USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 30
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
340
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
duction to the Latin Tongue in 1784, the first in- digenous work of that kind among us. He may be considered our Ezekicl Cheever. Riggs was followed by James Hardy, the compiler of several compends for instruction in the classics, in 1793-'4. The remembrance of him is still vivid. He was an Aberdeen scholar ; his early life was devoted to the seas ; he became an inmate of the family of Dr. Beattie, who gave him recommendations as well qualified for a professorship of classical liter- ature. At Dr. Beattie's suggestion he came out to this city. In his best cstate he was an approved teacher. After a while he abandoned the school- master's office, and finally sought a livelihood as a supernumerary of the Board of Health. He en- countered the yellow fever in its most malignant form with consummate bravery during its several visitations after 1795, and compiled those volumes of facts and opinions on the pestilence which bear his name. He lived through many vicissitudes, and died in great indigence, of cholera, in 1832.
The elementary spelling books of Webster, and the geography of Morse, in my urchin days, were making their way to public approbation, not how- ever without much opposition ; they had a long contest with Dilworth and Salmon, and almost a score of years had passed before Pike and Root, authorities with the federal currency, overcame the schoolmaster's assistant and the Irishman Gough,
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 341
with their sterling standard value of pounds, shillings, and pence. The success of these under- takings of Webster and Morse is to be classed among the wonders in literary history ; the period of their appearance was most opportune, and the public demand has caused the multiplication of editions that for a long series of years may have amounted in the aggregate to upwards of a million of copies annually. Such is indeed the fact with the elementary book of Webster, and the geography of Morse for a long while maintained a universal popularity. It is not saying too much that these books were great boons for the advancement of popular knowledge. As we advance a little fur- ther we find that Enfield's Speaker was forced to yield to Bingham's Preceptor, and Dwight's Co- lumbia superseded Rule Britannia. I cannot dwell on the speculations thrown out by the teachers of the day on the merits and demerits of these instruments of their art, and on the necessity then urged by them, of a disenthralled and free nation exercising an independent judgment, with the patriotic endeavor to create a new literature for a regenerated people. With respect to books of practical science the same spirit was manifested, till at length we find at the commencement of this century, the New Practical Navigator of Nathaniel Bowditch, of Boston, securing its triumphs for every sea, over the time-honored Practical Navi-
.
342
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
gator of Hamilton Moore, of Tower-hill, London. It is a fact of curious import that the eminent jurist, Theophilus Parsons, was the editor of the first American edition of the Practical Navigator, pub- lished by E. Blunt, the renowned projector of many works on coast surveys and nautical affairs.
This desire for fresh mental aliment under a new constitution was by no means limited ; it spread far and wide, particularly in New England ; it left, I believe, old Euclid unmolested, but it in- volved equally the infant primer and the elaborate treatise. In the colonial condition of affairs Stern- hold and Hopkins had sustained many assaults, but their strongholds were now invaded by the popular zeal of Barlow and Dwight. Nor were these innovations confined to sacred poetry alone. The psalmody which had for almost centuries mol- lified the distresses of the heart, and elevated the drooping spirits of the devout, surrendered its wonted claims to the Columbian Harmonist of Read. A tolerable library might be formed of the various productions of these operatives in the busi- ness of popular instruction. Noah Webster had engendered this zeal more perhaps than any other individual, and by incessant devotion had kept it alive. His Dissertations on the English Language he sent to Franklin, and Franklin in return wrote to Webster that his book would be useful in turn- ing the thoughts of his countrymen to correct
343
AMERICAN LITERATURE.
writing, yet administered to him profitable cau- tions. But literature, like the free soil of the country in these days, was infested with many wceds, and words ran high on many points of ver- bal logic. Amidst all these commotions some things were dcemed too sacred on all sides to be molested. Such was the affecting history of the martyrdom of John Rodgers, burnt at Smithfield ; but the nursery rhyme,
Whales in the sea-God's voice obey,
by acclamation was transformed into another equally undeniable truth :
By Washington-Great deeds were done.
A truth moreover which came home immediately to the feelings of the American bosom, and cleaved perhaps nearer the heart.
