KENTUCKY IN
AMERICAN LETTERS

[OTHER WORKS BY MR. TOWNSEND]

Richard Hickman Menefee. 1907
Kentuckians in History and Literature. 1907
The Life of James Francis Leonard. 1909
Kentucky: Mother of Governors. 1910
Lore of the Meadowland. 1911

KENTUCKY IN
AMERICAN LETTERS

1784-1912

BY

JOHN WILSON TOWNSEND

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

JAMES LANE ALLEN

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

THE TORCH PRESS
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
NINETEEN THIRTEEN

Of this edition one thousand sets have been printed, of which this is number

241

Copyright 1913
By The Torch Press
Published September 1913

To My Mother

[INTRODUCTION]

Mr. Townsend's fellow countrymen must feel themselves to be put under a beautiful obligation to him by his work entitled Kentucky in American Letters. He has thus fenced off for the lovers of New World literature a well watered bluegrass pasture of prose and verse, which they may enter and range through according to their appetites for its peculiar green provender and their thirst for the limestone spring. This strip of pasture is a hundred years long; its breadth may not be politely questioned!

For the backward-looking and for the forward-looking students of American literature, not its merely browsing readers, he has wrought a service of larger and more lasting account. Whether his patiently done and richly crowned work be the first of its class and kind, there is slight need to consider here: fitly enough it might be a pioneer, a path-blazer, as coming from the land of pioneers, path-blazers.

But whether or not other works of like character be already in the field of national observation, it is inevitable that many others soon will be. There must in time and in the natural course of events come about a complete marshalling of the American commonwealths, especially of the older American commonwealths, attended each by its women and men of letters; with the final result that the entire pageant of our literary creativeness as a people will thus be exhibited and reviewed within those barriers and divisions, which from the beginning have constituted the peculiar genius of our civilization.

When this has been done, when the States have severally made their profoundly significant showing, when the evidence up to some century mark or half-century mark is all presented, then for the first time we, as a reading and thoughtful self-studying people, may for the first time be advanced to the position of beginning to understand what as a whole our cis-Atlantic branch of English literature really is.

Thus Mr. Townsend's work and the work of his fellow-craftsmen are all stations on the long road but the right road. They are aids to the marshalling of the American commonwealths at a great meeting-point of the higher influences of our nation.

Now, already American literature has long been a subject in regard to which a library of books has been written. The authors of by far the most of these books are themselves Americans, and they have thus looked at our literature and at our civilization from within; the authors of the rest are foreigners who have investigated and philosophized from the outside. Altogether, native and foreign, they have approached their theme from divergent directions, with diverse aims, and under the influence of deep differences in their critical methods and in their own natures. But so far as the writer of these words is aware, no one of them either native or foreign has ever set about the study of American literature, enlightened with the only solvent principle that can ever furnish its solution.

That solvent principle is contained within a single proposition. That single proposition is the one upon which our forefathers deliberately chose to found the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World: that it should not be a civilization of States which were not a Nation; that it should not be the civilization of a nation without states; but that it should be a Nation of States.

Now, if any man aspires to draw from American literature the philosophy of its traits, if he sets it as the goal of his wisdom to explain its breadth and its narrowness, its plenty here and its lack there, its color in one place and its pallor in another, let him go back to the will of the fathers in the foundation of the Republic and find the explanation of our literature at the basis of our whole civilization. He will never find it anywhere else. He will find it there as he there finds the origin of our system of government, of our system of industry, of our system of political barriers, of our system of education: in the entire nature of our institutions as derived and unfolded from the idea that we should be a nation of states. Our literature—our novels and our poetry—have been as rigorously included in this development as all the other elements of our life.

For the first time in this way he may come to see a great light; and with that light shining about him he may be prepared to write the first history of American literature.

None has yet been written.

[PREFACE]

I

What is a Kentucky book, is the one great question this work has elicited. Surely a Kentucky book is one written by a Kentuckian about Kentucky or Kentuckians and printed in Kentucky; surely it is a book written by a Kentuckian upon any subject under the sun, and published in any clime; surely it is one written in Kentucky by a citizen of any other state or country, regardless of the subject or place of publication, for, "in general, I have regarded the birthplace of a piece of literature more important than that of the author." But is a book, though treating of Kentucky or Kentuckians, regardless of its place of publication, whose author was not born in, nor for any appreciable period resided in, this state, entitled to be properly classified as a Kentucky work? The writer has responded in the negative to this question in the present work.

There have been several noted American authors who have written volumes about Kentucky or Kentuckians, and they themselves were not natives of this state, nor resided within its confines. Those early Western travelers rarely omitted Kentucky from their journeys. The first of them, F. A. Michaux, published his famous Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains, in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, at London, in 1805; two years later F. Cuming's Tour to the Western Country, through Ohio and Kentucky, was printed at Pittsburg; and in 1817 John Bradbury got out the first edition of his now noted Travels in the Interior of America, at London. Bradbury died in 1823 and to-day lies buried in the cemetery at Middletown, Kentucky, near Louisville. George W. Ogden's Letters from the West (New Bedford, 1823); W. Bullock's Sketch of a Journey through the Western States (London, 1827); and Tilly Buttrick's Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries (Boston, 1831), round out fairly well that group of Scotchmen, Englishmen, New Englanders, and what not, who found many interesting things in Kentucky a hundred years and more ago. Ogden spent two summers in Kentucky; Bullock owned a river-side tract near Ludlow, Kentucky, and old Bradbury sleeps in a quiet Kentucky hamlet, but neither of them may be properly classified as a real Kentuckian.

The Beauchamp-Sharp tragedy of 1825 was the one Kentucky event that kindled the imaginations of more alien writers than any other happening in our history. Edgar Allan Poe, William Gilmore Simms, Charles Fenno Hoffman, G. P. R. James, James Hall, and several others, wrote plays, novels, and poems based upon this tragedy. In 1832 James Kirke Paulding, the friend of Washington Irving, published one of the earliest Kentucky romances, entitled Westward Ho! which name he got from the old Elizabethan drama of John Webster and Thomas Dekker. Two years after the appearance of Paulding's tale, William A. Caruthers, the Virginia novelist, printed The Kentuckian in New York; and in the same year Thomas Chandler Haliburton ("Sam Slick"), put forth one of his earliest works, Kentucky, a Tale (London, 1834). In 1845 Charles Winterfield's My First Days With the Rangers, appeared, to be followed the next year by William T. Porter's A Quarter Race in Kentucky.

These writers hardly did more than point the way to Kentucky for Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose world-famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (Boston, 1852), was set against a background of slave-holding Kentucky. This is the most famous example our literature affords of a writer of another state or country coming to Kentucky for the materials out of which to build a book.

In 1860 David Ross Locke, the Ohio journalist and satirist, discovered the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby, postmaster at "Confedrit X Roads, Kentucky," and his political satires on Kentucky, the Nasby Letters, tickled the readers of his paper, The Toledo Blade, through many years. These alleged communications from poor Petroleum may be read to-day in Locke's Swingin' Round the Cirkel, and Ekkoes from Kentucky. J. G. Marshall's The Outlaw Brothers (New York, 1864); Miss Martha Remick's Millicent Halford: a Tale of the Dark Days of Kentucky in the year 1861 (Boston, 1865); two novels by Edward Willett, entitled Kentucky Border Foes, and Old Honesty: a Tale of the Early Days of Kentucky, both of which were issued in the late sixties; Constance F. Woolson's Two Women (New York, 1877), and Mrs. Anna Bowman Dodd's story, Glorinda (Boston, 1888), concludes the group of writers of the comparatively modern school who did not linger long in the "meadowland," but who found it good literary soil, and helped themselves accordingly.

In recent years Mr. Winston Churchill's The Crossing, Dr. James Ball Naylor's The Kentuckian, Mr. Augustus Thomas's The Witching Hour, and the Kentucky lyrics of Mrs. Alice Williams Brotherton, the Ohio poet, have drawn fresh attention to Kentucky as a background for literary productions, although they are written by those who cannot qualify as Kentuckians. But to claim any of these writers for the Commonwealth, would be to make one's self absurd. Dr. Naylor's lines upon this point are apropos:

I must admit—although it hurts!—
That I was born unlucky;
I've never, literally, had
A home in Old Kentucky.
And yet I feel should wayward Chance
Direct my steps to roam there,
I'd meet you all and greet you all—
And find myself at home there!

As has already been indicated, the good physician-poet is not by any manner of means the only alien bard who has remembered Kentucky in his work. No less a poet than the great Sir Walter Scott celebrated Kentucky in Marmion—the State's first appearance in English poetry. The passage may be found near the close of the ninth stanza in the third canto. Lord Marmion and his followers have ridden "the livelong day," and are now quartered at a well-known Scottish hostelry. They have all eaten and drunk until they are on the borderland of dreams when their leader, seeing their condition,

... called upon a squire:—
"Fitz-Eustace, know'st thou not some lay,
To speed the lingering night away?
We slumber by the fire."—

VIII

"So please you," thus the youth rejoined
"Our choicest minstrel's left behind."

And while Fitz realizes that he cannot, in any degree, equal the famous singer to whom he has referred, he now further praises him, calls down curses on the cause that kept him from following Marmion, and ventures

"To sing his favourite roundelay."

IX

A mellow voice Fitz-Eustace had,
The air he chose was wild and sad;
Such have I heard, in Scottish land,
Rise from the busy harvest band,
When falls before the mountaineer,
On lowland plains, the ripened ear.
Now one shrill voice the notes prolong,
Now a wild chorus swells the song:
Oft have I listened, and stood still,
As it came soften'd up the hill,
And deem'd it the lament of men
Who languish'd for their native glen;
And thought how sad would be such sound,
On Susquehannah's swampy ground,
Kentucky's wood-encumber'd brake,
Or wild Ontario's boundless lake,
Where heart-sick exiles, in the strain,
Recall'd fair Scotland's hills again!

After Sir Walter, the next English poet to tell the world of Kentucky and one of her sons, was George Gordon (Lord) Byron. His references are found in the eighth canto and the sixty-first to the sixty-seventh stanzas inclusive, of Don Juan. This poem was begun in 1819 and published, several cantos at a time, until the final sixteenth appeared in 1824. The sixty-first stanza will serve our purpose.

LXI

Of all men, saving Sylla, the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the greatest names which in our faces stare,
The General Boone, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.

In 1827 Alfred Tennyson, with his brother Charles, published a slender sheaf of juvenile verses, entitled Poems By Two Brothers. On Sublimity contains eleven stanzas of ten lines each. The poet disdains "vales in tenderest green," and asks for "the wild cascade, the rugged scene," the sea, the mountains, dark cathedrals, storms, "Niagara's flood of matchless might," and Mammoth Cave.

The hurricane fair earth to darkness changing,
Kentucky's chambers of eternal gloom,[1]
The swift-pac'd columns of the desert ranging
Th' uneven waste, the violent Simoom
The snow-clad peaks, stupendous Gungo-tree!
Whence springs the hallow'd Jumna's echoing tide,
Hear Cotopaxi's cloud-capt majesty,
Enormous Chimborazo's naked pride,
The dizzy Cape of winds that cleaves the sky,
Whence we look down into eternity,
The pillar'd cave of Morven's giant king
The Yanar, and the Geyser's boiling fountain,
The deep volcano's inward murmuring,
The shadowy Colossus of the mountain;
Antiparos, where sun-beams never enter;
Loud Stromboli, amid the quaking isles;
The terrible Maelstroom, around his centre
Wheeling his circuit of unnumber'd miles:
These, these are sights and sounds that freeze the blood,
Yet charm the awe-struck soul which doats on solitude.

Tennyson was the third and last English poet of the nineteenth century to make mention of Kentucky in his works.

