* * * * *
Does his hand shake? When Sam cried out for war
His potent hand spread many a coat of tar,
That sinewy hand the feathers scattered o'er
Till Tories' jackets made their bellies sore.
Say, for whose sake has Time, that Barber gruff,
O'er his wise noddle shook his powder puff?
Was the task hard to hear the sage's noise?
Perhaps the awful sound had frightened boys;
But we, the sons of wisdom, fond to hear,
With joy had held the breath and oped the ear.
Did we e'en doubt that Solomon had spoke?
If so, has memory vanished into smoke."
The most of the succeeding numbers had reference to politics, but room was found for excursions in other fields: "Monier's Advertisement for a School," and "Newtonian Philosophy," served as pegs from which to hang rhymed jests, and the writers would very likely have taken a wider range if there had been a wider range in public interests. But politics dominated thought, and the wits were as bitter partisans as they were clever rhymesters. The poetry of the anti-Jacobin supplied them with the suggestion of form; but there was not the lightness of touch or deft mimicry which characterized those remarkable political skits. As one reads the "Echo," and the "Green-house," and Trumbull's "McFingal," he is constantly reminded of the heaviness of the education which formed the substance of the writers' preparation for their task. The rudeness of the satire is the rudeness of a homespun society.
The authors of the "Echo," when the series came to be reissued in a volume, provided a somewhat solemn preface, in which they say: "The principal poems in this volume, under the title of the 'Echo,' owed their origin to the accidental suggestion of a moment of literary sportiveness, at a time when pedantry, affectation, and bombast pervaded most of the pieces published in the gazettes, which were then the principal vehicles of literary information. Willing to lend their aid to check the progress of false taste in American literature, the authors conceived that ridicule would prove a powerful corrective, and that the mode employed in the 'Echo' was the best suited to this purpose.... But the ridicule of a vitiated mode of writing was not long the sole object of the 'Echo.' The important political changes which soon after occurred, not only in Europe, but in America, produced a corresponding change in the republic of letters; and some of the principal gazettes of this country exhibited a disgusting display, not only of a perversion of taste in composition, but a still greater perversion of principle, in that hideous morality of revolutionary madness, which, priding itself in an emancipation from moral obligation, leveled the boundaries of virtue and vice, while it contemptuously derided the most amiable and sacred feelings of our nature. Disgusted with the cruelties exhibited by the French Revolution at a very early stage of its progress, and viewing it as a consuming fire, which, in the course of its conflagration, threatened to destroy whatever was most valuable in society, the authors wished to contribute their efforts in stemming the torrents of Jacobinism in America, and resolved to render the 'Echo' subservient to that purpose. They therefore proceeded to attack, as proper objects of satire, those tenets, as absurd in politics as pernicious in morals, the visionary scheme of equality, and the baleful doctrine that sanctions the pursuit of a good end by the most flagitious means."
Webster's judgment of the condition of literature in the country at a time when he was seeking to live by it is contained in a frank statement which he makes in one of his letters to Dr. Priestley. That philosopher had addressed certain letters to the inhabitants of Northumberland, in which he undertook to lecture them as a philosophical and wise Englishman might properly lecture the citizens of a young and inexperienced republic. Webster replied in ten letters and a postscript, which were collected into a pamphlet and published at New Haven, in 1800. He contends throughout that Dr. Priestley did not know his countrymen, and especially that he was ignorant of New England; he corrects his political judgments, but admits the force in general of his social and literary criticisms. The picture which Webster draws of the condition of America at the beginning of the century is instructive, and explains, indeed, much of his own career:—
"I agree with you fully that our colleges are disgracefully destitute of books and philosophical apparatus, and that a duty on books without discrimination is highly impolitic. Very many of the best authors cannot be printed in the United States for half a century or more; and I am ashamed to own that scarcely a branch of science can be fully investigated in America for want of books, especially original works. This defect of our libraries I have experienced myself in searching for materials for the history of Epidemic Diseases.
"In regard to the state of learning in general, your remarks are not sufficiently discriminating. You say there is 'less knowledge in America than in most of the countries of Europe.' The truth seems to be that in the Eastern States knowledge is more diffused among the laboring people than in any country on the globe. The learning of the people extends to a knowledge of their own tongue, of writing and arithmetic sufficient to keep their own simple accounts; they read not only the Bible and newspapers, but almost all read the best English authors, as the 'Spectator,' 'Rambler,' and the works of Watts, Doddridge, and many others. If you can find any country in Europe where this is done to the same extent as in New England, I am very ill informed.
"But in the higher branches of literature our learning is superficial to a shameful degree. Perhaps I ought to except the science of law, which, being the road to political life, is probably as well understood as in Great Britain; and ethics and political science have been greatly cultivated since the American Revolution. On political subjects I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the learning of our eminent statesmen to be superior to that of most European writers, and their opinions more correct. They have all the authors on these subjects, united with much experience, which no European country can have had. This has enabled our statesmen to correct many of the theories which lead astray European writers.
"But as to classical learning, history, civil and ecclesiastical, mathematics, astronomy, chymistry, botany, and natural history, excepting here and there a rare instance of a man who is eminent in some one of these branches, we may be said to have no learning at all, or a mere smattering. And what is more distressing to me, I see everywhere a disposition to decry the ancient and original authors, which I deem far superior to the modern, and from which the best modern writers have drawn the finest parts of their productions.
"There is another circumstance still more afflictive to a man who is attached, as I am, to a republican government, and one that I perceive has not occurred to you. This is that the equal distribution of estates and the small property of our citizens, both of which seem connected with our form of government, if not essential to it, actually tend to depress the sciences. Science demands leisure and money. Our citizens have property only to give their sons a four years' education, a time scarcely sufficient to give them a relish for learning, and far inadequate to wide and profound researches. As soon as a young man has closed this period of study, and while he is at the beginning of the alphabet of science, he must betake himself to a profession, he must hurry through a few books,—which, by the way, are rarely original works, but compilations and abridgments,—and then must enter upon practice, and get his living as well as he can. And as to libraries, we have no such things. There are not more than three or four tolerable libraries in America, and these are extremely imperfect. Great numbers of the most valuable authors have not found their way across the Atlantic.