While the English language therefore, in the hands of the disciplinarians, was struggling for new powers and a loftier phraseology,-for few were enumerated in those days who believed with Gibbon and Franklin that the French tongue might absorb all other speech,-the patriotism of the youthful population ran no less wild than the literary ravings of the schoolmasters and the would- be philologists ; yet, as time has proved, with like innocence to the detriment of the Republic. The continental songs of revolutionary renown were
344
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
sung here and there in divers parts of the city, by the old soldiers congregated at places of public resort, who renewed their martial ardor by melody and mead, a beverage now almost forgotten, but then largely purchasable at the Knickerbocker taverns, along the Stuyvesant lane or Bowery. The Duyckincks have not in their Cyclopedia of American Literature, among their ballads of the Indian, French, and Revolutionary times, more striking instances of poetic license than I have often listened to, at these patriotic festivals. I give a verse from one of these most popular songs, vociferated to the tune of Malbrook :
King George sent his sheep-stealers, Poor refugees and tories, King George sent his sheep-stealers To filch for mutton here : But Yankees were hard dealers, They sold their sheep skins dear.
Wars and rumors of wars kept the juveniles alive. Social companies of youngsters were formed, ac- coutred with wooden guns and kettle drums, and were perpetually seen, with braggart front in harm- less squads, marching with the air of Captain Bobadil, chanting some piece of continental poetry :
Behold! the conquering Yankees come With sound of fife and beat of drum ; Says General Lee to General Howe, What do you think of the Yankees now ?
345
AMERICAN LITERATURE.
But these trifles were looked upon as the flying cloud ; the nation had ripe men at its head ; gov- ernment was successfully securing the measures for commerce and finance ; the schools were daily stronger with better teachers, and the halls of col- leges were better supplied with candidates for ele- vated instruction. The press was more prolific, and something beside the Fool of Quality and Evelina, the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain and George Barn- well, were with the reading public. Pope, and Anne Radcliffe and Monk Lewis, might be found on the stalls, with Bonaparte's Campaigns in Italy, a work filled with the martial achievements of the great soldier, and dedicated to Col. Burr, by the translator John Davis, who affirmed that the ex- ploits of Alexander the Great werc the marches of a mere holiday captain compared with the canı- paigns of the French general. Franklin's Life and Essays were in everybody's hands. Dobson, of Philadelphia, had heroically undertaken the re- publication of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Collins, of New Jersey, about the same time, had issued his highly prized quarto Family Bible. Nor were our New York publishers lukewarm at the printing of elaborate works of grave import and scholastic value. If, however, we except the Poems of Freneau and the reprint of Burns, we find little in the region of the muses that issucd from the
15*
346
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
press ; Clifton, Honeywood, Low, and Linn, were our prominent domestic poets.
The Della Cruscan muse now, however, invaded us : Mrs. Robinson's Poems was a dog-eared vol- ume ; and the song of the melodious Bard, Moore, " I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled," received a popularity surpassing that of perhaps any other verses. It found its way in the daily journals, weekly museums, weekly visitors and ladies' magazines ; it was printed on single sheets, placarded at inns and in stage coaches ; it travel- led to the races as the inner lining of hats ; it oc- cupied the cabins of the wood boats, and was found surrounding the trunk of the orchard tree ; it was among the earliest of our music printing, and old Dr. Anderson, now some eighty years of age, our first engraver on wood, still alive and still busy, gave it illustrations ; it was seen among the con- tents of the young misses' reticule, and was read in secret at the doors of churches, while the youth- ful maiden was tarrying for a partner to accom- pany her within the house of worship. My de- fective memory does not permit me to state posi- tively that Blanchard, in his aeronautic expedi- tions, wafted it to the skies. In short, it was everywhere. But the prospects of a French war and Hail Columbia ere long limited the duration of this electric poem ; and as if to facilitate this object, here and there appeared a sylvan rhymist
347
DELLA CRUSCAN BARDS.
who entwined a chaplet of the Rosa Matilda order. What had been considered rare, now lost its fresh- ness, and spurious articles had currency in the market without detection by the multitude. The insidious assaults of the Baviad and Maviad, from the pen of Gifford, seriously crippled the progress of this species of sentimentalism ; but the pre- tensions of the Della Cruscan finery came at last to a somewhat sudden and unexpected end in the humorous effusion of Barrett : *
TO DOROTHY PULVERTAFT.