Much writing has been done by Kentuckians from the beginning until the present time, but most of what is usually termed literature is the work of the school of today. That much, however, of the early productions, especially the anonymous and fugitive poems, have been forever lost, may be gathered from a letter written to Edwin Bryant, editor of The Lexington Intelligencer, by an Ohio correspondent, which appeared in that paper in January, 1834, a part of which is as follows:

There were a vast number of rural and sentimental songs, sung by the hunters and pioneers, that, in this our day, to the present generation would be truly interesting. Would it not be wise for you, Messrs. Editors, to publish a note in your valuable paper, offering the "Poets' Corner," and save what you can of the fragments of "Olden Times?"... I know that there were many sentimental pieces—some written by a Mr. Bullock—many war songs; one on St. Clair's defeat; and there was a wonderful flow of poetical effusions on the first discovery of a settlement of Kentucky. There was a wooing song of the hunter—one stanza I can only repeat:

"I will plough and live, and you may knit and sowe,
And through the wild woods, I'll hunt the buffaloe!"

To many these things may appear as ... light as empty air, but look to the future, and you will at once discover the inquisitive mind will earnestly desire to look into such matters and things.

The pity is, this admonition passed unheeded by Bryant and his contemporaries, and much that "the inquisitive mind" would revel in to-day, was thus lost. The most famous, however, of the pioneer songs that the above quoted writer probably had in mind, The Hunters of Kentucky, the celebrated ballad of the Battle of New Orleans, has come down to us, but it was written by the alien hand of Samuel Woodworth, who achieved a double triumph over oblivion by also writing The Old Oaken Bucket. And were other "wooing songs of the hunter" extant, we would certainly discover that many of them were done by non-Kentuckians. Even Kentucky Belle, ballad of Morgan and his men, was the work of Constance Fenimore Woolson, the famous author of Anne.

In recent years the ballads of the Kentucky mountains have been investigated by a group of scholars, and Dr. Hubert Gibson Shearin will shortly publish a collection of them. It is impossible to discuss them at this time; and as nearly all of them are offshoots of the old English ballads and Scottish songs, done over by their Kentucky descendants, the ever-recurring question: "Are they Kentucky productions?" will not down.

II

THE KENTUCKY MAGAZINES

Kentucky has failed to produce and maintain a respectable literary magazine for any considerable length of time. Many magazines have been born in Kentucky with high hopes, and a few of them have braved the storms for a number of years, but all of them have gone the way of all the earth after a pathetic struggle for existence.

The reasons for this lie not far afield: the leading magazines and periodicals of the east through the immensity of their circulation secure that large patronage necessary to maintain a publication conducted on a generous basis, ensuring variety and excellence. Experience has long since demonstrated even to the bravest of the inland publishers that the point of distribution is the controlling factor in success. The means of transportation which have so miraculously improved, have annihilated distance and along with it to no small extent the Western and Southern periodical of literary flavor. The opulent publications are enabled through their very prosperity to command contributors not to be approached by a periodical circumscribed in means and constituency. Again, the Kentucky magazines have all along made the fatal mistake of truckling to dead prejudices and sectionalism. The material and the moulders have long been with us, but the wide popular support, which after all is the first essential, has failed to materialise, and it may be regretfully apprehended that it now lies as far away as ever.

The first magazine issued in Kentucky or the West was The Medley, or Monthly Miscellany, for the year 1803, which was edited and published by Daniel Bradford, son of old John Bradford, the editor of The Kentucky Gazette. The Medley lived through the year of 1803, but in January, 1804, Editor Bradford announced that he was compelled, from lack of appreciation, to abandon its publication. The twelve parts were bound for those of the subscribers who cared to have them made into a single volume, and probably not more than two copies are extant to-day. The Medley's literary merit was not impressive, and its death can only be deplored because it happened to be the first Western magazine.

The Almoner, a religious periodical, the first issue of which was dated from Lexington, April, 1814, and which died a twelvemonth later, was published by Thomas T. Skillman, the pioneer printer. Its account of the preacher, John Poage Campbell, and his many theological works, is about all one finds of interest in it.

William Gibbes Hunt, a Harvard man, who later took a degree from Transylvania University, established The Western Review at Lexington, in August, 1819, and this was the first literary magazine in the West worthy the name. Hunt was a man of fine tastes, and he had a proper conception of what a magazine should be. He worked hard for two years, but in July, 1821,—the number for which month is notable as having contained the first draft of General William O. Butler's famous poem, The Boatman's Horn, which is there entitled The Boat Horn,—Hunt rehearsed the pathetic tale of the lack of support and appreciation for a Western magazine, and, without any expressed regret, entitled it his valedictory. He had survived twice as long as any of his predecessors, and he probably felt that he had done fairly well, as he undoubtedly had. The four bound volumes of The Western Review may be read to-day with more than an historical interest. Hunt returned to his home in New England; and the only other thing of his that is preserved is An Address on the Principles of Masonry (Lexington, 1821), and a very excellent oration it is, too.

There were brave men after Hunt, however. The Literary Pamphleteer was born and died at Paris, Kentucky, in 1823; and in the following year Thomas T. Skillman established The Western Luminary at Lexington. This was a semi-religious journal, but its publication was shortly suspended. The Microscope seems to have been the first magazine published at Louisville, it being founded in 1824, but its life was ephemeral. Under a half a dozen different names, with many lapses between the miles, The Transylvanian, which Professor Thomas Johnson Matthews, of Transylvania University, established at Lexington in 1829, has survived until the present time. It is now the literary magazine of Transylvania University. Mr. James Lane Allen, Mr. Frank Waller Allen, and one or two other well-known Kentucky writers saw their earliest essays and stories first published in The Transylvanian. John Clark's Lexington Literary Journal, a twice-a-week affair, was founded in 1833; and the Louisville Literary News-Letter, edited by Edmund Flagg and issued by George D. Prentice, lived in the Kentucky metropolis from December, 1838, to November, 1840.

Far and away the most famous literary periodical ever published in Kentucky, was The Western Messenger, founded at Cincinnati in 1835, and removed to Louisville in April, 1836. James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), the noted Boston Unitarian preacher and author, was editor, publisher, and agent of The Messenger while it was at Louisville; and he solicited subscriptions throughout Kentucky. Ralph Waldo Emerson first appeared as a poet in his friend Clarke's magazine. His Goodby Proud World, The Rhodora, The Humble Bee, and several of his other now noted poems, were printed for the first time in The Messenger. Clarke also published papers from the hands of Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, and nearly all of the writers now grouped as the New England school. He printed a poem of John Keats, which had never been previously published, the manuscript of which was furnished by George Keats, brother of the poet, who lived at Louisville for many years. Clarke later wrote an interesting sketch of George Keats for his magazine. During parts of the four years he published The Messenger at Louisville he had as assistant editors Christopher P. Cranch and Samuel Osgood, now well-known names in American letters. Clarke returned to Boston in 1840, and The Messenger returned to Cincinnati, where it was suspended in April, 1841. "The periodical was an exotic," wrote William Henry Venable, "a Boston flower blooming in the Ohio Valley;" and this is the one-line history of it. Its like was never seen before, never since, and will never be seen again in the West.

Thirteen years after The Western Messenger left Louisville, The Western Literary Magazine, a monthly publication, was begun; and three years later, or in 1856, The Louisville Review, another monthly, was established. But the war clouds of civil strife were gradually gathering, and the endless pen scratching of the Kentucky magazinist was lost in the cannon's roar. Newspapers were the only things Kentuckians had time to peruse.

Since the war Kentucky periodicals have been, almost without exception, rather tame affairs. They have all been most mushroomish. A few of them may be singled out, such as The Southern Bivouac, which was conducted at Louisville for several years by General Basil W. Duke and Richard W. Knott; The Illustrated Kentuckian, founded at Lexington, in 1892; The Southern Magazine, of Louisville, published papers by Mr. Allen, stories by Mr. John Fox, Jr., and several other now well-known writers; and Charles J. O'Malley's Midland Review ran for some time. These are the comparatively recent Kentucky periodicals which have bloomed in a day and wilted with the earliest winter. The Register, official organ of the State Historical Society, is still being issued three times a year. It is unique among Kentucky magazines in that it is the only one that has had adequate financial support, which, however, comes to it in the form of a State appropriation. For the last twenty-five years The Courier-Journal, of Louisville, has devoted space in its Saturday edition to reviews of new books; and in recent years The Evening Post, also of Louisville, has maintained a similar department.

J. W. T.

Lexington, Kentucky
June 13, 1913

[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

The last several years have been devoted to the collecting and classifying of Kentucky books and authors from Filson, in 1784, to Mr. Allen, in 1912. While the author has done other things, this has been his most serious business.

Of the more than a thousand Kentucky writers, one hundred and ninety-six, or those who achieved considerable reputation in their day and generation, or others to whom fame came late, are now discussed. The author hopes to publish within the next two or three years a Dictionary of Kentucky Writers, which will attempt to bring together in brief biographical and critical notes all of Kentucky's literary workers from the beginning until the present time. The crossroads poet is a most elusive, most diffident figure, but I shall do my best to bring him into the Dictionary that is to be.

I have received assistance from many quarters. Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, Dr. Henry A. Cottell, General Bennett H. Young, Colonel Robert M. Kelly, Mrs. Evelyn Snead Barnett, Mrs. Elvira Miller Slaughter, and Mr. George T. Settle, of Louisville, Kentucky, have aided me in many directions. Mr. George McCalla Spears, of Dallas, Texas, author of Dear Old Kentucky, and the owner of one of the best collections of Kentucky books ever gotten together, I have to thank for a catalogue of his library and a dozen informing letters. Judge James H. Mulligan, Miss Anna Totten, Mrs. Annie Gratz Clay, Miss Jo Peter, and Mr. James M. Roach, of Lexington, Kentucky, have loaned and given me many rare Kentucky items; to Mr. William Kavanaugh Doty, of Richmond, Kentucky, Mrs. Daniel Henry Holmes, of Covington, Kentucky, Mrs. Lucien Beckner, of Winchester, Kentucky, Dr. Thomas E. Pickett, of Maysville, Kentucky, State Librarian Frank K. Kavanaugh, of Frankfort, Kentucky, Mr. Alexander Hill, and Miss Marian Prentice Piatt, of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Henry Cleveland Wood, of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, Mr. Paul Weir, of Owensboro, Kentucky, Mr. Ingram Crockett, of Henderson, Kentucky, Mrs. Mary Addams Bayne, of Shelbyville, Kentucky, Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner, of Eminence, Kentucky, and Mrs. Caroline S. Valentine, of New Castle, Kentucky, the majority of whom are writers, I am doubly indebted for facts regarding their own work, as well as for what I now more especially thank them—information concerning other Kentucky writers.

Death found the two best friends, perhaps, this work had during the course of its preparation, when it took Charles J. O'Malley, the Kentucky poet and critic, and Jahu Dewitt Miller, the Philadelphia lecturer and bookman. Both of these men had just gotten into the spirit of the work when they died within a year of each other. O'Malley wrote the most illuminating letters concerning Kentucky authors it has been my good fortune to receive; Miller made the most gratifying and surprising additions to my collection of Kentuckiana, exceedingly scarce volumes and pamphlets which he alone seemed able to unearth from the old bookshops of the country. The memories of them both must be ever green with me and in this work.

I have to thank Mr. Allen for his very fine introduction. To have one's name associated with his is reward sufficient for the years of toil and sacrifice this work has demanded of its author.

