Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

dance gaily on the water; each rural sight, each rural sound is equally lost to him, who is under the dominion of that relentless Power, which the poet Gray energetically calls the TAMER OF THE HU

MAN BREAST,

Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour

The bad affright, afflict the best.

By one, who was himself a severe sufferer, it has been remarked, with truth and eloquence, that there are, perhaps, very few conditions more to be regretted than that of an active mind, labouring under the weight of a distempered body. The time of such a man is always spent in forming schemes, which a change of wind hinders him from executing; his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down, delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow, pleases his Ambition with the Fame he shall acquire, or his benevolence with the Good he shall impart. But in the night the skies are overcast, the temper of the air is changed, he wakes in languor, impatience and distraction, and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor any attention but to misery. It may be said that Disease generally begins that equality, which Death completes; the distinctions, which set one man so much above another, are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.

On the seventh of the month in which this was published, he died suddenly, at the early age of forty-four. The obituary in the next issue of the journal speaks warmly, in a style of elegance emulous of his own, of his literary accomplishments and personal virtues. "So pure was its texture, so delicate its conceptions, that his mind seemed, if we may speak so, to have been bathed at its birth in the very essence of literature-to be daily fed with the celestial dews of learning." His conversation was the counterpart of his writings, delighting in moral topics, and graced by his fine stores of poetical reading. He was free from the jealousies of the literary profession, a happy condition for the editorial life he was called to assume. His amiability is reflected on every page of his writings, though occasionally tinged by a tone of disappointment.

Buckingham, who was an apprentice to the publisher of the Museum, and carried copy from Dennie, describes his personal appearance in 1796. He was rather below than above the middling height, and was of slender frame; was attentive to fashion in his dress, appearing one May mornning at the office "in a pea-green coat, white vest, nankin small-clothes, white silk stockings, and pumps fastened with silver buckles, which covered at least half the foot from the instep to the toe." He wrote very rapidly, and like most persons connected with the press, deferred copy till the last moment. "One of the best of his lay-sermons," says Buckingham, "was written at the village tavern, directly opposite to the office, in a chamber where he and his friends were amusing themselves with cards. It was delivered to me by piece-meal, at four or five different

* Cowper.

1

times. If he happened to be engaged in a game, when I applied for copy, he would ask some one to play his hand for him, while he would give the devil his due. When I called for the closing paragraph of the sermon, he said, call again in five minutes. No,' said Tyler, I'll write the improvement for you.' He accordingly wrote a concluding paragraph, and Dennie never saw it till it was in print."

Buckingham speaks of his being "a premature victim to social indulgence," and Knapp* thinks the habit was increased by the attic nights of the Philadelphia wits when the poet Moore was in their company, and that Dennie acquired a distrust of American society, quoting Cliffton's complaint of "the land where fancy sickens, and where genius dies." There was doubtless some cause for dissatisfaction; for it should not be forgotten that Dennie wrote laboriously and well when the rewards of literature were scanty, and the position of the writer uncertain. If he wavered in his course, his sensibility may very naturally have led him astray.

Dennie's convivial tastes led him to the formation of a social gathering which was known in Philadelphia as the Tuesday Club. It included a number of the contributors to the Port Folio. Gen. Thomas Cadwallader who gave translations from Horace in the Magazine, Samuel Ewing a son of the Provost, who wrote with the signature "Jacques," Thomas Warton, Philip the son of General Hamilton, Wood the actor, Richard Rush, and Richard Peters author of the Law Reports, were members. John Quincy Adams, Gouv. Morris, Judge Hopkinson, Horace Binney, Robert Walsh, the Rev. John Blair Linn, Charles Brockden Brown, and Charles J. Ingersoll, were also contributors to the Port Folio, which, under the efficient management of the publisher, Harrison Hall, in its best days, largely occupied the attention of the reading public in its departments of literature.

As an Essayist, Dennie's influence was confined to the periodical literature of his day, only two scanty collections of his papers having been published:-The Lay Preacher; or Short Sermons for Idle Readers, printed at Walpole in 1796, and a volume also of the Lay Preacher, collected and arranged by John E. Hall, in Philadelphia, in 1817.

