Washington Allston, the descendant of a family of much distinction in South Carolina, was born at Charleston, November 5, 1779. He was prepared for college at the school of Mr. Robert Rogers, of Newport, T. I.; entered Harvard in 1796, and on the completion of his course delivered a poem.

He returned to South Carolina; sold his property; sailed for England, and on his arrival in London became a student of the Royal Academy, then under the presidency of Benjamin West. Here he remained for three years, and then, after a sojourn at Paris, went to Rome, where he resided for four years, and became the intimate associate of Coleridge.

In 1809 he returned to America for a period of two years, which he passed in Boston, and at this time married the sister of the Rev. Dr. Channing. He also delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 1811 he commenced a second residence in London, where, in 1813, he published a small volume, The Sylphs of the Seasons, and other Poems, which was reprinted in Boston the same year. The date is also marked in his career by the death of his wife, an event which affected him deeply.

During this sojourn in Europe, which extended to 1818, several of his finest paintings were produced. On his return home he resumed his residence at Boston. In 1830 he maried a sister of Richard H. Dana, and removed to Cambridgeport. His lectures on Art were commenced about the same period. ...

In 1841 he published Monabli, an Italian romance of moderate length, which had been written as early as 1821 when Dana published his Idle Man, and, but for the discontinuance of that work, would probably have appeared there. In the latter part of his life he was chiefly engaged on his great painting of Belshazzar's Feast. After a week's steady labor on this work, he retired late on Saturday night, July 8, 1843, from his studio to his family circle, and after a conversation of peculiar solemnity, sat down to his books and papers, which furnished the usual occupation of a great portion of his nights. It was thus, sitting alone about midnight, near the dawning of Sunday, with scarce a struggle, he was called from the temporary repose of the holy day to the perpetual Sabbath of eternity. ...

His poems, though few in number, are exquisite in finish, and in the fancies and thoughts which they embody. They are delicate, subtle, and philosophical. Though and feeling are united in them, and the meditative eye

          which hath kept watch
o'er man's mortality

broods over all. In The Sylphs of the Seasons he has pictured the successive delights of each quarter of the year with the joint sensibility of the poet and the artist, bringing before us a series of images of the iamgination blended with the purest sentiment.

If the other poems may be described as occasional, it should be remarked they are the occasions not of a trifler or a man of the world, but of a philosopher and a Christian, whose powers were devoted to the sacred duties of life, to his art, to his friends, to the inner world of faith. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 12-14)

[excerpt]

     'T was a sunset's hallow'd time--and such an eve
Might almost tempt an angel heaven to leave.
Never did brighter glories greet the eye,
Low in the warm and ruddy western sky:
Nor the light clouds at summer eve unfold
More varied tints of purple, red, and gold.
Some in the pure, translucent, liquid breast
Of crystal lake, fast anchor'd seem'd to rest,
Like golden islets scatter'd far and wide,
By elfin skill in fancy's fabled tide,
Where, as wild eastern legends idly feign,
Fairy, or genii, hold despotic reign.
Others, like vessels gilt with burnish'd gold,
Their flitting airy way are seen to hold,
All gallantly equipp'd with streamers gay,
While hands unseen, or chance directs their way;
Around, athwart, the pure ethereal tide,
With swelling purple sail, they rapid glide,
Gay as the bark, where Egypt's wanton queen
Reclining on the shaded deck was seen,
At which as gazed the uxorious Roman fool,
The subject world slipt from his dotard rule.
Anon, the gorgeous scene begins to fade,
And deeper hues the ruddy skies invade;
The haze of gathering twilight nature shrouds,
And pale, and paler, wax the changeful clouds.
Then sunk the breeze into a breathless calm,
The silent dews of evening dropt like balm;
The hungry nighthawk from his lone haunt hies,
To chase the viewless insect through the skies;
The bat began his lantern-loving flight,
The lonely whip-poor-will, our bird of night,
Ever unseen, yet ever seeming near,
His shrill note quaver'd in the startled ear;
The buzzing beetle forth did gaily hie,
With idle hum, and careless blundering eye;
The little trusty watchman of pale night,
The fire-fly trimm'd anew his lamp so bright,
And took his merry airy circuit round
The sparkling meadow's green and fragrant bound,
Where blossom'd clover, bathed in balmy dew,
In fair luxuriance, sweetly blushing grew.
...

(Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 180)

Ebenezer Bailey, is a native of Newbury in Massachusetts, and was graduated at Yale College in 1817. He is now Principal of the Young Ladies' High School in Boston. His prize ode, recited at the Boston Theatre in 1825, is the only performance by which he is known to the public as a poet. He has, however, produced a great number of poetical effusions of high merit, which have obtained anonymously a wide circulation in our various repositories of fugitive verse. If only Mr Bailey had written with a view to distinction, he might at this moment have been one of the most popular and esteemed poets of our country. The Triumphs of Liberty is a chaste and spirited production, superior to anything of the kind which our national anniversaries have called forth. His lighter pieces are thrown off with an ease and playfulness of fancy that we do not often see equalled in the hasty rhymes of a leisure moment. (Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 370)

Born 25 June 1795; died 5 Aug 1839

James N. Barker was born at Philadelphia; he was a captain in the artillery, and served on the frontiers during the late war with Great Britain. When the war was over, he returned to his native city, where he continues to live at present. He has been an Alderman, and was for one year Mayor of the city of Philadelphia. Mr Barker is better known by his dramatic than by his other productions. As early as 1807, he produced a comedy at the Philadelphia Theatre, entitled "Tears and Smiles," and a melo drama founded on the story of Pocahontas, which he called "The Indian Princess, or La Belle Sauvage." These were represented with success. He dramatised Scott's Marmion, which was a very popular play, and still keeps possession of the stage. In 1817, he published a remarkably neat and sprightly comedy, entitled "How to try a Lover," which was never performed, and in 1823, he produced a tragedy, entitled "Superstition," the scene of which is laid in New England, and one of the principal character is Goff, the regicide. This is the last of Mr Barker's dramatic efforts, and possesses considerable merit. It was performed but twice at the Chesnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. Mr Barker is also the author of several occasional pamphlets, the most interesting of which is entitled "Sketches of the Primitive Settlements on the River Delaware." He has written also in the Atlantic Souvenir. His writings are characterised by good taste, simplicity of language, and adherence to nature. His fancy is playful, and his images are such as are calculated rather to delight than startle. (Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 337-338)

Died 9 March 1858

Brainard, the gentle poet of the Connecticut, the sylvan, placid stream which happily symbolizes his verse, was born in the state of that name at New London, October 21, 1796. His father had been a judge of the Superior Court, and the son for a while, after his education at Yale was completed, pursued the study of the law, but it was little adapted to his tastes and constitution, and after a brief trial of its practice at Middletown he abandoned it in February, 1822, for the editorship of a weekly paper at Hartford, the Connecticut Mirror. He is said to have neglected the politics of his paper, dismissing the tariff with a jest, while he displayed his ability in the literary and poetical department. His genius lay in the amiable walks of the belles-lettres, where the delicacy of his temperament, the correspondence of the sensitive mind to the weak physical frame, found its appropriate home and nourishment. His country needed results of this kind more than it did law or politics; and in his short life Brainard honored his native land. His genius is a flower picked from the banks of the river which he loved, and preserved for posterity.

Before entering on the Mirror Brainard wrote a few pieces for a literary paper published by Cornelius Tuthill at New Haven, called The Microscope. His composition in the Mirror were at once relished and appreciated. Though they were mostly on trite and occasional subjects, such as time out of mind had occupied with little notice the corner of the country newspaper, yet they had a freshness of spirit infused in them, a fine poetical instinct, which charmed the youths and maidens of Connecticut. This instinct of Brainard led him to the employment of the ballad, in which he gave rare promise, as he embodied the patriotism or the superstition of the country, in such poems as Fort Griswold and the Black Fox of Salmon River. The annual new year carrier's address of the newspaper, in place of the usual doggerel, became a poem in his hands. Even album verses assumed a hue of nature and originality. ...

In 1825 a first volume of Poems was published by Brainard at New York, mostly made up from the columns of his newspaper, which was favorabley received. Not long after, in 1827, the poet was compelled by the inroad of consumption on his constitution to retire from his editorship. He went to the east end of Long Island for his health, and has left a touching memorial of his visit to the sea, in which the animation of his genius overcomes the despondency of his broken frame. He suffered and wrote verse until his death at his father's home, at New London, September 26, 1828.

After his death a second edition of Brainard's poems appeared in 1832, enlarged from the first, with the title Literary Remains, accompanied by a warmly written sketch of the poet's life, by Whittier. This has been since followed by a third edition, with a portrait, an elegant and tasteful volume, published by Edward Hopkins, at Hartford, in 1842.

