in behalf of the Revolutionary cause. The debate was adjourned in general confusion sine die, and the poem was left thus unconcluded for six years. After the defeat of Cornwallis in October, 1781, the work was carried on to completion by an account of what was said and done later in the same day and evening. The third canto quoted in this volume, more full of action than the others, tells how M'Fingal was first raised on the liberty pole, and then tarred, feathered and left sticking to its base. The fourth, after his escape, presents a melancholy assemblage in a Tory cellar, to whom M'Fingal prophesies, from the viewpoint of 1775, the events that every one knew in 1781. Yet even here, as he was advising submission to the inevitable, the enemy stormed the hiding-place, from which he vanished forever into the night. "The flight of M'Fingal," says the author's genial note, "forms the grand catastrophe of this immortal work. So sublime a dénouement, as the French critics term it, never appeared before in Epic Poetry, except that of the Hero turning Papist, in the Henriade of Voltaire.' As a whole, the work is an interesting combination of bookishness and popular journalism. Trumbull's mind was in some respects like Macaulay's -it was packed with literary lore and able to present this without overwhelming the reader. He referred to Homer, Aristophanes, Virgil, Ovid, Livy; to Shakespeare, Milton, Butler, Blackmore; to men as far apart as Berkeley and Rabelais; to the popular fiction of the day; but he never made a boast of his learning. Thus he wrote Like ancient oak o'erturned he lay, And more things else-but all men know 'em He appealed to popular prejudice (as all controversial literature does), and was thereby sure of a sympathetic hearing before he started. The real keenness of observation, already practised in his prose essays and in his "Progress of Dulness," was well tried for this more ambitious work, yet his methods of workmanship were not too subtle for the public taste. In every canto there was more or less of rough horse-play. He resorted to word elisions and multiple rhymes, from the worst, like "ruins-new ones," "trouble ye-jubilee," to such happy ones as "shallow way-Gallowway," and "league rose-negroes." He had no conscience to prevent his making M'Fingal the weakest of counsels for an evil cause, for in the process he gave more weight to the occasional passages in which Honorius rose to genuine eloquence. The work was immensely popular. The lack of copyright record makes the total number of editions speculative; almost certainly twentyfive or more appeared before 1800. Trumbull was peculiarly well adapted for the writing of Revolutionary satire, and the Revolution, in all likelihood, was responsible for reclaiming to this sort of literature a pen which not long after was wholly dedicated to the law. POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION In this group are included some forty representative selections which may fairly be regarded as a kind of verse obligato to the more substantial chorus of revolutionary literature. They extend from the first four (17551759), which supply evidence of a unified English population victorious over French and Indian foes, through the decade of discomfort and doubt (1766-1776), and the years of decision and conflict. (1776-1781). They are, for the most part, of unknown authorship, or the work of men like John Dickinson (1752-1808), Jonathan Mitchell Sewall (1748-1808), Joseph Stansbury (1750-1809), and Jonathan Odell (1737-1818), whose verse writing was almost wholly inspired by the war and whose work would not otherwise have been included in this volume. Taken in conjunction with the revolutionary poems of Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), John Trumbull (1750-1831), and Philip Freneau (1752-1832)-see pages 35-42, 43-57, and 89-117-they have a just but modest claim to the kind of attention to which war literature is always entitled-the attention due to sugar-coated history. About one-third of the entire list, chiefly the work of Stansbury and Odell, indicates the typical development of increasingly clear and aggressive Tory conviction. 1. Texts. Selections from Early American Writers, ed. W. B. Cairns; Cyclopedia of American Literature, ed. E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, 1st vol.; American War Ballads and Lyrics, ed. G. C. Eggleston; Poets and Poetry of America, ed. R. W. Griswold; Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, ed. Frank Moore; Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, and Loyal Verses of Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell, ed. Winthrop_Sargent; Library of American Literature, ed. E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, 3d vol.; Poems of American History, ed. B. F. Stevenson. II. Criticism. The Spirit of the American Revolution as Revealed in the Poetry of the Period, S. W. Patterson; American_Verse, 1605-1807, W. B. Otis; Literary History of the American Revolution, M. C. Tyler, 2 vols. In the first four, the unqualified colonial loyalty is evident at a glance. Braddock and Wolfe were heroes and