THE HISTORICAL MAGAZINE, AND NOTES AND QUERIES, CONCERNING THE ANTIQUITIES, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY AMERICA. VOL. III. SECOND SERIES. MORRISANIA, N. Y. HENRY B. DAWSON. 1868. THE HISTORICAL MAGAZINE. 12915 Vol. III. SECOND SERIES.] JANUARY, 1868. I-THE ORIGIN OF "M'FINGAL." Gage's Proclamation of June 12th, 1775, in Burlesque Verse, by John Trumbull. BY HON. J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL, PRESIDENT OF THE CONNECTICUT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. JOHN TRUMBULL, the author of M'Fingal, after his admission to the bar in Connecticut, 1 prosecuted the study of law at Boston, in the office of John Adams, from November, 1773, till September, 1774. During this period, as the 1. For the Life of Trumbull, see the Memoir prefixed to the Hartford Edition of his Poetical Works (1820, two volames, octavo), EVEREST's Poets of Connecticut, and DUYOKINCK's Cyclopaedia of American Literature, i. 308-312. The following Notes, preserved by President Stiles in his Itinerary [MS.], make a considerable addition to what the poet has elsewhere told us of himself and to the gleanings of his biographers: "Memoirs Jno. Trumbull Esq., Poet. (Ex ore John Trum"bull, May 14, 1788.) "1750, Apr. 24 N. S. born at Westbury [now Watertown]. "Et 2. Began Primer and learned to read in half-year, "without school. Mother taught him all the primer "verses, and Watts' Children's Hymns, before [he could] "read." "Et. 4. Read the Bible thro'-before 4. About this time "began to make Verses. First poetry" [he read was] "Watts' Lyrics, and could repeat the whole,-and the "only poetical book he read till æt. 6. "Et. 5. Attempted to write and print his own verses. "Sample, large hugeous letters. This first attempt "at writing, by himself, and before writing after copy. "Scrawls. "Et. 6. In Spring began to learn Latin and learned half "Lilly's Grammar before his father knew it: catched it, "as his father was instructing Southmayd" [William; grad. Yale, 1761; son of Capt. Daniel, of Waterbury.] "Same Spring, was 6 yrs. old. Learned Quae genus by "heart in a day. Tenacious memory: quick, too. "Et. 9. On a wager laid-to commit to memory one of "Salmon's Pater Nosters in a quarter of an hour-he ef"fected it, reciting by memory the P. N. in Hungarian "and Malabar, in Salmon; and retains it to this day. I "heard him repeat the Hungarian. "Et. 7. In Sept. 1757, entered Yale College-having fitted "for College in one year and half; having learned Cor"dery, Tully's XII Select Orations, Virgil's Eclogues, and "all the Eneid (not Georgics,) and 4 Gospels in Greek."* [No. 1 Memoir prefixed to the revised edition of his Works informs us, "he frequently employed his "leisure hours in writing essays on political subjects, in the public gazettes; which had, perhaps, a greater effect from the novelty of the manner, and the caution he used to prevent any discovery of the real author." Shortly after his return to Connecticut, he became a contributor 66 to the Hartford Courant, then published by Ebenezer Watson, and afterwards by Hudson & Goodwin.2 Gage,-whose early confidence in his ability to play the lion' had much abated since his arrival at Boston, in May, 1774,—was now apparently relying more upon the pen than the sword, to awe America to submission. In M'Fingal (Canto ii., p. 31) Trumbull retraces "The annals of his first great year: "While strokes alternate stunn'd the nation, "Et. 8. Read Milton, and Thompson's Seasons-Telemachus "the Spectators. These, all the poetical and belles [lettres] "books till æt. 13. "Et. 13. Sept. 1763. Entered College again and resided "there. Before this, read Homer, and Horace, and Tully "De Oratore. Versified half the Psalms before æet. 9, when "he first saw Watts' Psalms, and laid aside (and burnt) his "own. Before 4 æt., upon first reading Watts' Lyrics, he "cried because he despaired of ever being able to write "Poems like Watts. "Et. 17. Grad. at Y. C. and resided as Dean's Scholar till [he] "took [his] 2d degree. Then lived one year at "Wethersfield. "Et. 21. Elected Tutor Y. C. and in office 2 years. "1773. Resigned Tutorship, having studied law one year. "1774. One year studied law under Dr. John Adams in Bos"ton; and left, Sept. 1774. "1775. Fall, wrote two first Cantos of M'Fingal; printed, "Jan. 1776. "1782. Jan. to April, wrote the rest of M'Fingal; printed, "September." 