will never pass for poetry on this side of the Atlantic." In the end, assuming that the author is a very young man making his maiden attempt, he concedes: "Mr. Dwight has certainly a happy talent at description; but it is still in its puerility, and wants much cultivation and correction;" and "At present his work is a promising blossom of polite literature sprung up on the American continent.”

Southey borrowed a copy of the Conquest of Canaan from Humphreys when the latter was minister to Lisbon, and wrote: "There certainly is some merit in the poem. "" But years afterward he speaks slightingly of all Dwight's poetry in a review of the Travels in the London Quarterly.8

A correspondent of the Monthly Magazine and British Register who signs himself "H," after regretting the subject of the Conquest of Canaan, says:

But the lover of poetry, who shall not be prevented by this from the perusal of "The Conquest of Canaan," will discover in it many passages highly poetical; he will probably read the eleventh book with pleasure more than once; and will unite with the celebrated author of "The Botanic Garden" in an eulogium on the versification, which for uniform correctness has seldom been surpast.

That Dwight was not so great a name in England as his admiring fellow-countrymen fondly believed is shown by an article in the Monthly Review,11 which of all periodicals might be supposed to know of the existence of a prominent American. A brief notice of a recently published pamphlet entitled The Triumph of Infidelity: a Poem. Supposed to

"Quoted in Marble, Annie R., Heralds of American Literature, as from Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, I: 269.

XXX: 1. (Oct., 1823). The significant passage is quoted in the article on Dwight in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors.

VI: 1 (July, 1798). The same correspondent contributed articles on other Americans, including Trumbull and Barlow. From some of these it would appear that he might be an American, though he does not write especially in character as such, and the editor accepts his views without comment.

1 I have not found the passage in which Darwin praises the poem. 11 Mo. Rev. Enigd., VI: 459 (Dec., 1791).

be written by Timothy Dwight, D. D., of Greenfield in Connecticut, says:

Supposed to be written by a Doctor of Divinity! Surely it is a mistake! It cannot be, that the malignant spirit, which is breathed out in these lines against all who do not bear the badge of orthodoxy, should have resided in the bosom of an eminent Christian divine; but Timothy Dwight, D. D. &c, sounds very like fiction. hope that this may be the case.

We

It was Joel Barlow, the most bombastic and so, according to English ideas, the most American of the Hartford Wits, who attracted the greatest notice. Of the Vision of Columbus, the Town and Country Magazine12 says:

The design of this Poem is grand, extensive, and well adapted for the display of the author's descriptive and reflecting powers.

The Monthly Review13 is more moderate, but on the whole favorable:

Though we do not find in the piece any considerable share of that fire of genius and glow of fancy which are essential to epic poetry, yet, as a narrative of real facts in a poetical dress, it has some merft. Of the author's style and taste in versification the reader will form no unfavourable idea, by the following extract. [Page of extract]. The author, who is a native of America, gives the public no unpleasing specimen of his own abilities, and of the attention which is paid to the muses, in this rising republic.

The Monthly Review seems to have had a partiality for Barlow, even when it was not wholly able to approve of his theories or his manner. It reviews in turn the political writings that he put forth between the publication of the Vision of Columbus in 1787 and that of the Columbiad in 1807. In its notice of the Advice to the Privileged Orders, Part I1 it complains that the author carries freedom of speech too far, though it finds some extenuating circumstances; and it replies to the charge that it is improper for an American to meddle in the affairs of Great Britain by saying that it is

1 XX: 84 (Feb., 1788).

13 LXXVIII: 248 (March, 1788).

14Mo. Rev. Enlgd., VII: 313 (March, 1792).

no worse than for Burke to meddle in those of France. Of the Letter to the National Convention of France the same journal says:15

This pamphlet is, in some respects, well written, and abounds with shrewd and spirited remarks: but the doctrines which it holds forth will never, we believe, meet with approbation under any kind of monarchy.

The ideas in Part II of the Advice to the Privileged Orders are objectionable, but

It may be viewed in a two-fold light, as a political and as a literary production. If considered in the latter respect, it will be found entitled to considerable praise; the style is easy, and an elegant simplicity characterizes the language.

16

The long review of the Columbiad in the Edinburgh" is typical of the article that, on the whole unfavorable, makes a show of balancing faults and excellences with judicial fairness. It begins by pointing out, in a passage already cited in Chapter IV, that Americans are not in reality a new people in a stage to produce epics. It proceeds, then, to find that Barlow's failure "may be imputed partly to his country, and partly to his subject-but chiefly to himself." Barlow is, evidently, a plain, sensible man, wholly lacking in finer imagination.