" If Black Sea, White Sea, Red Sea ran On tide of ink to Ispahan ; If all the geese in Lincoln fens, Produced spontaneous well-made pens; If Holland old, or Holland new, One wondrous sheet of paper grew ; Could I by stenographic power Write twenty libraries an hour, And should I sing but half the grace Of half a freckle on thy face ; Each syllable I wrote, should reach- From Inverness to Bognor's beach ; Each hairstroke be a river Rhine, Each verse an equinoctial line."
The author of those exquisite lines, occurring in his poem entitled "Woman ":
"Not she with traitrous kiss her master stung, Not she denied him with unfaithful tongue ; She, when apostles fled, could danger brave, Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave."
Lines dear to the heart of the world as a beloved proverb.
348
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
One or two additional circumstances may be stated to strengthen what has already been said, rather than create doubt as to the accuracy of our narrative. Campbell and Bloomfield appeared as authors in London with little interval between them. The Pleasures of Hope and the Farmer's Boy were here reprinted nearly simultaneously ; the former had been subjected to the revision of Dr. Anderson, the editor of the British Poets ; the latter had undergone the incubation of Capel Lofft. Thus fortified, there was little hesitation as to the safety of the undertaking. Such was the impor- tance attached to these works, that the rival pub- lishers blazoned forth their labors, so that every corner of the city was enlivened by large placards announcing the important fact. It is almost su- perfluous to add, that with the literary taste which had been cherished, the Farmer's Boy outran in popularity the Pleasures of Hope. As the case now stands, Campbell makes one of every dozen volumes we meet with, while it might be difficult to find a copy of Bloomfield.
In 1804 Scott enriched the poetic world with his Lay of the Last Minstrel. Soon after its ap- pearance a presentation copy of the work in luxurious quarto was received by a lady, then a resident of this city, a native of Scotland, and who had been most intimate with the author when school companions in the same institution. It
349
SCOTT'S MINSTREL.
was seen that the Minstrel was a classic, and the volume circulated widely among friends. It shortly after fell into the hands of a publishing house, and the great question now to be decided was, whether it could bear an American reprint, keeping in view the primary object of the bookseller, that the wheel of fortune must turn in the right way. A literary coterie was selected who might determine the chances of adventure. Among other dissuasive arguments, the Lay was pronounced too local in its nature, and its interest obsolete ; its measure was considered too varied and irregular, and it had not the harmony of tuneful Pope. It was rejected by the critical tribunal. Longworth, however, brought sufficient resolution to bear, and printed in his Belles-Lettres Repository of 1805, the uni- versally known introduction to the first canto. Such was the cool and calculating reception of Scott with us. One might almost think from the open- ing lines of the poem, that the poet had, with prophetic vision, foreseen himself in the New World :
" The way was long, the night was cold, The Minstrel was infirm and old."
These were probably the first lines of Walter Scott's writings that ever issued from an American press. The memorable quarto is still preserved with many associations by the venerable lady to whom the illustrious author presented it, Mrs.
350
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
Divie Bethune, the founder of our Infant schools. Who can now tell the hundreds of thousands of volumes of this noble writer which the press of this country has brought forth ?
We are not to be abashed at the recital of these occurrences concerning the early condition of the press. They were associated, and naturally grew out of the spirit of the times and the condi- tion of the Republic. Scott was a new name among authors, and elegant letters are not among the first wants of a people. Yet it will be con- ceded that at that very period a broad foundation was already being laid, on which at no remote day literature, as well as science, would command its disciples. The trepidation at the hazard of print- ing a few leaves of poetry experienced by some, is to be judged merely as an individual infirmity, in- asmuch as we find that even then typography was prolific of works of voluminous extent, and many of its products at that day constitute a sound por- tion of existing libraries. Longworth himself was a man of enterprise, but he had bought experience by his ornamental edition of Hayley's Triumphs of Temper, and he was moreover sustaining his Shakspeare Gallery at no small sacrifice ; while we find that Evert Duyckinck, Isaac Collins, Geo. F. Hopkins, Samuel Campbell, and T. and J. Swords, were the leading men to whom we may turn for evidence that the press was not idle, and
351
LITERARY CHARACTERS.