martyrs; the subjects of Britain were fighting the wars of the Lord. With the fifth, however, appears the first sign of unrest. "Sure never was Picture drawn more to the Life" appeared the year after the Stamp Act, a year in which the words "freedom," "liberty," and "tyranny" were beginning to loom large. It was characteristic that this song and the three of 1768 should all be set to a melody then popular in old England, and it was significant that in 1768 the second of these songs was an abusive Tory parody of the first, following it within a few weeks, and rejoining to its heroic vocabulary with "villains," "rascals," "Banditti," "brats," "bunters," and allusions to the Devil and to Tyburn gallows. Still, by both factions, the extreme that was suggested was political insurrection which in the same breath protested against abuse and asserted its own loyalty to just British rule. As the break came nearer, the Tory attitude of Stansbury, and even of Odell, was notably conciliatory, and even the rebel song of May 31, 1775, which in the first stanza sounded the call to arms, petered out in a con vivial anti-climax. In 1776 comes the inevitable word "independence," and a farewell to all attempts to spare the King at the expense of Lord North. The Colonials became truculent, though the Loyalists continued to deprecate and deplore until the formation of an alliance with the French, and the revulsion of feeling caused by their own personal hardships transformed their sorrow into anger. Now Odell blazed out, his "Congratulation" of November, 1779, and "The American Times," of 1780, rivalling Freneau's "British Prison Ship" and "The Political Balance" in vitriolic bitterness. In the closing years of the War, the Colonial verse relapsed into complacency and Odell into sullen silence, while Stansbury pathetically tried to be happy as long as he might and prepared to play the rôle of graceful loser. The ways in which the verses were put into circulation are various and interesting. As always with "occasional" poetry, the regular journals and periodicals were the most effective instruments of distribution. These included, among others, The Virginia Gazette, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The Pennsylvania Packet, and The Pennsylvania Journal, The Boston Gazette, The Freeman's Journal, or New Hampshire Gazette, and, for the Tories, Towne's Evening Post and Rivington's Royal Gazette. The difficulties, after 1776, of getting loyalist material printed and distributed naturally made Rivington, who was safe behind the British lines, the chief agent. Many of these songs were originally delivered at social gatherings, winter dinners, and summer outings, or as prologues or epilogues to plays, or were circulated by means of handbill "broadsides." One was included in a cantata, one was put out as a pasquinade-simply written out and conspicuously posted and one, the most famous of all, was almost a folk poem or ballad in origin. For "Yankee Doodle," although attributed originally to Edward Bangs, a Harvard sophomore, undoubtedly had the ballad experience of being modified and varied, as all ballads have been by this process. This experience was, of course, in a lesser degree, common to all of the songs and jingles which were widely repeated or sung. "Yankee Doodle" was simply the pre-eminent example. Others from among this immediate group are "The Boston Tea Party," "The Fall of John Burgoyne," and "The Dance," all of which are in conventional ballad metre, with a half primitive ruggedness of form and content, and “Nathan Hale," more elaborate in form and more self-conscious in tone, a good eighteenth century treatment of ballad material which, if not actually "trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar," was at any rate quite appreciably dressed up. In any discussion of the literary qualities of these verses of conflict and loyalty, the frequently adopted device of writing new words for old melodies may be regarded as next of kin to the balladry of "Yankee Doodle." In the revolutionary days, as in every generation, there were a few popular favorites which it was impossible not to copy. The situation is well illustrated to-day by the general practice in connection with college and fraternity songs. A good new melody is invariably pirated before its third season, and old ones sometimes have as many as five or six sets of more or less inferior verse composed to them. The popular songs of the late 18th century furnished a fair stimulus to at least respectable song writing. Perhaps the most famous then and now were "Hearts of Oak," "Lords of the Main," and the "Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen," still familiar to the modern theatre-goer, as sung by Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal." These and their like were all well turned and graceful, with dashes of rather magniloquent heroism and turns of tender sentiment. They were not vulgar in tone or content, still less were they vulgar in the neat rotundity of their form. It was fortunate for the literary quality of revolutionary song that the standard types of the day were not doggerel