[CONTENTS]

[KENTUCKY IN AMERICAN LETTERS]

[JOHN FILSON]

John Filson, the first Kentucky historian, was born at East Fallowfield, Pennsylvania, in 1747. He was educated at the academy of the Rev. Samuel Finley, at Nottingham, Maryland. Finley was afterwards president of Princeton University. John Filson looked askance at the Revolutionary War, and came out to Kentucky about 1783. In Lexington he conducted a school for a year, and spent his leisure hours in collecting data for a history of Kentucky. He interviewed Daniel Boone, Levi Todd, James Harrod, and many other Kentucky pioneers; and the information they gave him was united with his own observations, forming the material for his book. Filson did not remain in Kentucky much over a year for, in 1784, he went to Wilmington, Delaware, and persuaded James Adams, the town's chief printer, to issue his manuscript as The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke; and then he continued his journey to Philadelphia, where his map of the three original counties of Kentucky—Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln—was printed and dedicated to General Washington and the United States Congress. This Wilmington edition of Filson's history is far and away the most famous history of Kentucky ever published. Though it contained but 118 pages, one of the six extant copies recently fetched the fabulous sum of $1,250—the highest price ever paid for a Kentucky book. The little work was divided into two parts, the first part being devoted to the history of the country, and the second part was the first biography of Daniel Boone ever published. Boone dictated this famous story of his life to the Pennsylvania pedagogue, who put it into shape for publication, yet several Western writers refer to it as "Boone's autobiography." Boone is the author's central hero straight through the work, and he is happier when discussing him than in relating the country's meager history. Filson's Kentucky was translated into French by M. Parraud, and issued at Paris in 1785; and in the same year a German version was published. Gilbert Imlay incorporated it into the several editions of his Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America (London, 1793). And several subsequent Western writers also reproduced it in their works, seldom giving Filson the proper credit for it. The last three or four years of his life John Filson spent in Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. He was one of the founders of Cincinnati, which he named "Losantiville;" and a short time later, in 1788, he wandered into the Miami woods one day and was never seen again. Col. Reuben T. Durrett, the Louisville historian, wrote his biography, and established an historical organization, in 1884, which he named the "Filson Club." Filson's fame is secure in Kentucky, and Colonel Durrett and his work have made it so.

Bibliography. The Life and Writings of John Filson, by R. T. Durrett (Louisville, Kentucky, 1884); Kentuckians in History and Literature, by John Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907); The First Map of Kentucky, by P. Lee Phillips (Washington, 1908).

THE AIR AND CLIMATE OF KENTUCKY

[From The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky (Wilmington, Delaware, 1784)]

This country is more temperate and healthy than the other settled parts of America. In summer it has not the sandy heats which Virginia and Carolina experience, and receives a fine air from its rivers. In winter, which at most lasts three months, commonly two, and is but seldom severe, the people are safe in bad houses; and the beasts have a goodly supply without fodder. The winter begins about Christmas, and ends about the first of March, at farthest does not exceed the middle of that month. Snow seldom falls deep or lies long. The west winds often bring storms and the east winds clear the sky; but there is no steady rule of weather in that respect, as in the northern states. The west winds are sometimes cold and nitrous. The Ohio running in that direction, and there being mountains on that quarter, the westerly winds, by sweeping along their tops, in the cold regions of the air, and over a long tract of frozen water, collect cold in their course, and convey it over the Kentucky country; but the weather is not so intensely severe as these winds bring with them in Pennsylvania. The air and seasons depend very much on the winds as to heat and cold, dryness and moisture.

QUADRUPEDS

[From the same]

Among the native animals are the urus, bison, or zorax, described by Cesar, which we call a buffalo, much resembling a large bull, of a great size, with a large head, thick, short, crooked horns, and broader in his forepart than behind. Upon his shoulder is a large lump of flesh, covered with a thick boss of long wool and curly hair, of a dark brown color. They do not rise from the ground as our cattle, but spring up at once upon their feet; are of a broad make, and clumsy appearance, with short legs, but run fast, and turn not aside for any thing when chased, except a standing tree. They weigh from 500 to 1000 weight, are excellent meat, supplying the inhabitants in many parts with beef, and their hides make good leather. I have heard a hunter assert, he saw above 1000 buffaloes at the Blue Licks at once; so numerous were they before the first settlers had wantonly sported away their lives. There still remains a great number in the exterior parts of the settlement. They feed upon cane and grass, as other cattle, and are innocent, harmless creatures.

There are still to be found many deer, elks, and bears, within the settlement, and many more on the borders of it. There are also panthers, wild cats, and wolves.

The waters have plenty of beavers, otters, minks, and muskrats: nor are the animals common to other parts wanting, such as foxes, rabbits, squirrels, racoons, ground-hogs, pole-cats, and opossums. Most of the species of the domestic quadrupeds have been introduced since the settlement, such as horses, cows, sheep, and hogs, which are prodigiously multiplied, suffered to run in the woods without a keeper, and only brought home when wanted.

BOONE'S FIRST VIEW OF KENTUCKY

[From the same]

It was on the 1st of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin river, in North Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucky, in company with John Finley, John Stewart, Joseph Holden, James Monay, and William Cool. We proceeded successfully; and after a long and fatiguing journey, through a mountainous wilderness, in a westward direction, on the seventh day of June following we found ourselves on Red river, where John Finley had formerly been trading with the Indians, and, from the top of an eminence, saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky. Here let me observe, that for some time we had experienced the most uncomfortable weather as a prelibation of our future sufferings. At this place we encamped, and made a shelter to defend us from the inclement season, and began to hunt and reconnoiter the country. We found everywhere abundance of wild beasts of all sorts, through this vast forest. The buffaloe were more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on those extensive plains, fearless, because ignorant, of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing. In this forest, the habitation of beasts of every kind natural to America, we practiced hunting with great success, until the 22d day of December following.

[JOHN BRADFORD]

John Bradford, Kentucky's pioneer journalist, was born near Warrenton, Virginia, in 1749. He saw service in the Revolutionary War, and came to Kentucky when thirty years of age. He fought against the Indians at Chillicothe, and, in 1785, brought his family out from Virginia to Kentucky, locating at Cane Run, near Lexington. Two years later he and his brother, Fielding Bradford, founded The Kentucke Gazette, the first issue of which appeared Saturday, August 18, 1787—the second newspaper west of the Alleghanies. The following year John Bradford published The Kentucke Almanac, the first pamphlet from a Western press; and this almanac was issued every twelvemonth for many years. Fielding Bradford withdrew from the Gazette in May, 1788, and "Old Jawn," as he was called, carried the entire burden until 1802, when his son, Daniel Bradford, assumed control. In March, 1789, under instructions from the Virginia legislature, Bradford discarded "Kentucke" for "Kentucky," one of the many interesting facts connected with the Gazette. John Bradford was the first state printer; and the first book he published was the laws passed by the first Kentucky legislature, which assembled at Lexington in 1792. The Bradfords published many of the most important early Western books, and a "Bradford" brings joy to the heart of any present-day collector of Kentuckiana. The column in the Gazette devoted to verse, headed "Sacred to the Muses," preserved many early Western poems; but the little anecdotes which seldom failed to be tucked beneath the verse, were nearly always coarse and vulgar, giving one a rather excellent index to the editor's morals or the morals of his readers. Bradford appears to have taken a great fancy to the poems of Philip Freneau (1752-1832), the first real American poet, for he "picked up" more than twenty of them from the Freeman's Journal. The most complete files of the Kentucky Gazette are preserved in the Lexington Public Library, though the vandals that have consulted them from time to time have cut and inked out many valuable things. John Bradford was a public-spirited citizen, being, at different times, chairman of the town trustees, and of the board of trustees of Transylvania University. He was a profound mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, his contemporaries tell us, and in proof thereof they have handed down another of his sobriquets, "Old Wisdom." Though his fame as the first Kentucky editor is fixed, as an author his reputation rests upon The General Instructor; or, the Office, Duty, and Authority of Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, Coroners, and Constables, in the State of Kentucky (Lexington, Ky., 1800), a legal compilation; and upon his more famous work, Notes on Kentucky (Xenia, Ohio, 1827). These sixty-two articles were originally printed in the Gazette between August 25, 1826, and January 9, 1829. Upon this work John Bradford is ranked among the Kentucky historians. At the time of his death, which occurred at Lexington, Kentucky, March 31, 1830, he was sheriff of Fayette county.

Bibliography. No biography of Bradford has been written, but any of the histories of Kentucky contain extended notices of his life and work.

NOTES ON KENTUCKY. SECTION I

[From the Kentucky Gazette (August 25, 1826)]

This country was well known to the Indian traders many years before its settlement. They gave a description of it to Lewis Evans, who published his first map of it as early as 1752.

In the year 1750,[2] Dr. Thomas Walker, Colby Chew, Ambrose Powell and several others from the counties of Orange and Culpepper, in the state of Virginia, set out on an excursion to the Western Waters; they traveled down the Holstein river, and crossed over the Mountains into Powell's valley, thence across the Cumberland mountain at the gap where the road now crosses, proceeded on across what was formerly known by the name of the Wilderness until they arrived at the Hazlepath; here the company divided, Dr. Walker with a part continued north until they came to the Kentucky river which they named Louisa or Levisa river. After traveling down the excessive broken or hilly margin some distance they became dissatisfied and returned and continued up one of its branches to its head, and crossed over the mountains to New River at the place called Walker's Meadows.

In the year 1754 James McBride with some others, passed down the Ohio river in canoes, and landed at the mouth of the Kentucky river, where they marked on a tree the initials of their names, and the date of the year. These men passed through the country and were the first who gave a particular account of its beauty and richness of soil to the inhabitants of the British settlements in America.

No further notice seems to have been taken of Kentucky until the year 1767, when John Finlay with others (whilst trading with the Indians) passed through a part of the rich lands of Kentucky. It was then called by the Indians in their language, the Dark and Bloody Grounds. Some difference took place between these traders and the Indians, and Finlay deemed it prudent to return to his residence in North Carolina, where he communicated his knowledge of the country to Col. Daniel Boone and others. This seems to have been one of the most important events in the history of Kentucky, as it was the exciting cause which prompted Col. Boone shortly afterwards to make his first visit to the Dark and Bloody Grounds.

[MATTHEW LYON]

Matthew Lyon, "the Hampden of Congress," was born in County Wicklow, Ireland, July 14, 1750. He emigrated to America when he was fifteen years old, and settled in Woodbury, Connecticut, as an apprentice of Jabez Bacon, the wealthiest merchant in all New England. Lyon left Connecticut, in 1774, and removed to Vermont, where he became one of the famous Green Mountain Boys of the Revolution. He was a member of the Vermont legislature for four years; and in 1783 he founded the town of Fair Haven, Vermont. Lyon became one of the great men of Vermont, a disciple of Thomas Jefferson, "the pioneer Democrat of New England." In 1796 he was elected to Congress and he went to Philadelphia in May, 1797, to enter upon his duties. He at once became one of the powerful men in that body. Lyon had published a newspaper at Fair Haven for several years, besides issuing a number of books from his press, but during the years of 1798 and 1799 he edited the now famous Scourge of Aristocracy, a semi-monthly magazine. At the present day this is a rare volume, and much to be desired. In 1801 Lyon cast Vermont's vote for Thomas Jefferson against Aaron Burr for the presidency, and this vote is said to have made certain Jefferson's election. Late in this year of 1801 Lyon left Vermont for Kentucky, and he later became the founder of Eddyville, Lyon county, Kentucky. The county, however, was named in honor of his son, Chittenden Lyon. In 1802 Matthew Lyon was a member of the Kentucky legislature; and from 1803 to 1811 he was in the lower House of Congress from his Kentucky district. His opposition to the War of 1812 retired him to private life. At Eddyville he was engaged in shipbuilding, in which he had great success, but after his defeat for reëlection to Congress, in 1812, disasters came fast upon him, and he was reduced from affluence to comparative poverty. At the age of sixty-eight years, however, he recovered himself, paid all his debts, and died in easy circumstances. In 1820 Lyon was appointed United States Factor to the Cherokee Indians of Arkansas territory, and he set out for his future home at Spadra Bluff, Arkansas. He was later elected as Arkansas's second delegate to Congress, but he did not live to take his seat, dying at Spadra Bluff, August 1, 1822. Eleven years later his remains were returned to Kentucky, and re-interred at Eddyville, where a proper monument marks the spot to-day. Matthew Lyon's reply to John Randolph of Roanoke, in 1804, in regard to the old question of the Yazoo frauds, is his only extant speech that is at all remembered at the present time.

