In December, 1779, the suspension of the magazine was announced, the editor declaring in explanation that the publication was "undertaken at a time when it was hoped the war would be of short continuance, and the money, which had continued to depreciate, would become of proper value. But these evils having continued to exist through the whole year, it has been greatly difficult to carry on the publication; and we shall now be under the necessity of suspending it for some time—until an established peace and a fixed value of the money shall render it convenient or possible to take it up again."
For seven years no one attempted another magazine, and then in September, 1786, by a combination of publishers,The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany, modelled upon theGentleman's Magazineand theLondon Magazine, began its career. It was the most ambitious enterprise of the kind that had yet been undertaken in America. The printingfacilities were still very limited, and the subscription lists for all publications small. In 1786 there was one daily paper printed in Philadelphia, and but three or four weekly ones. In the same year four printers after much deliberation agreed to print a small edition of the New Testament. "Before the Revolution a spelling-book, impressed upon brown paper, with the interesting figure of Master Dilworth as a frontispiece, was the extent of American skill in printing and engraving." Improvements came very rapidly, and before the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century Barlow'sColumbiadwas magnificently printed in Philadelphia, and the great undertakings of Rees' "Cyclopædia" and Wilson's "Ornithology" entered upon. The monthly expense of printing theColumbianwas said to be £100, which was paid to mechanics and manufacturers of the United States. The magazine was inaugurated by Matthew Carey, T. Siddons, C. Talbot, W. Spotswood and J. Trenchard.
Carey published, in the first number, "The Life of General Greene," whose portrait was the first in the volume. He also contributed "The Shipwreck," "A Philosophical Dream"(a vision of 1850), and "Hard Times." In the "Philosophical Dream" Carey made the first suggestion of a canal to unite the waters of the Delaware and Ohio. He withdrew from theColumbian Magazinein December, 1786, finding that the quintuple team could not work well together.
Charles Cist, another of the combination, was born at St. Petersburg, August 15, 1738, was graduated at Halle, and, upon coming to Philadelphia in 1773, entered into partnership with Melchior Steiner, with whom he published Paine's "Crisis"—"These are the times that try men's souls." He died in Philadelphia, December 2, 1805.
John Trenchard became sole proprietor of the publication in January, 1789. He was an engraver by profession, having studied under James Smithers, and engraved most of the plates for the magazine. His son, Edward Trenchard, entered the navy, visited England and induced Gilbert Fox, then a 'graver's apprentice, to return with him to America. In this country Fox became an actor, and for him Joseph Hopkinson wrote "Hail Columbia."
"The Foresters, an American Tale," waswritten for theColumbianby Jeremy Belknap, who sought to portray humorously in it the history of the country and the formation of the Constitution.
TheColumbianof May, 1789, gave an elaborate account of Washington's progress to New York, with the notable receptions at Gray's Ferry and at Trenton.
In July, 1790, the name of the magazine was changed to "The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, by a Society of Gentlemen." Benjamin Rush was one of its most faithful contributors. A number of the engravings and several of the articles illustrated the agricultural improvements of the times. John Penington contributed in 1790 "Chemical and Economical Essays to Illustrate the Connection between Chemistry and the Arts." The editor of theColumbian Magazinefor nearly three years was Alexander James Dallas, a sketch of whose life is to be found in a later magazine, thePort Folio, of March, 1817. Dallas was born in Jamaica, but received his earliest education near London from James Elphinstone, through whom he became acquainted with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin. He became a citizen of Philadelphia in 1785, studied law, edited theColumbian, held various offices of trust in the State, and became successively Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of War for the United States. Robert Charles Dallas, brother of the editor, author of the "History of the Maroons" and a score of other works, is best known as the friend and counsellor of Lord Byron. His last work was his "Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron from 1808 to 1814." It was at his request that Byron published "Childe Harold," and to him Byron gave the profits arising from that and four other of his poems. Dallas was related to Lord Byron through the marriage of his sister with the poet's uncle. George Mifflin Dallas, son of the editor of theColumbian, became Vice-President of the United States under President Polk. His commencement oration at Princeton, in 1809, on the "Moral Influence of Memory," is printed in thePort Folioof that year (Vol. II, p. 396[7]). Two members of thefamily, Rev. A. R. C. Dallas, son of Robert Charles, and his cousin, Rev. Charles Dallas, served at Waterloo, and were afterward prominent in philanthropic work.
A. J. Dallas reported for theHeraldand for theColumbianthe debates of the State Convention until the Federalists, annoyed by the publications, withdrew their subscriptions from theColumbian, which led Benjamin Rush to write to Noah Webster (February 13, 1788): "From the impudent conduct of Mr. Dallas in misrepresenting the proceedings and speeches in the Pennsylvania Convention, as well as from his deficiency of matter, theColumbian Magazine, of which he is editor, is in the decline."
Nevertheless theColumbiancontinued to prosper. The circulation at times made necessary a second edition, which was reset at considerable expense, and often contained additional articles.
The final number appeared in December, 1792. The principal motive for the suspension, the editors declared, "is to be found in the present law respecting the establishment of the post-office, which totally prohibits thecirculation of monthly publications through that channel on any other terms than that of paying the highest postage on private letters or packages." A futile attempt was made to continue the magazine in January, 1793, under the title, "The Columbian Museum, or Universal Asylum: John Parker, Phila." The only number that I have seen contains sixty pages.
In January, 1787, or one month after withdrawing from the management ofThe Columbian Magazine, Matthew Carey published the first number ofThe American Museum, or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, etc., Prose and Poetical, which proved to be the first really successful literary undertaking of the kind in America. General Washington said of it in a letter dated June 25, 1788: "No more useful literary plan has ever been undertaken in America." John Dickinson in the same year also commended it. Governor Wm. Livingstone wrote: "It far exceeds in my opinion every attempt of the kind which from any other American press ever came into my hands." Among others who swelled the chorus of praise were Governor Randolph of Virginia, Ezra Stilesof Yale, Timothy Dwight, Francis Hopkinson and Provost Ewing. "Citizen" Brissot, in his "New Travels in the United States" (1788), considered Carey'sMuseumto be "equal to the best periodical published in Europe." The first number attracted great attention; Franklin furnished the first article, "Consolation for America;" Benjamin Rush followed with an "Address to the People of the United States,"[8]the burden of which was that the "Revolution is not over;" already the cry was going up for civil service reform to deliver the country from the oppression of politics. The edition—one thousand copies—was soon exhausted. "I had not means," said Carey, "to reprint it. This was a very serious injury, many persons who intended to subscribe declining because I could not furnish them the whole of the numbers."
