TIMOTHY DWIGHT (1752-1817)
"He was in many ways the first of the great modern college presidents; if his was the day of small things, he nevertheless did so many of them and did them so well that he deserves admiration."
—WILLIAM P. TRENT.
Born in Northampton, Mass., he graduated from Yale and was then made a tutor there. He became an army chaplain in 1777, but his father's death made his return home necessary. He became a preacher later and finally president of Yale. His hymn, "Love to the Church," is the one thing we most want to keep of all his several volumes.
SAMUEL WOODWORTH (1785-1842)
"Our best patriotic ballads and popular lyrics are, of course, based upon
sentiment, aptly expressed by the poet and instinctively felt by the
reader. Hence just is the fame and true is the love bestowed upon the
choicest songs of our 'single-poem poets': upon Samuel Woodworth's 'Old
Oaken Bucket,' etc."
—CHARLES F. RICHARDSON.
Born at Scituate, Mass., he had very little education. His father apprenticed him to a Boston printer while he was a young boy. He remained in the newspaper business all his life, and wrote numerous poems, and several operas which were produced.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878)
"A moralist, dealing chiefly with death and the more sombre phases of life, a lover and interpreter of nature, a champion of democracy and human freedom, in each of these capacities he was destined to do effective service for his countrymen, and this work was, as it were, cut out for him in his youth, when he was laboring in the fields, attending corn-huskings and cabin-raisings, or musing beside forest streams."
—W. P. TRENT.