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Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817.

tetrameter. The famous couplet, lines 51-52, is
Each line has four iambic feet;

perfect in form.
and the rimes are perfect. There is an example of
feminine rime at lines 47-48; and an imperfect at-
tempt at the same in the two following lines. Other
imperfect rimes are found in the lines 15-16, 23–24,
25-26, 31-32, 37-38, 39-40. The last four lines of
the selection allude to modes of punishment which
were still practised in the colonial times, but which
have passed out of use now. Sewall's Diary speaks
of a criminal's ears being cut off in the court room.
The extreme Whig feeling is satirized in lines 27-28,
in which the Constable renounces the King along with
Pope, Turk, and Devil. There are other allusions in
this selection to events, customs, and characters of
the time, which would repay study; and the poem
is full of such. It is probable that a hundred years
hence "McFingal" will be more generally consid-
ered worthy of study than it is to-day, as the histori-
cal side gains interest with the passage of time, and
it has sufficient artistic excellence to insure its preser-
vation.

A friend and fellow-student of Trumbull was Timothy Dwight, afterwards president of Yale, and the grandfather of the present President Dwight. He published an extended meditative poem, called "Greenfield Hill." But he is better remembered by the simple but strong hymn which has made its place in the hearts of many, "I Love thy Kingdom, Lord."

Joel Barlow was also born in Connecticut, and

1754-1812.

Columbus,"

1787.

graduated from Yale College. His life was one of Joel Barlow, great activity and usefulness. He was United States consul at Algiers, and minister to France, and died in Poland, having been summoned to meet Napoleon Bonaparte at the time of the French retreat from Moscow. In 1787 he published "The Vision of "Vision of Columbus," a stately, prosy production in nine cantos of iambic pentameter verse. The vision extends over America from the equator to the north pole, and includes its history, from the imaginary origin of the native tribes, by way of Peru, Mexico, and the discoveries of Columbus and others, through the Revolution, and on into the future. In later life the work was enlarged and extended, the fuller version being published in sumptuous style, and called "The Columbiad." A more popular publication was the semi-humorous poem on New England manners, called "Hasty Pudding." Barlow's movements are always on a grand scale, and his humor even is rather elephantine.

Alexander Wilson is better remembered for his ser- Alexander Wilson, vices to science as the first distinguished American 1766-1813. ornithologist, than for his literary work. But it is a question whether he was not more a literary man than a scientist. He was born in Scotland in 1766, and before he came to this country in 1793 had published a volume of poems in the Scotch dialect. One of his poems was ascribed to Burns, and was not altogether unworthy of the compliment. He became an enthusiastic American in his feelings, and wrote much in prose and verse which shows loving and

Lyric Verse.

Francis

Hopkinson, 1737-1791.

close observation of nature in its characteristically American aspects. "The Foresters" is an extended descriptive poem, the subject of which is a pedestrian journey from Philadelphia to Niagara Falls. It is written in excellent rimed iambic pentameter lines, and has a number of passages of real poetic feeling. These lines from the beginning of the poem show the purpose of the writer, and illustrate the characteristic which makes Wilson's work so interesting and important in the history of American Literature.

Yet Nature's charms that bloom so lovely here,
Unhailed arrive, unheeded disappear;
While bare bleak heaths, and brooks of half a mile
Can rouse the thousand bards of Britain's Isle.
There scarce a stream creeps down its narrow bed,
There scarce a hillock lifts its little head,
Or humble hamlet peeps their glades among,
But lives and murmurs in immortal song;
Our western world, with all its matchless floods,
Our vast transparent lakes and boundless woods,
Stamped with the traits of majesty sublime,
Unhonored weep the silent lapse of Time,
Spread their wild grandeur to the unconscious sky,
In sweetest seasons pass unheeded by;

While scarce one Muse returns the songs they gave,
Or seeks to snatch their glories from the grave.

In general the songs of the Revolution have not much merit, but Hopkinson's "Battle of the Kegs was very popular, and E. P. Whipple says that it "laughed thousands of men into the patriot army." This was Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a man of great

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