CHRONOLOGY OF BRYANT'S LIFE. FOUNDED ON PARKE GODWIN'S BIOGRAPHY OF BRYANT. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 1794. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3d of this year. In regard to the exact site of the house in which he was born, Mr. Bryant says, in a statement printed in Parke Godwin's biography of him: "My father and mother then lived in a house, which stands no longer, near the center of the township, amid fields which have a steep slope to the north fork of the Westfield River, a shallow stream brawling over a bed of loose stones in a very narrow valley. A few old apple-trees mark the spot where the house stood, and opposite, on the other side of the way, is a graveyard in which sleep some of those who came to Cummington while it was yet a forest. It was a small house constructed of square logs, afterward removed and placed near that occupied by Daniel Dawes. On my first birthday there is a record that I could already go alone, and on the 28th of March, 1796, when but a few days more than sixteen months old, there is another record that I knew all the letters of the alphabet." 1797. In September of this year the family moved to Plainfield. "The poet was puny and very delicate in body, and of a pain xxxiii fully nervous temperament," said Senator Dawes in his Centennial Address, at Cummington, in June, 1879. "In a few years, when he had become famous, those who had been medical students with his father when he was struggling for existence with the odds very much against him, delighted to tell of the cold baths they were ordered to give the infant poet in a spring near the house each early morning of the summer months, continuing the treatment in spite of the outcries and protestations of their patient, so late into the autumn as sometimes to break the ice which skimmed the surface." Long years afterward Mr. Bryant wrote: "I have lately been to look at the site of that house. Nothing is left of it but the cellar and some portion of the chimney among a thick growth of brambles." 1798. our "In May," says Mr. Bryant, writing of this year, family moved again to the distance of about two miles, and occupied a house in Cummington. Not a trace of it now remains. The plow has passed over its site and leveled the earth where it stood, but immediately opposite are yet seen the hollow of an old cellar and the foundation stones of a house where there lived a neighbor. From my new abode, before I had completed my fourth year, I was sent to the district school." 1799. "In April," continues the poet, "when I was in my fifth year, our family went to live at the homestead of my grandfather on the mother's side, Ebenezer Snell, which I now possess, and which became my father's home for the rest of his lifetime. While living at the homestead I went with my elder brother, Austin, to a district school kept in a little house which then stood near by on the bank of a rivulet that flows by the dwelling. The education which we received here was of the humblest elementary kind, stopping at grammar, unless we include theology, as learned from the Westminster Catechism, which was our Saturday exercise. I was an excellent. almost infallible speller, and ready in geography. but in the catechism, not understanding the abstract terms, I made but little progress." 1803. "In my ninth year," writes Mr. Bryant, "I began to make verses, some of which were utter nonsense. A year or two later my grandfather gave me as an exercise the first chapter of the Book of Job to turn into verse. I put the whole narration into heroic couplets, one of which I remember as the first draft: His name was Job, evil he did eschew. To him were born seven sons; three daughters too! I paraphrased afterward the Hundred and Fourth Psalm." 1804-1806. "In the Spring of 1804," Mr. Bryant says further, in a passage given by Mr. Godwin, "when I was ten years old I composed a little poem, the subject of which was The Description of the School, and which I declaimed on the schoolroom floor. It was afterward printed in the Hampshire Gazette, the county newspaper published at Northampton. Meantime I wrote various lampoons on my schoolfellows and others, and when the great eclipse of the sun took place in June, 1806, I celebrated the event in verse. So my time passed in study, diversified with labor and recreation. In the long winter evenings, in the stormy winter days, I read with my elder brother books from my father's library-not a large one, but well chosen. I remember well the delight with which we welcomed the translation of the Iliad by Pope, when it was brought into the house. My brother and myself, in emulation of the ancient heroes, made for ourselves wooden shields, swords and spears, and fashioned old hats in the shape of helmets with plumes of tow, and in the barn, when nobody observed us, we fought the battles of the Greeks and Trojans over again. I was always, from my earliest years, a delighted observer of external nature; the splendors of a winter daybreak over the wide wastes of snow seen from our windows, the glories of the autumnal woods, the gloomy approaches of the thunder-storm and its departure amid sunshine and rainbows, the return of spring with its flowers, and the first snowfall of winter." 1808. Mr. Bryant further states: "In February, 1808, General Woodbridge, of Worthington, a place about four miles distant from our dwelling, died. He was a promising and popular lawyer, held in high esteem by the Federal party to which he belonged, and was much lamented. My father suggested this event as a subject for a monody. I composed one beginning with these lines: The word is given-the cruel arrow flies With death foreboding aim, and Woodbridge dies! In silent sorrow heaves the sigh sincere! "About this time the animosity with which the two political parties-Federalists and Republicans as they called themselves-regarded each other was at its height. My father was a Federalist, and his skill in his profession gave him great influence in Cummington and the neighboring county. I read the newspapers of the Federal party, and took a strong interest in political questions. Under Mr. Jefferson's administration, in consequence of our disputes with Great Britain, an embargo was laid in 1807 upon all the ports of our republic, which, by putting a stop to all foreign commerce, had a disastrous effect on many private interests, and embittered the hatred with which the Federalists regarded their political adversaries, and particularly Mr. Jefferson. I had written some satirical lines apostrophizing the President, which my father saw, and thinking well of them, encouraged me to write others in the same vein. This I did willingly, until the additions grew into a poem of several pages. This poem was published in Boston, 1808, in a little pamphlet entitled The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times—A Satire. By a Youth of Thirteen. I had the honor of being kindly noticed in the Monthly Anthology, a literary periodical published in Boston, which quoted from, it the paragraph that had attracted my father's attention. It was decided that I should receive a college education, and I was accordingly taken by my father to the house of my mother's brother, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Snell, in North Brookfield, to begin the study of Latin. I began with the Latin gram mar, went through the Colloquies of Corderius, in which the words, for the ease of the learner, were arranged according to the English order, and then entered upon the New Testament in Latin. Next the Eneid of Virgil. While I was occupied with the Eneid my father wrote to me advising me to translate some portion of it into English verse. Accordingly I made a rhymed translation of the narrative of A Tempest in the first book. Somebody showed me a piece of paper with the title The Endless Knot, the representation of an intricate knot in parallel lines, between which were written some homely verses. I thought I could write. better ones, and my head being full of the ancient mythology, I composed this." (Life, p. 29.) 1809. "While I was at my uncle's," the poet continues, "another edition of my poem, The Embargo, was published in Boston. It had been revised and somewhat enlarged, and a few shorter poems were added. I went through the Eneid in my Latin studies, and then mastered the Eclogues and the Georgies, after which my uncle put into my hands a volume of the select Orations of Cicero. In the beginning of July, having read through the volume of Cicero's Orations, I left the excellent family of my uncle, where I had been surrounded by the most wholesome influences and examples, and returned to Cummington, after an absence of just eight calendar months. I took my place with the haymakers on the farm, and did, I believe, my part until the 28th of August, when I went to begin my studies in Greek with the Rev. Moses Hallock, in the neighboring township of Plainfield, where he was the minister. I committed to memory the declensions and conjugations of the Greek tongue with the rules of syntax, and then began reading the New Testament in Greek, taking first the Gospel of St. John. At the end of two calendar months I knew the Greek New Testament from end to end, almost as if it had been Eng |