THE commauwc‘m 6F ”

.........

THE MGNTHW ANTHOLOGY AME} Hos-mm “V'EW;.~ __ x ,

110 THE bEvEmpMENT as THE GbLnEN AGE
OF AMERICAN Limits: '

TIE»?! For than 919ng of Ph. D.
MICE-Nam STATE UNWERSTY
Sue: ’Neuenswand'ar Greene

19 6'4

 

 

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled
The Ccntribution cf the Manthly Anthclcgl

and B "ton Review to the Golden
Age of American Letters

 

presented by

Sue Neuenswander Greene

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Eh D degree in English

Qua, 3.71.19;

Major professor

 

Date

 

0-169

 

 

‘74—.m—uiflfi . . 7 , - , , v—- *

LIBRARY

Michigm State
University

 

ABSTRACT

THE CONTRIBUTION OF
THE MONTHLY ANTHOLOGY, AND BOSTON REVIEW
TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN IETTERS

 

by Sue Neuenswander Greene

Historians of American literature have paid too little attention
to early nineteenth-century Boston, assuming that except for the devel-
opment of Unitarianism nothing significant happened, despite the unlike-
lihood of this assumption. This study shows that there was considerable

intellectual activity and that the Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review

 

(l803-1811), along with the papers of its contributors (including
Phineas Adams, Paul Allen, Joseph Buckminster, Edmund Dana, William
Emerson, Alexander Everett, John Gardiner, John Kirkland, Andrews
Norton, Josiah Quincy, James Savage, William Shaw, Samuel Thacher,
George Ticknor, Joseph Tuckerman, William Tudor, Arthur walter,
Benjamin Welles, William Wells, and Sidney Willard), is an excellent
source for its study. It offers evidence that the emergence of the
Golden Age of American literature was to some extent due to the
intellectual ferment represented in the Anthology; that in several
reSpects the genius of that age had begun to emerge during the
Anthology era and that the Anthology itself was instrumental in

its emergence.

The Anthology contributed to the development of American
literature in several respects. It was a conscious attempt of a
group of literary-minded men to create a milieu out of which a
literature could arise and, in the process, to contribute to that
literature. Through presenting the public with a literary journal,

the Anthologists hoped to turn its attention away from politics,

2 Sue Neuenswander Greene
commerce, and religion; but, believing that literature could not grow
in a vacuum but would be the product of a general awakening of
intellectual activity, they fostered any area that might contribute
to such an awakening. They attempted to generate interest in belles-
lettres by reviewing past and contemporary works published in America;
guiding the public and potential writers toward a high standard of
literature; and serving as a repository for such an American literature.
To a great extent they were successful.

That the Anthologists were not more successful was due to the
very reasons an American literature had not already developed more
fully and the very factors they were trying to combat. Boston was not
yet willing to support a literary periodical, and there was no profession
of men of letters to provide a constant source of material or to support
such a venture. The Anthology lacked a permanent full-time editor,
and all of its contributors were engaged in other professions. Although
the Anthology provided a higher standard of literature than any
American periodical had before, it did not publish enough pieces that
could win it either immediate or future fame.

The main contribution of the Anthology towards the Golden
Age was in its presentation of ideas that matured into the two main
branches of that age--Romanticism and Transcendentalism. Through
both the literary and theological controversies in which it engaged,
the Anthology revealed an increasing negation of authoritarianism.

In literature one sees the growth away from neoclassical stress upon
rules, models, and imitation as a basis for creativity towards greater
respect for the innate powers of the individual and his response to
his immediate surroundings. In theology one sees with the rejection

of Calvinism a growing insistence upon the necessity of free inquiry

3 Sue Neuenswander Greene
and private judgment of Scriptural revelation, an insistence that
helped lead to a belief in the study of man's perfection through
nature. Thus, in both areas the Anthology anticipated what was
perhaps the most pervasive characteristic of the Golden Age of
American literature. Not only did the Transcendentalists stress
the importance of the individual‘s seeking truth, beauty, or goodness
through his immediate experiences, but the poetry of the Romanticists
shows a similar tendency, and the works of other writers not so easily

categorized are in themselves products of such a spirit.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF

THE MONTHIX ANTHOIOGY, AND BOSTON REVIEW

 

TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN IETTERS

By

Sue Neuenswander Greene

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

196M

PREFACE

This dissertation had its beginnings in a seminar offered by
Professor Russel B. Nye on early nineteenth-century America. Professor
Claude M. Newlin had already suggested to me a study of the religious

views in the Christian Examiner as a possible dissertation topic, and

 

Professor Nye's seminar offered an opportunity for me to learn back-
ground material for such a study and, as a special project, to
examine a major periodical of early nineteenth-century Boston preceding

the Christian Examiner. By the end of the seminar it seemed to me that

 

not only was less known about this earlier period, but that it was more
interesting as a period of transition than the later one. MOreover,

the anthly Anthology, and Boston Review held more interest for me,

 

inasmuch as it was primarily a literary rather than a religious
periodical. For these reasons I felt I might contribute more through

a study of the Monthly Anthology than through a study of the Christian

 

Examiner.

The paper I wrote during Professor Nye‘s seminar treated only
the theological views in the Anthology and its controversies with the
Panoplist, much of this paper now making up a significant part of
Chapter III of the dissertation. Besides Professor Nye, Professor
Newlin and Professor Norman Grabo read and criticized the paper, and
until his death Professor Newlin was my major adviser on the disserta-
tion. It is, however, to Professor Nye, who became my major adviser,
that I owe thanks for criticism of the whole dissertation, as well as

for guidance during the time I was completing my graduate work. I am

ii

also grateful to Professor Clyde Henson and Professor John Yunck,
the other members of my graduate committee, for reading and
criticizing the dissertation.

There are several libraries that assisted me in locating
both printed works and manuscripts and in giving me permission to
use and quote from the manuscripts: the Boston Athenaeum, the
Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the
Congregational Library, and the American Unitarian Association
Historical Library, in Boston; Houghton Library, the Harvard University
Archives, and the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, in Cambridge;
the Essex Institute, in Salem; the American Antiquarian Society, in
WOrcester; and Yale University Library, in New Haven. I am especially
grateful to Mr. waldo Forbes for permission to use and quote from the
William Emerson Papers and to Mr. Walter Muir Whitehill for making
the journals of Arthur Maynard Walter available to me.

Miss Judith Reynolds of the Western Reserve Historical Society
and Mrs. Beverley Schell procured for me various books that were not
readily available, and Miss Meredyth Bacon typed the dissertation.
Finally, my husband, Jack, helped and encouraged me throughout my

graduate work.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

PREFACEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ..... ii

Chapter

I. THE DANGERS AND DUTIES OF MEN OF LETTERS ........... .. 1

II. ACRITICALTRBIJNALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 90

III. ASPIRIT OF INQUIRY...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 136

FREEING THE GENII: A CONCLUDING ESSAX....................... 209

BIBLIOGRAPI-IYOOOOOOOOO00......0.0.0.0...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... 222

CHAPTER I
THE DANGERS AND DUTIES OF MEN OF IETTERS

In his memoir of Ralph waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes

observes:

The nest is made ready long beforehand for the bird which
is to be bred in it and to fly from it. The intellectual
atmosphere into which a scholar is born, and from.which he
draws the breath of his early mental life, must be studied if
we would hope to understand him thoroughly.l

What Holmes says is applicable not only to Ralph waldo Emerson, but
to the whole group of intellectuals who created what has come to be
regarded as the Golden Age of American literature. If we are to
understand either American Romanticism or American Transcendentalism
thoroughly, we must study the intellectual atmosphere out of which
it grew. The early nineteenth century, Holmes says, had been "thrown
into confusion" by the Revolutionary war, so that the literary life
of the country had suffered.
The active intellects of the country had found enough to keep
them busy in creating and organizing a new order of political
and social life. Whatever purely literary talent existed was
as yet in the nebular condition, a diffused luminous Spot here
and there, waiting to form centres of condensation.
One of these nebular spots "had been brightening in and about

1

Boston for a number of years,’ and within the first few years of

 

1Oliver Wendell Holmes, The writings of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Vol. II: Ralph waldo Emerson, John Lothrop Motley (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), p. 19.

 

 

2
the nineteenth century "a small cluster of names became visible
as representing a modest constellation of literary luminaries,"
whose "light reached the world, or a small part of it, as
reflected from the pages of 'The Monthly Anthology.'"2

The Monthly Anthologyyand Boston Review3 was the attempt

 

of a few literary-minded men of early nineteenth-century Boston

to help create an American literature. Extremely conscious of

the paucity of literary productions America had hitherto presented
to the world and mindful of the difficulties that a new nation,
ravaged by war and beset by the problems of establishing social,
economic, and political order, faced in trying to remedy its
literary life, these men were eager both to create a milieu out

of which a literature could arise and, in the process, to contri-
bute to that body of literature they hoped to foster. To a remark-
able degree they succeeded in both. This success was due almost
entirely to the extent to which they assumed the duties of men

of letters.

Throughout the Anthology are descriptions and definitions
of the literary life, statements intended as guides to those young
Americans who had the inclination and ability to pursue such a life.
By far the most complete of these is "The Dangers and Duties of Men

of Letters," an address by Joseph Stevens Buckminster to the Harvard

 

2Hol.mes, II, 19-20.

3For a complete collation of the Monthly Anthology,
including the changes in its complete title, see M. A. DeWOlfe
Howe (ed.), Journal of the Proceedings of the Society Which
Conducts The Monthly Anthology & Boston Review, October 3, 1805,
to July 2LyI811 (Boston: The Boston Athenaeum, 1910}, pp. 307-313.

 

 

 

 

3
College Phi Beta Kappa Society, delivered in August 1809 and
published in the Anthology a month later. The Revolutionary War,
Buckminster observed, had had a severely detrimental effect upon
American scholarship, in particular American literature. It had
left "the minds of men in an unsettled state," but more than that
our forms of education were becoming more popular and super-
ficial; the knowledge of antiquity began to be despised; and
the hard labour of learning to be dispensed with. Soon the
ancient strictness of discipline disappeared; the curriculum
of studies was shortened in favour of the impatience or the
necessities of candidates for literary honours; the pains of
application were derided, and a pernicious notion of equality
was introduced, which has not only tainted our sentiments,
but impaired our vigour, and crippled our literary eminence.
The present generation had "many steps to recover." There was
much to be done before "the men of letters who are to direct our
taste, mould our genius, and inspire our emulation; the men, in
fact, whose writings are to be the depositories of our national
greatness" would make their appearance. Yet there were indications
that the time was not far off when such men would appear:
if we are not mistaken in the signs of the times, the genius
of our literature begins to show symptoms of vigour, and to
meditate a bolder flight; and the generation which is to
succeed us will be formed on better models, and leave a
brighter track.
Buckminster’s listeners, youths not much younger than Buckminster
himself, were, then,"destined . . . to witness the dawn of our
Augustan age, and to contribute to its glory."
It was essential, if these youths were to contribute to the
rise of an American literature, that they know the duties and dangers
of men of letters. In America especially, where political matters

had come to be of such importance, it was a temptation for a young

man "to turn his literary credit to the quickest account by early

A
making himself of consequence to the people, or rather to some of
their factions." Instead of giving his whole attention to learning
and writing, he yielded "himself up to their service," just at the
time when "his powers [were] yet in their bloom." Once having
turned his attention to "the profligate production of demagogues"
and "the minutiae of local politicks," his mind became "so much
dissipated, or his passions disturbed, that the quiet speculations
of the scholar can no longer detain him." Others went to the
opposite extreme. "Disgusted at the grossness which belongs to
the common contests and occupations of active life,” they gave
themselves up entirely to "the luxurious leisure of study." There
they soon discovered that it was "easier to read than to think,
and still easier to think that to act." In this passive isolation,
these potential men of letters became no less corrupted than those
who yielded to public service. But even the men who did devote
themselves to "active learning" encountered still another temptation,
that of losing themselves "in superficial and unconnected inquiries,"
of employing their time and talents "in loose and undirected studies."
There were several reasons for succumbing to this temptation: the
want of leisure time or "the necessity of turning our knowledge to
immediate account"; our defective system of education due partly
to the inadequate provision made for instructors; the isolation of
individual scholars in so vast a country; the antipathy of our
government to scholarly endeavors; the absence of suitable rewards
for literary accomplishments. But these adverse conditions made
it even more essential that men of talent discipline themselves

if there was to be an American literature.

5
MOSt of the difficulties that beset American men of

letters, however, were common to men of letters everywhere, and
most of them could be overcome. It was the duty of those who
wished to devote themselves to letters to overcome them; it was
incumbent upon them to "remember that, in the eye of reason and
of Christianity, simple unprofitableness is always a crime."
It was especially important that once a man had acquired the
learning necessary to a man of letters he made that learning
productive and not merely feed "his selfishness or his pride of
knowledge."

That learning, whatever it may be, which lives and dies with

the possessor, is more worthless than his wealth, which

descends to his posterity . . . the mere man of curious

erudition may stand, indeed, as an object of pOpular admira-

tion, but he stands like the occasional palaces of ice in

the regions of the north, the work of vanity, lighted up

with artificial lustre, yet cold, useless, and uninhabited,

and soon to fall away without leaving a trace of their

existence.
Buckminster's listeners, then, were obligated to "inquire what
you may do for mankind. Learning is not a superfluity; and

' More-

utility must, after all, be the object of your studies.'
over, they had to remember that "literature, whether it be her
pride, or her misfortune, will disdain to divide the empire of
your heart." Although "genius . . . sometimes bursts through"
all the "impediments" that attended a literary life, it was
unlikely that men who did not possess genius could hope to
produce anything noteworthy unless their devotion to a literary

A

life was complete.

 

"For Buckminster's oration, see The Monthly Anthology, and
Boston Review (cited hereafter as M.A.), VII (September, 1809),
145-58. ‘—

 

 

6

Buckminster's address is a fair summary of the views held
by other Anthologists. All agreed that "we are yet in our literary
infancy, just 'lisping in numbers,‘ just pressing, with faint and
faultering voice, our new and doubtful claim to literature." But
although "America has not yet produced (and it would be injustice
to expect it from her) poets, who can in any measure stand in
competition with those of England,"5 there were "symptoms of the

6

dawn of taste and love of learning in our country." There was

little doubt that America was "capable of knowing and exercising

all the arts, that can possibly meliorate and adorn our condition."7
There were, however, numerous disadvantages to overcome.

Not the least of these was the present interest of the American

people in things other than literature, especially in money.

"Wealth is power,‘ seemed to be America's motto; whatever power

she possessed owed much to the growth of commerce, almost none to
her accomplishments in the arts. Politics and theology, likewise,
had absorbed much of America's attention, so much that what written
works America had contributed to the world had been mainly in these
areas. Whatever talent America possessed, moreover, was not devel-

oped. Not only was there a lack of galleries and libraries, not

to mention foundations and patrons, but the schools themselves were

 

594.5, II (April, 1805), 167-70.

6WilliamTudor, "A Discourse, Intended to Have Been DeliveITfli
Before the Society of PBK on their Anniversary, the Day after Comflkfllce'
ment at Cambridge, August 30, 1810," M.A., IX (September, 1810), JJ+5-' S
61. Tudor left for Europe shortly befoFe he was to deliver the adjtres '

7David Phineas Adams, "The Loiterer. -- No. I," EQ.A¢, I
(November, 1803), 3-6.

7
inadequate in the very "rudiments of education."8 If a talented
writer overcame these difficulties, still he was faced with the
neglect and ingratitude of an unappreciative public. Of all the
difficulties that a potential man of letters faced, "the gloom
of neglect"9 was the least forgivable; "national vanity may be a
folly; but national ingratitude is a crime."10
But along with these disadvantages there were some aSpects
of America that might be conducive to literary production. David
Phineas Adams seems to have felt these more strongly than most
other Anthologists. Commerce may have absorbed our attention, he
argued, but it had provided us with a comfortable life which could
now be devoted to the arts. That our commerce was "universal,"
moreover, "opens to our attainment the literature and improvements
of the whole globe." Likewise, we did have schools and colleges

I

"interspersed throughout the country,‘ and these were "accessible

to studious youth of the humblest fortune." Now that "experience

' we could go on to

has . . . shown us the utility of learning,‘
discover "the rising importance of its increasing cultivation."

Our independence and with it our national strength and "the blessings
of peace" also contributed to conditions favorable to the advance-
ment of literature. Above all, "the diversified scenery of nature"

in America which "excites wonder, curiosity and contemplation" was

surely conducive to the development of poetry. "That refined

 

8 .
See eSpec1ally Tudor, M,A., IX (September, 1810), 1A5-6l.
9Adams,‘M.A., I (November, 1803), 3-6.

IDEA, II, (April, 1805), 167-70,

8

sensibility of soul . . . seems here to be earnestly invited by
the sweet melody of nature to awaken and admire her sublime and
beautiful features."

Yet Adams, no less than the other Anthologists, saw that,
even "with all these incitements to the principal glory of a
nation, polite literature and the fine arts have hitherto made a

' The "principal cause," he felt, "is the

very dilatory progress.’
want of zealous perseverance in the candidates for literary distinc-
tion."ll Too many, as other Anthologists pointed out along with
Buckminster, had turned their attention to such other areas as
politics and "frittered away" their talents "in guiding temporary

perverseness, in conciliating fleeting animosity, in opposing the

errours of the passing day."12 Too few had given "the chief of

 

llAdams, MHA., I (November, 1803), 3-6.

12Tudor,‘l_/I._A.., IX (September, 1810), lh5-6l. Tudor attacks,
in particular, Fisher Ames for spending his talents on politics
rather than literature. See also the review by Samuel Cooper
Thacher of John Quincy Adams's Lectures on Rhetorick and Oratory,
H-Au VIII (April, 1810), 2119-68, and the account of this review
in Howe, pp. 225-26, and in WOrthington C. Ford (ed.), writings
of John Quincy Adams (7 vols.; New York: Macmillan Co., 1915)
III, 513-15. Thacher lamented that Adams had abandoned the
literary "laurels which he might have gained without a rival, to
gather a barren and withering chaplet of political renown," and
described him, using Goldsmith‘s lines, as one
whose genius is such

We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;

Who, born for the universe, narrows his mind,

And to party gives up what was meant for mankind.
Thacher did not "disguise our sentiments on the political career
of Mr. Adams," and Adams suggested in letters to his mother and his
brother, Thomas Boylston, that the reviewer had degraded "himself
by . . . servile sacrifices to pOpular prejudices." Although there
were dissenting voices among the Anthologists (William Shaw and
Benjamin Welles, for instance), they were on the whole of the
Federalist stamp and did not sympathize with Adams's growth away
from the party.

 

 

9
[their] powers to [the] single object" of literature,13 so that

"what has been done, was generally performed in the intervals of

in

professional labours." Too "few have yet applied seriously to

"15 and assumed the "Duties of Genius and Learning to

literature
be Active and Useful."16

The Monthly Anthology was an attempt to help America grow

 

out of her "literary infancy" and to realize what she was capable

of in the realm of literature. It was an attempt to help assure,
and if possible to accelerate, the "dawn of our Augustan age."
Through presenting the public with a literary journal, the Anthol-
ogists hOped to turn its attention away from the areas of politics,
commerce, and religion, in which it had for so long been immersed
and to foster interest in areas that were more conducive to literary
productivity. Realizing the necessity of good educational facil-
ities and the importance of the advancement of other arts, the
Anthologists paid attention to institutions and events that promoted
these things, their most notable contribution along this line being
the establishment of the Anthology Reading Room, which was to become
the Boston Athenaeum. Above all, the Anthology tried to set a
standard of literary taste for both the public and aSpiring authors
and to encourage authors to persevere toward this standard. In so

doing, it attempted to live up to this standard itself and thereby

 

l3Francis Parkman, M-Aw VI (March, 1809), 177-80.

luTudor, MA: IX (September, 1810), 1h5-61.

l5Winthrop Sargent, M.A., II (February, 1805), 85-88.

l6Arthur Walter, n.5,, IV (December, 1807), 6u3-u7.

lO
serve as an example of what might be accomplished in the American
republic of letters.

The Anthology regularly set forth its aims, as well as the
extent to which it considered itself successful and the difficulties
against which it was struggling, usually in the "Address of the
Editors" that began each new volume. The Anthology was conducted
by men "desirous of raising the reputation of American literature";17
their aim was "to diffuse useful knowledge, and inspire a taste for

n18

literature among their fellows. Their object being "exclusively

literary,"19 they had "no other cause to serve than that of truth and

”20 and "to add something to the general stock of

good learning
innocent gaiety; something to the improvement of the literature of
our country, and something to the revival and diffusion of undefiled
taste."21 Through this endeavor they hoped that the Anthology might
"be the repository of the sound literature of New England." In
Joseph Buckminster's eyes, the Anthologists were
gentle knights, who wish to guard the seats of taste and morals
at home, from the incursion of the ‘paynim,host;' happy, if they
should now and then rescue a fair captive from.the giants of
romance, or dissolve the spell, in which many a youthful genius
is held, by the enchantments of corrupt literature.
They were "satisfied, if they in any way contribute to the mild
influence of our common Christianity, and to the elegant tranquillity

of literary life."22

 

l7Samue1 C. Thacher, MEA., V (March, 1808), 121-22.

18John S. J. Gardiner, M2§°1 V (January, 1808), 1-2.

19

Samuel Thacher, M. ., II (December, 1805), 677-78.

HP

20

Samuel Thacher, H. ., X (June, 1811), 361-65.

HP

2lSamuel Thacher, Mfié" II (December, l805),677-78.

22Joseph Buckminster, M.A., VI (January, 1809), 3-6.

11
The degree to which the Anthology succeeded in its endeavors

is attested to by the respect with which it has been regarded by
various men of letters over the years. In its own day the Anthology
received considerable praise. John Sylvester John Gardiner wrote
that "the Anthology has never been a favourite with the publick at
large . . . but from the ablest pens in the United States they have
received praise,more than enough to satisfy reasonable vanity."23
From time to time the Anthology published letters of approval of its
policies and accomplishments, its admirers not always being residents
of the United States. "A gentleman in Cambridge University (England)"
wrote,

I am glad, that you are actively employed in promoting a spirit

and taste for polite literature. In encourageing and effecting

this object, I am certain that in your country in particular,

men of letters will conduce more to the real happiness and

comforts of society, than in acrimonious disquisitions on
theology or politicks. . .

This correspondent attempted to aid the Anthology by recommending
some recent works by Scott and Goethe.2" When William Scollay was
in London in 1810, he wrote Anthologist William Smith Shaw,
I received by the Sally Anne numbers of the Anthology down to
April & I have been much gratified in perusing them. Some of
my literary acquaintance here to whom I have lent them have
passed very high encomiums on the merits of the work which

they think very far surpasses any periodical publication of
this country.

Two of the Anthologists who developed into distinguished men of letters

later became especially aware of the importance of the Anthology

 

23J. S. J. Gardiner, M.A., V (January, 1808), 1-2.

EMMA, III (April, 1806), 221.

25letter from William Scollay to William Smith Shaw, London,
July 18, 1810, in W. S. Shaw Papers (Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.).

12
to the growth of American thought and literature. William Tudor,
writing in 1821, said that "the work undoubtedly rendered service
to our literature,and aided the diffusion of good taste in the
community" and suggested then that the documents associated with

it, if examined "in the next century,‘ would supply considerable

material on "the early state of American literature which may then

"26 George Ticknor, the youthful protege of probably

be interesting.
several Anthologists, among them Joseph Buckminster, J. S. J. Gardiner,
and William Shaw, and secretary for the Anthology Society in its later
days, wrote in 18A9:

We should be glad to think that justice will ever be done to

the ’Monthly Anthology and Boston Review,’ as the pioneer to

that better scholarship and more generous Spirit of inquiry

which, we hope, may be said now to have obtained a firm foot-
hold in New England.

Two years later, in 1851, Josiah Quincy, never a member of the
Society but closely associated with it and a contributor to the
Anthology, published his History of the Boston Athenaeum in which

he judged the Anthology as

constituting one of the most lasting and honorable monuments of
the taste and literature of the period. Its labors may be
considered as a true revival of polite learning in this country,
after that decay and neglect, which resulted from the distrac-
tions of the Revolutionary war, and as forméng an epoch in the
intellectual history of the United States.2

This judgment was echoed not only by Oliver Wendell Holmes, but by

Henry Adams as well. In his History of the United States he said

 

 

26

pp. l-h.

27George Ticknor, "Review of Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Buck-
minster and the Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster," Christian Examiner,
XLVII (September, 18A9), 169-95. Cited hereafter as Ticknor, "Review."

28Josiah Quincy, The History of the Boston Athenaeum
(Cambridge, Mass.: Metcalf & Co., 1851), p. 3.

William Tudor, Miscellanies (Boston: Wells and Lily, 1821)

 

 

 

13
that the Anthology "marked the birth of the new literary school,"
"giving to Boston for the first time the lead of American literary
effort." The Anthology, Adams contended, "far surpassed any
literary standards then existing in the United States, and was not
inferior to any in England."29 Still later Julius H. ward called
the Anthology "the first distinctive note in our periodical liter-

ature,’ sustaining "from 1803 to 1811 the hOpeS of the first group

of men in America who attempted to lay a broad foundation in the

public mind for American letters."3O
Yet the references to the Anthology are scattered and scanty,

at best superficial and at worst Simply incorrect, and except for

M. A. Dewolfe Howe's edition of the Anthology Society's Journal and

the works of Lewis P. Simpson there has been little attempt to do

justice,as Ticknor put it, to the Anthology. Simpson has within

the last few years not only acknowledged the significance of the

Anthology but tried in several articles to place it in its proper

literary perspective and, more recently, made many of its pages

31

available to the public. In one of his articles Simpson attempts

to explain the reason for the long neglect of the Anthology and

 

29Henry Adams, History of the United States of America, Vol.
IX: The Second Administration of Thomas Jefferson (9 vols.; New
York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1889-91), 201 and 207.

 

 

3OJulius H. ward, "The North American Review," North American
Review, 201 (January, 1915), 123-3u.

 

31Simpson's work includes a dissertation on Joseph Buckminster
and several articles on various aspects of the Anthology and the
Anthology period. His largest and most recent undertaking is Th3
Federalist literary'NHnd (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State Univ.
Press, 1962). See this publication for a bibliography of Simpson's
Work: PP . 238-39 .

 

1A

early nineteenth-century Boston in general. It has been due, he
suggests, to the perpetration of "the myth of New England's
intellectual lapse," a myth largely initiated by Ralph waldo
Emerson's concept of his father's generation and perpetuated by
such later scholars as Vernon L. Parrington.32 But perhaps just

as important iS the fact that the Anthology was, in comparison to
some later literary periodicals, short-lived. For its time, its
existence was a "wonder and mystery."33 That it Should have lived
as long as it did, faced from the beginning with almost insurmount-
able obstacles, is remarkable. But it did not live long enough to
become a part of that literary enterprise that it had struggled to
bring about and that remains as an indisputable area of study.
Finally, it did not live longer and it has not been looked upon as
a more Significant contribution to American literary history because
it did not heed its own advice. Although it numbered among its
contributors some of the finest literary figures of not only Boston
but the country, none of these men was devoted enough to either the
Anthology or the literary life per se to perpetuate the Anthology
or to give to it consistently such literary productions as live on
with ease through the years. They did not give, in Short, "the
chief of [their] powers" either to the Anthology or to literature
itself; they had disdained to divide the empire of their hearts and

had not assumed completely the duties of men of letters.

 

32Lewis P. Simpson, "Emerson and the Myth of New England's
Intellectual Lapse," Emerson Society Quarterly, No. 10 (I Quarter,
1958), 28-31.

 

33William Tudor, Mug,, VIII (January, 1810), 3-6.

15

The Mbnthly Anthology began as the literary venture of a

 

young man named Phineas Adams. Information regarding Adams is
confined almost entirely to the brief Sketch of him in Josiah

Quincy's History of the Boston Athenaeum. He was the son of an

 

apparently unprosperous if not a poor farmer in Iexington, Massa-
chusetts. His father being unable to provide him with more than
a common education, he was early apprenticed to a paper-maker.
There he attracted the attention of a Mrs. Foster of Brighton and
under her patronage he left his job, prepared himself for college,
and entered Harvard at the age of twenty. He graduated from

Harvard in 1801. Two years later he began to edit The Mbnthly

 

Anthology; or Magazine of Polite Literature under the name of

 

Sylvanus Per-se.

 

Although these facts concerning Adams's life up to 1803
are few, Quincy does provide us with some further information that
shows that up until then Adams had hopes of adopting "literature
as a profession." He "manifested in early boyhood a passion for

' and it was this "fondness for letters" that won

elegant learning,'
the attention of Mrs. Brighton, herself "a lady of literary celeb-
rity at that time."3" At Harvard, Sidney Willard adds to this

information, Adams "was reputed . . . by his contemporaries to be
much more conversant with English literature than was usually the

case among his fellow-students."35 It is apparent from such comments

that Adams's creation of the Anthology in 1803 was an attempt to

 

3"Quincy, 1-2.

35Sidney Willard, Memories of Youth and Manhood (2 vols.;
Cambridge, Mass.: John Bartlett, 1855), II, 158.

 

16

adopt literature as a profession; through being the editor of a
literary magazine he hoped to establish himself as one of America's
first full-time men of letters.

Possibly Adams was patterning his career after that of

Joseph Dennie, who had been successfully editing the Port Folio

 

in Philadelphia Since 1800. But in trying out his literary venture
in the city of Boston, Adams was attempting to succeed where Dennie
himself had earlier failed. In May 1795 Dennie had begun editing
the Tablet, a weekly paper devoted mainly to literature, in Boston.
This enterprise had been short-lived, lasting only through August
11, 1795, and Dennie had left Boston for the more literary-minded
city of Philadelphia.36 Adams's project met a similar fate. In
April 1804, just Six months after he had issued the first number

of the Anthology, Adams was forced to abandon his first attempt to
be a professional man of letters. Apparently this attempt was also
his last.

The causes of Adams's failure point to some of the reasons
for the later success, as well as the final discontinuation,of the
Anthology. writing almost half a century later, Sidney Willard, who
was himself to become an Anthologist a few years after Adams‘s
failure, commented on literary periodicals in general:

There are but two things by means of which such a book can grow
and live long, and these are money and sympathy, and, in the
case of individuals, both.

The Anthology,while it was edited by Adams, had neither. Willard

observed that

 

36Frank L. Mott, A History of American Magazines l7hl-l850
(New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1930), p. 225.

 

17
if the projector who furnishes the literary materials has not
money enough to pay the printer and publisher, and these are
not able to take the risk of gaining friends, by the merits
of the work, numerous enough to pay the price, it must surely
die, and that very soon. This was the precarious condition
of the Mbnthly Anthology from its birth until it had lived,
through its poverty and struggles, the first half-year. . . .
The Anthology during Adams's editorship "was sustained by the
sympathy of a few individuals, separately. The bond was not strong
enough" to overcome the financial difficulties that beset it.37

The Anthology, even during its successful years after Adams's
failure, was never free from financial difficulties and these, more
than any other one factor, ultimately caused its demise. AS Willard
said, "this working for the public for nothing, and paying one's
own expenses, is a poor business." But with the formation of the
Anthology Society in 1805 the "sympathy" for the Anthology was
"united in social compact"38 and the Anthology prospered, despite
its financial worries, for Six years. It seems to have been, then,
the lack of a group of dedicated contributors that most severely
hurt the Anthology under Adams.

Many of the men who contributed to the Anthology while Adams
was editing it were later to be members of the society that was
formed to take over the editorship. Yet Adams's Anthology seems to
have been a lonely enterprise. Perhaps this was out of choice.
Adams did, after all, want to make his mark as an editor, and to do
so he had to carry the bulk of the responsibility for the magazine.

But very likely, despite his being a Harvard graduate of high

literary repute, he was somewhat estranged from Boston society and

 

37WiIIard, II, 22u-25.

38Willard, II, 225.

18
with it the literary circles of the city. Other than his being
a poor farmer‘s son with no family connections in the city and
nothing in his background, other than his tie to Harvard, to
recommend him, he appears to have had a rather unusual character
which did not probably help matters. According to Quincy, his
"invincible diffidence and an excitable temperament were the
occasion of great eccentricity of manners."39 Whatever the cause,
this estrangement seems certain because the only two of his contem-
poraries whose writings describe him in any detail, both of whom
were to become closely associated with the Anthology, actually knew
very little about him and because, strange as it may seem, once
Adams gave up his enterprise he never again had anything to do with
the Anthology. Sidney Willard remarked that "I learned more partic-
ularly than I had before known or remembered the history of Adams
. . . from a note in the Hon. Josiah Quincy's History of the Boston

Athenaeum,""O

and the description by Quincy, also Adams‘s contemporary,
as we have already seen, is scanty.

After his failure with the Anthology Adams "taught school
in different places, till, in 1811, he entered the Navy as chaplain

and teacher of Mathematics."

Quincy suggests that Adams now enter-
tained hopes of distinguishing himself in the field of science,
combining his knowledge of mathematics and "nautical affairs."
During the war of 1812 he sailed with Commodore David Porter on the
frigate Egggy over the Pacific and later rejoined Porter in his

expedition to the West Indies. There he died in 1823. Although

Quincy attests to Adams's "love of intellectual pursuits" accompanying

 

39Quincy, 2.

"OWillard, II, 157.

19

him "in every clime," the only evidence that Adams retained any hope
at all of becoming a man of letters after his failure with the
Anthology is a journal which he published of the Pacific cruise with
Commodore Porter."l

Despite the fact that Adams completely severed his connection
with the Anthology, the periodical was always in a sense his. The
essential characteristics of the Anthology under Adams remained with
the magazine to the end. The first pages of the first issue were
devoted to an essay on the appropriateness of America to polite
literature and the fine arts. This essay was to have been the first
of several in a series called "The Ioiterer," Adams’s design being
"to present to my readers lucubrations on manners and literature,
on the improvement of taste and the encouragement of genius" which

he hoped would afford as much pleasure as the Spectator, Rambler,

 

Adventurer, and "American Lounger" essays had."2 One sees in this
piece alone the scope that the Anthology was to assume under Adams
and from which it was never to turn.