The work of editorship was no novelty to Matthew Carey. He had had full and fiery experience in both Ireland and America. He was born in Ireland in 1760, and became acquainted with Dr. Franklin in Paris while living there to avoid prosecution at home. He was imprisoned for the publication of theVolunteer's Journalin Dublin. He arrived in Philadelphia, November 15, 1784, and in the following January began to publish thePennsylvania Evening Herald, the first newspaper in the United States to furnish accurate reports of legislative debates. He was wretchedly poor, but Lafayette laid the foundation of his fortune by a generous gift of four hundred dollars in notes of the Bank of North America. The first pamphlet that Carey published in Ireland was a treatise on duelling. Soon after his arrival in America he gave a practical illustration of the text by engaging in a duel with Colonel Oswald, in which he received a wound that stayed him at home for more than a year.
The American Museumwas the first magazine in Philadelphia to reflect faithfully the internal state of America. Bradford's magazines, intensely loyal, looked across the ocean and saw little at home worthy of record. Paine and Brackenridge expended their erratic genius in abusive satire upon the Tories; theColumbian Magazineavoided the serious political problems of the times, and granted much of its space to agricultural improvements and the beginnings of manufactures.
In almost every page, however, of theMuseumthe reader catches glimpses of the anxieties and disorders of the critical years of party strife that attended the making and adoption of the Constitution. The social order was weak, there was a general revolt against taxation. "I am uneasy and apprehensive, more so than during the war," wrote Jay to Washington, June 27, 1786. David Humphreys, one of the "Hartford Wits," who came into prominence at the close of the war, and who at this time (1786) was engaged in the composition of theAnarchiadand other satirical verse, aimed at the disorder of the time, contributed toThe Museumhis poem on the "Happiness of America." Francis Hopkinson's gentle prose satires and his poems of revolutionary incidents reappeared in its pages. Anthony Benezet uttered his oft-repeated protest against the iniquity of slavery. Philip Freneau's odes found place almost monthly in the poet's corner. Throughseveral numbers ran a series of articles, though not for the first time published, "On the Character of Philadelphians," signed Tamoc Caspipina, the pseudonym of the Rev. Jacob Duché, brother-in-law of Francis Hopkinson, and derived from the initial letters of his title as "the assistant minister of Christ's Church and St. Peter's in Philadelphia, in North America."
I cull from volume five a few specimen articles to illustrate the wealth of local and national history embedded in this popular periodical:
Vol.V, p. 185.—Report on the petition of Hallam and Henry to license a theatre in Philadelphia.
P. 197.—Account of the battle of Bunker Hill.
P. 220.—Letters of "James Littlejohn"—i.e., Timothy Dwight.
P. 233.—Franklin on food.
P. 235.—Duché's Description of Philadelphia.
P. 263.—Insurrection in New Hampshire.
P. 293.—Dr. Franklin's Prussian Edict.
P. 295.—Impartial Chronicle, by W. Livingstone.
P. 300.—Poetical address to Washington, by Governor Livingstone.
P. 363.—Earthquake in New England.
P. 400.—Battle of Long Island.
P. 473.—Franklin's idea of an English school.
P. 488.—"How to Conduct a Newspaper,"—Dr. Rush.
The same cause that led to the suspension of theColumbian Magazineput a period also to theAmerican Museum, and in the same month. On December 31, 1792, Matthew Carey, in bidding farewell to the public that had supported his undertaking, ascribed its failure to "the construction, whether right or wrong, of the late Post-Office law, by which the postmaster here has absolutely refused to receive theMuseuminto the Post-Office on any terms." Although the circulation of the magazine had been large for those days, the publisher had derived small profit from his venture. The subscription price, $2.40 per annum for two volumes, making together more than one thousand pages, was too low; and during the six years, between 1786 and 1792, Carey was always poor, and in hisAutobiographydeclares that during those years he was never at any one time the possessor of four hundred dollars. But in those years of personal penury and public turmoil, Matthew Carey laid the foundation of the American system of social science.
Six years after the suspension of the magazine, Carey attempted to re-animate it, and publishedThe American Museum, or Annual Register of Fugitive Pieces, Ancient and Modern, for the year 1798, printed for Matthew Carey. Philadelphia: W. & R. Dickson, Lancaster. Matthew Carey, whose introduction was dated June 20, 1799, wrote of the renascent publication, "If thiscoup d'essaibe favorably received, I shall publish a continuation of it yearly." No other volume was ever issued.
The Medical Examinerwas published in 1787, and made one volume octavo of 424 pages. It was edited by J. B. Biddle.
The Philadelphia Magazine, the first that ever bore the name of the city, made two volumes. The first volume extended from February to December, 1788, and contained 448 pages. The second volume began in January, 1789, and closed in November of thesame year (416 pages). The magazine is said to have been edited by Elhanan Winchester. His "Lectures on Prophecies" are bound up with the second volume of the periodical. The lectures were originally issued in each volume.
The Arminian Magazine, Vol. I, 1789, pp. 600; Vol. II, 1790, pp. 620, was published by Prichard and Hall, in Market Street, and was edited by John Dickins, the scholarly pastor of the church that he named the "Methodist Episcopal."
In magazines addressed to women, Philadelphia has always been fertile and successful. "The first attempt of the kind made in this country" was "The Lady's Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge, Vol. I, for 1792. By a Literary Society. Philadelphia: W. Gibbons, North Third Street, No. 144."
The motto chosen by the editors was "the mind t'improve and yet amuse;" and the fair sex, who are supposed to have received the proposals for the work with "extraordinary marks of applause," are assured that "the greatest deference shall be paid to theirliterary communications," and they are promised month by month offerings of "the mostlively proseandpathetic verse."
The magazine contains anecdotes, poems, female correspondence, similitude between the Egyptians and Abyssinians, manners and customs of the Egyptians, schemes for increasing the power of the fair sex, essays on ladies' feet, etc., etc. It began June, 1792, and lived until May, 1793.
The Philadelphia Minervawas filled with old and new fugitive pieces. It was published weekly by W. T. Palmer, at No. 18 North Third Street, beginning in 1795 and ceasing in July, 1798.
The Pennsylvania Magazine, of the very slightest significance, was issued in 1795, and made one volume.
The American Monthly Review or Literary Journal.Jan.-Aug., 1795. Phila.: S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith.
The American Annual Register, or Historical Memoirs of the United States, made one volume in 1796.
The Literary Museum, or Monthly Magazine.Jan.-June, 1797. "Printed by Derrick andSharples, and sold by the principal booksellers in Phila. Price, one quarter of a dollar."
