Francis Cope contributed essays to the Port Folio in 1812. He was an occasional writer for several years, signing his papers with the initials "C. F."
Robert H. Rose is the author of the "Sketches in Verse," published in 1810, nearly all of which had previously appeared in the Port Folio, where the "Sketches" were termed "a kind of chalk drawings." One of them, "To a Market Street Gutter," was a parody of the "Ode to the Raritan," and was the cause of John Davis writing the "Pursuits of Philadelphia Literature."[14]
The Port Folio of May, 1816 (page 361), has a frontispiece engraving of "Silver Lake," the seat of Robert Rose, in Susquehanna County, on the New York line.
ODE TO A MARKET STREET GUTTER.
A Specimen of Local Description.
O sweetest Gutter! though a clown,
I love to see thee running down;
Or mark thee stop awhile, then free
From ice, jog on again, like me;
Or like the lasses whom I meet,
Who, sauntering, stray along the street,
As if they had nowhere to go!
At times, so rapid is thy flow,
That did the cits not wish in vain
Thou wouldst be in the pumps again,
But like a pig, whose fates deny
To find again his wonted sty,
You turn, and stop, and run, and turn,
Yet ne'er shall find your "native urn."
How oft has rolled down thy stream
Things which in song not well would seem,
Ere scavengers their scrapers plied
To drag manure from out thy tide,
Or hydrants bade thy scanty rill
Desert its banks and cellars fill.
Last Thursday morn, so very cold,
A morn not better felt than told,
Then first in all its bright array,
Did I thy "frozen form" survey;
And, goodness! what a great big steeple!
What sights of houses! and such people!!
And then I thought, did I not stutter,
But verse could, like some poets, utter,
How much I'd praise thee, sweetest Gutter!
After the publication of this parody John Davis printed "The Philadelphia Pursuits of Literature. By Juvenal Junius of New Jersey. Phila.: John Davis, 1805."
"Then Muses aid me! and I'll fain review
The Philadelphia lounging scribbling crew."
Davis had met the gentlemen of the Port Folio and had all the information necessary for stinging satire of the Mutual Admiration Society that met at Meredith's and Hopkinson's or at Dennie's office. In his "Travels" (p. 203), he writes: "At Philadelphia I found Mr. Brown (C. B.), who felt no remission of his literary diligence by a change of abode (from New York). He was ingratiating himself into the favor of the ladies by writing a new novel, and rivalling Lopez de Vega by the multitude of his works. Mr. Brown introduced me to Mr. (Asbury) Dickins, and Mr. Dickins to Mr. Dennie; Mr. Dennie presented me to Mr. Wilkins, and Mr. Wilkins to the Rev. Mr. Abercrombie; a constellation of American geniuses, in whose blaze I was almost consumed.... Rev. Mr. Abercrombie was impatient of every conversation that did not relate to Dr. Johnson, of whom he could detail every anecdote from the time he trod on a duck till he purchased an oak-stick to repulse Macpherson."[15]
In the "Philadelphia Pursuits" Davis wrote of Dennie: