The supreme poetic opportunity in the career of Nicholas Noyes occurred, however, some years earlier, when a Reverend friend of his, James Brayley of Roxbury, became afflicted with the Stone. To this unhappy man the poet, accordingly, sent some verses, both consolatory and congratulatory, which certainly ought to establish the fame of Nicholas Noyes as the most gifted and brilliant master ever produced in America, of the most execrable form of poetry to which the English language was ever degraded. In this poem, the author flatteringly expresses astonishment, not only at the fortitude of his friend, but at his versatility, both in doing and in suffering: "What! in one breath both live and die, That leaves unwhipt scarce five of ten ?" He then advances into the merits of his theme, using the name of his friend's disease as a pivot on which to revolve the antic and frantic creations of his fancy: "For if thou shouldst be Stoned to death, And this way pelted out of breath, Thou wilt like Stephen fall asleep, And free from pain forever keep." The poet then proceeds to spiritual exhortation: "That Stone which builders did refuse, For thy foundation choose and use. Yea, think what Christ for thee hath done, Who took an harder, heavier, Stone Out of thine heart;" and he asks him to remember this comforting truth, that, great as may be the sufferings inflicted on him by the Stone in this world, they are vastly less than the sufferings of the damned in the next, some of whom "roll the Sisyphean Stone." With this joyous reflection, he also invites him to anticipate the bliss of heaven, where "shall hid manna be thy fare, In which no grit nor gravel are; Yea, Christ will give thee a White Stone VII. For a considerable time before Nicholas Noyes had ceased from his detestable labors, the new school of poetry in England, represented first by Dryden and then by Pope, had found sympathetic pupils in America. With the advancing years of the first half of the eighteenth century, the authority of this school became complete among us. The unloveliness of the earlier manner of poetry disappeared; and, in place of it, we find the smooth and mechanic melody, the shallow elegance, the monotonous grace, that, to a large extent, served as substitutes for real thought and passion. During the earlier portion of the century, an English scholar, Francis Knapp, a graduate of St. John's college, Oxford, lived the life of a literary recluse, at Watertown, Massachusetts; and glorying in a personal acquaintance with Alexander Pope, he attempted to reproduce, on "the bleak Atlantic shore," and amid "solitudes obscene," the poetic notes of his master. The two eloquent preachers, Benjamin Colman and Mather Byles, both caught the new tune in English verse; and for This monstrous production was printed in "The Boston News-Letter," August 4-11, 1707, from which I copy these extracts. 2 Poem by Francis Knapp, among the "Recommendatory Poems," prefixed to Pope's works. See, also, "Biographical Sketches," by Samuel L. Knapp, 140-143; and Duyckinck's "Cycl. of Am. Lit." 77-78, Simons's ed. 1 nearly fifty years, with a fatal facility, to the vast admiration of their parishioners, they both continued to evolve twaddling variations upon it. The gifted daughter of Benjamin Colman, Jane Turell, was instructed by her father to regard Sir Richard Blackmore as a poet "far above all her praises," and, next "after the Reverend Doctor Watts," as "the laureate of the Church of Christ; "1 and to this knightly and medicinal bard she addressed verses-not unworthy of his own pen.2 In Roger Wolcott, we have still another early example of the American knack of doing a great many things, and of doing them tolerably well,-a knack that does not become intolerable, except when it thrusts itself, as it has a dangerous fondness for doing, into the sphere of poetry. Born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1679, in a wild frontier settlement, he had never school or school-master for a day; at the age of twelve, he was bound as an apprentice to a trade; at the age of twenty-one, he set up for himself in business in his native town; he was diligent, thrifty, studious; he turned his attention to public affairs, military and political, and became great in both; in a campaign for the conquest of Canada, in 1711, he was commissary of the Connecticut troops; at the capture of Louisburg in 1745, he was major-general; he also rose through many stages of civil promotion, becoming member of the colonial assembly and of the colonial council, county-judge, deputygovernor, chief-justice of the superior court; at last, in 1751, he became governor, and continued so for four years; he died in 1767, a wise, strong, apt, devout, and wholesome man. He began life in ignorance and poverty; he ended it, at nearly ninety years of age, crowned with earthly prosperity, full of honor and knowledge, a Nestor, a patriot, a sage. His one human frailty lurked in an invincible illusion that he was a poet; and, surely, the man who could storm "Memoirs of Mrs. Jane Turell," by E. Turell, 29-30. 2 Ibid. 28-29. and carry so many heights of difficulty-might he not hope to carry by storm the heights of Parnassus also? Other poets had found inspiration in patriotic memories; he also. Accordingly, in commemoration of the early valor and statesmanship of his own Connecticut, he wrote a long poem, with a title almost as prosaic, if possible, as the poem to which it belongs: "A Brief Account of the Agency of the Honorable John Winthrop, Esquire, in the Court of King Charles the Second, A.D., 1662, when he obtained a Charter for the Colony of Connecticut." This great historical poem, the author forbore to publish in his lifetime; but upon one occasion, even during his lifetime, he did venture into print with specimens of his verse, to wit, "Poetical Meditations, being the Improvement of some vacant Hours," published at New London in 1725. Probably the best passage in the book is this, entitled "The Heart is Deep": He that can trace a ship making her way Find out the cursed policies of man."? The ordinary stroke and height of its art may be seen in these lines, on Man: The honor of first publishing it fell to the Mass. Hist. Soc. See their Collections, first series, IV. 262-298. "Poetical Meditations," 12. Ibid. 5. "Pride goes before destruction, And haughtiness before a fall; Shall be endangered there withal.” 1 Upon the whole, the "Poetical Meditations" of Roger Wolcott are sad rubbish. He himself described them as "the improvement of some vacant hours." One finds it hard to imagine by what possibility such things could have been an improvement upon any sort of vacancy likely to occur in this good man's hours. For ourselves, we could have been content, had his hours remained vacant; and putting our own interpretation on his words, we thoroughly agree with the author himself when, in one place, he drops the judicious observation, Among writers of poetry intended to be humorous, we encounter, in this period, at least two that may require a moment's notice. One of these is John Seccomb, the author of "Father Abbey's Will," and of "The Letter to the Widow Abbey," a writer, who, by some untoward accident, has had an extraordinary notoriety in our early literary history. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1728, at the age of twenty; was pastor of a church in the town of Harvard from 1733 to 1757; then, vexed by a calumny born, it is said,3 of the jealous imagination of his wife, he withdrew from that parish and from the colony likewise, and betook himself as far as possible from the rumor of the scandal that had besmirched him, settling in Chester, Nova Scotia; where he served as minister, apparently in clean repute, during the remainder of his long life, dying in 1793. Had there been in him any germ of "Poetical Meditations," 7. 2 Ibid. 16. 3 J. L. Sibley, in his ed. of "Father Abbey's Will," 8-9. |