Bibliography. The History of Kentucky, by R. H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882); Matthew Lyon, by J. F. McLaughlin (New York, 1900).

REPLY TO JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE[3]

[From Matthew Lyon, by J. F. McLaughlin (New York, 1900)]

The Postmaster General [Gideon Granger] has not lost my esteem, nor do I think his character can be injured by the braying of a jackal, or the fulminations of a madman. But, sir, permit me to inquire from whom these charges of bribery, of corruption, and of robbery, come? Is it from one who has for forty years, in one shape or other, been intrusted with the property and concerns of other people, and has never wanted for confidence, one whose long and steady practice of industry, integrity, and well doing, has obtained for him his standing on this floor? Is it from one who sneered with contempt on the importunity with which he has solicited to set a price on the important vote he held in the last Presidential election? No, sir, these charges have been fabricated in the disordered imagination of a young man whose pride has been provoked by my refusing to sing encores to all his political dogmas. I have had the impudence to differ from him in some few points, and some few times to neglect his fiat. It is long since I have observed that the very sight of my plebeian face has had an unpleasant effect on the gentleman's nose, for out of respect to this House and to the State he represents, I will yet occasionally call him gentleman. I say, sir, these charges have been brought against me by a person nursed in the bosom of opulence, inheriting the life services of a numerous train of the human species, and extensive fields, the original proprietors of which property, in all probability, came no honester by it than the purchasers of the Georgia lands did by what they claim. Let that gentleman apply the fable of the thief and the receiver, in Dilworth's Spelling Book, so ingeniously quoted by himself, in his own case, and give up the stolen men in his possession. I say, sir, these charges have come from a person whose fortune, leisure and genius have enabled him to obtain a great share of the wisdom of the schools, but who in years, experience, and the knowledge of the world and the ways of man, is many, many years behind those he implicates—a person who, from his rant in this House, seems to have got his head as full of British contracts and British modes of corruption as ever Don Quixote's was supposed to have been of chivalry, enchantments and knight errantry—a person who seems to think no man can be honest and independent unless he has inherited land and negroes, nor is he willing to allow a man to vote in the people's elections unless he is a landholder.

I can tell that gentleman I am as far from offering or receiving a bribe as he or any other member on this floor; it is a charge which no man ever made against me before him, who from his insulated situation, unconversant with the world, is perhaps as little acquainted with my character as any member of this House, or almost any man in the nation, and I do most cordially believe that, had my back and my mind been supple enough to rise and fall with his motions, I should have escaped his censure.

I, sir, have none of that pride which sets men above being merchants and dealers; the calling of a merchant is, in my opinion, equally dignified, and no more than equally dignified with that of a farmer, or a manufacturer. I have a great part of my life been engaged in all the stations of merchant, farmer and manufacturer, in which I have honestly earned and lost a great deal of property, in the character of a merchant. I act like other merchants, look out for customers with whom I can make bargains advantageous to both parties; it is all the same to me whether I contract with an individual or the public; I see no constitutional impediment to a member of this House serving the public for the same reward the public gives another. Whenever my constituents or myself think I have contracts inconsistent with my duties as a member of this House, I will retire from it.

I came to this House as a representative of a free, a brave, and a generous people. I thank my Creator that He gave me the face of a man, not that of an ape or a monkey, and that He gave me the heart of a man also, a heart which will spare to its last drop in defence of the dignity of the station my generous constituents have placed me in. I shall trouble the House no farther at this time, than by observing that I shall not be deterred by the threats of the member from Virginia from giving the vote I think the interest and honor of the nation require; and by saying if that member means to be understood that I have offered contracts from the Postmaster-General, the assertion or insinuation has no foundation in truth, and I challenge him to bring forward his boasted proof.

[GILBERT IMLAY]

Gilbert Imlay, the first Kentucky novelist, was born in New Jersey, about 1755. He was captain of a company in the Revolution. The war over, Imlay turned his face toward the West; and he reached the Falls of the Ohio—Louisville—in 1784. In the little river town he worked under George May as a "commissioner for laying out lands in the back settlements." Imlay had not been a Kentuckian many months before he had obtained patents for many thousand acres of land—all of which he subsequently lost. It is not certainly known how long he remained in Kentucky, but it was about eight years. He went to London in 1792 and, in that year, the first edition of his Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America was published. This work is made up of a series of descriptive letters which the author wrote from Kentucky to an English friend. The second edition of 1793, and the third edition of 1797, reproduced John Filson's Kentucke and Thomas Hutchins's History, together with much new material. While a resident of Kentucky Gilbert Imlay wrote the first Kentucky novel, entitled The Emigrants, or the History of an Expatriated Family, being a Delineation of English Manners drawn from Real Characters. Written in America, by G. Imlay, Esq. (London, 1793, 3 vols.; Dublin, 1794, 1 vol.). The epistolary form is adopted throughout, and the narrative relates the fortunes of "an eminent merchant in the city of London," Mr. T——n, who loses his great fortune and emigrates with his family to America. His daughter, the beautiful Caroline, is the heroine of the story. Landing in Philadelphia, they travel to Pittsburgh, and from there drift down the Ohio river in a Kentucky flatboat, or "ark," to Louisville. Caroline's lover, Capt Arl——ton, had preceded the family and gone on to Lexington, but he soon returned to Louisville when he learned that his sweetheart awaited his coming. "The emigrants" remained in Kentucky some three months, or from June until August. Caroline's capture by the Indians in August decided the family to forsake the "dark and bloody ground," though she was safely rescued. They finally find their way to London, and all ends well. The Emigrants, in the three-volume edition, is exceedingly scarce, but the Dublin one-volume edition may be occasionally procured in the rare book shops of London. In 1793 Gilbert Imlay went to Paris, where he met the famous Mary Wollstonecraft, with whom he was soon living, as they both held mutual affection equivalent to marriage. In 1794 a daughter was born to them, Fanny Imlay, who committed suicide at Swansea, October 10, 1816. In April, 1796, Imlay and Mary agreed to go separate paths after much stormy weather together; and a short time later she became the wife of William Godwin, the English philosopher and novelist. In giving birth to the future wife of the poet Shelley, she surrendered her own life. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is the chief memorial of her pathetic and eventful career. After having parted on that April morning of 1796 with the woman he had so outrageously treated, Gilbert Imlay, "the handsome scoundrel," is lost to history. When, where, or how he died is unknown.

Bibliography. London Monthly Review (August, 1793); Kentuckians in History and Literature, by John Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907); Dictionary of National Biography; biographies of Shelley, Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

THE FLIGHT OF A FLORID LOVER

[From The Emigrants (Dublin, 1794)]

LETTER XLVI. CAPT. ARL—TON TO MR. IL—RAY.

Louisville, June.

It is impossible for me to see Caroline in the present state of my mind, and therefore I hope you will not look upon it in the least disrespectful, my friend, if I should happen to be absent when you arrive; for to be candid with you, I shall make a journey purposely to Lexington.

Your obliging favour from Pittsburg, which you meant should give me spirits, has had quite a contrary effect.

By attempting to soothe my mind, I discover that secret poison, flattery, ever contains, and which I consider the principal cause of my present wretchedness.

The image you have given of Caroline makes her appear to me more lovely than ever; and when you say that enchantment seems to spring up where e'er she treads, I feel the full force of all her charms, and conceive that I behold her in this season of fragrance and beauty, decorating those gardens which you passed through on your return from the fatal view upon the Allegany,

While the blushing rose, drooping hides its head,
As Caroline's sweets more odorous prove,
And op'ning lilies look faint, sick, and dead,—
For things inanimate, feel the force of love.

She is irresistible—and it is only by absence that I shall ever be enabled to forget my misfortunes, and therefore, my dear friend, I must request that in your future letters, when you mention that divine woman, you will not appreciate that beauty which has ten thousand charms to fascinate and fetter the soul.

She has not only all the symmetry of form, the softness of love, and the enchantment of a goddess; but she can assume an animation and that surprising activity of motion, that while you are suspended in the transports of astonishment, you are lost in admiration at the gracefulness with which she moves—I have seen her bound over a rock, and pluck a wild honey-suckle, that grew upon the side of a precipice, and while I stood gazing at her in amazement, she has brought it as a trophy of her exertions.

Believe, my friend, that if ever nature formed one woman to excel another in personal charms, it must be Caroline.

I leave this enclosed in a packet for General W——. I am this moment informed there are boats making round Diamond Island. Who knows but one of them contains the lovely Caroline? Ah! my friend, I feel every emotion of love and shame so powerfully, that I must instantly fly to avoid exposing myself—curse that mandate which banished me from the lovely tyrant of my heart—curse the vanity which exposed my weakness;—for damnable is that fate which compels a man to avoid the object of all others, which to him is the most interesting—I must this instant be off. O Caroline!—Caroline! while my soul deadens at the thought, I abandon the spot which will be converted into elysium the moment you arrive. Forgive me, my friend, this effusion of nature—this weakness, for it prepares us for those delicious raptures, that flow from the source of sympathy, and while it softens us to that tender texture, which is congenial to feminine charms, it invigorates our actions, and fosters every generous and noble sentiment.

The streamers of your vessels, for it must be you, are playing in the wind, as if enraptured with the treasure over which they impend, seem eradiated with the charms of Caroline; while the gentle Ohio, as if conscious of its charge, proudly swells, and appears to vie with the more elevated earth, in order to secure to its divinity, upon which to tread at her disembarkation, the flowery carpet of its banks.

Adieu. I am off. J. A.

AN EXASPERATED MATCHMAKER

LETTER XLVII. MR. IL—RAY TO CAPT. ARL—TON.

Louisville, June.

My dear James,

From the time we left Pittsburg until our arrival here, which was ten days after our embarkation, we were all appreciating the pleasure we should derive from finding you at this place.

I had expatiated largely upon the satisfaction we should experience from the information you would give us of the country; and no sooner were we in sight of the town that we hung out a flag of invitation; not doubting that you would observe it, and immediately come off to us in a barge; but what was the surprise of the whole part, and my mortification, when we learned upon landing, you had left the place not more than half an hour.

The letter you left enclosed for me in General W——'s packet, to be sure, informed me of the cause of your absence; but it by no means justified the action. And I demand as a proof of your respect for your old friends, that you instantly return.

Remember, James, this is the command of a friend, who is anxious to restore you to a state of reason, which it appears you have not possessed for some time past.

Caroline was in tolerable spirits until within two days of our arrival, when she suddenly appeared to be pensive and in a state of extreme trepidation; and since we arrived she has been confined by indisposition.

If you have a delicate and tender regard for this charming girl, you will fly immediately to enquire after her health. But to put it out of your power to frame a shadow for an excuse, I inform you that it is my intention first to visit the Illinois, and to view this country on my return.

I waited during yesterday for an opportunity to send this, and as I could not meet with one, I send a person I have hired for that purpose, as my men are unacquainted with the country.

Believe me to be your sincere, but unhappy friend,

G. Il—ray.

THE BASHFUL LOVER'S RETURN

letter xlviii. capt. arl—ton to mr. il—ray.

Lexington, June.

Your express has this moment reached me: and to convince you, my dear Il—ray, that no man can be more alive to every sentiment of love and friendship, I shall not defer my return to Louisville a single hour; and I merely dispatch this by the return of your messenger, to let you know I shall be with you tomorrow in the evening; and that in my present distracted state of mind, I think it most advisable to make my entre under the cover of the dark, to prevent my being perceived, as I wish to devote the whole evening in sequestered converse with you, my friend.

Caroline is ill! Ah! Il—ray I am wretched in the extreme. I am burnt up with a scorching fever—I am wrecked in the elements of every painful passion, and my every effort to reason is baffled by my reflections upon past occurrences.

But I am your indissoluble friend,

J. Arl—ton.

[ADAM RANKIN]

Rev. Adam Rankin, author of the first book ever printed in Kentucky, was born in Pennsylvania, March 24, 1755. He was graduated from Liberty Hall, now Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, when about twenty-five years of age; and two years later he was licensed to preach by the Virginia Presbytery. Rev. Rankin came to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1784, to accept the pastorate of the Presbyterian church. He also conducted a school for some time, but his one thought was Psalmody, which became "his monomania." He created a schism in his church by insisting that Dr. Watts's imitation of the Psalms of David be expelled from the church worship, and that the Psalms in their most literal dress be chanted. His brethren disapproved of his views, but they could not discourage him or cause him to discard his contention. Everywhere he went he preached and wrote upon his favorite subject. Rev. Rankin's Kentucky brethren made life unbearable for him, and he went to London, where he remained for two years. When he did return to Kentucky it was to face accusation after accusation, and church trial after church trial, until he was finally suspended. Rev. Rankin was a strange, eccentric man, a dreamer of dreams, a Kentucky Luther, and, perhaps, a bit crazed with the bitter opposition his views received. His latest, boldest dream was that Jerusalem was about to be rebuilt and that he must hurry there in order to assist in the rebuilding. He bade his Lexington flock farewell, and started to the Holy City, but, on November 25, 1827, death overtook him at Philadelphia. Rev. Rankin was the author of several theological works, but his A Process in the Transylvania Presbytery, &c. (Maxwell and Gooch, At the Sign of the Buffalo, Main Street, Lexington, 1793), is the first book ever printed in Kentucky, if the Kentucky Acts which John Bradford published in the same year be excepted. Many days were required to print this little book of Rankin upon the hand-press of the publishers, though it contained but ninety-six pages, divided into five parts. Although it is not great literature, it is the first book that can, in any wise, come under that term published in this State. It is surely of more literary importance than Bradford's Acts. Rev. Rankin was, as were nearly all of the early Kentucky theologians, a prolific pamphleteer. His Dialogues (Lexington, 1810), is really his most important publication, but it has been greatly overlooked in the recent rush among Kentucky historical writers to list A Process as the first book published in Kentucky. His eccentric career as a man and preacher is, after all, of more interest than his work as an author.

Bibliography. History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, by R. H. Davidson (New York, 1847); The Centenary of Kentucky, by R. T. Durrett (Louisville, Kentucky, 1892).

ON THE EXTENT OF THE GOSPEL OFFER

[From A Process in the Transylvania Presbytery (Lexington, Ky., 1793)]

We believe, that as it respects the outward means, the ambassadors are authorised to publish, proclaim, and declare the counsel of God, as it stands connected with our salvation; and that all, who hear the sound, have an equal and indefinite warrant, not only to embrace the means as offered to them indiscriminately, by which comes faith, but have a right to believe, that Christ, with all his benefits, is freely offered to them, as sinners, without ever enquiring, into the secret purposes of God, whether they are elect, or non-elect.

UPON MARRIAGE BY LICENSE

[From the same]

Seeing, under our government, it is not purchasing a liberty by pecuniary rewards, further, than compensating a prothonotary, for taking bond and security, that guardians are agreed, and keeping a just register, for the credit and safety of the rising family. And as the contract is partly civil in its nature, and civil government is bound to defend the civil rights—we believe it perfectly consonant to the analogy of faith, which might be evinced from the fourth chapter of Ruth. But as it is partly social, and the parties contracting come under the mutual obligations to fulfil their relative duties, it ought to be consummated before witnesses. And as it is partly religious, every family appertaining to the Church of Christ, commences a nursery, or infant society, to train up their family in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We believe it right, that whenever a church in full order exists, that the pastor, or church officer should consecrate them, to the business assigned them as a Church of Christ, taking their obligations for the due performance of their duty.

[THOMAS JOHNSON, Jr.]

Thomas Johnson, Junior, the first Kentucky poet, who, for many years, enjoyed the sobriquet of the "Drunken Poet of Danville," was born in Virginia about 1760, and he came to Kentucky when twenty-five years of age. He settled at Danville, then a village, and immediately entered into the role of poet, punster, and ne'er-do-weel. Documentary evidence is extant to prove that Danville was a gay little town when the young Virginian arrived there about 1785; and he was early drawn into excesses, or led others into them. Johnson was a rather prolific maker of coarse satirical rhymes, which he finally assembled into a small pamphlet, and published them as The Kentucky Miscellany (Lexington, 1796). This was the first book of poems, if they may be so termed, printed in Kentucky. The original price of this pamphlet was nine pence the copy, but it is impossible to procure it today for any price, and there is not an extant copy of this first edition. The Kentucky Miscellany went into a second edition in 1815, and a third edition was published a few years later, but no copies of either edition are extant. The fourth and final edition appeared from the Advertiser office at Lexington, in 1821, and a dog-eared, much-mutilated copy of this is in the collection of the Filson Club in Louisville—perhaps the only copy in the world. The Miscellany contained but thirty-six small pages, about the size of the medical almanacs of to-day. Many of the little verses are very vulgar and actually obscene, perhaps due to the fact that Johnson could never quite bury John Barleycorn alive. The most famous of them is the Extempore Grace, which the bard delivered one day in the tavern of old Erasmus Gill in Danville. In his cups he stumbled into the tavern dining-room, where he found the meal over, and the guests gone, nothing being left but the crumbs. He glanced at the tables, then at Gill, and offered Extempore Grace. His lines on Danville, on Kentucky, and on several other subjects reveal the satirist; and the verses to Polly, his sweetheart, and to his favorite physician the better elements in his nature. That these rather vulgar verses of Johnson did not escape the censorship of Western advocates of the pure food law in literature, is made certain by a letter from an Ohio critic which appeared in the Lexington Intelligencer for January 28, 1834. After having made a strong plea for the preservation of early Western verse, the writer added: "I do not mean to embrace the low doggerel of Tom Johnson; this was published some years ago, and I never felt decency more outraged than when it was handed me to read by mine landlady! My stars! Save us from the blackguardism, for the world is sufficiently demoralized." Had this early critic of Tom's verses presented a bundle of them to some library, how many Western writers would rise up and call him blessed! Johnson died and was buried at Danville, but the date of his death or the exact place of his burial is unknown. He had passed and was almost forgotten by 1830.

Bibliography. History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, by R. H. Davidson (New York, 1847); History of Kentucky, by R. H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882); Centre College Cento (Danville, Kentucky, January, 1907); Kentuckians in History and Literature, by J. W. Townsend (New York, 1907).

EXTEMPORE GRACE

[From The Kentucky Miscellany (Lexington, Kentucky, 1821)]

O! Thou who blest the loaves and fishes
Look down upon these empty dishes;
And that same power that did them fill,
Bless each of us, but d—— old Gill!

DANVILLE

[From the same]

Accursed Danville, vile, detested spot,
Where knaves inhabit, and where fools resort—
Thy roguish cunning, and thy deep design,
Would shame a Bluebeard or an Algerine.
O, may thy fatal day be ever curst,
When by blind error led, I entered first.

KENTUCKY

[From the same]

I hate Kentucky, curse the place,
And all her vile and miscreant race!
Who make religion's sacred tie
A mask thro' which they cheat and lie.
Proteus could not change his shape,
Nor Jupiter commit a rape
With half the ease those villains can
Send prayers to God and cheat their man!
I hate all Judges here of late,
And every Lawyer in the State.
Each quack that is called Physician,
And all blockheads in Commission—
Worse than the Baptist roaring rant,
I hate the Presbyterian cant—
Their Parsons, Elders, nay, the whole,
And wish them gone with all my soul.

HUDSON, WIFE MURDERER

[From the same]

Strange things of Orpheus poets tell,
How for a wife he went to Hell;
Hudson, a wiser man no doubt,
Would go to Hell to be without!

PARSON RICE

[From the same]

Ye fools! I told you once or twice,
You'd hear no more from canting R——e;
He cannot settle his affairs,
Nor pay attention unto prayers,
Unless you pay up your arrears.
Oh, how in pulpit he would storm,
And fill all Hell with dire alarm!
Vengeance pronounced against each vice,
And, more than all, curs'd avarice;
Preach'd money was the root of ill;
Consigned each rich man unto Hell;
But since he finds you will not pay,
Both rich and poor may go that way.
'Tis no more than I expected—
The meeting-house is now neglected:
All trades are subject to this chance,
No longer pipe, no longer dance.

THE POET'S EPITAPH

[From the same]

Underneath this marble tomb,
In endless shades lies drunken Tom;
Here safely moored, dead as a log,
Who got his death by drinking grog.
By whiskey grog he lost his breath—
Who would not die so sweet a death?

[GEORGE BECK]

George Beck, classicist, born in England in 1749, became instructor of mathematics at Woolwich Academy, near London, at the age of twenty-seven years; but he was later dismissed. Beck married an English woman of culture and emigrated to the United States in 1795, reaching these shores in time to serve "Mad Anthony" Wayne as a scout in his Indian campaign. The wanderlust was upon George Beck, and he became one of the first of that little band of nomadic painters that came early to the Blue Grass country, and having once come remained. He arrived at Lexington in 1800; and it was not long before he began to send short original poems and spirited translations of Anacreon, Homer, Horace, and Virgil to old John Bradford's Gazette. At about this time, too, Beck was doing many portraits and a group of landscapes in oils of the Kentucky river country, a few of which have come down to posterity. Eighteen hundred and six seems to have been Beck's best year in Kentucky from the literary viewpoint, as the Gazette is full of his verses and translations. He was widely known as the "Lexington Horace." Besides painting and poetry, George Beck was a rather learned astronomer, as his Observations on the Comet of 1811 prove. With his wife he conducted an "Academy for Young Ladies" for several years. His last years were much embittered by the lack of appreciation upon the part of the Western public. The Kentucky of 1800 was not a whirlpool of art or literature by any means, and this cultured man languished and finally died among a people who cared very little for his fine learning or his manners. George Beck, poet, translator, mathematician, astronomer, artist, died in Lexington, Kentucky, December 14, 1812. His wife survived him until the cholera year of 1833, which swept away nearly two thousand citizens of Lexington and the Blue Grass.

Bibliography. Kentucky Gazette (Lexington, December 22, 1812); Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1887, v. i).

FIFTEENTH ODE OF HORACE

A New Translation of the Fifteenth Ode of Horace, or Prophecy of Nerceus, from which (according to Count Algorotti and Dr. Johnson) Gray took his beautiful Ode, The Bard.

[From The Kentucky Gazette (October 27, 1806)]

What time the fair perfidious shepherd bore
The beauteous Helen back to Ilion's shore,
To sleep the howling waves were won
By Nerceus, Ocean's hoary son,
While round the liquid realms he sung,
From guilty love, what dire disasters sprung.

Thee, tainted Youth, what omens dire attend!
Thy neck and Ilion's soon to Greece shall bend.
To man and horse what sweat and blood,
What carnage float down Xanthus' flood!
What wrath on Troy shall Greece infuriate turn!
What glittering domes, and spires, and temples burn!

In vain you boast the Queen of beauty's smiles,
Her charms, her floating curls, her amourous wiles,
These, these alas! will nought avail
While Cretan arrows round you sail!
And, tho' the fates awhile such guilt may spare,
Vile dust at length shall smear that golden hair!

Trace back, vain Youth! sad Ilion's fate of old!
Ulysses' sons and Nestor's yet behold,
Teucer's and Diomede's more dread
Horrific war shall round you shed;
Then shall ye trembling fly like timid deer
When hungry wolves are howling in their rear.

By promise Vain of Universal Sway
Lur'd you from Greece the beauteous Queen away?
In less than ten revolving years
Achilles' dreadful fleet appears!
His bloody trains of Myrmidonians dire
Shall wrap proud Ilion's domes in Grecian fire!

ANACREON'S FIFTY-FIFTH ODE

[From The Kentucky Gazette (November 3, 1806)]

What deathless Artist's mimic hand
Shall paint me here the Ocean bland,
Shall give the waves such kindling glows
As when immortal Venus rose?
Who, in phrenzy's flight of mind
Such touch and tinctures bright may find
To match her form and golden hair
And naked paint the heavenly fair?
While every amorous rival billow
Strives her buoyant breast to pillow?
'Tis done! behold the wavelets green
Softly press the Paphian Queen,
Around her heavenly bosom play,
Kiss its warm blush and melt away.
Her graceful neck of pearl behold,
Her wavy curls of floating gold:
But none but lips divine may tell
What Graces on that bosom dwell!
Such bloom a bed of lilies shows
Illumin'd by the crimson'd rose.
Rounding off with grace divine
Like hills of snow her shoulders shine.
While streaming thro' the waves she swims
The silvery maze half veils her limbs,
Else where's the eye that durst behold
Such beauty stream'd on heavenly mold?
Th' enamour'd Triton's glittering train
Sporting round the liquid main
Waving their gold and silver pinions,
Bear her o'er their deep dominions,
While infant Loves and young desires
Dancing 'mid the choral choirs
Clasp the beauteous Queen around
And sail in triumph o'er the bright profound.

ANACREON'S FIRST ODE

[From The Western Review (Lexington, March, 1821)]

I would Atrides' glory tell,
I would to Cadmus strike my shell;
I try the vocal cords—in vain!
Love, only love, breathes through the strain.
I strip away the truant wire,
And string with deeper chords the lyre,
Then great Alcides' toils would sing:
Soft love still sighs through every string.
Hence, themes of Glory, hence! adieu!
For what have I to do with you?
My heart and lyre in union make
Resounding Love and only Love.

[HUMPHREY MARSHALL]

Humphrey Marshall, author of the first History of Kentucky that was in any wise comprehensive, was born near Warrenton, Virginia, in 1760. What little school instruction he received was from the young woman whom he afterwards married. Marshall removed to Kentucky in 1782, after having served as an officer in the Revolutionary War. He was a member of the Virginia convention of 1788, as a representative of the district of Kentucky, which adopted the Federal constitution. Marshall was in the Kentucky legislature for several terms and, from 1795 to 1801, he was United States Senator from Kentucky. Some years later he was again in the State legislature; and at about that time his famous duel with Henry Clay took place. The first edition of his History of Kentucky (Frankfort, 1812), appeared in a single volume of 407 pages; but the second and final edition was greatly revised and augmented and published in two octavo volumes (Frankfort, 1824). Humphrey Marshall's pen was pointed with poison for his enemies (and he had more of them than any other Kentuckian of his time, perhaps), and in his book he lashed them ruthlessly. He was the first as well as the last of Kentucky's "personal" historians. He first endeavored to silence his foes with newspapers and pamphlets, but, not being satisfied with the results, he poured out his wrath in book form to the extent of a thousand pages and more. While prejudice is the most descriptive word possible to use in characterizing Marshall's work, it is not all prejudice. He wrote with wonderful keenness concerning the Spanish conspiracy in Kentucky, his views upon the men that were guilty of bartering Kentucky to Spain in order to obtain free navigation of the Mississippi river having been abundantly affirmed by the latest historical work upon that subject. He also wrote of the Burr conspiracy with great clearness of vision, all of which is very remarkable when one stops to consider that nearly every one of the men connected with these two conspiracies were his bitterest enemies. That Marshall was an able writer all of the Kentucky historians have freely admitted, notwithstanding the fact they have quarreled with his "copy" many times. He is, as his biographer writes, "the stormy petrel of Kentucky's earlier years," a most remarkable man from several points of view. His History of Kentucky, in either edition, is rather scarce at this time, and it is not to be found in many of the rare book shops of the country. Humphrey Marshall died at Lexington, Kentucky, July 3, 1841. He lies buried upon the banks of the Kentucky river, near the capitol of the Commonwealth, Frankfort.

Bibliography. History of Kentucky, by R. H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882); Life and Times of Hon. Humphrey Marshall, by A. C. Quisenberry (Winchester, Kentucky, 1892).

PRIMEVAL KENTUCKY

[From The History of Kentucky (Frankfort, Kentucky, 1824, v. i)]

The country, once seen, held out abundant inducements to be re-visited, and better known. Among the circumstances best adapted to engage the attention, and impress the feelings of the adventurous hunters of North Carolina, may be selected the uncommon fertility of the soil, and the great abundance of wild game, so conspicuous at that time. And we are assured that the effect lost nothing of the cause. Forests those hunters had seen—mountains they had ascended—valleys they had traversed—deer they had killed—and bears they had successfully hunted. They had heard the howl of the wolf; the whine of the panther; and the heart-rending yell of the savage man; with correspondent sensations of delight, or horror. But these were all lost to memory, in the contemplation of Kentucky; animated with all the enchanting variety, and adorned with all the majestic grace and boldness of nature's creative energy. To nature's children, she herself is eloquent, and affecting. Never before had the feelings of these rude hunters experienced so much of the pathetic, the sublime, or the marvellous. Their arrival on the plains of Elkhorn was in the dawn of summer; when the forests, composed of oaks of various kinds, of ash, of walnut, cherry, buck-eye, hackberry, sugar trees, locust, sycamore, coffee tree, and an indefinite number of other trees, towering aloft to the clouds, overspread the luxuriant undergrowth, with their daily shade; while beneath, the class of trees—the shrubs, the cane, the herbage, and the different kinds of grass, and clover, interspersed with flowers, filled the eye, and overlaid the soil, with the forest's richest carpet. The soil itself, more unctuous and fertile than Egypt's boasted Delta, from her maternal bosom, gave copious nutriment; and in rich exuberance sustained the whole, in matchless verdure.

Here it was, if Pan ever existed, that without the aid of fiction, he held his sole dominion, and Sylvan empire, unmolested by Ceres, or Lucina, for centuries.

The proud face of creation here presented itself, without the disguise of art. No wood had been felled; no field cleared; no human habitation raised: even the red man of the forest had not put up his wigwam of poles and bark for habitation. But that mysterious Being, whose productive power we call Nature, ever bountiful, and ever great—had not spread out this replete and luxurious pasture without stocking it with numerous flocks and herds: nor were their ferocious attendants, who prey upon them, wanting, to fill up the circle of created beings. Here was seen the timid deer; the towering elk; the fleet stag; the surly bear; the crafty fox; the ravenous wolf; the devouring panther; the insidious wild-cat; and the haughty buffaloe: besides innumerable other creatures, winged, fourfooted, or creeping. And here, at some time unknown, had been, for his bones are yet here, the leviathan of the forest, the monstrous mammoth; whose trunk, like that of the famous Trojan horse, would have held an host of men; and whose teeth, nine feet in length, inflicted death and destruction, on both animals and vegetable substances—until exhausting all within its range, itself became extinct. Nor is it known, although the race must have abounded in the country, from the great number of bones belonging to the species, found in different places, that there is one of the kind living on the American continent, if in the universe.

[STEPHEN T. BADIN]

Stephen Theodore Badin, Kentucky's earliest Catholic bard, was born at Orleans, France, in 1768. Though very poor he received a classical and theological training in Paris and Tours; and in 1792 he emigrated to America. In the following year Badin was ordained by Bishop John Carroll at Baltimore, he being the first Roman Catholic priest ordained in the United States. He was subsequently appointed to do missionary work in Kentucky, which was then in the old Baltimore diocese, and he made his home at Georgetown, Kentucky. During the next few years Badin rode more than one hundred thousand miles on horseback in order to meet all of his appointments. He was then the only Catholic priest in Kentucky, though he did have assistants from time to time. In 1797 Badin was made vicar-general, and the large Catholic emigrations from Maryland to Kentucky about this time greatly increased his labors. His Principles of Catholics (1805) was the first Catholic book published in the West, and it gave him a larger audience than his voice could well reach. Badin later organized missions and built churches in Louisville and Lexington, St. Peter's in Lexington being made possible by the generosity of his Protestant friends, of whom he had many. Badin and Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget, of the Bardstown diocese, had a misunderstanding as to the settlement of titles to certain church properties which Badin had acquired before Flaget came to Kentucky, and, rather than to have an acrimonious argument with the Bishop, he quit Kentucky, in 1819, and spent the next nine years in European travel. From 1830 to 1836 he worked among the Pottawatomie Indians in Indiana with marked success. Father Badin died at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1853. He was the author of several Latin poems in hexameters, among them being Carmen Sacrum, a translation of which was published at Frankfort; Epicedium, an elegy upon the death of Col. Joseph Hamilton Daviess at the battle of Tippecanoe; and Sanctissimae Trinitatis Laudes et Invocatis (Louisville, 1843). His brief in memoriam for Colonel Daviess is his best known work and, perhaps, his masterpiece.

Bibliography. Sketches of Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky, by M. J. Spalding (Louisville, 1846); The Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky, by B. J. Webb (Louisville, 1884).

EPICEDIUM

In Gloriosam Mortem
Magnanimi Equitum Ducis
Joseph Hamilton Daviess, Patrii Amoris Victimæ
In Tippecanoe Pugna ad Amnem
Wabaschum, 7. Die Nov. 1811.
Epicedium;
Honorabili Viro Joanni Rowan
Meo Ipsiusque Amico Dicatum.

[From The Kentucky Gazette (February 18, 1812)]

Autumnus felix aderat granaria complens
Frugibus; umbrosas patulis jam frondibus ulmos
Exuerat brumœ proprior, cum Fama per orbem
Non rumore vago fatalia nuncia defert:
"Sub specie pacis Slyvæcola perfidus atra
"Nocte viros inopino plumbo occidit et hasta;
"Dux equitum triplici confossus vulnere, fortis
"Occubuit; turmœ hostiles periere fugatœ,
"Hostilesque casas merito ultrix flamma voravit."
Mensibus Æstivis portenderat ista Cometes
Funera; Terra quatit repetitis motibus; ægre
Volvit sanguineas Wabaschus tardior undas
Ingeminant Dryades suspiria longa; Hymenœus
Deficit audita clade, et solatia spernit
Omnia; triste silet Musarum turba; fidelis
Luget Amicities, lugubri tegmine vestit
Et caput et lævam, desiderioque dalentis
Non pudor aut modus est. Lacrymas at fundere inanes
Quid juvat? Heu lacrymis nil Fata moventur acerba!
Ergo piæ Themidis meliora oracula poscunt
Unanimes; diram causam Themis aure benigna
Excipit, et mox decretum pronunciat œquum:
"Davidis effigies nostra appendatur in aula;
"Tempora sacra viri quercus civilis adornet,
"Ac non immeritam jungat Victoria laurum.
"Signa sui Legislator det publica luctus;
Historiœ chartis referat memorabile Clio.
"Prælium, et alta locum cyparissus contegat umbra.
"Tristis Hymen pretiosa urna cor nobile servet;
"Marmoreo reliquos cineres sincera sepulcro
"Condat Amicities; præsens venturaque laudet
"Ætas magnanimum David, virtute potentem
"Eloquii, belli et pacis decus immortale."
Vita habet angustos fines, et gloria nullos:
Qui patriœ reddunt vitam, illi morte nec ipsa
Vincuntur; virtutum exempla nepotibus extant.
Pro Patria vitam profundere maxima laus est.

Stephanus Theodorus Badin,
Cathol. Mission.

Moerens canebat 15. Dec. 1811.

A TRANSLATION BY "WOODFORDENSIS"

[From the same]

On the glorious death of Joseph Hamilton Daviess, Commander
of the Horse, who fell a victim to his love of country, in
the late battle on the Wabash, the 7th. Nov., 1811.
Dedicated to John Rowan, Esq.

'Twas late in autumn, and the thrifty swain
In spacious barns secur'd the golden grain;
November's chilly mornings breath'd full keen;
No leafy honors crown'd the sylvan scene.
When Fame with those sad tidings quickly flew
Throughout our land; (her tale, alas! too true):
"The savage Indian, our perfidious foe,
Pretending peace with hypocritic show,
Surpris'd our legions in the dead of night
And urg'd with lead and steel the mortal fight;
Our valiant warriors strew th' ensanguin'd plain,
Ev'n our great Captain of the Horse is slain
With triple wound!!! At length the foe retires,
With loss; and leaves his town to our avenging fires."

When summer gilded our nocturnal sky
With astral gems; a comet blazed on high,
Portentous of these fates!—the earth, in throes
Repeated labors; rueful Wabash flows
With slower current, stain'd with mingling blood!
The Dryads fill with plaints the echoing wood!
Hymen, the slaughter heard, dissolves in grief!
Naught can console him, naught can yield relief.
In woeful silence sits the muses' train
And Friendship mourns her fav'rite hero slain.
The funeral crape, vain badge of grief! she wears
Upon her head, her arms the emblem bears,
Her sorrowing mind no moderation knows,
Admits no measure to her boundless woes.

Ah, what avails the vain expense of tears?
Fate still unmov'd this fruitless anguish bears!
Therefore to Themis' shrine, with one accord,
They come to crave a more benign award.
The direful cause the attentive Goddess hears,
And soon this just decree her record bears:
"Let Daviess still in semblance grace my halls,
Let his bright portraiture adorn my walls;
The civic oak his sacred brows entwine,
And vict'ry to the wreath his laurel join.
Let Legislative acts of mourning show
The voted ensigns of the public woe;
In the historic page be ever read
The fierce encounter, when great Daviess bled,
And be the fatal spot with cypress shade o'erspread;
His noble heart let Hymen's care enclose
In the rich urn, and friendship's hand compose
His other relics in the marble tomb.
Then let the ages present and to come
Just praises render to his glorious name;
Let honor'd Daviess gild the page of fame,
A hero, fit a nation's pow'r to wield,
In council wise, and mighty in the field."

His mortal life a narrow space confines,
But glory with unbounded lustre shines.
Those virtuous souls, who shed their noble blood
A willing off'ring to the public good,
Who to their country's welfare freely give
The sacrifice of life, forever live
As bright examples to the unborn brave,
To shew how virtue rescues from the grave.
The noblest act the patriot's fame can tell,
Is, that he bravely for his country fell.

Thus sung the missionary bard, and paid
This mournful tribute to the mighty dead.

[DR. CHARLES CALDWELL]

Dr. Charles Caldwell, versatile and voluminous writer of prose, was born at Caswell, North Carolina, May 14, 1772. He entered the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1792; and he won the city's gratitude in the following year by his medical services during the yellow fever epidemic. In 1810 Dr. Caldwell became professor of natural history in the University of Pennsylvania; and four years later he succeeded Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844) as editor of The Port-Folio, a Philadelphia magazine of high character. In 1819 Dr. Caldwell came to Lexington, Kentucky, to accept the chair of materia medica in Transylvania University. Some months later he was sent to Europe to purchase books and apparatus for his department. He returned to Transylvania and continued there until 1837, when he removed to Louisville and established a medical institute. Some years later he and the trustees disagreed and he left. After leaving the institute, Dr. Caldwell continued to reside at Louisville, in which city he died, July 9, 1853. Dr. Caldwell was the first distinguished American practitioner of phrenology, if he did not actually discover this alleged science. From 1794 until his death, Dr. Caldwell was an indefatigable literary worker. He was the author of more than two hundred pamphlets, essays, and books. He translated Blumenbach's Elements of Physiology (1795); Bachtiar Nameh (1813), a Persian tale which he translated from the Arabic; edited Cullen's Practice of Physic (1816); Memoirs of the Life and Campaigns of the Hon. [General] Greene (Philadelphia, 1819); Elements of Phrenology (1824); A Discourse on the Genius and Character of the Rev. Horace Holley, LL.D., late President of Transylvania University (Boston, 1828); and Thoughts and Experiments on Mesmerism (1842).

Bibliography. His Autobiography (Philadelphia, 1855), published posthumously, has been regarded by many as an unfortunate work, as in it he made some rather severe pictures of his contemporaries. That the work contains much excellent writing, and is often very happy in the descriptions of the country through which the author passed, no one has arisen to gainsay; Autobiography of Samuel D. Gross, M. D. (Philadelphia, 1887, v. ii).

GENERAL GREENE'S EARLY LIFE

[From Memoirs of the Life and Campaigns of the Hon. Nathaniel Greene (Philadelphia, 1819)]

Nathaniel Greene, although descended from ancestors of elevated standing, was not indebted to the condition of his family for any part of the real lustre and reputation he possessed. As truly as is the case with any individual, he was the founder of his own fortune, and the author of his own fame. He was the second son of Nathaniel Greene, an anchor-smith, of considerable note, who is believed to have had the earliest establishment of the kind erected in America, and, by persevering industry in the line of his profession, an extensive and lucrative concern in iron-works, and some success in commercial transactions, had acquired a sufficiency to render him comfortable, if not wealthy.

He was born in the year 1741, in the town of Warwick, and county of Kent, in the province of Rhode Island. As far as is known, his childhood passed without any peculiar or unequivocal indications of future greatness. But this is a point of little moment. The size of the oak it is destined to produce, can rarely be foretold from an examination of the acorn. Nor is it often that any well defined marks of genius in the child afford a premonition of the eminence of the man.

Several of his contemporaries, however, who are still living, have a perfect recollection that young Greene had neither the appearance nor manners of a common boy; nor was he so considered by his elder, and more discerning acquaintance.

Being intended by his father for the business which he had himself pursued, young Greene received at school nothing but the elements of a common English education. But, to himself, an acquisition so humble and limited, was unsatisfactory and mortifying. Even now, his aim was lofty; and he had a noble ambition, not only to embark in high pursuits, but to qualify himself for a manly and honourable acquittance in them. Seeming, at this early period of life, to realize the important truth that, knowledge is power, a desire to obtain it became, in a short time, his ruling passion.

He accordingly procured, in part by his own economy, the necessary books, and, at intervals of leisure, acquired, chiefly without the aid of an instructor, a competent acquaintance with the Latin tongue.

This attainment, respectable in itself, was only preliminary to higher efforts. With such funds as he was able to raise, he purchased a small, but well selected library, and spent his evenings, and all the time he could redeem from business, in regular study. He read with a view to general improvement; but geography, travels, and military history—the latter, more especially—constituted his delight. Having, also, a predilection for mathematics and mechanical philosophy, and pursuing, in most cases, the bent of his inclination, as far as prudence and opportunity would admit, his knowledge, in the more practical departments of these sciences, became highly respectable.

[ALLAN B. MAGRUDER]

Allan Bowie Magruder, poet and historian, was born in Kentucky, about 1775. He received an academic education, studied law, and was admitted to the Lexington bar in 1797. He contributed very fair verse to the Kentucky Gazette in 1802 and 1803, which attracted considerable comment in the West. That his fame as a poet was wide-spread, is indicated by a letter from an Ohio writer published in the Lexington Intelligencer, January 28, 1834, in which Magruder's verse is highly praised and further information concerning his career is sought. After stabbing poor Tom Johnson's little pamphlet of rhymes to the heart, Magruder is placed upon his pedestal as the first real Kentucky poet; and that his work was superior to either Johnson's or George Beck's is obvious, continues the caustic correspondent. The truth is, of course, that the verses of neither of the three men merit mention for anything save their priority; and the young Lexington lawyer's muse was not as productive as Tom's or Beck's, no more than three or four of his poems having come down to us. His first prose work was entitled Reflections on the late Cession of Louisiana to the United States (Lexington, 1803). This little volume of 150 pages was issued by Daniel Bradford, for whose periodical, The Medley, Magruder wrote The Character of Thomas Jefferson (June; July, 1803). This essay attracted the attention of the President, and he appointed Magruder commissioner of lands in Louisiana, to which territory he shortly afterwards removed. He was later a member of the State legislature; and from November 18, 1812, to March 3, 1813, Magruder was United States Senator from his adopted State. The next few years he devoted to collecting materials for a history of the North American Indians; and he also made notes for many years for a history of Kentucky, which he finally abandoned, and which he turned over to his old friend, John Bradford, who made use of them in his Notes on Kentucky. Allan B. Magruder died at Opelousas, Louisiana, April 16, 1822, when but forty-seven years of age. He was a man of culture and of high promise, but once in the politics of the country his early literary triumphs were not repeated, and he appears to have never done any writing worth while after his removal from Kentucky.

Bibliography. The Lexington Intelligencer (Lexington, Kentucky, January 28, 1834); Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1888, v. iv).

CITIZEN GENET AND JEFFERSON

[From The Medley (Lexington, Ky., July, 1803)]

When Citizen Genet, the ex-minister of the Robesperian fanaticism, appeared in America, he attempted to impose his new philosophy of light and liberty upon the government. He had nothing to boast of, on the score of superior diplomatic skill. His communications to the secretary of state, were evidently of the tampering kind. They were impressed with all the marks of that enthusiastic insanity, which regulated the councils of the faction; and which, were calculated to mistake their object, by disgusting their intended victims. The mind of Mr. Jefferson, discovered itself, in an early period of his correspondence with the French minister. The communications of Genet were decorated with all the flowers of eloquence, without the force and conviction of rhetorical energy. Accustomed to diplomatic calculation, and intimately combining cause with effect, Mr. Jefferson apprehended the subject, with strength and precision; considered it—developed it—viewed it on all sides—listened to every appeal, and attended to every charge—and in every communication, burst forth with a strength of refutation, that at once detected and embarrassed, the disappointed minister of a wily and fanatic faction.

It is, in most instances, useless to oppose enthusiasm with the deliberate coolness of reason and argument. They are the antipodes of each other; and of that imperious nature, which mutually solicit triumph and disdain reconciliation. The tyranny of the Robesperian principles, were calculated to inveigle within the vortex of European politics, the American government and people. The coolness and sagacity of the secretary of state, composed their defence and protection. The appeal was mutually made to the government; and it is a fortunate circumstance, that there existed this tribunal to approbate the measures of the secretary, and to silence forever, the declamatory oracle of an insidious faction. Checked and defeated on all sides, his doctrines stripped of their visionary principles, and himself betrayed into the labyrinth of diplomatic mystery, their ex-divinity, shrank into the silence of contempt; declaring with his last breath, that Mr. Jefferson was the only man in America, whose talents he highly respected.

