ism, but, as before 1776, continued to imitate English models; in Barlow's Columbiad or Tyler's Contrast the theme was independence, but the whole treatment betrayed an English debt. Americans still imitated Addison in prose and Pope in verse-as Englishmen were doing also of course, for the eighteenth century was not an original age-but our imitation had the peculiar brand of provincialism; we imitated more servilely and longer. In the notable political works indeed not merely the ideas but even the style and treatment are fresh. The Declaration of Independence is certainly not trite, and Paine is democratic in style as well as in substance. In Freneau our poetry also first becomes original. But for the most part our literature of this second class is still colonial and second-hand. Indeed the "Yale poets" exhibit our literary provincialism at its lowest depth; they furnish a warning example of the futility of imitation, and of the danger of putting even new wine into old bottles. storm. This volume opens with Crèvecoeur, whose idyllic descriptions of colonial country life represent the calm before the The Letters from an American Farmer are mainly pre-Revolutionary. Even here, however, the contrast of free America with effete and oppressed Europe suggests separation; the air is overcharged; and in the last letter the storm breaks. The peaceful farmer is overwhelmed in "this unfortunate Revolution." Naturally a large part of the volume is taken up with political prose. This includes first the State papers-statements, petitions, remonstrances, declarations of right. These papers are almost uniformly substantial in thought, dignified and elevated in tone, and excellent in style. "When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from America," said Chatham to the English Lords in 1775, "when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause For solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress in Philadephia." It has become fashionable to represent the most shining example of this kind as somewhat tarnished by time, and, with Rufus Choate, to speak of the "glittering and sounding generalities" of the Declaration of Independence. But without its abstraction and rhetoric it would probably have lacked its signatures. Its influence on later thought is unquestionable, of which one example will suffice. "I have never had a feeling, politically," said Lincoln, "that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." If the reader catches the spirit of the time he will probably find this Declaration stirring; and he will at least find it an example of admirable prose. The conflict of course called forth a flood of oratory. In the North James Otis, opposing the "writs of assistance" in 1761, "spoke the prologue" to the Revolutionary drama. In the South Patrick Henry, considered the greatest orator of the time, made a speech before the Virginia Convention in 1775, which is known to every American. This, like the speech of Otis, was preserved only in rough notes, and the familiar version from Wirt's biography (1817) doubtless owes something to other hands, and even to later oratorical ideals. If fictitious, like the speeches in Thucydides, its breathless periods may all the better represent the spirit of 1775. Largest of all is the body of controversial writingspolitical letters, essays, and satires, appearing in pamphlets and newspapers-most of them ephemeral, many, however, permanently valuable to politics and even to literature. They were of every sort by violent popular agitators, by adroit and well-informed party leaders, and by men of weighty thought and training in law or government. The controversy ran through three phases. Down to 1775 it was a temperate but increasingly vigorous debate between two parties one for resistance, the other moderate or acquiescent. During the War it was carried on across the battle line between Americans and tories; these satires or invectives were most bitter, for the tories were more hated by the Revolutionists than the British enemy, and had good reason to return the hate. And finally after 1783 similarly opposed parties debated the nature of the new government. New England led the way in this literary war. James Otis, in his Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764, declared that "no parts of his Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent." The cause of the colonies was supported by Samuel Adams and John Adams in numerous letters, essays and pamphlets; that of the King in a series of letters signed "Massachusettensis." The repeal of the Stamp Act brought a lull in the conflict, which, however, was renewed at the imposition of Townshend's new duties in 1767. John Dickinson, a lawyer of Pennsylvania, advocated peaceful resistance in able but moderate Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, which were read throughout America and in Europe. In 1774 and 1775 the paper war reached its height. Samuel Seabury, a conservative clergyman, in a series of outspoken pamphlets, written