Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

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Introduction

THE EARLY settlers of New England were no less distinguished for their attachment to letters than for their strong religious character; and although their taste and partialities lay rather toward the substantial than the ornamental parts of literature, yet the commune vinculum, the natural and intimate connexion of all liberal pursuits, unavoidably turned their studies in some degree in the latter direction. A great number of the earliest emigrants were men of the first attainments in the principal sciences held in repute at that period, and their writings reflect no small honor on their character for learning and ability. Their earliest attempts in the department of polite literature, must certainly be considered rude and feeble, when compared with the contemporaneous productions of Europe, but they deserve attention from the influence which they undoubtedly exercised upon the writers who succeeded them, no less than from the light they throw upon the character of the writers and the state of society. They also possess an interest arising from the curiosity we naturally feel to view the most ancient memorials of literary effort on record among us. We shall proceed therefore to enumerate such of the first settlers of the country as were known for any productions in verse which have remained to the present day, and give a brief historical sketch of the early poetical literature of the English Colonies.

It was hardly three years from the arrival of the pilgrims that the first essay of this kind was made by William Morell, an episcopal clergyman, who wrote a description of New England in Latin hexameter verse. Morell came to this country in 1623 and remained about a year. Except therefore, as being the earliest attempt at versification within the present limits of the country, his performance can hardly claim any remark here. It was published in England with a translation by the author. Both have been reprinted in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The next poetical production which offers itself to our notice is the version of the Psalms published at Cambridge in 1640, and which was the first book printed in the United States. About the year 1639 the clergymen of New England considering that in their new residence they had been enabled to enjoy most of the ordinances of christian worship in all desirable purity, were induced to extend the reform they had thus effected, to the ordinance of the singing of psalms. The common metrical translation of the psalms was considered to deviate so far from the original as to be an unsatisfactory help to their devotions. A new version was therefore resolved upon, and the several portions of the work were assigned to the most eminent divines of the country. The principal of these whom we find mentioned were John Eliot of Roxbury, the celebrated Indian Apostle, Thomas Welde of Roxbury, and Richard Mather of Dorchester. The work thus produced was such as might have been expected from the plan. The main object of the translators was of course to make the version as literal as possible. An extract from their preface may serve to give the reader the views which they entertained of the nature of their task.

“If therefore the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire and expect, let them consider that God’s altar needs not our polishings; for wee have respected rather a plain translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and so have attended to conscience rather than elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the Hebrew words into English language, and David’s poetry into English meetre.”

This book was called The Bay Psalm Book. The version is exact enough in respect of adherence to the original to satisfy the scruples of the most rigid critic. But the versification is harsh and unmusical to the last degree, and it was soon found expedient to give it a little more polish. The following extract will convey some idea of the rest of the work.

After two editions had been printed, an improvement of the language was declared necessary. It was therefore put into the hands of the Rev. Henry Dunster, President of Harvard College and Mr Richard Lyon, a tutor to a young student at Cambridge. These editors gave the work a revision “with a special eye,” as they inform us, “both to the gravity of the phrase of sacred writ, and sweetness of the verse.” They added versifications of some other portions of scripture, entitling them The Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testament. This “improved version” has gone through more than thirty editions in this country, and has been often reprinted in Scotland and England, and used in many of the English dissenting congregations.

The earliest poet of New England, however, was ANNE BRADSTREET, the wife of Simon Bradstreet, Governor of the Massachusetts colony, and daughter of Thomas Dudley, also Governor. She was born in 1612, probably at Northampton or Boston in England. She was married to Mr Bradstreet at the age of sixteen, and came the next year, 1630, with her husband to this country. The preface to the second edition of her poems published after her death, declares the volume to be “the work of a woman honored and esteemed, where she lives, for her gracious demeanor, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet managing of her family occasions; and more than so these poems are the fruit but of some few hours, curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments.” She died September 16th, 1672. One of the pieces in her volume bears the date of 1632, Ætatis suæ 19.

Her writings gained her great celebrity among her contemporaries. Cotton Mather is warm in her praise and declares that “her poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles.” The learned and excellent John Norton of Ipswich calls her the “mirror of her age and glory of her sex.” He wrote a funeral eulogy in which he did not scruple to pun upon her name according to the fashion of the time.

Many others wrote verses in her commendation, and it is much to their credit that they so justly appreciated her talents; for we must come down to a late period in the literary annals of the country before we find her equal, although her productions are not without the marks of the barbarous taste of the age. Her first essays in polite composition had but an untoward guidance from the authors most esteemed at that time. The models they presented were not adapted to promote either good taste or excellence of any sort, in writing. Du Bartas was the favorite poet of the day, and his conceits seem to have been, in particular, the admiration of our author. She appears also to have caught something of his spirit.

The contents of her volume are a poem upon the Four Elements, upon the Four Humors in Man’s Constitution, upon the Four Ages of Man, and the Four Seasons of the Year. In these we are presented with personifications of Fire, Air, Earth and Water; Choler, Blood, Melancholy and Phlegm; and Childhood, Youth, Middle Age and Old Age, each of whom comes forward with an address in which its peculiar excellences are set forth. Then follows a versified history of the Four Monarchies of the World, and some shorter pieces, one of which, for its great merit, we shall extract; it shows Mrs Bradstreet to have possessed genuine poetical feeling. This poem is entitled

The sister of Mrs Bradstreet, Mrs Woodbridge, the wife of John Woodbridge, minister at Andover and Newbury, was likewise an adventurer in verse. An epistle which she addressed to her sister upon the subject of her volume, is still extant. The poetry is respectable, but has no striking passages.

Governor Dudley, the father of Mrs Bradstreet, was a versifier. He wrote an epitaph on himself which was found in his pocket after his death; it is hardly worth quoting, and we know not whether any other of his rhymes have been preserved. William Bradford, the second Governor of Plymouth Colony, who came over in the first ship in 1620, figured also as a poet. He died in 1657. His Descriptive and Historical Account of New England in verse, containing about three hundred lines, may be found in the Historical Collections. He is commended by the author of the Magnalia for his great learning and particularly for his skill in various languages. His verses however have little to recommend them.

JOHN COTTON, the minister of Boston, must be recorded among those who attempted poetry. Some of his verses upon the death of two of his children have been preserved, written in Greek letters upon the blank leaves of his Almanack. His elegy upon the death of Thomas Hooker, the first minister of Hartford, Connecticut, who died in 1647, has been commended as sensible and correct. We give a short extract.

EZEKIEL ROGERS the minister of Rowley, who gave that town its name, and died in 1660, also ‘embalmed’ the memory of Hooker in the following epitaph, every line of which, in the judgment of Cotton Mather, deserved a reward equal to that which Virgil received for his verses upon Marcellus in the Æneid.

The same event was lamented in an elegy by Peter Bulkly, the first minister of Concord, whose latin verses written at the age of seventy-six, are preserved in the Magnalia, along with the latin poetry of Elijah Corlet of Cambridge upon the character of Hooker.

The death of any noted divine in those days seems to have been very certain to arouse the muse of our ancestors. Scarcely one of any eminence closed his mortal career without drawing forth a profusion of elegiac strains. When John Cotton died in 1652, the event afforded a theme to BENJAMIN WOODBRIDGE for a poem which contains a somewhat remarkable passage, as it has been conjectured that it suggested to Franklin the hint for his celebrated epitaph upon himself. Benjamin Woodbridge was educated partly at Oxford in England, and coming to this country finished his studies at Harvard College, of which he had the honor of being the first graduate. He afterwards returned to England and became one of the chaplains of Charles II. The passage referred to is this.

JOSEPH CAPEN, minister of Topsfield, wrote some lines upon the death of Mr John Foster, a mathematician and printer, which have a still more remarkable similarity to the epitaph of Franklin.

John Norton also commemorated the death of Cotton by an elegy; his verses in praise of Mrs Bradsheet have already been mentioned. Nathaniel Ward, the Simple Cobler of Agawam, wrote poetry in his facetious way Edward Johnson the author of the Wonder Working Providence, interspersed his history with a multitude of verses, laudatory of the several worthy and eminent men of whom he had occasion to speak. His poetry is to be found in the records of Woburn, the town where he passed the latter part of his life.

ROGER WILLIAMS wrote verses among his other works during his banishment; some of them have been preserved in his Key to the Indian Languages. We offer a short specimen.

JONATHAN MITCHEL, Pastor of the church in Cambridge, deserves some notice for his attempts at poetry. Upon the death of Henry Dunster, one of the translators of the Bay Psalm Book, who was dismissed from his office as President of Harvard College for his heterodox opinions upon the subject of baptism, Mitchel wrote an elegy, some stanzas of which deserve transcribing for the strain of liberal sentiment which they breathe on the subject of the President’s religious notions.

John Wilson, the Paul of New England, who is celebrated by Cotton Mather as the greatest “anagrammatizer” since the days of Lycophron, and who even uttered anagrams by improvisation, has also left specimens of his verse behind him; they may be found in the Magnalia. Thomas Shepard of Charlestown, who died in 1677, has left similar relics. He is better known by the Elegy which URIAN OAKES, the President of Harvard College wrote upon his death. President Oakes was styled the Lactantius of New England; his fame as a scholar was widely extended, and his character pre-eminent for piety and benevolence. His elegy on Shepard’s death was printed in 1677; a good authority has pronounced it a highly meritorious performance. We give a few stanzas taken from different parts of the poem.