The style of the Lay Preacher in which Dennie, as he himself tells us, aimed to unite "the familiarity of Franklin with the simplicity of Sterne," does not always suggest those qualities. Its elegance is occasionally somewhat plethoric of adjectives and fine phrases, especially in the earlier series; while it has a vein of ingenuity and gentle humor belonging to itself.

ON THE PLEASURES OF STUDY.
"Blessed is he that readeth."-Rev. i. 1.

Whenever I reflect upon my habitual attachment to books, I feel a new glow of gratitude towards that Power, who gave me a mind thus disposed, and to those liberal friends, who have allowed the utmost latitude of indulgence to my propensity. Had I been born on a barbarous shore, denied the glorious privileges of education, and interdicted an approach to

* American Biography.

the rich provinces of literature, I should have been the most miserable of mankind. With a temperament of sensibility, with the nerves of a valetudinarian, with an ardent thirst for knowledge, and very scanty means for its acquisition, with a mind often clouded with care, and depressed by dejection, I should have resembled the shrinking vegetable of irritableness, and like the mimosa of the gardens, have been doomed to be at once stupid and sensitive. The courses of nature and fortune having taken a different direction, parental benignity having furnished me with the keys, and discipline and habit having conducted me through the portico of education, I have ever found, whether walking in the vestibule of science, or meditating in the groves of philosophy, or hearkening to historians and poets, or rambling with Rabelais, such excellent companions, that life has been beguiled of more than half its irksomeness. In sickness, in sorrow, in the most doleful days of dejection, or in the most gloomy seasons in the calendar, study is the sweetest solace and the surest refuge, particularly when my reading is directed to that immortal book, whence the theme of this essay is taken. In an hour of adversity, when I have caught up this precious volume, I have found, instantly, the balm of Gilead and the medicine for the mind. The darkness of despair has been succeeded by the brightest rays of cheerfulness, and in place of grim phantoms, I have found comfort, peace, and serenity.

I hope that this style of speaking occasionally in the first person will be forgiven, even by the most fastidious reader, when he adverts to the custom of my predecessors. A periodical writer can hardly avoid this sort of egotism, and it is surely very harmless when its employer muffles himself in the mantle of concealment, and in the guise, whether of a shrewd Spectator or a simple Lay Preacher, walks unobtrusively abroad. Mr. Addison and Monsieur Montaigne perpetually indulge this habit; and on a very careful inspection of many editions of their essays, I have always found, by certain infallible marks, that those speculations had been most diligently perused, which abound in little sketches of the manners, humours, and habits of their authors. We are naturally curious thus to peep through the keyhole of a study, to see a writer in his elbowchair, and to listen to his story with the fondness and familiarity of friendship. Anonymous authors have a prescription from Parnassus to paint themselves; and when by a Tatler, a Spectator, or a Connoisseur, nothing but good colours and modest tinting is employed, men look with mingled curiosity and complacency at the picture. In a speculation on the blessings derived from a studious temper, if a miniature of a lover of books is introduced, provided it be a tolerable resemblance, and viewed in a proper light, it will, by an easy association, lead the observer to reflect more intensely upon the value of literature.

The utility and delight of a taste for books are as demonstrable as any axiom of the severest science. The most prosperous fortune is often harassed by various vexations. The sturdiest son of strength is sometimes the victim of disease. Melancholy will sometimes involve the merriest in her shade, and the fairest month of the year will have its cloudy days. In these dreary seasons, from which no man may hope to escape, sensual delights will not fill scarcely a nook in the gloomy void of the troubled time. Brief as the lightning in the collied night, this sort of pleasure may flash before the giddy eyes, but then merely for a moment, and the twinkling tadiance is still surrounded with the murkiest gloom. Eating, drinking, and sleeping; the song and the