[HENRY CLAY]

Henry Clay, the most famous Kentuckian ever born, first saw the light in the "Slashes," Hanover county, Virginia, April 12, 1777. When twenty years of age, he settled in Lexington, Kentucky, as a lawyer; and Lexington was his home henceforth. In 1803 Henry Clay was elected to the State legislature; and before he was thirty years old he was filling an unexpired term in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was sent to the National House of Representatives from the old Lexington district. He was immediately chosen Speaker of that body, a position to which he was subsequently elected five times. This was the period of his greatest speeches. His utterances upon American rights did much to bring about the War of 1812. In 1814 Henry Clay went to Europe as a peace commissioner, and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814. He had resigned the Speakership in order to go to Ghent, but on his return in 1815, he found himself reëlected; and he presided as Speaker until 1820, declining two diplomatic posts and two cabinet offices in order to continue in the chair. In 1820 Henry Clay advocated the Missouri Compromise, and a short time afterwards he retired from public life to devote his attention to his private affairs. He was, however, in 1823, again elected to the lower House of Congress, and was again chosen Speaker, serving as such until 1825. In 1824 he announced himself as a candidate for president, but he was defeated by John Quincy Adams, who made him his Secretary of State. Andrew Jackson was elected president, in 1828, and Mr. Clay—to give him the name he was always known by, regardless of the many positions he held—once more retired from American politics. In 1831 the people elected him United States Senator from Kentucky, and in that body he fought Jackson's policies so strenuously that the Whig party was born, with Mr. Clay as its legitimate parent. The Whigs nominated him as their first candidate for president, but he was overwhelmingly defeated by his old-time enemy, Andrew Jackson. He was the author of the Compromise tariff of 1832-1833, which did much toward winning him the sobriquet of the "Great Compromiser." Mr. Clay was reëlected to the Senate, in 1837; and two years later his great debates with John C. Calhoun took place. Late in this year of 1839, the Whig political bosses set him aside and nominated William Henry Harrison for president and he was elected. In 1842 Henry Clay was retired to private life for the third time, but two years later he was again the candidate of the Whigs for president, and he was defeated by a comparatively unknown man, James K. Polk of Tennessee—the only Speaker of the House who has ever been elected president of the United States. The year of 1849 found Henry Clay once more in the Senate, but he was now old and very feeble. The great Compromise of 1850 sapped his rapidly waning strength, though it greatly added to his fame as a statesman. On June 29, 1852, Henry Clay died at Washington City, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His body was brought back to the land he loved so well, and to which he had brought world-wide fame, and was buried at Lexington, where a grateful people have erected a cloud-tipped monument to his memory. He is one of the American immortals, though it is not at all difficult to quarrel with many of his public acts. He carried the name and fame of Kentucky into the remotest corners of the universe, and it would be indeed surprising if it were not possible to find flaws in a record that was as long as his. His connection with the Graves-Cilley duel in 1838 appears unpardonable at this time, but perhaps the whole truth regarding this infamous affair has not yet been brought out. Considering the patent fact that few orators can stand the printed page, and that the methods by which Clay's addresses were preserved were crude and unsatisfactory, many of the speeches are very readable even unto this day. They undoubtedly prove, however, that the man behind them, and not the manner or matter of them, was the thing that made Henry Clay the most lovable character in American history.

Bibliography. There are many biographies of Clay, and numerous collections of his speeches. Carl Schurz's Henry Clay (Boston, 1887, two vols.), is the best account of the statesman; Henry Clay, by Thomas H. Clay (Philadelphia, 1910), is adequate for Clay the man; and Daniel Mallory's Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay (New York, 1844), is the finest collection of his speeches made hitherto.

REPLY TO JOHN RANDOLPH[4]

[From The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, edited by Daniel Mallory (New York, 1844, v. i., 4th edition)]

Sir, I am growing old. I have had some little measure of experience in public life, and the result of that experience has brought me to this conclusion, that when business, of whatever nature, is to be transacted in a deliberative assembly, or in private life, courtesy, forebearance, and moderation, are best calculated to bring it to a successful conclusion. Sir, my age admonishes me to abstain from involving myself in personal difficulties; would to God that I could say, I am also restrained by higher motives. I certainly never sought any collision with the gentleman from Virginia. My situation at this time is peculiar, if it be nothing else, and might, I should think, dissuade, at least, a generous heart from any wish to draw me into circumstances of personal altercation. I have experienced this magnanimity from some quarters of the house. But I regret, that from others it appears to have no such consideration. The gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say, that in one point at least he coincided with me—in an humble estimate of my grammatical and philological acquirements, I know my deficiencies. I was born to no proud patrimonial estate; from my father I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indigence. I feel my defects; but, so far as my situation in early life is concerned, I may, without presumption, say they are more my misfortune than my fault. But, however I regret my want of ability to furnish to the gentleman a better specimen of powers of verbal criticism, I will venture to say, it is not greater than the disappointment of this committee as to the strength of his argument.

ADDRESS TO LA FAYETTE

[From the same]

General,

The house of representatives of the United States, impelled alike by its own feelings, and by those of the whole American people, could not have assigned to me a more gratifying duty than that of presenting to you cordial congratulations upon the occasion of your recent arrival in the United States, in compliance with the wishes of Congress, and to assure you of the very high satisfaction which your presence affords on this early theatre of your glory and renown. Although but few of the members who compose this body shared with you in the war of our revolution, all have, from impartial history, or from faithful tradition, a knowledge of the perils, the sufferings, and the sacrifices, which you voluntarily encountered, and the signal services, in America and in Europe, which you performed for an infant, a distant, and an alien people; and all feel and own the very great extent of the obligations under which you have placed our country. But the relations in which you have ever stood to the United States, interesting and important as they have been, do not constitute the only motive of the respect and admiration which the house of representatives entertain for you. Your consistency of character, your uniform devotion to regulated liberty, in all the vicissitudes of a long and arduous life, also commands its admiration. During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after the dispersion of, every political storm, the people of the United States have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheering and animating with your well-known voice, the votaries of liberty, its faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt, in the same holy cause.

The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place; to view the forest felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. Every where, you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to the latest posterity.[5]

[JOHN J. AUDUBON]

John James Audubon, the celebrated ornithologist, was born at Mandeville, Louisiana, May 5, 1780. He was educated in France under private tutors, but his consuming love of Nature and especially of bird-life, was too strong to keep him in a beaten path of study, so most of his time was spent in the woods and fields. When seventeen years old Audubon returned to the United States to settle upon his father's estate, "Mill Grove," near Philadelphia. There he devoted his entire time to hunting, fishing, drawing, and music. Some months later he met and fell in love with his nearest neighbor, Lucy Bakewell, a young English girl. "Too young and too useless to be married," as he himself afterwards wrote, his about-to-be father-in-law, William Bakewell, advised Audubon to become a New York business man. With his friend, Ferdinand Rozier, whom he had met in France, and who was then connected with a French firm in Philadelphia, he visited Kentucky, late in 1806, "thought well of it, and liked it exceedingly." But his great love of Nature was not to be denied, and his business suffered accordingly. On April 8, 1808, Audubon was married to Miss Bakewell, and the next morning left for Pittsburgh, where he and his bride, accompanied by Rozier, floated down the Ohio river in a flatboat, which was their bridal tour, with Louisville, Kentucky, as their destination. Upon reaching Louisville Audubon and Rozier opened a large store which prospered when Audubon attended to it; "but birds were birds then as now, and my thoughts were ever and anon turning toward them as the objects of my greatest delight." His first child, Victor, was born at Louisville, in 1809. Rozier conducted the store, and Audubon spent his days in "the darling forests." In 1810 Alexander Wilson, the Scotch ornithologist and poet, called upon Audubon at his store in Louisville hoping to obtain his subscription to his work upon American birds, but Audubon showed him birds he had never seen before, which seemingly angered the Scot as he afterwards wrote slightingly of the Kentucky naturalist. Late in 1810 Audubon and Rozier removed their stock of goods to Henderson, Kentucky, where their trade was so poor that Rozier was left behind the counter, while Audubon was compelled to fish and hunt for food. A short time after their arrival in Henderson, the two partners decided to move to St. Genevieve on the Mississippi river, but Audubon disliked the community, sold out to Rozier, and returned to his home in Henderson. His second son, John Woodhouse, was born at Henderson, in 1812. Two daughters were also born at Henderson, the first of whom, Lucy, died in infancy and was buried in her father's garden. His pecuniary affairs were now greatly reduced, but he continued to draw birds and quadrupeds. He disposed of Mill Grove and opened a small store in Henderson, which prospered and put him on his feet again. Audubon was doing so finely in business now that he purchased a small farm and was adding to it from time to time. His brother-in-law, Thomas Bakewell, arrived at Henderson about 1816, and finally persuaded Audubon to erect a steam-mill on his property at a great expense. For a time this mill did all the sawing for the country, but in the end it ruined Audubon and his partners. He left Henderson in 1819, after having resided in the town for nearly ten years, and set up as a portrait painter in Louisville, where he was very successful. From Louisville Audubon went to Cincinnati and from there to New Orleans. In October, 1823, he again settled at Louisville as a painter of "birds, landscapes, portraits, and even signs." His wife was the only person in the world who had any faith in his ultimate "arrival" as a famous naturalist, and the outlook was indeed dark. Audubon quitted Louisville in March, 1824, and two years later he went to England, where the first public exhibition of his drawings was held. His first and most famous work, Birds of America, was published at London from 1827 to 1838, issued in numbers, each containing five plates, without text, the complete work consisting of four folio volumes. Audubon returned to America in 1829, and he was with his sons at Louisville for a short time, both of whom were engaged in business there. He went to New Orleans to see his wife, and together they came to Louisville, in 1830, to bid the "Kentucky lads," as he called them, goodbye, before sailing for England. At "the fair Edinburgh," in the fall of 1830, Audubon began the Ornithological Biographies (Edinburgh, 1831-39, 5 vols.), the text to the plates of the Birds. In 1840-44 the work was republished in seven volumes, text and plates together, as Birds of America. In 1831 Audubon and his wife returned to America, and they were again in Louisville with the boys for some time. In 1833 his famous trip to Labrador was taken, and the following year found the family in England. The next ten years were passed in wandering from country to country in search of birds, but, in 1842, Audubon purchased "Minniesland," now Audubon Park, New York. With his sons and the Rev. John Bachman he planned the Quadrupeds of America, the last volume of which was issued after his death, which occurred at "Minniesland" on January 27, 1851. His wife, who wrote his life, survived him many years, dying at Shelbyville, Kentucky, June 19, 1874, but she is buried by his side on the banks of the Hudson.

Bibliography. Life of John James Audubon, edited by his Widow (New York, 1869); Audubon and His Journals, edited by Maria R. Audubon (New York, 1900); John James Audubon, by John Burroughs (Boston, 1902).

INDIAN SUMMER ON THE OHIO IN 1810[6]

[From Audubon and His Journals, edited by Maria R. Audubon (New York, 1900, v. ii)]

When my wife, my eldest son (then an infant), and myself were returning from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, we found it expedient, the waters being unusually low, to provide ourselves with a skiff, to enable us to proceed to our abode at Henderson. I purchased a large, commodious, and light boat of that denomination. We procured a mattress, and our friends furnished us with ready prepared viands. We had two stout negro rowers, and in this trim we left the village of Shippingport [now within the corporate limits of Louisville], in expectation of reaching the place of our destination in a very few days.

It was in the month of October. The autumnal tints already decorated the shores of that queen of rivers, the Ohio. Every tree was hung with long and flowing festoons of different species of vines, many loaded with clustered fruits of varied brilliancy, their rich bronzed carmine mingling beautifully with the yellow foliage which now predominated over the yet green leaves, reflecting more lively tints from the clear stream than ever landscape painter portrayed, or poet imagined. The days were yet warm. The sun had assumed the rich and glowing hue which at that season produces the singular phenomenon called there the "Indian Summer." The moon had rather passed the meridian of her grandeur. We glided down the river, meeting no other ripple of the water than that formed by the propulsion of our boat. Leisurely we moved along, gazing all day on the grandeur and beauty of the wild scenery around us.

Now and then a large catfish rose to the surface of the water, in pursuit of a shoal of fry, which, starting simultaneously from the liquid element like so many silver arrows, produced a shower of light, while the pursuer with open jaws seized the stragglers, and, with a splash of his tail, disappeared from our view. Other fishes we heard, uttering beneath our bark a rumbling noise, the strange sound of which we discovered to proceed from the white perch, for on casting our net from the bow, we caught several of that species, when the noise ceased for a time.