Like other persons of a cold and coarse imagination, he is caught only by what is glaring and exaggerated....he is constantly mistaking hyperbole for grandeur, and supplying the place of simplicity with huge patches of mere tameness and vulgarity. This curious intermixture, indeed, of extreme homeliness and flatness, with a sort of turbulent and bombastic elevation, is the great characteristic of the work before us.

Mo. Rev. Enigd., IX: 316 (Nov., 1792).

ie Mo. Rev. Enlgd., XVIII: 300 (Nov., 1795). Other works of Barlow noticed by the Monthly Review are, The Conspiracy of Kings, VIII: 336 (July, 1792) and Letter Addressed to the People of Piedmont, XVIII: 446 (Dec., 1795).

17 XV: 24 (Oct., 1809).

The reviewer next makes sport of the poet's absurd barbarisms.18 Passing to praise, he says:

The truth is, however, that the greater part of Mr. Barlow may be understood by a careful reader, even in this country; that his versification is generally both soft and sonorous; and that, notwithstanding the occasional lowness and want of purity in his diction, there are many passages of rich and vigorous description, and some that might lay claim even to the praise of magnificence. The fatal want of simplicity, passion and character, unfortunately leave no room to doubt of his destiny as an Epic poet; but there is a power, now and then, both in his descriptive and didactic passages, that, under stricter management, might turn to some account in another department of poetry.....

The author's talents are evidently respectable: and, severely as we have been obliged to speak of his taste and his diction in a great part of the volume, we have no hesitation in saying, that we consider him as a giant, in comparison with many of the puling and paltry rhymsters, who disgrace our English literature by their occasional success. As an Epic Poet, we do think his case is desperate; but as a philosophical and moral poet, we think he has talents of no ordinary value; and, if he would pay some attention to purity of style, and simplicity of composition, and cherish in himself a certain fastidiousness of taste,-which is not yet to be found, we are afraid, even among the better educated of the Americans,— -we have no doubt that he might produce something which English poets would envy, and English critics applaud.

There may or may not be a subtle irony in the commendation bestowed on "the extraordinary beauty of the paper, printing and embellishments."

We do not know that we have ever seen a handsomer book issue from the press of England; and if this be really and truly the production of American artists, we must say, that the infant republic has already attained to the very summit of perfection in the mechanical part of bookmaking. If her home sale can defray the expense of such a publication as the present, it is a sign that a taste for literature is spreading very widely among her inhabitants; and whenever this taste is created, we have no doubt that her authors will improve and multiply to a degree that will make all our exertions necessary to keep the start we now have of them.

18 See passage quoted in Chapter IV.

The critic of the Eclectic Review19 is clearly antagonistic both to Barlow's political philosophy and to his religion:

This poem demands more attention from the nature of its subject, connected with the time of its appearance and the country of its author, than could be claimed for it on the very questionable ground of its intrinsic worth. As a work of immense labour and proportionate bulk, it not only affords an ample criterion of the state of polite literature in America, but as a great national poem, the Columbiad will probably become, by right of primogeniture, a standard of imitation, and a stumbling block to genius, for ages to come. This is not a random speculation. Mr. Barlow's book, with its pedantry of patriotism and barbaric verbosity of style, is so exquisitely transatlantic, both in its theme and its structure, that no true-born federalist can be indifferent to its contents; and few, we apprehend, of the author's reading fellow-citizens, will be so blind to its merits as not to admire it even for its faults. Nor can a purer taste be expected to obtain, so long as commerce is the principal pursuit, and politics the favourite study of a nation of modern colonists,-whose population, beyond the course of nature, is augmenting in a double ratio by the influx of emigrant adventurers from distant and discordant countries, and whose progress to greatness, contrary to every precedent in history, must be insured, not by the triumph of arms, but of industry,-not by the exertions of genius, but of labour. Among people so heterogeneous and selfinterested, so eager for gain, so little tempted by glory, the fine arts may exist, but they cannot flourish. Few will seek leisure to improve them, and fewer find opportunity of rising to eminence by excelling in them. Not only the spirit to delight in poetry, but the occasions to inspire it, must be wanting in a state of society, characterized by mercenary speculation, and formed for individual aggrandizement.

.

The article is more unequivocal in its condemnation of the poem than is that in the Edinburgh, saying: "If a work were wanted to exemplify every species of fault that can be committed in verse, we would recommend the Columbiad," and concludes, "Those who wish to contemplate the absurd speculations and degrading influence of infidel (not to say atheistic) philosophy, should read the Columbiad."

19 VI: 403 (1810).