The Methodist Magazinewas founded by John Dickins in January, 1797, and was edited by him until his death, in 1798 (September 27). It was printed by Henry Tuckness. It was chiefly made up of sermons.
The American Universal Magazineconsisted chiefly of selections from other periodicals. The first volume began Monday, January 2, 1797, and was completed March 20, 1797. It was embellished with Du Simitiere's portrait of William Penn. It was "printed by S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith for Richard Lee, No. 131 Chestnut Street." It was commenced as a weekly journal, but after January 23 it was published biweekly. After February 6 it was printed by Budd and Bartram, and contained frequent articles favoring the abolition of slavery. It was taken in hand by new printers on March 6, and sent out by Snowden and McCorkle.
The second volume ran from April 3 to June 13, and was printed by the proprietor, Richard Lee, at No. 4 Chestnut Street.
The third volume, July 10, to November 15, 1797, informed the patrons of the publication that the editor "would be assisted by a gentleman whose literary abilities have been frequently sanctioned by public approbation." It was printed by "Samuel H. Smith and Thomas Smith."
The fourth volume, with which the publication ended, lived from December 5, 1797, to March 7, 1798.
Philadelphia, in 1793, had been visited by the terrible scourge of yellow fever. In 1798 the pestilence returned, and repeated in Philadelphia the horrors recorded of London in the previous century.
During this year certain magazines were published in the city that may almost be called journals of the plague.
The Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge and Entertainment, was begun in January, 1798, and printed for Thomas Condie, stationer in Carter's Alley (No. 20). It lasted through the year, and made two volumes. The publishers appended to the second volume "A History of the Pestilence, commonly called Yellow Fever,which almost desolated Philadelphia in the months of August, September and October, 1798. By Thomas Condie and Richard Folwell." The history contains 108 pages, an appendix of 31 pages, and a list of all the names of those who died of the fever—3,521 in all. In the month of September alone 2,004 persons died of the plague, being one in every twenty-five of the total population.
This magazine contained the first long biographical sketch of Washington. The "Memoirs of George Washington, Esq., Late President of the U. S.," ran through the months of January, February, March, May and June, 1798.
It is in this magazine that we find the earliest notice of Mrs. Merry, who was the first eminent actress that crossed the ocean. "Biographical Anecdotes of Mrs. Merry of the theatre, Philadelphia, by Thomas Condie," April, 1798 (Vol. I, p. 187). With a reputation in England second only to Mrs. Siddons, this brilliant actress was added to the American stage by Mr. Wignal, of the Philadelphia Theatre, who had gone abroad in 1796 to recruit his company and, if possible, to engagesome first-rate actors in London. Mrs. Merry arrived at New York in October, 1796, and made her first appearance in the Western World in December in the character ofJuliet. She was the daughter of John Brunton, of the Norwich Theatre, and the wife of "Della Crusca" Merry, the well-known playwright and author.
The Weekly Magazine of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces and Interesting Intelligence, was begun February 3, 1798. It was conducted by James Watters, of Willing's Alley, a young man who was the manager for Dobson's American edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The first article in the periodical introduces us to the first professional man of letters in America. It is "The Man at Home," by Charles Brockden Brown. Although unsigned, no one familiar with Brown's style could read a page without discerning him in the short snap-shot sentences of the story. On page 228 of the first volume three pages of the "Sky-Walk" are "extracted from Brown's MSS." The singular title of this unfinished story, which was afterward woven into the web of "Edgar Huntley," seems tohave been as puzzling to readers then as now, and it is explained in a stray note on page 318 of the magazine as "a popular corruption of Ski-Wakkee, or Big Spring, the name given by the Lenni Lennaffee (sic) or Delaware Indians to the district where the principal scenes of this novel are transacted." "The Man at Home" ran through thirteen numbers of the first volume, which closed on April 28.
In the second volume (page 193) Brown commenced the publication of his first important novel, "Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793," the first chapter of which appeared June 16, 1798. It contained vivid descriptions of the scenes during the pestilence of 1793-8. Brown's genius naturally dealt with weird and sombre subjects and extraordinary passions and experiences. While occupied with this romantic narrative of the horrors of the plague, his intimate friend, Elihu Hubbard Smith, who had introduced him to the "Friendly Club," in New York, died of the fever, and his own life was for a time in danger by it.
The third volume of the magazine (August 4, 1798-April 6, 1799) was printed by EzekielForman, the young and gifted editor, James Watters, having died of the fever. A commemorative note of the stricken editor is to be found in the number bearing date February 2, 1799 (page 129).
In consequence of Watters' death, no number of the magazine was published between August 25, 1798, and February 9, 1799. The property was then bought from the late editor's mother, and was continued until June 1, 1799, when it came abruptly to an end, leaving the fourth volume unfinished and with only 256 pages.
The Weekly Magazinehad carried upon its covers in 1798 a proposal to publish the novel, "Sky Walk, or the Man Unknown to Himself," a few pages of which had been given in the magazine. The manuscript was known to be with James Watters, but its fate is unknown; it probably was destroyed with the rest of the unfortunate editor's papers.
One other Philadelphia publication was terminated in consequence of the plague, which, although properly classified as a newspaper, is yet of so much literary and historical interest that it would seem to deserve a place inthis narrative.Porcupine's Gazette and United States Daily Advertiserwas published by William Cobbett on Second Street, opposite Christ Church. It was first issued on Saturday evening, March 4, 1797. Up to that time no such cut and thrust weapon had been seen in America, and no such truculent foul-mouthed editor had plucked a pen out of his pilcher by the ears on this side of the Atlantic. We had known editors who were learned in profanity and gifted in vulgarity, but none that had just such a bitter trick of invective as William Cobbett, or "Peter Porcupine," as he was pleased to call himself. He was born at Farnham, in Surrey, in 1762, within a stone's throw of Sir William Temple's Moor Park, where lived for ten years the greatest master of virile and virulent English in all the long annals of our literature. It is a curious coincidence that the first book that fell into the well-nigh penniless hands of Cobbett was "The Tale of a Tub," and in it he discovered and appropriated the secret of Jonathan Swift's burning English.
In Philadelphia, Cobbett advocated the extremest Tory principles, and requested thecontributors to his paper, "whether they write on their business or mine, to pay the postage, and place it to my account. This is a regulation I have been obliged to adopt to disappoint certain Democratic blackguards, who, to gratify their impotent malice and put me to expense, send me loving epistles full of curses and bawdry."