The Anthology was always what Adams called a "Magazine of
Polite Literature," seeking both to disseminate and to create liter-
ature, and in the process, more broadly, culture itself. The first
six issues exhibited the liberal combination of literature with
pieces on the arts, history, biography, science, religion, and so on
that the remaining issues Showed. Even within the realm of belles-

lettres, there was breadth, original essays, poems, and letters

 

"lQuincy, 1-2. According to Quincy, Adams prefixed David
to his name "out of regard to Commodore David Porter."

"214.33., I (November, 1803), 3-6.

20
being interspersed with translations, reviews, and, here and there,
pieces gleaned from already published works. How the Anthology
changed was mainly in its fulfillment of the aims it had begun with,
a change that only the experience of an able group of writers could
bring about. The short-lived "literary wanderer," "Guest," "Evening
Entertainments," "Loiterer," "Collectanea," "Amusement," "Sans Souci"--
all attempts to establish series that would run through all the

issues of the Anthology--gradually settled down into the stable

H H H H

"Remarker, Botanist," "Silva, Retrospective Notices," "Levity,"

' and so on

"Remarks on the English Translations of the Roman Poets,‘
that the reader learned to anticipate in each new issue. Even the
essential theological views of the Anthology, which for many readers
came to be its distinguishing mark, found expression in the first
issues. That the Anthology retained the character with which it
began, however, is not surprising, since many of the contributors

to Adams's Anthology were the same men who contributed to its pages
up to the end.

Immediately after Adams and his publisher, E. Lincoln, aban-
doned the Anthology, another firm, Munroe and Francis, took it over,
and without skipping an issue the Anthology reappeared under a new
editor."3 Munroe and Francis knew that if they were to succeed
where Lincoln had failed, it was essential that they secure an able
editor. Such a man they found in William Emerson. Emerson had
several advantages that made him a good choice: he was personally
suited to the job of editing, he was devoted to the development of

American literature, and he numbered among his friends and acquaint-

ances all of the most able literary-minded Bostonians of the day.

 

"3Howe, A, 305-309..

21

Very much aware that he was "to originate nothing"""
and "that his BEER is REESE to be splendid," William Emerson had
developed those qualities that nonetheless assure a certain amount
of success in life and win for one the esteem of the public.

"The honest and noiseless man is the man, whose honours I most
highly prize," he once wrote his Sister, Mary,"5 whose ambition
for her family he knew he could never fulfill, and it is such
stable and inoffensive qualities as these that seem best to
characterize him. Quincy described him as having been "diligent

H H

and zealous, assiduous and exact" in his pastoral duties, and

these characteristics he carried over into his activities in
literary and charitable institutions.

In most of these, Mr. Emerson was intrusted with some
important office. His methodical strictness in the distri-
bution of his time, his exemplary punctuality in all his en-
gagements, and the fidelity with which he executed every
trust, made his talents and services the subject of frequent
requisition, which his love of labor and usefulness seldom
permitted him.to decline.

As editor of the Anthology, Quincy observed, he devoted "himself
with zeal and laborious fidelity to the advancement of its character

""6 Charles Lowell simply called Emerson "a man of

and interests.
good sense." Like Quincy, Lowell emphasized the degree to which

Emerson was able to discipline his life: "He had the organ of

order very fully developed--he was one of those who have 'a place

 

""Letter from William Emerson to Phebe Ripley, Boston,
October 16, 1803, Emerson Papers (Houghton Library, Cambridge,
Mass.) Hereafter cited as Emerson Papers.

"Sletter from William Emerson to Mary Mbody Emerson,
Boston, November 11, 1807, Emerson Papers.

"6Quincy, 11-12.

22

for every thing, and every thing in its place.'"

Moreover,

Lowell attributed to Emerson one of the qualities Emerson himself
so valued: "He was an honest man, and expressed himself decidedly
and emphatically, but never bluntly or vulgarly.""7 That Emerson
was diligent, exact, methodical, generous, sensible, and honest
made him likely to be a successful editor. These qualities had
already won for him the esteem of his fellowmen, and undoubtedly
the financial asset of an editor of a literary magazine's having
universal respect did not escape the business sense of Munroe

and Francis.

That the Anthology was primarily a literary magazine made
the choice of Emerson even more appropriate. Emerson was by no
means a professional man of letters--no one in Boston at the time
waS--but he was deeply interested in literature, especially
American literature. As early as 178A Emerson had revealed his
concern over the weak state of American letters when he delivered
an essay entitled "On Taste" to the Phi Beta Kappa Society upon
his graduation from Harvard. In the Anthology he must have seen
an Opportunity to help remedy "the effects of a bad taste" which,
he had said, were the cause of "the prejudices which are frequently
formed against literature." Mbreover, because taste, to Emerson,
was not confined to the realm purely of literature or even the arts
in general, but "like air, pervades the regions of universal know-

ledge?"8 he must have found the broad scope of the Anthology

 

"7Ietter from Lowell to William Sprague, November 8, 1859,
quoted in William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol.
VIII: Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit (New York: Robert
Carter & Bros., 1865), 2Hh.

 

 

William Emerson, "0n Taste," Emerson Papers.

23

especially inviting. That he hoped the Anthology would continue
to treat the several areas it already had, and even others, is
evident in the "Preface" he wrote for the first volume of the
Anthology after it was bound."9

It is possible that one reason Emerson was more successful
than Adams had been was that Emerson seems not to have considered
the Anthology a means to make himself a professional man of letters
and so leave his mark on the history of American literature, as
Adams seems to have done. Emerson was always foremost a clergyman,
being pastor of First Church in Boston. But, whatever his literary
ambitions, the Anthology could never have borne his mark alone and
survived. It was fortunate, therefore, that Emerson could count
on the willing help of a group of able men, many of whom had contri-
buted already to the Anthology but who under Emerson's editorship
became devoted to its success.

One reason for this apparent intensification of interest
among contributors may have been the simultaneous intensification
of the religious controversy between the liberal and orthodox
Congregationalists. Although this controversy had been going on
for several decades, it reached a peak with the oncoming election
of a new Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard. Emerson himself
was a strong liberal Christian. His orthodoxy had been questioned
several times already, even upon his call to First Church in 1799.50

His son, Ralph waldo, was to describe his father's beliefs as

 

"9William Emerson, "Preface" to M.A., I (written January 1,
1805), i-iv.

50letter from William Emerson to Ruth Emerson, October 15
and 16, 1799, Emerson Papers.

2h
inclining "to what is ethical and universal in Christianity,"51
a view that Charles Lowell was to put more bluntly as "to say
the least, far from having any sympathy with Calvinism."52 About
the same time that he took over the Anthology, Emerson founded
the Christian Mbnitor Society,53 which issued works Slanted
towards the liberal Christian view, and he was not averse to
presenting such a view through the Anthology as well. Several
of the contributors were of his stamp and may have been drawn
toward supporting the Anthology partly because they saw it as
a vehicle for the expression of their views. This possibility,
however, should not be over emphasized, for religion continued
to be only one aspect of the general scope of the Anthology and
there were several among this group of devoted contributors who
had no interest in this controversy.

It is indicative of the literary ferment going on in
Boston during the early nineteenth century that the year after

Emerson took over the Anthology another literary magazine, the

Literary Miscellany, appeared. Mbreover, that it was a rather

 

small circle of ambitious young men who brought about this ferment
is evident in the fact that many of the men who contributed to
both Adams's and Emerson's Anthology were among those who also

contributed to the Literagy Miscellany and who later created

 

the Anthology Society to take over the job of editing the

 

51letter from R. W. Emerson to Sprague, October 5, 18A9,
in Sprague, VIII, 2A5.

52Lowell to Sprague, in Sprague, VIII, 2A6.

53letter from John Pierce to Sprague, May 8, 18A9, in
Sprague, VIII, 2A2.

25

Anthology. The Miscellany was first issued in July 1805, but

 

its inception dates back to the annual meetings of the Harvard
Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1802, 1803, and 180u.5“ At the first
meeting it was proposed that the Society publish a periodical
that would promote the cause of literature in America. Appointed
to assume the responsibility for the new publication at the last
meeting was a committee composed of Sidney Willard; the Reverend
Thaddeus M. Harris of Dorchester; William Jenks, a teacher of
classics and reader in the Episcopal Church, Cambridge; Levi
Hedge, a tutor of metaphysics at Harvard; and Parker Cleaveland,
another tutor at Harvard. But the Society's plans were temporarily
thwarted by an opposition led by the same man who was later to
command the forces against the theological views of the Anthology,
Jedidiah Morse. What Mbrse and his associates feared in the
projected periodical was essentially the same as what they later
feared in the Anthology: a threat to orthodox religion.

The reason Mbrse, Professor Eliphalet Pearson, and others
thought the periodical would be subversive in its religious, as
well as its political, views was that it would be the product of
a secret society.55 Secret societies had become suspect mainly
because of the activities of the Illuminati in Germany and the
Jacobins in France, which had become known to New Englanders

through the circulation of John Robinson's Proofs of a Conspiracy

 

 

5"Aside from my own reading of the Miscellany, the following
information concerning its history including that on the secret
societies is gathered from Willard, II, 133-57, 322.

 

55There is no proof that the Anthology was ever suspect
for the same reason, but possibly it was, for it too was later
conducted by an organization to which members were elected and by
which no business was conducted in the presence of guests.

26
against all the Religions and Governments of Europe carried on
in the Secret Nbetings of the Free-Masonsy_Illuminati, and Reading

Societies, collected from good Authorities . . . and Abbe Barruel's

 

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism . . ., both published

 

in the United States in 1799. These works tried to Show that these
societies fostered the ideals of a universal equality that sought
to subvert the existing religious and political institutions, and
they propagated the fear among some New Englanders that their
agents were at work in the United States, particularly through the
higher degrees of Masonry. In the excitement, all secret societies,
to some degree, became suspect. The Phi Beta Kappa Society was
believed not only to be an offshoot of Masonry, but also a relative
of the Jacobins because of its first letter, the initial of the

Greek word philosophia. Professor Pearson was especially fearful

 

that the proposed publication would endanger the religious stability

of Harvard, but despite his and Merse's strong objections the

 

Miscellany finally materialized, with the support of the president
and other less fearful friends of the college.
Although the members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society who

founded the Literary Miscellany felt these fears were unfounded,

 

they did ultimately contribute to their realization. During its

Short life the Miscellapy was primarily a literary magazine,

 

indulging in neither political nor religious radicalism. But

before long the Miscellany was absorbed by the Anthology and many

 

of its writers were the same men who led the movement of liberal
Christianity through the pages of the Anthology, a movement that
did eventually undermine the established religious order that

Morse and Pearson were trying to protect. The observation of

27
Leonard Woods that the liberal Christians would disseminate their
religious views by first establishing themselves as men of letters
may not have been based upon the intention of the contributors to

the Miscellagy, but such was eventually to be the case.56

 

In the "Prospectus" of its first issue the Literary

Miscellany was careful to define its purpose. Its intention was

 

to stimulate learning, rather than to proselytize for either
political or religious radicalism. It was
projected by a few friends, who agreed to contribute such
reflections and remarks, as were the result of their studies,
with a wish to rouse a mutual emulation in literary pursuits,
and to excite in others a taste for scientific investigations.
Its idea of the realm of literature was, like the Anthology's,
broad. Among the topics it hoped to treat were ancient and modern
history; the mythology, customs, manners, and antiquities of other
nations; Hebrew and oriental literature; Greek and Roman classics;
and the lives of eminent men. There were to be essays on morality,
ethics, jurisprudence, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, natural
history, natural philosophy, and both natural and revealed religion,

as well as sections devoted to poetry and reviews of ancient and

modern works. All in all, the Miscellany was to be "a repository

 

for the lucubrations of the scholar, the speculations of the
PhilOSOpher, and the lectures of the Divine." But more particularly
it hoped to aid the cause of American literature: its biographies
were to be mainly on "those who were born, or flourished in our

own Country," and its attention to the classics was intended "to

 

56Letter from Leonard Woods to Jedidiah Morse, Newbury,
January 17, 1809, Morse Family Papers (Yale University Library,
New Haven, Conn.) Hereafter cited as Mbrse Family Papers.

28

assist studious youth in acquiring a correct taste, and laying

the foundation of solid learning." Through its publication of
pieces on the sciences it hoped to "be useful to the Mechanic,"
but its main intent appeared to be "improving . . . the Artist."57

In short, the purpose of the Miscellany was about the same as

 

that of the Anthology.
According to Sidney Willard, there was never any intended

rivalry between the Miscellany and the Anthology; since at least

 

two-thirds of the contributors to the Miscellany were likewise

 

contributors to the Anthology any other situation would seem to
58

have been impossible. Yet the two periodicals did engage in
a controversy which arose with the Anthology's "observations" on

the new journal and ended with the absorption of the Miscellany

 

into the Anthology. Andrews Norton, a contributor to both
periodicals wrote these "observations." First he discussed
briefly the effect of periodicals in contributing, more than
other types of publications, "toward forming the manners of a

people.‘ This was due to their being'easily diffused" and

"easily read." Norton commended the Port Folio, which until the

 

last year had been "the only periodical publication of much

literary merit, circulating in New England," and then proceeded

 

S7Literary Miscellany (cited hereafter as L.M.), I (n.d.),

 

l-S.

58Willard, II, 157. Willard, pp. lAO-5h, lists the major
contributors to the Miscellany as Thaddeus M. Harris, J. Q. Adams,
Abiel Abbot, Ievi Hedge, John Pierce, William Wells, Francis D.
Channing, William Jenks, John Abbot, Arthur M. Walter, Sidney
Willard, Parker Cleaveland, Loammi Baldwin, Joseph S. Buckminster,
Andrews Norton, John Abbot, James Winthrop, Charles Coffin, Peter
0. Thacher, Samuel C. Thacher, Daniel A. White, William Allen, and
John T. Kirkland. Almost all were graduates of Harvard and members
of Phi Beta Kappa.

 

29

to the Miscellany, "being native among us." His judgment of this

 

new periodical was that, although it was conducted with some
ability, "it is deficient in exciting interest or affording
amusement." Thus it could hardly fulfill the purpose of contri-
buting to the civility of the American people. Norton eSpecially

condemned the style of the Miscellany, "which has some resemblance

 

to that, which the ancients called the Asiatic, but which has so
long been the disgrace of our country, that it may now with
unfortunate propriety be denominated the American."59

Insofar as the writers for both periodicals were the same

men, the style of the Miscellany could hardly have differed much

 

from that of the Anthology, and this criticism, as well as those
that succeeded it, cannot be taken too seriously. It would appear
that Norton, more than anything else, was Simply having a good
time. But when he ended his essay with the comment that all of
his remarks on the new publication were not written "with any
design to injure its reputation, but with the most sincere desire
to promote its future respectability," he was very likely being
somewhat ironical. Norton, who was considered practical enough
to have been chosen to edit the Anthology just before its close,
probably saw at the beginning that two such Similar periodicals

as the Miscellany and the Anthology could not long survive together

 

in Boston and he seems to have chosen to give his vote to the latter.

The Miscellany, in its reply, mimicked Norton's apparent

 

intention of good will after giving his piece a thorough going
60

over, cleverly turning many of his phrases to its own advantage.

 

59Andrews Norton, Hg, II (April, 1805), 170-7u.

69E.M., II (n.d.), 49-53.

30
When the Anthology published its rebuke, its fear of a rival became

clear. Its solution, if the Miscellany was intent on surviving,

 

was the separation of duties and the allocation of subjects that

were peripheral to literature to the Miscellany. The Anthology

 

writers, it admitted, "have felt more than a stranger's partiality"

for the Nfiscellany and even though "we have whatever right to

 

publick favour priority of birth can bestow, yet we have never felt

any Turkish jealousy of this ‘brother near the throne.'"

Always
they believed "that within the ample domains of literature, there
was enough to find us both employment without interference." But
it was clear that the Anthologists also saw that the domains of
finance and public support were not so ample. Thus, at the same
time, they suggested "that while we [the Anthology] were engaged
in the humble employment of collecting the scattered and neglected
flowers of its [literature's] fields, we might resign to them [the
Miscellany] the more dignified task of cultivating the oaks of
science, and enriching the soil around their roots." In short,
the Anthology wanted priority over the belles-lettres and was
willing to give up some related interests for the sake of survival.61

The Anthology got more than it asked for and at the end of

two volumes the Miscellany ceased publication. Two such Similar

 

works could hardly have flourished at the same time in a city that
could not support the Single venture of Phineas Adams. Arthur

Maynard walter, informing Buckminster of the end of the Miscellany,

 

called Boston "a bookless & museleSS town." He added, however,

that the Miscellany had been discontinued for other reasons as well

 

 

61111.92, II (August, 1805), AA6.

31
as financial. "Nobody was earnest but Harris & myself," he
confided, and after a while not even Harris. "Mr. Harris stild
himself out of the list of writers & Willard did not like the
labour of continual exertion." There was simply no bond of

sympathy strong enough to continue the Miscellany; apparently,

 

after Samuel Thacher and Buckminster sailed for Europe, walter
was the only dependable contributor. The consequence, as walter
wrote, was "that the A. is fattening from the fruits that were
given to the M."62 So the Anthology "gained something by the
death of the Miscellany," as Willard observed, "but if it had
gained all its subscribers, it would still have been poor."63
In quite a different vein did the Anthology treat its
64

It often praised Dennie's

"65

only other rival, the Port Folio.

 

work, complimenting him on his "taste and talents, and when

the Port Folio became a monthly, rather than a weekly, publication

 

in 1809, the Anthology welcomed it "with fraternal cordiality,

into the rank of monthly publishers."66

The Anthology's respect
was Sincere; in fact, William Smith Shaw had helped the Port

Folio obtain subscribers in Boston, feeling "a deep interest in the

success of this periodical, not only as a friend to the proprietors,

 

62Letter from Arthur walter to Joseph S. Buckminster,
Boston, September 29, 1806, Buckminster Papers (Boston Athenaeum,
Boston, Mass.) Hereafter cited as Buckminster Papers.

63Willard, II, 171.

6"See Mbtt, 792-9h, for a list of other magazines appearing
during the Anthology years.

6?M.A,, II (April, 1805), 170-7u.

6§Mag., VI (May, 1809), 348.

32
but also as an American."67 But at the same time the Anthology

had little choice other than to praise the Port Folio, which had

 

both the "priority of birth," having appeared in 1800, and many
more subscribers, in 1806 having 1500 compared to the Anthology's

th.68 Moreover, the Port Folio never seemed to be so imminent

 

a threat as the NHscellany. Not only was it published many miles

 

away in Philadelphia by a different group of men (though they did
Share some contributors, among them Paul Allen, J. S. J. Gardiner,
Josiah Quincy, and John Quincy Adams), but it had a somewhat
different character from that of the Anthology.

Mbst important, the Port Folio bore the stamp of one man,

 

Joseph Dennie, whereas the Anthology, supervised through most of
its years by several men, revealed the diversity inherent in such

an arrangement. Mbreover, the Port Folio always had a stronger

 

political flavor than the Anthology, and the latter a stronger
leaning to theological disquisitions, a difference explained in
part by the difference between Philadelphia and Boston at the time.
Also, the Anthology had a more scholarly and learned tone, making
less attempt to appeal to the whole public. Henry Adams did not
perhaps consider Dennie's aim when he judged the original matter

of the Port Folio to be "for the most part hardly better than that

 

of a college magazine" and Dennie himself as "commonplace, trivial,

and dull," but he was showing in what sense the Anthology actually

 

67Letter from William Shaw to Arthur walter, January 16,
1800, in Joseph B. Felt, Memorials of William Smith Shaw (Boston:
S. K. Whipple & Co., 1852), pp. 90-91.

68letter from Munroe and Francis to William Shaw, July 15,
1806, quoted in Felt, 215.

 

33

did take "a stride beyond Dennie's power." Attempting to amuse

as well as to instruct, the Port Folio, in Adams's estimation,

 

failed at both: Dennie's "humor was heavy and commonly coarse,"
and "of scholarship or scholarly criticism, his paper Showed
great want."69 Still the Anthology appreciated being "cheared
on their way by the smile of their distant countryman" through
its many struggles. "Sensible by experience of the difficulties
and vexations of a periodical publication," the Anthology knew
"how to appreciate the value of success, and the worth of so

"70

distinguished a colleague and companion.

On October 3, 1805, the Monthly Anthology was officially

 

assured of that support which it had had from the time Emerson

became editor, a support which the Miscellany so sorely lacked.

 

At a meeting at the home of J. S. J. Gardiner a group of several
of the most dedicated supporters of the Anthology adopted and
Signed the constitution for the Anthology Society, the initial
purpose of which was to take charge of the Anthology. The con-
stitution was drawn up by a committee, previously appointed at

an informal meeting, of Arthur Maynard walter, William Smith Shaw,
and Joseph Stevens Buckminster. Consisting of fourteen articles,
the constitution called for four officers--a president, vice
president, secretary, and treasurer; two committees of three;

and an editor of the Society's publication. The secretary, among
other duties, was to keep a journal of the Society's proceedings.

This journal has been preserved and is today the major source of

 

69Henry Adams, History, IX, 200-201.

703/1211” VI (May, 1809), 3H8.

3h
information on the Anthology Society. The treasurer, who was to
handle transactions with the printers as well as collect assess-
ments on the Society, was also to be a member of the standing
committee to purchase books, subscribe for publications, provide
places of meeting, and transact whatever other business the Society
undertook. The other committee was to audit the treasurer’s accounts
and keep track of the library. Finally, the editor of the Anthology
was to "have a general power of preparing the materials & superin-
tending the publication of this work." He was to "correct the

I!
press,

solicit and present to the Society all foreign communications
(presumably pieces written by men outside the Society), register
with dates all book review assignments, notify the writers of

series Six weeks before their numbers were due, inform members of
duties assigned to them in their absence, and carry on whatever
correspondence the Society might desire, including soliciting
contributions.

The Society was to convene every Thursday evening. Only
three members were necessary to transact the ordinary business of
the Society, but for the election of officers, which would occur
annually, and the admission of new members, seven would be needed
to constitute a quorumt Candidates for membership were to stand
on nomination for four successive meetings and then be admitted
only by unanimous vote. The main business was, of course, to be
the Anthology, though the Anthology Reading Room, which grew into
the Boston Athenaeum, soon also became a major concern. The

constitution treated with particular care the problem of book

reviews. Books were to be assigned by a majority vote and each

35

review was to be read to the Society before it was published. If
any major objections arose, a committee of three would be appointed
to aid the writer in remedying it and to report their success at
the next meeting. Members were to deposit all communications they
received with the editor, who was then to present them to the
Society, but only in cases of controversy were they to be read at
the meetings, "unless at the option of the writer." Finally, the
last article of the constitution provided for its amendment.71

For its president the Society chose J. S. J. Gardiner, who
at forty was its oldest member. Gardiner was likewise perhaps the
most learned member of the Society. Having been educated partly in
England under the severe discipline of Dr. Samuel Parr, he was
certainly the most learned classicist of Boston and probably one
of the most learned of his day. While an assistant minister of
Trinity Church in Boston, he had opened a school for classical
instruction (a school which, some judged, began the revival of
classical learning in Boston) and upon his becoming rector of
Trinity in August 1805 he continued to instruct a select group of
students. Among his pupils were George Ticknor and William Prescott,
both of whom later attested to his superiority as a scholar and
teacher.72 Ticknor described his teaching as "undoubtedly better
of the sort than any to be had elsewhere in New England" and
observed that "he was a strict and accurate teacher, stern and

severe to the inattentive and stupid, but kindly and helpful to

 

71See Howe, pp. 29-32, for the "Constitution," and pp. 35-36,
for the minutes of the "Journal" for October 3, 1805.

72See Quincy, "Biographical Notices," History, 3-10 for
a sketch of Gardiner's life.

36

willing workers."73 According to Prescott, Gardiner's "relish for
classical learning" was

visible in the habitual accuracy and propriety of his style,

both in writing and conversation; in his pure taste in

criticism, as well as in his increased relish for the more

refined beauties of composition, and in the inexhaustible

source afdelight which the study of this literature, continued

to afford him to the last moments of his life.
(As an example of this last, Prescott tells of Gardiner's passing
the last painful days of his life by reading "the forty-eight Books
of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the original, without the aid of a
lexicon or an English version.") Prescott‘s judgment of the pervasive
effect of Gardiner's admiration for the classics is justified in the
pieces he published in the Anthology. In both his style of writing
and in his criticism he showed himself to be a devoted student of
the classics and of those British writers whose work Showed their
strong influence. "The high standard which Dr. Gardiner had formed

1

from his intimacy with the severe models of antiquity,‘ observed

Prescott, "led him to be fastidious in no little degree, in his

1

estimation of the moderns.‘ Whenever "he read aloud from the English

classics,' as he did often and with admirable delivery, they "were
pretty sure to be of the age of Elizabeth or of Anne."

AS an Anglican clergyman, Gardiner likewise revealed a
deep respect for the past. Far from being of the stamp of the
"humanitarian" Anglican James Freeman, Gardiner "was firmly attached
to the doctrines of the Church of England." But he was not one to
71+

proselytize or enter into theological controversy, and since he

 

73George S. Hillard, Mrs. Anna Ticknor, and Miss Anna Eliot
Ticknor (eds.), Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor
(Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1877), I, 8. Hereafter cited as
Ticknor's Life.

 

7"letter from William Prescott to Sprague, December 21, 18A8,

37

was an outsider to the controversies going on within the Congre-
gational Church he did not express any particular religious views
in the Anthology. Yet, as a traditional Anglican he was a Trini-
tarian, and as the Anthology came more and more to display its
unitarian bias Gardiner must have gradually felt somewhat alienated.
Very likely it was the heat of the unitarian controversy in which
the Anthology came to take so active a role that ultimately caused
Gardiner to resign from the Society, for Shortly thereafter he
preached a sermon in defense of Trinitarianism which the Anthology
reviewed with contempt.

Many meetings of the Society were held at Gardiner's house,
and, according to Robert Hallowell Gardiner, he was during his
membership "the life and soul of the Society."75 But it was not
only his learning and love of literature that made him so. He was
extremely convivial; he loved to talk and he talked very well.
Ticknor describes the little symposia which Gardiner was fond of
holding in his home, to which he invited such favorite students as
Ticknor himself and such friends as William Shaw, William Wells,
Joseph Buckminster, and James Savage-~all Anthology comrades--for
an evening "full of fun and wit, and always rich in literary culture."76
According to Willard, the spirit of Gardiner’s symposia must have
carried over into the Anthology Society sessions: he "had the

faculty, when any business or reading became dull, to change the

scene; and, aided by the variety of interlocutory olios, the scene

 

in Sprague, Vol. V: Annals of the American Episcopal Pulpit
(New York: Robert Carter & Bros., 1859), 365-67.

 

75Quincy, "Biographical Notices," History, 10.

76Ticknor's Life, 8-9.

38
sometimes became so farcically dramatic as to draw forth torrents
of laughter."77 At times, so playful did Gardiner become that he
would rule that no business be conducted when the Society gathered
or that an article not be read if it seemed too long and boring.
At one point his playfulness provoked him to insert into the
Anthology pages "the filthy story of Pope's going with Cibber to a
Brothel," a story, according to Arthur Walter, that was "worse than
Port Folio Shamelessness." (Walter saw to it that the printed Sheets
were "struck off," without consulting Gardineryso the story never
appeared.) Gardiner's zest apparently was evident also in his role
as rector of Trinity, a post from which he would happily absent

78

himself on Sundays in favor of Shooting expeditions. According

to William Bentley, when a new bishOp was chosen for the Episcopal
churches of New England, "Gardiner of Boston was thought to have

too little of professional manners for such promotion" and,
furthermore, "did not struggle against the public prejudices upon
the subject.”79 writing to Buckminster, walter observed that "Mr. G.
has qualities, which are very much in his favour, but he does not
pay attention enough to decorum, propriety & Opinion, & by these

the world is governed. I could tell you some strange stories about

him, but I shall reserve them for your private room; they are not

 

77Wi11ard, II, 231.

78letter from walter to Buckminster, September 29, 1806,
Buckminster Papers.

79The Diary of William Bentley (Salem, MaSS.: The Essex
Institute, 1905), III, 521-22.

 

39

against him as a man, but as a minister. Yet I like him & esteem
him & Mrs. G. is one of the finest of women."80
As secretary the Society elected Arthur Maynard walter.
Although walter was trained for the bar, he alone among all the
Anthologists seems to have put literature foremost in his pursuits.
That he hoped one day to make a worthy contribution to American
literature is evident in his letters, his journal, and his early
literary attempts. In 1802, having finished his studies in law,
he put off admittance to the bar in favor of taking a journey to
several cities in the United States and to Europe. This trip was
not to be one merely for pleasure, but for the acquisition of
knowledge which he hoped one day to use.
I shall have to see mankind in new situations, to improve my
mind in the numerous scenes to which I Shall be a party; and,
under the guidance of Heaven, I hope my time will not be lost,
as it regards either thglacquisition of knowledge or the
improvement of opinion.
His ultimate aim, he confessed, was preparing himself for life as
a literary man: "Literature is my object," he wrote.82 Walter
saw that the United States was becoming a land of opportunity for
someone who had the financial means, the ability, and the ambition
to become a man of letters, and he recognized that he himself had
all these advantages. "I hope, one day, to do something which will
be worthy of being remembered," he wrote a friend. Although he

might accomplish something in politics or in "the empire of morals

and religion by some work of merit," he saw that "in America,

 

80Walter to Buckminster, September 29, 1806, Buckminster Papers.

1 .
From walter‘s Journal, September, 1802, quoted in Quincy,
"Biographical Notices," History, lA-15.

82Quoted from walter in Quincy, "Biographical Notices,"

History, 15.

#0
letters are not too much encouraged" and that he himself had not
only "ambition and perseverance" but "perhaps my fortune may enable
me to print my own work."83 "There is a pathway open in this
country to a goodly land," he said. "I mean to offer my passport
at the turnpike-gate." Writing to Channing, he said,
I am glad that you and Shaw are making excursions into literature.
I would I were with you, to participate the labor and the pleasure.
I want my country to do something in this cause. It is high time
that the young Hercules, who has strangled the serpents, should
go forth in the plenitude of muscular force, and perform the
mighty labors assigned to him. American literature ought to
bud, it ought to promise future fruits of Hesperian luxuriance.8"
Upon returning from Europe he was going "to study, for diligence
alone can add greatness to genius, or produce respectability when
talent is wanting." He was exceedingly aware of the limitations
of imagination, wit, and genius.
Imagination, without the sense acquired by industry to restrain
and embellish it, is nothing but a wild hippogriff, that plays
fantastically in the high heavens and amuses children with its
freaks and vagaries. And what is wit even, unless illuminated
by knowledge: Acquired by study, indeed, it amuses for a little
while, but mere wit is contemptible.
As for genius, it could only "quicken progress, give an energy to

' What one needed,

our researches," and "illuminate what is obscure.’
if wit, imagination, and genius were to be of any use, was knowledge,
and it was walter's belief that "all knowledge must be acquired from
books, conversation, or reflections upon human nature."

His journey to Europe was to help supply him in all of these.

In London he planned to "buy a good library."

 

83Quoted from walter in Quincy, "Biographical Notices,"

History, 17.

8"Letter from Arthur walter to William Ellery Channing,
April 1, 1803, quoted in Felt, 167-68.

hi

I Shall expend $1,500 in law books and a private, choice

collection. I mean to buy the corner—stones of learning.

These must support the building; and others, gradually

attained, must contribute to its strength and beauty. 5
Moreover, throughout his journey he was to keep a journal, and
this journal, undoubtedly one of the most interesting and
informative of any American then living, records not only the
numerous conversations he held, mostly with other young Bostonians
then in Europe, but his thoughtful reflections upon everyone and

everything he came into contact with--the books he read, plays he

saw, sights he visited, peOple he saw or met, and so on.86 For

 

85Quoted from Walter in Quincy, "Biographical Notices,"
History, 15-16.
86 . . . .

It 18 a pity this journal (actually there are two
journals, a London and a Paris one) has never been published,
though I have been told by the director of the Boston Athenaeum
that its publication is, has been for several years, in process.
Anyone interested in what one young man of early nineteenth-
century Boston thought about, was interested in, and came into
contact with--all probably typical of the experiences of several
men of his time and place--should certainly peruse walter's
journals. Mbreover, the journals are Significant Simply as a
contribution to the literature of America. Here is a partial
list of topics from his London journal: London hospitality and
the character of Londoners; reflections on himself; Addison;
the classics and their status in America; the vanity and love
of praise; his father; his love of friends and conversation;
his loneliness; John Quincy Adams and politics; Ulysses and
Nausicaa; Johnson's Rassellas; Macbeth players (Cooke, Kemble,
Mrs. Siddons) with analyses of the Sleep-walking scene and
the ghost of Banquo; Clarissa Harlowe; CowPer'S Task; Horne
Tooke; Paley on Christianity; book stores; politics in Britain;
Spectator; Smith's Wealth of Nations; Gibbon; Boyd's Dante;
James McIntosh; Athenian democracy; painters of London; William
Jones; British Museum and other various Sights in London. His
Paris Journal is just as full. See Arthur Maynard walter,
"Journal" (Boston Athenaeum). Cited hereafter as walter,
"Journal."

 

 

 

A2
walter, "the object of a journal," as he had gathered from Samuel
Johnson, "is to note the state of the mind, so as to observe its
progress or declension in wisdom or virtue, & also to preserve
the most striking impressions made on the understanding & senses
by the first survey of new objects."87 Walter, in his own journal,
fulfilled this object admirably, and he himself felt that, although
"a journal should exhibit the travels of the mind" and "mine
fulfills this object imperfectly" and "I feel conscious that I
have observed many things ignorantly, superficially, & falsely,
I have still added something to my knowledge."88
Among his early literary pieces is a poem entitled "Poetry,"

written in 1797 and delivered before a Harvard literary society.
A long poem written in heroic couplets, it follows the "nymph"
Poetry in her varied perambulation through the ages up to the
formation of the society, "A.L.S.," to which Walter addressed
his poem. Besides revealing certain judgments concerning various
poets of the ageS--"when her Gray and favorite Goldsmith died,
she left mankind and to a valley hied"--"Poetry" shows the strong
devotion of a band of young Harvard undergraduates to not only the
reading and writing of literature, but a life in which literary
topics played an important role:

Sure when we Sit around our social fires,

And tell the tales of learning's ancient sires,

When we relate an anecdote of Young,

Or tell when Alfred died, or Shakespeare sung;

Or learn how Johnson penn'd a curious note,
Why Priestley challenged, and why Gibbon wrote.