The successor of President Oakes at Harvard was JOHN ROGERS. He came in his youth to New England and was educated at the College over which he was called to preside. Before he was chosen to the presidency he had been first a preacher and then a physician. He died suddenly in 1684, having been President but two years. His verses addressed to Mrs Bradstreet merit an insertion here. They have more correctness and elegance than are to be found in any we have yet noticed except those of the writer to whom they are addressed.

PETER FOLGER, who settled at Nantucket, where he kept a school, was the author of a poetical work entitled “A Looking Glass for the Times.” This was published in 1675 or 1676. Folger’s daughter was the mother of Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin in his own life has given a description of the poem. We have not been able to obtain a sight of this performance. The only copy we have yet heard of, was in the possession of a friend a year or two since but is now lost. A few extracts have been published in one of our literary journals. We will quote the words of Franklin in describing the poem. “The author addresses himself to the governors for the time being; speaks for liberty of conscience, and in favor of the Anabaptist Quakers, and other sectaries who had suffered persecution. To this persecution he attributes the war with the natives and other calamities which afflicted the country, regarding them as the judgments of God in punishment of so odious an offence; and he exhorts the government to the repeal of laws so contrary to charity. The poem appeared to be written with a manly freedom and a pleasing simplicity.” Folger’s book we understand is accurately described in the above paragraph, and a short extract which we have at hand will give an idea of the poetry.

The Rev. Samuel Danforth, of Roxbury, was a writer of verse. He was more celebrated, however, as a mathematician and astronomer. He calculated the trajectory of the great comet which appeared in 1664, and published a treatise on it entitled, “An astronomical description of the late comet with a brief theological description thereof.”

JOHN DANFORTH, of Dorchester, son of the above, claims to be mentioned for his verses; he wrote against religious controversy in the following strains.

In the following verses written in 1690, he attempted to point out the best method of christianizing the Indians.

The next poet that offers himself to our notice is BENJAMIN TOMPSON the “learned schoolmaster and physician.” By the Boston Records it appears that he was master of the public school in Boston from 1667 to 1670, when having had and accepted a call to Charlestown, he removed thither and was succeeded by Cheever. He was the son of William Thompson or Tompson, the minister of Braintree, and was born at that place within the limits of the present town of Quincy, in 1640, and received a degree at Cambridge in 1662. To Benjamin Tompson must therefore be awarded all distinction of being the first native American poet. All his poetry hitherto known, was thought to be comprised in an Elegy upon the Rev. Samuel Whiting of Lynn, a poem addressed to Hubbard, and a few lines upon Cotton Mather. But we have lately discovered another work of his, which we consider the greatest curiosity as an antiquarian relic, that the early writings of New England present to us. It is a Poem on Philip’s War, written and published, according to undoubted internal evidence, during that desperate struggle with the natives in which the very existence of the New England colonies was at stake. The poem is entitled New England’s Crisis. We shall offer the reader one or two extracts of some length, no less to set in a fair light the merits of Tompson’s poetry, than to gratify the curious with an exhibition of the strains in which our first native bard sung the wars which threatened the extinction of his nation.

The author begins with a “Prologue,” in which he complains seriously of the great increase of luxurious habits in the country! One would think the land of the Pilgrims stood hardly in danger from this cause in 1675, when the females personally assisted to build a fortification on Boston neck for a protection against the savages.

Having despatched his preliminaries the author plunges in medias res and gives us a representation of King Philip, who calls his warriors around him and makes to them a speech in choice Indian. We next have the incidents of the campaign, the marches of the troops, and the storming of an Indian fort. Then follow detached portions, celebrating battles, and the burning of towns, which items of intelligence appear to have come to hand while the author was writing his poem. In this manner we are presented with Marlburye’s Fate; the Town called Providence, its Fate; Seaconk Plain Engagement; Seaconk or Rehoboth’s Fate; Chelmsford’s Fate, and lastly Lines On a Fortification at Boston begun by women. The subjoined extract will give an idea of his general manner.

On the whole, Tompson must be allowed considerable praise; he is exceeded by none of his contemporaries for correct and smooth versification.

NICHOLAS NOYES is another native poet; he was the nephew of James Noyes, the first minister of Newbury, and was born in that town December 22d, 1647. He was graduated at Cambridge in 1667, and settled in the ministry at Salem. His poem on the death of the Rev. Joseph Green, of Salem village, we have not seen. He wrote a prefatory poem to the Magnalia, from which we take the following lines complimentary of the author.

TIMOTHY WOODBRIDGE, minister of Hartford, brother of Benjamin Woodbridge, already quoted, also complimented Mather and his book in a poetical address. Whether he was a native of this country or England we know not. We extract a few lines from his poem.