During the prevalence of the plague, Cobbett ejected his venomous superfluity upon Dr. Benjamin Rush, comparing him to Doctor Sangrado, in Gil Blas, because he advocated blood-letting as a remedy for the fever. Rush, stung into retaliation, sued Cobbett, and recovered from him five thousand dollars. This, together with an additional three thousand dollars, the cost of the suit, ruined Cobbett, and he removed to Bustleton, August 29, 1799, where he continued for a short time to publish his "Gazette," weekly. The last barbed arrow, quivering with scorn, was fired from Bustleton, January 13, 1800, and the author returned to England.
Cobbett also published, in Philadelphia,The Political Censor, orMonthly Review, which lasted from March, 1796, to March, 1797.
A German magazine was published in Philadelphia, in 1798:Philadelphisches Magazin für die deutschen in Amerika. Philadelphia: H. and J. R. Kämmerer.
The Dessert to the True Americanmeasures a year from July, 1798 to July, 1799.
The last magazine published in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century was thePhiladelphia Magazine and Review, or Monthly Repository of Information and Amusement. It was begun in January, 1799, and printed for Benjamin Davies, 68 High Street. In announcing this work, the editor alluded to the unsuccess that had attended all efforts to establish magazines in Philadelphia, and he believed the cause to be the spurious patriotism that led the editors to reject whatever was not of native production. The magazine was strongly "anti-Gallican" in character. It closed its career with its first volume.
I have made no mention in this necessarily incomplete enumeration of the eighteenth century magazines of an early religious publication,The Royal Spiritual Magazine, by Joseph Crukshank, 8vo, 1771. A few stray numbers exist, but I have never seen a copy of it. How long it was published I do not know.
Christopher Sauer printed, at irregular intervals, in 1764, theGeistliches Magazien. There are fifty numbers in the first volume. Sauer cast his own type, and this magazine is therefore printed, as he himself says on page 136 of the second volume, with the first type made in America.
At the beginning of this century Philadelphia was the most attractive city in America to a young man of brains and ambition. It was the seat of an active social, political and literary life. Poet George Webbe noticed in 1728 the leadership of Philadelphia in all matters pertaining to the higher life of the country, and prophesied:
Rome shall lament her ancient fame declined,And Philadelphia be theAthensof mankind.
General Lee might petulantly exclaim in 1779, "Philadelphia is not an Athens," and Neal might write inBlackwood's Magazinethat the Philadelphians were "mutton-headed Athenians," but the name became a favorite one with which to characterize the thriving Pennsylvania town which exercised such sovereign sway and masterdom over its sister cities. Benjamin West, in a letter to Charles WillsonPeale (September 19, 1809), predicts that Philadelphia will in time "become the seat of refinement in all accomplishments ... theAthensof the Western Empire." Harrison Hall and the gentlemen who published and maintained thePort Folioalways styled Philadelphia the "Athensof America."
As the capital of the government it was the centre of wealth and fashion. Fine old mansions and gardens adorned Chestnut and High Streets; Judge Tilghman in the Carpenter Mansion, Israel Pemberton in Clarke Hall, Thomas Willing, the merchant prince, at Third and Walnut, and his partner, Robert Morris, at Sixth and High Streets, Edward Shippen at Fourth and Walnut, the Norris family in their home upon the site of the U. S. Bank and Custom House, and in their great mansion at Fair Hill, the Hamiltons at Bush Hill and the Woodlands, dispensed lavish hospitality.
William Bingham, father-in-law of the eminent banker Alexander Baring, who was afterwards Lord Ashburton, entertained in grand style. General Washington drove out from the Morris mansion along the unpaved streetssouth of Chestnut Street in a coach drawn by six horses and attended by two footmen. In his stables on Minor Street was a stud of twelve or fourteen horses. General John Cadwallader, father-in-law of the second Lord Erskine, in his great house at Second and Spruce, made liberal use of his immense fortune.
In the first year of this century the University of Pennsylvania, which had played so great a part in the Revolution, and to which Louis XVI had, in 1786, made so generous a donation, was removed to its new home in the spacious buildings erected for the executive mansion. The Philadelphia Library, which had been Franklin's first scheme for public improvement, and which had been enriched by the generous gifts of James Logan, was furnishing such opportunities for literary work as were unknown elsewhere. John Quincy Adams sought in vain to cultivate in Boston the "Wistar parties" that Caspar Wistar had made so famous in Philadelphia. One hundred years ago there was only one scientific foundation within this Republic that was not in Philadelphia, and that was the American Academy in Boston. The American Philosophical Society in its venerable hall in State House Yard numbered Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Adams among its members. The best scholars of Europe and America read its "Transactions" or contributed to its "Proceedings." From his private observatory David Rittenhouse made the earliest astronomical observations in this country, and rested his transit instrument upon the ancient stanchions that still maintain their place in the Philosophical Society window looking out upon the fine old trees planted by the father of John Vaughan, secretary and librarian of the society. The only Natural History Museum in this country was opened in 1802 at Third and Lombard by Charles Willson Peale; and far out on the Schuylkill at Gray's Ferry, John Bartram, whom Linnæus called "the greatest natural botanist of the world," had planted the first botanic garden.
The number of foreign exiles who at this time were moving in Philadelphia society gave a cosmopolitan character to the city, and lent to it the air of foreign capitals. Talleyrand, Beaumais, Vicomte de Noailles and his brother-in-law Lafayette, Volney, the Duc deLiancourt, and General Moreau, and at a later date Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, were but a few of the distinguished members of the "French colony."
Joseph Dennie, the most interesting figure among American editors, came to Philadelphia in 1799 as clerk to Timothy Pickering, who was then Secretary of State, and his brilliant social qualities soon won him recognition in the city. "The American Addison" he was called then, a title he had won by the easy grace and pleasing melody of his style.[9]He was born in Boston, August 30, 1768, and was sent to Harvard College, where he proved a jibbing pupil, and was rusticated for a term of six months. He industriously read all the books that were proscribed by the Faculty, and ignored those studies that were recommended to him. His was a brilliant but undisciplinedmind, strongly independent, impetuous, fond of contradiction, full of surprises, "studious of change and fond of novelty," as he often defined himself. Soon after beginning the study of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the events and weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, or be content to munch turnip in a cell amidst want and obscurity." Of course, all this is very outrageous, but altogether what we should expect from such "unimproved mettle, hot and full." He abandoned the law, and was among the first men in America to devote himself to literature.
His first experience in journalism was as editor of theTabletin Boston, May 19, 1795. The paper lived just thirteen weeks.