 

87wa1ter, "Journal," July 3, 1804.

88walter, "Journal," May 20, 180A.

A3

We then receive a joy unknown before,
Unknown to those, on whom we Shut the door.89

walter left Harvard before receiving his degree, having refused
to accept the role assigned him in commencement exercises, but
he did not leave his literary endeavors behind. While he was
preparing himself for entrance at Columbia, from.where he finally
graduated after a year's residence, "having considerable time,
devoted to no particular object, I determined to employ myself
in writing some papers for the improvement of my style and the
pleasure of the public at a future period." These he planned to
entitle "The Narrator." In the first he frankly reveals his
literary ambitions:
By writing often and attentively I hope to lessen defects,
to gain graces and in time to become master of a style pure,
correct, and harmonious. . . . I confess myself a votary,
without being a slave to renown. It is often, tho' not
always, the cause of actions and a pleasing delirium thrills
thro' my frame when I receive the approbation of the wise
and virtuous. . . . The Spectator, Rambler and Speculator
were written for the world, and why Should not the Narrator
follow at a humble distance? . . . My happiness would be
greatly advanced, should some Johnson or Burke ask, 'who
is the writer of this' and say as Dryden of Pope, 'he is no
mean fellow.’ I care very little for inferior critics and

scribblers.9O

When the Literary Miscellany came into being, walter

 

supplied it with three essays which Show that his endeavors had
by 1805 carried him far beyond the juvenile "Narrator." The
first of these, "The Influence of Religion upon the Fine Arts,"
was written in Paris after he had visited the Louvre, and the

second, "Apology for Epicurism," perhaps also inspired in Paris,

 

89Arthur walter, "Poetry" (Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.)

9OArthur walter, "The Narrator to his readers. October
9, 1798. Number 1" (Boston Athenaeum).

AA

praised the delicate art of cooking. The third was "The present
State of English poetry."91 Here walter surveyed, more carefully
than any Bostonian had hitherto done, the recent poetry of England
and concluded that "the present state of English poetry has few
claims to applause. The days of Cowper are past, and no brother
bard has great pretensions to excellence." Among the bards

walter considered are Southey, Coleridge, Bloomfield, WOrdsworth,
Sotheby, Boyd, and Rogers. Of these, Walter seems to have thought
Southey to have shown the greatest promise, though he had not
lived up to that promise. Coleridge, he said, "is the boast of,

many a vulgar mind; but, if the commons honor him, the lords reject,

l

the prince disclaims him.’ walter paid more attention to WOrdsworth,

but his final judgment of him was not much more favorable than that
of Coleridge:

Wordsworth too has written ballads; some are good; but most are
bad. They are distinguished by an affectation of simplicity,
and a reality of Silliness. He had seen the mighty effects,
produced by the natural description of Cowper and Burns, and
endeavored to transfuse into sentiment, what they had discovered
in real existence, or had easily drawn by natural consequence
from the Objects, which they had surveyed. It is well known,
that he did not succeed. Readers were at first astonished by
such goddipping and children's prattle; they could not believe,
that the writer wished to carry them back to the Simpering
nursery, or introduce them to the soft easy chair of a senti-
mental, foolish girl. But they soon discovered, that the
tendency of the ballads was to corrupt the heart by unnatural
Simplicity, and weaken the head by false representations of
poetical beauty.92

Although time has certainly not substantiated walter's judgment

of werdsworth, still in the phrase "unnatural Simplicity" Walter

 

918cc Willard, II, 1A6, for identification of pieces.

929%., II (n.d.), 369-71».

A5
did hit upon what many critics came to regard as WOrdSworth's
major weakness.

All of Walter's hopes for his future as a literary man
were inseparable from his hopes as well for a virtuous Christian
life. Although he never was a major participant in the theolog-
ical controversies of the Anthology, none of the Anthologists
was more pious than he. He did "have my own opinions" on
"mysteries or doctrinal points" and did "sometimes talk about
them, but not often."93 Rather he tended to look upon Christi-
anity as a matter of "the human heart," something that was
believed in but not necessarily argued about. That he could
hold this view was due to his conception of Christianity as "a
benevolent doctrine, a free system of morals & a most benign
religion, which appeals to the human heart for its truth." "What
virtue," he asked, "is not sanctioned by Xianity, what honorable
feeling is condemned, what virtuous emotions refused? None. . . .
Upon this principle alone I should be willing to build my faith
in Xianity. We have a natural reverence for virtue, & instinctive
love of truth, & upon examinations we must find that truth &
virtue can only descend from Heaven." If Christianity inculcated
"a system of doctrines" involving these beliefs, Walter could
"not refuse my assent to the excellence & verity of the system."91+

In January 1807 Walter died at the age of 27, and if
students of American literature today regret the untimely death of

one of America's first true devotees to literature, their regret

 

93Walter, "Journal," March 31, 180A.

9"Walter, "Journal," November 27, 1803.

H6
can be only a dim reflection of the grief that his contemporaries
felt. The letters that passed between Joseph Buckminster and
William Shaw are unrestrained outpourings of their deep sorrow
in losing their fondest friend.95 It was not only love that
others felt for him, but a deep respect both for what he was as
a man and for what he had attained and promised to attain as a
man of letters. The Anthology devoted a page to his memory,
Speaking of his moral qualities and his intellect-~his imagination
"which seemed to glow with the pure, unmingled fire of genius, or
his judgment, which appeared to shine with the clear, unclouded
light of intuition"--and quoting lines from lycidas--"Lycidas
is dead, dead ere his prime/ Young lycidas, and hath not left his

n96

peer. In the next issue the Anthology published its own elegy

on him, commending his liberal passions, the workings of his

mind, his knowledge and talents, and with all this his "love of
human kind" that caused him to lead an active life for the public.97
Still later the Anthology published a poem written by Buckminster

to Shaw on his death.98 Then, two years later, when Buckminster

presented his Phi Beta Kappa oration, he closed his address with a

description of walter, the model man of letters:

 

95Several works quote these letters. See Quincy,'Biographical
Notices," History, 18-21.

96 .A.. IV (January, 1807). 37.

H3

97MHA., IV (February, 1807), 93.

98 ., IV (August, 1807), E32.

IE
HP

A7

There is now present to my mind the image of a scholar, whom

some of you knew, (for he was one of us,) and those who knew

him well will say with me, he was as pure a Spirit as ever

tasted the dew of Castalia!--How would walter have delighted

in this anniversary!99

If walter was devoted to creating literature, the Society's

treasurer, William Smith Shaw, was no less devoted to promoting it.
Shaw did write his share for the Antholog , but his primary contri—
bution was his efforts to make others' learning and creativity

possible. Like walter, Shaw was intent on doing his part to bring

about a new era of American letters. When the Port Folio appeared,

 

he vigorously supported it, writing to Walter in 1800

I ardently wish to live in those days, when my country, by her
munificence to learned men, by a true estimation of their
productions, and by the cultivation of the fine arts, Shall
rescue herself from the imputation under which she now very
justly lies; when America, from the number of her illustrious
citizens and her literary fame, may be called the eye of thg
world, as the ancient city of Athens was the eye of Greece.loo

 

later, again writing to walter, he commented on America's being
"deficient in literature and sciences" and said thus "She will
continue till these pursuits are more liberally encouraged."
For he did believe that her backwardness in these areas was not
due to "any physical defect in Americans."

we have many men among us, who would not suffer, if compared

in point of genius, with the most renowned men of Greece and
Rome, of France and England. Erudition must first become the
object of ambition with our countrymen before they will attain
to eminence. It was near Six hundred years after the foundation
of Rome, before she produced any celebrated poets. . . . Still
there must have been geniuses, at that very period, in Rome,
equal to those of the noted poets in Greece. 01

 

99M.A., VII (September, 1809), 156,

100Letter from William Shaw to Arthur Walter: January 16,
1800, in Felt, 90-91.

101letter from William Shaw to Arthur Walter; June 11)
1803, in Felt, 169.

A8

From the beginning of the Society Shaw handled many of its
business transactions, not simply because he was treasurer but
because he waS.vitally interested in the Anthology‘s success.

Shaw's most important role was that of progenitor of the
Anthology Reading Room, a role that when the Boston Athenaeum was
eventually founded brought him the nickname of "Athenaeum Shaw."
His interest in books began early in life, when as a sickly youth
he came to regard them as a sure source of enjoyment. Shaw, like
walter, was trained as a lawyer, but again like walter, he did
not let this profession rule his life. As private secretary to
his uncle, President John Adams, he had taken advantage of his
life in Philadelphia to mingle in literary circles and to begin
an extensive collection of pamphlets and books, a project that
was to fill the rest of his days. On his return to Boston, he
studied and then practised law, but in 1806 he was appointed
Clerk of the District Court of Massachusetts and through the
leisure time that this office allowed him he was able to pursue
his true interests with zeal.102 Walter had earlier agreed with
welles's estimation of Shaw, that he was more interested in
politics and literature than in law and that he "has not quickness
of debate" nor the ability to Size up "an affair immediately, tho'
he can write well on any subject, which is presented him."103 So
when Shaw became Clerk, walter was pleased at his success and wrote
Buckminster

You & I know his merits well, & there is not a being on earth
at whose good fortune I rejoiced more. He is one of these

 

102see Quincy,'THographical Notices," History, 22-AH.

lO
3walter, "Journal," December 29, 1803.

1+9

very few good beings, whom we sometimes meet with in the world,
who are perfectly calculated for esteem & affection, & who might
make a desponding man believe that the world was not full of
selfishness & knavery. I believe he will make a good Clerk.lO"

If one wants to know how an early nineteenth-century American
went about building up from scratch one of the most outstanding
libraries of the day, he should look at the correspondence of Shaw,

a correspondence that extended to persons all over America and to
England as well.105 Among his letters those to Joseph Buckminster

are the most informative regarding his aims for the Anthology Reading
Room and the means by which he hoped to attain these aims. Shaw not
only sent money orders of $500 to Buckminster with which he personally
was to buy books for the Anthology Reading Room, but instructed him

on various means (from which even present-day promoters could learn)
to attain still other literature and to Spread the "fame of the

Reading Room." In 1806 Shaw wrote to Buckminster

I have very little doubt, that in a few years we shall see a
library in our beloved Boston inferior to none in America. If
we do not, it will be owing altogether to want of exertion on
the part of our literary men, whose duty it is to awake from
their stupid lethargy, and to rescue our countryogrom the scorn
and derision which now lie so heavily upon her.

By 1807 Shaw was able to write Buckminster:

I can now congratulate you on the prospect of having a library

in this town,--which you always seemed to believe was only a
delusion of my idle brain,--on a liberal plan, highly honorable

to the munificence of our citizens, and which will assist and
facilitate the researches of the learned and gratify the curiosity
of strangers. This, with me, I can assure you, is no ordinary
subject of congratulation. Depend upon it, that the establishment
of the Athenaeum, the rooms of which are to be always accessible

 

10"letter from Arthur Walter to Joseph Buckminster, Boston,
September 5, 1806, Buckminster Papers.

lOSShaw's papers are in the Boston Athenaeum. For published
correspondence see Felt.

106Letter from William Shaw to Joseph Buckminster, Boston,
December 1, 1806, quoted in Quincy, "Biographical Notices," History,

26-27.

SO

at all hours of the day, is one of the greatest strides toward
intellectual advancement that this country has ever witnessed.107

William Emerson, who was the second oldest member of the
Society, was elected vice president, and Samuel Cooper Thacher was
chosen as the new editor, requesting in January 1806 that the title
be changed to "Superintending Committee" so as to relieve him of
some of the responsibility. He held this post until he sailed for
Europe in June 1806,108 after which time William Shaw, James Savage,
and Alexander Hill Everett each took a turn at the job.109 Having
just graduated with highest honors from Harvard in 180A, Thacher
had immediately begun the study of theology under the direction of
William Ellery Channing, who was then twenty-four. Then in 1805
he had become head master of Boston latin Grammar School and after
that his own private school. He became librarian of Harvard in
1808, and in 1810 he succeeded John Thornton Kirkland at New South
Church, Boston, when Kirkland became president of Harvard.110

Thacher's early manhood is best seen through his corre-
spondence with his classmate Andrews Norton and Norton's description
of him written in l8h9. At a time when, according to Norton,
Harvard library numbered so few volumes that "the whole collection
would, at the present time, if advertised by sale at auction,

hardly draw together any purchasers," Thacher and some others turned

 

107letter from William Shaw to Joseph Buckminster, Boston,
May 13, 1807, quoted in Quincy, "Biographical Notices," History,
36-37.

lOBQuinCY; "Biographical Notices." History; APP-“8-

109Howe, 298.

llOQuincy, "Biographical Notices," History, h6-A8.

51
their "desultory studies . . . to some account;--the more, perhaps
because they were pursued from free will and inclination, and there
was no danger that our appetites should be distracted or cloyed by
the variety and abundance of the feast set before us." Thacher died
early, in 1815, already having produced some important theological
tracts, among them his criticism of Andover Theological Seminary
published in the Anthology. But Norton believed that if his "life
had been prolonged, his industry, his love of learning, and the
clearness and comprehensiveness of his mind, would have enabled
him, even under the oppressive labours of his profession, to become
a clergyman of very respectable theological attainments, and a well
informed gentleman."

As for Thacher‘s personality, "his equable and amiable temper,
united with correct conduct and proper self-reliance," produced
"general liking of him." AS a member of the Anthology Society, he
reminded Norton "of what Cumberland . . . said of Soame Jenyns,--
that his company at our meetings was like bread at dinner which we
cannot dispense with, whatever else may be on the table."111
Although controversy did not seem to be particularly natural to his
temperament, still he was willing to engage in it when he felt the
cause justified, and it was to a great extent his labors that gave
the Anthology its reputation as a mouthpiece for liberal Christianity

and it was he to whom Channing in 1815 addressed his important

letter in defense of unitarianism.

 

lllLetter from.Andrews Norton to Sprague, September 8:
18h9, in Sprague, VIII, AA2-Ah.

52

Of the other officers of the Society, by far the most
important, both in his personal attainments and in his contribution
to the Anthology and the Anthology Reading Room, was Joseph Stevens
Buckminster, one of the auditing committee. Of all the Anthologists,
no one was more esteemed, and with reason, than Buckminster. During
his brief life he was undoubtedly the brightest star among the
"constellation of literary luminaries" in Boston. Some of his
qualities he was born with. His engaging manner, his beauty, his
intelligence were so evident even in infancy that a couple passing
through his hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, asked his parents
if they might adopt him.112 Later, walter wrote of him, "There is
something in his manner and disposition which irresistibly attracts,
and something in his intelligence and way of communication, which
captivates and conquers."113 These qualities he made the best of
throughout his life. By the end of it he was reckoned to be not
only one of the finest scholars but by far the most brilliant pulpit
orator of his day, his charming appearance and powerful delivery
adding greatly to the effect of the words he uttered. So much was
he admired during his lifetime that afterwards, probably partly
because he died at only twenty-eight at the height of his powers,

he became somewhat of a legendary figure, serving as an example to

 

112There are several sketches of Buckminster, but the longest
and most interesting account by a contemporary is his Sister's Eliza
Buckminster Lee's Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D.D., and of
his songRev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster (Boston: Wm. Crosby & H. P.
Nichols, 18A9), a work that is in itself an admirable Specimen of
nineteenth-century feminine literary accomplishment. As her brother's
companion in Boston, Mrs. lee was herself one of the literary circle
Buckminster drew about him. See Lee, 69.

113letter from Arthur walter to William shaw, June 27) 1798’
quoted in Felt, 26. '

 

 

53

the generation that came after him of what a man might accomplish
within a Short life.

Buckminster had early Shown a propensity towards being a
scholar, so that when he became a student at Harvard at the age
of thirteen (having waited a year at that) be distinguished himself
in his breadth of reading, his themes, and his recitations. His
interests were predominantly literary, and not only were his reading
and writing in this direction but, according to Joshua Bates, his
mind itself "possessed all the elements of poetic genius."ll" It
was not as a poet, however, but as an essayist and philologist
that Buckminster made his greatest literary contributions. His
sermons themselves were--for him and his listenerS--literary, as
well as religious, works, as were all his orations. The 1809 Phi
Beta Kappa address was universally hailed as the most brilliant
oration of its time; according to Henry Adams, it was "regarded
as making almost an epoch in American letters."llS Although
Buckminster wrote some literary criticism, an example of which is
his criticism of Thomas Gray's poetry in the Anthology, his major
work was in Biblical criticism, an area of study he saw as the
only firm foundation for sound religious beliefs. It was due
largely to his work in this area that he was appointed the first

Dexter Professor of Biblical Criticism at Harvard in 1811.

 

ll"letter from Joshua Bates to Sprague, March 20, 18A9, in
Sprague, VIII, 393-99.

115 .
Henry Adams, Histor , IX, 199. Henry ware wrote of
Buckminster's oration: "I believe it fully satisfied his greatest
admirers,--which is saying as much as can be said." A classmate
had followed Buckminster with an admirable poem, "but both he and
his poem were perfectly killed by the preceding performance."
letter from Henry ware to Andrews Norton, September 5, 1809, Norton
Papers (Houghton Library). Cited hereafter as Norton Papers.

54

The religious principle that most pervaded Buckminster's
thinking was the idea "that the solid foundation of all true Theology
was to be laid in the diligent study of the Scriptures in the
original tongues, under the lights of an intelligent and conscientious
criticism." It was with this principle in mind that he undertook the
task of editing the Greek New Testament of the German scholar Griesbach,
in the process of which he added German to his knowledge of other
languages. With this work he "gave the first impulse" in the vicinity
of Boston, "if not in the United States to the systematic study of

'Biblical Criticism.‘"ll6

Inherent in Buckminster‘s insistence upon
Biblical scholarship was the belief in the invincibility of private
judgment and free inquiry. Through his studies, despite the efforts
of his Calvinistic father, he was led to a nonsectarian view of
religion, finding no evidence in the Scriptures for any creed, and

a thorough rejection of Calvinism, including a rejection of Trini-
tarianism. One need only look at the titles of his sermons and the
entries in his diary to discover beliefs completely antithetical to
Calvinism. Among his sermons, for instance, are ones on self-govern-
ment, practical religion, the duty of excelling in virtue, free will
("To ask whether the will be free is ridiculous"), the infinite
goodness of God, and God as a benevolent intelligence. Likewise his
diary contains such statements as "to take pleasure in the damnation
of any one, is more than God requires of us, & even is capable of

himself" and admiring portraits of such liberal divines as Charles

Chauncy and Joseph Priestley.117 In at least two ways much of the

 

116Letter from Edward Everett to Sprague, April 12, 18A9, in
Sprague, VIII, #00.

117See Joseph Buckminster's sermons and his diary, Buckminster

Papers.

55

later Unitarian-Transcendentalist controversy can be traced to
Buckminster's principle of Biblical criticism. First, in giving
impetus to the belief in the right of private judgment and free
inquiry he helped to bring about the radical views of Transcenden-
talism. But, on the other hand, this principle likewise caused
certain men, such as Andrews Norton, to reject Transcendentalism
altogether. AS Edward Everett wrote in 18H9,

It is perhaps not the least recommendation of this view that

it leads directly to the cultivation of the congenial branches

of ancient and philological literature, and thus establishes a

safeguard against individual extravagancies and wild speculative

novelties. It is dangerous to take any department of enquiry

out of the recognized analogies of the human mind. The modern

Transcendentalism, like the ancient Mysticism, claims to have

a province of its own; not requiring, hardly inviting, illus-

tration from any other quarter.

Buckminster's Phi Beta Kappa address was only one of

several ways in which he attempted to influence the younger gener-
ation in its respect for active learning. It was from his observa-
tions on the liverpool Atheneum, sent to Shaw during his trip abroad,
that the basic plans for the Boston Athenaeum took Shape.119 It was
he, also,who began in the Anthology the "Retrospective Notices,"
providing knowledge of the bibliography of American literature and
a critical appreciation of these works. Moreover, like Gardiner,
he was fond of holding informal discussions in his study, which at
his death contained one of the finest and most extensive private

libraries of his time,120 and it was here that much Of the literary

 

118Everett, in Sprague, VIII, A00.

ll98cc Lee, #05-11.

120Catalogue of the Library of the late Rev. J. S. Buckminster
(Boston, 1812), and the partial list in lee, A83-86.

56
and theological activity of the day was probably initiated.12l One
of the young men who was fond of visiting him and browsing among
his books was John G. Palfrey. In 1861 he could look back upon the
days of his youth and write of Buckminster:

Since his time, New England has won a recognized place in the
realm of letters. Looking back through fifty years, I hold
nothing to be more sure than that much of the impulse that has
achieved that triumph is to be traced to him of whom I make
this desultory record. An admiring company of young men was
inspired with his generous love of learning. Norton, Ticknor,
Frothingham, the Everetts, were among those who came within

the circle of his personal companionship. Sparks, Prescott,
Bancroft, felt the influence at a further remove. The more
numerous scholars who have won a name in later days, have known
him only by the traditions of their circle; but the propitious
atmosphere in which their genius has been unfolded owes more of
its nourishing quality to no other mind.122

The rest of the officers were John warren and Peter
Thacher, on the auditing committee with Buckminster, and Benjamin
Welles, on the standing committee with Shaw and Thacher. Of these,
so far as this study goes, welles was the most important. He wrote
very little for the Anthology, neither steadily attending the
Society's meetings nor always contributing what he was assigned.
But his one essay on nature is so advanced for his time that it
alone distinguishes him among the others. Welles graduated from

123

Harvard, along with Buckminster, in 1800 and afterwards began

 

121See Ticknor's Life, p. 9, and lee, p. 209.

122letter from John Palfrey to Sprague, November 19, 1861,
in Sprague, VIII, AO3-AO6. Buckminster left a large quantity of
manuscripts, now mostly in the Boston Athenaeum: student themes;
his diary including an account of his trip to EurOpe in 1806 and
notes on his reading; letters; and many sermons. See Lee, pp. A82-
83, for a list of his publications.

123Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of
Harvard University, 1636-1915 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1915): P- 162-

 

57

studying law. But before long he took a trip to Europe and was there
at the same time as walter. It is mostly from walter's journal and
letters that what little we know of Welles emerges. Here walter
describes his fondness and simultaneous impatience with Welles and
tells us something of his unusual nature. walter enjoyed his
numerous conversations with Welles and Speaks of Welles's "niceness
of perception, so much delicacy, purity, agreeable wit & flowing
talk that no one but is pleased who hears him, & loves him who
knows him." In fact, Welles possessed "so much delicacy & sense,
he iS so superior to all meanness & bears his great qualities so
meekly, that I cannot find in these respects a better man in the
circle of my acquaintance."12" At the same time there were
innumerable things about Welles that walter objected to. Welles
carried around too many clothes and books while traveling, "his
conduct to females" had been extremely "contrary to what I expected,"
his "political sentiments" too greatly favored "those of the
present administration in America,"125 and worst of all he did not
even believe in the truth of Christian revelation.126 All in all,
walter finally concluded, Welles was "a strange fellow."127 More-
over, by 1806 walter had not seen any improvement in him. Writing
to Buckminster, he Simply reiterated what he had already recorded

in his journal, calling him "the curious, the strange & very curious

 

121‘LWalter, "Journal," November 26, 1803-

125Walter, "Journal," May 18, 180A.

lgéwglter, "Journal," December 1h, 1803-

127Walter, "Journal," May 18, l80u.

58

Welles."128 Apparently, other than his rather meager contributions
to the Anthology, Welles left no writing by which we might judge
his later development. He seems to have retired from what little
literary life he had indulged in to the ordinary life of a lawyer,
dying in 1860 after a long and apparently uneventful life of
seventy-nine years.129

The other members of the Society who were either original
members or who joined slightly later in 1805 were Joseph Tuckerman,
William Tudor, Thomas Gray, William Wells, Edmund Trowbridge Dana,

l3O Tuckerman had

James Jackson and Robert Hallowell Gardiner.
graduated from Harvard in 1798 with William Ellery Channing,
washington Allston, Sidney Willard, and Joseph Story, with whom

he remained close friends throughout life. Pastor at Chelsea,
Tuckerman was to distinguish himself as one of America's first
social workers. It was largely through his efforts that Boston's
children received more adequate school facilities including trade
schools, Special court treatment and institutional care in cases
of delinquency, and protection and education if orphaned or
neglected; that the underprivileged received just wages and steady
employment, proper opportunities for public worship, and better
housing; that working females received better protection and

remuneration; that prisoners received better care and help in

rehabilitation and employment opportunities upon release; that the

 

128walter to Buckminster, Boston, September 29, 1806,
Buckminster Papers.
129Howe, 299.

130Howe, 298-99.

59

mentally ill, the intemperate, and members of minority groups all
received more humane and constructive treatment.l3l

In all of his efforts for the unfortunate Tuckerman was
simply practising what he believed to be Christianity. For him
God was foremost a benevolent being and, according to Channing,
he "understood the character of Jesus by sympathy."132 Although
Tuckerman had once thought of preparing a work on Jewish antiquities,
it was the New Testament, rather than the Old, that came to occupy
his studies. But he Spent little time, in comparison to his
fellow ministers, in study, his active benevolence absorbing his
whole life. As Channing observed, "his heart was his great power."133
Tuckerman started the Society for Religious and Moral Improvement of
Seamen in 1811 and in 1826 he became the first minister-at-large
in Boston. Although Tuckerman as a young man enjoyed the belles-
lettres, especially Gray, Collins, and Shakespeare, and even wrote
some poetry, he much preferred the "active life" to the life of

books, and except for his Principles and Results of the Ministry

 

at Large and his various pieces for the Anthology he wrote very
little for the public.l3" He did, however, keep a diary, both
while in America and during his trip abroad, and in it one can

see what Tuckerman himself called "An Account of my conduct,

 

l3lSee Daniel T. McColgan, Joseph Tuckerman, Pioneer in
American Social Work (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America
Press, 19h0) for a life of Tuckerman.

132William Ellery Channing, A Discourse on the Life and
Character of the Rev. Joseph Tuckermap, D.D. (Boston, Mass.:
William Crosby & Co., l8hl), p. 53.

133

 

 

 

 

Channing, 29.
l3u

See McColgan for a full account of Tuckerman's interests
and accomplishments.

60

l

mental operations, etc.' and his strivings toward what he called

"active goodness."135 So far as a study of the Anthology goes,

 

Tuckerman is Significant because he so perfectly represents the
idea set forth so often in Anthology writings of benevolent and
practical Christianity, the antithesis of what the Anthologists
called "metaphysicks" and "creed—making." It was towards such a
Christianity as Tuckerman embodied that liberal Christianity of
the Anthology era hoped to move.

William Tudor is best known today as the first editor of

the North American Review, and that magazine has been correctly

 

seen as the literary descendant of the Anthology. As an agent for
his family's expanding firm, Tudor spent some of the Anthology
years abroad. Likewise his election to the Massachusetts legis-
lature and later his various duties for the government kept him
especially busy. So, although he wrote several pieces for the
Anthology, including its most humorous essays, he did not devote
himself to literature until 1814 when he set about establishing

136

the North American Review.

 

William Wells was active in literary circles mainly as a
bookseller and promoter of American publications.137 According to
the highly critical Bentley, Wells was the only intelligent bookman

in Boston, making a decided effort to supply New Englanders with

 

135See Joseph Tuckerman's Diary, in Papers and Diaries of
Joseph Tuckerman, Box 1, 1803-1836 (Massachusetts Historical Society,
Boston, Mass.). One of the most interesting parts of his diary is
the account of his visits to Coleridge in February 183A.

136See Quincy, "Biographical Notices," History, 54-63-

137Howe, 299.

61

rare but important works, especially in the classics. Bentley
attributed to Wells the first importation of classics from Germany.

At his store I found him opening an importation of German

Classical & Critical works from Leiden. I believe this to be

the first importation of the kind in America. . . . I never

heard of a Classical Collection from that quarter. Indeed I

date from this arrival the commencement of a Classical

Collection of Books for general sale in the Country.13
Bentley judged "the other Book stores" to be kept by"mere merchants"l39
but Wells's store to be "served with good books as he is a man of
taste & education."]'"0 It was greatly through his efforts that
Buckminster‘s edition of Griesbach's New Testament was published in
Boston, an event of considerable importance inasmuch as it was the
first time England imported an American edition of a classical work.

Edmund Trowbridge Dana was trained for the law, but like

walter he was also a student of literature. He was abroad at the
same time as were walter and welles, and the three Spent much time
together. As with Welles, walter found Dana to have some outstanding
faults, but at the same time he had a high regard for him. After a
Sunday with welles and Dana, Walter remarked that "the whole day was

' and that Dana "talks before strangers . . .

a day for wrangling,‘
for the sake of fame . . . & was fond of disputing with me, in order
to Show Welles his powers. This I do not blame, only he should try
to keep it a little concealed."l"l Again, he remarks he "could not

easily make a friend of" Dana, for "he loves mystery & obscurity,

which I abhor," and "hates to be fathomed, & in fine he loves mystery

 

138Bentley, Dia , September 16, 1806, III, 2H7.

139Bentley, Diary, May 31, 1807: 111: 298°

luOBentley, Diar , September 1, 1808, III, 381

l"lwalter, "Journal," December A, 1803.

62

in conduct more than frankness." walter added, however, "yet he

is a most excellent fellow."l"2 Of particular interest is walter's
account of Dana’s prolonged attempt to get his poem "Seduction"
published. After one publisher backed out,believing that "the

moral was good, but that the poetry was poonfl and another, saying

that "'the work [Should] not be extended beyond the circulation of
private friendship,'" Dana gave up, though the poem finally reached
the public through the Anthology.l"3 Sidney Willard likewise remarked

' and one who "was always atten-

on Dana‘s being "a natural talker,’
tively listened to." Dana, he said, was "a great reader, and
remarkably conversant with the writings of all the best English poets

" "well established in his opinions of the authors he

and dramatists,
had read," and "regarded . . . as a suitable member to pass judgment
on the poetical effusions that were sent to the Society for
publication."l""
Among these first members of the Anthology Society there were
many similarities. Except for J. S. J. Gardiner and Arthur Walter,
they were all graduates of Harvard, and walter, as we have noted,
attended up until graduation ceremonies. They mostly represented,
moreover, the two professions for which Harvard trained most of its
students--the ministry and the law. There were six clergymen among

the group--J. S. J. Gardiner, Emerson, Buckminster, S. C. Thacher,

Tuckerman, and Gray--a fact that accounts in large part for the

 

l"2walter, "Journal," November 26, 1803-

121L3walter, "Journal," January 11, 16, 20, 21, February 3, 1803;
31.5., II (July, 1805), 366-69; (August, 1805), 1172-71..

l"’"wnlard, II, 226 .

63
Anthology's strong theological tendency. Of these Six all but
Gardiner were liberal Congregationalists, Harvard being the strong-
hold of this group, and this fact helps to account for the strong
liberal views among the Anthology's theological pieces. Five of the
Anthologists were trained for the bar--Walter, Shaw, P. O. Thacher,
Dana, and Welles. Two other members, warren and Jackson, were
physicians and professors in Harvard medical school.

The Anthology Society was primarily a young man's club. All
of the members except Gardiner and Emerson were born after 1772 and
five were born after 1780.1"5 To some extent, the Anthology was
considered liberal in its views Simply because it was mostly a product
of the younger generation. One can see this conflict between genera-
tions even within the Anthology in the debates between J. S. J. Gardiner
and the much younger Buckminster and walter. Schooled in the litera-
ture of Pope and Johnson and taught to respect the language of reason,
Gardiner had never tried to appreciate either these giants’ contempo-
raries or the newer writers who appealed more strongly to the emotions
and senses of the reader. His younger colleagues, on the other hand,
were well acquainted with the early romantics; and, although as we
have already seen in the case of walter they were far less appreciative
of contemporary British poets than the next generation was, they were
much more sympathetic than Gardiner.

Likewise, the liberal views of the Anthologists concerning
religion Show the tendency among youth to question the beliefs of
their fathers. Archibald Alexander describes Buckminster on his

visit to Portsmouth in 1801 as being "full of anecdotes, such as

 

l"5See Howe, pp. 298-99, for very brief accounts of members.

6A

were current at Cambridge, and which were mostly intended to
ridicule evangelical opinions."ll‘L6 Throughout his son's youth
the elder Buckminster tried to guide his son in the direction
of his own Calvinistic beliefs. But the young man's studies, as
well as the influence of liberal ministers such as James Freeman
and his stay at Harvard, led him away from these beliefs, so that
his father persistently tried to persuade him to give up the
ministry altogether and enter a life devoted entirely to literature.
When young Buckminster was called to Brattle Street Church, his
father advised him "as an honest man . . . to tell them plainly
that you do not believe in the proper Deity and Divinity of Christ,"
thinking that if he did the church would change its mind. But the
son resolved to "leave my opinions upon disputed points to the
private inquiries of my hearers," despite his deep respect for
his father.l"7

The Emerson family also provides a study in the rise and
fall of generations, of the conservative old being overcome by the
liberal young. In 1802 William Emerson came upon Edward Bliss, the
brother of his grandfather, and Bliss's son, who asked if Chauncy
"was not . . . an universalist" and if Emerson "might possibly be of
the same kidney," to which Emerson replied that he "did not visit

them to discover the complexion of their theological creed, or to

 

l"'6James H. Alexander, The Life of Archibald Alexandery_D.D.
First Professor in the Theological Seminary, at Princetony New
Jersey (New York: Charles Scribner, 185E), p. 258.

 

l"7Lee, 1&2-A5. Throughout her book Mrs. Lee provides an
account of the dispute between father and son.

