USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I > Part 21
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Edward B. Hooker. M. T.
CHAPTER VIII.
HARTFORD IN LITERATURE.
BY HENRY A. BEERS, Professor of English Literature at Yale College.
H ARTFORD'S first writer was its founder, that notable man and leader of men, Mr. Thomas Hooker, " Luther of New England," " Pillar of Connecticut Colony," and "Light of the Western Churches;" of whom it was finely said, "He was a person who, while doing his Master's work, would put a king in his pocket." 1 His writings consist exclusively of sermons, of which nearly one hun- dred have been printed; and of tracts and theological treatises, such as " A Survey of the Sum of Church Discipline," and "The Poor Doubt- ing Christian drawn to Christ." They display that earnestness, rising on occasion into a sombre eloquence, and relieved by a quaint and homely fancy, which characterized the Puritan divines of Old and New England. In Hooker, Edwards, and Bushnell, Hartford County may claim as its own, by birth or adoption, the three greatest names in three successive centuries of New England Orthodoxy. Hooker's writ- ings were first published in England, and have been only in part reprinted in America.2
His associate in the ministry at Hartford was Samuel Stone, who was likewise the sponsor of the new settlement, being himself a native of English Hartford. He printed a single pamphlet,3 and left. two works, still in manuscript, one of which is described as a body of divinity, and the other as a confutation of the Antinomians. He had reputation as a wit, and was certainly the occasion of wit in others ; his death calling ont a punning elegy attributed to Edward Bulkley, who describes the deceased as a " whet-stone," a "load-stone," and
" A Stone for kingly David's use so fit, As would not fail Goliath's front to hit."
Hartford's first secular writer and earliest poet was Roger Wolcott (born at Windsor, Jan. 4, 1679; died at Windsor, May 17, 1767), who became a major-general, judge, and colonial governor of Connecticut, and founded a line of statesmen illustrious in New England history. Wol- cott's curious little volume bears the following title : " Poetical Medita-
1 Life of Hooker in Mather's Magnalia.
2 A list of Hooker's published works is given in an appendix (V.) to the Rev. Dr. Walker's History of the First Church in Hartford.
3 A Congregational Church is a Catholike Visible Church. Or An Examination of M. Hudson, his Vindication, etc. London: 1652.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
tions, being the Improvement of some Vacant Hours, by Roger Wolcott, Esq. ; with a Preface by the Reverend Mr. Bulkley of Colchester. New London : Printed and Sold by T. Green, 1725." In the preface of fifty-six pages the painful Mr. Bulkley delivers himself on matters and things in general, but chiefly on the title of the Indian aborigines to their lands. Then follow a dedication in verse to the Rev. Timothy Edwards, a few poetical meditations on Scripture texts, and a poem of sixty pages, en- titled " A Brief Account of the Agency of the Honourable John Win- throp, Esq. ; in the Court of King Charles the Second, Anno Dom. 1662. When he obtained for the colony of Connecticut His Majesty's Gracious Charter." The volume closes with an " Advertisement " by Joseph Dewey, a Colchester cloth-maker, who, "having been something at charge in promoting the Publishing the foregoing Meditations," hereby taketh occasion to give his country people a few directions toward the better preparation of wool for the weaving.
There is nothing noteworthy about the shorter pieces in the book ; but the " Brief Account"1 is of historical interest, its subject being the procuring of that charter, so precious in Connecticut tradition, which Wadsworth afterward hid in the Charter Oak. The greater part of the poem is in the form of episode, Winthrop describing to the king the plantation of the colony and its war with the Pequots. Not much can be said for its literary merits. The description of Connecticut River and its banks - a favorite theme with later Hartford poets - is conventional and untrue. "Philomel high perch't upon a thorn," mead- ows enamelled with roses and violets, elms embraced by fruitful vines, figure in the same landscape with the beaver and the mink. The pragmatic style of the narrative is heightened by the usual classical in- sipidities, - Aurora, Phœbus, Cynthia, Tithon, Thetis, and Lucifer carrying on their astronomical operations in laughable proximity to the names of Uncas, Sasacus, and Miantinomoh. The burning of the Pequot fort at Mystic - which the poet calls a " castle" and a " stately palace" -is painted with an epic pomp that emulates Ver- gil's picture of the destruction of Troy. In the recently issued " Wol- cott Memorial "2 is an autobiography or private journal of Roger Wolcott, containing a few short occasional poems, together with one or two papers on political and theological subjects.
