Yet side by side with these conventional standards, the “Portfolio” showed tendencies which seemed inconsistent with conservatism,—a readiness to welcome literary innovations contradicting every established canon. No one would have supposed that the critic who accepted Johnson and Pope as transcendent poets, should also delight in Burns and Wordsworth; yet Dennie was unstinted in praise of poetry which, as literature, was hardly less revolutionary than the writings of Godwin in politics. Dennie lost no opportunity of praising Coleridge, and reprinted with enthusiasm the simplest ballads of Wordsworth. Moore was his personal friend, and Moore’s verses his models. Wherever his political prejudices were untouched, he loved novelty. He seemed to respect classical authority only because it was established, but his literary instincts were broader than those of Jefferson.
The original matter of the “Portfolio” was naturally unequal, and for the most part hardly better than that of a college magazine. Dennie was apt to be commonplace, trivial, and dull. His humor was heavy and commonly coarse; he allowed himself entire freedom, and no little grossness of taste. Of scholarship, or scholarly criticism, his paper showed great want. He tried to instruct as well as to amuse, but society soon passed the stage to which his writing belonged. The circulation of the “Portfolio” probably never exceeded fifteen hundred copies, and Dennie constantly complained that the paper barely supported itself. When the Bostonians, in the year 1805, began to feel the spirit of literary ambition, they took at once a stride beyond Dennie’s power, and established a monthly magazine called the “Anthology and Boston Review,” which in 1806 numbered four hundred and forty subscribers. The undertaking was doubly remarkable; for the Anthology Society which supported the Review combined with it the collection of a library, limited at first to periodical publications, which expanded slowly into the large and useful library known as the Boston Athenæum. The Review and Library quickly became the centre of literary taste in Boston, and, in the words of Josiah Quincy many years afterward, might be considered as a revival of polite learning in America. The claim was not unreasonable, for the Review far surpassed any literary standards then existing in the United States, and was not much inferior to any in England; for the Edinburgh was established only in 1802, and the Quarterly not till 1809.
The Anthology Society, which accomplished the feat of giving to Boston for the first time the lead of American literary effort, consisted largely of clergymen, and represented, perhaps unintentionally, the coming Unitarian movement. Its president and controlling spirit had no sympathy with either division of the Congregational Church, but was a clergyman of the Church of England. John Sylvester John Gardiner, the rector of Trinity, occupied a peculiar position in Boston. Of American descent, but English birth and education, he was not prevented by the isolation of his clerical character from taking an active part in affairs, and his activity was sometimes greater than his discretion. His political sermons rivalled those of the Congregational ministers Osgood and Parish, in their violence against Jefferson and the national government; his Federalism was that of the Essex Junto, with a more decided leaning to disunion; but he was also an active and useful citizen, ready to take his share in every good work. When he became president of the Anthology Society, he was associated with a clergyman of Unitarian opinions as vice-president,—the Rev. William Emerson, a man of high reputation in his day, but better known in after years as the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The first editor was Samuel Cooper Thacher, to whom, ten years afterward, Channing addressed his earliest controversial letter. Young Buckminster and William Tudor, a Boston man, who for the next twenty years was active in the literary life of Massachusetts, were also original members. The staff of the “Anthology” was greatly superior to ordinary editorial resources; and in a short time the Review acquired a reputation for ability and sharpness of temper never wholly forgiven. Its unpopularity was the greater because its aggressiveness took the form of assaults on Calvinism, which earned the ill-will of the Congregational clergy.
Buckminster and Channing were the editor’s closest friends, and their liberality of thought was remarkable for the time and place; yet the point from which the liberality of Boston started would have been regarded in most parts of the Union as conservative. Channing’s fear of France and attachment to England were superstitious.
“I will not say,” began his Fast Day Sermon in 1810, “that the present age is as strongly marked or distinguished from all other ages as that in which Jesus Christ appeared; but with that single exception, perhaps the present age is the most eventful the world has ever known. We live in times which have no parallel in past ages; in times when the human character has almost assumed a new form; in times of peculiar calamity, of thick darkness, and almost of despair.... The danger is so vast, so awful, and so obvious, that the blindness, the indifference, which prevail argue infatuation, and give room for apprehension that nothing can rouse us to those efforts by which alone the danger can be averted. Am I asked what there is so peculiar and so tremendous in the times in which we live?... I answer: In the very heart of Europe, in the centre of the civilized world, a new power has suddenly arisen on the ruins of old institutions, peculiar in its character, and most ruinous in its influence.”
While Channing felt for France the full horror of his Federalist principles, he regarded England with equivalent affection.
“I feel a peculiar interest in England,” he explained in a note appended to the Fast Day Sermon; “for I believe that there Christianity is exerting its best influences on the human character; that there the perfections of human nature, wisdom, virtue, and piety are fostered by excellent institutions, and are producing the delightful fruits of domestic happiness, social order, and general prosperity.”
The majority of Americans took a different view of the subject; but even those who most strongly agreed with Channing would have been first to avow that their prejudice was inveterate, and its consequences sweeping. Such a conviction admitted little room for liberalism where politics were, directly or remotely, involved. Literature bordered closely on politics, and the liberalism of Unitarian Boston was bounded even in literature by the limits of British sympathies. Buckminster’s Phi Beta Kappa Oration of 1809 was as emphatic on this point as Channing’s Fast Day Sermon of 1810 was outspoken in its political antipathies.
“It is our lot,” said Buckminster, “to have been born in an age of tremendous revolution, and the world is yet covered with the wrecks of its ancient glory, especially of its literary renown. The fury of that storm which rose in France is passed and spent, but its effects have been felt through the whole system of liberal education. The foul spirit of innovation and sophistry has been seen wandering in the very groves of the Lyceum, and is not yet completely exorcised, though the spell is broken.”
The liberalism of Boston began in a protest against “the foul spirit of innovation,” and could hardly begin at any point more advanced. “Infidelity has had one triumph in our days, and we have seen learning as well as virtue trampled under the hoofs of its infuriated steeds, let loose by the hand of impiety.” From this attitude of antipathy to innovation, the Unitarian movement began its attempts to innovate, and with astonishing rapidity passed through phases which might well have required ages of growth. In five years Channing began open attack upon the foundation, or what had hitherto been believed the foundation, of the Church; and from that moment innovation could no longer be regarded as foul.