65

publish and defend my own."l"8 Archibald Alexander also met an uncle
of William Emerson's who told him "that the father of the latter was
a pious and orthodox man; and that when he had reminded his nephew
of this, the reply was, that if his father had lived to this time,
he would in like manner have changed his Opinions.."l"9 Ralph waldo
Emerson was not so charitable in his estimation of his father's,
William's, ability to change, however, and viewed him simply as a
stodgy conservative, even though William Emerson was by his own
contemporaries considered to have gone "farther on the liberal
side than most of his brethren with whom he was associated."150

Partly because of their similar backgrounds and ages, there
was a strong similarity of interests among the Anthology Society
members, a likeness that accounts, in fact, for the founding of
the Society. They were all interested in a cultural life, beyond
their immediate professions, that would bring them personal
enjoyment and benefit their community and their country. For them
it was a matter of self respect not to be (as walter pointed out
so many of "the gentlemen of Boston" were) "ignorant of literature,

& unskilled in languages, & science."151

In order to acquire such
knowledge many of them journeyed to Europe. During walter's visit

abroad there were at least Six other young Harvard men who were also

 

l"Shatter from William Emerson to Phebe Ripley, Boston,
March 3, 1802, Emerson Papers.

l"9Alexander, 26%.

150Letter from John Pierce to Sprague, May 8, 18A9, in
Sprague, VIII, 2A3.

151Walter, "Journal," December 5, 1803.

66
taking the tour—~besides Edmund Dana and Benjamin welles, welles's
brother Samuel, Charles Lowell, washington Allston, and William
Austin.152 It was especially popular for young ministers to go
abroad, some of them, like Lowell, for study among the Scotch
divines, but others to educate themselves through travel so as to
better fill their posts as intellectual, as well as spiritual,
leaders of their congregations.153 Several, like Buckminster,
went abroad initially for their health, but once there they took
advantage of the opportunities offered them. Buckminster, S. C.
Thacher, and Tuckerman all took the tour.

While abroad it was customary for them to keep journals,
write descriptive and analytical letters home to their friends,
and acquire libraries. John Quincy Adams, washington Allston,
William Tudor, Winthrop Sargent, Joseph Buckminster, John Lowell,
and William Scollay all wrote letterS--some a long series of
letters--that were published in the Anthology. But even if they
travelled only in the United States,they felt an obligation to
learn from their travels and to make what they had learned known.

William Emerson wrote, with a touch of humor, to his wife from Merrimack,

 

l52Wi11ard, II, 165 .

153William Bentley speaks of the traveling ministers in
several places in his diary. See Diazy, February 26, 1815, III, 317,
for a brief account of the tradition and its effects; also walter
to Buckminster, Boston, September 29, 1806, Buckminster Papers.
Buckminster's salary from Brattle Street Church was continued during
his absence, though he had to pay the ministers who supplied the
pulpit (lee, 252). walter gives a fairly detailed account of his
personal expenses in his journal a year after his arrival in
Liverpool. His expense for the year was L'177.5.10, which he
thought "sufficiently reasonable" since he had expected it to be at
least L 200. He calculated he would spend $3,000 in all during his
stay and said he was worth about $7,500 on his return to Boston.

67

If I should be prospered, you know, I Should like well to keep
a sort of journal of my tour, that would be worth publishing--
with a view of putting an end to the alarming dearth‘of
periodical publications in & about our metropolisH-D”r

 

Several of the European travellers acquired extensive libraries.
Buckminster's, the most impressive among those of the Anthologists,
numbered 1136 items, some items including several volumes, when
sold, and the quality matched the quantity.155 Some of the Anthol-
ogists bought books for the Anthology Reading Room as well as for
themselves, and walter, Welles, and Buckminster all wrote Shaw
descriptions of the Liverpool Atheneum, after which the Boston
Athenaamlwas modeled, Buckminster's letter being published in the
Anthology.156 Shaw‘s private collection itself was valuable, most
of it, like John Quincy Adams's, ultimately going to the Boston
Athenaeum.

With so many similarities among its members it was no wonder
that the Anthology Society was a closely knit group. It cannot be
denied that it was to some extent a social club, where the members
gathered for the pure enjoyment of conversation over dinner, wine,
and cigars.157 The Society was composed, after all, of many of the

most socially successful and convivial men in Boston. Eliza

Buckminster lee remarked that "ladies would not invite company on

 

15"Letter from William.Emerson to Ruth Emerson, Merrimack,
September 19, 1806, Emerson Papers.

155See Catalogue of . . . Buckminster. The catalogues of
the libraries of several Anthologists were published upon their
being auctioned after their owners' deather.

156

 

M-Au IV (November, 1807), 597-99; Felt, 161-62, 181.

157See Howe for various entries in the "Journal" describing
the Society as a social club. The secretary is often moved to
record even the menus for the suppers.

68
Anthology evening, because the meeting of the club robbed them of

"158

the presence of the most agreeable gentlemen. But beyond
pleasant chitchat, the members enjoyed talking about literature

and in particular their mutual literary project, so that although

the Society was a social club it was primarily a literary club.

They liked to indulge in what walter called "the mingling of mind,"l59
to exchange ideas and criticize one another's works.

Several writers on the Anthology Society, contemporary and

later, speak of the esprit de corps of the Society. Joseph Dennie,

 

welcoming the Anthology into the world of literary periodicals in
August 1805 after the Anthology Society had taken over the Anthology,
wrote:

So unfrequent in America is the intercourse between men of
letters, so sullen is the genius of republicanism, so wide is
our waste of territory, so narrow our prejudices, so local
our interests, so humble our means either of receiving or
imparting knowledge; that we have but little of that esprit
du cogps, which characterizes the Literati of Europe. Our
men of letters scarcely ever act in concert, each unconscious
and often careless of what another is doing, proceeds sullenly
alone, and a Magazine, or even works less ephemeral, may be
projected and executed at Boston, of whose authors and whose
objects an inquirer at Philadelphia or Baltimore, may be
profoundly ignorant.

Though Dennie had no idea who was conducting the magazine or how
it had begun, he praised it, for it was "correctly and elegantly
composed. Men of real scholarship and versatile talents are

engaged in its support."160 What Dennie felt about the state of

 

158Lee, 222.
159Walter, "Journal," November 26: 1803-

160Port Folio (August, 1805), quoted in Howe, pp. 13-14.
This view is echoed by Buckminster in his introduction of the
"Retrospective Notices of American Literature," M,A., V (January,

1808)) SAL-57 o

 

69
American men of letters as a whole, the Anthologists had felt about

the state of Boston men of letters in particular, and with the

Anthology Society for the first time they felt an esprit de corps

 

based primarily upon literary interests. Kirkland described this
spirit in one of the addresses of the editors in the Anthology:

Perhaps the present state of society tend in a peculiar
degree to foster general selfishness of character. A man's
intellectual attainments appear to be regarded as the means
only of his personal advantage. Doubtless many men of sense
ascribe to us a species of fanaticism, as the spring of that
propensity we discover to enlighten, improve, and entertain
a publick, which gives us for our pains neither fame nor money.
We suggest to them a solution of our conduct which does not
assign us a place greatly below or above the standard of human
nature. we are exposed to the influence of that 'Esprit de
corps' which animates literary association. The pleasures
found in composition and in the exercise of the mental powers
put some of us upon blotting paper. If the cause still appear
inadequate to the effect, we must be supposed to feel a desire
to be useful in the way which our pursuits and studies direct;
or if this seem too elevated a principle, let our services be
deemed symptoms and effects of an impulse of more doubtful
value, what a late writer on mora philosophy denominates the
pgssion for reforming the world.1

 

The numerous bonds of friendship within the Society could only
strengthen this spirit. Buckminster was very close to walter, Shaw,
and S. C. Thacher; Walter to Dana, Welles, and Shaw; and so on,
there being unions within circles and circles within circles, all
evident in the letters and diaries of‘Uxme men. But these bonds
were themselves based greatly upon mutual appreciation of literature
and its accompaniments. Buckminster described this interaction of
friendship and pursuits in a letter to Shaw:

England, with all her learning, luxury and arts, has not yet

furnished me with any pleasure equivalent to that which I

relinquished when I broke away from the circle of beloved
acquaintances in Boston, who were bound to me by all the

 

l6lMaA., IV (January, 1807), l-h.

70

enthusiasm of literature, by habits of daily intimacy, by
Similarity of pursuits and of age, and by the still finer ties
of that holy affection, on which Cicero has written that golden
treatise, and I be ieve I may also add by the bonds of Christian
charity and love.1 2

It is only to be expected that as this bond of sympathy, as
Willard called it,163 lost some of its power the Anthology Society,

and consequently the Menthly Anthology, Should have suffered. The

 

first members tried to guard against their own weaknesses by
strengthening the Society's ranks. Over the years they admitted
twelve more members, who shared many of the similarities among the
first members: Robert Field, James Savage, John Thornton Kirkland,
John Gorham, Joseph McKean, Sidney Willard, Winthrop Sargent, John
Stickney, Alexander Hill Everett, Joseph Head, George Ticknor, and
Jacob Bigelow. Gorham, McKean, Willard, Ticknor, and Bigelow were
all soon to become professors at Harvard, and Kirkland, in 1810,
was to become its president.l6" All of the men connected with
Harvard were to have considerable influence over the succeeding
generation and several had already exerted theirs. Kirkland, who
was thirty-five when the Anthology Society was founded, had already
influenced Buckminster and S. C. Thacher, who according to
Buckminster's sister were like "younger brothers to Dr. Kirkland."165
Being one of the most liberal clergymen of his day, he undoubtedly

had some effect on their religious beliefs, and when he joined the

 

162Letter from Joseph Buckminster to William Shaw, June 9:

1806, in Felt, 21h.

163Willard, II, 225.

l6"See Howe, 299-301.

165Lee, 312.

71

Anthology Society in 1806, becoming president in 1811 after Gardiner's
resignation, he added strength to the liberal views already being
expressed in the Anthology. None of the Anthology clergymen was
more anti-Calvinistic than Kirkland or tended more toward a purely
ethical view of Christianity.l66

The Society likewise acquired at least eighteen corresponding
members: John Pickering, John Dexter Treadwell, Jeremiah Smith,
Daniel webster, Nathaniel Appleton Haven, Charles Stewart Davies,
Andrews Norton, Benjamin Merrill, John Davis, Josiah Quincy, Isaac
Parker, John Lowell, Levi Frisbie, Paul Allen, James Luce Kingsley,
Benjamin Silliman, James Kent, and Thomas Day.167 So far as this
study goes Allen and Norton are the most important, Allen contri-
buting several significant articles dealing with literary criticism
and Norton being proposed as editor of the Anthology just before it
died and summarizing the theological views of the Anthology in the
periodical that he began shortly thereafter. Allen, during the
Anthology years, lived in Philadelphia, where he was an active member

of the literary circle surrounding Joseph Dennie and for a brief time

even edited the Port Folio. He never seems to have produced a major

 

literary work, but he was prolific as an essayist and poet, writing

168

considerably for both periodicals and editing his own newspaper.

 

166See Sprague, VIII, 26l-8l, for several accounts of
Kirkland's views.

167

6
l 8Mott, 239. Allen signed his Anthology articles "R."

Mrs. Lee, p. 2AA, says these articles were i'supposed to have been
written by Mr. Rockwell of Boston," but the volumes of the Anthology
having signatures to the articles do not support this view.

Howe, 301-303.

72

Norton was proposed several times for membership in the
Society but for some reason, probably because he was not in Boston,
never joined. Throughout its life, however, he was closely
associated with several of the most active members, sharing both
their literary and their theological interests. His student themes
and his letters to S. C. Thacher show a deep interest in literature,
especially poetry, and a strong sensitivity to poetic elements. At
this time of his life, he was obviously easily moved, whether by
signs of affection or by the beauty of nature, and deeply intro-
spective, even to the point of depression. Although Norton contri-
buted a fair amount to the Anthology, Thacher time and again asked
him to submit more, knowing from his letters what he was capable of
writing. It is a pity, for instance, that passages such as the
following never reached the Anthology:

There seems much reason to prefer the sinking to the rising
sun. The natural beauty attendant on each may be equal, but
with the one is associated the anticipation of the cures and
the business of the day; to the other succeeds the interesting
elegance of evening and the undisturbed solemnity of midnight.
Some days since I was uncommonly pleased with this prospect of
sunset. I was walking, after a slight shower, by the side of
a small inlet from our harbour bordered on one hand by a beach
sloping diversified with woodland; when turning the corner of a
high bank, which had before shaded him from my view the sun
appeared purpling the whole horison before me; the deep green
of the fields glittering with drops of rain and a broad line
of light trembling upon the waters.

It was not I believe in this walk, though at a time not very
distant, that to divert my-self from 'sorrier fancies' I attempted
a translation of that very beautiful passage of Tibullus to which
in your letter you referred. Like most other translations it is
an inexpressive, colourless, plaister of paris copy of the
original, infelix simulaeturum

 

When life with fluttering wing departing flies
Thou kindly, sadly near my couch shalt stand
On thy lov'd form I'll rest my closing eyes
And dying grasp thee with a trembling hand.169

 

169Letter from Andrews Norton to S. C. Thacher, Hingham,
July 31, lBOh, Norton Papeis. See, besides the letters of Thacher

73
The tendency in some Anthology essays towards what we have come to
term Romanticism would undoubtedly have been strengthened by such
pieces, and Norton, had he pursued this line of writing, might have
emerged as one of the first American Romantics. As a young man he
apparently seriously considered devoting himself to literature, as
his letters to Samuel Thacher suggest, but probably partly because
of bad health he seems to have decided that such a course was more
than he could undertake. During one of his states of despondency,
Henry ware wrote him an encouraging letter, saying
I would not have you hasty to abandon a literary life,--it will
be departing from the line which nature & providence have pointed
out to you, & in which patience & perseverance will certainly
give you, sooner or later some honorable place.170
As it is, Norton is remembered as one of the sternest opponents of
Transcendentalism and a distinguished Biblical scholar. It was, in
fact, his Biblical studies that seem to have led him to "distrust
all appeals to the emotional nature" and insist on "a solid basis of
fact, and superstructure of argument" for "every item of belief,"171
a position that made him reject Transcendentalism entirely.
The strength gained by the addition of new contributors,
however, was not enough to offset the loss of support from some of
the more important members of the Society. Several were away from

Boston for long periods of time, like Buckminster and Thacher,who

went to Europe in 1806,and William Tudon whose business and political

 

and Norton, Norton's student themes, HUC/8803/386.6l/
1803 (Harvard Archives, Cambridge, Mass.)

170Letter from Henry Ware to Andrews Norton, September 5,
1809, Norton Papers.

171letter from A. P. Peabody to Sprague, December 10’ 1859’
in Sprague, VIII, A35.

7h
responsibilities were constantly taking him away. Others, like
Benjamin Welles, were simply not dependable and eventually quit
coming to meetings.172 Even as early as June 1806 Walter could
write Buckminster:
Our Anthology Club is growing thin. You are gone, & S. Thacher
going, B. Welles lives out of town, R. H. Gardiner is going to
Maine . . . , Dana will go away with Shaw at ll. because E. Dana
is moving to Cambridge, W. Wells grows really uninteresting &
stupid at his own house; Emerson will begin to snarl at summer
suppers, the Drs never come, and there is only Mr. Gardiner who
is stable to invite, & myself, who am stable to stay.l73
In 1807, as we have already noted, Walter died, and in 1810 Gardiner
resigned, perhaps because of his disagreement with the theological
views of the Anthology. Kirkland took his place as president}?!1L
but he could not take his place as a writer or scholar of literature.
A year after walter's death, another Anthologist, Winthrop Sargent,
died at the age of twenty-five.l75 Finally, the Anthology Society
lost Wfilliam Emerson. He resigned apparently because of pastoral
obligations in 1809 and then in 1811, when the Anthology was near its
end, he died.176 Samuel Thacher, writing the last words for the
Anthology, had the task of writing at the same time a tribute to the
man who had rescued that periodical from what would have been almost
certain oblivion and who had gathered round him the men who had

formed the Anthology Society and given it whatever cause it has

for fame.

 

2 . . .
17 See various entries in Howe.

173Letter from Arthur walter to Joseph Buckminster, Boston,
June 3, 1803, Buckminster Papers.

171LHowe, 297.

l7SSeelMޤ., V (January, 1808), 36-37, for Emerson's obituary
on Sargent and M.A., VIII (January, 1810), 32, for Joseph Head's PBK
anniversary poem that concludes with a tribute to Sargent.

176Hove, 303.

75

In taking our final leave of the public, we yet linger
awhile. It is because we have a mournful duty to perform. It
would be unjust that the pages of the Anthology should be
closed without at least a passing tribute to the memory of a
man to whose zeal and activity we owe it, that our work did
not perish at its birth. Though the pressure of other cares
had prevented him from giving much direct assistance to us
during the last years of his life; yet we were always sure
of his smiles and good wishes. His short and active course is
now ended; but his bright example still remains, and 'marshals
us on' in the path of virtue and piety.

Peace to the memory of a man of worth
A man of letters and of manners too.17

The tribute Thacher here paid Emerson he was in a sense also paying
the Anthology, for the Anthologists hoped that it too might be
remembered for its worth, its manners, or taste, and its contribution
to literature, thus serving as an example for other such periodicals
in the future.

Had the Anthology been financially successful, the loss of

the Society's esprit de corps might not have loomed so heavily. But

 

the experiences of Phineas Adams and of the Literary Miscellany had

 

already shown that early nineteenth-century Boston was not a town
to offer adequate support to a literary magazine. In 1807 the

Anthology republished a poem.taken from the Port Folio on Boston,

 

which depicted it as a city that "thinks only on gold" and its
inhabitants as slaves of avarice. The Anthology outdid itself
defending Boston from these attacks,178 but undoubtedly it only
hoped to gain support by trying to convince the city that it was
more generous than it was, winning its patronage through flattery

and cajolery. The publishers wrote in May 1805, "We confess

 

”FIE-é.” x (June, 1811), 361-65.

178M.£.’ IV (May, 1807), 289-91; (July, 1807), uI6-21.

76
ourselves ambitious of refuting a charge on the character of this
town, a charge no less disreputable to its munificence than its
taste, that no attempt within its limits to support a literary
publication can be long successful."179 Even through its original
poetry the Anthology attempted to convince Bostonians that it was
only to be expected that they would support their only literary
magazine:

What? will a land of learned Merchants see
Their muse's carrier pine in poverty?loo

 

But the Anthology was never able to convince any wealthy Bostonians
that it was worth patronizing, or even many less wealthy Bostonians
that it was worth subscribing to.

As a result the Anthology Society journal offers an interesting
account of the financial struggles that a literary magazine faced in
early nineteenth-century Boston. During its eight years, the
Anthology had four different printers, the Society appointing one
committee after another to deal with them. Always there was the
same problem that, as one of the printers put it to the Society,
the number of subscribers "has decreased, is decreasing and will
probably decrease more."181 Several times the Society contemplated
the possibility of ceasing publication. The last time "the momentous
question of the continuance or dissolution of the Anthology" was

brought up in February 1811, it was

 

172M~g,, II (June, 1805); 333-

18OMa§., III (December, 1806), 6h5-h6.

181Howe, January 29, 1811, p. 2&7.

77

very humourously discussed, and there was on the whole but one
opinion and that was that the club would not suffer it to be
sent to its account with so little ceremony and that they would
support it totis viribus, until the present volume shall be
completed-~that it would be very much to our discredit to have
it stop at the commencement of this year after a succession of
indifferent numbers and on the whole that it shall never die
until it carry with it the regret of the publick.182
That the topic could have been "humourously discussed" may seem
somewhat surprising. But one of the Anthology Society’s most
admirable assets was the sense of humor that so many its members
possessed and that as a group it revealed not only in its meetings
but even in the most heated theological controversies in the AnthOIOgy,
The Anthologists were sincere in their efforts to make the Anthology
financially successful, no less sincere than in their statements on
liberal Christianity, but still they were capable of enjoying their
arguments, whether with printers or with orthodox ministers; towards
the end, when they once more had to deal with the printers, they
looked upon it as "yet one fine opportunity left for a quarrel."183
With such spirits it is perhaps not surprising that the
Society's last meetings were some of its most enjoyable ones. But
it is doubtful that anyone today reading the "last words and dying
speech" of the Anthology, written by Samuel Thacher, would recognize
it as the piece of "ironical solemnity" that the Society considered

it to be. ”Written in his happiest manner, according to Ticknor,

then secretary, it "was admirably adapted to the languor and indif-
"184

ference of the Society and was read amid bursts of laughter.

 

182Howe, February 5, 1811, pp. 247-h8.

183Howe, April 23, 1811, p. 253.

181+Howe, June ll, 1811, p. 256.

78

Although of the next meeting, when two apparently critical pieces on
the Anthology were read, Ticknor recorded "it is really a grievous
thing, that these blockheads will not suffer us to die in peace" and
"in our better estate we could endure it, but, to be kicked by every
ass in our weakness and decrepitude is heaping insult upon injury,"185
the next to the last session was so gay that "the members seemed by
their hilarity to have forgotten the feeble and perishing state of

the Anth."186

Thus the Society went down, but in apparent good
spirits.

Financial success might also have been able to remedy still
another serious disadvantage under which the Anthology always func-
tioned, the lack of a single, permanent editor. When Samuel Thacher
requested that the title of "editor" be changed to "superintending
committee," he was acknowledging the apparent inability of any
Anthology Society member to fill the post of editor by himself. The
Society was very much aware that many of the "imperfections of our
work . . . arise . . . from the number of hands employed to fill its
pages" and from its never passing "under the rigorous review of any
single editor."187 Eliza Buckminster Lee justly remarked that

when it is recollected that all of the contributors to the
Anthology were men engaged in laborious and exacting professions;
that their contributions were the fruits of chance half-hours,

or of moments lighted by midnight lamp, after days of fatiguing
labor in their offices; ‘that they did not pass under the

rigorous review of any single editor'; that each was his own
censor, proof—reader, and critic;--there is certainly a wonderful

 

185H0we, June 18, 1811, p. 257.

186Howe, June 25, 1811, p. 257. The minutes for the final
meeting read "Finis" (Howe, July 2, 1811, p. 258).

187Joseph Buckminster, "Address of the EditorS,"‘Mq&-a VI
(January, 1809), 3-6.

79

degree of unity of purpose and harmony of sentiment, and a
general respectability, in its pages, highly creditable to the
dawning literature of the day. Any one reading it now will be
startled at the independent tone of its criticism.l

It was bad enough that each of the contributors had a full-time
profession of his own to attend to, but this situation might have
been helped if each contributor had not found it necessary to edit
his own work, or if there had been one among them for whom the
Anthology was a full-time profession. What the Anthology needed,
in short, was what the youthful Phineas Adams had hoped to be, a
professional man of letters, but one with the backing that the
Anthology Society was able to give. It needed "an editor devoted
to the work, whose literary reputation would be in a measure at

189

stake," and towards the last, the Society thought that it had

found such a man. The Anthology published a statement on its
expected change of policy, saying "hitherto the receipts of the
Anthology" had not made it possible for the Society to have a full-
time editor.

One of our number has voluntarily assumed the responsibility of
seeing the work through the press; and when the materials have
not been furnished to his hands, he has been obliged to make
such hasty selections, in order to complete the requisite number
of pages, as his leisure amidst professional engagements would.
permit. For this evil we have the prospect of a speedy remedY:
and if our hopes are not disappointed, the Anthology will be
placed under the peculiar care of a gentleman, whose learning,
talents, and taste, will enable him to make it all that its
friends can desire.l9O

188Iee, 223—2u.

, 11

189Sidney Willard and S. C. Thacher, "Address of the EdiiKIFS:

M4,, X (January, l8ll), 3-5.

199yig., x (January, 1811), 3-5.

80

The gentleman thus described was Andrews Norton. Samuel Thacher
had proposed him and asked him to draw up "a project of the new
establishment by letter" telling "what degree of agency" he desired
"the club still to exercise" and Norton, never a Society member,
attended some of the meetings. But in the end the "only difficulty"
Thacher had foreseen, that of the Society’s perhaps not being able

to "make the office of editor worth your acceptance,' seems to

191 In his "dying speech" Thacher

have become insurmountable.
revealed that the Society's hopes for "a permanent editor" had
"been disappointed, from the inadequacy of the receipts of the
Anthology to repay the labour of any gentleman to whom we should
be willing to confide it."192

One reason the Anthology never had enough subscribers was
that it never was willing to lower its standards enough to attract

' wrote Samuel Thacher,'that

them. It was "our pride and our praise,‘
we have never sought patronage by making our work popular and insipid;
that we have never sought the praise of any one who does not relish
manly thinking and manly literature." Thus they insisted on their

object's being "exclusively literary,"

with no attempt to please
the public.193 But in attempting a literary magazine the Anthologists
ran up against a situation that they, even had they been completely

devoted men of letters aided by similar contributors outside the

 

191Letter from S. C. Thacher to Andrews Norton, Boston,
January 12, 1811, Norton Papers.

1928. C. Thacher, "Address of the Editors," Mfié') X
(June, 1811), 361-65.

193Mfig,, II (December, 1805), 677-78.

81
Society, could not easily have remedied. "American literature,"
Buckminster remarked,
is not a tract where we expect any regular annual product, or
where we are sure of constant improvements from the hand of well
directed industry; but it is rather a kind of half cleared and
half cultivated country, where you may travel till you are out
of breath, without starting any rare game, and be obliged to
sit down day after day to the same coarse, insipid fare.l

One periodical, published only from 1803 to 1811, could not change this.

Yet the Anthologists had such a broad view of literature that

 

it would seem that this breadth alone would have won their journal
more support than it had. They were fond of referring to the Anthology
as a "literary" periodical, but this term meant to them something much
more broad than it means to the present generation. Certainly they
recognized the difference between, say, a political tract that
happened to be well written and a poem, written well or not; and

there is no question that they were more devoted to the development

of American poetry, no matter how poor most of it seemed to them,

than of American political tracts, no matter how well written. But
they saw that literature, especially an undeveloped literature,

could not grow in a vacuum and seemed to believe that it would be

the product of a general awakening of intellectual activity in
America. Thus they fostered any area that might contribute to such

an awakening. That the Anthology came to take such a leading role

in the theological controversies of the time is due just as much to

a belief that religion was a part of the whole culture of America

as to the simple fact that several of the Anthologists were themselves

liberal Christians who used the Anthology to express their views in

 

1954.5, VI (January, 1809), 3-6.

82
one of the major movements of the era. In fact, for them the break-
down of orthodoxy was a necessary step in the creation of an American
literature; if a mind was to create a work outside the realm of
theology it could not be fettered by theological chains, by dogma
that prohibited inquiry of whatever kind.
But theology was only one of a great many areas that the

Anthology treated. In their "passion for reforming the world"

 

they delved into education, slavery, liberty of the press, democracy,
and even women's rights as authors. They had something to say about
the fine arts of music and painting and kept abreast of news
concerning museums and other institutions related to the arts.

Among the sciences they treated medicine, astronomy, chemistry,

and agriculture, their most significant pieces being the series of
essays called "The Botanist" by Benjamin waterhouse.

Even within the realm of more purely literary matters there
was great variety, ranging from sketches of the lives of such
prominent literary figures as Dr. Samuel Johnson and Joseph warton
to serial romances of young girls or soldiers. Of the pieces they
themselves wrote, the series entitled "The Remarker" was the most
significant, the separate essays being written by any one of the
Anthologists and treating theology, literature, character traits,
or anything else that happened to be interesting to the author. Just
the opposite of these finished essays were the entries in "Silva,"
which the Anthology defined as "a wilderness of sweets, and a
repository for curious remarks on men and manners, and literary

fragments and novelties"195 and, more simply, as "disjointed

 

195Mflg,, IV (February, 1807); 8"-

I

83
paragraphs."196 Here one will find in abundance brief comments on
all sorts of literary topics.

By far the most informative expositions of the Anthology's
views on literature, as well as some of its most significant writing,
are to be found in its review sections. From the beginning the
Anthology presented reviews of current publications on all topics,
though they were primarily concerned with literature and theolOgy,
in its section called "The Boston Review." In 1808, moreover,
Buckminster instituted the "Retrospective Notices of American

literature,"

which was to offer a survey of all American works,
"chiefly of literature and scholarship," outside the realm of
theology, which was not only the "most rich in materials" but also

"the best known" and "less generally interesting."197 Here one can

find reviews of Nathaniel Ward's Simple Cobler of Aggawam; poems

 

by John Adams and Philip Freneau; histories by John Smith, John
Callender, Ezra Stiles, Nathaniel Morton, Ira Allen, Samuel Williams,
Daniel Neal, Jeremy Belknap, and Thomas Mbrton; and several editions
of classical works as well as a grammar of Hebrew by Judah Monis.
Among the works reviewed in the "Boston Review" are novels, or

similar works-~William Godwin's The New Man of Feeling, Maria

 

Engeworth's Ieonora, Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Mbdern Chivalry, and

 

washington Irving‘s History of New York. Included in the plays

 

reviewed are William Dunlap's Dramatick Works, John B. White's

 

Foscari, and William Charles White's The Clergyman’s Daughter and

 

The Poor Lodger, all American productions. The'Boston Review"

 

 

l96yflg,, II (December, 1805): 636-

197MB.» v (January, 1808), 51+-57.

8h

likewise treated poetry: among American works, William Cullen

Bryant's Embargo, George Cockingas war, Henry M. Lisle's Milton Hill,

 

and, with special attention, Joel Barlow's Columbiad; and among
British productions, poems by Thomas Mbore, George Crabbe, William
Sotheby, and walter Scott, reviewing the works of Scott on three
different occasions.

' or just here and there in

Either in reviews, in "Silva,'
various essays one can find comments on Pope, Collins, Dryden,
Jonson, Southey, Thomscnl, Burns, Cowper, and Scott, to name only
a few British poets, and on such American poets as Trumbull, Dwight,
and Humphreys. Moreover, the Anthology offered a special section on
poetry that included both British published poems and American
original poems. To this latter group several Anthologists or their
friends regularly contributed: Joseph Head, Jacob Bigelow, E. T.
Dana, Joseph Story, Winthrop Sargent, Levi Frisbie, and washington
Allston,

The scope of the Anthology was not confined to works
originally composed in English. Mbst important was the attention
it gave to the classics. walter had described the state of classical
learning in America while he was abroad, considering for a time
devoting his studies towards becoming proficient in Greek.

We have very few Greek scholars in America, not more than three
in Boston, perhaps not more than one that can read Aeschylus &
Pindar, tho' there may be three or four, who read Homer &
Thucydides, because this poet & this historian are more easily
understood than the dark obscurity & refind eccentricity of the
two former. John Q. Adams I believe knows little of Greek.

Mr. Theophilus Parsons pretty well & so does Rev. Mr. Freeman.
Josiah Quincy precious little Judge Davis something. Mr. Welles
[william Wells?], the pupil of G. Wakefield reads Homer. I
believe these are the only Grecians in Boston, Some of the

Gentlemen I know, & the characters of others I have heard from.
. . . Such is the state of Greek literature in that place at

85

the beginning of the nineteenth Century; & unless a spirit of
ambition should arise among the scholars, I fear that the state

of things will be worse in a few years, than it is at present,

the young men are fonder of Latin, than of Greek & perhaps an
attentive observer might find three Romans for a Grecian, but

no more; & yet in general knowledge, in correct information, &

in number of scholars Boston exceeds any other city of U. States.l98

This somewhat inaccurate view walter repeated in the Anthology two

years later, still ignoring the learned J. S. J. Gardiner.199

Particularly important to the Anthologists was the encouragement

of the classics within the schools. One of its articles stated,
Since the revolution, owing either to a relaxation of the
discipline at our university, or to a general mistake of our
countrymen, under pretence of devotion to more useful pursuits,
the study of ancient literature is so much slighted, that few
can read Latin and fewer write it with ease . . . while to be
versed in Greek is almost as rare, and may soon become as
dangerous, as the practice of the black art.200

According to William Wells, not only the revolution in general, but
the publication of Mr. Locke's Treatise upon Education, which
very properly animadverted upon the exclusive attention, then
prevailing in the English grammar schools, to the acquisition
of the dead languages, unhappily gave some degree of countenance
to that darling opinion of dunces and projectors--that the study
of the Latin and Greek languages is a branch of education both
unnecessary and injurious.

To combat this notion, the Anthology was publishing a lengthy essay

on the utility of classical learning, written in 1769 by Dr. [James?]

Beattie. Wells suggested that if anyone wished "to see how weakly

and absurdly the contrary side may be defended by a respectable and

sensible man, he may read Dr. [Benjamin] Rush's Essays 'On the mode

of education proper in a republick,‘ and 'On the study of the Latin

and Greek languages.”201 The most necessary step in bringing about

 

198Walter, "Journal," November 23, 1803.
199"Silva," M.§., II (June, 1805), 30"-
200y.g., IV (February, 1807), 65-71.

201944,, VIII (April, 1810), 227-36.

86

a revival of classical learning in America was the acquisition of
classical texts on a large scale. With the Salem edition of
Sallust, Buckminster wrote,"We record it as a memorable fact in
the annals of our literature, that in the year of our Lord 1805
appeared the first edition of an ancient classick ever published
in the United States, which was not a professed reimpression of
some former and foreign edition."202 In 1810 William wells
announced the publication by him and T. B. Wait and Co. of "an
elegant, uniform, and complete series of those writings, which
from their just celebrity have acquired the appellation of the
Latin Classicks." This occasion was eSpecially important to the
schools, where "the progress of classical literature is materially
obstructed by the almost total want of good editions of the ancient
writers." A few of the classics had been published in the United
States, and individual scholars could obtain copies of various works
at a high price,
but should a class at a university be desirous of making themselves
acquainted with a classick of the higher order, they will probably
find it impossible to procure a sufficient number in the united
States. The consequences to literature are obvious, the ardent
curiosity of youth receives a check, and that knowledge, which,
if imparted at the favourable moment, might have been eagerly
accepted,will probably never be acquired.
After all, Wells pointed out, "our young men aspire to be something
beyond schoolboys."203 The Anthology attempted to review all classical
works that appeared in America and published translations of various

classical poems and essays on the lives of some classical scholars

and on classical literature. Of this last group by far the most

 

20294.5” II (October, 1805), 519-51; VII (July, 1809), 55-56.

20335, VIII (January, 1810), 69-72.

87

significant were Sidney Willard's "Remarks on English Translations

of the Roman Poets,‘ a series begun in the Literary Miscellany and

 

extending to about fifteen essays by the last number of the Anthology.