Roger Wolcott's still more distinguished grandson, Oliver Wolcott, Jr. (born at Litchfield, Jan. 11, 1760; died at New York, June 1, 1833) Secretary of the Treasury under Washington and Adams, seems to have inherited the desire at least of writing verses. During his residence at Hartford from 1781 to 1789, he became intimate with Trumbull, Hop- kins, Barlow, and Noah Webster; and, seduced perhaps by the exam- ple of Barlow, "achieved," to use his biographer's word, a number of poems, still in manuscript, - among which was one on " The Vision of Paris," which " would be much worse than Barlow's epic, if it were not much shorter." The Hon. Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, reports him as having a good taste in literature, with one exception, namely, " an excessive admiration of Dr. Dwight's ' Conquest of Canaan.'" '" His letters and State papers, edited by his grandson, are among the most
1 Reprinted in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, vol. iv. p. 262.
2 Memorial of Henry Wolcott and some of His Descendants. By Samuel Wolcott. Printed for private distribution. New York : Anson D. F. Randolph & Co., 1881.
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HARTFORD IN LITERATURE.
valuable sources of American history for the period which they cover.1 He left over fifty folio volumes in manuscript (now deposited with the Connecticut Historical Society), further selections from which are promised to the public.
Jonathan Edwards (born at East Windsor, Oct. 5, 1703; died at Princeton, N. J., March 22, 1758) ; the greatest of American theologians and metaphysicians, the author of the famous " Essay on the Freedom of the Will," and the hardly less famous " Treatise on Religious Affec- tions," was a native of Hartford County ; though his literary work was done elsewhere, and mainly at Northampton and Stockbridge, Mass. From his thirteenth year, when he entered Yale, he was almost con- tinuously absent from the home of his boyhood.
The Golden Age of literature in Hartford was during and imme- diately following the War of the Revolution, when for a brief period the little provincial capital became the intellectual metropolis of the coun- try, and a focus of political influence hardly less important than Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. This temporary eminence it owed to the presence of a society of clever writers, known as the Hartford Wits, who took up their residence there almost simultaneously. John Trum- bull came to Hartford in 1781, Lemuel Hopkins in 1784, and about the same time Richard Alsop opened his bookstore and Joel Barlow es- tablished his weekly gazette, the " American Mercury." Colonel David Humphreys was much at Hartford in 1786-1787, and Dr. Elihu H. Smith (who published at Litchfield, in 1793, the first miscellany of American poetry ) was then resident at Wethersfield. Theodore Dwight, the elder, who became Alsop's brother-in-law, belonged also to this group.
None of this company of wits and poets was a native of the county ; nor, with the exception of Trumbull and Hopkins, did any of them re- main long at Hartford. But during the few years that they were there together, a club holding weekly meetings for social and literary com- munion, they represented a concentration of talent such as had not hitherto existed in any American town.
John Trumbull was perhaps more completely identified with Hart- ford than any of the others. He was born at Westbury (now Water- town), April 24, 1750, and had made a reputation as a wit by his college satire, " The Progress of Dulness," and by the first part of " Mc- Fingal," published at Philadelphia in 1775, and afterward made over into the first two cantos of the poem as it now stands. But it was at Hartford that " McFingal " was finished ; and the first edition was pub- lished there by subscription in 1782. It came so pat to the occasion, and so hit the humor of the day, that it gained immediate popularity, and ran quickly through more than thirty American editions,2 to say
1 Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and Adams. Edited from the papers of Oliver Wolcott, by George Gibbs. New York, 1846.
2 There being at the time no copyright law, " the poem remained the property of news- mongers, hawkers, pedlers, and petty chapmen." The pirating of "McFingal" led to the passage by the General Assembly of Connecticut, in 1783, of an " Act for the Encouragement of Literature and Genius," which secured to authors their copyright within the State. The personal exertions of Noah Webster in defence of his spelling-book led to the passage of simi- lar laws by the legislatures of other States, and finally to the passage of a general law by Con- gress, modelled on the Connecticut act of 1783. See a paper by the Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull on " The Origin of McFingal," contributed to the "Historical Magazine " for Janu- ary, 1868, second series, vol. iii.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
nothing of several impressions in England. "McFingal " was a mock heroic in four cantos, ridiculing the British and the American tories in smart Hudibrastie doggerel. The hero, one Squire McFingal, a tory of Scotch descent, sallies forth to cut down an obnoxious liberty-pole ; but is tarred, feathered, and carted by a mob of whigs, and finally takes flight to the royal army at Beston. The nucleus of the poem was a burlesque in rhyme of one of Gage's proclamations, contributed by Trumbull to the " Connecticut Courant " of Aug. 7 and 14, 1775. This famous Revolutionary epic is certainly the most successful of the many imitations of " Hudibras." The coarse, vigorous wit of Butler, his apt- ness in figure and allusion, and his pithy proverbial style, are cleverly reproduced. Several current quotations from " McFingal" are often mistakenly credited to "Hudibras," such as the couplet
"No man e'er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law ; "
and this, -
" But optics sharp it needs, I ween, To see what is not to be seen."
