The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 Part 5

[9] When British reviewers styled Dennie "the American Addison," the _Aurora Gazette_ broke forth into the following horse-laugh: "Exult, ye white hills of New Hampshire, redoubtable Monadnock and Tuckaway! Laugh, ye waters of the Winiseopee and Umbagog Lakes! Flow smooth in heroic verse, ye streams of Amorioosack and Androscoggin, c.o.c.khoko and Coritocook! And you, merry Merrimack, be now more merry!"

His first experience in journalism was as editor of the _Tablet_ in Boston, May 19, 1795. The paper lived just thirteen weeks.

Dennie next tried his Bohemian fortunes in Walpole, N. H., and contributed to the _Farmer's Weekly Museum_, a good and popular journal that had been founded in 1790, the papers ent.i.tled "The Lay Preacher,"

upon which rests his literary fame. Of this magazine he became editor in 1796, and at once gathered about him a number of n.o.ble swelling spirits who contributed racy and original reading to the "Farmer's"

subscribers.[10]

[10] Dennie always remained faithful to his New England friends. T. G.

Fessenden had been one of the contributors to the _Farmer's Museum_; when his "Terrible Tractoration" appeared, Dennie wrote to the _Port Folio_, "To Connecticut men studious either of Hudibrastic or solemn poetry, we look with eager eyes for the most successful specimens of the inspiration of the Muse." Fessenden was the last to maintain the fame of the "Hartford Wits;" and the glory of "McFingal," and "The Conquest of Canaan" and the "Anarchiad," and the "Political Green house" and "The Echo" faded with the failing of the _Farmer's Museum_.

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 d.i.c.kins, a son of John d.i.c.kins of the _Methodist Magazine_, he began, January 3, 1801, the publication of the _Port 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 made him 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 the _Port 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 the _Port 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 those _noctes ambrosianae_ of the Tuesday 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 the _Port Folio_.

In the introduction to the magazine Dennie stated that the word _Port Folio_ was 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 t.i.tles, frequently select a name not intimately connected with the nature of their work. We hear of the _Mirror_ and the _Aurora_; but what relation has a literary essay with a _polished plane of gla.s.s_, or what has politics to do with the _morning_?[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 their _commentary_.... 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 Maecenas.... Authors far elevated above the mire of low avarice have thought it debas.e.m.e.nt to make literature common and cheap."

[11] The editor of the _Aurora_ retorted in kind, and dubbed the _Port Folio_ "Portable Foolery."

The _Port Folio_ at once sprang into popular favor. In the life of Josiah Quincy, by his son, we read, "The _Port Folio_ was 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 the _Aurora_, 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 are _at peace_ with that power--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 "the _Republic_ of letters;" with Dennie it was the _Monarchy_ of letters. Several articles ran through the _Port Folio_ of 1801 on the sentiment and style of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing that famous doc.u.ment 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 with _acting_ like 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 murder _English_?" 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 cla.s.sical poets ever conjured up from the vasty deep of their Pagan h.e.l.l."

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 I finish 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 epithet _Cabotian_ instead 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. _Lengthy_ he stigmatizes as "a foolish, flat, unauthorized, unmusical Indian word".[12] In conclusion (_Port Folio_, I, page 370), "let then the projected volume of _foul and unclean_ things bear his own Christian name and be called NOAH'S ARK!"

[12] "Lengthy" is the American for long. It is frequently used by the _cla.s.sical_ writers of the New World.--(John Davis' "Travels in the United States," page 126.)

We meet the first notice of Benjamin West, as a boy of 19 years, in Bradford's second _American Magazine_. In the first volume of the _Port Folio_ we find the first of a long series of sketches in praise of West's genius and generosity. "It is a melancholy and miraculous circ.u.mstance," 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 t.i.tles, honours and gold to an independent Republican who, remaining at home, might have had the n.o.blest and amplest opportunities of _giving away_ as 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 young American 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 inst.i.tution.

The _Port Folio_ is 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 the _Port Folio_ of 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 a.s.sistance 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 the _Port Folio_ suspended, Lord Chancellor of England, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst. To Lyndhurst, as the greatest of orators, Lord Lytton dedicated his _St. Stephen's_.

The leading article of the _Port Folio_ of May 28, 1803, is devoted to young Leigh Hunt, and treats him as an American poet, and a.s.sures the public that he "is a deserving object of patronage." Again, in June 11, 1803, some sonnets and odes are quoted from Hunt's _Juvenilia_, 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 married sisters, daughters of Stephen Shewell, merchant, in Philadelphia. Leigh Hunt, in 1810, writing in the _Monthly Mirror_, gave an eloquent and tender description of his mother, Mary Shewell, which was reprinted in the _a.n.a.lectic Magazine_ of Philadelphia, in 1814. "Here, indeed," he exclaimed, "I could enlarge both seriously and proudly; for if any one circ.u.mstance 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 the _Port Folio_, in his "Memoirs of a Life Chiefly Pa.s.sed 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley, before he went to England and became master of Castle Goring.

Many another 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.serted and believed that Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, of New York, was the first American editor of Shakespeare. A few jottings from the _Port Folio_ will show that he has too rashly been placed upon the pinnacle, and that the honor justly belongs to Joseph Dennie.

The _Port Folio_ of 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 the _Port Folio_ he 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, of making 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 the _Port Folio_ was issuing from the English Lakes. "William Wordsworth" said the _Port Folio_ of 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._ 2 _vols._ 120. VOL. I, _pp._ xxii-159. VOL. II, _pp._ 172.

The earliest notice of John Howard Payne is in the _Port Folio_, new series, Vol. I, p. 101 (1806). Payne was then a lad of fourteen years, and already editor of the _Thespian Mirror_ in New York.

The _Port 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, August 30, 1768; Died at Philadelphia, January 7, 1812; Endowed with talents and qualified by education To adorn the senate and the bar; But following the impulse of a genius Formed for converse with the muses He devoted his life to the literature of his country.

As author of "The Lay Preacher,"

And as first editor of the _Port Folio_, He contributed to chasten the morals, and to Refine the taste of this nation.

To an imagination lively, not licentious, A wit sportive, not wanton, And a heart without guile, he United a deep sensibility, which endeared Him to his friends, and an ardent piety, Which we humbly trust recommended him to his G.o.d.

Those friends have erected this tribute of their Affection to his memory; To the mercies of that G.o.d is their resort For 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 the _Port Folio_.

His "Tour Through Silesia," afterward reprinted in London in two octavo volumes, first appeared in the _Port Folio_ in 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. A brother 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 the _Port Folio_ of 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 sh.o.r.e;" 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 the _Port Folio_ would 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 a.s.sumed names are in most cases easily penetrable, some that occur infrequently are only identified with much difficulty.

The last editor of the _Port 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 of _cairn_ to 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.