The Anthology made a considerable contribution, moreover, to
the diffusion of both French and German literature in America. It
reviewed such French publications as Madame de Stael's Corinna
and her father's life, published various surveys and letters on the
state of French literature, and treated in one way or another such
writers as Voltaire, Rousseau, La Harpe, and Racine. The Anthology's
interest in German literature was more pronounced, partly because
of the Anthologists‘ strong interest in Biblical scholarship and the
publication of the classics, both of which were gaining strong support
in Germany. The Anthology at several times published lists of German
works appearing on these subjects, and in the "Boston Review" treated
Zollikoffer's sermons on the reformation as well as Reuben Puffer's
address on "the propriety and importance of free inquiry on religious
subjects" which he delivered at Harvard in 1808.20" It is likely
that in both the areas of Biblical exegesis and the concepts of
private judgment and free inquiry the liberal Christians among the
Anthologists were somewhat influenced by German scholars and
theologians.

The Anthologists may have been influenced, as well, by
German romanticism. As early as l799 Shaw wrote to walter thanking
him for his "accurate account of Wieland's Oberon. It is as curious

a fact as the history of literature presents," he continued, "that a

 

goufié” V (July, 1808), 387-89..

88
nation, known as the Germans have been for productions of a phlegmatic
caste, should, all at once, astonish the world by works of fancy and
feeling."205 The Anthology reviewed Sotheby's Oberon, based upon the
German poem of Wieland, and gave some attention to Herder's

Scattered Leaves, Goethe's Elective Affinities,and Schiller's The

 

 

Robbers. The German writer most frequently mentioned, however, in
both the Anthologists' private writings and the Anthology, was
Kbtzebue, particularly his play Pizarro. Although "Silva" records

that the "chief purposes of the illuminated author" of Pizarro were

 

"to dazzle and seduce a romantick fancy, to raise delightful and
exalted notions of a savage state of nature, and by partial delineation
and false colouring, degrade and calumniate the mild doctrines of

"206 such adverse criticism was soon to insinuate itself

Christianity,
into even Anthology literary criticism as favorable comment.
Finally, the Anthology offered several listings of books currently
being published in or on Germany and a lengthy survey of German
literature from the commencement of its "Golden Age" up to 1811 in
an article entitled "On the effects of the industry of the literati

of Germany on the literature of that country; and on the influence

of the four last years of war upon it," by John Chr. Huttner.207

 

205Letter from William Shaw to Arthur walter, November A, 1799,
in Felt, 80. For German literary influences in New England at this
time, see especially Stanley M. Vogel, German Literary Influences on
the American Transcendentalists (New Haven, 19557: and Scott M.
Goodnight, German Literature in Magazines Prior to 18h6 (Madison,

Wis., 1907). Both works give some attention to the Monthly Anthology.

206

 

 

 

 

M.fi., V (January, 1808), 97.

207First published in TreuaVerkfindiger, a German newspaper
published in London. 34.5., x (January, 18113, 62-67; (February,
1811), 122-25.

 

89

In the end, the Anthologists' broad view of literature and
their concept of what was needed to produce literature helped to
defeat their purpose. It cannot be denied that today the Anthology
is important largely because of its breadth-—historians of literature,
philosophy, religion, science, government, art, and social, cultural,
and educational institutions can all learn much from its pages.
Mbreover, it cannot be denied that the Golden Age of American
literature, which it helped to bring about by trying to produce a
general awakening of intellectual activity, was no less broad in
its scope of interests. But it must also be admitted that had the
Anthologists devoted themselves to literature in a more narrow sense,
to what we know as belles-lettres--which was what they were ultimately
hoping to foster--they might very well have contributed more signifi-
cantly to the development of American literature, both in the produc-
tion of essays and poetry of more lasting quality and in the inspir-
ation of the succeeding generation to follow their example. As it
was, the Anthology refused to give its powers to a single object,
so that its greatest contribution towards the Golden Age of American
literature was in the formulation, sometimes through otherwise
insignificant pieces, of ideas that ultimately matured into the two

main branches of that Age--Romanticism and Transcendentalism.

CHAPTER II
A CRITICAL TRIBUNAL

The Anthology‘s major contribution to American literature as
belles-lettres is in its role in the transition of American literary
theory from neoclassicism to romanticism. This contribution can be
seen to a limited extent in the original poetry that the Anthology
published. But it is in their prose--whether in brief entries in

' or in reviews of

"Silva," in full-length essays in "The Remarker,l
books--that this transition is most apparent. In their literary
criticisms the Anthologists did not voice any ideas about the nature
of literature that had not been stated before by eighteenth-century
British critics. On the contrary, they played out parts that had
already been created. Rather, their importance lies in the fact

that they did play them and that they played them with vitality.
Romanticism arose in America not solely because there was a transition
in literary theory and practice in eighteenth-century England, but
because there was a transition in literary theory, at least,in early
nineteenth-century America as well. Although the tOpics of the
controversies that were waged in the Anthology were not new, neither
were they mere replicas of eighteenth-century British controversies.

There was freshness in the appeals of the Anthologists; they believed

what they themselves said.

90

91

Through their literary criticism the Anthologists helped to
accomplish what they had intended: the creation of a milieu conducive
to literary creativity. In their reappraisals of British poets and
their restatements of British poetic theories, they weighed the prob-
lems that any literati must weigh. Moreover, in their application
of these problems to American literature, as in the "Retrospective
Notices" and the "Boston Review," they not only acknowledged a body
of American literature already created, but kept the direction of its
advancement before the public eye and to some extent determined that
direction. Finally, voiced by American critics, the concepts of
such British critics as Edmund Burke and Joseph warton had a special
effect. The transition from neoclassicism to romanticism, gradual
and relative as it was, became in America a transition from British
authoritarianism to American originality as well. One manifestation
of this transition was that the stature of the critic decreased while
that of the poet grew. American critics had always insisted upon the
primacy of the poet in the republic of letters; but in fact the poet's
position was not supreme until critics saw his contribution as one of
originality. As George Ticknor wrote in 1810, "Criticks certainly
ought to give place to those who without or even in defiance of art
and rules, perform wonders in literature. . . . This seems to be the
characteristick mark which discriminates the man of genius from the
scholar."l

That critics came to pay originality such high regard resulted

from a change in attitude towards established models and rules for

 

lGeorge Ticknor, "Silva," Mn§-’ VIII (January, 1810), l9-25.

92
writing. Basic to the neoclassical position was a belief that there
were standard models of literary excellence and certain rules by
which that excellence might be attained. American neoclassical
critics were obligated to point out these models and rules to
American poets, as well as to the public, and to criticize works
according to their success in attaining the established standard.
This was the least they could do for the struggling artists of a
new nation, who were faced with not just the continuation of
English literature but the creation of a new American one. But once
the neoclassical position was questioned and certain critics began
to emphasize originality, genius, and imagination over learning,
rules, and imitation, the necessity of the critic himself was
questioned. The new critics also could voice views of certain
British critics and hold up models such as Collins, Thomson, Cowper,
and Burns. But if they were sincere in their emphasis upon origi-
nality, genius, and imagination, they had to admit that any model
was not only unnecessary but even detrimental to the creation of
poetry. Thus, although there was a new wave of criticism that
arose from the attack upon neoclassical criticism, the role of the
critic himself could only become inconsequential. Far from telling
the artist how to create a work of art, the critic could only
comment upon the work once it was created. Instead of insisting upon
a powerful "critical tribunal" to guide American poets towards the
creation of literature according to rules, the new critics came to

speak of critics as merely "commentators."2 The freeing of the

 

2See Paul Allen's essays on commentators, Ma§., VII (July,
1809), 31-37, and IV (July, 1807), 345.

93

American artist (or more precisely the imaginary American artist),
not only from British models but from American critics as well, was
perhaps the most important contribution of the Anthology critical
writing to the deveIOpment of American literature.

The Anthology poetry shows its tendency towards romanticism
mainly through the prevalence of odes. But even here, although the
ode offers more freedom to the poet than most forms of poetry, there
was more imitation than initiation on the part of the poets. Very
often the form was used simply because it was an appropriate one for
tributes: one will find odes to the anniversaries of washington's
birth, independence, and the election of Vermont into the union; to
a young divine upon his ordination; and even to the Massachusetts
Charitable Fire Society (this last, written by Robert Treat Paine,
to be sung, along with two other poems, by a Mrs. Jones). On the
whole the Anthology poems are weak imitations of eighteenth-century
British poetry that attempted to present familiar themes in an
elevated manner. William Story's remarks on the state of American
poetry at the beginning of the nineteenth century accurately describe
most of the Anthology poetry (though they may less accurately
describe the state of English poetry). Speaking of his father's,
Joseph Story's, "Power of Solitude," he called it a didactic poem
written in heroic verse and modeled on Samuel Rogemrs "Pleasures
of Memory."

It was written at a time when English poetry was nearly at its
lowest ebb, and it had the faults of its age. The Della Cruscan
School then reigned supreme in America, and even in England the
influence of the lake poets was very limited. Every versifier

used a poetic language. Poetry was prose gone mad. Milton‘s
parenthetical definition of what it should be, 'simple, sensuous,

9h
passionate,‘ had long been set aside, and by universal acclaim,
the Muse as she was called, was required to be bombastic,
artificial and unnatural. Simple English was too common for her
use. She must be pampered by Iatinized forms. She drove a
Pegasean two-in-hand of metaphor and personification, which
usually managed to run away with her and bear her beyond the
regions of sense. Phaeton was a trifle compared to her. Her
bathos exceeded his fall. In America, there was no native poet
whose reputation was superior to that of Robert Treat Paine. . . .

3
William's criticism of his father's poem in particular, both of its
defects and of its attributes, might have been given of much of the
poetry of the time:
The defects of his poem on the 'Power of Solitude' are exaggera-
tion of feeling, confusion of imagery, and a want of simplicity
of eXpression. The style is tilted and artificial. But though
dull as a poem, it shows facility and talent for versification,
breathes a warm aspiration for virtue and truth, and is creditable
to his scholarship.
The Anthology review of the second edition of Story‘s poem was not
even so charitable as William's estimation. The reviewer admitted
that it was a "better poem, than nine tenths that are published,"
but found little to recommend it, other than the second edition’s
being "undoubtedly improved, as it is diminished to one third of
its former size."5 That the Anthology could condemn a poem that was
on a par with the poetry that it published is indicative of the
extent to which its poetic criticism exceeded its poetic practice.
It is through the Anthology’s essays, rather than its poetry,
that its tendencies toward romanticism are most evident. Most of

these essays are critical, dealing with theories of poetry. But

there are a few that are primarily descriptive essays, and these are

 

3William W. Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story (2 vcils.3
Boston: C. 0. Little and J. Brown, 1851), I, 107-108.

"Story, 109.

5gug., II (July, 1805), 379-82.

95
in themselves examples of the literary theory advocated in the critical
essays. These descriptive essays, however, were not the chronological
result of the critical essays. In fact, so far as the Anthology goes
there was no steady chronological development away from neoclassicism
towards romanticism. The new wave of criticism was evident as early
as 1805, the year the Anthology Society was founded, and the old views
of poetry were restated up to the end in 1811. Although the devel-
Opment from neoclassicism to romanticism did happen chronologically
so far as the overall history of American literature goes, in the
Anthology one sees rather the range of critical thought and the fer-
ment involved in this development. Since many of these essays are,
taken individually, significant documents in the development of
American romanticism and are in themselves some of the best composed
essays in the Antholog , they are here treated as unified pieces,
though discussed in an order showing the overall deveIOpment away
from neoclassicism to romanticism.

Joseph Buckminster concluded his "Remarker, No. 5," with a
recognition of the superior rank of the author over the critic "in
the ceremonial of literature." Aside from the "intrinsick respect"
that the author commands and the fact that "it requires less ability
to detect faults than to avoid them," the author "forever retains
the right of primogeniture" because, "while authors may exist without
criticks, the latter cannot maintain themselves a moment if writers
should withhold the customary prey." But the theme of Buckminster‘s
essay is the necessity of "a critical tribunal" of unlimited power'.
Buckminster saw the early nineteenth century as a time of emergerniy

in American letters, a time when it was essential to the welfare (If

96
the literary republic that "the right of critical severity" be
established. To those who might argue that America was young and
inexperienced in the republic of letters, and that therefore her
productions were rather "to be cherished by the gentle and perfumed
gales of flattery than to be checked by the chills of neglect, or
beaten down by the blasts of angry criticism," Buckminster replied
that "the everlasting oaks of our forests were not raised in a

hot-house." American writers needed "a manly and unprejudiced

I "-

criticism,‘ not Indulgent remarks of candid friends, the Simpering
smiles of kitchen-criticks, the puffing advertisements of newspapers,
and the lullaby strains of poetasters." He who wished to excuse
American literature from examination could not be a friend to it;
the "easy multiplication of feeble works" could not form "a solid
basis for our future fame." But the critic did not have to justify
his criticism, for "this right of literary censure is bestowed upon
the critick by the author himself. Every man who publishes virtually
offers a challenge to the publick, or at least courts their decision."
Buckminster quoted La Harpe, from.his introduction to his Lycaeum, in
which he suggested that an author who would have us admire him must
permit us to judge him, and he went still further, this time gaining
support from Dr. Johnson (Rambler, No. 176), to say that even
derision, ridicule, or baiting was the right of the critic, the
object of criticism being not the author but his work.

The assumption that underlay Buckminster's strong insistence
upon the need for a powerful critical tribunal in America was that a
responsible and learned critic could teach an author how to write.

The reason the critic could teach the author was that, according to

Buckminster, there were "laws of fine writing." There was little

97

excuse for shoddiness in American letters, for "every candidate for
fame has it in his power to consult innumerable precedents, statutes,
declarations of criticism by which the verdict of the publick and the
sentence of the reviewer may be previously and probably conjectured."6
As John Adams observed in "An Essay on Method," "poems will please,
only in proportion as these rules are observed."7

The Anthologists repeatedly demonstrated their devotion to
what they thought were established rules in their reviews of various
works. Nathaniel A. Haven, reviewing George Cockings's poem.W§£,

condemned it as a heroic poem, which it purported to be, because "it

8

spurns at the unities so extolled by Aristotle and the minor criticks."

Jacob Bigelow likewise criticized Mason L. Weemss Life of George

 

Washington for not fulfilling "the first requisites in biography,"

 

which were "fidelity and correctness." Being "at a loss whether to
denominate [Weems's work] a biography, or a novel, founded on fact,"
Bigelow concluded that the author had "presented a specimen of writing,
which for variety and oddity is almost an unique in the annals of
literature." Thus, just as Cockings failed in his attempt to write

an epic, Weems unintentionally succeeded, "for, besides its figures,
characters, battles and episodes, it is duly provided with a suitable

quantity of preternatural machinery."9

 

6Buckminster,llil.:é., III (January, 1806), l9-23.
7“Adams, 995., III (March, 1806), 120-2u.
8Haven, Mug, X (June, 1811), 389-93.

9Bigelow, Mg” IX (December, 1810), lull-19.

98
By far the most exhaustive criticism of a poem according to

"the rules" is Andrews Norton’s review of Joel Barlow’s The Columbiad.

 

In every respect, Norton suggested, Barlow's poem was an invocation
to freedom.
The present poem opens in a very appropriate manner (as may
appear), with an invocation to Freedom. That undoubtedly, in
which the author wanted her assistance, and in which he has
indeed been very successful, was in freeing himself from the old
prescriptive rules of criticism, those rusty fetters by which
genius has been so long manacled. The oppressive regulations,
of which we speak, have produced, it is true, many murmurs of
disgust and many symptoms of sedition, but still their authority
was in some degree respected, and before the author of this poem
none had dared to break out into such open rebellion and defiance.
It is this, which constitutes the grand characteristick of the
work. . . .
In a sixteen-page criticism Norton then set out to prove his point.
One by one he listed the characteristics of epic poetry and showed,
with devastating accuracy, how Barlow failed in his intent. The epic
required for its subject "one single great event, to which allEits]
parts are to have relation," but Barlow's poem had avoided this
tedious uniformity" and treated "of a variety of things, which have
no common bond of connection, except their nearer or more remote
reference to one or the other of the grand divisions of the continent."
The epic required "that its subject should not be of modern date" and
"that from every serious poem, which treats of recent events, the
agency of supernatural beings should be entirely excluded," but
Barlow had treated both rules "with equal contempt." The characters
of an epic were to be "distinctly marked and distinguished from each
other," but Barlow had invested "all his favourite characters with an
uniform dignity and splendour." It was imperative that "when the

characters introduced were not of the poet's invention, but were

already known in history, that no qualities should be attributed to

99
them very different from what they were in reality considered to
possess," but Barlow's "characters introduced from history undergo
a process of melioration and refinement." The epic poet was "to
regard the manners and usages of any age or country, the events of
which he might be describing," but again this rule "did not often

' or when it did was

come in the way of the genius of its author,’
"trampled upon with as little remorse as any other." The epic poet
was to "adopt some one system of mythology or religion, which he
should uniformly regard throughout his work," but Barlow had not
revealed "any such particular partialities and attachments."
Finally, in technique Barlow had failed miserably: his versification,
"not such as we could praise in any other" poem, fitted "very well
. . . the character of the present"; in phraseology, he outdid himself
in "enriching the language and extending its limits"; and,as to
figurative language, his poem simply abounded in "splendid compounds
of hyperbole and metaphor." All in all, Norton had "scarcely ever
met with a work, in which every thing, to use an expressive vulgarism,
was so much of a piece as in the present poem."lO
Mbreover, there are descriptions of "fine writing" in the
Anthology that suggest what the Anthologists expected when they
argued that precedents, statutes, and declarations of criticism
could teach an author how to write. Typical of such passages is
Josiah Quincy's criticism of the works of Fisher Ames, whose devotion

to political, rather than literary, matters was time and again

regretted in the Anthology.

 

lONorton, MIA., VII (August, 1809), llA-30. For more on
Barlow (his dispute with Henry Gregoire over the religious aspects
of his work), see M.A. VII (July, 1809), 3-11; (September, 1809),
166-67; (October, i869), 290-97; (November, 1809 , 289-98.

100

The common observer is chiefly attracted by the novel and
splendid imagery which abounds in his writings. But the
critical eye delights in the purity and perspicuity, both of
style and sentiment, the correct choice of language, and the
sweetness and simplicity, for which they are no less distin-
guished. His political essays, particularly those written in
the latter years of his life, are eminently conspicuous for
such characteristicks. In these, his periods are free from
all classical inversion and oratorical ostentation. His
sentences, short, terse, and often sparkling with antithetical
brightness, attract the attention of the heedless and facili-
tate the comprehension of the dull. They seek and preserve an
unambitious level of style, equally removed from vulgarity, or
elevation; softening the severity of research by their facility,
and beguiling the tediousness of investigation by frequent
scintillations of wit and fancy. They are models, as fine
perhaps as any language possesses, of that Species of composition,
in which learning and genius may best diffuse wisdom and truth
among the mass of mankind. The flow of thought is easy, and
the arrangement of the words unstudied and natural. His style,
springing from the soil of the best English and Latin classicks,
partakes of the raciness of both. In the pride and power of his
fancy, he sometimes takes flights into regions, where criticism
can neither follow nor uphold him. On these occasions, it is
enough for men in general to gaze and wonder. But should any,
not endowed alike by propitious nature, strive to emulate,

ceratis ope Daedalea

Nititur pennis, vitreo daturus
Nomina ponto.ll

Quincy attributed to Ames's writing virtually every quality that
eighteenth-century British critics had admired; it was a perfect

blend of novelty with correctness, fancy with wit, ease with precision,
genius with learning. Mbreover, it was rooted "in the best of

English and Latin Classicks." None of the Anthologists ever assumed
that native genius was not essential to a writer; nor did any of

them ever suggest that learning was undesirable. Quincy made it clear
that Ames possessed both. Yet, in viewing Ames's work as the attain-
ment of the literary standards of both the critics and the models of

fine writing, Quincy suggested that, though a writer not endowed

 

llQuincy, M5§., VIII (February, lBlO), 112-22.

101
with genius could never hope to emulate fine writing, granted this
endowment he could succeed in writing well only through striving
towards the established standards. Mbreover, he could "diffuse
wisdom and truth" only insofar as he wrote well. Style was
exceedingly important. There was no question simply of an author's
putting down what he felt; indeed, there was no question of his
feeling anything. He was a magician who knew the tricks by which
he could make the public believe what he believed to be true. He
had to be able to attract the reader's attention and affect even
the dullest one's understanding, to make his message palatable
through facility and beguilement. There was no question, either,
simply of a reader's being moved; even when the author, on occasion,
soared on the wings of fancy, the reader could only "gaze and

' The style best suited to such ends was of "an unambitious

wonder.‘
level": a smooth blend of simplicity, clarity, correctness, flavored
with fancy; one that was consistently comprehensible, yet "often
sparkling," frequently scintillating; one that was neither dull

nor ostentatious.

Such fine writing, as well as the means by which it was
attained, was usually considered to be the product of proper taste.
It was the duty of the critic, Buckminster asserted, "to check the
contagion of false taste," to correct and refine taste, among both
authors and the public.12 The Anthologists were aware that "to

assign correct rules for taste is not easier than to give a defini-

tion of beauty" and one critic suggested "that the most accurate

 

l2Buclnninster, pg, III (January, 1806), 19-23.

102
standard will be to decide by taste in eating."13 But although there
was as much dispute about taste as about morals, as Samuel Thacher
remarked, "we might as well say, that morals are baseless and
fortuitous, because men dispute on them, as to say, that taste has
no laws, because all do not assent to them."l" Even in a single
essay the word £2532 could contain a whole spectrum of qualities.
This is true, for example, of William Emerson's essay "On Taste,"
delivered before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1789 and
printed in the Anthology fifteen years later. Emerson's thesis
was a moralistic one, that "the man of true taste, like Quintillian's

' virtue being "the amiable qualities

true orator, is a man of virtue,‘
of a good heart." But Emerson did not define taste only in terms of
virtue. He inserted,throughout the essay, other concepts of taste,
all previously expounded by British critics and expounded again by
other Anthologists. Taste was the harmony between fancy and judgment;
it was the union of the powers of reason and the soul; it involved
imagination and native genius, as well as respect for certain modern
writers and the ancients.15 In the Anthology one can find not only
essays emphasizing judgment, reason, or study of the ancients as a
means to literary taste, but also essays emphasizing fancy, the soul,

imagination, and genius, even with a complete disregard for taste as

an end to be attained. It is these latter essays that helped to

 

l3HSilva, fl M'A" III (AuguSt, .1806), 11:16-19.

l"Thacher, "Remarker, No. 7,"‘Ma§., III (March, 1806),
124-27.

15Emerson, "On Taste," Emerson Papers; published in Mn§., I
(August, IBOA), h35-39. '

lO3

make possible such statements as Ralph waldo Emerson's concerning his
father‘s papers: "At best, they showed no more than that candor and
taste, or I should almost say, docility, the principal merit possible
to that early, ignorant & transitional Month-of-March, in our New
England culture . "15

The man of taste was most consistently a man of learning, one
who studied, or even imitated, the writings of other men of taste.
These models were almost always either Latin or late seventeenth-
century and eighteenth-century British writers. Although it was
generally agreed that "good taste is that holy fire of Vesta, of
which the writings of antiquity are the principal depositaries,"l7
in practice, the models for taste were probably more often works
written in English. William Emerson's observation concerning the
abilities of his sister Mary and the expedient road for her to take
in her literary endeavors was probably no less accurate for the
majority of American writers: "It is highly improbable that she
will ever be able to slake her thirst for knowledge at the fountain
of the ancients: she must therefore content herself with the purest
streams, which her native language can boast, and these are the works
of Addison, Pope, Swift, Steele, Hawkesworth, Johnson, Goldsmith &c.
&c."18 Reading these British authors was, in fact, reading the
ancients once removed: they themselves were admirable writers greatly

because they were learned in the classics.

 

16Letter from Ralph waldo Emerson to William Emerson, in Ralph
L. Rusk (ed.), Letters of Ralph waldo Emerson (6 vols.; New York:
Columbia University Press, 1939), IV, 179.

 

l7"Silva," M,§., II (May, 1805), 239-hl.

18Letter from William Emerson to Phebe Ripley, March 19, 1805,
Emerson Papers.

101+

Of all the moderns Addison was the most frequently held up

I

as the best representative of "fine-writing" and "true taste,‘ and

the qualities attributed to him were those likewise attributed to

the ancients. "All true taste will be best cultivated in the ancient

I

soils,‘ wrote Winthrop Sargent in his review of the 1806 Cambridge

edition of Horace.

It would be foolish to assert, that no one has ever thought
correctly or written well, whose mind was not imbued with
ancient lore; but the history of letters assures us, that

the instances are rare. Original genius sometimes vindicates
its superiority from the deficiencies of education . . . but
grace of fine-writing in poetry or prose; that ease, which every
man, before the experiment, is confident he could equal; that
justness of thought and propriety of expression, so distin-
guishable at a second reading from violent paradox and tawdry
decoration, that may mislead at the first; that indescribable
charm, diffused over the humour of Addison, like a thin fleecy
cloud upon the surface of the sun, mitigating its ardour, but
not lessening its radiance; all are derivable from early, and
frequent, and enthusiastick study of the Grecian to the
ancients.

Sargent's reference to Addison is indicative of the place he held
among the models to be imitated. To William Emerson, in fact, he
was "the inimitable Addison; whose elegant writings, breathing the
spirit, they were intended to disseminate, effected a happy
reformation in the world of letters, and will stand a perpetual
monument of virtuous and refined taste."20
The qualities most admired in Addison were ones of expression--

his ease, grace, propriety, correctness, elegance, charm--the very

traits that Anthology critics found to be so lacking in American

 

l9Sargent, M.§., IV (July, 1807), 380-89.

20Emerson, M.A., I (August, lBOA), h35-39.

lOS

writers. There was a slow progress in American letters, J. S. J.
Gardiner contended, because of the want of taste, and that want of
taste was primarily a deficiency in style. "In fertility of thought,
and cogency of argument, our writers are excelled by few; but in the
chaste elegance of a style, at once dignified and simple, we are
greatly inferiour to the authors of Europe." Gardiner singled out
Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke as the three writers who more than any
others had "corrupted the publick taste": "The colours of their
style are too glaring; there is too much artifice, there are too
many balanced sentences, there is too much appearance of labour, in
the two former, to please a man of correct taste." The remedy lay,
rather, in imitating Addison, as Johnson himself had advocated.
"The repeated perusal of Addison might remedy the most striking
defects of our compositions, by affording us natural and easy flow
of period with imagery, that has the glow of nature, not the glare
of art."21

When Gardiner criticized American authors, he dwelt mainly

upon their style. In his review of The Miscellaneous WOrks of David

 

Humphreys, he compiled a list of flaws in Humphreyas works, almost
every one a stylistic weakness. His similes were too tremendous for
his topics, his epithets had misplaced accents, he emphasized
adjectives rather than substantives, his rhymes were incorrect, he
took advantage of poetic license in coining words, he gave words

more, or fewer, syllables than they really had, and so on. Throughout

 

21Gardiner, "Remarker, No. 38," M,§., V (November, 1808),
599-601. See also, Gardiner, "Remarker, No. 2," M,§., II (October,
1805), 517-19.

106
his criticism Gardiner relied upon English Augustan standards, even
though he admitted such comparison was unjust, there being so great
a disparity between American (and even contemporary British) authors
and Augustan ones. But since there was no American standard, one had
to refer to English standards. Otherwise, "if every one has a right
to accent as he pleases, and use whatever words are current among his
associates, unknown to good authors, as Noah webster and other conceited
innovators assert, the language will soon degenerate into a Babylonish
dialect, and be fit only for the lowest of the populace."22

With this review Gardiner provoked a controversy, in which his
opponent, Harvardiensis (perhaps Humphreys), set out to disprove
Gardiner's assertion

that the age of good English poetry ended with the reign of queen
Anne; that the British Muse has, from.that period, been declining
in a gradual nervous decay; that her young offspring, the American
Muse, inherited from her parent the same disorder; and that both
are now in the last stages of an incurable hectick.
He picked out certain passages describing scenes of desolation from
Pope, Goldsmith, Trumbull, Dwight, and Humphreys to "observe in what
manner the poets of their Augustan Age of England, the modern British
poets, and the 'bards of Columbia' have written upon the same subject,"
and he concluded that "in strength, novelty, and sublimity, none of
the thoughts or images in the others, are equal to the personification
of the pestilence by Col. Humphreys."23

Gardiner in reply disputed the authorities his opponent raised

and particularly attacked his justification of word coinage, which only

 

22Gardiner, 9513., I (September, 1801+), 507-511.

23"HarvardiensiS," Egg-y II (January, 1805), 7'9°

lO7
proved him "a true disciple of Noah Webster, that scourge of grammar,
no less than your sneer at English literature."

Yet let us inform.you, young Sir, that all sensible Americans
will rely on the great writers of that nation as authorities,
until we can produce equal excellence. We know of no American
language that is not Indian, and feel no inclination to resort
to the Choctaws, the Chickesaws, the Cherokees, and the Tusca-
roras for literary instruction. Whilst we speak and write the
English language, we are satisfied to be guided in our use of
that language by approved.Emglish writers, by which we shall
guard against modern foppery and provincial impurities. If we
flatter ourselves that we have already attained to perfection,
we encourage a vain delusion, which will tend to cherish vanity
and prevent improvement.2

Gardiner's concern over language as an element of style and
his strong opposition to the development of an American language,
separate from English, was representative of the Anthology's
running controversy with Noah Webster, which began with James

Savage‘s review of A Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the

 

English Language. Savage scorned "the notion of an American tongue,

 

or of gaining our idiom from the mouths of the illiterate" rather

than from established English works and reminded Webster that "the
English language, as well as their liberties, is our birthright."25
Webster replied by first questioning whether "reviewers constitute

the only legitimate Board of Criticism on this continent" and

 

accusing the Anthology, in particular, of being untrustworthy because
it was prejudiced against American and toward English products. He
then argued that principles of philology, not men, were the proper
authority for language and that, besides, the Anthology's major

authority, Dr. Johnson, had harmed the language more than Webster

 

2"Gardiner, Mi§., II (January, 1805), Ah-MS. See also Ma§°!
I (December, 1801+), 631-35, and Mg, 11 (January, 1806), 53.

25Savage, M.§., V (May, 1808), 267-77.

l08
himself had. Johnson had introduced innumerable local, vulgar,
obscene, and pedantic words, which Webster had rejected; yet the
Anthology had not censured Johnson.26

Savage again attacked Webster in a review of his Dictionary.

 

In every respect--syntax, definition, pronunciation, spelling,
selection--Webster's work was inferior to Johnson's. Again Savage
emphasized the dangers of innovation and the importance of accepting
the foremost English authors as authorities. In setting up "our

illiterate writers,"

among them Barlow, as authorities, Webster
seriously hindered the progress of American literature; his book
was "a most dangerous guide for our young scholars."27 The contro-
versy continued with another long review,by James Perkins, of
Webster's works, which was mainly a portrayal of Webster as a

H -

"literary proteus" whose sole object was pecuniary emolument."
Clever and biting in his attack upon Webster, Perkins did not
restrain himself.28

Indeed the debate had become not unlike some of the more
rabid theological controversies in the Anthology. In the end,
webster took refuge in the theological antagonist of the Anthology--
the Panoplist. "The spirit displayed in the Anthology," Webster
wrote,"renders it necessary for me to withhold all communication, with

the conductors of that work." Following Webster's reply was a

"Prospectus" of his New and Complete Dictionary and then a letter

 

 

26Webster,l_4.;g., VII (September, 1809), 205-212.
27Savage, M.é., VII (October, 1809), 2A6-6A.

28Perkins, Mpg., VIII (February, 1810), 80-89; (April, 1810),
219-27.

109

from Timothy Dwight, president of Yale, the stronghold of the
theological conservatives, and three of its professors. "We
Sincerely regret," the letter said, "that you [Webster] have so
many obstacles to encounter, particularly so many prejudices, in
an undertaking, which, we think, will be honorable to you, and
useful to the public."29

This antipathy to innovation is also evident in the Anthol-
ogists' criticisms of poets whose works seemed to be more the product
of inspiration or genius than of learning and industry. "Literary

H

excellence, wrote John Gorham,

is not the effect of an accidental ray of genius, nor of a
momentary glow of enthusiasm; the former must be tempered by
industry, the latter by judgment.
Gorham agreed with Pope that "True ease in writing comes from art,
not chance."3O In an essay on the state of American literature,
in which he condemned a whole bevy of American poets--besides
Humphreys, Barlow, Dwight, and Trumbull--J. S. J. Gardiner, too,
put forth the view that "genius without judgment is useless or
ridiculous, and that there can be no good poetry where there is not

good sense."3l In another essay, on "the art of puffing," Gardiner

took to task those critics who considered "every new production . . .

 

29"Intelligence. From.the Panoplist, published at Boston.
To the Friends of Literature," M. A. ., VIII (March, 1810), 207- 210.
See also M. A., VII (October, 18097, 2u6- 6A, and M. A. , VII (December,
1809), 366-71, for further attacks by Savage and Perkins and M. A.,
VII (November, 1809), 353, for another reply by Webster. A humorous
essay on the possibility of establishing a native language is by
William Shaw, "Remarker, No. l2,"lM.§., III (August, 1806), 399-hOl.

30Gorham,‘M.é., III (October, 1806), 529-31.

31Gardiner, "Remarker, No. A," M.A., 11 (December, 1805):
630-32. —._

110
a masterpiece, and every new author a first rate genius." In

particular he attacked the Port Folio for "this wholesale kind of

 

approbation," even accusing its critics of sometimes praising what
they had never read.
Nothing can prove more injurious to the cause of literature than
this conduct. The majority of readers are incapable of apprecia-
ting the literary merit of any work, and generally suspend their
judgment till they are acquainted with the opinions of profest
literati. This gives the latter immense influence in the province
of taste, in which they may be justly considered as the public
guides.
Gardiner was especially upset by the praise that had been heaped upon
the poet Robert Bloomfield, "an English cobbler (for I believe he
never rose to the dignity of a Shoe-maker.)." Gardiner observed,
We have native nonsense enough among us without importing foreign
absurdities; if we choose to employ an English shoemaker, let us
employ him to make shoes for us and not poems.32
But all of the Anthologists did not scorn originality or
respect the sole authority of the past giants of English literature
to the degree Gardiner did. This is made clear in an exchange between
Gardiner and Arthur walter over the poetry of Pope. Gardiner, of
course, defended Pope and in his defense showed the importance he
attributed to style and the extent to which he propounded imitation
of Augustan writers as the proper means for American writers to
develop an admirable style. Paraphrasing to some extent the poet
he was defending, Gardiner wrote,
High, masterly execution is what constitutes a preeminent writer.
He exhibits the best thoughts, exprest in the best manner. When
he borrows, he improves; what he imitates, he excels. He commands
a certain felicity of style, which,though simple, is highly

figurative, which convinces by its energy, and charms by its
beauty.