as by "A Westchester Farmer," denounced the trade agreements and the usurpations of Congress. Among others Alexander Hamilton, then an undergraduate in King's College, took the opposite side. This interesting debate is represented by our selections. Meanwhile Thomas Paine, after failing in several undertakings in his native country, had come to Philadelphia to do brilliantly successful work for the American cause. In a pamphlet, Common Sense, crude in its argument, but plain in style and full of skillful appeals to popular feeling, Paine first openly advocated independence. This tract, originally published in January, 1776, and reprinted in hundreds of thousands throughout the colonies, prepared popular opinion for the momentous Declaration of July Fourth; and indeed did such signal service to the cause that it has been called an "event in history." If with independence irrevocably declared and supported by arms, the sword now became mightier than the pen, still, as Francis Hopkinson remarked, "amongst the implements of war the pen and the printing-press are not the most insig nificant." Hopkinson himself on the eve of independence had reviewed the issues in his allegorical Pretty Story, and he now wrote patriotic letters, using the weapon of goodnatured but pointed irony. In a letter to the New Jersey Gazette, in 1778, he humorously proposed the appointment of a "liar general" to offset the British "lying-offices"-in other words, to counteract the "propaganda" issuing from the loyalist presses of Philadelphia and New York. William Rivington, printer of the New York Royal Gazette, was especially active in publishing on the British side, and is often the object of American satire. Meanwhile Paine kept up the spirit of Americans and urged them to support their army in a series of papers called The Crisis (1776-1783). In the last number of The Crisis, of December, 1783, it is significant that the far-seeing Paine pled for a strong union; "that which includes and makes easy all our inferior concerns is the Union of the States." But men who had fought for an independent government now disagreed as to its proper nature. Henry, at first an advocate of a strong central government, finally spoke against it and opposed the adoption of the Constitution. The arguments which prevailed, and thus the principles which became fundamental in our government as finally established, are best stated in The Federalist. This series of papers—the ablest by Hamilton-addressed to the people of New York and well calculated to accomplish its immediate purpose of securing the adoption of the Constitution, was so sound in substance and so admirable in style, that it has remained a valuable treatise on the structure of government and a model for later legal writers. The literary battles were carried on not only in prose but in verse. At the outbreak in 1775 Freneau wrote caustic satires on the tories in New York and the British in Boston. After his return from the West Indies in 1778 he renewed his attacks in The British Prison Ship, in stirring "naval lyrics," such as The Memorable Victory of Paul Jones, and in tirades, personally abusive rather than gen uinely satirical, like The Fall of General Earl Cornwallis. John Trumbull, shortly to be mentioned again, produced the most widely read and permanently interesting satire on the tories in his M'Fingal. Loyalist satire is best represented by Jonathan Odell, a Church of England clergyman of New Jersey. His couplets, suggesting Pope's, which are well represented in The American Times, 1780, quite match Freneau's in bitterness and venom. "What pen can write, what human tongue can tell The endless murders of this man of hell." So Freneau writes of Cornwallis; and Odell is equally unrestrained in addressing Washington: "Go, wretched author of thy country's grief, Men who wrote thus hotly were not in the mood to produce poetry, even satirical poetry, of value. After the War the proper coolness and detachment are found again in the work of the "Hartford Wits." In 1786 Trumbull and Barlow, with Hopkins, Humphreys, and other Federalists of Hartford, composed, after the manner of the Dunciad and the Rolliad, an Anarchiad-ingeniously described as an epic of greater antiquity than Homer, recovered from the ruins of a city of the New World. The satire was directed against the democracy, faction, and political chaos of the period of Shays's Rebellion, and was thus a plea for the Constitution. The fugitive poetry of the period-hymns, songs, and ballads, with burlesques and parodies-is abundant and interesting. It has not yet been properly collected and edited. This too is from both sides. The loyalist verse, of which less has been preserved, coming often from men of breeding and education, is largely in the polite manner of the eighteenth century; that on the American side is more crude, popular, and home-spun. The best known ballad, Yankee Doodle, though of doubtful origin evidently became the prevailing song in New England about 1775. A true folk |