[ocr errors]

dance, the tabret and viol, the hurry of dissipation, the agitation of play, these resources, however husbanded, are inadequate to the claims of life. On the other hand, the studious and contemplative man has always a scheme of wisdom by which he can either endure or forget the sorrows of the heaviest day. Though he may be cursed with care, yet he is surely blessed when he readeth. Study is the dulce lenimen laborum of the Sabine bard. It is sorrow's sweet assuager. By the aid of a book, he can transport himself to the vale of Tempe, or the gar dens of Armida. He may visit Pliny at his villa, or Pope at Twickenham. He may meet Plato on the banks of Ilyssus, or Petrarch among the groves of Avignon. He may make philosophical experiments with Bacon, or enjoy the eloquence of Bolingbroke. He may speculate with Addison, moralize with Johnson, read tragedies and comedies with Shakspeare, and be raptured by the rhetoric of Burke.

In many of the old romances, we are gravely informed, that the unfortunate knight in the dungeon of some giant, or fascinated by some witch or enchanter, while he sees nothing but hideousness and horror before him, if haply a fairy, or some other benignant being, impart a talisman of wondrous virtue, on a sudden our disconsolate prisoner finds himself in a magnificent palace, or a beautiful garden, in the bower of beauty, or in the arms of love. This wild fable, which abounds in the legends of knight-errantry, has always appeared to me very finely to shadow out the enchantment of study. A book produces a delightful abstraction from the cares and sorrows of this world. They may press upon us, but when we are engrossed by study we do not very acutely feel them. Nay, by the magic illusion of a fascinating author, we are transported from the couch of anguish, or the gripe of indigence, to Milton's paradise, or the elysium of Virgil.

ON MEDITATION.

"Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still."-PSALMS iv. 4.

Having, in my last speculation, attempted to describe some of the delights of study, in this paper it is proposed to consider the true use of retirement. Between them there should be a perpetual alliance: nay, they are not only neighbouring and friendly powers, but they are familiar connexions. Amiable, interesting, and lovely sisters! if your worthy admirer be attracted by the riches of one, he will quickly be delighted with the pensiveness of the other. Study will give him all her books, and retirement conduct him to all her bowers. In no ramble will he experience more delight than when he roves through the healthful wood, or saunters through the tranquil cloister, with retirement on his right hand, and study on his left. Though their guise is exceedingly modest, though their conversation has no resemblance to loquacity, though their best attire is from no other wardrobe than that of sweet simplicity, still they will always gain more regard from the wiser than all the pageants of the pompous, and all the plumage of the vain.

The royal psalmist, from whose divine odes I have transcribed my text, was himself a memorable example of the utility of retirement, reflection, and self-communion. It will be remembered that he was a warrior, a statesman, a man of business, and a man of the world. In these various characters, though he often acquitted himself excellently well, yet unfortunately, in some flagrant instances, we perceive how much he was tainted by the infection of the world. But when he shuts his eyes against the glare of ambition, and the gaze of beauty, when he ceases to touch the harp of fascination, and for

sakes the cabinet and the camp, then we recognise, at once, the scholar, the philosopher, and the poet. In the strong-holds at En-gedi, he is a mere soldier; in the palace of Saul, a servile musician; in the cave of Adullam, a skulking fugitive; and in the forest of Hareth, an unhappy exile. But when he tore himself away from the thraldom of care, the bustle of business, and the din of Jerusalem, when he wandered away by the brook of the field, or the plains of the wilderness, when he retired to his chamber, and communed with his heart, then he formed those noble associations, and composed those exquisite performances, which will transmit his name with renown to the remote-t posterity.

My Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Grotius, Mr. Addison, and Mr. Locke, together with a great multitude of illustrious men, have been deeply involved in the cares of public business, as well as engrossed by the meditations of the closet. But for the fairest portion of their glorious fame how much are they indebted to the latter! While the chancery decrees of Sir Francis Bacon moulder away in the hands of some master of the rolls, the experiments of his study, and the essays of his wit, like certain exquisite paintings, grow brighter by time. While we peruse, with still renewing pleasure, Raleigh's history of the world, his unlucky politics are scarcely regarded. Mr. Addison was secretary of state, and Grotius an ambassador; but who inquires for the despatches of the one, or is interested in the negociations of the other? The fame of Erasmus, constantly immersed in the turmoil of his times, and engrossed by cares, civil and ecclesiastic, would have perished with the names of those miserable monks whom he has derided, or those imperious princes whom he has courted. But by sometimes wisely withdrawing himself from the cabals of a court, and the polemies of the church, by meditating on horseback and in his chamber, by avarice of time, by intenseness of application and ardour of genius, he has filled ten folios, composed in the purest Latinity, where an indolent reader can find nothing too prolix, and where a critical reader can discover nothing to reprehend. The foolish politics of Addison are scarcely remembered even by his faction. The character of Locke, as a man of business, is painted with no other pencils than those of ridicule, and the diplomacy of Grotius and of Sir William Temple are utterly contemned; but their literary and philosophical works, the beauteous offspring of retirement and study, will continue to charm,

'Till time, like him of Gaza, in his wrath,
Plucking the pillars that support the world,
In nature's ample ruins lies entombed,
And midnight, universal midnight, reigns.

Though in the text we are admonished to commune with ourselves in our chamber, yet it would be a very partial and narrow interpretation, if it were concluded that we could not meditate any where else. The secresy of a closet, and the stillness of midnight, are, unquestionably, propitious to the powers of reflection. But other places and other seasons may be selected for that salutary diseipline, which the Psalmist recommends. It is a vulgar error to suppose that retirement and contemplation are never to be found except in a forest or a desert, a cell or a cloister. In the thronged mart, and in the blaze of day, he who has inured himself to habits of abstraction, may commune with himself, as though he was in his chamber. Proofs of this abound in many a page of the records of liteSome of the fairest displays of self-knowledge, some of the finest results of meditation, some

rature.

of the sweetest fruits of retirement, owed their appearance not to the tranquillity of sylvan groves. In many a metropolis, resounding with the din of commerce, and crowded with the throng of nations, contemplation has had her fill. Though a sublime poet, in a fit of rural enthusiasm, has exclaimed, Hide me from day's garish eye,

yet it would be alike dangerous and delusive to believe, that we cannot speculate at noon, as well as at night. In short, the choice of time or place is not essential to the formation of habits of self-sequestration, and the acquisition of the precious power of withdrawing the mind from all external objects.

As, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, I am often wakefully disturbed at midnight, and as I have not wholly forgotten my boyish attachment to woods and meadows, I acknowledge that I often commune with myself in my chamber; and, in genial seasons, by the banks of a romantic river, or in the recesses of a lonely forest. I have already speculated twice on the profit and pleasure producible by nocturnal hours wisely employed, and rural rambles judiciously directed. But for a period of no inconsiderable duration I have often retired to rest at a vulgar hour, and have wholly exchanged the country for the city. Change of circumstances demanded new habits. Though but seldom I wind slowly o'er the lea; though the glimmering landscape but rarely fades before my sight; and my ears generally listen to other sounds than the drowsy tinklings of a shepherd's bell, yet it is my duty to reflect much even in the midst of confusion. Accordingly I commune with my own heart in the crowd, and can be still even in the street. I sermonize in the suburbs, and find apt alliteration in an alley. I start a topic in High street, and hunt it down as far as Southwark or the Northern Liberties. I walk through the market-place, as I once wandered in a wood; and while one is talking of his farm, and another of his merchandise, I listen to the suggestions of fancy, or invoke the cherub contemplation.

He

But, to return to a more rigorous exposition of the text, and consider it merely as an exhortation to the tranquil exercise of our mental powers in the retirement of the closet, I do not know whether in the pages of any philosopher I could find a better lesson of salutary discipline. It is favourable to the culture of intellectual as well as moral habits. who accustoms himself to closet meditations will not only purify his heart but correct his judgment, form his taste, exercise his memory, and regulate his imagination. Moreover, he then has an admirable opportunity to view the world at a due distance, to form a deliberate estimate of life, to calculate with precision the proportion of his own powers, combined with those of other men; and having weighed himself, as it were, in the "balance of the sanetuary," to find new causes for regret, and new reasons for reformation.