.
for illustration of the rising capabilities of the book-publishers' craft. An author was a scarce article in those days, about the beginning of the nineteenth century ; the returns for literary labor must have been small. Noah Webster was un- questionably the most successful of the tribe, and in his wake followed the geographer Morse. The city library, and the circulating library of Caritat, constituted pretty much all the establishments of that order we possessed. Pintard was then at New Orleans, and years elapsed before he and the excellent William Wood began to think of the Apprentices' Library, and to suggest the Mariners' Library for ships at sea. The Mercantile Library, now so vast a concern, was not then dreamt of, and Philip Hone, with all his ardor as a patriotic citi- zen, had not as yet enlisted in the great cause of knowledge, or manifested that attention to those important interests which absorbed the years of his more advanced life. In a pedestrian excursion through our then thinly populated streets, one might see the learned Bishop Provoost, the ample Dr. Mitchill and his colleague Dr. Miller, Dr. Bay- ley, Dr. Hosack, Dr. Livingston, Dr. S. Miller, Dr. Mason, and Dunlap, all writers ; Caines, the deep- read reporter ; Cheetham and Coleman, the an- tagonistic editors ; Kent, afterwards the great Chancellor. In the court room we might behold Hamilton and Burr, Harrison, Brockholst Living-
352
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
ston and Martin Wilkins, Colden and Slosson, Hoffman and Pendleton, and young Wells .**
The literary struggles of those days deserve more ample notice, but our task may be honestly abridged at this time. The curious in a knowl- edge of literary toil, in the progress of letters, and in the details of authorship, will not fail frequent consultation of the several works of the late Dr. Griswold, a faithful pioneer of mental acumen in this department of study, and turn with renewed delight and increased satisfaction to the Biograph-
* To render these imperfect sketches of the times less defec- tive, I had designed to notice briefly the New York Bar, with which I was partially acquainted, by my repeated visits at the courts ; often as medical witness in behalf of the people in crimi- nal cases involving medical jurisprudence ; but my resources are not adequate to the great subject, and the undertaking is the less necessary after the precious and interesting History of the Court of Common Pleas, from the pen of the Hon. CHARLES P. DALY, one of the Judges, and printed in volume Ist of the Report of Cases, by Counsellor E. Delafield Smith. Some forty-five years ago, my lamented friend and associate of Columbia College, Samuel Berrian, brother of the venerable Rector of Trinity Church, commenced a series of Sketches of the Members of the Bar, which appeared in Dennie's Portfolio. His first subject was Josiah Ogden Hoffman, with whom he was a pupil. The great men of the legal profession of those days to which I allude, were indeed by universal concurrence, enumerated among the master minds of the land ; and I have often heard it said, that the voice of the law, from their lips, was the harmony of the world. Legal medicine, I am inclined to think, received more homage in the days of the great Thomas Addis Emmet and the Hon. Hugh Maxwell, the District Attorney, than it had before or has since.
353
HARPER'S BOOK ENTERTAINMENT.
ical Essays of the æsthetic Tuckerman, and the pages of the Cyclopedia of American Literature, by the Messrs. Duyckinck. When thoroughly in- vestigated, the candid inquirer may wonder that under such difficulties so much was in reality ac- complished.
So long ago as in 1802 I had the pleasure of witnessing the first social gathering of American publishers at the old City Hotel, Broadway, an organization under the auspices of the venerable Matthew Carey. About thirty years after I was one of a large assembly brought together by the Brothers Harper's great entertainment. I remem- ber well the literary wares displayed on that first memorable occasion, and I still see in "my mind's eye " the prominent group of American authors
Emmet was profoundly learned as a physician ; and upon his arrival in this country in 1804, deliberated whether to enter upon the practice of medicine or enter the courts of law. In all cases of death that came before Emmet requiring medical testimony, an examination of the brain he made a prerequisite. It is not irrelevant to add, that Dr. James S. Stringham is to be considered the founder of Medical Jurisprudence in this country. He was the first who gave lectures on this science in America, and was my predecessor in the chair of Forensic Medicine in the Univer- sity of New York. His taste for this knowledge he originally imbibed from his able preceptor, Dr. Duncan, of Edinburgh. His reading on the subject was extensive, from the elaborate investi- gations of Paulus Zacchias, down to the recent productions of Foderé and Mahon. A fuller account of him may be found in my Sketch, in Beck's Medical Jurisprudence. He was a native of New York, and died in 1817.
