Jerusalem my joy,’ etc., etc.
Such wretched stuff as this our good forefathers sung with the profoundest gravity; and those who thus murdered the king’s English and the Hebrew’s poem were called ‘poets!’ Yet this same age could produce such poets as Mrs. Ann Bradstreet, of whom her great panegyrist, John Norton, in a poetical description of her says:
‘Her heart was a brave palace, broad street,
Where all heroic simple thoughts did meet,
Where nature such a tenement had ta’en,
That other souls to hers dwelt in a lane.’
The pun here is good, but the comparison might have been dropped sooner without damage. The poem of Mrs. Bradstreet, entitled ‘Contemplations,’ possesses a great deal of merit, and proves her to be worthy of the extravagant praise of her extravagant admirer. The extracts from the poetry of Governor Wolcott are very favorable to the poetic reputation of the governor. But the richest thing in the whole collection is the ‘Simple Cobbler of Aggawam,’ occupying ten columns. The king-fashionable ladies, and long-haired young gentlemen, are successively put on the cobbler’s lapstone and hammered most industriously. And we must say, cobbler as he is, he appears to us to give vastly more blows than he takes stitches. This part of the work alone is worth the price of the whole book. It is quite too long to quote entire, and a mere extract would do it injustice. Freneau was a rare character, and his pasquinades on Rivington, a tory editor, are rich specimens. The confession he puts in the mouth of Rivington, in his ‘Address to the Whigs of New-York’ immediately after the close of the war, is equal to ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’ on the poor Scotch quack.
This Rivington, however, was not a more unlucky dog than another tory named Benjamin Towne, editor of the ‘Pennsylvania Evening Post.’ Supposing the cause of the rebels to be hopeless, he undertook to win favor and reward from the British by the most unsparing abuse of the Americans. But when the cause of freedom finally triumphed, the unlucky editor was left on the sand. Without money, without patrons, he found himself in the midst of those whom he had traduced, and dependent on them for a livelihood. In this emergency, he goes to the celebrated Dr. Witherspoon for aid. The stern republican doctor would listen to nothing, unless Towne would make his peace with his country by a most humble confession. Finding no other resource, he consented to publish in his paper any thing the doctor would write. This confession is given by Mr. Griswold at length; and if the tory editor does not make himself out a most precious scoundrel, the fault is certainly not with the doctor. He acknowledges that he had lied without limit, and was willing to publish bigger lies had they been brought him; he assures the people that he did every thing for personal gain, and was willing to do and say any thing now for the same purpose. He was moreover a brave man! ‘I hope,’ says he, ‘the public will consider that I have been a timorous man, or if you will, a coward from my youth, so that I cannot fight; my belly is so large that I cannot run; and I am so great a lover of eating and drinking that I cannot starve. When these things are considered, I hope they will fully account for my past conduct, and procure me the liberty of going on in the same uniform, tenor for the future.’ The collection teems with rich matter, and we have not even skimmed the surface. Here and there only have we touched a point. We could fill twice the space allotted us, with the revolutionary ballads alone, for the gathering of which Mr. Griswold deserves our thanks. New-England epitaphs come in for their share; and there is a capital anecdote of Dr. Dwight and Mr. Dennie, at which we gazed and pondered wistfully for a long time, in the hope, (a vain one, we are sorry to say,) of being able to present it to our readers.
This collection of Mr. Griswold brings together and preserves what was before floating around and slowly disappearing with the lapse of time. Our early literature is now grafted on a work which will secure its life; and those peculiar characteristics of a remarkable age, which grow more valuable the more distant the point from which we view them, will never pass away. Nothing is more difficult than to preserve the scanty and fugitive literature of an early age. A great work will live; but those fragments which are thrown off here and there, in a careless or earnest moment, perish, because they are fragmentary. They do not belong together in a book, and cannot stand alone. In a later period of the history of the country, this would be of little consequence, because there is enough else to stand as exponents of that age. But these fragments are all that is left to tell us how our fathers felt, and thought, and spoke. Without them, we are without every thing. This collection greatly enhances the value of the English edition, and cannot fail to increase its already extensive sale.
North-American Review for the April Quarter. Number CXXIII. pp. 268. Boston: Otis, Broaders and Company. New-York: C. S. Francis and Company.