To the indications we have given of the poet's genius we have only to add a few personal traits. He was a small man, and sensitive on that score. His friends noticed the fine expression of his countenance when animated. He was negligent of his dress and somewhat abstracted. He wrote rapidly, and was ready in conversation, with playful repartee. His biographer, in the last edition of his poems, gives an insance of his wit. A preacher had come to New London, and labored heavily through a discourse, complaining all the time that his mind was imprisoned. When this difficulty was urged in defence of his dulness Brainard would not allow it, since "the preacher's mind might easily have sworn out." At another time he replied to a critic, who had pronounced the word "brine" in his verses on "The Deep," "to have no more business in sentimental poetry than a pig in a parlor," that the objector, "though his piece is dated Philadelphia, lives at a greater distance from the sea, and has got his ideas of the salt water from his father's pork barrel." (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 226-227)

James Gordon Brooks, the son of David Brooks, an officer of the Revolutionary army, was born at Claverack on the Hudson, September 3, 1801. He was graduated at Union College in 1819, and studied law at Poughkeepsie, but never engaged actively in the practice of the profession. It was in this place that he commenced his poetical career by the publication in the newspapers of the place of a few fugitive poems, with the signature of Florio, which attracted much attention. Various conjectures were made respecting their authorship, but the author succeeded in maintaining his incognito not only among his neighbors, but also in his own household.

In 1823 Mr. Brooks removed to New York, where he became the literary editor of the Minerva, a belles-lettres journal which he conducted about two years. He then started the Literary Gazette, a weekly journal on the model of the English publicaiton of the same name, which, after being continued for a few months, was united with the Athenaeum, and conducted under the care of Mr. Brooks and Mr. James Lawson for two years. He then became an editor of the Morning Courier, with which he remained connected for about the same period. In these journals, and in the Commercial Advertiser, most of his poems were published, with the signature of Florio. They were great favorites, and placed the author in the popular estimate of his day in the same rank with Drake and Halleck as one of the poetical trio of the town.

In 1828 he married Miss Mary Elizabeth Akin, ... who had been from an early age a writer of verse for periodicals under the signature of Norna. The year after a volume entitled The Rivals of Este and other Poems, by James G. and Mary E. Brooks, appeared. ...

Mr. Brooks died at Albany in 1841. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 323-324)

William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Hampshire County, Mass., on November 3, 1794. His father, a physician, and a man of strength of character and literary culture, took pride in his son's early ability, and cherished the young poet with paternal affection. We have heard the anecdote of his reciting the poem "Thanatopsis" at the house of one of his friends, with tears in his eyes. "The father taught the son," we are told in a valuable notice of the poet's life and writings, "the value of correctness and compression, and enabled him to distinguish between true poetic enthusiasm and fustian." ...

Bryant early displayed the poetic faculty, and fastened upon the genial influences of nature about him. He began to write verses at nine, and at ten composed a little poem to be spoken at a public school, which was published in a country newspaper. At the age of fourteen he prepared a collection of poems, which was published in Boston in 1809. ...

Bryant studied at Williams College, which he left to prosecute the study of the law, a profession in which he was engaged in practice at Plainfield for one year, and afterwards for nine years at Great Barrington. In 1816 his poem of Thanatopsis, written in his nineteenth year, was published in the North American Review. ... In 1821 he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard.... This he published in that year with other poems at Cambridge. In 1825, abandoning the law for literature, he came to New York and edited a monthly periodical, the New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine, which in 1826 was merged in a new work of a similar character, also conducted by him, the United States Review and Literary Gazette.... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 183-185)

Died 12 June 1878

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood!
    When fond recollection presents them to view;
The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wild wood,
    And every loved spot which my infancy knew;
The wide spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,
    The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,
    And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well.
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket which hung in the well.

That moss-cover'd vessel I hail as a treasure,
    For often at noon, when return'd from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
    The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it with hands that were glowing,
    And quick to the white pebbled bottom it fell,
Then soon with the emblem of truth overflowing,
    And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well.
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket arose from the well.

How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
    As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips!
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
    Though fill'd with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now far removed from the loved situation,
    The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
    And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well.
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket which hangs in the well.

(Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 242-243)

[excerpt]

     Muse, that upon the top of Pindus sitt'st,
And with the enchanting accents of thy lyre
Dost soothe the immortals, while thy influence sweet
Earth's favor'd bards confess, be present now;
Breathe through my soul, inspire thyself the song,
And upward bear me in the adventurous flight:
Lo the resistless theme--The Buckwheat Cake.

     Let others boastful sing the golden ear
Whose farinaceous treasures, by nice art
And sleight of hand, with store of milk and eggs,
Form'd into pancakes of an ample round,
Might please an epicure--and homebred bards
Delight to celebrate the tassell'd maize
Worn in the bosom of the Indian maid,
Who taught to make the hoe-cake, (dainty fare,
When butter'd well!) I envy not their joys.
How easier of digestion, and, beyond
Compare, more pure, more delicate, the cake
All other cakes above, queen of the whole,
And triumph of the culinary art--
The Buckwheat Cake! my passion when a boy,
And still the object of intensest love--
Love undivided, knowing no decline,
Immutable.  My benison on thee,
Thou glorious Plant! that thus with gladness crown'dst
Life's spring-time, and beneath bright Summer's eye,
Lured'st me so oft to revel with the bee,
Among thy snow-white flowers:  nay, that e'en yet
Propitious, amidst visions of the past
Which seem to make my day-dreams now of joy,
Giv'st me to triumph over the ills of time.
...

tomcats, which prowl in search of a mate

The play was unpublished except for the last scene, which appeared in the Saturday News and Literary Gazette; it was reprinted in 1930.

     Marius.  The icy drops of death
Are on my frame, and the hot blood of old
Metellus, burns like molten lead.  See there!
All stain'd with gore, he writhes in agony.
And looks forgiveness on the wretch who slew him.
He stretches forth his hands, imploring mercy;
The hands that foster'd me in early youth!
A cherub's smile is on his pallid lips,
But now distorted with the pangs of death!--
Madness!  Remove him from my sight!  Away--
Take him away, I'll be soldier yet!-
     Granius.  Alas! my father!
     Marius.  And trembles, too, my son.
O! what a pang was there! and yet another!
My bosom is too small--it heaves to bursting--
Feel how it throbs!--More air! more air!--I die!--
Help me to rend these close-knit ribs asunder--
Help me!  O! help!
     Cinna.  Look to the Sybil, there--
     Granius.  Press not thus closely on him.
     Marius.  Soft.  Bend me forward.  So--I breathe again.
My eyes grow dim.  More air--more air--
     Cinna.  The Sibyl's dead!
     Marius.  Thou dear, devoted one!
Then the last human tie is rent in twain.
The gods have done their worst, for Sylla comes,
And I am breathing still.  Death, death, where art thou?  (Trumpets.)

               Enter Sylla and Soldiers.

Stand off and touch me not, till I am dead;
Avaunt, and let me die as I have lived,
Unshackled both in body and in mind.
Sylla, 'tis past with me, and, I bequeath
An abject world to thy unpitying care.
Now unoppos'd, go drive thy chariot wheels
Across the necks of slaves, who will not groan,
Lest it offend the ears of godlike Sylla.
But for me--Freedom, freedom, freedom
With the gods.                       (Dies.)

The twin brothers Clark were born at Otisco, Onondaga county, New York, in the year 1810. Their father had served in the Revolutionary war, and was a man of reading and observation. Willis, on the completion of his education, under the care of this parent and the Rev. George Colton, a relative on his mother's side, went to Philadelphia, where he commenced a weekly periodical similar in plan to the New York Mirror. It was unsuccessful and soon discontinued. He next became an assistant of the Rev. Dr. Brantley, a Baptist clergyman ..., in the editorship of the Columbian Star, a religious newspaper. He retired from this position to take charge of the Philadelphia Gazette.... He became its proprietor, and continued his connexion with it until his death.

One of the most successful of Clark's literary productions was the Ollapodiana, a series of brief essays, anecdotes, and observations, continued from month to month in the Knickerbocker Magazine, of which his brother Lewis had become the editor. ...

[He fell] a victim to a lingering disease in June, 1841.

Clark's poems, with the exception of The Spirit of Life ... are brief, and were written for and published in his own journals and the magazines and annuals of the day. ...

Mr. Lewis Gaylord Clark is the editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, having conducted that periodical since its third volume in 1832. He has become widely known by his monthly Editor's Table and Gossip with Readers and Correspondents, embracing a collection of the jests and ondits of the day, connected by a light running comment. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 534-535]

Died 3 Nov 1873

Willis Clark published poetry in The Token in 1830 and 1832.

     Saw ye that cloud, which arose in the west,
     As the burning sun sank down to his rest,
     How it spread so wide, and tower'd so high,
     O'er the molten gold of that glowing sky,
That it seem'd--Oh! it seem'd like some arched way,
As it beam'd and gleam'd, in that glorious ray,
          Where the spirit, freed
          From its earthly weed,
          And robed in the white
          Of the saints in light,
     Might pass from the waves of sin and wo,
     To that world where ceaseless pleasures flow!

     Ye saw that cloud, how it tower'd alone,
     Like an arched path o'er the billows thrown,
     How its pillars of azure and purple stood,
     And mock'd at the dash of the angry flood,
While it beam'd--oh! it beam'd from its battlements high,
As it gleam'd, and stream'd, in that western sky,
     Such a flood of mellow and golden light,
     As chain'd and fix'd the ravish'd sight,
     And pour'd, along our dark'ning way,
     The peace and joy of celestial day.

     Such, as we haste to our heavenly home,
     Saviour! such be the sights that come--
     Thus, while the visions of time flit by,
     And the fashion of earth grows dim to our eye,
Thus, let the light--oh! the light of thy love,
Beam bright on our sight from the mansions above--
          Rending the gloom
          Which enwraps the tomb,
          And guiding our eye
          To that world on high,
Where the people who love thee, for ever shall share
The rest thou hast purchased, and gone to prepare.

(Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 348)

William, the third child of the Rev. Harry Croswell, was born at Hudson, New York, November 7, 1804, and graduated from Yale College in 1822. The next four years were passed in desultory reading and study. His preference was early formed for a clerical career, but from a distrust of his fitness for the holy office, a distrust arising solely from the modesty which characterized him through life, it was not until 1826 that he finally decided to enter theministry. He commenced his preparatory studies at the General Theological Seminary in New York, where, owing to ill health, he remained but a short time. After passing a brief period at New Haven he went to Hartford, where he edited, with Mr. now Bishop Doane, a religious newspaper, The Episcopal Watchman. He commenced his poetical career in the columns of this journal with a number of sonnets and short poems, which were much admired and widely copied. At the end of the second year of their joint editorship Mr. Doane removed to Boston to become the rector of Trinity church, and Mr. Croswell retired to devote himself exclusively to his studies.

In 1828 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Brownell of Connecticut. ...

In 1829 Mr. Croswell was admitted to the priesthood, and became rector of Christ church, an ancient edifice in the vicinity of Copp's Hill burial-ground, Boston. He continued his poetical contributions, which were almost exclusively on topics connected with church ordinances, or the duties and affections of Christian life. A portion of these were collected and appended by Bishop Doane to the first American edition of Keble's Christian Year.

... [I]n the delivery of a sermon to the children of the congregation at the afternoon service of Sunday, November 9, 1851, the rector's voice was observed to falter. He brought his discourse to an brupt close, and gave out the first stanza of the hymn--

Soldiers of Christ, arise
    And put your armor on,
Strong in the strength which Christ supplies,
    Through his eternal Son.

This he announced instead of the lxxxviii., as the clxxxviii., which contains the following stanza:--

Determined are the days that fly
    Successive o'er thy head;
The numbered hour is on the wing
    That lays thee with the dead.

The choir, however, following directions previously given, sang the former. At its conclusion he knelt in his ordinary place at the chancel-rail, and said from memory, his book having dropped from his hand, a collect. He then, still kneeling, in place of as usual standing and facing the congregation, delivered, in a faltering voice, the closing benediction. A portion of the auditory went to his assistance, and bore him helpless to the vestry-room and in a carriage to his home. He was conscious, but unable to speak distinctly, and uttered but a few words. Apprised by his physicians of his imminent danger he closed his eyes as if in slumber. His friend, the Rev. Dr. Eaton, was soon by his bedside, and finding him unable to speak, and apparently unconscious, took his hand, and offered the "commendatory prayer for a sick person at the point of departure," provided by the Book of Common-Prayer. "As the word, amen, was pronounced by the venerable priest, the last breath was perceived to pass, gently, quietly, and without a struggle." ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, pp. 394-395)

Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge, November 15, 1787. His early years were passed at Newport, in the midst of the associations of the Revolution and the enjoyments of the fine sea views and atmosphere of the spot. He entered Harvard, which he left in 1807. He studied law in the office of the his cousin Francis Dana Channing, the eldest brother of Dr. Cahanning. After admission to the Boston bar he spent about three months in the office of Robert Goodloe Harper at Baltimore, where he was admitted to practice. He returned home in 1811 and became a member of the legislature, where he found a beter field for the exercise of his federal politics and opinions. His first literary public appearance was as an orator on the Fourth of July celebration of 1814.

The North American Review was commenced in 1815. It grew out of an association of literary gentlemen composing the Anthology Club who for eight years, from 1803 to 1811, had published the miscellany entitled The Monthly Anthology. Dana was a member of the club. ...

Dana wrote in the period of two years five papers, one an essay on "Old Times," the others on literary topics, chiefly poetical. In 1824 Dana began the publication of The Idle Man, a periodical in which he communicated to the public his Tales and Essays. ...

[W]hen this publication was discontinued Dana wrote for ... The New York Review of 1825, and afterwards the United States Review of 1826-7. ... From 1828 to 1831 he contributed four papers to The Spirit of the Pilgrims. ...

The first volume of Dana's Poems, containing The Buccaneer, was published in 1827. In 1833 he published at Boston a volume of Poems and Prose Writings, reprinting his first volume with additions, and including his papers in the Idle Man. ... In 1850 he published an edition of his writings in two volumes at New York, adding several essays and his review articles....

His writings possess kindred qualities in prose and verse; though and rhythm, speculation and imagination being borrowed by each from the other.

The Buccaneer is a philosophical poem; a tale of the heart and the conscience. The villainy of the hero, though in remote perspective to the imagination, appeals on that account the more powerfully to our own consciousness. His remorse is touched with consummate art as the rude hard earthy nature steps into the region of the supernatural, and with unchanged rigidity embraces its new terrors. The machinery is at once objective and spiritual in the vision of the horse. The story is opened by glimpses to the reader in the only way in which modern art can attain, with cultivated minds, the effect of the old ballad directness. The visionary horror is relieved by simple touches of human feeling and sweet images, as in the opening, of the lovely, peaceful scenes of nature. The remaining poems are divided between the description of nature and a certain philosophical vein of thought which rises into the loftiest spculative region of religion, and is never long without indications of a pathetic sense of human life. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 90-91)

Died 2 Feb 1879

Rufus Dawes, the youngest but one of a large family of sixteen, was born at Boston, January 16, 1803. He entered Harvard in 1820, but was refused a degree, in consequence of his supposed participation in a disturbance of the discipline of the institution, a charge afterwards found to be unjust. The incident furnished the occasion of his first published poem, a satire on the Harvard faculty. Mr. Dawes next studied law, was admitted, but never practised the profession. He contributed to the United States Literary Gazette, published at Cambridge, and conducted for a time at Baltimore, The Emerald, also a weekly paper. In 1830, he published The Valley of the Nashaway and Other Poems, and in 1839, Geraldine, Athenia of Damascus, and Miscellaneous Poems.

... In 1840, Mr. Dawes published Nix's Mate, a spirited and successful historical romance. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 353-354)

The later years of Mr. Dawes's life were passed as a clerk in one of the Government departments at Washington, in the District of Columbia. He died in that city, at the age of fifty-six, November 30, 1859.

[C]ergyman, b. in Mansfield, Mass., 30 March, 1784; d. 9 Aug., 1834. He was graduated at Brown in 1805, and in 1810 became pastor of the second church at Scituate, Mass., a charge which he retained for twenty-four years. He published "Populous Village," a poem (1826); a "History of Scituate" (1831); and a number of sermons and short poems. (Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.)

When I am dead, no pageant train
    Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain,
    Stain it with hypocritic tear;
For I will die as I did live,
Nor take the boon I cannot give.

Ye shall not raise a marble bust
    Upon the spot where I repose;
Ye shall not fawn before my dust,
    In hollow circumstance of woes:
Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath,
Insult the clay that moulds beneath.

Ye shall not pile, with servile toil,
    Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
    Lay down the wreck of Power to rest;
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him, that was "the scourge of God."

But ye the mountain stream shall turn,
    And lay its secret channel bare,
And hollow, for your sovereign's urn,
    A resting-place for ever there:
Then bid its everlasting springs
Flow back upon the King of Kings;
And never be the secred said,
Until the deep give up his dead.

My gold and silver ye shall fling
    Back to the clods, that gave them birth;--
The captured crowns of many a king,
    The ransom of a conquered earth:
For e'en though dead will I control
The trophies of the capitol.

But when beneath the mountain tide,
    Ye 've laid your monarch down to rot,
Ye shall not rear upon its side
    Pillar or mound to mark the spot;
For long enough the world has shook
Beneath the terrors of my look;
And now that I have run my race,
The astonish'd realms shall rest a space.

My course was like a river deep,
    And from the northern hills I burst,
Across the world in wrath to sweep,
    And where I went, the spot was cursed,
Nor blade of grass again was seen
Where Alaric and his hosts had been.

See how their haughty barriers fail
    Beneath the terror of the Goth,
Their iron-breasted legions quail
    Before my ruthless sabaoth,
And low the queen of empires kneels,
And grovels at my chariot-wheels.

Not for myself did I ascend
    In judgment my triumphal car;
'T was God alone on high did send
    The avenging Scythian to the war,
To shake abroad, with iron hand,
The appointed scourge of his command.

With iron hand that scourge I rear'd
    O'er guilty king and guilty realm;
Destruction was the ship I steer'd,
    And vengeance sat upon the helm,
When, launch'd in fury on the flood,
I plough'd my ways through seas of blood,
And in the stream their hearts had spilt
Wash'd out the long arrears of guilt.

Across the everlasting Alp
    I pour'd the torrent of my powers,
And feeble Cæsars shriek'd for help
    In vain within their seven-hill'd towers;
I quench'd in blood the brightest gem
That glitter'd in their diadem,
And struck a darker, deeper die
In the purple of their majesty,
And bade my northern banners shine
Upon the conquer'd Palatine.

My course is run, my errand done:
    I go to Him from whence I came;
But never yet shall set the sun
    Of glory that adorns my name;
And Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of Alaric.

My course is run, my errand done--
    But darker ministers of fate,
Impatient, round the eternal throne
    And in the caves of vengeance, wait;
And soon mankind whall blench away
Before the name of Attila.

(Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 53-55)

George Washington Doane was born in Trenton, N. J., May 27, 1799. He was partly educated in New York by the Rev. Edmund D. Barry, a classical instructor.... Pursuing his studies at Geneva in Western New York, Mr. Doane entered Union College, where he was graduated in 1818. He was then for a short time a student of law in the city of New York, in the office of Richard Harrison. In 1821 he was ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church by Bishop Hobart, and was for four years an assistant minister in Trinity church, New York. In 1821 he was appointed Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the new Washington, now Trinity, College, Hartford, Ct. In 1828 he went to Boston as assistant minister of Trinity church, of which he became rector in 1830. In 1829 he was married to Eliza Greene Perkins. On the 31st of October, 1832, he was consecrated Bishop of New Jersey, and the next year became rector of St. Mary's Church at Burlington.

At this beautiful town on the banks of the Delaware Bishop Doane, in addition to the more immediate duties of his diocese, has devoted himself to the cause of education, in connexion with two institutions known as St. Mary's Hall and Burlington College. ...

The literary productions of Dr. Doane have been numerous, though mostly confined to sermons and charges, and church periodical literature. He has edited the Missionary, a monthly religious newspaper and journal of his diocese. In 1832 a volume of his sermons was published by the Rivingtons in London.

He is the author of numerous short poems chiefly of a lyrical or simple devotional character, which have appeared from time to time in the journals. In 1824 he published a volume of his early poetical writings entitled Songs by the Way, chiefly devotional; with Translations and Imitations. Several of them have been included in the collection of hymns in use in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The translations are of Latin hymns, from the Italian of Metastasio, and from the odes of Horace. He has also edited Keble's Christian Year, introducing additions from additions from Croswell and others, and a Selection from the Sermons and Poetical Remains of the Rev. Benjamin Davis Winslow, his assistant in St. Mary's Church.

In all these, and in the prose writings of Bishop Doane, there is an elegant taste, evidence of good English scholarship, and spirited expressions. His pulpit style is marked by brevity and energy; wistnessing to an activity of mind which has characterized his numerous labors in his diocese and in the cause of education. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 199-200)

Bishop Doane died at his episcopal residence at Burlington, N. J., April 27, 1859, in the sixtieth year of his age, and twenty-seventh of his episcopate. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. 1875; vol 2, p. 79)

Doane published poetry in The Token in 1829.

There 's a fierce gray bird--with a sharpen'd beak;
With an angry eye, and a startling shriek:
That nurses her brood where the cliff-flowers blow,
On the precipice-top--in perpetual snow--
Where the fountains are mute, or in secrecy flow--
That sits--where the air is shrill and bleak,
On the splinter'd point of a shiver'd peak--
To a comfortless tune--like a wintry harp--
Bald-headed and stripp'd!--like a vulture torn
In wind and strife!--with her feathers worn,
And ruffled and stain'd--while scattering--bright,
Round her serpent-neck--that is writhing, bare--
Is a crimson collar of gleaming hair!--
Like the crest of a warrior thinn'd in the fight,
And shorn--and bristling--see her! where
She sits in the glow of the sun-bright air!
     With wing half-poised--and talons bleeding--
          And kindling eye--as if her prey
          Had--suddenly--been snatch'd away--
     While she was tearing it, and feeding!
A Bird that is first to worship the sun,
When he gallops in flame--'t ill the cloud tides run
In billows of fire--as his course is done:
Above where the fountain is gushing in light;
Above where the torrent is forth in its might--
Like an imprison'd glaze that is bursting from night!
     Or a lion that springs--with a roar--from his lair!
Bounding off--all in foam--from the echoing height--
Like a rank of young war-horses--terribly bright,
Their manes all erect!--and their hoofs in the air!
The earth shaking under them--trumpets on high--
And banners unfurling away in the sky--
     With the neighing of steeds! and the streaming of hair
Above where the silvery flashing is seen--
The striping of waters, that skip o'er the green,
And soft, spongy moss, where the fairies have been,
Bending lovely and bright in the young Morning's eye
Like ribands of flame--or the bow of the sky:
Above that dark torrent--above the bright stream--
The gay ruddy fount, with the changeable gleam,
Where the lustre of heaven eternally plays--
The voice may be heard--of the thunderer's bird,
Calling out to her god in a clear, wild scream,
As she mounts to his throne, and unfolds in his beam;
     While her young are laid out in his rich red blaze;
     And their winglets are fledged in his hottest rays:
Proud bird of the cliff! where the barren-yew springs--
Where the sunshine stays--and the wind-harp sings,
Where the heralds of battle sit--pluming their wings--
A scream! she 's awake!--over hill-top and flood;
A crimson light runs!--like the gushing of blood--
Over valley and rock!--over mountain and wood
That bird is abroad--in the vane of her brood!
            *     *     *     *
     *     *     *  The Bird that laves
Her sounding pinions in the sun's first gush--
Drinks his meridian blaze and sunset flush:
Worships her idol in his fiercest hour:
Bathes her full bosom in his hottest shower:
Sits amid stirring stars, and bends her beak,
Like the slipp'd falcon--when her piercing shriek
Tells that she stoops upon her cleaving wing,
To drink anew some victim's clear-red spring.
That monarch Bird! that slumbers in the night
Upon the lofty air-peak's utmost height:
Or sleeps upon the wing--amid the ray
Of steady--cloudless--everlasting day!
Rides with the Thunderer in his blazing march:
And bears his lightnings o'er yon boundless arch:
Soars wheeling through the storm, and screams away
Where the young pinions of the morning play.

(Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 89-91)

[P]olitician, b. in Tennessee in 1790; d. in Washington, D. C., 17 Nov., 1856. He received a thorough education, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, begining to practise in Nashville, Tenn. He was elected to the U. S. senate as a Democrat, and served till his resignation in 1829. He was a personal friend of Andrew Jackson, and was appointed by him secretary of war, holding the office from 1829 till 1831. ... His wife, Margaret L. O'Neill, b. in 1796; d. in Washington, D. C., 8 Nov., 1879, was the daughter of ... an Irish hotel-keeper in Washington. After the death of his first husband, ... she married Mr. Eaton in 1828. She possessed great beauty and fascination of manner united to a persistent will and high ambition. The appointment of Mr. Eaton to the cabinet gave her a social position that she had long desired, but owing to reports unfavorable to her reputation, she was refused recognition on equal terms by the families of the other members of the cabinet. The feud in society caused by this involved the president, who warmly supported his "little friend Peg," as he was accustomed to call her. ... Finally the president demanded of his secretaries the recognition of the social status of Mrs. Eaton, and was refused by all of them excepting Mr. Van Buren. As a compromise it was suggested that her public status should be conceded, while each lady should act as she chose in regard to private recognition. ... The quarrel culminated in a general disruption of the cabinet n 1831. ... (Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.)

Truth is, as the reviewer for the Boston Literary Magazine pointed out, an "attempt at an imitation of Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"--a far more adept piece of literary satire which appears to have inspired also the name of Snelling's work:

[excerpts]

     Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide his hand
To drive this pestilence from out the land.
E'en I--least thinking of a thoughtless throng,
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong,
Freed at that age when reason's shield is lost,
To fight my course through passion's countless host,
Whom every path of pleasure's flowery way
Has lured in turn, and all have led astray--
E'en I must raise my voice, e'en I must feel
Such scenes, such men, destroy the public weal:
Although some kind, censorious friend will say,
'What art thou better, meddling fool, than they?'
And every brother rake will smile to see
That miracle, a moralist in me.

                                  [lines 687-700]



     Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,
Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to Lamb and Lloyd:
Let them--but hold, my muse, nor dare to teach
A strain far, far beyond thy humble reach:
The native genius with their being given
Will point the path, and peal their notes to heaven.

     And thou, too, Scott! resign to minstrels rude
The wilder slogan of a border feud:
Let others spin their meagre lines for hire;
Enough for genius, if itself inspire!
Let Southey sing, although his teeming muse,
Prolific every spring, be too profuse;
Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse,
And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering Lewis aim, at most,
To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;
Let Moore sigh; let Strangford steal from Moore,
And swear that Camoëns sang such notes of yore;
Let Hayley hobble on, Montgomery rave,
And godly Grahame chant a stupid stave:
Let sonneteering Bowles his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;
Let Stott, Carlisle, Matilda, and the rest
Of Grub Street, and of Grosvenor Place the best,
Scrawl on, till death release us from the strain,
Or Common Sense assert her rights again.

                                  [lines 903-930]

Occasionally, Byron provides the structure for Snelling's verse. Byron writes

     When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall,
Employs a pen less pointed than his awl,
Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of shoes,
St. Crispin quits, and cobbles for the muse,
Heaven! how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud!
How ladies read, and literati laud!

                                  [lines 765-770]

Snelling mocks Nathaniel Parker Willis:

     Let but a school-boy pen a twaddling theme,
Ye Gods--how Pa exults!--How Ma will scream!
So Natty, having with a world of pain
Transmuted sacred prose to verse profane,
Was petted, flatter'd, sent forthwith to college,
To store his shallow skull with classic knowledge.
                                  (1832 ed., pp. 34-35)

Byron eulogizes Kirke White in lines 831-848:

     Unhappy White! while life was in its spring,
And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing,
The spoiler swept that soaring lyre away,
Which else had sounded an immortal lay.
Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,
When Science' self destroy'd her favourite son!
Yes, she too much indulged thy fond pursuit,
She sow'd the seeds, but death has reap'd the fruit.
'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart;
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel;
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.

