Tag Archives: social commentary

The Hartford Wits

from The Vision of Columbus (1787)

from The Vision of Columbus (1787)

by Joel Barlow

Joel Barlow (1754-1812), the last of the four original Hartford Wits, came to Yale in 1774 at the age of 20 after a stint at Dartmouth. Joel grew up on a farm in Redding, Connecticut, the fourth son of Samuel and Esther Barlow and one of nine total children. His humble upbringing as the son of a farmer led to a close friendship with classmate Noah Webster. 

Barlow became a French citizen in the winter of 1791-92, just as the French Revolution, of which he was a supporter, was coming to a head. Even during his European travels, Barlow never forgot his Connecticut heritage. The comical poem, The Hasty-Pudding: A Poem in Three Cantos (1793), written about his experience eating a cornmeal dish in a French inn that reminded him of the hasty pudding he grew up with, is perhaps the work that Barlow is best remembered for. In 1804, back in the United States, Barlow picked his The Vision of Columbus back up and expanded it to become The Columbiad: A Vision of Internal Peace (1807), which he hoped might restore American faith in democracy. Barlow served as a diplomat for the United States in Algiers and France before his death in 1812 in Warsaw, Poland. 

It is believed that Joel Barlow was inspired to begin this epic poem while in service to the Continental Army during the American Revolution. The Vision of Columbus provides an overview of America’s glorious past and promising future from the perspective of the explorer Christopher Columbus, who at the time was credited with the “founding” of America. In the poem, an angel visits an imprisoned Columbus to show him the country that he “discovered.”  Written shortly after Barlow became a minister, the influence of Christianity is clear, but Barlow also includes many ideas from the Enlightenment, advocating for knowledge, art, and science. Overall, Barlow applauds the “blest period” of time, when the “peaceful race / shall speak one language and one cause embrace,” which is in his mind, the cause of liberty.

The Vision of Columbus. Excerpt: Book IX.
“At this blest period, when thy peaceful race
Shall speak one language and one cause embrace,
Science and arts a speedier course shall find,
And open earlier on the infant mind.
No foreign terms shall crowd with barbarous rules.
The dull, unmeaning pageantry of schools;
Nor dark authorities, nor names unknown
Fill the learn’d head with ign’rance not its own
But truth’s fair eye, with beams unclouded, shine,
And simplest rules her moral lights confine;
One living language, one unborrow’d dress
Her boldest flights with happiest force express;
Triumphant virtue, in the garb of truth,
Win a pure passage to the heart of youth,
Pervade all climes, where suns or oceans roll,
And bid the gospel cheer the illumined whole.
As the glad day-star, on his golden throne,
Fair type of truth and promise of the sun,
Smiles up the orient, in his rosy ray,
Illumes the front of heaven, and leads the day
Thus soaring Science, daughter of the skies,
First o’er the nations bids her beauties rise,
Prepares the glorious way, to pour abroad
The beams of Heaven’s own morn, the splendors of a
Then blessed Religion leads the raptured mind,
Thro’ brighter fields and pleasures more refined
Teaches the roving eye, at one broad view,
To glance o’er time and look Existence thro’,
See worlds, and worlds, to Being’s formless end,
With all their hosts, on one dread Power depend,
Seraphs and suns and systems round him rise,
Live in his life and kindle from his eyes,
His boundless love, his all-pervading soul
Illume, sublime and harmonize the whole
Teaches the pride of man to fix its bound
In one small point of this amazing round
To shrink and rest, where Heaven has fix’d its fate,
A line its space, a moment for its date;
Instructs the heart a nobler joy to taste,
And share its feelings with another’s breast,
Extend its warmed wish for all mankind,
And catch the image of the Maker’s mind
While mutual love commands all strife to cease,
And earth join joyous in the songs of peace. 

 

Public domain.

Source: https://archive.org/details/visionofcol00barl/page/252/mode/2up
The Hartford Wits

from The Anarchiad  (1786-1787)

from The Anarchiad or American Antiquities: a poem on the restoration of chaos and substantial night (1786-1787)

Excerpt: American Antiquities. – No. IV. Extract from The Anarchiad, Book XXIII

by David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, and Lemuel Hopkins  

Dr. Lemuel Hopkins (1750-1801), principal author of The Anarchiad, was known as an innovative physician who specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis, to which he prescribed fresh air and a healthy diet over old-fashioned “cures” such as donkey’s milk instead cow’s milk. (He later wrote a satirical poem entitled “Epitaph on a Patient Killed by a Cancer Quack.”) Having received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale in 1784, Hopkins was aligned with the Wits in both their intellectual and literary pursuits as well as their Federalist political leanings.  Continue reading from The Anarchiad  (1786-1787) →

The Hartford Wits

from The Conquest of Canaan (1785)

from The Conquest of Canaan (1785)

Excerpt from Book IX.
 

by Timothy Dwight

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was 13 years old in 1765 when he came from his home in Northampton, Massachusetts  to New Haven, Connecticut to attend Yale. His father, Major Timothy Dwight (1726-1777), who had graduated from Yale in 1744, was a merchant and farmer who served in the Massachusetts legislature. His mother, Mary Edwards, was the daughter of the formidable preacher Jonathan Edwards, a central figure in the First Great Awakening. Timothy Dwight was first cousins with the politician Aaron Burr.  Continue reading from The Conquest of Canaan (1785) →