Dennie next tried his Bohemian fortunes in Walpole, N. H., and contributed to theFarmer's Weekly Museum, a good and popular journal that had been founded in 1790, the papers entitled "The Lay Preacher," uponwhich rests his literary fame. Of this magazine he became editor in 1796, and at once gathered about him a number of noble swelling spirits who contributed racy and original reading to the "Farmer's" subscribers.[10]
The publisher became bankrupt in 1798, and Dennie pilgrimaged to Philadelphia, without fortune and without a patron. His service under Pickering was of short duration.
In connection with Asbury Dickins, a son of John Dickins of theMethodist Magazine, he began, January 3, 1801, the publication of thePort Folio, by Oliver Oldschool, Esq., the best of Philadelphia magazines, which he continued to edit until his death, in 1812. Dennie's strong personality and engaging qualities of mind and heart attracted attention, and madehim many friends. With genuine editorial tact and skill he drew to himself all the literary ability of the city, which was then "the largest and most literary and most intellectually accomplished city in the Union," to quote the words of a later editor of thePort Folio, Dr. Charles Caldwell. There was scarcely a more picturesque figure in Philadelphia in the first decade of this century than that presented by the editor of thePort Folio. It would be necessary to go to London and to Oliver Goldsmith to find another to outshine this Oliver Oldschool as Buckingham saw him slipping along Chestnut Street to his office "in a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small-clothes, white silk stockings and pumps, fastened with silver buckles which covered at least half the foot from the instep to the toe." Dennie was but 44 years of age when he died; Buckingham says he was "a premature victim to social indulgence." Those were the days of hard drinking and of high thinking. Nothing so frugal as a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg would satisfy Dennie's epicurean soul. He was a social creature, and thosenoctes ambrosianæof theTuesday Club when Tom Moore, who celebrated the club in his eighth epistle, or some other lover of Anacreon was the guest, were often kept up until it was too late to go to bed. Wine songs and Martial-like epigrams of pointed indecencies are correspondingly brisk and plentiful in the pages of thePort Folio.
In the introduction to the magazine Dennie stated that the wordPort Foliowas not to be found in Johnson's Dictionary, and proceeded to define it as "a portable repository for fugitive papers." "Editors," he continued, slyly satirizing his contemporaries, "ambitious of sonorous or brilliant titles, frequently select a name not intimately connected with the nature of their work. We hear of theMirrorand theAurora; but what relation has a literary essay with apolished plane of glass, or what has politics to do with themorning?[11]" The editor began with a "lilliputian page" because he was warned by "the waywardness of the time." "A waywardness which," he explains, "alludes to our indifference to elegant letters, the acrimony of our party bickerings, and to the universal eagerness for political texts and theircommentary.... Amid such 'wild uproar' the gentle voice of the Muse is scarcely audible." In these early years of the century literature was wretchedly paid. John Davis, the vivacious English writer of travels, offered, in 1801, two novels to any bookseller in the country who would publish them, on the condition of receiving fifty copies. The booksellers of New York could not, he said, undertake them, for they were dead of the fever. It is interesting to find Dennie writing in his introduction, "Literary industry, usefully employed, has a sort of draught upon the bank of opulence, and has the right of entry into the mansion of every Mæcenas.... Authors far elevated above the mire of low avarice have thought it debasement to make literature common and cheap."
ThePort Folioat once sprang into popular favor. In the life of Josiah Quincy, by his son, we read, "ThePort Foliowas very far superior in literary ability to any magazine or periodical ever before attempted in this country. Indeed, it was no whit behind the best English magazines of that day, and would bear no unfavorable comparison with those of the present time on either side of the water. Its influence was greatly beneficial in raising the standard of literary taste in this country, and in creating a demand for a higher order of periodical literature and for more exact and careful editorship."
Dennie was a daring and devoted lover of England. He had no patience with American innovations that, as it seemed to him, were certain to lose history by being severed from the traditions of England. When the doctrine of social equality was flaunted before him, or the glittering clauses of the Declaration of Independence were quoted to him, his indignation forgot all discretion. He was soon bandying hot words with theAurora, and marking with his scorn every new phase of Americanism. Speaking in his editorial person he declared:
"To gratify the malignancy of fanatics he will not asperse the Government or the Church, the laws or the literature of England. Remembering that we areat peacewith thatpower—that the most wholesome portions of our polity are modelled from hers—that we kneel at shrines and speak a language common to both, he will not flagitiously and foolishly advert to ancient animosities, nor with rash hand attempt to hurl the brand of discord between the nations." In the same connection he attacks Gallic philosophy and the equality of man, the latter of which he styles an "execrable delusion of hair-brained philosophy." Others might speak of "theRepublicof letters;" with Dennie it was theMonarchyof letters. Several articles ran through thePort Folioof 1801 on the sentiment and style of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing that famous document as a "false and flatulent and foolish paper." In the same volume (page 215) Dennie, offended by the introduction of some new Americanism into politics, writes:
"Unsatisfied withactinglike fools, men begin to enlarge their scheme and talk and write from the vocabulary of folly. All this, however, quadrates with the character of a good republican; as he hates England, why not murderEnglish?" In April, 1803,Dennie denounced Democratic Government, and prophesied that of it would come "civil war, desolation and anarchy." His pranks had now become too broad to bear with, and on the Fourth of July this latest publication of his was condemned as "an inflammatory and seditious libel," and a bill of indictment was found. The case was tried in November, 1805, Ingersoll and Hopkinson appearing for the defence. The verdict reached was "not guilty," and Mr. Joseph Dennie had the triumphant pleasure the next week in his report of the case to define democracy for the benefit of his enemies as "a fiend more horrible than any that the imagination of the classical poets ever conjured up from the vasty deep of their Pagan Hell."
When Dennie learned that a certain Noah Webster was to publish "A Columbian Dictionary" containing "American corrections of the English language," he had a few suggestions to offer. The Columbian language he understood to be an elegant dialect of the English, but, he went on, "there is one remark which I would wish with deference to submit to our great lexicographer before Ifinish this paper. As his dictionary, I understand, is to be the dictionary of the vulgar tongue in New England, would it not be better to prefix to it the epithetCabotianinstead of Columbian? Sebastian Cabot first discovered these Eastern States, and ought not to be robbed of the honor of giving his name to them. I would, therefore, propose calling New England Cabotia, the other States America, and the Southern continent Columbia." He then proposed, in irony, a list of a few "Cabotian words"—happify, gunning, belittle, quiddle, composuist, sot, etc.Lengthyhe stigmatizes as "a foolish, flat, unauthorized, unmusical Indian word."[12]In conclusion (Port Folio, I, page 370), "let then the projected volume offoul and uncleanthings bear his own Christian name and be calledNoah's Ark!"
