And in due form do tar him next,

And feather, as the law directs;

Then through the town attendant ride him
In cart with Constable beside him,
And having held him up to shame,
Bring to the pole, from whence he came."
Forthwith the crowd proceed to deck
With halter'd noose M'Fingal's neck,
While he in peril of his soul

Stood tied half-hanging to the pole;
Then lifted high the ponderous jar,
Pour'd o'er his head the smoking tar.
With less profusion once was spread
Oil on the Jewish's monarch's head,
That down his beard and vestments ran,
And cover'd all his outward man.
As when (so Claudian sings) the Gods
And earth-born Giants fell at odds,
And stout Enceladus in malice
Tore mountains up to throw at Pallas;
And while he held them o'er his head,
The river, from their fountains fed,
Pour'd down his back its copious tide,
And wore its channels in his hide:
So from the high-raised urn the torrents
Spread down his side their various currents;
His flowing wig, as next the brim,
First met and drank the sable stream;
Adown his visage stern and grave
Roll'd and adhered the viscid wave;
With arms depending as he stood,
Each cuff capacious holds the flood;
From nose and chin's remotest end,
The tarry icicles descend;

Till all o'erspread, with colors gay,
He glitter'd to the western ray,
Like sleet-bound trees in wintry skies,
Or Lapland idol carved in ice.
And now the feather-bag display'd
Is waved in triumph o'er his head,

And clouds him o'er with feathers missive,
And down, upon the tar, adhesive:
Not Maia's son, with wings for ears,
Such plumage round his visage wears;
Nor Milton's six-wing'd angel gathers
Such superfluity of feathers.

Now all complete appears our 'Squire,
Like Gorgon or Chimæra dire;
Nor more could boast on Plato's plan1
To rank among the race of man,
Or prove his claim to human nature,
As a two-legg'd, unfeather'd creature.
Then on the fatal cart, in state
They raised our grand Duumvirate.
And as at Rome a like committee,
Who found an owl within their city,
With solemn rites and grave processions
At every shrine perform'd lustrations;
And lest infection might take place
From such grim fowl with feather'd face,
All Rome attends him through the street
In triumph to his country seat:
With like devotion all the choir
Paraded round our awful 'Squire;
In front the martial music comes
Of horns and fiddles, fifes and drums,
With jingling sound of carriage bells,
And treble creak of rusted wheels.
Behind, the crowd, in lengthen'd row
With proud procession, closed the show.
And at fit periods every throat
Combined in universal shout;
And hail'd great Liberty in chorus,
Or bawl'd "Confusion to the Tories."
Not louder storm the welkin braves
From clamors of conflicting waves;
Less dire in Lybian wilds the noise
When rav'ning lions lift their voice;

1 Alluding to Plato's famous definition of man, Animal bipes implume-a two-legged animal without feathers.

Or triumphs at town-meetings made,

On passing votes to regulate trade.1

Thus having borne them round the town,
Last at the pole they set them down;
And to the tavern take their way

To end in mirth the festal day.

1 Such votes were frequently passed at town-meetings, with the view to prevent the augmentation of prices, and stop the depreciation of the paper money.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT

Like the great puritans of the seventeenth century, Timothy Dwight was pious, learned, and high-minded; he was, however, more modern and liberal. He was a great theologian, orator, college president, and man of affairs. If he could not become a great poet merely by taking thought, he at least showed a very genuine interest in poetry. He was born in 1752 at Northampton, Massachusetts, the scene of the labors of his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards. He was little less precocious than Trumbull, and quite as ambitious; as a boy, hearing talk of great men, he "formed a settled resolve to equal those whose character and talents he had heard so highly extolled." He graduated at Yale in 1769, and from 1771 to 1779 was tutor in the college. With Trumbull he formed great plans for an American literature. He lengthened the list of the American periodical essayists in "The Meddler" and "The Correspondent," and he began an epic poem. In 1777 and 1778 as a chaplain in the American army he kept up the morale of the soldiers by vigorous sermons and poems; one of the latter, "Columbia,' was long preserved in patriotic collections. He then spent five years in Northampton, farming, preaching, and serving in the legislature of Massachusetts. From 1783 to 1795 he was pastor at Greenfield (in the town of Fairfield), Connecticut; and then, until his death in 1817, he was president of Yale College. Here, among other reforms and improvements, he finally introduced the study of English. During summer journeys, in gig and on horseback, through the eastern states, he collected materials, which, with miscellaneous observations and opinions, formed the four volumes of his Travels in New England and New York (1821).

Though the Travels is his most readable book, Dwight is probably best known as one of the "Yale Poets." He is said to have begun his epic Conquest of Canaan at the age of

nineteen; his plan to publish it in five books in 1775 (see Trumbull's "Lines," p. 134) was made impossible by the war. Revised and extended to eleven books, and with patriotic references to events and heroes of the war introduced in the similes, it finally appeared at Hartford in 1785, with a dedication to Washington. Like Paradise Lost it seeks a Christian subject—in the wars of the Israelites under Joshua. It rivals Homer and Virgil at least in "sustained effort," consisting of nearly ten thousand lines in heroic couplets of remarkably uniform mediocrity-probably in imitation of Pope's Iliad. In his preface Dwight calls it "the first of its kind in this country," and excuses its lack of "national interest"; he has at least "thrown in his mite for the advancement of the refined arts on this side of the Atlantic." The Conquest of Canaan is the deliberate effort of a young man, ambitious but not poetically gifted, to lay the foundation of an American literature in a great epic poem. Perhaps he himself means to acknowledge the overboldness of his attempt in quoting on the title-page from Pope:

"Fired, at first sight, with what the Muse imparts
In fearless youth we tempt the height of arts.'

In The Triumph of Infidelity, published anonymously in 1788, Dwight defends Calvinistic orthodoxy against freethinking in satirical couplets which suggest Young's Love of Fame. In his Greenfield Hill, a more interesting poem, published in 1794, his original design, as stated in the preface, was "to imitate, in the several parts, the manner of as many British poets.' "Though this design was given up, the seven parts in various metres, suggest and echo Spenser, Pope, and Goldsmith; indeed the author himself calls attention to the imitations in notes. The poem in its best parts describes the country and inhabitants of Dwight's parish, and closes in Part VII with a theme very common in Revolutionary poetry-"The Vision, or Prospect of the Future Happiness of America."