To multitudes, solitude, retirement, and reflection appear in a form more horrid than the weird sisters in Shakspeare. The man of business, the man of pleasure, the votary of vanity, and the vietim of lassitude, all sedulously shun those hours which have been so nobly employed by philosophers, poets, hermits, and saints. Dr. Young, who has immortalized his self-communion, in one of the most original poems in our language, a poem not only of gorgeous metaphors, but of the most ardent piety, exclaims, with more than mortal enthusiasu.Oh, lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, Lost to the noblest sallies of the soul! Who think it solitude to be alone,

Communion sweet! communion large and high!
Our reason, guardian angel, and our God!

INGRATITUDE OF REPUBLICS,

"For the workman is worthy of his meat."-Matt. x. 10. If there be such a personage as Truth, this assertion certainly belongs to her family, for what can be more just than that a vintager should eat some, at least, of those grapes which he had planted and watered.

But judging from the practice of the world, at the present time, one would think my text was grown obsolete, and that its principle was not recognised. In the shambles there is always meat enough, but how little is bestowed upon workmen. Parasites, buffoons, fiddlers, equestrians, French philosophers, and speculators gormandize; but I see Merit, that excellent workman, that needeth not to be ashamed, as lank and as lean as my old tabby-cat, who has had nothing to eat but church mice for a year.

Though I am not saluted a brother by any legitimate parson, and belong to no ministerial associa tion on earth, yet I cherish great respect, and feel a cordial regard for the established clergy. I consider them, with few exceptions, as faithful workmen; they make us moral; they instruct our youth; they lead sober and peaceable lives.

Along the cool, sequestered vale of life,

They keep the noiseless tenor of their way. They are wise, they are amiable men, though they are ignorant of foolish questions, and "strivings about the law;" they understand perfectly the great rules of life. Such men, therefore, are worthy of their meat, and should be liberally provided. They labour much: few men labour more; they are compelled to exercise not only the head but the hands. The private estate, as well as the gospel vineyard, claims their care. When the drudgery of the year is done; when numerous sermons have been composed, and numerous sick-chambers visite; when they have been in watchings and weariness often, what meat will the benevolence of a parish bestow? Verily, a morsel. A beggarly pittance, called a salary, and that pittance scantily and grudgingly paid. When I visit a village, covered with stores and shops, and cultivated by opulent farmers; when I hear the inhabitants boast of their flourishing circumstances, and recount how many bushels of wheat they threshed last year, and how well it sold; if I should be informed that their parson's annual stipend is but sixty pounds, in despite of all their boasted riches and ostentation, I should think them unworthy to enter a church.

If I should repair to any place where men congregate, and describe to them one, who, in an hour of jeopardy, had quitted his hearth, travelled many wearisome miles, been exposed to sickly air, been shot at for hours, and frequently without a crust or a draught to supply the waste of nature. If I should add, that all this peril was sustained, that we, at home, might live in security, not one of my audience, provided speculators and bloodsuckers were not of the number, would deny that the OLD SOLDIER was a worthy workman. But where is his meat? Oh, my good sir, do not propose that question in a republic, you know that a republic is never bounteous. Belisariuses ask for their obolus here as well as at Rome. But here the business ends, They receive in Great Britain and elsewhere. You might as soon expect moderation in a Frenchman, or knowledge of the belles-lettres in a country attorney, as that a commonwealth should be grateful.

ON CLEANLINESS.

"Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment."-ECCL. ix. 8.

Though much occupied in preaching, and noted, as some of my friends say, for a certain poetical

heedlessness of character, yet, if not oftener, at least every Sunday, I copy the common custom, and invest my little person in clean array. As, from a variety of motives, and none of them, I hope, bad ones, go with some degree of constancy to church, I choose to appear there decently and in order. However inattentive through the week, on the solemn day I brush with more than ordinary pains my best coat, am watchful of the purity of my linen, and adjust my cravat with an old bachelor's nicety. While I was lately busied at my toilet, in the work of personal decoration, it popped into my head that a sermon in praise of neatness would do good service, if not to the world at large, at least to many of my reading, writing, and thinking brethren, who make their assiduous homage to mind a pretext for negligence of person.