We meet the first notice of Benjamin West, as a boy of 19 years, in Bradford's secondAmerican Magazine. In the first volume of thePort Foliowe find the first of a long series ofsketches in praise of West's genius and generosity. "It is a melancholy and miraculous circumstance," the satirical writer begins, "that this American artist, after experiencing the good fortune to be born and educated in Pennsylvania, should sullenly retreat to England and exchange the glorious privileges of our happy, tranquil and rising Republic for the smoke and servility of the city of London. It is perfectly inexplicable that he should barter citizenship for knighthood, that he should receive a king's money, and, more provoking still, be soothed by regal praise. What are titles, honours and gold to an independent Republican who, remaining at home, might have had the noblest and amplest opportunities ofgiving awayas many pictures as he pleased."
It is a singular history, that of the boy from Chester County, whom Byron called—
The dotard West,Europe's worst daub, and poor England's best.
The Archbishop of York, for whom he had painted his "Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus," presented the youngAmerican to George III. "The Departure of Regulus from Rome" won for him the royal favor. In 1768 he was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of that institution.
ThePort Foliois full of accounts of "Christ Healing the Sick," West's generous gift to the Pennsylvania Hospital, and of his "Death on the Pale Horse," and his "Paul and Barnabas" in the Pennsylvania Academy.
In a letter from West to Charles Willson Peale, dated November 3, 1809, and published in thePort Folioof the following year, reference is made to a young gentleman, studying under his directions, "whose talents only want time to mature them to excellence," and West desires his friends in Philadelphia to procure for the young man the means of studying another year. That rising artist, who had early felt the generous assistance of Benjamin West, was Thomas Sully, who had the honor, in 1837-8, of painting the scene of Queen Victoria's coronation, and his daughter, to save her Majesty fatigue, stood for her, wearing the royal robes.
John Trumbull, son of "Brother Jonathan" the patriot, who painted the famous "Declaration of Independence," was imprisoned for treason in London, and was only released by Benjamin West, to whom he had been introduced by Franklin, becoming his surety. Gilbert Stuart, greatest of American portrait painters, who has graven the face of Washington upon our memories, learned his art and received his earliest encouragement in the English home of Benjamin West. It is a matter of interesting and singular memory that a Boston boy, John Singleton Copley, sent anonymously to West, in 1760, a portrait which at once attracted attention. It was "The Boy and the Flying Squirrel," the boy representing Copley's half-brother, Henry Pelham. Through West's influence the picture was exhibited at Somerset House. Through West again, Copley was elected a fellow of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. When he crossed the ocean to make his home near West, he took with him his Boston-born son, John Singleton, Jr., who became in 1827, the year that thePort Foliosuspended, Lord Chancellor of England, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst. To Lyndhurst, as the greatest of orators, Lord Lytton dedicated hisSt. Stephen's.
The leading article of thePort Folioof May 28, 1803, is devoted to young Leigh Hunt, and treats him as an American poet, and assures the public that he "is a deserving object of patronage." Again, in June 11, 1803, some sonnets and odes are quoted from Hunt'sJuvenilia, Hunt being then a lad of 19 years, and the author is said to be a "blossom from our own garden." Although the editor lays claim to Leigh Hunt as a Philadelphian and to his works as American, he is advised to abide in London: "Let him remain in London, 'the metropolis of the civilized world,' and remember with the judicious Sancho that St. Peter is very well at Rome.... It affords the editor the purest pleasure to have it in his power to advance the claims of a child of genius, a nephew of Sir Benjamin West, an honor to that country from which he is descended and to that which protects him."
Isaac Hunt, the father of the author of "The Story of Rimini," and Benjamin West marriedsisters, daughters of Stephen Shewell, merchant, in Philadelphia. Leigh Hunt, in 1810, writing in theMonthly Mirror, gave an eloquent and tender description of his mother, Mary Shewell, which was reprinted in theAnalectic Magazineof Philadelphia, in 1814. "Here, indeed," he exclaimed, "I could enlarge both seriously and proudly; for if any one circumstance of my life could give me cause for boasting, it would be that of having had such a mother. She was indeed a mother in every exalted sense of the word, in piety, in sound teaching, in patient care, in spotless example." The father, Isaac Hunt, came to Philadelphia from the Barbadoes, was graduated at the College of Philadelphia, read law in the city, and was admitted to the bar in 1765. He was an uncompromising Tory. It is said that on one occasion he pointed out to a bookseller a volume of reports of trials for high treason as a proper book for John Adams to read. Alexander Graydon, one of the faithful contributors to thePort Folio, in his "Memoirs of a Life Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania," relates the following incident which, no doubt, led to the accident of Leigh Hunt's birth in England, and to the loss of "Abou ben Adhem" to America: "A few days after the carting of Mr. Kearsley, Mr. Isaac Hunt, the attorney, was treated in the same manner, but he managed the matter much better than his precursor. Instead of braving his conductors, like the Doctor, Mr. Hunt was a pattern of meekness and humility; and at every halt that was made he rose and expressed his acknowledgments to the crowd for their forbearance and civility. After a parade of an hour or two, he was set down at his own door, as uninjured in body as in mind. He soon after removed to one of the islands, if I mistake not, to Barbadoes, where, it is understood, he took orders."
Leigh Hunt was not the only English poet of far-shining fame who was of American origin. Percy Bysshe Shelley was the grandson of a quack doctor in Newark, N. J., who, according to a local tradition, married the widow of a New York miller. Fitz-Greene Halleck lived and died in an old house in Guilford, Connecticut, built upon ground that had belonged to Bysshe Shelley, before he went to England and became master of Castle Goring. Manyanother great life in England was bound with strands of intimate connection to the history of America. John Keats's brother George made his home in Kentucky, and his descendants are still residents of Philadelphia. Tench Francis, the merchant, who was for many years the agent for the Penns in their domain, and who was the first cashier of the Bank of North America, was a cousin of Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the "Junius" letters. Sir Philip wrote to Tench's brother, Turbott, whom he called, familiarly, "Tubby:" "At present I am bound to the Ganges, but who knows whether I may not end my days on the banks of the Ohio? It gives me great comfort to reflect that I have relatives, who are honest fellows, in almost every part of the world. In America the name of Francis flourishes. I don't like to think of the quantity of salt water between us. If it were claret I would drink my way to America." The name of Francis certainly flourishes in Philadelphia. The intricate little settlement of Francisville, within the city, perpetuates the name of the family.
It has always been asserted and believedthat Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, of New York, was the first American editor of Shakespeare. A few jottings from thePort Foliowill show that he has too rashly been placed upon the pinnacle, and that the honor justly belongs to Joseph Dennie.