Mr Everett was born in Dorchester, Mass. His father was pastor to the New South Church in Boston. He studied at Harvard University, and was ordained as a minister over the Brattle Street Church in Boston, at the early age of eighteen. Upon the foundation of the professorship of Greek literature of Cambridge, he was called upon to fill the office, in consequence of which, he relinquished his pastoral duties in Boston. After making a visit to Europe, he entered upon his business as professor, and continued in that station till 1825. Since that time he has been a representative in Congress.

Mr Everett's reputation, both as a statesman and a scholar, is too widely extended to need any comments from us. Among the great variety of his labors, he has found moments to devote to the muse. ["Dirge of Alaric, the Visigoth"] and a Phi Beta Kappa poem, written in his youth, are, we believe, all that have appeared in public. (Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 52)

Died 15 Jan 1865.

Sumner Lincoln, the son of Dr. Abner Fairfield, a physician of Warwick, Massachusetts, was born in that town on the twenty-fifth of June, 1803. In 1806 his father, who had previously removed to Athens, a village on the Hudson, died, leaving a widow and two children in humble circumstances. The family retired to the home of the mother's father, a farm house in Western Massachusetts, where Fairfield remained until his twelfth year. After a twelvemonth passed at school he entered Brown University. Here he studied so unremittingly, that, after a few months, he was attacked by a severe fit of sickness. On his recovery he endeavored to eke out his support by teaching, but failing in this was forced to leave college and seek a living as a tutor at the south. He passed two years in this occupation, and in preparation for the ministry, but in consequence of the death of his friend and instructor, the Rev. Mr. Cranston of Savannah, he changed his plan of life and returned to the north. He had during this period published "two pamphlets of rhymes," which, as we are informed in his biography by his widow "he ever after shrunk from reading," were probably of indifferent merit.

He returned to the north, with the determination to pursue a literary life, and in December, 1825, sailed for London. He carried letters of introduction to the conductors of periodicals, and obtained engagements as a writer. His poem, The Cities of the Plain, a description of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, appeared in the Oriental Herald.... He returned home in July, 1826, and soon after published a volume of poems, entitled The Sisters of Saint Clara, a Tale of Portugal, which was followed in 1830 by Abaddon, the School of Destruction, and other poems, another volume of poetry.

The next event in his life was his marriage to Miss Jane Frazee. He removed with his wife to Elizabethtown, with the intention of forming a classical school, but before the honeymoon was over the sheriff levied on their furniture and they were set adrift. They afterwards resided at Boston, Harper's Ferry, and Philadelphia, the husband gaining a precarious subsistence by writing for the press, and becoming somewhat soured by want of success. In 1828 he republished in a volume The Cities of the Plain, with a few miscellaneous pieces. A few months after, by the influence of his Philadelphia friends, he was placed at the head of Newtown Academy, about thirty miles from that city. The situation pleased him, and his affairs went on with unwonted serenity until one July afternoon a favorite pupil, while bathing with him in the river, was unfortunately drowned. The event caused a temporary disarrangement of the duties of the school, and threw such a gloom over the mind of the teacher that he insisted upon leaving his situation and removing to New York. By the exertions of his wife, in personally soliciting subscriptions, the means were secured, principally in Boston, whither the pair resorted in 1829, for the publication of a new poem, The Last Night of Pompeii, which appeared on their return to New York in 1832. It was maintained by Mr. Fairfield that he had anticipated in this poem the leading material of Bulwer's novel, bearing a similar title, published in London in 1834. His next enterprise was a monthly periodical. His wife was again his canvasser, and the North American Magazine was started in Philadelphia in 1833. He continued to edit it for five years, when, the enterprise proving unproductive, he disposedof the property to Mr. James C. Brooks of Baltimore.

The poet now became completely disheartened, fell into irregularities, and with a family of five children was often straitened in his finances. His health rapidly failed, and in the fall of 1843 he left Philadelphia with his mother for New Orleans. He arrived in the following spring, and was cheered by meeting with his old friend Mr. George D. Prentice. He died soon after, on the 6th of March, 1844. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 376-377)

Henry J. Finn was born in the city of New York, in the year 1782. When a boy he sailed for England, on the invitation of a rich uncle resident there. The vessel sank at sea, and the passengers and crew were for many days exposed in small boats until they were picked up by a ship which landed them at Falmouth. Finn resided in London until the death of his uncle, who made no mention of him in his will. He then returned to New York in 1799, studied law for two years,--became tired of the profession, returned to London, and made his first appearance at the Haymarket Theatre "in the little part of Thomas in the Sleep Walker." He continued on the stage with success, and in 1811 returning to America made his first appearance at Montreal. He next performed in New York, and afterwards became a member of the stock company of the Federal Street Theatre, Boston. Here he remained for several years, and was at one time manager of the theatre. He was extremely successful here, and in every part of the country which he subsequently visited, as a comic actor, and accumulating a handsome fortune, retired in the intervals of his engagements to an elegant residence at Newport. He was on his way to his pleasant home, when with many others he met a sudden and awful death, in the conflagration of the steamboat Lexington on the night of January 13, 1840.

Finn was celebrated as a comic writer as well as a comic actor. He published a Comic Annual, and a number of articles in various periodicals. The bills of his benefit nights were, says Mr. Sargent, "usually made up of the most extraordinary and inconceivable puns, for which his own name furnished prolific material." He wrote occasional pathetic pieces, which possess much feeling and beauty, and left behind him a MS. tragedy, portions of which were published in the New York Mirror, to which he was a contributor in 1839. He also wrote a patriotic drama entitled Montgomery, or the Falls of Montmorenci, which was acted at Boston with success and published. He was a frequent versifier, and turned off a song with great readiness. He also possessed some ability as a miniature and landscape painter. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 28)

Hannah Flagg Gould is the daughter of a soldier of the Revolution, who fought in the battle of Lexington, and served in the army throughout the war. She was born at Lancaster, Vermont, but removed soon after to Newburyport, Mass. While yet a child she lost her mother. Her father survived for several years, his declining age being tenderly cared for and cheered by his constant companion, his daughter, whose subsequent poems contain many touching traces of their intercourse.

Miss Gould's poems, after a favorable reception in several periodicals, were collected in a volume in 1832. By 1835, a second had accumulated, and a third appeared in 1841. In 1846, she collected a volume of her prose contributions, entitled Gathered Leaves.

Miss Gould's poems are all short, and simple in subject, form, and expression. They are natural, harmonious, and sprightly. She treats of the patriotic themes of the Revolution, and the scenes of nature and incidents of society about the ordinary path of woman; and her household themes have gained her a widely extended audience. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 497)

Miss Gould died at the age of seventy-seven, at her residence in Newburyport, Massachusetts, September 5, 1865. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. 1875; vol 2, p. 343)

Gould published poetry in The Token in 1830-1840 and 1842.

[excerpt]

...
     The idols of my heart are fading fast,
     And my own fragile beng will not long
     Edure the fatal memory of the past,
     Still less the gathering ills of present wrong,
     And unforgetful sighs, a tireless throng,
     Which day by day sink deeper than before;--
     Weak sighs,whch still are mightier than the strong,
     Soon--soon--oh, when shall the vain strife be o'er,
And I repose in peace, and ye torment no more?

     Yet will I hush this voice of weak lament;--
     Yet will I conquer this unmanly grief;--
     But the strong pain of passion first must vent
     Its throbbing woes in words for sad relief:
     'T is done,--my waning pilgrimage be brief,--
     Though young and dying, scarcely can I mourn;--
     Time cannot bind my feelings' shatter'd sheaf,
     Nor bid the loved, the long, long lost return,--
Then welcome be my journey towards the perilous bourne.

     Methinks it scarcely matters when we tread
     The road which all must tread who have not trod,
     Though the dark journey be replete with dread;--
     Firm by the mercy of a pitying God,
     And humbled at the chastening of his rod,
     How sweet, this aching heart and painful head
     Slumbering in peace beneath the grass-green sod,
     To join those ancient worthies who have fled,
And meet the mightier spirits of the mighty dead!

     With them and such as them I have conversed
     More than with men, and thus the fruit has been
     That they and their old mouldering tomes have nursed
     Feelings and thoughts and hopes which do not win
     Men's charity, though haply not of sin:
     For Roman, Grecian lore has been to me
     The mistress of my love;--'mid cities' din
     I 've loved all Rome while yet she was free,
And wander'd, lost in mists, through sage Philosophy.

     Perchance it did not profit me;--at least,
     I learnt that knowledge doth not always bring
     The fabled pleasures of the mental feast;--
     That intellectual streams might own a spring
     Of bitter wave, whose sun-bright vapors fling
     An arch of promise o'er the cheating source,
     Lit by the ray of man's own hopes, which cling
     To all delusion with a desperate force,
Till doubts and darkness soon obstruct their stumbling course.
...

(Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 342-343)

Fitz-Greene Halleck was born at Guilford, in Connecticut, August, 1795. He early wrote verses. One of his effusions--it is said there were some earlier--was published in a New York Paper, in 1809, when he was fourteen. At the age of eighteen, in 1813, he came to New York, and entered the banking-house of Jacob Barker, with which he was associated for many years, subsequently performing the duties of a book-keeper in the private office of John Jacob Astor. Not long after the decease of that eminent millionaire, he retired to his birth-place, where he has since resided.

It is said that Halleck's first appearance in print was in the columns of Holt's Columbian, New York, where, in 1813, a poem appeared, with the signature of "A Connecticut Farmer's Boy," which the editor introduced with the remark that he did not credit that authorship--"the verses were too good to be original!" ...

