On his return to the United States, in 1786, he renewed his intimacy with his old friends, the authors of the "Columbiad" and "McFingal,” and with Dr. Samuel Hopkins, with whom he engaged in writing the "Anarchiad," a political satire, in imitation of the "Rolliad,” a work attributed to Sheridan and others, which he had seen in London. Colonel Humphreys subsequently filled many military and diplomatic offices. He died at New Haven, in February, 1818, at the age of sixty-five. An interest attaches to the first known sonnet produced by an American author, as well as to the author himself, entirely independent of the artistic merits of the one, or the amount of poetical genius possessed by the other. Colonel Humphreys's sonnet, however, on the subject of "The Soul," is by no means a contemptible performance. It shows the writer to have been a clever versifier, and a correct thinker. Its conclusion, particularly, is stately and sonorous. One other sonnet by him has come down to us, in the form of an address to the Prince of Brazil, whose acquaintance Colonel Humphreys made during his residence as Minister in Lisbon. It bears the date of July, 1797, and is a manly, unaffected effusion, expressed in scholarly terms, and with some musical and rhythmic facility.* * The principal poems of Colonel Humphreys are "An Address to the Armies of the United States," written in 1772; a poem on “The Happiness of America,” written during his residence in London and Paris; "The Widow of Malabar, or the Tyranny of Custom"; and lastly, a "Poem on Agriculture." His "Miscellaneous Works" were published (in octavo) in New York City, first in 1790, and again in 1808. As regards his style, "he seems to have aimed only at an elegant mediocrity, and his pieces are generally simple and correct in thought and language." (Griswold's "Poets and Poetry of America.") The next American sonnets, in the order of time, are those by Richard B. Davies, a native of New York, who died when quite a young man, in 1799; and those by Robert Treat Paine, a poetaster, famous in his generation, whose verses have long since deservedly sunk into oblivion. His sonnets, like everything else he wrote, are formal and lifeless, though ambitious. No feeling more intense than vanity seems to have inspired them, and in execution they lack both taste and imaginative force. I have reproduced them, together with the sonnets of Paine's immediate predecessor, Davies, as literary curiosities only. From the period at which we have now arrived to the rise of those generally considered the fathers of our poetic literature, namely, Allston, Dana, Bryant, Longfellow, etc., I have been unable to find, after consulting all the sources at my command, a single sonnet, good, bad, or indifferent.* It is therefore with the sonnets * Since the above was written, I have accidentally discovered in the columns of the old Charleston "City Gazette and Daily Advertiser," for Wednesday, February 14, 1798, an original sonnet, signed W. R., and no doubt intended as a valentine. It reads thus: "They tell me that in opening life the hue 66 Of rosy health bloomed on my glowing cheek; That my full eye sparkled with liquid blue, And seemed with strong intelligence to speak : 'They tell me too, that in luxuriance wild Waved my dark locks; perchance they tell me truth, Makes in advancing age the sorrier youth. "So has it been with me; in vain I seek To trace the roseate hue of healthful red; And gone the flowing honors of my head; "But still remains unchanged my better part, of Washington Allston that our critical task properly begins. One would have supposed that a man of Allston's delicate and true feeling for beauty, his fine yet vigorous imagination, and the opportunities he enjoyed of studying Italian poetry among the scenes and associations that gave it birth and passionate life, would naturally have shown some partiality for the sonnet in its highest, most artistic forms. When, however, we examine the few sonnets he has left us, we are disappointed, not merely in the paucity of their numbers, but in their want of constructive care. The thought is always appropriate, often suggestive, occasionally full of the insight and force of imagination characteristic of the writer in his happiest moods; but the same sort of dissatisfaction which Mr. Hunt expresses while reverting to the sonnets of Milton is apt to be felt, I think, after an impartial perusal of those by Allston. He could have done so much better, had he willed it. His genius, endowed with the constructive faculty, might have found herein one of its fittest modes of strictly poetical expression; and, indeed, after very just deduction from the merits of his sonnets, as they now remain, they are perhaps the best specimens of his poetic works. The sonnets by William Cullen Bryant are only four ▸ in number. Of these, the subjects have been drawn chiefly from impressive aspects of the natural world, associated with the moral ideas and feelings of which such aspects are suggestive. They are delicate and beautiful productions; belonging, it is true, to the illegitimate school, yet so thoroughly possessed by "the laconic soul of the sonnet" that none but a hypercritical reader would pause to note the defect of form. Nevertheless, turning hypercritical ourselves for the moment, we venture to hint how much all Bryant's sonnets would have gained in melody, if the concluding terzettos had not invariably been burdened by a couplet. The effect of such a close, even in sonnets in other respects perfect, is to give an incongruous tone to the versification, very much resembling the discord that would follow upon the introduction of a deep bass note at the end of a lyric that should be sung throughout in tenor. As for the sentiment, the fancy, the genuine philosophical perception of Bryant's sonnets, they could hardly be overrated. In a somewhat different strain are the sonnets of Longfellow. As might have been anticipated from the peculiar genius and culture of the poet, they have generally adapted themselves to the legitimate model, and are, moreover, admirable specimens of a rare descriptive power and picturesque imagination. The too frequent desire to illustrate by material images and comparisons what is abstract in thought and emotion as when, for example, the " stern thoughts and awful" of the Florentine are likened to "Farinata rising from his fiery tomb " -constitutes, perhaps, the only reasonable objection that can be brought as an offset to their unquestionable grace, purity, and "purple richness" of diction. gorgeousness of color and language "The Evening Star" is remarkable. For "THE EVENING STAR. "Lo! in the painted oriel of the West, Like a fair lady at her casement shines The evening star, the star of love and rest! And then anon, she doth herself divest And from thy darkened window fades the light." In the last edition of Percival's Poems there are many sonnets of merit. It surprised me to remark the general finish and grace of their execution; for the author's impulsive fancy, ready command of language, and, I may add, false principles of art, have caused him in the majority of his works to err on the score of diffuseness, and a careless ease of manner and expression. He says himself, in one of his prefaces, that his verse is very far from bearing the marks of the file and burnisher"; and that he likes “to see poetry in the full ebullition of feeling and fancy, foaming up with the spirit of life, and glowing with the rainbows of a glad inspiration." 66 Believing thus in original genius, unrestrained and unmodified by the moulding powers of art, it is not astonishing that Percival should have left so little poetry – sidering of course the quantity of verse he has published - that is likely long to survive him. con His sonnets are beautiful productions. Illegitimate in form, they yet show a true conception of what the sonnet ought to be, in tone, general structure, and character of melody. In several cases the poet has invented a form of his own, by a novel and a not ineffective disposition of rhymes, as, for example, in the following: |