2. In 1772, while a Tutor of Yale, he published the first Part of The Progress of Duliness,-a poem "designed to expose "the absurd methods of education which then prevailed;" a second Part, with another Edition of the first, was printed in January, 1773; and the third Part appeared in July. In May, 1772, he had published in the Courant, An Elegy on the Death of Mr. Buckingham St. John, one of his earliest and most intimate friends. Shortly before leaving Boston, (August, 1774,) he wrote An Elegy on the Times, which was printed in one of the Boston papers. All these publications were anonymous. Into this wordy warfare, Trumbull entered with spirit and success. Imitations in burlesque of Gage's magnificent and turgid Proclamations, "In true sublime of scarecrow style," had occasionally appeared in the newspapers of Boston and in Connecticut. At so fair a mark, ridicule could hardly miss its aim; and these squibs were perhaps quite as popular and effective as if their versification had been smoother or their wit more refined. The Proclamation of the twenty-fifth of July, 1774, "for the Encouragement of Piety and "Virtue," &c., and that of the twenty-eighth of September, proroguing the General Court of Massachusetts, were thus re-produced, in doggerel, and printed (one, or both, perhaps, being copied from a Boston paper,) in the Courant, of the third of October. In the Boston Gazette of the fourteenth of November, a Proclamation prohibiting compliance with the requisition of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress for the payment of taxes to a Receiver of their own appointment, &c., appeared in Hudibrastic verse: "Since an Assembly most unlawful, "The powers of government to assume; "Dar'd rashly seek their own salvation," &c. This burlesque may have been previously published elsewhere. Its merit is too slight to impart any interest to the question of its origin. It appears, however, to have attained a transient popularity and was widely copied by the patriotic press. It may be found (re-printed from the Pennsylvania Journal, of the twenty-eighth of June), in MOORE's Diary of the Revolution, vol. i., pp. 93-94. In the Courant of the seventh and the fourteenth of August, another version of the Proclamation made its appearance,-and this last was unquestionably written by Trumbull. Itis somewhat remarkable that not only the evidence of authorship, but the composition itself, should have escaped the observation of so many diligent gleaners of the newspaper literature of the Revolution. It is more surprising that no editor of M'Fingal has detected in the burlesque Proclamation, the origin of the "modern epic," to which more than fifty of the two hundred and sixteen lines of this earlier composition were transferred by its author. In a letter to the Marquis de Chastellux, Trum bull states that "the poem of M'Fingal was "written merely with a political view, at the "instigation of some leading members of the "first Congress, who urged [him] to compose a 66 satirical poem on the events of the Campaign "in the year 1775." The Memoir prefixed to the Edition of 1820, adds, that the friends at whose solicitations the first Canto was written "imme This was re-printed the following week in the Courant, and in several other newspapers. Whether this and other similar compositions,diately procured it to be published at Philadelpublished in the Courant, in 1774, were from Trumbull's pen, is not certain. His characteristic "caution to prevent discovery" has rendered it impossible to convict him of the authorship, except upon the internal evidence. In some publications of the following year, such evidence is more direct; and in one instance, at least, it is positive and conclusive. On the nineteenth of June, 1775, the Courant published GAGE'S Proclamation of the twelfth, extending free pardon to "the infatuated multi"tude," on their return to allegiance, but proscribing Samuel Adams and John Hancock, with "all their adherents, associates, and abetters," and establishing Martial Law throughout Massachusetts. The Proclamation re-appeared in the same paper, on the seventeenth of July, in burlesque verse, as "phia, where Congress was then assembled." It made its appearance in an octavo pamphlet of forty pages,-printed by William and Thomas Bradford,—in January, 1776, but with the date of 1775. At this time, the author "had also "formed the plan of the [whole] work, sketched 66 some of the scenes of the third Canto, and "written the beginning of the fourth." (The first Canto, as originally published, was subsequently divided into two.) The composition was suspended until after the surrender of Cornwallis had established the success of the Revolution, when the poem was completed and published in Hartford, by Hudson & Goodwin, on the tenth of September, 1782. Before the close of the year, (December 28,) a second edition was issued by a rival Hartford publisher, Nathaniel Patten,3 with |