Halleck, however, gained his first celebrity in literature as a town wit, one of the producers, in connexion with his friend Drake, of the poetical squibs which appeared in the columsn of the Evening Post in 1819....

The characteristic of Halleck's poetry is its music; its perfection of versification, whether embalming a trifle of the hour or expressing a vigorous manly eloquence, a true lyric fire and healthy sentiment. ... In some of his poems he appears to have been led by dislike to even the suspicion of sentimentality to fasten a ludicrous termination to a serious emotion; but this is more dangerous to his imitators than injurious to his own powers. In Connecticut, which appears to be indebted to a happy idea struck out by Brianard, in his New Year's verse on the same theme, his subtle humor has happily blended the two qualities. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 207-209)

Died 19 Nov 1867

James Abraham, ... poet, b. in New Haven, Conn., 26 Sept 1789; d. there, 5 Jan., 1841, was graduated at Yale in 1808, after which he spent three years in Boston, preparing for a mercantile career. He engaged in business in New York, and in 1819 went to Europe, where he met many distinguished men. Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian, spoke of him "as the most accomplished young man with whom he was acquainted." In 1822 he married Cornelia, daughter of Isaac Lawrence, of New York, and retired to his country-seat, "Sachem's Wood," near New Haven, where he spent the remainder of his life, devoting his attention to literature. He published "The Judgment, a Vision," a poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Yale (New York, 1812); "Percy's Masque," a drama (London, 1819; reprinted, with additions, New York, 1820); "Hadad," a sacred drama (New York, 1825); and a collected edition of his writings, containing the additions of "Demetria," a domestic Italian tragedy, written in 1813; "Sachem's Wood," a poem; and several discourses, under the title of "Dramas, Discourses, and other Pieces" (2 vols., Boston, 1839). (Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.)

[excerpt from Hadad, sc 3: Hadad and Tamar, the woman he loves, meet in a garden at twilight]

     Had.  Delicious to behold the world at rest.
Meek labor wipes his brow, and intermits
The curse, to clasp the younglings of his cot;
Herdsmen, and shepherds, fold their flocks--and hark!
What merry strains they send from Olivet!
The jar of life is still; the city speaks
In gentle murmurs; voices chime with lutes
Waked in the streets and gardens; loving pairs
Eye the red west in one another's arms;
And nature, breathing dew and fragrance, yields
A glimpse of happiness, which He, who form'd
Earth and the stars, had power to make eternal.
     Tam.  Ah! Hadad, mean'st thou to reproach the Friend
Who gave so much, because he gave not all?
     Had.  Perfect benevolence, methinks, had will'd
Unceasing happiness, and peace, and joy;
Fill'd the whole universe of human hearts
With pleasure, like a flowing spring of life.
     Tam.  Our Prophet teaches so, till man rebell'd.
     Had.  Mighty rebellion!  Had he 'leaguer'd Heaven
With beings powerful, numberless, and dreadful,
Strong as the enginery that rocks the world
When all its pillars tremble; mix'd the fires
Of onset with annihilating bolts
Defensive volleyed from the throne; this, this
Had been rebellion worthy of the name,
Worthy of punishment.  But what did man?
Tasted an apple! and the fragile scene,
Eden, and innocence, and human bliss,
The nectar-flowing streams, life-giving fruits,
Celestial shades, and amaranthine flowers,
Vanish; and sorrow, toil, andpain, and death,
Cleave to him by an everlasting curse.
     Tam.  Ah! talk not thus.
     Had.  Is this benevolence?--
Nay, loveliest, these things sometimes trouble me;
For I was tutor'd in a brighter faith.
Our Syrians deem each lucid fount, and stream,
Forest, and mountain, glade, and bosky dell,
Peopled with kind divinities, the friends
Of man, a spiritual race allied
To him by many sympathies, who seek
His happiness, inspire him with gay thoughts,
Cool with their waves, and fan him with their airs
O'er them, the Spirit of the Universe,
Or Soul of Nature, circumfuses all
With mild, benevolent, and sun-like radiance;
Pervading, warming, vivifyng earth,
As spirit does the body, till green herbs,
And beauteous flowers, and branchy cedars rise;
And shooting stellar influence through her caves,
Whence minerals and gems imbibe their lustre.
     Tam.  Dreams, Hadad, empty dreams.
     Had.  These Deities
They invocate wth cheerful gentle rites,
Hang garlands on their altars, heap their shrines
With Nature's bounties, fruits, and fragrant flowers.
Not like yon gory mount that ever reeks--
     Tam.  Cast not reproach upon the holy altar.
     Had.  Nay, sweet.--Having enjoyed all pleasures here
That Nature prompts, but chiefly blissful love,
At death, the happy Syrian maiden deems
Her immaterial flies into the fields,
Of circumambient clouds, or crystal brooks,
And dwells, a Deity, with those she worshipp'd;
Till time, or fate, returnher in its course
To quaff, once more, the cup of human joy.
     Tam.  But thou believ'st not this.
     Had.  I almost wish
Thou didst; for I have fear'd, my gentle Tamar,
Thy spirit is too tender for a Law
Announced in terrors, coupled with the threats
Of an inflexible and dreadful Being,
Whose word anihilates, whose awful voice
Thunders the doom of nations, who can check
The sun in heaven, and shake the loosen'd stars,
Like wind-toss'd fruit, to earth, whose fiery step
The earthquake follows, whose tempestuous breath
Divides the sea, whose anger never dies,
Never remits, but everlasting burns,
Burns unextinguish'd in the deeps of Hell. ...

(Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 360-361)

Edwin C. Holland, a lawyer of Charleston, S. C., published in 1814 a volume of Odes, Naval Songs, and other occasional Poems, suggested for the most part by the war with England pending during their first publication in the Port Folio. His style is fluent, and occasionally somewhat too ornate and grandiloquent. One of the most spirited compositions is his prize poem ["The Pillar of Glory"]. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 139)

Born 1794; died 11 Sept 1824. (Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose polished verses and playful satiric wit are the delight of his contemporaries, as they will be cherished bequests of our own day to posterity, is a son of the author of the Annals, the Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge. At that larned town of Massachusetts, he was born August 29, 1809. He was educated at the Phillips Academy at Exeter, and graduated at Harvard in 1829. He then gave a year to the law, during which time he was entertaining the good people of Cambridge with various anonymous effusions of a waggish poetical character, in the Collegian, a periodical published by a number of undergraduates of Harvard University in 1830....

As a lawyer, Holmes, like msot of the American literati who have generally begun with that profession, was evidently falling undder the poets' censure, "penning a stanza when he should engross;" when he turned his attention to medicine, and forswore for a time the Muses. He was, however, guilty of some very clever anonymous contributions to a volume, the Harbinger [in 1836]....

The muse of Holmes is a foe to humbug. ... He clears the moral atmosphere of the morbid literary and other pretences afloat. People breathe freer for his verses. They shake the cobwebs out of the system, and keep up in the world that brisk healthy current of common sense, which is to the mind what circulation is to the body. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 511-512)

Holland published poetry in The Token in 1831, 1833, 1837, and 1838.

[excerpt]

God of the earth's extended plains!
     The dark green fields contented lie:
The mountains rise like holy tower,
     Where man might commune with the sky:
The tall cliff challenges the storm
     That lowers upon the vale below,
Where shaded fountains send their streams,
     With joyous music in their flow.

God of the dark and heavy deep!
     The waves lie sleeping on the sands,
Till the fierce trumpet of the storm
     Hath summon'd up their thundering bands;
Then the white sails are dash'd like foam,
     Or hurry trembling, o'er the seas,
Till calm'd by thee, the sinking gale
     Serenely breathes, "Depart in peace.["]

God of the forest's solemn shade!
     The grandeur of the lonely tree,
That wrestles singly with the gale,
     Lifts up admiring eyes to thee;
But more majestic far they stand,
     When side by side, their ranks they form,
To wave on high their plumes of green,
     And fight their battles with the storm.

God of the light and viewless air!
     Where summer breezes sweetly flow,
Or, gathering in their angry might,
     The fierce and wintry tempests blow;
All--from the evening's plaintive sigh,
     That hardly lifts the drooping flower,
To the wild whirlwind's midnight cry--
     Breathes forth the language of thy power.
...

(Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 325-326)

Samuel Kettell, an author to whom American literature is mucvh indebted for his researches into its early history, was born in Newburyport, Mass., in 1800. He was early engaged in literary pursuits, and assisted the late Samuel G. Goodrich in the preparation of his Peter Parley series of juvenile works. He was a good linguist, and, it is stated, in the course of a voyage to Malta, translated one of the Peter Parley books into modern Greek, and it was afterward published in the language. The work by which he is best known, entitled, Specimens of American Poetry, with Critical and Biographical Notices, was published by S. G. Goodrich & Co., in Boston, in 1829. It is in three volumes, contains an historical introduction, noticing various minor authors of the seventeenth century, and fairly opens with Cotton Mather and Roger Wolcott. The series is continued to the author's own day. The critical observations are acute, and the whole work, which embraces many minor writers not noticed elsewhere, is of an interesting character. All subsequent writers on the subject are under obligations to the author's diligence, and much aid has been derived from his labors in the preparation of the present work.

