722 AMERICAN LITERATURE the arms 01 the Democratic party, and in the constitutional struggle that ensued his keener sense of the direction in which popular sympathies were tending, with the weight of his half physical energies, gave him the ascend ancy over the wider knowledge and more far-seeing intel lects of his adversaries. Jefferson might be termed the Danton of the West, but his forte lay not so much in oratory as in political management and incisive vivacity. More perhaps than any other great statesman of his age, he aspired to be an atithor, to which title the best passages in his Notes on Virginia, his Autobiography, and Correspond ence, give him a fair claim. His descriptions of scenery in the first are always pleasing and generally graphic. His sketches of Continental society are lively, and his occasional flights of fancy, as the dialogue between the head and heart, at least ingenious. His religion and ethics were those of his friend Tom Paine and the Encyclopedic. Minor The age of tlie Titans in transatlantic history abounds in minor writers. literati, whose light effusions, mainly satirical or descriptive sketches in prose and verse, throw a somewhat dim and ragged lustre over its graver page. The bulk of these obvious reflections of the manner and thought of Butler, Pope, and Swift, or of Gay, Prior, and Sheustone, are a penance to wade through, and scarce claim re membrance for their authors. A few stand out conspicuously by the celebrity of the names with which they are associated, or a certain raciness and approach to originality in their style. Of these the chief are : The social caricatures of Judge Brackenridge (who, though born in Scotland, lived in America from infancy), and his doggerel but vigorous lines on Bunker s Hill ; the once popular humorous lyric entitled APFingal, by J. Trumbull, also the author of The Progress of Dulness, in the Hudibrastic metre which seems to have been used by imitators to show how intolerable it is in any but the original hands ; the more flowing but on the whole commonplace odes of Philip Freneau, including his patriotic hymns to Washington, with the more musical lyrics the Wild Honeysuckle " and the Indian Death Song, " and his prose entitled Advice to A uthors; the political satires of Mercy Warren, authoress of Things necessary to a Woman (the obvious model of the more modern squib, Nothing to Wear), and of a History of the Revolution, remembered only as being the first in date ; the patriotic rhapsodies of Phillis Wheatley, interesting as the production of a young negress brought from Africa in 1761, and soon afterwards sold in Boston to the mistress from whom she took her name ; Francis Hopkinson s Battle of the Kegs and his Pretty Story a burlesque closely fashioned after Arbuthnot s John Bull his Neiu Roof, meaning the American con stitution, and his satire on the pedantry of the sciences entitled the Salt Box; Joel Barlow s Hasty Pudding ; the humorous Wants of Man, by Quincy Adams, more prominent as a statesman than as a poet ; and on a similar but higher platform the best of too large a volume of verses, in which the " Triumph of Infidelity" (after the manner of Cowper), the "Conquest of Canaan," and "Columbia," are the leading pieces, by the amiable theologian Dr Timothy Dwight. Dwight s prose descriptions, as that of the Notch of the White Moun tains and the evening on Lake George, are superior in grace to his efforts in rhyme. Ballad The ballad literature of the revolution days is said to have at- Hterature. tracted the attention of Lord Chatham, less probably from its intrinsic merit than from its faithful though rough embodiment of the sentiment that not only moved over the surface, but penetrated the depths of the national life. The anonymous popular literature of a country is the best abstract and brief chronicle of the time in which it is produced. The songs current in America during this era, inspired by the same spirit and pitched in the same key, are historically interesting and artistically monotonous. They celebrate in rude verse the achievements of native heroes, like " Bold Haw thorne ;" or ridicule, like "Jack Brag," the British Lion, or, like the Fate of Burgoyne," the overthrow of vaulting ambition ; or, as in "Wyoming Massacre," bewail the fate of the fallen ; or, as in " Free America," celebrate with schoolboy Imzzahs the triumph of the good cause. Among the very rude national anthems of the West, "Yankee Doodle" is remarkable as having been an old Dutch catch adapted into an English satirical chant, and adopted, with conscious or unconscious irony, by the American troops. "Hail Columbia," which as a poetical production takes even a lower rank than "Rule Britannia," was a somewhat later production by Joseph Hoplcinson (1798); and the "Star-Spangled Banner" of Francis S. Key is associated with the traditions of the second British war. As inspired with the spirit of the 18th, though be longing in date to the early years of the 19th century, we may mention in advance the " Pilgrim Fathers" of J. Pierpont, Wood- worth s "Old Oaken Bucket," "Home, Sweet Home," by J. H. Payne ; the humorous burlesque of J. G. Saxe. " Miss MacBride ; " and the verses of the great painter and creditable romancer Wash ington Allston, with the refrain " We are one." English philology and literature were during this period represented by the famous Lindley Murray, and Noah Webster (1758-1843), the author of the best dictionary of our language that has appeared since Johnson s. In natural science, the two Bertrams ; Alexander Wilson tho ornithologist; and Audubon, the literary glory of Louisiana, whose descriptions of animate nature rival those of Buffon, are illustrious names. IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Prose Writings. 1. In a rapid estimate of the literature of this prolific age we can only signalise its contributions to the several branches of physical and mental science. The United States have during the last two generations been justly proud of the names of Morton and Schoolcraft in ethnology, of Bowditch in mathematics, of Sullivan and Dana in chemistry and mineralogy. Their classical scholarship, which hardly competes with that of England, has yet been fairly maintained by Everett, Felton, Woolsey, Anthon, and Robinson. Dr Marsh is an accomplished English scholar, while Professor Whitney is a learned and accurate philologist, whose researches in Sanscrit are well known and appreciated by European Orientalists. The meta physical schools of Locke and Reid are nowhere better represented than in America by Dr Bowen and Dr N. Porter. The place of Marshall as a jurist has been worthily filled by Chief -Justice Kent and Judge Story ; the latter of whom ranks, by virtue of his essay on classical studies and his graceful descriptions of natural scenery, among the most accomplished of the numerous professional men who have in the New World devoted their leisure hours to lighter literature. The inhabitants of the United States have always been Oratoi noted for remarkable fluency, sometimes a super-fluency of speech. The early years of the century were illustrated by the fiery zeal of Randolph and the practical force and occasional impassioned eloquence of Henry Clay. The great political controversies inherited from the preceding age found their most conspicuous popular exponents in two leading minds laying claim to diverse kinds of great ness, and destined to be in almost incessant antagonism. John C. Calhoun, the most illustrious representative ofcalhoi the Southern States, of whose rights, real or imaginary, he was during his life the foremost champion, was by educa tion and choice a professional statesman. Secretary of War in 1817, and V ice-President of the Commonwealth in 1825, he resigned the latter office on occasion of the dis pute about the tariff law in 1832, to become the leader of the Opposition ; and in vindicating the attitude of South Carolina was the first to lay the strands of the future Secession war. The most accomplished modern apologist for slavery, it is probable that he only hastened the conflict between opposing principles which was sooner or later inevitable. Calhoun s eloquence, as attested by his audi tors and the numerous speeches and papers preserved in the six volumes of his published works, was notable for its earnestness and gravity, the terse polish of its manner, for philosophic generalisations and analytical dialectic. His prevailing sincerity and candour have made his memory respected by those farthest removed from him in sentiment and opinion. Daniel Webster, on the whole the grandest Webst orator of the New World, was during the greater part of his career the champion of Massachusetts and the assertor of her policy. His defence of that State in the Senate (1830) against General Hayne of Carolina, and his oratorical duel with Calhoun (1838), resulting in the temporary over
throw of the doctrine of nullification, are among the most
