Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817.

The third writer in this group is Timothy Dwight. The subject of his epic -- for his inspiration was also epical -- is Religion. It was entitled “The Conquest of Canaan”; and it appeared in 1785. It is described by its author as "the first of the kind which has been published in this country." The spirit of the Revolution is felt in the treatment of even this ancient theme; and the ingenious device by which the great event of American history in the latter part of the eighteenth century is linked with this epic recital of Israelitish wars is very amusing.

The most interesting example of his prose is the “Travels in New England and New York” -- four volumes of letters fictitiously addressed to an English correspondent, and filled with observations made during his summer travels in his gig.

In 1777 and 1778, Dwight served as an army chaplain and employed his lyric gifts with patriotic fervor. His best remembered song “Columbia, Columbia” was the fruit of this period. The fact that he was the author also of the hymn “I Love thy Kingdom, Lord” should certainly not be forgotten.

Revolutionary Songs and Ballads.

Among the most interesting compositions of the Revolutionary period, are the numerous songs and ballads, hundreds of which were written during the years of the war. Many of these were mere doggerel, but some -- as such songs of the people often are -- were characterized by a homely, hearty strain, which in spite of crudity bears its own appeal, and stirs the passion of men without the aid of art. The names of their writers were often unknown even in that generation. Sometimes these compositions took the form of camp-songs like that to “The Volunteer Boys” (1780). Sometimes they are religious songs, one of the best examples of which is found in “The American Soldier's Hymn”.

But more numerous were the narratives in crude and vigorous verse of battle, of incident, and of individual exploit, such as we find in an anonymous poem on the “Battle of Trenton” (December 26, 1776). The account of the action is very brief, the surprise, the victory, the trophies of battle are tersely described.

One of the best naval ballads of the time was “The Yankee Man of War”, a stirring record of an exploit in 1778, wherein the bravery of John Paul Jones is enthusiastically celebrated. Its unknown author writes like an eye-witness of the incident.

Francis Hopkinson, 1737-91.

The humorous ballad on “The Battle of the Kegs” illustrates another phase of the patriotic activity in verse. The author of these rollicking lines was Francis Hopkinson, a man full of vivacity and an irresistible humor which frequently broke forth in trenchant satire and clever verse. In “The Battle of the Kegs”, his irrepressible wit runs merry riot. The incident which inspired the ballad belongs to the beginning of 1778. Some Yankee inventor having constructed a sort of infernal machine for the purpose, a lot of kegs were equipped with the mechanism and charged with powder; these kegs were then sent floating down the Delaware toward Philadelphia, where the British force under Howe was quartered for the winter. Whether actually dangerous or not, these suspicious-looking kegs caused great excitement as they came floating by the city and provoked a general bombardment from ships and garrison. No harm resulted to the English from this fleet of Yankee invention, but Hopkinson's doggerel rhymes which followed appear to have had a most beneficent effect upon the Continentals. The ballad proved to be the most popular composition of the war period.

Francis Hopkinson's impassioned “Camp Ballad” (1777) exhibits the real lyric power of the poet in his serious mood.

THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. TRANSITION: POETRY, DRAMA, FICTION.

Coincidentally with the satires, the epics, the songs and ballads, which owed their measure of inspiration immediately to the spirit of that strenuous time, we note also the appearance of a different school of verse which meant infinitely more in the development of our literary art.

Philip Freneau, 1752-1832.

Among the satirists of the Revolutionary epoch, there was none whose pen was readier or sharper in its thrusts than Philip Freneau; and among the poems of the war itself, none holds a firmer place in the literature than Freneau's brief elegy on the valiant who died at Eutaw Springs. But Freneau's strongest claim for remembrance lies in a few compositions which mark the beginning of nature poetry in America.

The Nature Poems.

The compositions which have done most for Freneau's fame as a poet belong to his earlier years. In these productions, we find the beginning of genuine nature poetry in America. “To a Honeybee”, addressed to a wandering rover from the hive resting luxuriously on the rim of the poet's glass, is written with the same charming simplicity of style and with a dainty touch of humor befitting the theme.

Of a different tenor are two poems in pensive key: “The Indian Student” and “The Indian Burying-ground”. In all these compositions, we feel the spirit of a true poet who loves Nature and responds to her appeals spontaneously and without artifice. There had been a few previous attempts at this form of treatment in American verse, but they had been isolated instances and had failed of the excellence attained by Freneau. These poems are therefore the more worthy of note. Among other poems are: “The Parting Glass”, “On the Ruins of a Country Inn”, “The House of Night”.

A singular example of precocious literary development is found in the work of a negro girl, Phillis Wheatley. Brought from Africa at the age of seven or eight, she became a slave in the household of a family in Boston. She learned rapidly under the guidance of her mistress and began to write verse in the conventional style of the English classical poets -- verse as good as that produced by any of their American imitators. A volume of Phillis Wheatley's poems was published at London in 1773, the genuineness of the work being vouched for by prominent people in Boston. At the appearance of this volume, Phillis could have been scarcely twenty years of age.

Early American Plays.

The first American play to be performed by a professional company was “The Contrast”, written by Royall Tyler (1757-1826). The theme of this comedy was patriotic; a contrast is drawn between those who ape foreign fashions and those who hold to the plain but wholesome manners of home. In this play the Yankee, Jonathan, is introduced effectively as a typical character. Tyler produced other plays, a novel and several poems.

In 1789, another American comedy was produced “The Father, or American Shandyism”. This was the work of William Dunlap (1766-1839) of New Jersey. This play, one of some sixty written by Dunlap, is the most worthy of them. Dunlap became a theatrical manager, and later wrote a “History of the American Theatre” (1832).

The American Novel.

The first native experiment in this form of fiction, modeled -- very distantly -- after Richardson's Pamela, was entitled “The Power of Sympathy”. This work has a curious history. Madam Sarah Wentworth Morton, its author, for the plot utilized a miserable scandal which had blighted her own family life, and made the identity of her principal characters so obvious that the persons most interested bought the entire edition from the publisher -- and “The Power of Sympathy”, thus incontinently suppressed (1789), was never published in that generation.

Two other New England women appeared thus early in print with narratives of somewhat similar sort "founded on fact." Susanna H. Rowson, an English lady who had established a school for girls in Boston, was the author of a very popular novel “Charlotte Temple, a Tale of Truth” (1790), and of other novels, including a sequel “Lucy Temple”, which was published in 1828.

Hannah W. Foster wrote, in 1797 “The Coquette or The History of Eliza Wharton, a Novel Founded on Fact”. Mrs. Foster was the wife of a clergyman and wrote with a moral purpose. In the novel the theme of indiscretion and desertion is treated in the sentimental, didactic style which characterized many of the English novelists of the same period. The popularity of these two stories outlasted their own generation.

Hugh H. Brackenridge wrote a satirical romance called “Modern Chivalry or The Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague O' Regan, his Servant”, the first part of which appeared in 1792, the second, in 1806; and the playwright Royall Tyler also entered the lists with a two-volume narrative entitled “The Algerine Captive”, in 1799. Neither of these works, however, can be regarded as possessing the interest or importance of Mrs. Rowson's and Mrs. Foster's "tales of truth" in the annals of American fiction. It is with “Charlotte Temple” and “The Coquette” that the novel of manners appears.