Part 1 (1/2)
The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850.
by Albert Smyth.
PREFACE.
This study in the history of the Philadelphia magazines was undertaken at the request of Professor H. B. Adams, and the results were first read at a joint-meeting of the Historical and English Seminaries of the Johns Hopkins University. At a later date they were again read before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The subject has been found so rich, and the materials so interesting, that, in spite of my best efforts to be brief, the article has grown into a book. It has been with no little distrust that I have made this wide excursion from my chosen studies, but the generous aid and encouragement of friends, who are learned in our local lore, have given me heart to complete and to publish the results of these researches.
A complete list of the Philadelphia magazines is impossible. Many of them have disappeared and left not a rack behind. The special student of Pennsylvania history will detect some omissions in these pages, for all that has here been done has been done at first hand, and where a magazine was inaccessible to me, I have not attempted to see it through the eyes of a more fortunate investigator. I have done my best to make the story, dull and dreary as it surely is at times, not unworthy of its subject, or of the city that it describes, and of which I grow fonder year by year.
My grateful thanks are due to my friends, Professor H. B. Adams, Dr.
James W. Bright, Mr. Charles R. Hildeburn, Professor John Bach McMaster, Hon. S. W. Pennypacker and Mr. F. D. Stone, for thoughtful suggestions and valuable information.
I am deeply indebted to Mr. George W. Childs for his unfailing interest and a.s.sistance. To Mr. George R. Graham, Dr. Thomas Dunn English, Mr.
John Sartain and Mr. Frank Lee Benedict I owe some of the most important facts in this little volume.
ALBERT H. SMYTH.
_Philadelphia, 5 February, 1892, 126, South Twenty-second Street._
”Sweet Philadelphia! lov'liest of the lawn,”
Where rising greatness opes its pleasing dawn, Where daring commerce spreads th' advent'rous sail, Cleaves thro' the wave, and drives before the gale, Where genius yields her kind conducting lore, And learning spreads its inexhausted store:-- Kind seat of industry, where art may see Its labours foster'd to its due degree, Where merit meets the due regard it claims, Tho' envy dictates and tho' malice blames:-- Thou fairest daughter of Columbia's train, The great emporium of the western plain;-- Best seat of science, friend to ev'ry art, That mends, improves, or dignifies the heart.
_The Philadelphiad_, Vol. I, p. 6, 1784.
INTRODUCTION.
To relate the history of the Philadelphia magazines is to tell the story of Philadelphia literature. The story is not a stately nor a splendid one, but it is exceedingly instructive. It helps to exhibit the process of American literature as an evolution, and it ill.u.s.trates perilous and important chapters in American history. For a hundred years Pennsylvania was the seat of the ripest culture in America. The best libraries were to be found here, and the earliest and choicest reprints of Latin and English cla.s.sics were made here. James Logan, a man of gentle nature and a scholar of rare attainments, had gathered at Stenton a library that comprehended books ”so scarce that neither price nor prayers could purchase them.” John Davis, the satirical English traveller, who said of Princeton that it was ”a place more famous for its college than its learning,” did justice, despite of his own nature, to Logan and to Philadelphia when he wrote: ”The Greek and Roman authors, forgotten on their native banks of the Ilissus and Tiber, delight by the kindness of a Logan the votaries to learning on those of the _Delaware_.” The eagerness of Philadelphia social circles for each new thing in literature enabled booksellers to import large supplies from England and to undertake splendid editions of notable books. Dr. Johnson was made to feel amiable for a moment toward America on being presented with a copy of _Ra.s.selas_ bearing a Philadelphia imprint.
The first American editions of Shakespeare and of Milton, of ”Pamela”
and of ”The Vicar of Wakefield” were printed in Philadelphia. In the same city, in 1805, Aristotle's ”Ethics” and ”Politics” were published for the first time in America. A little later came the costly ”Columbiad” and the great volumes of Alexander Wilson. Robert Aitken, at the Pope's Head, issued the first English Bible in America in 1782, and his daughter, Jane, printed Charles Thomson's translation of the Septuagint in four superb volumes in 1808. Robert Bell successfully compiled Blackstone's _Commentaries_ in 1772, ”a stupendous enterprise.”
Bell did much by his good taste and untiring industry to advance the literary culture of the city. ”The more books are sold,” he declared in one of his broadsides, ”the more will be sold, is an established Truth well known to every liberal reader, and to every bookseller of experience. For the sale of one book propagateth the sale of another with as much certainty as the possession of one guinea helpeth to the possession of another.”
”The Philadelphiad” (1784) gives us a glimpse of the motley society that loitered in Bell's Third Street shop.
”Just by St. Paul's, where dry divines rehea.r.s.e, _Bell_ keeps his store for vending prose and verse, And books that's neither--for no age nor clime, Lame, languid prose, begot on hobb'ling ryme.
Here authors meet who ne'er a sprig have got, The poet, player, doctor, wit and sot; Smart politicians wrangling here are seen Condemning Jeffries or indulging spleen, Reproving Congress or amending laws, Still fond to find out blemishes and flaws; Here harmless _sentimental-mongers_ join To praise some author or his wit refine, Or treat the mental appet.i.te with lore From Plato's, Pope's, and Shakespeare's endless store; Young blus.h.i.+ng writers, eager for the bays, Try here the merit of their new-born lays, Seek for a patron, follow fleeting fame, And beg the s.l.u.t may raise their hidden name.”
The Philadelphia magazines, from Franklin's to Graham's, furnished ample opportunities for ”young blus.h.i.+ng writers eager for the bays.” Their articles, it is true, were often a kind of yeasty collection of fond and winnowed opinions, but among these shallow fopperies there would at times be heard a strain of higher mood. Nor is the story of these magazines altogether without its pathos. American writers, after the Revolution which lost England her colonies, felt themselves to be under the opprobrium of the literary world. They felt keenly the sneers of English men-of-letters, and winced under injustice and invective that they were not strong enough to resent. The insolence of British travellers was especially provoking. J. N. Williams, a Philadelphian, stung by some offensive criticism by a wandering Englishman, wrote, ”America looked not for a spy upon the sanct.i.ty of her household G.o.ds in the stranger that sat within her gates; she scarce supposed that the hand of a clumsy servant like the claws of the harpies could utterly mar and defile the feast which honest hospitality had provided.”
The _Port Folio_, in 1810, was moved indignantly to declare that foreign critics grounded their strictures ”upon the tales of some miserable reptiles who, after having abused the hospitality and patience of this country, levy a tax from their own by disseminating a vile ma.s.s of falsehood and nonsense under the denomination of Travels through the United States.”
Sydney Smith waved American literature contemptuously aside in the _Edinburgh Review_. _The Quarterly_ was brutal in its attacks upon timid transatlantic books. William G.o.dwin reproached American ignorance, and proceeded to locate Philadelphia upon the Chesapeake Bay. No wonder that the _Port Folio_ exclaimed in 1810, ”The fastidious arrogance with which the reviewers and magazine makers of Great Britain treat the genius and intellect of this country is equalled by nothing but their profound ignorance of its situation.”
The insolence of Great Britain affected American writers in two ways.