 

32Gardiner, l_4. 5., I (August, 180A), 152-53.

lll

Pope himself learned from Virgil: "He has the same correctness,
the same majesty of numbers, allowing for the inferiority of a
modern language." Virgil learned from still other writers: "There
is scarcely a page of Virgil, his Georgics excepted, in which we
cannot trace him imitating or translating whole passages from other
writers, so that he has fewer pretensions to originality, than
almost any poet ancient or modern." Gardiner's opinion of the
importance of originality he could state briefly: "Originality!
Fiddledy diddledy1"33

walter, on the other hand, charged that Pope was not even a
poet because he lacked originality. The "essence of poetry" was,
as Longinus saw, genius; and genius was the power--natural, not
acquired--to create. "Genius rejoices in nothing vulgar or common.
It is exercised about novelty and invention. It is ever attended
by a bold and ardent imagination. It delights to discover new
properties in mind and to form new arrangements in matter." A poet
was "not merely a constructor of verses, but an inventor." Pope's

advocates, walter pointed out, usually referred to The Rape of the

 

Lock as his most imaginative work. But, although it was a poem of

"fine taste, pleasant satire, and nice humour,‘ it was not one "of

strong, operative imagination." Indeed, "original genius" was
seldom found in any of Pope's works.

His page is irradiated by little of that mysterious light, which
is generated by this unknown power. Taste, judgment, and sense,
predominate in his works; in vain do we seek for the creative
energies of invention, the sublime soarings of thought, and the
audacious struggles of imagination, bursting from the confinement

 

33Gardiner, "Silva," Mhfl., III (January, 1806), lS-l9.

112
of reason. In the translation of Homer, there is splendour of
verse; in his satires, acuteness of remark; in the art of
criticism, ingenuity and knowledge; in the 'Rape of the Lock,‘
playfulness and delicacy of fancy; in the 'Windsor Forest,‘
beauty of just description; and in the epistle of 'Eliosa to
Abelard,‘ a dignity of diction, a selection of images, and a
gloominess of thought, which render it one of the most attractive,
and thereforE most dangerously licentious poems in the circle of
literature.3
POpe obviously had numerous qualities, bug lacking the essential
quality of genius, he could not be considered a poet.

Just as Gardiner was aware that he was voicing the conviction
of Dr. Johnson that Pope was a superior poet, so did Walter know he
was supporting and even going beyond the view of Joseph warton, who
had questioned this claim. If walter's essay did no more than deny
the authority of an Augustan poet in the American republic of letters,
if would be an important document. But it does much more. It denies
the authority of POpe, the most eminent of Augustan poets; Johnson,
the most eminent of eighteenth-century critics; and Gardiner, their
most vocal supporter in Boston. Moreover, it is an attack on
imitation of any kind, arguing the incompatibility of imitation with
poetry, poetry being above all a creation. It emphasizes novelty
and invention, genius and imagination, enthusiasm and the sublime,
qualities that were identified with the new British poetry and
criticism. In contrast, it denounces the characteristics associated

with "polite literature," "fine writing,‘ and "taste." That a work

" "acuteness of remark," "ingenuity of

was endowed with "fine taste,
knowledge," "just description," "dignity of diction" was not enough.

Gardiner was defending not only a poet and a critic who were slowly

becoming unfashionable, but an outmoded vocabulary as well. Finally,

 

31"Walter, 13.5, II (May, 1805), 233-38.

113
in denouncing these qualities, walter rejected the means by which
they were attained--study and imitation-~and consequently the
standard idea of criticism as a purveyor of these qualities. His
emphasis upon originality as the essence of poetry made not only
model poets but also critics who extracted their "rules" undesirable
and unnecessary. In expounding such views, walter's essay offered
a new kind of criticism in the American republic of letters.

It was Gardiner’s controversy with Joseph Buckminster over
the poetry of Thomas Gray, however, which completely opened the doors
of Anthology criticism to a romantic view of literature. It may at
first seem strange that the same Anthologist who called for a powerful
critical tribunal to guide American authors toward taste and fine
writing by way of rules should also have stressed the importance of
original genius and freedom in this controversy over Gray. But
Buckminster seems to have seen the best of both worlds, or one world
full of diverse qualities that were not mutually exclusive but that
instead complemented one another. In this sense, Buckminster, more
than any other Anthologist critic, represented the mixture of ideals
expressed in the Anthology pages. He seems to have respected them
all. It was perfectly natural that just as he had advocated writing
correctly according to rules he should have defended the "indistinct-
ness" and impressionism in Thomas Gray‘s poetry and, in so doing,
contributed to the new criticism. These apparently antithetical
views, however, may also indicate a chronological develOpment in
Buckminster, since the essay on the critical tribunal was published
in 1806 and the essay on Gray's lyric poetry in 1808. If so, such

a development would be more an indication of Buckminster's personal

llu
speed in acquiring new ideas than of a steady chronological change
toward romanticism in the Anthology itself.
The controversy over the poetry of Gray began with the

' written in imitation

publication of Gardiner's "Ode to Winter,'
of the odes of Gray. As in the debate between Gardiner and walter
over Pope, both Gardiner and Buckminster found support in British
eighteenth-century critics. Gardiner, as usual, backed up his
statements condemning Gray with criticisms from Dr. Johnson;
Buckminster based much of his argument supporting Gray on Edmund
Burke‘s conception of the sublime. Gardiner prefaced his ode with
a profession of his alliance with Johnson. Whereas warton and
wakefield had thought Gray‘s poetry to be a "genuine offspring of
lyrick sublimity," Johnson had seen his "quaint and affected
language, the false glitter of florid epithet, and the repeated
recurrence of alliteration" for what they were. Gardiner aligned
himself with "that party who think Gray a mechanical poet. His
Elegy is indeed an unique, and deserves all the praise, which it
has received. His ode to Adversity also contains both poetry and
good sense." But his other odes were the "offspring of a taste

" "compositions of long time and great labour,"

sickly and fastidious,
which could have been written by anyone in the space of one sitting,
as Gardiner attempted to show in his "Ode to Winter."35

Prompted perhaps by conversation with Gardiner and an

acquaintance with the controversy over Gray begun by his contemporaries,

as much as by Gardiner’s ode, Buckminster published a long essay not

 

35Gardiner, "Silva," Mmé" V (February, 1808), 100.

115

only defending Gray, in particular The Progress of Poesy and The

 

Bard, but praising the qualities of lyric poetry in general. He

treated Gray as a "neglected genius,"

a poet "of the first order"
whose reputation had suffered from the ignorance, envy, and
insensibility of his contemporaries. But Gray's final reputation,
he argued, had not been damaged by the neglect of a public who saw
the qualities neither of Thomson nor of Milton; by the parody of
Colman; or by "the invidious and contemptible criticisms" of "that
great man who could pronounce Dryden‘s ode on Mrs. Killigrew the
finest in our language, and who could find nothing in Collins' but

'clusters of consonants.'"

Nor, Buckminster implied, could it
now be hurt by Gardiner's attempted imitation or this latter-day
Johnson's denouncement. For the judgment of Gray had been one
Simply of ignorance of and insensibility to "different forms of

" "arising from notions of poetry too confined."

perfection in writing,
It was based upon the mistaken beliefs that poetry was always a
matter of "faithful description, fine sense, or pointed sentiment

in polished verse," that it was always didactic in intent, that
"obviousness of meaning is . . . always an indispensable excellence,"
that there was no "higher species of poetry than the mere language

of reason," that "to be a poet it is always indispensable to write
like Pope." In short, it was based upon the denial that there was
such a thing as lyric poetry. Spenser, Milton, and Dryden had known
better and studied the Italian poets. Since Pope's time, Gray,
Collins, Mason, and warton had retrieved lyric poetry, saving

English poetry from "the elegant perfection" of the school of "the

merely didactic" Boileau, "while French poetry yet continues barren

116
of the higher beauties of verse, correct without enthusiasm, and
sensible without inspiration."

Buckminster suggested that "if Pindar and Horace were poets,
so too was Gray. The finest notes of their lyre were elicited by
the breath of inspiration breathing on the strings; and he who
cannot enter into the spirit which animates the first Pythian of

Pindar, or the 'Quem virum aut heroa' of Horace, must be content

 

to be ghgyp the beauties in Gray, which it is not yet granted to
him to feel, or spontaneously to discern." One might be helped,
however, by a perusal of the last part of Burke's essay on the
sublime. There one would find it argued that "passages, which
produce the most powerful effect on a sensible mind, present no
ideas to the fancy which can be strictly marked or embodied," that
"the most thrilling touches of sublimity and beauty are consistent
with great indistinctness of images and conceptions," that "the
effect of poetical expression depends more upon particular and
indefinable associations than upon the precise images which the
words convey." The effect of Gray's poetry, like that of the

finest passages of Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, "is to

 

raise a glow, which it is not easy to describe; but the beauty

of a passage, when we attempt to analyze it, seems to consist in
a certain felicity of terms, fraught with pictures, which it is
impossible to transfer with perfect exactness to the canvas."
Buckminster asked the reader to consider, for example, these lines
from Gray:

O'er her warm.cheek and rising bosom move
The Bloom of young desire, and purple light of love.

ll7
"Here," he contended, "we feel that no other expressions could have
excited in the mind an emotion so vivid, though they might have
conveyed an image more distinct."
Just as Buckminster defended Gray's indistinct images, so
did he defend his "irregularities." One would not find the "regularity
of the drama, the coherence of a canto, the bearings and dependencies

of an epick leading to some definite conclusion," "

a beginning, a
middle, and an end" in Gray's odes. For "the ode has by the consent
of criticks in all ages been indulged in irregularities, which are
not pardonable in other kinds of verse, because it is supposed to
follow the rapid and unrestrained passages of images through the mind."
Buckminster observed that he himself took "as much delight in contem-
plating the rich hues that succeed one another without order in a
deep cloud in the west, which has no prescribed shape, as in viewing
the seven colours of the rainbow disposed in a form exactly semi-
circular." As to the objections of abrupt digressions, obscurity,
and stale morality in Gray‘s poetry, Buckminster replied that
"violence of transition" was one of the laws of lyric poetry; Gray‘s
obscurity was "not the fog of dullness; but . . . vanishes the longer
it is contemplated" and, further, was appropriate to the "language

of prophecy" found in The Bard, for instance; and that "there are no

I

discoveries to be made in ethicks.’ Unequalled in poetry were Gray's

"wonderful raciness of expression," "the astonishing force and beauty

' which were impossible to imitate; "the classical

of his epithets,‘
raciness of his diction"; and'the power of his numbers." This last

quality, especially, Buckminster, himself a musician, appreciated:

"I admire in silent rapture the genius of that man, who could so

118

mould our untractable language as to produce all the effect of the
great masters of musical composition. If the ancient lyricks contain
many specimens of numerous verse equal to this, we need no longer
wonder that they were always accompanied with musick."36

In this essay Buckminster expounded several of the concepts
which have come to be associated with romanticism. He saw the poet
Gray as an isolated genius, misunderstood and unappreciated by his
contemporaries. The poet was isolated by his lack of concern for
the predominant, most admired forms of poetry of his time; if not
a rebel trying out new forms, he was at least exercising his right
to revive forgotten ones. In choosing to revive the form of the ode,
tlle Inset was paying even more respect to freedom, for its form
was one of irregularities. As lyric poetry, the ode wagzmoreover,
an expression of personal feeling. Its source was pure inspiration.
Indeed, Buckminster suggested the romantic image of the poet as an
aeolian harp, the mere instrument of a power greater than himself,
when he Spoke of "the breath of inspiration breathing on the strings"
of his lyre. Just as feeling was essential to the poet, so was it
the reward of the reader. The poet moved the reader, or the reader
was made to feel, through an appeal to his senses. It was the

beauty and sublimity of the poem's images that moved him, images

that appealed to his sense of hearing as well as to his sense of

 

36Buckminster, "Remarker, No. 3",".Mfié" V (July, 1808),
376-72. George Ticknor remarked that Buckminster was "very fond of
music, and played on a small organ which stood in his study." (See
Ticknor's Life, p. 9.) Mrs. Lee, p. 208, also noted her brother's
musical abilities and interests. Besides the organ, he had learned
to play the flute, violin, and cello, and he also sang with choirs
and assisted in the hymnal collection of Brattle Street Church.

ll9

sight. But they did not need to be distinct images; rather their
purpose was to create an impression, "to raise a glow." Far from
seeing poetry as a clearly reasoned and pleasantly stated lesson
to the reader, Buckminster emphasized the qualities of beauty and
emotion over didacticism, of images and impressions over reason and
sense, of inspiration over rules, of freedom over propriety. Such
a view of poetry was in direct contrast to that which the Anthologists
associated with the poetry of Pope and the criticism of Johnson.
Indeed, Buckminster was here replacing these giants with Milton,
Spenser, and Dryden; Gray, Collins, Mason, warton, Cowper, and
Thomson; Aiken and Burke. And, in the realm of American literary
criticism, he was replacing Gardiner with such critics as himself.

Gardiner suggested in his reply that Buckminster might have
used his "acknowledged talents as a writer more usefully, than in
the defence of absurdity." Again, he based his Opinions on "the
superiour authority of the mighty Johnson," this time supported by
some review of Burke's essay. His central charge was directed
against Buckminster’s praise of Gray‘s sublimity, or his "indistinct-
ness," and partial defense of his obscurity. Gardiner stated that
obscurity was never commendable in poetry, and that the "indistinct-
ness" that Buckminster saw as being consistent with the sublime in
Gray's poetry was actually obscurity, indeed corruption. Burke’s
reviewer had argued that "nothing can move but what gives ideas to
the mind"; Gardiner carried on this theme to state that, except for

" "whatever imagery a good

images "which are not subjects of the eye,
painter cannot execute on the canvas, must necessarily be incorrect."

Moreover, even if one should find Gray‘s meaning, it would probably

120

not "repay the labour of the search," as one could see from examination
of his "purple light of love." Just as Gardiner could not agree with
Buckminster on the presence of the sublime in Gray's poetry, so did
he deny that the "power of his numbers" was unrivalled. Again, his
complaint was one of "incorrectness," of "inaccuracy"; Gray was
"determined to write like no one but himself." Finally, Gardiner
again argued that imitating Gray, unlike imitating Horace or Dryden,
was a simple matter.37

Buckminster retorted, playing upon Gardiner's insult to him,
that "instead of employing your acknowledged talents as a poet, in
burlesque imitations of Gray [according to James Savage, Gardiner
wrote four imitations in all381,you would have the goodness to give
us an ode equal to the Bard." 'The highest sublimity," he suggested,
"is most susceptible of being burlesqued." He further accused Gardiner
of lacking what Buckminster had earlier termed "manly and unprejudiced
criticism" and even of having such a poor ear as not to be able to
"distinguish between a jig and the movements in an oratorio; or, in
American phrase, between Old Hundred and Yankee Doodle." As for

I

Gray's "purple light of love,‘ it surpassed the Greek source; in
describing a goddess, moreover, it was not "unnatural or far-

fetched" to suppose "the light, which encircles the features of this
celestial being, to be tinged with the purple glow, which love diffuses

over her cheeks." Again, Buckminster argued that in lyric poetry the

strength of the impression seldom depended upon the exactness of the

 

37Gardiner, "Remarker, No. 35," M.§., V (August, 1808),
I‘I']_6-J_9 0

38Lee, 231.

121

images conveyed because lyric poetry was chiefly concerned about ideas
generated within the mind and hence "always in some degree obscure to
those whose intellects have not been exercised in similar contempla-
tions." Buckminster might just as well have been defending Shelley's
hyacinth, whose music "was felt like an odor within the sense," or
even twentieth-century abstractionism.

The force of the words used often depends upon some fine associa-

tions and remote sympathies, with which the canvas has nothing to

do. What is there absurd or unphilosophical in supposing, that

an abstract word may excite a train of delicate and poetical

associations in the mind, so as to affect it with sensible emotion,

without presenting a definite picture?39

And so the controversy continued, Gardiner reiterating that

"men write to be read, and are read to be understood; and there can
be neither good poetry, nor good prose, without good sense"; complaining
that English elegiac poetry was diseased with "a drowsy, monotonous,
funeral pageant of undertaker's imagery and sobbing snivelling sentiment"
and that he "would not give the worst ode of Horace or Pindar for all
the moping melancholy of all the elegies in christendom";"O and even
ironically implying that there was a connection between Buckminster‘s
literary and religious views. "When a man resolves to believe . . .
the very absurdity of the creed confirms him in the faith. This
appears to be the situation of those, who admire the lyrick poetry
of Gray. Like new lights in religion, they are impenetrable equally

"Al

to ridicule, and to reason. The controversy terminated, according

 

39Buckminster,lM../i.l., V (September, 1808), h8A-86.
"OGardiner, "Silva," M.&., V (December, 1808), 65h-58.

"lGardiner, "Silva," M.§., V (September, 1808), A93-97. See
also Gardiner‘s review of William Bentley's 1807 election sermon in

122
to James Savage, when Gardiner read his "fourth attempt at the

II

ludicrous to the Society. In it was

something unguardedly personal from the satirist to his antagonist,
which produced strong tho silent emotions of sympathy in many of
the party. In an instant, the writer threw the inconsiderate
effusion into the fire. This as a striking instance of the
powerful influence of the gentleness of Mr. Buckminster, and the
profound regard felt for him by a critic of opposite sentiments
in a protracted controversy, has dwelt forty years in my memory;
yet the kindly natured polemics had, I dare say, in half as many
weeks, utterly forgotten it. Fromuthat moment, no allusion was
made in the club to Gray's merits. 2
Half a year later Paul Allen, one of the most prolific
corresponding members of the Anthology Society, published a long
defence of Gray against Dr. Johnson's criticisms of The Bard.
Allen's essay made no reference either to Buckminster's or to
Gardiner's statements on Gray and cannot be considered as part of
their controversy. His concern was not over the success of Gray
as a writer of odes or the indistinctness or obscurity in poetry but
the problems of probability and didacticism. First he considered
Johnson's belief that "we are affected only as we believe; we are
improved only as we find something to be imitated or declined" and
his denial "that the Bard promotes any truth, moral or political."
Allen quoted a critic of Shakespeare in saying that "the delight of

tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of the fiction" and issued a

strong statement against the didactic theory of poetry:

 

which Gardiner refers to the misconception of obscurity as a source
of the sublime and condemns Bentley's sermon for being obscure,anfl.

IV (June, 1807), 335-37.

"2Lee, 231.

I23

Mbrality is one thing, poetry is another, nor have they any
necessary, or inseparable connection. The moral may be bad,
and the poetry good; or the moral good, and the poetry bad.
Whether, therefore, the Bard 'promotes any truth, moral or
political,‘ leaves the integrity of the poet just where it
found it, untouched.

Allen examined Johnson's criticism of The Bard point by point

and finally returned to the problem of morality in poetry when he
argued that "it is the very height of hypercriticism to censure
sentiments, without any consideration of the character of the person

who is speaking," and that the bard should not be studied as "a
1+3

christian moralist," but as the "poor barbarian" that he was.

Allen considered the problem of probability more fully in

II

his essay "On Taste, as significant for what it excludes as for

what it includes. Instead of identifying taste with morality, as

William Emerson had done, or with "fine writing,‘ as Gardiner had

done, Allen defined it as the "delicate and judicious combination
of fancy and fact." He was not so much concerned with the author's
effect upon the moral life of the reader, or with the execution or
form of the work, as with the extent to which it was a product of

the "imaginary existence" of the author. His thesis was that there

II II

is "a sort of fairy ground," "a middle nature, a visionary world,"

which is in the mind of the artist and where fact and fancy meet,
lose their identities, and "appear a perfect whole."

Whereever the point of their union is discovered, the alliance
seems forced and unnatural, and we pronounce the artist destitute
of taste, or, in plainer dialect of that skill to combine those
two opposites, so as to fascinate us into the belief, that the
representation is just.

"AA

Thus "a man who possesses no fancy can never be a man of taste.

 

"3Allen,anfl., VI (February, 1809), 95-98.

""Allen, mg” V (August, 1808), 1+10-16.

12h
This emphasis upon fancy, "the liberty . . . to embellish fact," and
upon the imagination of the poet-~although both had been acknowledged
by the most authoritarian of British critics as integral parts of
literary creativity--was yet another step towards a romantic view of
poetry among Anthology critics.

In his essay "Imitation" Allen set forth still more theories
tending towards romanticism. Here his main argument was against that
view, expressed by Sargent, that "all true taste will be best culti-
vated in the ancient soils."

Many of our authors aspire to nothing further than an imitation
of the ancients. Disregarding an entire revolution of life and
manners, they endeavour to modernize antiquity; and the composition
is what might be expected, a cluster of forced thoughts and
artificial conceits. It has neither the masculine strength and
simplicity of the ancients, nor the graceful ease of the moderns,
but is a discordant and uncouth union of both, and resembles the
brawny statue of Hercules dressed in petticoats. By the devotees
of antiquity it is thought more criminal than classick (a word
of wonderous import) for a writer to pen his own ideas. Homer,
Horace, and Virgil are immediately resorted to by our good lords
the criticks, and because an idea is not found in them it is
thought unworthy to be read. This idolatry of the ancients has
done more to repress the exertions of genius than any other
circumstance whatever.
Rather than imitate the classics, Allen wished American poets to
imitate nature. "Our country is abundant in objects for the exercise
of pastoral genius," but "the first thing one of our pastoral writers
undertakes to do is to forget his own country." The reason the
American poets had "forsaken nature for antiquity" was that they were
compelled to by their "severe task-masters, the criticks." Some
critics had "graciously condescended to . . . substitute modern
writers for the ancient," each critic offering his favorite author

for imitation. But, in either case, the critics had lost sight of

the fact that the excellence of a writer was due not to imitation but

I25

rather to the development of his own peculiar and exclusive traits.
"Every author of eminence has such discriminating points of character,
irrecoverably lost, if he makes imitation his standard. . . . Let
an author give less attention to his criticks and more to his own
talents, if he would wish the applause of his readers.""5 Again the
Significance of Allen‘s views lies not in their novelty, but in
their emphasis.

The idea that the poet should imitate nature rather than
antiquity was likewise expressed by Edmund Dana in his review of

John Blair Linn's The Power of Genius. This essay, along with Dana's

 

"Remarker, No. 18," heralded more loudly than any other in the
Anthology the dawn of romanticism in American letters. Point by
point, Dana attacked the whole framework of the "establishment."

It is difficult to conjecture wherefore, but it has latterly
become the vogue to imitate any thing but nature; to filter
through the pericranium the fancies of other people in
preference to cultivating our own. If, now a days, you take

up a communication from a correspondent, you are either
enveloped in the voluminous curl of the Johnsonian peruke,

or pierced through the sensorium by the tart laconism of
Lavater. 'Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light:
for the law of writ these are the only men.‘ It is not our
inclination to cavil at the singularities of established
writers, but we wish it always recollected that those who
follow can necessarily never come up; and that the peculiarities
which are interesting with their originator may be preposterous
in his imitator.

The ancients themselves had not "squandered themselves on the

manufacture of facsimile"; rather, "nature, pure and unadulterated
by frosty infusions of literary empiricks," was "the fountain from
which they drank of immortality." But today, despite the presence

of such capable writers as Cowper and Southey, we accept the belief,

 

"SAllen, Mg, VI (April, 1809), 2u2-u6.

126
along with Milton, in the degeneracy of human nature and bow to the
authority of the classics. "One is hagridden, as it were, . . .
with nothing but the classicks, the classicks, the classicks!" The
sole authority of the classics as "the law of writ" had been erected
by the critics, including those within the schools. "A smooth
gentleman from Alma mater tutors you, forsooth, that this performance
is classical and that is not classical; that this metaphor is dis-
jointed, or that metaphor articulates, and so on to the conclusion
of the chapter," the result of such a lesson being only "the
interesting disclosure, that to write classically is to write
accurately."

The main concern of the idolators of classicism, Dana
observed, was style, and style meant, in particular, a correct manner
of expression. In so emphasizing a correct style based upon imitation
of the classics, these critics overlooked what the ancients themselves
knew: that "style, without character appropriate, will perish with
its mannerist." Furthermore, they ignored one of the most essential
characteristics of the classics--their vigor--which could be gained
only through expression of individuality. Poetry, after all, was
"not intended merely for the retirement of the student" but was a
"universal appellant . . . to the sentiments and passions of mankind."
But we had to "be awakened" before we could be "persuaded to feel,"
and "the frigidity of correctness" could not accomplish this. Among
contemporary works there was "very little . . . directed to the fancy
or heart"; it was considered "unfashionable to be moved." The most
demanded of a work, by either author or critic, was only that it have

a style that was "equable and level as water at rest . . . ; smooth &

127
tonsored as the forehead of a friar." There were to be "no pleasing

sallies of cadence or thought . . . , but members of sentences be

intermarried with members, tediously constituting, like the links in
a chain, a series of polished monotonies."

In short, Dana argued, in attempting only to imitate the style
of the ancients, writers, following the advice of critics, had denied
the existence of "that miracle of nature and genius"--variety. In
place of inspiration and nature, our writers had substituted rhetoric
and thus "degenerated to a race of manufacturers"; in striving to be
"faultless," they had "neglected to be natural." The result was that
"criticism is satisfied, but sensibility frozen"; "establishment has
crowded out sentiment; luxury and refinement have enervated virility."

"When, oh when,"

wailed Dana,

shall the winter of criticism be passed and the springtide of
passion return! when shall the library be deserted for the fields,
and poetry ruminate in the shades she loves to depicture! when,

oh when, shall the idolatry of learning be superseded by the
worship of truth! We are surfeited with the repetition of
repetitions, and want opportunity for reflection; for thought is
as necessary to the soul as exercise to the body; and the
intellect incessantly in arms is rickety for life.

Yet, in the end, the writer who was governed by his own genius, rather
than by rules; who valued the emotions and imagination over learning
and propriety; who imitated nature, rather than the ancients; who
recognized and respected the variety in that nature and hence among
writers--such a writer would be vindicated by posterity.
Thousands will daily devour Shakespeare for one that reads Pope;
thousands shall prefer playing with a dried leaf and a switch in

the simple retirements of Weston and Cowper for one that sits

primly with Addison and propriety, on a visit of ceremony in the
parlour of the muses.

 

"6Dana, Mmé-i II (October, 1805), 530-38. Andrews Norton
wrote, about 1803 probably, a whole essay on the idea of the degeneracy

128
Dana even more strongly defended genius and individual

sensibility in his "Remarker, No. 18." Accepting the idea that "the
best society and conversation is that, in which the heart has a
greater share than the head," he condemned his own society as one of
a "calculating age" in which the heart was never consulted. He would
not do away with judgment, or the intellect, altogether; rather he
merely objected to "overtasking the judgment and neglecting the
affections." "If the head is invited to judge," he argued, "let
the heart, too, be permitted to feel."

I will defend to the utmost the cause of the heart, and never

advance the cold dictates of reason on the warm ruins of good

feeling and dignified passion. There is somewhat so cold about

the philosophy of the head, that it Should be laid to warm in

the bosom, to be made pleasant for use.
Critics, in particular, should beware of "continually puzzling their
brains, and never consulting their bosoms." Such were the hyper-
critics: "with empty hearts, and overcharged heads, they set about
scrutinizing an author whom they want sentiment to relish, and
measure his contents by the dogmas of the schools, with the same
degree of deliberateness with which a mechanick employs his mensu-
ration upon the dimensions of timber." "Obedience to the canons,
obedience to the canons, is the thing," declared Dana, "though the
critical code is as unnecessary to true genius, perhaps, as the
criminal is acknowledged to be to the exemplary and ingenuous.""7

In emphasizing sensibility, and especially sensibility to

one's surroundings rather than to books, Dana himself was carried

away from the realm of critical writing into purely descriptive

 

of man in which he said, "Man, unsatisfied with the present, is apt
to prize the past too highly. To complain of degeneracy has always
been common." (HUC/88OA/386.6l, Harvard Archives.)

"7Dana, "Remarker, No. 18," M,§,, IV (February, 1807), 77-83.

129

writing. In his defense of "genuine taste,"

as opposed to the false
taste erected by proponents of imitation, learning, and style, he
observed that "nature is brimful of character," and that "the
untutored gestures of children are more exquisite than the accom-
plished ceremony of courts. In the adjustment of their little
etiquettes of first meeting," for instance, "there is sweeter food
for contemplation than my lord Chesterfield or yourself would
imagine." Then Dana slipped into just such contemplation: "Nay,
there is an interesting character about my great grandmother,
smoking in the chimney corner, or even in the playsomeness of kittens
through the broken straw-bottoms of the old family furniture." The
reader is here drawn into the realm.of descriptive writing, indeed
of fiction. Neither the intent nor the effect of this passage is
didactic; rather it both originates and results in sensibility.
Mbreover, it is not the language of reason that moves the reader

but the language of images. These images are familiar ones, not
gleaned from books but from the author‘s immediate surroundings.
Dana quickly followed up this passage with a critical generalization,
returning the reader to the arena of literary theory: "We are
environed with articles of delicacy and daintiness, yet murmur at
the narrowness of materials; we starve upon copying in the centre

of originals£""8 By his own example, Dana was showing that American

 

"8Dana,‘Mné., II (October, 1805), 530-38. For a poetic state-
ment of Dana's poetic theories, see his poem "Seduction," Mmé" II
(August, 1805), 366-69; (September, 1805), A72-74. A long poem written
in heroic couplets, "Seduction" tells of an old man named Bruno-~an
"unletter'd, indigent, yet gay" recluse, who "till'd his scanty ground,/
And din'd from oaken plate on homely meal,/ With all the luxury Content
can feel"--and his daughter, Lucy--"In innocence as pure, as void of
art"--who is seduced by a city dweller and huntsman and taken off to a

l30

authors did not need to "starve upon copying." Indeed, he was
suggesting that American literature could develop only when American
authors became free from the authority of foreign criticism and
literature and American reverence for that authority; that it could
develop, in short, only when American authors accepted their own
responses to their own immediate surroundings as their sole authority.

When Dana spoke of nature, he used the term loosely, to
include all of one's surroundings. A kitten playing through a chair
was as much a part of nature as a grove of trees. Other writers,
however, referred specifically to the landscape. Thus, when Paul
Allen suggested that our poets imitate nature, he was arguing for
the development of pastoral poetry: "Our green fields are as pleasant,
our cataracts roar as loudly, and our mountains project the same
grandeur of shade as those which the pages of Homer or Virgil describe.""9
Nature was the one source for poetic matter in America that was abundant.
Moreover, it was the one source, according to some Anthology critics,
from which an original poetry could arise; a poetry not just distinc-
tively American, but a poetry that would be a contribution to the

literature of the world. Such a view was expressed by Samuel Thacher:

The common charge against us of poverty of genius is least easily
eluded, when we are told, that America has never yet produced a
poet of more than second rate excellence. . . . The birth place
of the original poet has often been, where, as in our country,

 

life of corruption in the city. Besides praise of the simple life in
nature, "Where soul view'd soul in native truth array'd,/And naked
Nature scorn'd to masquerade," Dana's poem shows his theory of writing
poetry according to one's reSponse to his immediate natural surroundings
and of the proper effect of poetry's being the emotion felt by the
reader: "The poet writes from rules of conscious art,/And feeling
feigns to catch the reader's heart./But I, alas, can feign no feeling
here;/And all my art is Pity’s simple tear."

"9Allen, MAJ, VI (April, 1809), 212-46.

131

nature appears in all her rudeness, where the mountains rise in
their unsubdued and gigantick elevations, the cataracts fall
without artificial meanders. The only reason, that I can think
of, without admitting the justice of the charge, is that our
writers import the style and imagery of the poets of England,
as much as our merchants do its wares. The new appearances of
nature in our country, one would think, ought to have extended
the limits of an art confessedly imitative. But our poets

have been contented with attempting to revive the lilies and
roses of Europe, all whose leaves are withered, and all whose
fragrance is exhausted by having been so long plucked, and
having been transferred to so many possessors. When we are
farther advanced in refinement, we Shall have poetry of as much
beauty, as any that has recently appeared in EurOpe; but whilst
we continue to receive our riches by inheritance, and not to
produce them by our vigour, we shall not be able to boast of
any imperishable name; of one, who may sit down with Homer,
Milton, and Shakespeare.50

It was not enough that the poet merely observe the nature surrounding
him, however. Arthur walter viewed nature primarily as a place for
reflection, much like the privacy of his own study. If one was to
gain "renown among generations to come" and "produce something,

which may be of use and honour to his country," he had to retire

' where he could "consult books for

to "his own snug chamber,‘
authority" and his own mind for reflection"; where "confirmed by

the knowledge of others, and full of raciness from the deep, strong

soil of his own powers, perhaps he may feel the solemn inspirations . . .
which breathe a consciousness, that his great secret work will be
immortal."Sl Again, referring to lines from Tacitus that "woods

and groves and solitary places afford . . . the pleasures of a

poetick imagination . . . far from the noise and bustle of the

world," walter suggested that one must live "in the coolness and

greenness of the valley, communing with his own spirit, or conversing

 

SOThacher, "Silva," M,A., II (September, 1805), 358-61.

51Walter, y.g., II (December, 1805), 6211-28.

132
with those illustrious intelligences, who are immortal in their
writings." Like Virgil, one who sought beauty, truth, purity, or
sublimity had to retire "from the nonsense and business of the
world" and live in the solitude of the country.52 In including
the desirability of knowledge of illustrious and authoritative
works, walter attempted a balance between the poet's learning and
his inspiration, his reliance upon what others can teach him and
what nature and he himself can teach him. But, as in his essay
defending originality, his emphasis was upon the solitary figure
delving into sources that are peculiarly his own,ref1ection that
could be done in the privacy of the study or the fields.

