peraments had been forced so far apart that neither could appreciate what each other meant. So neither would have been true to the deepest traditions of their common race, had anything less than the Revolution resulted. Nine Sorts was lutionary of Revo Yet Literature. This deep national misunderstanding naturally gave rise to a great deal of publication. Most of this controversial, and of no more than passing interest. no consideration of literature in America can quite neglect it. Professor Tyler, who has studied this subject more thoroughly than anyone else—and who uses the term "literature" so generously as to include within it the Declaration of Independence, divides the literature of the Revolution into nine classes:* correspondence, state papers, oral addresses, political essays, political satires in verse, lyric poetry, minor literary facetiæ, drama, and prose narratives of experience. Most of this publication we may put aside once for all; it is only material for history. But we may wisely glance at a few of the better written works such as the political essays of James Otis, John Dickinson, and Francis Hopkinson, on the one side; and those of Samuel Seabury, and the satires in verse of Jonathan Odell, on the other. JAMES OTIS (1725-1783), of Massachusetts, whose Otis famous speech in 1761 against “writs of assistance" was based rather upon precedent than upon abstract rights, published in 1764 a pamphlet called The Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Proved. In this essay Otis declared that "by the law of God and nature" the colonists were entitled to all the rights of their fellow-subjects in Great Britain. Again, in 1765, Otis's famous Considerations *M. C. Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, I, 9-29. Dickin son. Hopkinson. Bishop Seabury. on Behalf of the Colonies, in a Letter to a Noble Lord, attacked the English idea of virtual representation and declared that the mother country should keep the colonies by nourishing them as the apple of her eye. Otis's writings show the temper of an advocate, trained in the English law, but so eagerly interested in his cause as to be less and less careful about precedent. JOHN DICKINSON (1732-1808), of Philadelphia, is best known by his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (1767). They are said to have gone through thirty editions in six months. The main object of these pamphlets, which were among the most influential of the period, was, in Dickinson's own words, "to convince the people of these colonies that they are, at this moment, exposed to the most imminent dangers; and to persuade them, immediately, vigorously, and unanimously, to exert themselves, in the most firm but most peaceable manner, for obtaining relief.” FRANCIS HOPKINSON (1737-1791), also of Philadelphia, was perhaps the most distinctly American writer of all. He had been in England between 1766 and 1768. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he died a United States District Judge. His only popular work is a poem-the Battle of the Kegs (1778)—which ridiculed the British army when it occupied Philadelphia. But some of his prose writings during the Revolutionary period show that he felt, as distinctly as people feel today, how widely the national temperaments of England and of America had diverged. Among the Loyalist writers who opposed the doctrines of such men as the foregoing, one of the most conspicuous was SAMUEL SEABURY (1729–1796), of Connecticut, later the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Under the name of a "Westchester Farmer," he wrote a brilliant series of pamphlets (17741775), which shrewdly pointed out the misfortunes which must ensue from some of the acts of the first Continental Congress. Nearer to pure literature, was the work of the Rev. Odell JONATHAN ODELL (1737-1818), of New Jersey, whose satires in verse, The Word of Congress, The Congratulation, The Feu de Joie, and The American Times, all published in 1779-1780, ridiculed the Revolutionists in the manner of the English satirist Charles Churchill (17311764). This eager controversial writing of the Revolution is of great historical interest. Professor Tyler sets it forth with a minuteness and impartiality which give his volumes on the period a value almost equal to that of the innumerable documents on which they are based. In a study like ours, which is chiefly concerned with pure literature, however, little of this work seems positively memorable. Decidedly more memorable we shall find the American writings of the years which followed. VIII LITERATURE IN AMERICA FROM 1776 TO 1800 REFERENCES THE FEDERALIST WORKS: *The Federalist, ed. P. L. Ford, New York: Holt, 1898; Hamilton's Works, ed. H. C. Lodge, 9 vols., New York: Putnam, 1885; Madison Papers, 3 vols., Washington: Langtree & O'Sullivan, 1840; Madison's Letters and Other Writings, 4 vols., Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1865; Jay's Correspondence and Public Papers, 4 vols., New York: Putnam, r89o-93. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: H. C. Lodge, Alexander Hamilton, Boston: Houghton, 1882 (AS); *J. T. Morse, Jr., The Life of Alexander Hamilton, 2 vols., Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1876; *W. C. Rives, Jr., History of the Life and Times of James Madison, 3 vols., Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1859; S. H. Gay, James Madison, Boston: Houghton, 1884 (AS); William Jay, Life of John Jay, New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833; *George Pellew, John Jay, Boston: Houghton, 1890 (AS); E. G. Bourne, Essays in Historical Criticism, New York: Scribner, 1901, pp. 113-156. BIBLIOGRAPHY: *P. L. Ford, Bibliotheca Hamiltoniana, New York, 1886; Winsor's America, VII, 259-260; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 155. SELECTIONS: Griswold, Prose, 93-95; Hart, Contemporaries, II, Nos. 173, 190, and III, Nos. 54, 72, 86; Stedman and Hutchinson, III, 432– 441 and IV, 110-127. HARTFORD WITS WORKS: None in print. The Miscellaneous Works of David Humphreys were published at New York in 1790; the Poetical Works of John Trumbull, LL.D., in two volumes, appeared at Hartford in 1820. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: C. B. Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow, New York: Putnam, 1895; F. Sheldon, "The Pleiades of Connecticut," Atlantic Monthly, XV, 187 ff. (Feb., 1865); *M. C. Tyler, Three Men of Letters [Berkeley, Dwight, Barlow], New York: Putnam, 1895; *Tyler, Lit. Hist. Am. Rev., I, 187-221, 427-450; J. H. Trumbull, "The Origin of M'Fingal,” The Historical Magazine, January, 1868. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Tyler, Lit. Hist. Am. Rev., II, 429 ff; Tyler, Three Men of Letters, 181-185. SELECTIONS: Duyckinck, I, 312-319, 362-365, 398-403; Griswold, Poetry, 42-47, 49–54, 59–63; Griswold, Prose, 82–84; Hart, Contemporaries, II, Nos. 164, 200, and III, No. 153; Stedman, 9-10; *Stedman and Hutchinson, III, 403-415, 422-429, 463-483, and IV, 46-57, 89-92, 167-168. FRENEAU WORKS: The Poems of Philip Freneau, ed. F. L. Pattee, 2 vols., Princeton, 1902-03. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: Mary S. Austin, Philip Freneau: A History of His Life and Times, New York: A. Wessels Co., 1901; S. E. Forman, The Political Activities of Philip Freneau, Baltimore, 1902 (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series XX, Nos. 9-10); *Tyler, Lit. Hist. Am. Rev., I, 171-183, 413-425, and II, 246–276. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 98-100; V. H. Paltsits, A Bibliography of the Separate and Collected Works of Philip Freneau, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1903. SELECTIONS: Duyckinck, I, 336–348; Griswold, Poets, 35-39; Stedman, 3-8; *Stedman and Hutchinson, III, 445-457. BETWEEN the close of the Revolution and the beginning of the nineteenth century, our newly independent country was adrift; the true course of our national life was slow in declaring itself. Until the very end of the eighteenth century, we accordingly remained without a lasting literature. But, like the earlier period, that last quarter of this eighteenth century produced a good deal of publication at which we must glance. American Our public men, Hamilton, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Writings of Gouverneur Morris, John Adams, Madison, Jay, and others, wrote admirably. They were earnest and thoughtful; they had strong common sense; they were far-sighted and temperate; and they expressed themselves with that dignified urbanity which in their time marked the English of educated people. In purely literary history, however, they can hardly be regarded as much more important |