nor modern concert hall drivel. The four songs of 1766 and 1768 already alluded to were all close parodies of "Hearts of Oak" or of each other, as was also Stansbury's "When Good Queen Elizabeth Governed the Realm." Stansbury's "Lords of the Main" was after an English prototype, and the "Volunteer Boys," attributed to Henry Archer, is very evidently after the metre of "Here's to the Maiden." Sometimes a good melody was used without attempt to parody the original words or sentiment. The tune "Derry Down," in one of the prevailing anapestic measures, for which were written the "Satire on the Liberty Pole" of 1770, and the satirical "Epilogue" of 1778, could carry several other of the selections by the mere addition of the burden "Derry down, down, hey, derry down"; and the iambic "Maggie Lauder" could accompany not only "Cornwallis Burgoyned," but any other of the conventional ballad verse which was not otherwise engaged. Of the songs as a whole, from Wolfe's "How Stands the Glass Around" to those of Freneau and Hopkinson forty years later, it is fair to say that they were thoroughly English in form and sentiment. Manly strength, feminine grace, the cheering influence of the social glass, and a traditionally aristocratic point of view were implicit in them. By accident, they were dedicated to a struggle for and against a democratic principle, but these song writers, by common consent with the rest of the radical vintners of their day, poured their new political wines into old literary bottles. Equal in importance with ballad and song in Revolutionary verse is the satire. The ballad was composed to record heroic deeds and episodes, like the songs, to stimulate heroic moods. Both of them were designed for vocal interpretation and were picturesque and concrete appeals to the emotions. In contrast, satire based on analysis and criticism was a calculated approach to the intellect. Most of it is quite cold-blooded; its sole emotional challenge is to righteous wrath. "Facit indignatio versum." In its most guileless, yet sometimes most effective, form it may be simply amusing, derisive only by implication. In such guise it occurs in Stansbury's "Pasquinade," a rare instance of Tory satire directed at one of its own leaders, and, again, in the Tory "Fable" attributed to David Matthews, the single example here of the fable in verse to which Pope's generation were peculiarly addicted. It cropped out here together with the companion type of primitive allegory, the essay fable which flourished in 18th century periodicals, from the Spectator to The Citizen of the World and beyond. În verse such as the present example it occurred somewhat infrequently in Colonial America, but in prose the fable was often used with effect by Franklin, Hopkinson, and others. There is abundant other satire in the verse of the Revolution, for it is a natural weapon in the times that try men's souls. The writing of explicitly satirical poems on an extended scale was chiefly done for the Colonials by John Trumbull and Philip Freneau (see pp. 43-57, 89-117) and for the Loyalists by Jonathan Odell. The most important of Odell's contributions were "The Congratulation" and "The American Times," of 1779 and 1780. At these stages in the war Odell had lost all hope for any but the most bitter solution, and, like Freneau, he had become filled with hatred as the result of his own indefensible hardships. These hot protests were written in the iambic pentameter of "The Dunciad." The jauntier four-foot measure of "Hudibras" and "The Hind and the Panther" was left to those who felt less deeply. The mock congratulation of the first poem plays around the twelve times repeated burden: Joy to great Congress, joy an hundred fold: The grand cajolers are themselves cajoled, and the vocabulary of abuse is moderately sounded. In the second the depths are plumbed; "foul Sedition skulks" in the third line, the state is "one putrefying sore," and "all the lice of Egypt" follow Washington, who is "Patron of villainy, of villains chief." The recriminative language of war sounds strangely familiar when Odell, in the third part of "The Times," contends that the colonists were wanton trouble-makers, and that the war clouds would all have blown over if only the malcontents had not insisted upon fighting. And the mental processes behind war controversy are more frankly confessed than usual in the couplets: But arm they would, ridiculously brave; Good laughter, spare me: I would fain be grave: With these two diatribes the bitterest of Loyalist asperity seemed to exhaust itself, and from this time on, in a somewhat lighter vein, Trumbull, Freneau and their sympathizers laughed best and laughed last. PHILIP FRENEAU (1752-1832) Philip Freneau was born in New York City in 1752. He entered the sophomore class at Princeton, graduating in 1771. He taught for a while after college, but in 1775 gained sudden reputation as a political satirist. From late 1775 to 1778 he lived in Santa Cruz and Bermuda. In 1779 he made the voyage to the Azores and back. In 1780, when starting on another voyage, his vessel was captured, and he was held in British prison ships |