In another essay, that by Thomas Tracy, the association
between reflection and nature is more strongly expressed. Nature
alone becomes the place of contemplation:

In a melancholy, contemplative frame of mind . . . I last

evening took a solitary ramble in the neighbouring woodlands,

and imperceptibly arrived within the limits of a circular

glade, which opened toward the east. The setting moon

gleamed on a distant lake. All was silent, save a waterfall.

. . . The uncommon beauty of the evening induced me to pursue

the train of congenial ideas, which the surrounding scenery

had produced.53
This passage creates a mood such as one of the English romantic poets
might have created, a mood of solitude, contemplation, melancholy,

beauty; insistent upon the beauty of the scene as the source of

thought. Indeed, the passage, in all its romantic trappings and

 

52walter, yu§., III (April, 1806), 172-7A.

53Tracy, "The Literary wanderer, No. 3," g.g., II (April,
1805), 179-81.

133
its awkward symbolism, appears artificial, no less imitative of
contemporary British poetry than other American lines were of
Augustan. When one reads that "contemplation teaches us to commune

with ourselves" and brings back with the "joy of grief" the

 

"scenes of departed years,‘ one feels as though he were reading
William Wordsworth. 0r Ralph waldo Emerson. What is important

here is that this essay by Tracy, published only two years after
Ralph waldo Emerson was born, might just as well have been published
after 1836. What is no less important is that the course of action
Tracy suggested is directed at not would-be American poets but at
everyone; moreover, in his own "evening walk" he diSplayed purely
descriptive writing. In short, he was not writing as a critic.

One is led to believe that whereas advocates of Pope were able

to state in critical terms the advantages of writing like POpe,
advocates of such a poet as Wordsworth, because they emphasized
individual response to nature, could not state further rules for
achieving his heights, but instead were bound to apply his methods
to their own situation and attempt to create something as original
as his poetry. Tracy's attempt ended up in an appearance of
imitation.

Benjamin Welles was more successful. His "Remarker, No. 10,"
is perhaps the most significant essay in the Anthology, an example
not only of romanticism but of transcendentalism as well. Indeed,
it shows more clearly than any other the union of the two. Like
Tracy's essay, it might have been written much later, but, coming

in 1806, it offers further evidence for an early nineteenth-century

American source for both romanticism and transcendentalism. The

13A
ideas expressed by Welles seem to have arisen as much from his own
individual response to his surroundings as from a sympathy with any
views currently being expressed by British writers, though he was
probably familiar with these views. He does not seem to have been
writing according to any rules other than faithfulness to his topic.
Insofar as Welles's essay is successful, it is an indication of the
American writer's source for originality being the American artist,
rather than the American critic or the foreign writer. Indeed, it
professes complete unconcern with the problems of literature or
with literature itself.

What Welles wrote about was "beyond . . . the fascination
of poetry." His topic was the love of nature and the relationship
of man to nature, his theme being the same, essentially, as that
voiced some thirty years later in America: "Man . . . appears to
hold an intimate connexion, and grand alliance with nature"
wherein "his mind may, for a moment, stand and gaze on the very
borders of its own perfection";'he, who thus gives himself up to
nature, is in the brightness and purity of his existence." Welles
condemned all men for being "too niggardly" in taking advantage of
what nature could offer them during their lifetime; at death their
"eye shuts blankly on the walls of their prison, while the vision
of him, who has communed with nature, slowly fades with the
Imelancholy dimness of things, and vanishes with their departure."
He emphasized the importance of acquiring truths that were beyond
man's own perception; that could be perceived only through the
contemplation of nature, which was beyond the logic of man.

Finally, Welles suggested that literature itself was only

l35
imitative of nature." We had, then,to go beyond mere descriptions,

turn from the transcription, however charming and exact, to the
raptures of the original. We are no longer content with the
ideal sympathy of visionary existence, but we extend all the
pleasures of fiction into the emotions of sensible truth. In
the presence of nature, even the minuteness and exactitude of
COWper is indiscriminate and unsatisfactory; the mellow
luxuriance of Thomson barren and wasteful. In the bright
expanse, which surrounds her, even the sublime and transcendent
genius of Milton flutters with dark and heavy wings, near the
earth, but faintly tinged with the celestial light, and rests
on objects blasted or deformed. Let him then whose soul is
pure and holy with the love of nature take his position in the
midst of creation and commence the mighty work of the eternal
perfection of thought.5"

In reading Welles's essay, one is led to believe that it is only
when a man loses respect for literature that he can produce
literature. No wonder that Gardiner called this piece "nonsense
& unintelligible and the most absurd production he ever read,"
"the most contemptible thing that has ever appeared in the

Anthology."55

 

l5"Welles, "Remarker, No. 10," L,A., III (June, 1806),
285-88.

55Letter from Arthur walter to Joseph Buckminster, August 7,
1806, Buckminster Papers.

 

 

CHAPTER III

A SPIRIT OF INQUIRY

Any study of the development of nineteenth-century American
religion, theology, or philosophy should take into account the views

expressed in the Monthly Anthology. For here, perhaps more easily

 

than anywhere else, one can observe the intellectual ferment during
the first decade of the nineteenth century that preceded the emer-
gence of both Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. The Anthology
makes clear that Transcendentalism was not merely an English or
German importation, but to a great extent a natural outgrowth of
liberal thinking in America, and that its American roots were intri-
cately intertwined with those of Unitarianism. The formation of the
Unitarian Association was the direct result of the theological
controversies in which the Anthology came to take a leading role.
But it might be argued that Transcendentalism was no less consequent,
for the spirit of inquiry that fathered the liberal views expressed
in the Anthology gained enough momentum with the Anthology to carry
thought beyond the boundaries of all associations. It might be
argued, in fact, that the Anthologists were more truly the immediate
progenitors of the Transcendentalists than of the Unitarians: there
is little doubt that the Anthologists were just as free thinking

for their own time as the Transcendentalists were for theirs.

136

137-
The liberal Christianity of the early nineteenth century

as it was manifested in the Monthly Anthology developed out of that

 

of the eighteenth century. The controversies in which the Anthology
took a leading role were a continuation of the debates that had
accompanied the growth of Arminianism in America.1 That dissidence
within the church had arisen at all, Calvinism being the strict
theology that it was, was made possible by the peculiar church polity
of Congregationalism. Unlike Presbyterianism, in which the individual
churches conformed to a governing synod, Congregationalism.permitted
each church individual government. As occasion demanded, councils
might meet to discuss specific problems, but they could only advise,
not rule, individual congregations. Thus it was possible for a
minister to dissent from Calvinistic theology and still remain in his
pulpit, if his congregation did not object to being led astray by
him. Between the establishment of the Congregational system in the
seventeenth century and the formation of the Unitarian Association
in the nineteenth, ministers did dissent, though still remaining
within the orthodox church.

So it was that the eighteenth century saw the growth of a
liberal Christian force within the Congregational Church that
gradually substituted for Calvinism a more humanitarian theology.

Liberal Christians came to believe that man was not a helpless,

 

1Although there are several works that treat the rise of
Arminianism and Unitarianism in eighteenth-century America, the
following discussion is based mainly upon Conrad wright, The Begin-
nings of Unitarianism in America (Boston: Star King Press, 19555.
Also of particular help were the unpublished lectures of Claude M.
Newlin and an unpublished paper by him entitled "From Puritanism
to the Age of Reason in New England."

 

138
Sinful creature, dependent upon an arbitrary Judge for his salvation,
but rather a being capable of goodness as well as evil whose salva-
tion depended upon his freely choosing right actions over wrong and
upon the benevolence of a God of love. In short during the eight-
eenth century, liberal Christians seriously challenged the five points
issued by the Synod of Dort in 1618 against the teachings of Jacob
Herman Arminius. Point by point, they attacked the belief in the
total depravity of man, unconditional election, prevenient and
irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints, and limited atonement
and substituted, at least for themselves, beliefs more flattering to
man. In essence, they took some of God's sovereignty away from him
and gave it to man.

From the beginning Puritan preachers were faced with a serious
problem: how could they justify preaching good deeds when the damned
would be damned and the elect would be saved whether they practised
good deeds or not? If man had no power to save himself, if his sal-
vation or damnation was determined before he was born, at the
beginning of time, he had little need to conduct himself righteously.
It was here that Arminianism first got its foot in the door of
Calvinistic theology. The Puritans, as a chosen people, formed a
covenant with God, and through this covenant, tried to effect a
compromise between Antinomianism, which stressed the sovereignty of
God, and Arminianism, which stressed the freewill of man and
salvation at least partly through moral conduct. Man was to enter
into a covenant with God, whereby God would lay down certain rules
of conduct for man to follow; but man could follow these only if

he were of the elect. Good deeds were the result, not the cause,

139
of justification. But the covenant with God could at most be only a
stopgap measure; preachers were still faced with the problem of how
to prevent the damned from sinning.

Fundamental to this problem was the belief in total deprav-
ity. If man was totally depraved, he hgg to depend upon God's grace
for salvation; if not, he might do some good and perhaps help to
save himself. An early attempt to disprove this belief came in l7h9,
when Lemuel Briant of Braintree preached a sermon entitled TEE

Dangep, and Blasphemy of Depretiating Mbral Virtue, in which he

 

tried to show the bad effects of resting man's salvation completely
upon God's grace. When Christians hear of their "being saved by
ggggg," he warned, "they conceive of it so as to destroy all moral
agency, and set themselves down with this vain thought, that nothing
on their part is necessary to Salvation but if they are designed for
it, they shall irresistibly be driven into Heaven, whether they will
or not." John Porter of Bridgewater and John Cotton of Halifax
rebuked the heresy of Briant, and a church council found him guilty
of publicly renouncing the Westminster Confession and advised his
congregation to "withdraw themselves from his Ministry"; but, since
the council could only advise and not rule, it could not dismiss
Briant from his pulpit.2

Charles Chaunc)’ of First Church, Boston, and Ebenezer Gay
of Hingham continued the attack on original sin with the doctrine
of limited or partial depravity. Adam.had sinned, they contended,

but man had inherited only some--not all--of his sin, and thus came

 

2Newlin, "Puritanism," 3-A.

1A0

into the world with "a nature less perfect than it might have been"

 

but nonetheless with a power to control it.3 Fch this argument
Arminians came to the position that men were born "neither Righteous
nor Wicked, but capable of being either." God, they argued, gave us
"certain Appetites and Passions" which could lead us astray, but He
also provided us with "an intelligent Nature: He has bless'd us
with the Power of Reason, and implanted in us that moral Sense which
we call Conscience" with which to control these appetites."
If man was not chained by original sin, he had freewill to do '
good as well as evil, and through his choice of good he might help to
save himself. Salvation, the Arminians came to believe, was not the
prize merely of an elect, but was possible for all men. Here they
attacked especially the Hopkinsians--New Divinity men who derived
their name from Samuel Hopkins of Yale, a follower of Jonathan
Edwards. The Hopkinsians stressed the Calvinistic doctrine that man
had to be converted or regenerated to be pleasing to God and that
only the elect could be converted; that justification came only
through faith and that only the elect could have faith. The Armin-
ians argued that Since all men were capable of righteous living,
all men might attain justification, or become worthy in God's eyes
of salvation. Thus did the Arminians do away with the doctrines
of irresistible and prevenient grace and limited atonement.
In the process of breaking down the five points of Calvinism,

the Arminians changed the Calvinistic conception of God. He could

 

3Newlin, "Puritanism," 5.

"Wright, 88-89.

lul
no longer be looked upon as a terrible God of wrath, who unmercifully
and arbitrarily judged the majority of men to damnation. Instead,
the Arminians asserted, God's sole concern was the happiness of all
men and his main attributes were love and benevolence. Man's duty
was to try to model himself after God; hence the Arminians empha-
sized an ethical, rather than a metaphysical, Christianity. There
was, in fact, a growing suspicion that hell did not even exist. If
God could do only good (as Edwards himself said) and if He was
essentially a loving and benevolent Deity, what could man fear? If
man led a good life, surely he would be saved; if not, surely God
through his infinite goodness and mercy would not condemn him to
eternal hell.

Accompanying the belief in man's ability to choose right over
wrong was a faith in man as a reasonable being. To be sure, the
Calvinists acknowledged and greatly respected reason. But they did
not think it could help save one. To some extent the Arminian
confidence in reason was a reaction against the enthusiasm generated
by the great awakening, though British figures of the enlightenment
were also influential. But the Arminians were not Deists: they
believed that man‘s reason had to be supplemented by revelation from
God. The faith in man as a reasonable being did, however, lead
Arminians to the belief that man was able to interpret the revealed
truth, the Bible, for himself and that there was therefore little
need of creeds or confessions of faith. But even though the
Arminians claimed to be nonsectarian, they still were church members.
By the end of the eighteenth century, they still had hopes of effecting

their reformation within the bounds of the Congregational body.

1A2
It was not until the last quarter of the eighteenth century
that unitarianism became a dominant issue. The early part of the
century had seen a few arguments for unitarianism, such as Samuel

Clarke's Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) and Thomas Emlyn's

 

An Humble Inquiry into the Scripture-Account of Jesus Christ (1702),

 

to which later unitarians often referred. Later, in 1755, Jonathan
Mayhew had preached on the New Testament passage "to us there is but
one God, the Father" and scolded his congregation for not giving God
his due reverence.5 But probably no one would have been more
astonished than Mayhew had he known that a debate over the Trinity,
and not the doctrine of grace, was to occasion the actual separation
of liberal Christians from the orthodox church. Mayhew did, however,
arouse Trinitarian feeling. Some of his opponents wanted to deprive
him of his seat on the Harvard Board of Overseers; orthodox Boston
ministers began to stress the doctrine of the Trinity in their sermons
and lectures; Joseph Sewall, Thomas Foxcraft, and Thomas Prince

sponsored the publication of All Power in Heaven, and in Earth Given

 

unto Jesus Christ, by Ebenezer Pemberton, to which was added an

 

appendix containing Scriptural evidence for the Divinity of Christ.
Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Foxcraft, Jonathan Parsons, and Joseph
Bellamy all were moved to write publicly or privately on the subject.

A year after Mayhew's sermon Thomas Emlyn's Humble Inquiry was repub-

 

lished, probably at Mayhew's instigation, and dedicated to the clergy
of New England that they might recommend it to their congregations.

Aaron Burr of the College of New Jersey replied with The Supreme

 

Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maintained (1757). Unitarianism

 

 

5wright, 20u-205.

1A3
gained still more ground when Simeon Howard succeeded Mayhew upon
his retirement from west Church in 1767. Howard held theological
views similar to those of his predecessor, and his ordination caused
Andrew Croswell and Samuel Hopkins to denounce his waywardness and
uphold Trinitarianism.

Mbst of these unitarians were Arians, believing that Christ
was inferior to God yet more than a mere man because he was created
before the beginning of the world. But by the end of the eighteenth
century there were at least two avowed Socinians--believing that
Christ was simply a man, though a perfect one, endowed with special
authority and a faithful revelation of God's will--among the Arminian
clergy around Boston: the Anglican James Freeman of King‘s Chapel
and William Bentley of East Church, Salem. The growth of Socinianism
was aided by the visit of William Hazlitt to the United States
between 1783 and 1786. Through his influence on Bentley and Freeman,
he helped to establish a link between English and American unitarians,
and before long the writings of Joseph Priestley were circulating and
even being printed in New England.

By the early nineteenth century New England was still predom-
inantly Calvinistic, but Boston itself had yielded considerably to
the influence of Arminianism and along with it unitarianism. A
succinct view of the State of religion in New England in 180A is found
in Jedidiah Mbrse’s "miscellaneous observations" which he sent to a

friend as an appendage to his History of New England:

 

The congregational clergy in New England, generally speaking,
may be styled Calvinistic in their doctrinal sentiments, with
shades of difference from the severe views (if I may so speak) of
Calvin himself, Edwards, and Hopkins, to the milder schemes of

 

1AA

Doddridge, and Baxter. Of this character are I apprehend,
19/2OHE of the clergy of Connecticut, the western parts of
Massachusetts proper, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine; and I
may add Rhode-Island, where there are but five or six clergy-
men of the congregational denomination, and very few of any
Other, and consequently but little religion.

In the other part of Massachusetts, there remain a few
elderly ministers, reputable for their understanding and
character, who are Arminians, upon the old scheme of Arminius,
Tillotson &c--and a considerable body of younger men, also
men of good abilities & characters, who may be denominated
Arians; and who, there is reason to believe, embrace in their
scheme, the doctrines of Arminius, and of the late Dr. Chauncey.
Boston and its neighborhood, embraces the largest portion of the
divines of this description. -

There are a few Socinians, not I apprehend ten in all, in
all New England among the clergy who are of this sect--not half
that number avowedly.

Mbdern Arminianism, and the still more liberal views of
Christianity, entertained by Arians, Universalists, and Socinians,
have been on the increase in the eastern part of Massachusetts
prOper ever since the close of the Revolutionary war, 'till within
a year or two, when they apparently became stationary, and I
conceive are now retrograde; and their injurious effects having
alarmed some of our best men in civil life, and awakened more
serious christians to increased zeal and diligence in prayer
and other religious duties-~which have been happily followed
by the blessing of God, in remarkable revivals of Religion in
this, and of late in almost every part of our country. ‘

It is proper to remark that departures from.the orthodox faith
of the fathers of New England, have been chiefly among the clergy.
The progress of %iberal sentiments in religion in churches,

has been slow. . . .

Had Morse written this observation in 1805 it is doubtful that he

would have described the liberal views as having become stationary. With
tlle controversy over the election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity at
Harvard, Morse himself became involved in a controversy that was to

gain such intensity that it ultimately ended in the Unitarian schism.
Viewing this era in retrospect, Henry Adams could write that, far from
the liberal side having become stationary or "the progress of liberal

sentiments" having been "slow" at this time, "the Unitarian movement

 

6Letter from Jedidiah Morse to Dr. Kemp, Charlestown, October
17, 1808, Mbrse Family Papers.

1115

. . . with astonishing rapidity passed through phases which might well
have required ages of growth."7 But certainly there is little doubt
that the liberal spirit was centered "in the eastern part of
Massachusetts."

Describing a visit to Boston taken in 1801, four years earlier
than Mbrse‘s account was written, Archibald Alexander gave a somewhat
more detailed account of the religious opinions in eastern Massachu-

setts at that time:

One might learn with ease what each man believed, or rather
did not believe, for few positive opinions were expressed by the
liberal party. Dr. Kirkland was said to be a Socinian, as was
Mr. POpham; and Dr. HCoward an Arian. Dr. Eckley had professed
to be an Edwardean, but he came out after my visit, a high Arian.
Mr. Eliot was an Arian, Mr. Emerson a Unitarian of some sort,
and Dr. Lathrop a Universalist. Dr. Freeman, one of the first
who departed from orthodoxy, was the lowest of all, a mere
humanitarian. He still used the book of Common Prayer, altered
so as to suit his opinions. Dr. Morse was considered a rigid
Trinitarian. Dr. Harris, of Dorchester, w s reckoned a low
Arminian, and became a thorough Unitarian.

Of this group Kirkland, Eliot, Emerson, and Freeman all contributed
to the religious writings of the Anthology, begun two years later.
Alexander also described Harvard College at the time of his visit,
the stronghold of liberal Christianity and the center of the first
of the major controversies in which the Anthology engaged:

Harvard College was not yet fully under Unitarian influence,
but was leaning in that direction. President Willard was thought
to hold the old Puritan doctrine, but had no zeal for orthodoxy.
Dr. Tappan, professor of theology, was in his writings a Calvinist
of the school of Watts and Doddridge. . . . Dr. Pierson was
professor of Hebrew; he was much opposed to Unitarianism, but did
not possess great influence. All were for making little of
doctrinal differences. As soon as the liberal men had caused
this to be settled as a principle, they devised a way to introduce

 

7Henry Adams, 1x, 205.

8
Alexander, 252.

1A6

the ablest Unitarians into the College, as fast as vacancies
occurred. . . . Even at the time of my visit, all the young men
of talents in Harvard were Unitarians.

In these passages Alexander suggested several characteristics
of the liberal movement of early nineteenth-century Boston, not the
least significant of which is seen in his last statement, that "all
the young men of talents in Harvard were Unitarians." Several of
these young men were to become Anthologists. But the most pervasive
impression that Alexander seems to have come away from Boston with
was the unsettled quality of the liberal movement. Not only was
there a wide variety of opinion within the liberal group itself, but
as individuals the liberals seem to have been in a state of flux.

' as it was so often called in both ortho-

This "diversity of opinion,‘
dox and liberal writings, was perhaps the dominant characteristic of
the liberal movement of the early nineteenth century and it is this
quality that sharply distinguishes it from the later Unitarian sect.
In fact, insofar as there was any unifying factor among the liberals
of this era, their respect for diversity of opinion seems to have
been it. William Emerson at times even seems to have felt almost
debilitated by it. "In every view the profession [of clergyman] is
honorable & important," he confessed to Ezra Ripley as early as 1790,
"but who wil [§_i_c§| not exclaim, with the Apostle, who is sufficient
for these things? The amazing diversity of opinions respecting modes

& doctrines, all of which claim our Savior for their patron, is enough

to confound our ideas of religion itself."lo Buckminster, however,

 

9A1exander, 253.

10Letter from William Emerson to Ezra Ripley, Roxbury,
November 20, 1790, Emerson Papers.

1117
expressed in his diary the prevailing attitude among the liberals
concerning controversy over religious doctrines:
There is often much astonishment expressed in the world at the
diversity of xtn [Christiana sects, & the contradictory opinions
conscientiously maintained by men who profess to derive their
faith from one common source. . . .
Men react to this diversity in varying ways. Some "give up the whole
doctrine of revelation," but in doing so they deny that Christianity
involves profundities "worthy of such deep . . . discussion." Others
may maintain "that their own articles of faith are solely & infallibly
true," but "this 'claim of infallibility' cannot be proved."
Others more rationally & candidly conclude, that the diversities
on the subject are to be traced to the same source with all other
differences of opinion to the education, circumstances, tempers
& talents, of men, & that this variety is so far from being an
objection to religion in general or to xnity in particular that
it may be so conducted attempered regulated as to produce the

most beneficial xnity.ll

According to Samuel Thacher, it was "to a spirit of inquiry we are

 

indebted for all our improvements in knowledge"12 and what Arthur
walter in his diary called the "instinctive love of truth" that the
liberals of the Anthology period so valued.l3 Only through "a curious
& exploring understanding," Buckminster insisted, could one hope to

14 "The understanding gains strength

arrive at any religious truths.
by exercise, the memory constantly adding its treasures by means of

a principle of curiosity, which is ever grasping what is new, exploring

 

llJoseph Buckminster, diary, n.d., Buckminster Papers.

l2Samuel Thacher, sermon on Romans xiv.10: "But why dost thou
judge thy brother. . . . ," n.d., Massachusetts Historical Society.

l3Walter, "Journal," November 27, 1803.

l"Buckminster, "Cultivation of the Understanding on Matters
of Religion," 1805, Buckminster Papers.

118
what is abstruse & calling up what is forgotten." Yet, Buckminster
added, "the consequence of every new inquiry is the discovery of new
ignorance, and among the few truths which cannot be doubted the
imperfection of our knowledge seems to be that which receives the
most frequent confirmation."15
In so emphasizing the principle of the right of private
judgment, the liberals expressed confidence in man as a reasonable
being and his ability to discover truths through his reason. It was
a "rational religion" that they advocated, one that relied upon neither
"enthusiasm" nor "metaphysicks" but rather upon individual freedom of
inquiry. "Let them acknowledge no authoritative guide of their faith
& practice," Eliphalet Porter said at the ordination of Charles Lowell,
but the holy scriptures; & no master in religion, but Jesus Christ.
The regard, which has been paid by Christians to human names &
authorities, in forming religious opinions, is not easily recon-
ciled with that respect, which is due to the divine oracles. Nor
does the use, which has often been made of the creeds, confessions,
& compositions of fallible men, as tests of soundness in faith, &
as preferable or at least, as supplementary to the holy scriptures,
appear honorary to the word of God, or promotive of free inquiry,
& the progress of truth.:L
This reliance upon individual interpretation of the Scriptures,
this strong respect for free inquiry and the right of private judgment,
explains why at the beginning of the nineteenth century there could be

such a variety of opinion among the eastern Massachusetts liberals.

Although they were all church members, either Anglican or Congregational,

 

15Buckminster, "Religious Knowledge," n.d., Buckminster Papers.
l6Eliphalet Porter, A Sermon Preached at the Ordination of
the Rev. Charles Lowell to the Pastoral Care of the west Church and
Congregation in Boston, Jan. 1, 1806 (Boston: Belcher & Armstrong,
moo), 11+.

 

 

119
they saw themselves as nonsectarians, and it was the doctrine of
nonsectarianism that they most consistently advocated. William
Emerson went so far as to form a plan for the establishment of a
nonsectarian church, a plan he never lived to realize. "If I had
not left Harvard for Boston," he wrote Samuel Ripley, who was then
in washington,
it was my intention to leave it for Washington, where I designed
to plant a church strictly on congregational principles, in
which there was to be no written confession of faith, no covenant,
and no subscription whatever to articles as a term of communion.
It was my plan, and still would be in forming a new church, to
administer the rituals of Christianity to all who would observe
them, without any profession except such observance.17
Such a liberal attitude was possible--the nonsectarians could at
the same time be Congregationalists--because of the polity of the
Congregational Church. Yet this liberal attitude was liberal only
in comparison to what preceded it within the Congregational Church.
Just as the early nineteenth-century liberals identified themselves
with those liberals of the Reformation in respect to the right of
private judgment, so did they see their alliance in an insistence
upon trying to reform religion within the bounds of their established
church. Except for a few isolated instances--instances which are,
nonetheless, important to our understanding of the later liberality
of Transcendentalism--these early nineteenth-century liberals were
liberal only within the confines of the Christian belief in the

necessity of revelation through the Scriptures and of the structure

of the Congregational, or in some cases the Anglican, Church.

 

17Letter from William Emerson to Samuel Ripley, Boston,
Jan. 22, 1806, Emerson Papers.

150

So far as this study goes, the significance of the nonsectari-
anism of these early liberals lies in the fact that they were, because
of their professed nonsectarianism, more liberal than the Unitarians
they spawned or became. Henry Adams remarked that "the earlier stage
of Unitarianism was more interesting than the later," that the society
of Boston "had never been so agreeable or so fecund," that "no such
display of fresh and winning genius had yet been seen in America as
was offered by the genial outburst of intellectual activity in the
early days of the Unitarian schism."18 Here Adams referred to the
Boston under Channing’s influence. George Ticknor, however, himself
a member of the Anthology Society as a very young man, saw the era
of the Anthology, rather than of Channing, as the more inquiring
period. By l8h9, when he reviewed Eliza Buckminster Lee's Memoirs
of her father and brother, Ticknor had found that

in the course of this long warfare, that Labarum of Liberal
Christianity, which Mr. Buckminster had done more than any other
man of his time among us to plant on the high ground of the Bible,
as interpreted by the private judgment of its Christian readers,--
this true standard of the Cross has been removed,--whether by the
skilful strategy of its assailants or by the unsound principles

of defence adopted by its friends, it is useless here to inquire;--
but it has been removed, and it has been planted on the ground of
'Uhitarianism,‘ as if the doctrine of the Trinity were the only,
or the chief thing, that separates Liberal Christians from Papacy
or Calvinism, from the Methodists or the Baptists. This we regard
as a misfortune to the great cause it claims to lead on. For from
this time, and in consequence of this movement, the old body of
‘Liberal Christians' has lost something of its original and kindly
comprehensiveness, and more of its peculiar character. It has
become a denomination and a sect, like other denominations and
other sects. It has felt obliged, and in some degree, to pass
without censure, if not to receive into its fellowship, persons
who are Unitarians only because they believe in the unity of God,
while they deny all miraculous authority to the Christian
revelation. It has been placed before the world in a false

 

laAdams , IX, 182-83 .

151
position, where it is more easily assailed than it ought to be,
and where its defences are necessarily rendered weaker by being
so much extended, as, on the one side, to include some whom it
cannot protest and ought never to countenance, and, on the other,
to shut out those generous and independent Christians of the
elder school, who are its natural allies, and safe and honorable
support. . . . Has, then, Christianity, faithful, devout, liberal
Christianity-~really gained by this change of its position . . . ?
Despite the liberals’ profession of nonsectarianism, the
orthodox Calvinists persistently labeled them Unitarians, as if the
Unitarian schism had been effected long before it was. Ticknor
suggested two reasons for this. First, despite the fact that, as
Ticknor pointed out, the doctrine of the unity of God was only one
aspect of liberal Christianity and there were far more fundamental
differences between orthodox Calvinism and liberal Christianity,
this doctrine was the most controversial one at the beginning of the

nineteenth century. As Buckminster observed in his diary,

the diversity of opinion is on no subject greater than on the
character of Jesus, the acknowledged author of the xtn faith.2O

 

That this one doctrine concerning the Trinity should finally have
distinguished the liberals from the orthodox seems to be due to its
just happening to have been the most controversial one by the time
liberal Christianity had ripened enough for its proponents to desire
separation from the Congregational Church. That they finally did
desire separation leads to the second reason. As Ticknor pointed
out, with the debates over the unity of God the controversy between
the orthodox and the liberals became so heated that separation became
necessary; the two groups could not remain within the same framework

with compatibility. That it became so intense was due, Ticknor

 

lENTicknor, "Review," 29.

20Buckminster, diary, n.d., Buckminster Papers.

152

suggested, to "the skilful strategy" of the "assailants" of liberal
Christianity-~their most effective weapon being their labeling the
liberals Unitarians when they were only Enitarians--and to "the
unsound principles of defence" employed by the liberals. The
liberals, being forced to defend the doctrine of unitarianism, even
though it was only one aspect of liberal Christianity, defended it
with such vigor as eventually to make true the charge of their
assailants: they became a sect like any other sect, and in the
process alienated those men who either had carried on or inherited
the "generous spirit of inquiry" that they themselves had fostered.

During the Anthology era the orthodox developed their
"skilful strategy" through four major steps: the creation of the
Panoplist; the establishment of Andover Theological Seminary; the
organization of the General Association; and the establishment of
Park-street Church. So far as the Anthology goes, it is the first
of these that is most important, for it is in the Anthology‘s
debates with the Panoplist that its liberal Christianity can best
be seen.

The first of these debates was initiated by the death of
David Tappan in 1803, leaving vacant the Hollis Chair of Divinity
at Harvard College. From its endowment in 1721 this chair had been
held by Calvinists. Now the orthodox feared that it might be filled
by a liberal; and there ensued a debate between the liberals and the
orthodox, putting off the appointment of the next Hollis professor
for two years. The main point of controversy concerned the terms

upon which Hollis had established his chair. The Calvinists, led by

153
Jedidiah Mbrse, claimed that Hollis had intended the chair to be
held by a Calvinist; but the liberals argued that Hollis had "wished
to found a Professorship of Divinity, in the large interpretation of
the word, and not a Professorship of Calvinism or Arminianism."21
Secondarily, this debate was over academic freedom, the liberals
finally contending that to demand any kind of profession of faith
from a teacher impeded the process of learning, of discovering truth.
After several fruitless meetings, on February 1, 1805, the corporation
elected Henry ware of Hingham, a liberal, to the chair. Then on
February 14, the overseers ratified the election.22 In his declar-
ation of acceptance, ware pledged to "religiously observe the Statutes
of my Founder and all such other Statutes and Orders, as have been,
or shall be made by the College," but at the same time insisted
that "the Scriptures . . . are the only perfect rule of faith and
manners."23

Up until January 16 the controversy was waged through the pages

of the Columbian Centinel. On that date the editor, after having

 

announced that he would publish no more controversial letters,
admitted one more, apparently because the first part consisted of

' as the writer signed

praise for his decision. But "Constant Reader,‘
himself, went on to state the liberal view that "whether the candidates

for the Presidential and Theological chairs, be Calvinists, Arians,

 

21wright, 27u-76.

22wright, 279.

23Declaration of Henry ware, ware Papers, HUG 1871 (Harvard
Archives).

15h

Socinians, or Latitudinarians, is not of so much importance, as

"2%

whether they are learned, pious, moral men. In the February

issue of the Anthology is a letter by William Wells that restates
the position of "Constant Reader" in the Centinel. With the publi-
cation of this letter, the Anthology took up where the Centinel
left off, providing for the continuation of public debate. wells
described himself as a true liberal, saying that he was not a
Calvinist, but that he couldn't object "to a man as a publick
instructor" who was a Calvinist.

Feeling, as I do, most seriously interested in the prosperity of
our Alma Mater, I shall lament, as deeply injurious to her use-
fulness and reputation, that hour, when her present liberal
principles shall be exchanged for subscriptions to Articles of
Faith; or, what is the same thing, when the belief of a certain
speculative system shall be esteemed necessary in him, who aspires
to the honorable station of an instructor to her sons. The next
step, a very short one, is to require such a condition from the
youth at their matriculation; to turn the college catalogue into
an Index Expurgatorius; and to expel from the shelves of the
library all heretical publications. So shall all access of
errour be prohibited, and the fountain of knowledge shall flow
with an unpolluted stream from generation to generation.25

Immediately after the decision of the overseers, Mbrse published
The True Reasons on which the Election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity
in Harvard College, was Qgposed at the Board of Overseers,iFeb. 14, 1805.
In March William Wells reviewed this work for the Anthology. Morse had
said that Hollis had intended a Calvinist to hold the chair, and that
the overseers were wrong in permitting ware to hold it, since he was a
liberal. Wells questioned whether Hollis, in saying the professor

I

should be one of "sound or orthodox principles,‘ meant he should be a

Calvinist. He thought MOrse was misinterpreting Hollis‘s words and

 

2"Wright, 276,

25Wells, MIA., II (February, 1805), 78-80.