Time has a little blunted the edge of "McFingal," yet it remains the best of American political satires in verse, with the possible exception of the "Biglow Papers." The first edition of Trumbull's collected poems 1 was published at Hartford in 1820, with a memoir of the author, an engraving from his portrait painted by Colonel John Trumbull in 1793, and plates from humorous designs by Elkanah Tisdale, the Hart- ford miniature-painter. His serious poems include several elegies and Pindarie odes in the manner of Gray, but of no great merit. During the years 1789-1819 Trumbull took an active part in public life. Ile was at different times State Attorney for Hartford County, Repre- sentative of Hartford town in the State Legislature, Judge of the Supe- rior Court and of the Supreme Court of Errors. In 1825 he removed to Detroit, where he died May 12, 1831.
Dr. Lemuel Hopkins (born at Waterbury, June 19, 1750; died at Hartford, April 14, 1801) was a distinguished physician, and one of the founders of the Connecticut Medical Society. Many of his squibs and occasional verses, like Dr. Holmes's " medicated novels," bespeak the physician. Such are, for example, his " Epitaph on a Patient killed by a Cancer Quack," and his lines on " The Yellow Fever in New York in 1798." He was above all things a humorist. " The bludgeon satir- ist," he is called by Goodrich, who gives the following sketch of him from report : "He left a strong impression upon the public mind, as well by the eccentricity of his personal appearance and habits, as by his learning and genius. He was often described to me as long and lank, walking with spreading arms and straddling legs. His nose was long, lean, and flexible, his eyes protruding, and his whole expression a strange mixture of solemnity and drollery."
No edition of Dr. Hopkins's collected poems has ever been published. They consisted in great part of contributions to the "Anarchiad," the "Political Green-House," and the "Echo," which were serial satires, in verse, by the Hartford wits. The first of these was the
1 The Poetical Works of John Trumbull, LL.D. In two volumes. Hartford. Printed for Samuel G. Goodrich by Lincoln and Stone, 1820.
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HARTFORD IN LITERATURE.
" Anarchiad," extending to twelve numbers, and printed in the "New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine" during the years 1786 and 1787. It was written by Trumbull, Hopkins, Humphreys, and Barlow in concert. The plan was suggested by Colonel Humphreys, and was something like that of the English " Rolliad." The sat- irists of the " Anarchiad " addressed themselves to rebuke the spirit of lawlessness which broke out during the period of confusion that followed the signing of peace in 1783, when Democratic mobs, in Connecticut and elsewhere, opposed the grant of five years' pay to the officers of the regular army. The statesmen of Connecticut were stanch Federalists ; and Hartford now became, and continued for some twenty years, the literary headquarters of that Conservative party which favored a strong general government and opposed French democracy.1
The papers of the " Anarchiad "- which have been collected into a volume2-are imaginary extracts from an epic poem in twenty- four books, "On the Restoration of Chaos and Substantial Night," dug out of the ruins of an ancient Indian fort, - a relic of the mythical Welsh colony planted in America by Madoc. It is not easy to identify the work of the several authors.
To the series of social and political satires which passed under the general name of the " Echo," Dr. Hopkins contributed the "New Year's Verses," originally printed in the "Connecticut Courant " of Jan. 1, 1795 ; the verses entitled "Guillotina," 3 and a part of the " Political Green-House," first issued in pamphlet form, Jan. 1, 1799. A few lines in this series were written by Drs. Mason F. Cogswell and Elihu H. Smith. With these exceptions the entire work was the pro- duction of Richard Alsop and Theodore Dwight, Sr. The first number was written at Middletown, but printed at Hartford, Aug. 8, 1791, in the " American Mercury," - Barlow's paper, which he had, however, resigned the management of in 1787. In this paper the greater part of the series appeared ; the last number being of the date March 4, 1805, - a burlesque of President Jefferson's Inaugural. In 1807 the twenty numbers of the " Echo," together with the "Political Green-House," " Democracy," " New Year's Verses," "Symptoms of the Millennium," " Sketches of the Times," etc., were published at New York, in a single volume, with preface, index, and supplementary notes, and seven en- gravings from capital humorous designs by Tisdale.4
The " Echo" was a sort of Yankee "Dunciad." Starting with the parody of a bombastic description of a thunder-storm in one of the Boston papers, it caught up and prolonged the various humors of the
1 See a parody in the "Echo," No. 12, of a Democratic attack upon the " Federal Printers in the Eastern States," published over the signature of "Mirabeau," in a Philadelphia jour- nal, in 1793 : -
" Hartford ! curst corner of the spacions earth ! Where each dire mischief ripens into birth . . .