354
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
who participated in the festivities of the latter celebration. Again in 1855 a complimentary fes- tival of the New York Book Publishers' Associa- tion to authors and booksellers took place at the Crystal Palace. A comparative view of these three periods in literary progress would furnish an instructive illustration of the workings of the American mind and of the enterprise and capa- bilities of the American press. The venerable Matthew Carey at the primary meeting held forth, in earnest language, persuasives to renewed meet- ings of a like nature as the most effective means for the promotion and diffusion of knowledge. Isaac Collins, that jewel of a man for solid worth and integrity, concurred in sentiment. At the Harper entertainment similar opinions proceeded from many minds, and the liveliest responses in confirmation were listened to from Chancellor Kent and a large number of native writers of ce- lebrity. At the last celebration of 1855, which was conducted on a scale of great variety and ele- gance, Washington Irving and a most imposing association of distinguished authors, male and female, graced the occasion : those public spirited publishers, the Appletons, with Wiley and Put- nam, rendered the banquet a genial gathering of kindred spirits. The intelligent and patriotic Putnam, in an appropriate introductory address, stated the fact that for twelve years, ending
355
FECUNDITY OF THE PRESS.
in 1842, there were published 1,115 different works, of these 623 wcre original ; in the year 1853 therc were 733 new works published in the United States, of which 276 were reprints of English works, 35 were translations of foreign authors, and 420 orig- inal American works ; thus showing an increase of about 800 per cent. in less than twenty years. Mr. Putnam thus draws the conclusion that literature and the book-trade advanced ten times as fast as the population. If with these facts we compare the numbers printed of each edition, the growth is still greater ; editions at the present time varying from 10,000, 30,000, 75,000, and even 300,000. The Magazine of the Messrs. Harper reaches the astounding number at each issue of 180,000. On this last memorable occasion of the publishers' celebration our distinguished poet, Bryant, rc- sponded to a sentiment on American literaturc in his happiest manner. I quote a few lines from his suggestive address : " The promise of American authorship, given by the appearance of Cotton Mather, has never been redeemed till now. In him the age saw one of its ripest scholars, though formed in the New England schools and by New England libraries, in the. very infancy of the colo- nics ; a man, as learned as the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, and sometimes as quaint- ly eloquent, sending out huge quartos as the fruit of his labors, interspersed with duodecimos, the
356
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
fruit of his recreations ; but his publications ex- ceeded the number of the days of the year. After his time, in the hundred and fifty years which fol- lowed, the procession of American authors was a straggling one ; at present they are a crowd which fairly choke the way ; illustrious historians, able and acute theologians, authors of books of travels, instructive or amusing, clever novelists, brilliant essayists, learned and patient lexicographers. Every bush, I had almost said every buttercup of the fields has its poet ; poets start up like the soldiers of Roderick Dhu, from behind every rock and out of every bank of fern."
I must linger a moment longer on this subject. Our literary annals, while they abound with occur- rences most gratifying to the intellectual and moral advancement of our species, possess yet another claim to estimation. The making of books has not been an employment of selfish and inert grati- fication ; it has proved a prolific source of emol- ument, no less remarkable than the peculiar occa- sions which have awakened the . talents necessary for the healthy exercise of the art itself. Liter- ature, independently of its own noble nature, has superadded to its powers a productive result of substantial issue ; and while it beautifies and en- riches with precious benefits the progress of civil- ization, it has secured the comforts which spring up from the wholesome pursuit of other sources
357
CONDITION OF AUTHORSHIP.
of wealth. This indeed is the offspring of but a recent period among us ; but the fact is not the less solacing to the pangs of intellectual labor. The huckstering which once marred the trans- actions between publishers and authors no longer occurs ; the starveling writers whom I now and then saw, at about the time of the first meeting of our literary venders, the booksellers of 1802, have paid the debt of nature, I dare not add pre- maturely ; and we can now enroll a list of the literary and the scientific who have increased far and wide the nation's renown. For a considerable while during my early medical career my diagnosis often led me to attribute the causes of mental in- quietude and physical suffering among this cir- cumscribed order of men to inanition ; but if the literary squad, as old Dr. Tillary denominated them, preserve intact their wonted energics and privileges, their improved condition may sometimes demand an alterative treatment corresponding with that robust state and imposing plethora, in which they so generally present themselves to our admiration and estccm. Personal observation and individual experience may have helped the great reform, for not a few must have lcarncd the truth of the remark of the playwright, George Colman : " Authorship, as a profession, is a very good walking-stick, but very bad crutches."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.