The Hartford Wits

from M’Fingal (1782)

from M’Fingal (1782), Canto First, or The Town Meeting

by John Trumbull

John Trumbull (1750-1831), a child prodigy born to the Watertown, Connecticut branch of the Trumbull family, entered Yale in 1763 at the age of 13.  John’s father, the Reverend John Trumbull (1715-1787), was the pastor of the Watertown Congregational Church. His mother, Sarah Whitman, was the daughter of a Farmington minister. Historical evidence indicates that the family enslaved at least six people. Reverend John Trumbull’s cousin, Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), would become Connecticut’s governor in 1769, serving through the Revolutionary War until 1784. One of Jonathan’s sons, also named John Trumbull (1756-1843), was the famous American artist, “the painter of the American Revolution.”  Continue reading from M’Fingal (1782) →

Charles Dudley Warner

Backlog Studies – Sixth Study, Part III

Backlog Studies – Sixth Study, Part III

by Charles Dudley Warner

Sixth Study

III
Herbert returned to us in March. The Young Lady was spending the winter with us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to be a winter month. It usually is in New England, and April too, for that matter. And I cannot say it is unfortunate for us. There are so many topics to be turned over and settled at our fireside that a winter of ordinary length would make little impression on the list. The fireside is, after all, a sort of private court of chancery, where nothing ever does come to a final decision. The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one’s own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence. A man left to himself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake; it is only when the wind blows that the boat goes anywhere. Continue reading Backlog Studies – Sixth Study, Part III →

Charles Dudley Warner

Backlog Studies – Third Study, Parts I, II, III, IV

Backlog Studies, Third Study

by Charles Dudley Warner

Third Study

I
Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he had turned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson’s.

The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of “pay-dirt;” one only needs to know how to “strike” it. An able man can make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think how many epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how many dramatists (though the age of the drama has passed) have wasted their genius in great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man who might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of this country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day after day upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening to wrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge his fellow-men rather than enlighten them. Continue reading Backlog Studies – Third Study, Parts I, II, III, IV →

Charles Dudley Warner

Backlog Studies – Second Study, Part IV

Backlog Studies, Second Study, Part IV

by Charles Dudley Warner

Second Study

IV

The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavy and black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, a background of inclemency for the illumined room with its pictured walls, tables heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and their occupants,—it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far through the crystal of the broad windows, in order that we may rightly appreciate the relation of the wide-jambed chimney to domestic architecture in our climate. We fell to talking about it; and, as is usual when the conversation is professedly on one subject, we wandered all around it. The young lady staying with us was roasting chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions required considerable attention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, ready to rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this or that guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about a fireside will not have any wants if they are not suggested. The worst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, and that later in the evening. And it is an open question whether you ought to associate with people who want that. Continue reading Backlog Studies – Second Study, Part IV →

Charles Dudley Warner

Social Screaming and Dinner-Table Talk

In these two short essays, Warner discusses normal behavior at occasions that ought to be fun: a party and a dinner. However, Warner uses a formal tone and over-analyzes the situations for comedic effect. This is a technique used by comedians to this day. However, Warner wrote at a time when anthropology was a new academic discipline and numerous public societies were dedicated either to studying civilizations or trying to reform public morals and campaign for social causes. Warner’s satire is to turn this kind of analysis back on mundane, unproblematic aspects of society. Continue reading Social Screaming and Dinner-Table Talk →

Noah Webster, Uncategorized

The Union of the American States, from Sketches of American Policy

The Union of the American States (1785)

by Noah Webster

No PERSON can be said to enjoy civil liberty who has no share in legislation, and no person is secure in society unless the laws are known and respected. 

In despotic governments, where the scepter is swayed by an individual, the ruler, whether denominated an emperor, a king, or a bashaw, having the sole right of making and executing laws, is the only person who enjoys any liberty. Every individual within his dominions is a slave. In this case, the interest of the individual, of the magistrate, and of the supreme power are all united, and government is of course as active as possible. Hence the vigor and decision of military operations when the power of the general is without limitation.  Continue reading The Union of the American States, from Sketches of American Policy →

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Noah Webster

An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution

An Examination Into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution Proposed by the Late Convention Held at Philadelphia: With Answers to the Principal Objections That Have Been Raised Against the System.

by Noah Webster (original attribution: “By A Citizen of America,”  Oct 17, 1787)

Of all the memorable eras that have marked the progress of men from the savage state to the refinements of luxury, that which has combined them into society, under a wise system of government, and given form to a nation, has ever been recorded and celebrated as the most important. Legislators have ever been deemed the greatest benefactors of mankind—respected when living, and often deified after their death. Hence the fame of Fohi and Confucius—of Moses, Solon and Lycurgus—of Romulus and Numa—of Alfred, Peter the Great, and Mango Capac; whose names will be celebrated through all ages, for framing and improving constitutions of government, which introduced order into society and secured the benefits of law to millions of the human race.  Continue reading An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution →

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