Hartford, detested more by faction's race
Than hardened sinner hates the call of grace," etc.
2 The Anarchiad. With Notes and Appendices by Luther G. Riggs. New Haven : T. H. Pease, 1861.
3 Published as the " News-Boy's Address," for the " Courant," Jan. 1, 1796, and verses under the same title, for Jan. 1, 1797, 1798, 1799, are probably from his pen.
4 The titlepage reads simply, "The Echo. Printed at the Porcupine Press, by Pasquin Petronius."
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
day, - now travestying a speech of Jefferson or Hancock, now turning into burlesque a Boston town-meeting, or an article by Brackenridge on the Indian question. Its objects were mainly political, but it some- times stooped at smaller prey. Thus, one John Monier, having adver- tised a school for boys at New York, which was to have "a very healthy, desirable stand, near perhaps to the Israelitish Burying- Ground," "Echo" inquires, -
" What air more fragrant to a Christian nose Than from the mouldering Hebrew daily flows ? What scene more pleasing to a Christian eye Than where the sons of eirenmeision lie ?"
Nor is there wanting, on occasion, that audacious exaggeration and ir- reverence said to form the staple of American humor, as, for example, in this forcible equivalent for carrying coals to Newcastle : -
""T were nonsense all, - we might expect as well To retail brimstone from a store in hell."
A local flavor is given to many of the papers by allusions to matters famous in Connecticut tradition, - Captain Kidd, the Blue Laws, the Windham Frogs, the Hebron Pump, etc. A passage from the " Politi- cal Green-House " was quoted in Congress, in January, 1799, by the Hon. John Nicholas, of Virginia, in proof of Connecticut's desire for a war with France.1
One of the "Echo" poets, Theodore Dwight the elder (born at Northampton, Mass., Dec. 16, 1764; died at New York, June 11, 1846), established at Hartford, in 1809, the "Connecticut Mirror," which he edited until 1815. He was secretary of the famous Hartford Convention in 1814, a history of which he published in 1833. He served one term in Congress in 1806-1807. From 1817-1835 he conducted the New York " Daily Advertiser." In the latter year he removed to Hartford, but subsequently returned to New York. His publications include
" Open Convents," 1836; "Character of Thomas Jefferson," 1839; and a "Dictionary of Roots and Derivations." Some poems by Dwight are included in Dr. Smith's Litchfield Collection of 1793; and others, of a satirical kind, are given by Goodrich in his " Recollec- tions." A hymn of his composition, sung at Hartford, Dec. 27, 1799, on the occasion of Washington's death, made a strong impression at the time, and has been often reprinted.
Of Joel Barlow's meteoric career but a short arc belongs to the history of Hartford. His fine version of the 137th Psalm, " The Baby- lonian Captivity," was written at Hartford, and published in 1785, in a revised edition of Watts, undertaken at the request of the General Association of the Clergy of Connecticut.2 At Hartford, too, was com- pleted and, in 1787, published, the " Vision of Columbus," afterward expanded into the " Columbiad," printed at Philadelphia in 1808. The " Vision " was published by subscription,3 and subsequently reprinted in London and Paris. Barlow left Hartford in 1788.
1 See the " Echo," pp. 259-266.
2 Dr. Watts's Imitation of the Psalms of David. Corrected and enlarged by Joel Barlow. Hartford. Printed by Barlow & Babcock, 1785.
3 The Vision of Columbus. A Poem in Nine Books. By Joel Barlow, Esq., Hartford. Printed by Hudson & Goodwin, for the Author, 1787.
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HARTFORD IN LITERATURE.