Among the minor virtues, cleanliness ought to be conspicuously ranked; and, in the common topics of praise, we generally arrange some commendation of neatness. It involves much. It supposes a love of order, an attention to the laws of custom, and a decent pride. My Lord Bacon says that a good person is a perpetual letter of recommendation. This idea may be extended. Of a well-dressed man, it may be affirmed, that he has a sure passport through the realms of civility. In first interviews we can judge of no one except from appearances. He, therefore, whose exterior is agreeable, begins well in any society. Men and women are disposed to augur favourably, rather than otherwise, of him who manifests, by the purity and propriety of his garb, a disposition to comply and to please. As, in rhetoric, a judicious exordium is of admirable use to render an audience docile, attentive, and benevolent, so at your introduction into good company, clean and modish apparel is, though an humble, at least a serviceable herald of our exertions.

As these are very obvious truths, and as literary men are generally vain, and sometimes proud, it is singular that one of the easiest modes of gratifying self-complacency should, by them, be, for the most part, neglected; and that this sort of carelessness is so adhesive to one tribe of writers, that the words poet and sloven are regarded as synonymous in the world's vocabulary.

This negligence in men of letters sometimes arises from their inordinate application to books and papers, and may be palliated by a good-natured man, as the natural product of a mind too intensely engaged in sublime speculations to attend to the blackness of a shoe or the whiteness of a ruffle. Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton might be forgiven by their candid cotemporaries, though the first had composed his essay with "unwashen hands," and the second had investigated the laws of nature when he was clad in a soiled night-gown. But slovenliness is often affected by authors, or rather pretenders to authorship; and must then be considered as highly culpable; as an outrage of decorum, as a defiance to the world, and as a pitiful scheme to attract notice by means which are equally in the power of the drayman and chimneysweeper. I know a poet of this description, who anticipates renown no less from a dirty shirt than from an elegant couplet, and imagines that when his appearance is the most sordid the world must conclude, of course, that his mind is splendid and fair. In his opinion, " marvellous foul linen" is a token of wit, and inky fingers indicate humour; he avers that a slouched hat is demonstrative of a well-stored brain, and that genius always trudges about in unbuckled shoes. He looks for invention in rumpled ruffles, and finds highsounding poetry among the folds of a loose stocking. But this smirched son of Apollo may be assured

there is no necessary connexion between dirt and ability. It is not necessary to consummate such a marriage to produce the fairest offspring of the mind. One may write brilliantly, and, strange as it may seem, be dressed well. If negligence be the criterion of genius, a critic will, in future, inspect a poet's wardrobe rather than his works. Slovenliness, so far from being commendable in an author, is more inexcusable in men of letters than in many others, the nature of whose employment compels them to be conversant with objects sordid and impure. A smith from his forge, or a husbandman from his fields, is obliged sometimes to appear stained with the smut of the one or the dust of the other. A writer, on the contrary, sitting in an easy chair at a polished desk, and leaning on white paper, or examining the pages of a book, is, by no means, obliged to be soiled by his labours. I see no reason why an author should not be a gentleman, or at least as clean and neat as a Quaker. Far from thinking that filthy dress marks a liberal mind, I should suspect the good sense and talents of him who affected to wear a tattered coat as the badge of his profession. Should I see a reputed genius totally regardless of his person, I should immediately doubt the delicacy of his taste and the accuracy of his judgment. I should conclude there was some obliquity in his mind, a dull sense of decorum, and a disregard of order. I should fancy that he consorted with low society; and, instead of claiming the privilege of genius, to knock and be admitted at palaces, that he chose to sneak in at the back door of hovels, and wallow brutishly in the sty of the vulgar.

It is recorded of Somerville and Shenstone that they were negligent, and of Smith that he was a sloven. But disregard of dress is by no means a constant trait in the literary character. Edmund Waller, Prior, Swift, and Bolingbroke, were remarkably neat in their persons, and curious in the choice of apparel; and of David Mallett, Dr. Johnson observes" that his appearance was agreeable, and he suffered it to want no recommendation that dress could give."

