elsewhere; Barlow became more American when his friends gained power; the work of the colleges went unbroken; but prejudices, habits, theories, and laws remained what they had been in the past, and in Connecticut the influence of nationality was less active than ten, twenty, or even thirty years before. Yale College was but a reproduction of Harvard with stricter orthodoxy, turning out every year about thirty graduates, of СКАЧАТЬ