The "Vision of Columbus" was a poem once greatly admired. Barlow, and Timothy Dwight in his "Conquest of Canaan," were thought to have domesticated the epic muse in America. But it would make a strong draft on the reader's patriotism to get through either of these works to-day. The "Vision" is written in the rhymed heroics of Pope, and abounds in the vague, glittering imagery, the false sub- lime, the stilted diction, and monotonous verse which marked the decay of the so-called " classical" school of English poetry in the last cen- tury. It tells how an angel appeared to Columbus in prison, and led him to the top of a hill of vision, whence he saw the American continents outspread before him, and the panorama of their future history un- rolled ; the conquest of Mexico by Cortez; the rise and destruction of the kingdom of the Incas; the settlement of North America; the French and English wars and the War of the Revolution ; the future progress of civilization in America and over the world ; ending with a prophecy of universal peace, and a " general council of all nations," in a passage which will remind the modern reader of Tennyson's " Par- liament of Man, the Federation of the World." The machinery of the "Vision " is evidently borrowed from the eleventh and twelfth books of "Paradise Lost." A solitary allusion to the city of its pub- lication may be quoted here : -
" Thy parent stream, fair Hartford, met his eye, Far lessening upward to the northern sky ; No watery gleams through happier valleys shine, Nor drinks the sea a lovelier wave than thine."
In 1811 Samuel Griswold Goodrich, " Peter Parley " (born at Ridge- field, Ang. 19, 1793 ; died at New York, May 9, 1860), came to Hartford, where he carried on business as a bookseller and publisher during the years 1816-1822. His " Recollections "1 contain much interesting in- formation about the state of literature and taste at Hartford during the first generation of this century. "In my time," he writes, " Hopkins was dead, Trumbull had left off poetry for a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court, and Dwight was devoted to the 'Connecticut Mirror.' . . Hartford was then a small commercial town of four thousand inhabitants, dealing in lumber, and smelling of molasses and old Ja- maica, for it had still some trade with the West Indies. ... There was a high tone of general intelligence and social respectability about the place; but it had not a single institution, a single monu- ment that marked it as even a provincial metropolis of taste in lit- erature, art, or refinement. Though the semi-capital of the State, it was strongly impressed with a plodding, mercantile, and mechanical character."
During Goodrich's residence at Hartford he belonged to a literary club, which included among its members Bishop J. M. Wainwright, the IIon. Isaac Toucey, Judge Samuel H. Huntington, Jonathan Law, and Colonel William L. Stone. The last mentioned of these (born at Esopus, New York, April 20, 1793 ; died at Saratoga, Aug. 15, 1844) had succeeded Dwight, in 1816, in the management of the " Connecti- cut Mirror." He was afterward (1821-1844) editor of the New York " Commercial Advertiser," and well known as an author by his " Life
1 Recollections of a Lifetime. By S. G. Goodrich. New York and Auburn, 1856. VOL. I .- 11.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
of Joseph Brant," "Life and Times of Red Jacket," "Poetry and History of Wyoming," "Uncas and Miantonomoh," and other works. Mr. Goodrich issued three or four numbers of the "Round Table," composed of articles written by members of this elub. Among his publications were a number of educational works by Hartford authors, such as Woodbridge's "School Geography," Dr. Comstock's text-books in natural science, and a "History of the United States," by the publisher's brother, the Rev. Charles A. Goodrich. He published also a partial edition of the Waverley Novels, in eight volumes. " American literature," he says, "was then at a low ebb. It was positively injurious to the commercial credit of a bookseller to undertake American works." He adds, incidentally, that one Hartford publisher refused to be concerned in stereotyping Byron's poems because of their immorality. Goodrich himself began to write po- etry while at Hartford, though no edition of his poems was issued until 1836.1 In 1827 Goodrich removed to Boston, where he established himself as a publisher ; putting forth, among other things, his very popular series of "Peter Parley " books for the in- struction of the young, and edit- ing the "Token," - an annual in which many of Hawthorne's tales were first given to the world. He
was at one time United States Consul at Paris.
First in order of time on the list of Hartford's female writers is Mrs. Willard, née Emma Hart (born at Berlin, Feb. 23, 1787 ; died at Troy, New York, April 15, 1870), whose long and useful life was devoted to the improvement of women's education. Beginning in her native town as a school-teacher at the age of sixteen, she taught subse- quently in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York States, but became specially identified with the city of Troy, where she conducted a famous seminary for young ladies during the years 1821-1838. In the latter year she resigned the charge of her seminary and came to Hartford to reside. Her publications include a large number of text-books and manuals in history, geography, astronomy, etc., the total sales of which amounted to a million at the time of her death. Her most original contribution to science was a " Treatise on the Motive Powers which produce the Circulation of the Blood," 1846. In 1830 she announced
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