During a considerable portion of his life, Mr. Kettell was connected with the newspaper press of Boston. He was brought into notice in this relation as a contributor of occasional articles to the Boston Courier. They were chiefly of a humorous cast, as, satirical letters of "Peeping Tom," from Hull. When Mr. Buckingham retired from the editorship of the Courier, in 1848, Mr. Kettell became its principal editor, and so continued till his death, December 3, 1855, at his residence in Malden. ... (Duyckinck, ed. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. 1875. vol 2, p. 76)

[excerpt from the introduction]

The way was long, though 'twas not cold
But the poor bard was weak and old,
And carried, scor'd upon his front,
Of many a year the long account.
His Fiddle sole remaining pride
Hung dangling down his ragged side,
In faded bag of flannel green,
Through which the well carv'd head was seen
Of gaping lion, yawning wide,
In regal pomp of beastly pride.
The last of all the race was he,
Who charm'd the ear with tweedle dee.
For lack-a-day! full well I ween
The happy times he once had seen,
When in the merry capering days
Of olden time he tun'd his lays,
'Mong gallant lads, or jolly sailors,
And play'd "the de'el among the tailors,'
Had given place to other glee,
And different strains of harmony.
"The bigots of this iron time
"Had called his harmless art a crime;"
And now, instead of dance and song
Pricking the night's dull pace along,
And sprightly gambols deftly play'd
By rustic lad and gleeful maid,
And all that decks the cheek of toil,
With nature's warm and heartfelt smile,
No sound is heard borne on the gale,
In village lone or rural dale,
But canting, whining, nasal notes,
Twanging through hoarse and foggy throats,
Ascending to the startled sky,
Mocking the ear of deity
With nonsense blasphemous and wild;
While wretches, of their peace beguil'd,
Scare the dull ear of drowsy night,
With screams that boding screech owls fright,
And hollow moans, that seem to flow
From damned souls in shades below.
Love-feasts are held at midnight's hour,
When fancy wields her potent power,
And to the trembling wretch's eyes
Sepulchres ope, and spectres rise,
Gaunt forms, and grisly shapes appear,
And sweet religion turns to fear.
And fiddler now, no wight so poor,
May beg his bread from door to door,
Nor tune to pease a peasant's ear,
Those notes that blithe King Cole might hear.
...

William Leggett, an able and independent political writer, was born in the city of New York in the summer of 1802. He entered the college at Georgetown, in the district of Columbia, where he took a high scholastic rank, but in consequence of his father's failure in business, was withdrawn before the completion of his course, and in 1819 accompanied his father and family in their settlement on the then virgin soil of the Illinois prairies. The experience of western pioneer life thus acquired, was turned to good account in his subsequent literary career.

In 1822 he entered the navy, having obtained the appointment of midshipman. He resinged his commission in 1826, owing, it is said, to the harsh conduct of the commander under whom he sailed, and shortly after published a volume of verses, written at intervals during his naval career, entitled Leisure Hours at Sea. The poems show a ready command of language, a noticeable youthful facility in versification, and an intensity of feeling; beyond this they exhibit no peculiar merit, either of originality or scholarship. ... He also wrote in the Atlantic Souvenir, one of the earliest of the American annuals, a prose tale, The Rifle, in which he portrayed with spirit the scenes and incidents of western adventure. This met with such great success, from the novelty of the subject as well as its excellence of execution, that it was speedily followed by other tales of sea as well as land. The whole were subsequently collected under the title of Tales by a Country Schoolmaster.

[Leggett edited The Critic, the Evening Post, and The Plaindealer]

In May, 1839, he was appointed by Mr. Van Buren Diplomatic Agent to the Republic of Guatemala, an event which gave pleasure to his friends, not only as a recognition of his public services, but from their hopes that a residence in a southern climate would be beneficial to his health. It was but a few days after, however, that the public were startled by the announcement of his death, in the midst of his preparations for departure, from a severe attack of bilious colic, on the evening of May 29, 1839. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 343-344)

[excerpt]

"Room for the leper!  Room!"  And, as he came,
The cry passed on--"Room for the leper!  Room!"
Sunrise was slanting on the city gates
Rosy and beautiful, and from the hills
The early risen poor were coming in,
Duly and cheerfully, to their toil, and up
Rose the sharp hammer's clink, and the far hum
Of moving wheels and multitudes astir,
And all that in a city murmur swells,
Unheard but by the watcher's weary ear,
Aching with night's dull silence, or the sick
Hailing the welcome light, and sounds that chase
The death-like images of the dark away.

     "Room for the leper!"  And aside they stood,
Matron, and child, and pitiless manhood--all
Who met him on his way--and let him pass.
And onward through the open gate he came,
A leper with the ashes on his brow,
Sackcloth about his loins, and on his lip
A covering, stepping painfully and slow,
And with a difficult utterance, like one
Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down,
Crying "Unclean!--Unclean!"

                  'Twas now the depth
Of the Judean summer, and the leaves,
Whose shadows lay so still upon his path,
Had budded on the clear and flashing eye
Of Judah's loftiest noble.  He was young,
And eminently beautiful, and life
Mantled in eloquent fulness on his lip,
And sparkled in his glance; and in his mien
There was a gracious pride that every eye
Followed with benisons--and this was he!
...

Born 28 Aug 1794

Mr Lewis is a native of Lynn, Massachusetts, where he is now employed as an instructer. A volume of his poems was published in 1823, and he has since contributed others for the newspapers. (Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 332)

Died 21 Jan 1861. Lewis published poetry in The Token in 1830.

A bigger-than-life Westerner, Nimrod Wildfire provides a humorous contrast with the effete Easterners and snobbish Europeans he meets when he visits the East Coast.

[excerpt]

She was, indeed, a pretty little creature,
So meek, so modest:  what a pity, madam,
That one so young and innocent, should fall
A prey to the ravenous wolf.
     --The wolf, indeed!
You 've left the nursery to but little purpose,
If you believe a wolf could ever speak,
Though, in the time of Æsop, or before.
--Was 't not a wolf, then?  I have read the story
A hundred times; and heard it told:  nay, told it
Myself, to my younger sisters, when we 've shrank
Together in the sheets, from very terror,
And, with protecting arms, each round the other,
E'en sobb'd ourselves to sleep.  But I remember,
I saw the story acted on the stage,
Last winter in the city, I and my school-mates,
With our most kind preceptress Mrs Bazely,
And so it was a robber, not a wolf
That met poor little Riding Hood i' the wood?
--Nor wolf nor robber, child:  this nursery tale
Contains a hidden moral.
     --Hidden:  nay,
I 'm not so young, but I can spell it out,
And thus it is:  children, when sent on errands,
Must never stop by the way to talk with wolves.
--Tut! wolves again:  wilt listen to me, child?
--Say on, dear grandma.
     --Thus then, dear my daughter:
In this young person, culling idle flowers,
You see the peril that attends the maiden
Who, in her walk through life, yields to temptation,
And quits the onward path to stray aside,
Allured by gaudy weeds.
...

(Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 338)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, February 27th, 1807, "In an old square wooden house, upon the edge of the sea." He entered Bowdoin College, where in due time he was graduated in the class with Hawthorne, in 1825. He wrote verses at this time for the United States Literary Gazette, printed at Boston.

For a short time after leaving college, he studied law in the office of his father, the Hon. Stephen Longfellow; but soon fell into the mode of life he has since pursued as a scholar, by the appointment to a Professorship of Modern Languages in his college, to accomplish himself for which he travelled abroad in 1826, making the usual tour of the continent, including Spain. He was absent three years; on his return, he lectured at Bowdoin College, as Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, and wrote articles for the North American Review....

He also at this time penned the sketches of travel in Outre Mer, commencing the publication after the manner of Irving in his Sketch Book....

The elegance of the manner, the nice phrases and fanciful illustrations--a certain decorated poetical style--with the many suggestions of fastidious scholarship, marked this in the eye of the public as a book of dainty promise. ...

The first volume of original poetry published by Longfellow, was the Voices of the Night at Cambridge in 1839. It contained the "Psalm of Life," the "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year," the Manrique translation, and a number of the early poems of the Gazette. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 443-444)

Died 24 March 1882. Longfellow published poetry in The Token in 1832, 1833, 1834, and 1842.

George Lunt was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts. After completing his collegiate course at Harvard in 1824, he studied law at Boston, and has since practised the profession at Newburyport.

In 1839 he published a volume of Poems, followed in 1843 by The Age of Gold and other Poems, and in 1854, by Lyric Poems, Sonnets, and Miscellanies. He is also the author of Eastford, or Household Sketches, by Westley Brooke, a novel of New England life, published in 1854. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 438)

... He has evidently high powers as a poet, which require only the developement [sic] that study and a mature taste will afford, to be duly appreciated. He shows deep sentiment, reminding us occasionally of Percival." (Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 341)

Died 17 May 1885. Lunt also published The Grave of Byron and Other Poems, in 1826. He published poetry in The Token in 1830 and 1842.

apparently J. L. Martin; died 1848. Author of Native Bards

[excerpt]

...
     Twelve years are gone since Matthew Lee
     Held in this isle unquestioned sway;
     A dark, low, brawny man was he;
     His law,--"It is my way."
Beneath his thick-set brows a sharp light broke
From small gray eyes; his laugh a triumph spoke.

     Cruel of heart, and strong of arm,
     Loud in his sport, and keen for spoil,
     He little recked of good or harm,
     Fierce both in mirth and toil;
Yet like a dog could fawn, if need there were;
Speak mildly, when he would, or look in fear.