The death of Urian Oakes in 1681 was lamented in an Elegy by DANIEL GOOKIN, jr. son of Daniel Gookin who made the valuable Historical Collections respecting the Indians of New England. Daniel Gookin, jr. was born, as we have reason to think, at Cambridge. He was ordained as a minister there, and was afterwards a missionary among the Indians. We have never met with any mention of him as a poet. The elegy above-mentioned exists only in a single manuscript, the autograph perhaps of the author. We have a quotation of two stanzas at hand.

We know not whether JOHN HAWKINS, of Boston, has left any other specimen of his metre behind him, but we will introduce here his

SAMUEL SEWALL, who came to America in his youth, was educated at Harvard College and afterwards became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, was also a poet. His Hymn for the New Year, written Jan. 1st, 1701, “a little before break a day, at Boston of the Massachusetts,” we will cite as the earliest specimen we have of that sort of occasional composition.

Of the poetry of William Wetherell, of Scituate, we can offer no specimen. The same must be said of Joseph Rowlandson, of Lancaster, whose verses exist in some ancient manuscript files. There was an Indian youth by the name of Eleazar, who studied at Harvard College in 1678. He wrote Latin and Greek poetry, which has been preserved, but we have seen no verses in English from his pen.

The Rev. Nathaniel Pitcher, of Scituate, was also a versifier. An anonymous poem on his death, compares him to Pindar, Horace and Casimir. How well he deserved this praise we have no means of knowing. The Elegy just mentioned is a curiosity. It is entitled Pitchero Threnodia; it is written in an odd metre, and with a great display of classical learning. Of the poetry nothing need be said. It was published at Boston in 1724.

An anonymous performance of contemporary date and greater merit, is the Gloria Britannorum, or the British Worthies, which appeared also at Boston. In this work the political and military events of the time are sung in the manner of Addison’s Campaign, from which production the design was evidently borrowed. The versification is quite spirited and correct for the period.

We must notice in this place, although a little in anticipation of the chronological order of persons, John Seccomb. He was esteemed a wit, and wrote the ballad entitled Father Abdy’s Will. It is rather of the doggerel species, but was popular in the author’s day, and pleased Governor Belcher so much that he sent it to England, where it was first published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in 1732. Seccomb was also considered the author of an Eclogue on the death of Dr Colman, and some other anonymous pieces.

FROM a review of the character of these early and imperfect endeavours in the rhyming art, and of our literature generally, down to a very recent date, we perceive the perfectly spontaneous growth to every branch of polite letters among us. The common incitements to literary exertion, rivalry and the prospect of fame and emolument, cannot be said to have exerted any material influence in prompting the efforts of American writers. Authors have been too few to create competition, and the public, to whom they addressed themselves, too much occupied with matters of direct practical interest to bestow any high consideration upon the talents which are exerted only in the embellishment of life. Hence we have never known till the present day such a thing as a professed author. All the talent and industry of the people have been called into the field of active employment, and the most of what has been written among us consists of such productions as were executed in the early days of our authors, before the serious business of life was entered upon; or in such leisure moments as were snatched from constant and laborious occupations. We have obtained therefore only the unripe fruits of their youth, or the imperfect performances of casual moments. The cultivation of literary talent has moreover been retarded by the state of dependence as to literature, in which we have continued, to the writers of Great Britain. Without searching for causes which lie deep in the character of our nation, we may assert that the “bales and hogsheads” of learning which our friends beyond the ocean speak of having supplied us with, have been dealt to us in such abundance that the great stimulus to exertion has been wanting, and no pressing necessity has thrown us upon our own resources. Still the feeling of patriotism must prompt the desire that native genius should be conspicuous in every high career of human intellect, and that a national spirit in the liberal arts should be encouraged, as instruments to nourish the civic virtues and give scope to the energies of mind among our countrymen. That this has not hitherto been effected, can hardly excite surprise in any one acquainted with our history. While we have been filling this wide land with people, it is not remarkable that as a nation, we should have found little leisure to cultivate the refinements of intellectual taste,

The present state and future prospects of literature among us offer a theme for fond anticipation and sagacious conjecture, but hardly for certain calculation. There is a vast amount of intellect daily developing in the community, and again absorbed in the great purposes to which the ingenuity and enterprise of our busy population are constantly giving birth. The precise effect of this power, when settled into regular channels of action in the various departments of literature cannot be foreseen. In the twilight of the morning of letters which now dawns upon us, the general outline of the view is indistinct and wavering, and the eye meets with hardly a point upon which to rest with steadiness. But nothing lingers; every moment some new element is unfolding, the shadows flee, and the hour cometh, we doubt not, which shall usher in a new scene, and enlighten us with the fulness and splendor of a brighter day.