ThePort Folioof February 11, 1804 (p. 46) advertises "the first complete edition of Shakespeare in this country, from the text of the best editors of Shakespeare. To be published by Hugh Maxwell and Thomas S. Manning." No editor's name is mentioned, but in the following month (March 10, 1804) Dennie tells the whole story: "The editor, having, at the request of his publisher, undertaken to superintend a new edition of the Plays of Shakespeare, is particularly desirous of inspecting the first folio edition. This is probably very scarce, and may be found only in the cabinet of some distant virtuoso. But the owner of this rare book will be very gratefully thanked if the editor can have permission to consult it for a short season." Later on (April 14, p. 119) Dennie confesses some further "wants:" "During some weeks in which the editor has been engaged in researches respecting the text of Shakespeare he has had frequent occasion to acknowledge the kindness of many literary gentlemen who have directed his attention to many books auxiliary to his labors. But notwithstanding his own inquisitiveness and the aid of others, he still has not had the good fortune to find the following, for the whole or any one of which he will be particularly obliged:—'Remarks on Shakespeare's Tempest,' 'An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, by Mr. Maurice Morgan, 8 vo, 1777,'" etc., etc.
After this there can be no doubt that the useful notes to the 1807 edition, signed "J. D.," are from the pen of Joseph Dennie. Although he edited but one volume, he is the first American editor, and the honors are transferred from New York to Philadelphia.
Charles Brockden Brown was the first man in America to cultivate literature as a profession; Dennie was the second. When inaugurating thePort Foliohe wrote of himself: "He has long been urged by a sober wish, or, if the sneering reader will have it so, he has long been deluded by the visionary whim, ofmaking literature the handmaid of fortune, or at least of securing something like independence, by exertion, as a man of letters."
Of course Dennie and his colleagues who drew their poetry from Pope and their prose from Addison had no sympathy with the new romantic poetry that at the time of the birth of thePort Foliowas issuing from the English Lakes. "William Wordsworth" said thePort Folioof 1809 "stands among the foremost of those English bards who have mistaken silliness for simplicity, and, with a false and affected taste, filled their papers with the language of children and clowns" (P. F., Vol. VII, p. 256).
The first American edition of Wordsworth was published in Philadelphia in 1802. It is exceedingly rare, and bears the following imprint:
LYRICAL BALLADS, | with | other poems: | In Two Volumes. | By W. WORDSWORTH. | [Motto] Quam nihil ad genium, papiniane, tuum! | Vol. I. | From the London Second Edition. |Philadelphia: |Printed and sold by James Humphreys,—At the N. W. Corner of Walnut and Dock street,1802.2vols.120.VOL. I,pp.xxii-159.VOL. II,pp.172.
The earliest notice of John Howard Payne is in thePort Folio, new series, Vol. I, p. 101 (1806). Payne was then a lad of fourteen years, and already editor of theThespian Mirrorin New York.
ThePort Folio, new series, Vol. II, p. 421, contains an account of the first dramatic performance composed in North Carolina, "Nolens Volens; or,The Biter Bit," written by Everard Hall, a gentleman of North Carolina.
Dennie died January 7, 1812, and was buried in St. Peter's churchyard. A monument was erected to him, and the inscription carved upon it, which errs only in the place of his nativity, was written by his friend, John Quincy Adams:
Joseph Dennie,Born at Lexington, Massachusetts,August 30, 1768;Died at Philadelphia, January 7, 1812;Endowed with talents and qualified by educationTo adorn the senate and the bar;But following the impulse of a geniusFormed for converse with the musesHe devoted his life to the literature of his country.As author of "The Lay Preacher,"And as first editor of thePort Folio,He contributed to chasten the morals, and toRefine the taste of this nation.To an imagination lively, not licentious,A wit sportive, not wanton,And a heart without guile, heUnited a deep sensibility, which endearedHim to his friends, and an ardent piety,Which we humbly trust recommended himto his God.Those friends have erected this tribute of theirAffection to his memory;To the mercies of that God is their resortFor themselves and for him.MDCCCXIX.
John Quincy Adams, who wrote the lines upon the monument, was an old and valued friend of Dennie's, and one of the earliest contributors to thePort Folio.
His "Tour Through Silesia," afterward reprinted in London in two octavo volumes, first appeared in thePort Folioin 1801. He also contributed to the first number of the magazine a version of the thirteenth satire of Juvenal, and intended to continue the translation of Juvenal, but abandoned the project when Gifford's work was announced. Abrother of John Quincy Adams, who was a resident of Philadelphia, had been a fellow-student with Dennie at Harvard.
The obituary notice of Dennie in thePort Folioof February, 1812, did not satisfy his friends. His life was related at greater length, accompanied by a silhouette, in May, 1816 (Port Folio, page 361). This time the affection and admiration for the man found right expression. It was said that Dennie had "erected the first temple to the muses on his natal shore;" and "when the Muse of History shall hereafter narrate the story of our rapid progress from ignorance, poverty and feebleness, to knowledge, splendor and strength, the name of Dennie will be inscribed among the most worthy of those who laboured to procure these invaluable blessings" (page 170).
A complete list of the contributors to thePort Foliowould be the history of literature in Philadelphia for the first quarter of this century. The articles were almost never signed, and while the thin disguises of assumed names are in most cases easily penetrable, some that occur infrequently are only identified with much difficulty.
The last editor of thePort Folio, Mr. John E. Hall, published in 1826 "The Philadelphia Souvenir, a collection of fugitive pieces from the Philadelphia press, with biographical and explanatory notes." The book was intended to be "a sort ofcairnto the memory of the circle of friends which Mr. Moore has commemorated in his immortal poems." The commemoration to which Mr. Hall refers is found in Moore's "eighth epistle," addressed "To the Honourable W. R. Spencer:"
Yet, yet forgive me, oh you sacred few,Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;Whom, known and lov'd through many a social eve,'Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave.Not with more joy the lonely exile scann'dThe writing traced upon the desert sand,Where his lone breast but little hop'd to findOne trace of life, one stamp of human kind,Than did I hail the pure, th' enlightened zeal,The strength to reason and the warmth to feel,The manly polish and the illumin'd taste,Which,—'mid the melancholy, heartless wasteMy foot has travers'd,—oh you sacred few!I found by Delaware's green banks with you.
The only pleasant memories of America that Thomas Moore carried back with him to England were of the "nights of mirth andmind" spent "where Schuylkill winds his way through banks of flowers." He was in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1804, and was lionized by thePort Folio; the eighth epistle in the "Poems Relating to America," from which the lines above are quoted, was written at Buffalo, and it was from Buffalo also that Moore sent to Dennie the manuscript of the beautiful "Lines on Leaving Philadelphia," which was published in thePort Folioof August 31, 1805 (Vol. V, p. 271), and reprinted in Brockden Brown'sLiterary Magazine, January, 1806 (Vol. III, p. 27).
LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING PHILADELPHIA.
Alone by the Schuylkill a wanderer rov'd,And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;But far, very far were the friends that he lov'd,And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh.O Nature, though blessed and bright are thy rays,O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,Yet faint are they all to the lustre that playsIn a smile from the heart that is fondly our own!Nor long did the soul of the stranger remainUnblest by the smile that he languished to meet;Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again,Till the threshold of home had been prest by his feet.But the lays of his boyhood had stol'n to their ear,And they lov'd what they knew of so humble a name;And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear,That they found in his heart something better than fame.Nor did woman—O woman! whose form and whose soulAre the spell and the light of each path we pursue;Whether sunn'd in the tropics or chill'd at the pole,If a woman be there, there is happiness too.Nor did she her enamouring magic deny,—That magic his heart had relinquished so long,—Like eyes he had loved washereloquent eye,Like them did it soften and weep at his song.Oh, blest be the tear, and in memory oftMay its sparkle be shed o'er the wanderer's dream;Thrice blest be that eye, and may passion as soft,As free from a pang, ever mellow its beam!The stranger is gone—but he will not forget,When at home he shall talk of the toils he has known,To tell with a sigh what endearments he met,As he stray'd by the wave of the Schuylkill alone.
It is interesting to remember that the woman in the poem,
Like eyes he had loved was her eloquent eye,
was the wife of Joseph Hopkinson, the author of "Hail Columbia," whose house at Fourth and Chestnut Streets was the resort of Dennie and the wits.
Moore also contributed to thePort Folio"When Time who steals our Hearts Away," "Dear, in Pity do not Speak," "Good-night, Good-night, and is it so?" "When the Heart's Feeling," "Loud sung the Wind," and "The Sorrow long has worn my Heart."
Among thePort Foliogentlemen who may have met "Anacreon" Moore, and who were Dennie's faithful coadjutors, were John Blair Linn, John Shaw, Francis Cope, Robert H. Rose, Thomas I. Wharton, Charles J. Ingersoll and his brother Edward, Condy Raguet, Robert Walsh, John Sanderson, John Syng Dorsey, Royall Tyler, Robert Hare, Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, Alexander Graydon, Josiah Quincy, John Leeds Bozman, William B. Wood, General Thomas Cadwalader, Philip Hamilton, Richard Rush, Richard Peters, Gouverneur Morris, Joseph Hopkinson, Horace Binney, Alexander Wilson, Charles Brockden Brown and Samuel Ewing. To this list must be added the bright names of Sarah Hall, Mrs. Elizabeth Ferguson and Harriet Fenno.
The editors and editorial helpers of thePort Foliofrom the death of Dennie until1827, when the magazine finally ceased, were Paul Allen, Nicholas Biddle, Dr. Charles Caldwell, Thomas Cooper, Judge Workman, John Elihu Hall, and his three brothers James, Thomas Mifflin, and Harrison.
John Blair Linn(1777-1804), the author of the "Powers of Genius" (1801), a popular work which was splendidly reprinted in London,[13]was the son of Dr. William Linn, of Shippensburg, who presided successively over the destinies of three colleges—Washington, Rutgers and Union—and was for many years a regent of a fourth—the University of the State of New York. John Blair was graduated from Columbia, read law with Alexander Hamilton, wrote an unsuccessful drama, "Bourville Castle," and on June 13, 1799, was installed as joint-pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. He engaged in controversy with Joseph Priestley, but his best achievements were "Valerian," a narrative poem, and "The Death of Washington"(1800). John Blair Linn was a brother-in-law of Charles Brockden Brown. A biographical sketch of him was written for thePort Folioin 1809 (page 21), and again in 1811 (89-97). Brown also published a review of his life and work in theLiterary Magazine, Vol. II, page 554.
John Shaw(1778-1809) was born in Annapolis, May 4, 1778, and lost at sea January 10, 1809. He studied medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, and visited Algiers as a ship-surgeon in 1798. He died on a voyage to the Bahama Islands.
The best poem that he contributed to thePort Foliowas:
Who has robbed the ocean cave,To tinge thy lips with coral hue?Who from India's distant waveFor thee those pearly treasures drew?Who, from yonder Orient sky,Stole the morning of thine eye?Thousand charms thy form to deck,From sea, and earth, and air are born;Roses bloom upon thy cheek,On thy breath their fragrance borne.Guard thy bosom from the day,Lest thy snows should melt away.But one charm remains behind,Which mute earth can ne'er impart;Nor in ocean wilt thou find,Nor in the circling air, a heart.Fairest! wouldst thou perfect be,Take, oh take that heart from me.
All his offerings to thePort Foliowere signed "Ithacus." His poems were collected and published in 1810, together with a memoir and extracts from his foreign correspondence.
Francis Copecontributed essays to thePort Folioin 1812. He was an occasional writer for several years, signing his papers with the initials "C. F."
Robert H. Roseis the author of the "Sketches in Verse," published in 1810, nearly all of which had previously appeared in thePort Folio, where the "Sketches" were termed "a kind of chalk drawings." One of them, "To a Market Street Gutter," was a parody of the "Ode to the Raritan," and was the cause of John Davis writing the "Pursuits of Philadelphia Literature."[14]
ThePort Folioof May, 1816 (page 361), has a frontispiece engraving of "Silver Lake," the seat of Robert Rose, in Susquehanna County, on the New York line.
ODE TO A MARKET STREET GUTTER.
A Specimen of Local Description.
O sweetest Gutter! though a clown,I love to see thee running down;Or mark thee stop awhile, then freeFrom ice, jog on again, like me;Or like the lasses whom I meet,Who, sauntering, stray along the street,As if they had nowhere to go!At times, so rapid is thy flow,That did the cits not wish in vainThou wouldst be in the pumps again,But like a pig, whose fates denyTo find again his wonted sty,You turn, and stop, and run, and turn,Yet ne'er shall find your "native urn."How oft has rolled down thy streamThings which in song not well would seem,Ere scavengers their scrapers pliedTo drag manure from out thy tide,Or hydrants bade thy scanty rillDesert its banks and cellars fill.Last Thursday morn, so very cold,A mornnotbetter felt than told,Then first in all its bright array,Did I thy "frozen form" survey;And, goodness! what a great big steeple!What sights of houses! and such people!!And then I thought, did I not stutter,But verse could, likesome poets, utter,How much I'd praise thee, sweetest Gutter!