     Amid the uproar of the storm,
     And by the lightning's sharp, red glare,
     Were seen Lee's face and sturdy form;
     His axe glanced quick in air.
Whose corpse at morn lies swinging in the sedge?
There's blood and hair, Matt, on thy axe's edge.
...

(Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 5)

John C. M'Call, is a native of Philadelphia, and received an education for the bar, but we understand is not at present engaged in practice. He is known as the author of The Troubadour, The Condottier, Fleurette, and other small poems. This first named of these is the only one we have had an opportunity of seeing. It has many passages of rich and graceful description, which dispose us to think highly of the author's poetical talent. We must add, that this poem is marked by some of the strangest metrical anomalies that have ever come in our way. Mr M'Call we are informed, writes only for amusement, and does not seem to bestow the necessary attention upon the more mechanical department of poetry. We should be gratified to see him put forth his strength upon a work of higher character, with a studied and persevering effort. (Samuel Kettell. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 2, p. 314)

Died 3 Oct 1846

[P]hysician, b. in Larne, County Antrim, Ireland, 20 Dec., 1875; d. there, 21 July, 1845. He was the son of a cloth-merchant, who died when the son was but a lad. He was graduated in medicine at the college in Dublin, and also received a diploma from the college at Glasgow. He began practice at Larne, then removed to Belfast, where he also carried on a drug business until he came to the United States in 1817. After living in Baltimore, Md., and Pittsburg, Pa., he came in 1824 to Philadelphia, where he practiced medicine and carried on a mercantile business. From 1842 till his death he was U. S. consul at Londonderry. He was of a romantic disposition, early developed considerable poetic genius, and became noted for his rural stanzas in Ireland, and, on coming to this country, took deeper interest in literary works than in the business of his profession. His house in Philadelphia was much frequented by literary men. His earliest publication in the United States was "The Pleasures of Friendship" (1822), which poem, with others, was reprinted (Philadelphia, 1836). In 1824 he edited at Philadelphia the "American Monthly Magazine," for which he wrote "O'Halloran, or the Insurgent, a Romance of the Irish Rebellion".... [Also wrote "The Wilderness, or Braddock's Times, a Tale of the West" (1823); "A Spectre of the Forest, of Annuals of the Housatonic" (1823); "The Betrothed of Wyoming" (2d ed., 1830); "Meredith, or the Mystery of the Meschianza, a Tale of the Revolution" (1831); "Waltham, an American Revolutionary Tale" (1823)] (Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.)

I. M'Lellan, of Boston; he was graduated at Bowdoin College, in 1826, and is now a student at law. His poetry has appeared in various periodicals. (Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G. Goodrich & Co., 1829; vol 3, p. 330)

Born 21 May 1806; died 20 Aug 1899. McLellan published many poems in The Token 1828, 1829, 1832, 1834-1837, and 1842.

Grenville Mellen was born at Biddeford, Maine, June 19, 1799. He was the eldest son of Chief-justice Mellen, of the court of common pleas in that state. He was graduated at Harvard in 1818: studied law with his father, and settled at Portland, Maine. In 1823 he removed to North Yarmouth, in the same state, where he remained for five years. His poems at this period and subsequently to his death, appeared frequently in the periodicals, the magazines and annuals, of the time. In 1826 he pronounced before the Peace Society of Maine, at Portland, a poem, The Rest of Empires, and in 1828 an Anniversary Poem, before the Athenian Society of Bowdoin College, The Light of Letters. He wrote for the United States Literary Gazette, supported by Longfellow and others of Cambridge. In 1827 he published Our Chronicle of Twenty-Six, a satire, and in 1829 Glad Tales and Sad Tales, a volume in prose, from his contributions to the periodicals. The chief collection of his poems appeared in Boston in 1833, The Martyrs' Triumph, Buried Valley, and other Poems.

From Boston he came to reside in New York. His health, which was always delicate, was now much enfeebled; he was lingering with consumption when he made a voyage to Cuba, from which he returned without benefit, and died in New York, September 5, 1841, at the residence of his friend, Mr. Samuel Colman, for whose family he felt the warmest affection, and whose house he had called his home for the latter years of his life. Before his death he was engaged upon a collection of his unpublished poems, which still remain in manuscript.

A glance at his poems shows a delicate susceptibility to poetical impression, tinged with an air of melancholy. He wrote with ease, often carelessly and pretentiously--often with eloquence. With a stronger constitution his verse would probably have assumed a more condensed, energetic expression. With a consciousness of poetic power he struggled with a feeble frame, and at times yielded to despondency. The memory of his tenderness and purity of character is much cherished by his friends. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 277-278)

Mellen published poetry in The Token in 1828-1836, 1838, 1840, and perhaps 1841.

The play was a solid money-maker for tragedian Edwin Forrest, who played the title character off and on for decades. A portrait of Forrest as Metamora was published with a poem in The Token in 1842.

George P. Morris was born in Philadelphia in 1802. He came early in life to New York, and formed an association with the late Samuel Woodworth, with whom he commenced the publication of the Mirror in 1823.

Mr. Morris conducted this journal with distinguished success till the completion of his twentieth volume in 1842, when its publication was interrupted by the universally spread financial disasters of the times. ...

One of the earliest productions of Mr. Morris was his drama of Brier Cliff, which was produced at the Chatham Theatre, New York, in 1837, and acted for forty nights. It was constructed on incidents of the American Revolution. ... In 1842, he wrote the libretto of an opera, The Maid of Saxony, which was set to music by Mr. C. E. Horn, and performed for fourteen nights at the Park Theatre.

The songs of Mr. Morris have been produced at intervals during the whole term of his literary career. They have been successfully set to music, and popularly sung on both sides of the Atlantic. The themes include most varieites of situation, presenting the love ballad, the patriotic song, the expression of patriotism, of friendship, and numerous occasional topics. (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 347-348)

Review in New England Magazine:

             With a grateful heart to God,
Devour each day your pudding and your cod,
Comfort yourselves with flagons, courage! cheer
Your maudlin spirits with besotting beer,
Go, plough your fields, teach hopeful youth, engross,
Plant onions, notions vend, for gold sell dross,
Vote, muster, edit journals, import tea,
Make Goshen cheeses, wretched rum for sea,
Bad cloths, and flimsy fabrics for the mart
Of the poor south, that still must pay and smart, &c.

Ye mighty small ones, and ye little great,
I'll to the task again, and try a strain,
Which shall not, by your leave, be heard in vain;
Again Apollo's aid I will invoke,
And ply my weapon with a closer stroke,
Each recreant rhymester shall behold his name,
And notes and illustrations speak his shame.
Now have I purged my choler, spilt my gall,
And feel more placid, I shall nought recall,
Write, rave, blaspheme, I do despise ye all.

John Neal ... is a native of Portland, Maine. He was born about 1794, and was of a Quaker family, but does not appear to have inherited any Quaker placidity of mind. In his boyhood he was "read out" of the drab fraternity for "knocking a man, who insulted him, head over heels; for paying a militia fine; for making a tragedy, and for desiring to be turned out, whether or no." He was brought up as a shop-boy, and when he became a man, became also a wholesale dry-goods dealer, in partnership with Pierpont, afterwards the poet. The concern failed, and Neal commenced the study of law, and with it the profession of literature, by an article on the poetry of Lord Byron, who had then just published the third canto of Childe Harold. ...

Next came Keep Cool, his first novel. ...

The Battle of Niagara, with other Poems, by John O'Cataract, was published in 1818. ... Otho, a five act tragedy, was written about the same time. ...

These poems possess vigor, spirit, and ease in versification. They consist of the "Battle of Niagara," which contains some fine passages of description of the scenes and conflict which supply its title; "Goldan, or the Maniac Harper," a narrative poem, suggested in part by the celebrated slide of the Rossberg, Switzerland, in 1806; and Ode delivered before the Delphians, a literary society of Baltimore, and a few brief miscellaneous pieces. ...

The favorable reception of a portion of [his] novels in England, on their republication, induced their author to try his literary fortunes in that country. With his characteristic promptitude he closed up his business affairs, transferred his clients to a professional brother, borrowed cash, and was off in three weeks. He arrived in England in January, 1824, and remained three years, writing for Blackwood ... and other periodicals. ...

In 1828 he published Rachel Dyer, a story, in a single volume, the subject of which is "Salem Witchcraft." It is much more subdued in style than his earlier novels, and is a carefully prepared and historically correct picture of the period it presents. ...

It was followed in 1830 by Authorship, by a New Englander over the Sea. It is a rambling narrative, whose interest is dependent on the mystery in which the reader is kept until near its close, respecting the character of the chief personages. The Down Easters, and Ruth Elder, which have since appeared, close the series of Mr. Neal's novels. ...

Mr. Neal has written much for the periodicals, and some of his finest poems have appeared in this manner since the publication of his early volume. ... (Evert & George Duyckinck. Cyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Charles Scribner, 1855; vol 2, p. 161-163)

Died 21 June 1876

[excerpt]

     Who that has mingled in the fray,
          Or borne the storms of life,
     Has not desired to flee away
          From all its sin and strife--
     Has not desired, to flee away,
          Like yonder startled dove,
     And seek, in some far wilderness,
A nestling place of love--
Where the tumult, if heard, should excite no alarm,
And the storm and the tempest sweep by, without harm.
...

(Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. Boston: S. G