Chapter Poetry of The Revolution of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

poet, borrowing the rollicking measure of the earlier satirist, narrates the misadventures of his hero -- a tory squire in the midst of patriots. The poem first appeared in January, 1776, was afterward expanded and reappeared, in four cantos, in 1782. McFingal is full of native Yankee wit and humor, and contains many clever couplets -- couplets which have passed for Butler's:--

"No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law;
Or held in method orthodox
His love of justice in the stocks;
Or failed to lose by sheriff's shears
At once his loyalty and ears."

So popular was this merry epic, McFingal, that it ran to thirty editions. It was a source of joy in the camps of the Continentals, and nerved the arm of many a tired soldier in the ranks.

Joel Barlow, 1754-1812.

Still more ambitious was the effort of Joel Barlow, who published, in 1787, his Vision of Columbus. In 1807, the completed work appeared under the epic title The Columbiad. It was a prodigious poem, intended to be a second Iliad. Following a plan employed by Milton in the eleventh book of Paradise Lost, Columbus is led to the hill of Vision and is shown the future greatness of the land he had discovered. The patriotic fervor of the author is intense.

"I sing the mariner who first unfurled
An eastern banner o'er the western world,
And taught mankind where future empire lay
In these fair confines of descending day."

In 1793, Barlow composed in lighter vein another poem which has outlived the ponderous epic. This is the happy composition in honor of Hasty Pudding, one of our best examples of light and fanciful verse. The poem was written when Barlow was abroad in Savoy, and was dedicated to no less a personage than Lady Martha Washington. The poet still uses the heroic couplet, this time in mock-heroic strain; and the humorous realism of his rural scenes is no less attractive to the modern reader than it was to those who first enjoyed the poet's glorification of this homely theme.

Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817.

The third writer in this group, Timothy Dwight, was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards; and he became in time the president of Yale College. The subject of his epic -- for his inspiration was also epical -- is Religion. It was entitled The Conquest of Canaan; and it appeared in 1785. It is described by its author as "the first of the kind which has been published in this country."¹ The spirit of the Revolution is felt in the treatment of even this ancient theme; and the ingenious device by which the great event of American history in the latter part of the eighteenth century is linked with this epic recital of Israelitish wars is very amusing.

Timothy Dwight was, like his grandfather Edwards, a man of marvelous energy and of great literary productiveness; he inherited, however, none of the genius which distinguished Jonathan Edwards's scholarly work. His Theology Explained and Defined, in five volumes, does not resemble the famous treatise on The Freedom of the Will. The most interesting example of his prose is the Travels in New England and New York -- four volumes of letters fictitiously addressed to an English correspondent, and filled with observations made during his summer travels in his gig.

In 1777 and 1778, Dwight served as an army chaplain and employed his lyric gifts with patriotic fervor. His best remembered song, Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, was the fruit of this period. The fact that he was the author also of the hymn, I Love thy Kingdom, Lord, should certainly not be forgotten. In Greenfield Hill (1794) we find a very interesting attempt at a descriptive as well as didactic poem. It is in frank imitation of the English classic poets, Pope, Denham, Thomson, Goldsmith, but shows some touches distinctively American.