This extract will give a fair idea of the Colonel's manner. A poem on "The Future Glory of the United States of America," another on "The Industry of the United States of America," and "The Death of General Washington," make up his credentials to a seat on the American Parnassus.
Joel Barlow, "Virgilian Barlow," is the most remarkable of the cluster. He started in the race of life with ten competitors of his own blood, and came in a successful adventurer in both hemispheres. After serving in the army with musket and prayer-book, he practised law, edited a newspaper, kept a book-shop,—and having exhausted the variety of callings offered by Connecticut, went to France as agent for the Scioto Land Company, and opened an office in Paris with a grand flourish of advertisements. "Farms for sale on the banks of the Ohio, la belle rivière; the finest district of the United States! Healthful and delightful climate; scarcely any frost in winter; fertile soil; a boundless inland navigation; magnificent forests of a tree from which sugar flows; excellent fishing and fowling; venison in abundance; no wolves, lions, or tigers; no taxes; no military duty. All these unexampled advantages offered to colonists at five shillings the acre!" The speculation took well. Nothing was talked of but the free and rural life to be led on the banks of the Scioto. Brissot's foolish book on America confirmed the promises of Barlow, and stimulated the ardor of purchasers.
The Scioto Company turned out to be a swindling land-company, the precursor of many that have resembled it. The lands they offered had been bought of the Ohio Company, but were never paid for. When the poor French barbers, fiddlers, and bakers, as they are called in a contemporary narrative, reached the banks of la belle rivière, they found that their title-deeds were good for nothing, and that the woods produced savages instead of sugar. Some died of privation, some were scalped, and some found their way to New Orleans. The few who remained eventually obtained a grant of a few acres from the Ohio Company, by paying for them over again.
In the mean time the French Revolution had broken out, and Barlow saw the visions and dreamed the dreams of the enthusiasts of that day. He dropped the land business, and he dropped his New England prejudices, religious as well as political, and his New England common sense. Connecticut men who wander into other lands and other opinions seem peculiarly subject to such violent transformations. Some of the most ignivorous of our Southern countrymen are the offspring of Connecticut; and, strange as it may appear, the sober land of the pumpkin and onion exports more arbiters of elegance and punctilio, more judges without appeal of horses, wine, and beauty, more gentlemen of the most sensitive and demonstrative honor, than any other Northern State.
Inspired by the instincts of his race, Barlow fancied he saw the approach of a new era of perfection. To hasten its advent in England, he translated Volney's "Ruins," and went to London to publish his translation. There he wrote his "Advice to the Privileged Classes," a political pamphlet, and became an active member of the Constitution Society. The Society commissioned him as delegate to the French Convention, with an address of congratulation and a gift of a thousand pairs of shoes. The Convention rewarded him with the dignity of Citoyen Francais. Barlow adopted the character, and carried it out. He sang at a supper a parody of "God save the King," composed by himself.
"Fame, let thy trumpet sound!
Tell all the world around
How Capet fell!
And when great George's poll
Shall in the basket roll,
Let mercy then control
The Guillotine!
"God save the Guillotine,
Till England's King and Queen
Her power shall prove;
When all the sceptred crew
Have paid their homage to
The Guillotine!"
A few years before, Barlow had dedicated the "Vision of Columbus" to poor Capet, whose destruction he celebrates so pleasantly,—with many assurances of the gratitude of America, and of his own veneration. "Cœlum, non animum," would never have been written, if Horace had properly understood Connecticut character.
Barlow's zeal was pleasing to the rulers of France. They sent him and the Abbé Grégoire to revolutionize Savoy, and to divide it into departments. After his return, he became rich by speculation, and lived handsomely in the Hotel de Clermont-Tonnerre. His reputation extended to his own country. The United States employed him to negotiate with the Barbary pirates,—that is to say, to buy off the wretched cutthroats who infested the Mediterranean. He went to Africa, and made arrangements which were considered advantageous then, and would be hooted at as disgraceful now. In the treaty with Algiers occurred a passage that gave great offence to his friends at home, and to Federalists in general. It was to this effect, if not in these words: "That the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
In 1805, after seventeen years of absence, Barlow returned to America, built himself a house near Washington, and called it Kalorama. Jefferson and the Democrats received him with open arms; he embraced them with equal warmth, and was a very great man for some time. A new edition of the "Columbiad" completed his fame,—an edition gotten up at his own expense, with engravings by his friend Robert Fulton; the paper, type, illustrations, and binding, far superior to anything as yet produced by American publishers. At the request of the President, Barlow went back to France as Minister, in the place of General Armstrong. It was the winter of the Russian campaign. A personal interview with the Emperor on the subject of the Berlin and Milan Decrees seemed necessary, and Barlow hurried to Wilna to meet him. The weather was unusually severe, the roads rough, and the accommodations wretched. Cold and exposure brought on a violent illness; and Barlow expired in a miserable hut near Cracow. The "Columbiad" is an enlargement, or rather a dilution, of the "Vision of Columbus," by the addition of some two thousand verses. The epic opens with Columbus in prison; to him enters Hesper, an angel. The angel leads Columbus to the Mount of Vision, whence he beholds the panorama of the Western Continent he had discovered. Hesper acts as showman, and explains the tableaux as they roll on. He points out the geographical features of America, not forgetting Connecticut River; relates the history of Mexico and of Peru, and explains the origin of races, cautioning Columbus against the theory of several Adams. Turning north, he describes the settlement of the English colonies, and narrates the old French War of General Wolfe and the American Revolution, with the customary episodes,—Saratoga, Yorktown, Major André, Miss McCrea, and the prison-ships. Finally, the angel predicts the glory of the world's future,—perpetual peace, unrestricted commerce, public works, health and longevity, one universal language. The globe, "one confederate, independent sway," shall