The Orientals are careful of their persons, with much care. Their frequent ablutions and change of garments are noticed in every page of their history. My text is not the only precept of neatness that can be quoted from the Bible. The wise men of the East supposed there was some analogy between the purity of the body and the mind; nor is this a vain imagination.

I cannot conclude this sermon better than by an extract from the works of Count Rumford, who, in few and strong words, has fortified my doctrine:

"With what care and attention do the feathered race wash themselves and put their plumage in order; and how perfectly neat, clean, and elegant do they ever appear. Among the beasts of the field, we find that those which are the most cleanly are generally the most gay and cheerful, or are distinguished by a certain air of tranquillity and contentment; and singing-birds are always remarkable for the neatness of their plumage. So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person serupulously attentive to cleanliness who was a consummate villain."

DAVID EVERETT,

ONE of the band of accomplished contributors to the Farmer's Museum, and a political editor himself of note, was born in 1769 at Princeton,

Massachusetts. He fitted himself for Dartmouth College, and is on the list of graduates for the year 1795, when he delivered a valedictory Poem, with this generous prophecy of the growth of the country:—

The Muse prophetic views the coming day,
When federal laws beyond the line shall sway:
Where Spanish indolence inactive lies,
And every art and every virtue dies;
Where pride and avarice their empire hold,
Ignobly great, and poor amid their gold,-
Columbia's genius shall the mind inspire,
And fill each breast with patriotic fire.
Nor east nor western oceans shall confine
The generous flame that dignifies the mind;
O'er all the earth shall Freedom's banner wave,
The tyrant blast and liberate the slave:
Plenty and peace shall spread from pole to pole,
Till earth's grand family possess one soul.*

Previously to entering college, he was a teacher in the grammar-school at New Ipswich, where he wrote the famous juvenile schoolboy recitation for one of his pupils, Ephraim Farrar, which has been made so well known to the public in Bingham'st Columbian Orator :

LINES SPOKEN AT A SCHOOL EXHIBITION, BY A LITTLE BOY
SEVEN YEARS OLD.

You'd scarce expect one of my age
To speak in public on the stage;
And if I chance to fall below
Demosthenes or Cicero,

Don't view me with a critic's eye,
But pass my imperfections by.
Large streams from little fountains flow;
Tall oaks from little acorns grow;
And though I now am small and young,
Of judgment weak and feeble tongue,
Yet all great learned men, like me,
Once learned to read their A, B, C.
But why may not Columbia's soil

Bear men as great as Britain's isle?—
Exceed what Greece and Rome have done?-
Or any land beneath the sun?

Mayn't Massachusetts boast as great
As any other sister State?

Or where's the town, go far and near,
That does not find a rival here?

Or where's the boy but three feet high
Who's made improvement more than I?
These thoughts inspire my youthful mind
To be the greatest of mankind:

Great, not like Cæsar, stained with blood,
But only great as I am good.‡

Everett studied law in Boston, and wrote for Russell's Gazette and other newspapers, including

Loring's "Hundred Boston Orators."

+Caleb Bingham, the compiler of this production, almost sa well known, in its way, as Webster's Spelling Book, was a school teacher, and afterwards a bookseller of Boston, and had been a graduate of Dartmouth in 1782. As a director of the State prison, he interested himself in the instruction of the younger criminals. He was a Jeffersonian in politics. His school books were, besides the Columbian Orator, the American Preceptor, a book of selections for reading, Young Lady's Accidence. He also wrote a narrative entitled The Hunters. He died in 1817, at the age of sixty.-Allen's Biog. Diet.

Mr. Loring, in his Boston Orators, gives an account of Farrar, the original speaker of the lines, and quotes some remarks by Edward Everett, at a High School Examination, at Cambridge, July 23, 1850, in which he alludes to this "favorite little poem, which many persons have done me the honor to ascribe to me, but which was in reality written by a distant relative and namesake of mine, and, if I mistake not, before I was born."

« ZurückWeiter »