THE RECLUSE
of the Passumpsic and Connecticut Rivers, and the “Lines To Aspasia, Sailing”. His work shows a polish and mastery of metre not common to the singers of his day.
Contemporaneous to the Guilford School, and probably somewhat influenced by it (since he was a contributor to Dennie’s Weekly Museum or Journal, along with Royall Tyler) was Thomas Green Fessenden. His career was spectacular, and his genius like a meteor across the horizon of his time. He was a son of Rev. Thomas K. Fessenden of Walpole, N. H., being thus a native of the very town in which The Weekly Museum (Dennie’s and Tyler’s periodical) was published. It is probable that he here came under the influence of Judge Tyler and his school; for we find that, after graduating from Dartmouth in 1796, he was already contributing to the columns of the Museum, under the nom-de-plume of “Simon Spunky.” He was very diffident and sensitive about publicity; but his contributions to the Museum and to the Eagle of Dartmouth were generally admired. Humor, satire, and patriotic lyrics were his forte. He was the first American poet to give us humorous descriptive portraits of New England character, manners and customs; being in this the forerunner of James Russell Lowell.
See his “Jonathan’s Courtship”, a broadside, 1795. (In Porter G. Perrin’s “Life and Works” of Thomas Green Fessenden”, 1925).
Fessenden removed to Rutland, after graduating, and began the study of law under Nathaniel Chipman. In 1801 he went to London to engage in the construction of a mill, being encouraged thereto by prominent British capitalists; but being deserted by these associates before the mill could be fairly tested and proved, he was forced to abandon it for lack of funds. This nearly ruined him financially; but seemed to stimulate his literary powers; and being driven by necessity, he undertook, and completed in the space of four weeks, 1803, the first edition of his famous satire, “Terrible Tractoration”, which the English press compared favorably with Butler’s “Hudibras”. This work was inspired by contact with a son of Dr. Elisha Perkins of Plainfield, Conn., whose celebrated cure-all, or nostrum, the “metallic tractors” were then being introduced into England. (See Perrin, as above). After going through several editions in England, this work was also published, 1805, in America. Fessenden was a man of strong Federalist or “Tory” convictions; and in elucidation of his rabid anti-Jeffersonian doctrines, he brought out, on his return to America, in 1805, a political satire, entitled “Democracy Unveiled”.
He is next found in New York City, editing a newspaper caled the Weekly Inspector, 1806–7; but in this enterprise he fails, owing largely to his unpopular politics and to the rivalry of Irving’s newly established magazine, Salmagundi. In this year (1806) he issued an American edition of his “Original Poems” (first published in London in 1804), it being a collection of his verse from early Dartmouth days up to that time. This book of 203 pages received a very favorable reception from such prominent English Reviews as the British Critick, Literary Journal, Anti-Jacobin Review, Monthly Review and Critical Review; demonstrating Fessenden’s hold on the literary esteem of his own age. The volume contains a number of fine odes, some caustic and witty satires and a few splendid humorous burlesques in rhyme. Fessenden next went to Philadelphia, where, in 1809, appeared his third important satire, entitled “Pills, Political, Poetical, Philosophical.”
Returning in 1812 to Vermont, and settling at Bellows Falls, he practised law there till 1815. This latter year he was called, by the death of his brother William, to the editorship of the Brattleboro Reporter, but remained with it only a short time. He was back in Bellows Falls very soon, editing there the Bellows Falls Intelligencer from 1816 to 1822; and here, in 1818, he issued his fourth and last volume of satire, didactic in nature, entitled “The Ladies’ Monitor”.
After leaving Bellows Falls in 1822, Fessenden settled in Boston, Mass., and began there, and continued till his death in 1837, the publication of The New England Farmer, which became one of the foremost agricultural papers of the land. He also issued for a number of years The New England Farmer’s Almanac, 1828–36, which attained an extensive sale throughout New England. Here, in Boston, he passed the remaining days of his life, dying of apoplexy on November 11, 1837. The Massachu-
