Lodge's Estimate. - Henry Cabot Lodge, in his biography of Alexander Hamilton, passes judgment upon him in the following words : "It is given to but few men to impress their individuality indelibly upon the history of a great nation. But Hamilton, as a man, achieved even more than this. His versatility was extraordinary. He was a great orator and lawyer, and he was also the ablest political and constitutional writer of his day, a good soldier, and possessed of a wonderful capacity for organization and practical administration. He was a master in every field that he entered, and however he may have erred in moments of passion, he never failed." SUGGESTIONS FOR READING Jefferson: The Declaration of Independence, Notes on Virginia. Alexander Hamilton: The Federalist. HELPFUL BOOKS T. E. Watson's Thomas Jefferson. The Hartford Wits. During the Revolutionary War a little group of writers in Connecticut, familiarly known as the "Hartford Wits," made a desperate effort to write something that should be creditable to themselves and place American literature on a higher plane than it had been before. The leaders of this group were John Trumbull (1750-1831), Joel Barlow (1754-1812), and Timothy Dwight (1752-1817). Trumbull's most pretentious work was McFingal, a burlesque epic, modeled after Butler's Hudibras, which was immensely popular in its day. Joel Barlow decided that America should be glorified in a grand epic, which he entitled Columbiad, but its fame has passed into obscurity along with its author. His poem, Hasty Pudding, which is mock-heroic in its nature, is filled with the spirit of rustic life and deserves a reading. Timothy Dwight, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, was president of Yale College, and the author of a so-called epic, The Conquest of Canaan, which has scarcely a redeeming virtue. Besides this little group, there were many writers during the Revolution who attempted satirical verse; but it is in Philip Freneau's work that we catch the first glimpse of genuine poetry. It is true that the glimpse is fleeting, yet an occasional verse is distinguished by true poetic feeling. Stedman, in his American Anthology, introduces that work with selections from Freneau, assigning more space to him than to any other poet before the time of Bryant. Youth and Education. This "father of American poetry was born January 2, 1752, in New York City, where his father, Pierre Freneau, was a prosperous wine merchant. Shortly after his birth the family removed to a farm of about a thousand acres near Monmouth, New Jersey, upon which, after a very checkered career, Philip spent the last years of his life. In 1768 he entered the college at Princeton and became at once one of the dominant spirits in that republican institution, for Freneau, even as a boy, evinced a strong desire for freedom. He had as classmates two men who afterward became conspicuous in the making of American history, James Madison and Aaron Burr. Freneau began writing poetry very early in his college days, one of his attempts being The Prophet Jonah, which is well conceived for a boy of sixteen. The subject of a young man's commencement oration is usually an index of what he has been thinking about during his college course. If this be true in the case of Freneau, we have additional proof of his love for poetry and the cause of freedom, for his Commencement address was written in blank verse on The Rising Glory of America. Adventures. After leaving college, his experiences were many and varied.. At first he taught school, then, in accordance with the wishes of his father, who had died just before he entered Princeton, he planned to study theology, but this he liked less than teaching. Later he tried the law, but soon found that this was no more congenial to his tastes than the other two vocations. He made a voyage to the West Indies in 1778, visiting Jamaica and Santa Cruz, where he wrote The Beauties of Santa Cruz and The House of Night: A Vision, which Richardson considers the best poem written in America before 1800. While he was in these islands, the dark side of slavery was revealed to him, and he used his vigorous pen in denouncing the dreadful system. In 1780 he was captured by a British cruiser and placed on a prison ship in New York harbor, rightfully called the Scorpion, where he received very harsh treatment. After his release he recorded his experiences in one of his most bitter satires, The British Prison-Ship. As a Writer. Freneau was a voluminous writer upon various subjects. He produced war lyrics, descriptions of nature, translations from the classics, and poems of the sea. The largest part of his verse is a bitter invective against the British in general, King George III and his generals in particular. Freneau was an ardent re |