155
reiterated what he had said in the February letter. Hollis, "tho' a
Baptist," Wells said, was a liberal-minded man. He suggested that

Hollis held the same views as his "

pastor and confidential friend,"
Jeremiah Hunt, whom Hollis had consulted when he established his
chair. Hunt had not subscribed to the articles of the Church of
England, the synod of New England, or the westminster Confession,
declaring that the Bible alone should be the religion of Protestants,
especially dissenters. Wells felt that Hollis could not have been
prejudiced in favor of any one sect for all time if he had believed
as Hunt had. Moreover, the overseers in general wanted the new
Hollis professor to be of Christ rather than "of Paul, Appollos, or

Cephas.‘ Finally, Wells suggested that even Edward Wigglesworth,
who had filled the chair before Tappan, was not in his later life
a Calvinist.26

In April Morse replied in a letter to the editors of the
Anthology. He accused the Anthology reviewer of thinking that "our
fathers were ignorant and we are wise; we disdain to follow their
steps." But, he said, there were others among us who had not grown
so wise as to reject the precedents of our fathers. He then tried

to Show that Wigglesworth was a Calvinist because he had consented

to William Ames's Medulla Theologiae; the westminster Confession;

 

and the articles of the Church of England (the Trinity, predestination,
salvation through grace, and infant baptism). Moreover, only five
years before his death, Wigglesworth had preached a sermon in which

he condemned reliance on natural reason and emphasized the depravity

 

26Wells, Mg, II (March, 1805), 152-57.

156
of man and predestination. Finally, when Wigglesworth took the Hollis

chair, he had been examined by Calvinists to see if he was orthodox.27

 

In the same issue Wells offered a lengthy reply. He began
by scolding Morse for writing such a long letter. It would have been
better had Morse limited his reply to correction of important points

and vindication of his evidence before given rather than to add so

much new material as "to serve as an appendix to his first publication."

Wells then asserted that Hollis was an Arminian; but whether he was
Arminian or Calvinist did not really matter. The present overseers
were to judge a man orthodox by what they themselves thought orthodox
and not by what Hollis or the overseers before them thought orthodox.

Such an examination as that which the gentleman has detailed as
taking place with regard to the first professor [Wigglesworth],
may be favourable to the support of a sect, but not of truth.

It is that imposing and judging system, which lays a snare for

a man's conscience, discourages inquiry and discussion, impedes

the progress of truth, which endeavoured to stifle the reformation
in its cradle, and which drove our puritan fathers to this country.
It is at war with the three great principles of protestantism--
the sufficiency and certainty of the scriptures as a rule of faith;
the right and duty of private judgment in religion; and liberty of
conscience. If therefore the corporation and the overseers were
not egpressly required by the statutes of the founder to resort

to this method of obtaining evidence of the principles of the
professor, they were wise to decline it. They had this additional
justification of the omission, that they left the gentleman taking
the office at full liberty to be faithful to the declaration
required by Mr. Hollis, in which he engages to explain and open the
scriptures according to the light he Shall receive.

This was a strong plea not only for liberty of conscience and the right
of private judgment in religion, but for academic freedom as well, for
the two could hardly be separated where a professor of divinity was
concerned. Samuel Thacher was later to use the same argument against

sectarianism in reference to professors of Andover Theological Seminary.

 

27Morse, Mg, II (April, 1805), 206-211.

157
In defending liberty of conscience, wells also defended modern beliefs.
Something was not the worse for being modern "if it be proved right
and salutary. Christianity was once modern; the reformation was once
modern; congregationalism was once modern." Moreover, wells suggested
that it would really be an impossibility to judge the Hollis professor
orthodox according to nineteenth-century Calvinism. Not only was
modern Calvinism vastly different from the Calvinism of Ames's time;
now there were several classes of Calvinists. One class "have
incorporated with it the doctrine of philosophical necessity, and
another many of the leading sentiments of the Arminians; though both
are ambitious of being considered as entitled to the 23mg." Finally,
Wells recommended to Mbrse a certain passage which pointed out that
in a country where there was religious freedom "that religion which
is founded on reason, will gradually gain over the other to it." Not
that men would formally renounce their traditional religion, but they
will adOpt into it the more rational doctrines, the improvements
and discoveries of the neighbouring sects; by which means the
worse religion, without the ceremony of a reformation, will
insensibly assimilate itself to the better.
Thus where Catholicism and Protestantism might be permitted to dwell
together, the "Papists might not become Protestants, for the Egmg is
commonly the last thing that is changed, but they would become more
enlightened and reformed," gradually incorporating into their creeds
the more reasonable tenets of Protestantism, "as well as . . . a
portion of its spirit and moderation." Wells attempted to show the
truth of his generality in the situation at hand. Wigglesworth had
been examined according to "Dr. Ames‘s Medulla, Westminster Confession,
doctrinal articles of the Church of England, and the five points, sharp

I

and unblunted as Perkins’s Tractors.‘ The corporation then reported

158

his confession of faith to the overseers and it was "entered upon
their records with great formality; always ready to rise up in
judgment against him, whenever the light which God should give him
might lead him astray from these good old paths." But with the
introduction of the second Hollis professor--David Tappan-~"what a
falling off from the faith once delivered!" There remained no
account of any inquisition of the candidate by the overseers because
there was no examination-~"only a report to the overseers, that from
their examination the corporation were satisfied." Now, Wells
ironically asserted, in consequence of these precedents,

we shall be liable to professors, who have no qualification for

the place but acknowledged talents, piety, virtue; who give no

proof of the soundness of their principles but edifying instruc-

tions, a character for probity and sincerity, and an avo al of

the scriptures as the rule of their faith and practice.2

Later in May, the Anthology reviewed another work, apparently

intended "to add another and a louder note to the dolorous croakings,

which the publick have already heard on this subject": Two Discourses

 

on Christ's Self-existence, by Samuel Spring. Either Emerson or

 

Buckminster wrote the review. Again the writer attacked through irony:

If, as this writer asserts, the Unitarians, under which term he
comprehends all who are not Athanasians [Trinitarians], mediate

a total revolution in the theological opinions of our country,

we Should recommend to them to commence their labours by a liberal
distribution of his pamphlet. we hope this mild, catholick,
ingenuous, and polished writer will not suspect us of aiding and
abetting so nefarious a design, by presenting the following
specimens of the sentiments, spirit, and style of his performance.29

In June another letter to the editors appeared, this time

from a member of the liberal camp, probably Emerson, which pointed

 

28Wells, 3.5., IL (April, 1805), 211-16.

29118» II (May, 1805), 263m.

159

out a mistake in Morse‘s letter: the Wigglesworth who had held the
Hollis chair was not the same Wigglesworth who had preached the
sermon from which Morse had extracted passages to Show that he had
been a Calvinist.3O In August Morse replied, acknowledging his
mistake, but still insisting that Wigglesworth had been a Calvinist,
though of the "middle ground."31 His opponent then wrote another
letter in which he begged the readers of the Anthology to observe
how Morse had tried to revive the controversy on "the Hollisian
Professorship of Divinity, in which he was so fairly vanquished."32
This letter brought the controversy to a close, though the Anthology
in October published a review by John Eliot of the sermon that ware
preached on leaving his Hingham parish to go to Harvard. Eliot
praised ware as "a divine of high literary character, an excellent
preacher, and a man very amiable in private life," who "will be
eminently useful to future generations"33--useful in furthering the
cause of liberal Christianity.

In the midst of this controversy Jedidiah Mbrse began editing
the Panoplist and the Anthology Society organized to take over the

management of the Monthly Anthology. Both the orthodox and the

 

liberals realized that a theological war had begun with the squabble

over the Hollis Chair of Divinity. "We are on the eve of revolutions

 

305.5,, 11 (June, 1805), 322.
31Morse, 5.5., II (August, 1805), A37.
32Emerson, M,5., II (September, 1805), A92.

33Fliot, 5.5., II (October, 1805), 601.

160

of incalculable consequences,"

wrote Morse not long before ware's
election.3" The Anthology had made it clear that it was not about
to offer itself as a mouthpiece for the orthodox through Mbrse's
long letters. Mbreover, the Anthology's being able to reply to his
letters with even greater length put the orthodox and Morse at a
decided disadvantage. If the orthodox were to participate in the
controversy that they had so long awaited and had tried to force
into the open, they needed a publication of their own. In June 1805
the first issue of the Panoplist appeared with a preface, probably
written by Morse, which stated its purpose. Morse, like the Anthology
editors, insisted that his magazine was to be nonsectarian "unlike

some other periodicals," Morse here referring to the newly created

Christian Monitor as well as to the Anthology. But when he said

 

that the function of the Panoplist was to defend God and Christ
against "one species of . . . publications, conducted by unprincipled
and designing men, [who] have administered poison to the publick

' it was evident that he meant to defend Calvinism.

faith and morals,‘
This enemy, he said, "armed with a specious and subtle philosophy,"
had been no less than "an engine to throw the world into convulsions."35

"The Panoplist," as Morse was later to observe in a letter to Joseph

Lyman, "is the only channel through which we can, with effect,

 

3"Letter from Jedidiah Morse to Joseph Lyman, Charlestown,
Dec. A, l80h (Copy), Mbrse Family Papers.

35"Preface," Panoplist, I (June, 1805), i-viii. Hereafter
cited as Pan. For an account of Morse’s activities throughout the
controverSIEs with the Anthology, see James King Morse, Jedidiah
Morse, a Champion of New England Orthodoxy (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1939).

161

communicate such information to the public from time to time, as may
be necessary to our purpose. It is the only weapon of the kind which
our opposers fear."36 On October 3 the Anthology Society held its
first meeting, adopting a constitution which specifically stated the
procedure for admitting controversial reviews to the pages of its
publication. Perhaps one immediate reason for the formation of the
Society, as has been suggested already, was to insure the continuation
of the Anthology as a means for liberals to make known their views.

The Anthology Society, however, did not publish just any
attack on the orthodox that it received. Indeed, for a time it tried
to avoid entering any direct controversies with the PanOplist. On
June 19, 1806, William Shaw read to the club "a strange communication
on TransubstantiEati]on as believed by the Peruvians," which "ridiculed
ironically & seriously a piece on the 'Trinity' in the Panoplist."
But the Society did not publish it because "the author was unknown,

the thing was singular, & perhaps poorly written,‘ and, most

important, because "the S[ocietly had kept free from all kind of
intercourse with the Panoplist in the management of the AnthEologJy."37
The Pano list, too, professed intentions of keeping out of religious
debates with the Anthology. "It is our fixed determination to avoid
filling our consecrated pages with angry and fruitless controversy

I

on any subjects,‘ it printed;38 and Leonard Woods, one of its major

 

36Letter from Jedidiah Morse to Joseph Lyman, Charlestown,
April 22, 1806, Morse Family Papers.
37Howe, 78-79.

3833., II (July, 1806), 96.

162

supporters, wrote to Morse on the day of the Panoplist's first
publication that he hoped and prayed "that there may not be a spice
of Bitterness or ill nature, in the whole Panoplist."39 But the
Hollis Divinity Chair controversy had made it clear that although
"the present is a crisis which ought to be discreetly . . .
improved,""0 the two publications could not and would not restrain
themselves very much. By 1809 the orthodox Leonard w00ds could
admit "I have become less afraid of directly attacking them, than
I was. Indeed I almost think it a duty publickly to rebuke such
absurdity & falshood," though he still thought "it ought to be done
with good temper, & with great caution." His greatest fear was not
so much that his attacks were not within the Christian spirit, but
that "a formal attack . . . will provoke a rejoinder.""l

In March, 1806, the year following ware's election to the
Hollis Divinity Chair, the orthodox were dealt another blow at
Harvard College with the resignation of Eliphalet Pearson, professor
of Hebrew, immediately after the election of President Samuel webber.
Pearson resigned, according to his letter to the corporation because
the change of personnel at the college and the events of the preceding

year all "spread such a gloom" over the whole college and so "alarm

all my fears" as to exclude "the hope of rendering any essential

 

39Letter from Leonard WOods to Jedidiah Morse, Newbury,
July 1, 1805, Morse Family Papers.

"OLetter from Jedidiah Morse to Joseph Lyman, Charlestown,
July 17, 1805, Mbrse Family Papers.

"lLetter from Leonard WOOds to Jedidiah Morse, Andover,
February 1, 1809 (Copy), Morse Family Papers.

163
service to the interests of religion by continuing my connexion with
it.""2 The orthodox had hoped that Pearson would be made president,
and his failure greatly increased their anxiety. In a letter to
Jedidiah Morse Pearson urged that they rally forces immediately:
"The time is short the period of exertion will soon close. The
enemy seems to be gaining ground. Can nothing more be done to
arrest his progress?""3 Leonard w0ods also wrote Morse:
I am.more and more convinced that we can't keep any terms with
the Socinian crew. They are not honest. They hate the true
Gospel, & the true God. ‘We have suffered by treating them too
well. I think heaven has placed you in the front of the battle
against the powers of error & wickedness. The Lord support &
guide you, & give you victory. If we can only get all calvinists
together, we need not fear. Hopkinsians must come down, &
moderate meg must come up, till they meet. Then the host will
be mighty."

With the publication of John Sherman's One God in One Person

 

955y the orthodox and liberal camps once again had occasion to put
forth their opposing views. The Anthology was the first to review
the work, Buckminster writing the review. Sherman offered no new
evidence, he said, in support of the unitarian position, but his

work was "one of the first acts of direct hostility against the
orthodox, which has ever been committed on these western shores" and
as such offered "a kind of challenge to the orthodox" that "they will

be sensible . . . must either be answered, or thrown by with affected

 

"eLetter from Eliphalet Pearson to the Corporation, March 21,
1806, quoted in Willard, II, 177.

"3Letter from Eliphalet Pearson to Jedidiah Morse, Andover,
September 1, 1806 (Copy), Morse Family Papers.

""Letter from Leonard Woods to Jedidiah Mbrse, March 15, 1806,
Morse Family Papers.

161+

contempt." However much Buckminster may have agreed with Sherman,
he did treat the work critically, now and then questioning Sherman‘s
translations from the Greek. But the most interesting part of his
review so far as the unitarian controversy goes is his quotation
from William Wilberforce:

one great advantage possessed by the Unitarians in their warfare

with the orthodox results from.the very circumstance of their

being the assailants. If the Unitarians or even the Deists

were considered in their turn as masters of the field, and were

in their turn attacked, both by arguments tending to disprove

their system directly'and to disprove it indirectly, it is
likely they would soon appear wholly unable to keep their ground.

115
This observation may explain in part why the liberal Christians

of the Anthology era were so strongly against being labeled.Unitarians

and for remaining professed nonsectarians. A united group was open

to attack, and the attacker was in a far more advantageous position

than the attacked. A Unitarian sect, if formed at this time, the

liberals very likely suspected, would not have been strong enough to

withstand its assailants. But even if such a sect became "masters

of the field," such was the nature of theological warfare that they

would soon lose the battle. Either way the best policy was to

remain disunited. If the liberals, and in particular the Anthology

liberals,were putting off organization for this reason, the charges,

made time and again by the orthodox, that they were acting in secret

union may have had some foundation. "It would facilitate our work,

as reviewers," the Panoplist later complained, "and assist the

decision of the community, if these gentlemen would cease to hide

any part of their object, and would honestly declare, what religious

 

"5Buckminster, 54.5., III (May, 1806), 2119-56.

165
opinions they embrace, as well as what they oppose.""’6 But the
Panoplist was perhaps only trying to create an exact target so that
they might better aim their fire,for, on the whole, the liberals!
profession of nonsectarianism seems to have been sincere.

Buckminster also reviewed Daniel Dow's Familiar Letters to

 

the Reverend John Sherman, which attempted to answer Sherman's

 

treatise. In these letters Buckminster found "the utmost contempt
of scriptural criticism, ignorance of theological opinions,
impudence of style, and bigotry of doctrine.""7 Sherman's work
stirred up considerable controversy in both America and England.
John Codman wrote Mbrse from Edinburgh, where he was studying
divinity, that he was sorry to hear of Sherman‘s vindication of
Arianism and called the unitarians the "new antichrists" rising

in the world,"8 while the Unitarian Thomas Belsham, writing to
Buckminster, had nothing but praise for the author."9 A month after
Buckminster's review, the Panoplist offered its opinion of the book.
Sherman‘s "liberality of sentiment," based upon the idea "that no
man can be infallibly certain, whether any one article of his
religious creed be agreeable to the word of God," was "calculated to
open the door to every species of religious errour, infidelity, and

skepticism."SO Dow's letters, of course, the Panoplist commended.51

 

"6Pan., III, New Series (June, 1810), 20-35.
1+7Buckminster,‘M.;5., III (May, 1806), 256-57.

"8Letter from John Codman to Jedidiah Morse, Edinburgh,
January, 1806, Morse Family Papers.

"9Letter from Thomas Belsham to Joseph Buckminster, October
25, 1808, Buckminster Papers.

SOFan., I (October, 1805), 218-22.

51355., II (June, 1806), 35-38.

166

In September 1806 the Panoplist reviewed An Historical View

 

of Heresies, and Vindication of the Primitive Faith, by Asa Mac-

 

Farland. This was a valuable book, said the reviewer, because it
exposed not only the heretics of yesterday but also those of today:
the Unitarians. But he disagreed wiHanaeFarland that there was
any difference between an error in judgment and heresy. Both had
their origin in the "evil heart of unbelief."52 The Anthology did
not review this book until 1809, before which time it was busy
carrying on another debate with the Panoplist. John Kirkland wrote
the review, beginning with a complaint of how much he hated theo-
logical arguments. But, feeling the necessity of finally speaking
out, he launched into a six-page criticism, thus joining what he
called "the noise and trampling of theological combatants." This
book, he said, "contains a crimination and proscription of the
greatest part of the Christian world, in our view unjust and unnec-
essary." It was such sectarianism and intolerance as was shown here
that incited men to heresy. Perhaps the Anthology would be called
bigoted for calling MacFarland's book bigoted-~for to the zealots,
anti-sectarianism was the worst kind of sect--but still he had to
expose its true bigotry.

MacFarland had asserted that anyone who failed "to embrace
strict Calvinistick orthodoxy, as explained by the writer, is
heretic, his soul in danger." But why, asked Kirkland, should a
Christian go to "the compends of Calvinism" instead of the Bible
for Divine truth? Orthodox doctrine had been culled from "articles,

definitions and propositions, ordained by different councils, synods

 

52355,, 11 (September, 1806), 179-82,

167
and assemblies, at successive periods, from the time of the Council
of Nice, Ad. 325, to the present," and from still more commentaries
on these commentaries. Why turn to these "bulky or extravagant
systems of artificial theology" when Divine truth could be found
through just one book, the Bible? Specifically, Kirkland questioned
the evidence MacFarland had used to show the Divinity of Christ and
his statement that the Calvinistic doctrines of grace, original Sin,
and predestination had been in the Christian church from its
beginning, having been especially prominent when Pelagius had
disputed Augustinianism in the fifth century. Kirkland said that
on the contrary Christians up to Augustine had believed that man
had freewill, that the utmost effect of Adamfs sin was mortality
and proneness to evil, and that our salvation was connected with
our choice and endeavors; and he explained how Augustine had fallen
into his ideas. Finally, Kirkland pleaded for a more ethical kind
of Christianity than MacFarland had shown in his book. In scorning
as heretics the Unitarians, Arians, Socinians, Pelagians, Arminians,
Quakers, Wesleyan Methodists, and Free-willers, he had shown himself
to be a "foe to truth, to charity, and edification." Such a work
resulted in turning men's attention from the practice to the dispute
of Christianity and made "the religion of men a mode of their passions,
a struggle for superiority, a contest of pride, ambition and self
love."53 Despite all his arguments against MacFarland's work,
however, Kirkland may have seen an inkling of truth in his conclusion.

Unitarianism, MacFarland had charged, was adopted by those who

 

”Kirkland; MA... VI (April, 1809), 259-55; VI (May, 1809),
330-38; VII (July, 1809), 51-54.

168

assume to themselves the exclusive character of rational Christians.
. . . Although Unitarians have not an exclusive claim to this
character; yet, if they can have it believed that they are the

only persons who have a rational system, it will have an effect on
the minds of many: for there are not a few who would rather have

it supposed that they have no rfiligion, than that they are
deficient in human philosophy.5

In May 1807 John Reed of Bridgewater delivered a sermon before
the convention of the Congregational ministers in Boston which provoked
another exchange between the Anthology and the PanOplist. The sermon
was an exhortation to all to be tolerant and a commendation of
religious inquiry. Reed contended that "each brother has the same
equal right to investigate and understand . . . according to the
dictates of his own judgment and conscience. But he is not permitted
to impose his interpretation or creed upon others." He argued that
"an uniformity of opinions" was not to be expected for it was
impossible, both because of the limitations of man and because of the
problems inherent in the Scriptures:

some parts are prophetical, others historical, political, bio-
graphical, proverbial, doctrinal, controversial; . . . some
passages are to be understood in a literal, and others in a
conditional, figurative, spiritual, typical, or mystical sense:
. . . like other ancient, oriental writings, it abounds with
tropes, metonymies, ironies, hyperboles, similes, metaphors,
allegories, parables, personifications, dialogues, &c.: . . .
the meaning is liable to be obscured or varied, by the trans-
position or alteration, addition or omission of a single
sentence, word, letter, accent, interpunctuation, or parenthesis.
Furthermore, he contended, the commands of Christ and his apostles
"are predicated upon the supposition, that there would be a diversity
of opinions and practices among Christians." Thus unity "consists

n55

principally in the union of affection.

 

5"Asa MacFarland, An Historical View of Heresies, and Vindica-
tion of the Primitive Faith (Concord, N. H.: George Hough, 1806), 225-26.

 

55John Reed, A Sermon, Preached Before the Convention of the
Congregational Ministers in Boston, May 27, 1807 (Boston: Munroe &
Francis, 1807), pp. h-7.

169
William Emerson reviewed Reed's sermon for the Anthology in
July. He contrasted it to a sermon delivered a few years earlier on

the same occasion that "boldly maintained, that some christians know

 

they are right, whilst other christians only think they are so; and

that consequently the former have a right to blame those who think

 

differently from.them on religious subjects." Reed, on the contrary,
attacked "this dogmatizing spirit with a cool and manly courage, and
drives it from its strongholds."56
The Panoplist published its review in September. The reviewer
agreed that men should think for themselves, but objected to the idea
that all interpretations of the Scriptures were of equal value. Some
were more nearly right than others, and "if the Calvinist be right,
he cannot consider the Socinian, as a Christian at all; but must

contemplate and represent him, when he has occasion to speak on the

subject, as an enemy of the cross of Christ." But Reed himself did

 

not practise what he preached:

Dr. R. while he pleads for universal mildness and charity, is
frequently severe on the rigid and 'excluding' advocates of
orthodoxy. But why so? If 555,'without exception, who profess

to believe in the Christian religion, and whose moral character

is good, are to be regarded 'with equal satisfaction,‘ however
they may differ from each other in articles of faith, why not
extend to the highest toned Calvinist, the same indulgence which
is granted to the most lax heretic? It is one of the most curious
phenomena of modern liberality, that every thing can be borne

but strict unbending orthodoxy. . . .

 

With the increasing loss of support at Harvard College, the
orthodox saw that the only way they could continue to spread their

views and expect to be followed by generations to come was to

 

56Emerson, 5.5., IV (July, 1807), 396-97.

57%., III, (September, 1807), 175-78.

170
establish a school of their own. "What friend to the Church of man-
kind," Charles Coffin asked Pearson," does not wish to see the learning
of Harvard associated with the piety of Yale?"58 William Bentley
observed in his diary, "It must be mortifying to Morse, Pearson,
& men of their stamp, that they can rule at Cambridge no longer. A
few years more & the University must have become contemptible."59
So the orthodox set about to establish a school which would teach
and perpetuate their beliefs and in 1807 founded and the following
year opened the doors of Andover Theological Seminary. Mbrse, in
a letter to an orthodox friend, described the idea of the school as
having "originated in the spring of 1806 at the time Dr. Pearson
resigned his professorship at Cambridge."60 Although Bentley
attributed the whole scheme to the "devout resentment in the late
Dr. Pearson, because he was not promoted to the Chair of Cambridge,"61
Morse explained that Pearson had planned to retire to a farm but that
his friends persuaded him.to help them establish Andover and thus
enable them to continue to take advantage of his talents. Mbrse

further said that "the foundation of the Institution" was to be "on

so broad a scale, as to embrace, . . . all shades of Calvinists" in

 

hOpes of bringing "all together on some middle ground." He told his

 

58Letter from Charles Coffin to Eliphalet Pearson, Rogersville,
February 24, 1805, Edwards Albert Park Collection (January-March, 1805),
Yale University Library. (Hereafter cited as Park Coll.)

59Bentley, Diary, March 3l, 1805; III; l"9-

60Letter from Jedidiah Morse to Joseph Lathrop, November 18,
1807 (COpy), Morse Family Papers.

61Bentley, Diary, September 25, 1808, III, 386.

171
friend to rest assured that the seminary would not be purely Hopkinsian,
despite the election of woods, "a reputed Hopkinsian," as a professor.
62

In fact, Morse said, w0ods was not a HOpkinsian.

The orthodox published The Constitution and Associate Statutes

 

of the Theological Seminary in Andover; with a Sketch of its Rise and
Progress in 1808 and in November of that year Samuel Thacher published
a review of it in the Anthology. When Thacher read his review to the
Society, it passed "a vote of profound secrecy" and accepted the

piece "with acclamation."63 Like the debate over the Hollis Chair

of Divinity, this controversy concerned academic freedom as well as
nonsectarianism. Thacher began disarmingly, praising the establishment
of Andover as the most important event in the ecclesiastical history
of America. "Our Divines have been hitherto almost exclusively

directed to what may be called the Metaphysicks of theology." In this

 

area they had been unsurpassed in acuteness and penetration. Edwards
"first gave a plausible, or even intelligible statement of the

distinguishing doctrines of Calvinism,"

and Hopkins and his followers
had shown a "subtlety of disquisition, which would not have disgraced
the most eminent of the followers of Aquinas." Secondly, America had

been graced with exponents of the "essential and practical tenets of

our religion." But in "critical and exegetical" theology, "the

 

investigation of the origin and state of the sacred text," which

showed its meaning by casting on it all the lights of Christian,

 

62Letter from Jedidiah Morse to Joseph Lathrop, November 18,
1807 (Copy), Morse Family Papers.

63Howe, 162.

172
Jewish, and pagan antiquities, America had been, "to speak very
moderately, a century behind the theologians of Europe." Thacher
said the establishment of Andover should lessen America's ignorance
in this area.

The question that Thacher raised was whether the principles
on which Andover was established were such as "to impair or destroy
the good, which such an institution is calculated to effect."
Thacher believed that a Christian should "nourish a perpetual spirit
of investigation and activity on the subject of religion." No one
should think his beliefs infallible. Thus, if the only tendency of
Andover were "to promote learning and investigation, under the
influence of piety," the Anthology would help lay the first corner-
stone. But, Thacher proceeded, the creed on which Andover was based
was purely Hopkinsian. Andover was founded through a "coalition

between two distinct bodies of men": the original founders of

 

' who later offered a

Phillips Academy and the "new Associates,‘
sizeable donation to the Academy. Phillips Academy was founded with
the help of Lieutenant Governor Phillips, his son, and Samuel Abbot
to assist indigent students of divinity. Its constitution showed

that it was the intention of the founders that the principles of

the institution should be "strictly Calvinistick, as they are

 

contained in the ‘Assembly's Shorter Catechism.'" But the donation

of the new associates-~William Bartlet, Moses Brown, and John Norris—-
was to support "purely Hopkinsian" principles. Thacher attempted to
prove that almost every peculiar principle of the Hopkinsians could

be discerned in the Andover creed. He noted that those parts of

the creed that touched on differences between the Calvinists and

173

H0pkinsians were clothed in "loose and indeterminate expressions,"
whereas the parts referring to differences between these two sects and
other Christian sects were precise and to the point. The two agreed on
the Trinity, divine decrees, particular and unconditional election and
reprobation, total depravity, special influences of spirit, justifi-
cation by faith alone, and perseverance of the saints; but they differed
on imputation and the consequences they drew from these principles.

The Hopkinsians believed that men became sinners by way of Adam, but
that they were accountable only for their personal sins. Likewise,
believers were justified in Christ's righteousness, but this right-
eousness was not transferred to them. Thacher pointed out that this
one article in which the Calvinists differed from the Hopkinsians was
omitted from the Andover Creed. Moreover, every important addition of
H0pkinsianism to Calvinism was either expressed or strongly implied in
the creed. The only two omissions of H0pkinsianism from the Andover
Creed were the Edwardean theory of benevolence and the belief that we
ought to be willing to be damned for the glory of God. Thus the
Calvinists had surrendered to the Hopkinsians, and future professors

of Andover were to be Hopkinsian.

But it was not simply the H0pkinsianism of Andover that
Thacher objected to. He objected to the imposition of any creed
whatsoever on a professor. His first main objection was that
creeds were superfluous to and corruptions of the Bible. They were
"founded on the assumption, that the essential doctrines of

Christianity are not distinctly and explicitly expressed in the

 

 

language of the volume which contains them." Creed-makers apparently
thought they could make the Bible clearer. Yet they said they based

their creeds on clear statements in the Bible; so if "the doctrines

171+
of a creed are clearly stated in scripture, why not use the language
of scripture?" If the creeds were written to clarify only the
ambiguous passages, one had to realize that even the most honest of
men could misinterpret these passages. Creed-makers argued that
their works were merely "short and convenient compends" of the
doctrines set forth in the Gospel. But if the doctrines were clearly

stated in the Bible, then there could be "no comparison between the

 

 

evil 2: using g few more words 15 order pg_retain the very language

9f_inspiration, and the danger of errour in substituting our own

 

unauthorized diction." Finally, creed-makers declared that they

 

wished to show "in what sense' a Christian society understood the

 

Scriptures. But if the doctrines were clearly revealed in the
Scriptures, there was only one true sense, so the creeds were useless.

Thacher's position was that "the words Qf_scripture 52 clearly convey

 

II

the sense 9f_every essential doctrine g£_Christianipy. Therefore,

 

 

we did not need creeds. For creed-makers "to maintain that the
scriptures are ambiguous on articles essential to salvation" was
treachery to'protestantism, nonconformity, and even ChristianityJ' If
creed-makers could prove otherwise, we might as well have recourse
not to them but to Rome's "infallible judge."

In Thacher's eyes, not only were creeds useless and ill-founded;

they had malevolent effects. They operated "as a temptation and

 

premium.pg_dishonesty,' opening the way to "a false profession of

 

faith in any human articles of belief." If a man candidly did not
accept a creed, the "creeders" would banish him; but if he falsely
professed belief, they would give him "privileges, immunities or

advantages." Moreover, creeds aimed "at what, from the very nature

175
of the human mind, is impossible." Verbal conformity was possible,
but since no two persons could hold to any one verbal agreement in
the same way, partly because of the imperfection of language and
partly because men were constructed differently, complete real
conformity was impossible. But Thacher felt that even if conformity
were possible it would be undesirable. Division of sentiment was

designed, was "intended as a part of our moral discipline,"

and, if
this were to be done away with, "a most important part of the evidence
of Christianity would be withdrawn." Thacher continued to denounce

creeds by showing that they were all "founded on the assumption of

a right, which it is the very essence 2: Protestantism 59 deny pg

 

 

 

any human being": the admission that "any human power whatever
possesses the right of settling the terms of salvation." If any
sect had such a power, none had greater claims to it than the Catholic
Church. But we forsook this belief during the Reformation. If we
denied anyone to impose a creed on us, but nonetheless reserved the
right to adopt one for ourselves, the difference would not be in
kind but only in degree of wrong. Any church adopting a creed would
be like the Catholic Church, for it would demand conformity. Andover
might as well demand that its students, as well as its professors,
profess H0pkinsianism. Finally, Thacher suggested that the use of
a creed "must be deadly to the best feelings of the minds of the
professors."
They have a code of propositions put into their hands in which all
their inquiries must terminate, under the penalty of the loss of
their station and its advantages.

Thacher wanted to see the object of the institution "to make learned

theologians, whatever might be the Opinions of those who founded it."

176

Our sole objection to this establishment is, that it is founded
on such principles as we think must defeat the ends, which those,
who have so liberally endowed it, designed to effect.

Thacher said we could not expect

that men of learning and talents will be prevailed on to accept
professorships, which must fetter forever the freedom of their
minds. It is a yoke too galling to be endured by any man, who
has felt the difficulty of investigating truth, a yoke, which
neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. In this age of
religious light and liberty, to see an institution rising among
us, which would have disgraced the bigotry of the dark ages;--
but we repress our feelings. We most devoutly pray, that the
being, who brings good out of evil, will make this institution
an instrument to effect his purposes of benevolence and wisdom,
and disappoint the forebodiggs, which we confess, at present
almost overwhelm our hopes.

 

6"Thacher, Mfié" V (November, 1808), 602-6lh.
It should be noted, in regard to both this discussion and that on the
Hollis Divinity Chair controversy, that Harvard applied a religious
test to all its professors, though of a more liberal kind. John
Quincy Adams rejected an appointment to the Boylston professorship
of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard in 1805 partly because of this
test. He wrote to Samuel Dexter:
There is another part of the statutes which I feel myself under
an obligation to request may be revised. It is that part of
the third article which imposes upon the professor a religious
test, to be applied publicly on the day of his inauguration. The
Constitution of the Commonwealth has made a general declaration
of belief in the Christian religion sufficient for admission to
the highest offices of the State, and in the opinion of many
wise, virtuous and pious citizens even that requisition is too
much. With the most perfect deference and respect for the
legislature of the college, I must question their authority to
require my subscription to a creed not recognized by the Consti-
tution of laws of the State; nor do I perceive in a professor-
ship of rhetoric and oratory anything which peculiarly calls
for so minute a scrutiny into the details of the professor's
religious opinions as is here proposed. I beg to be understood
that this objection has reference more to the interest of the
institution itself, than personally to me. It is to the test
itself, and not to the doctrines which it prescribes. These I
wish to leave undisturbed by any controversy; reserving my
confession of faith for my Maker, and desirous of seeing my
fellow creatures enjoy the same indulgence.
See Letter from J. Q. Adams to Samuel Dexter, August 6, 1805, quoted
in Ford, III, 123.

177

In December James Savage commented in the Anthology on the
historical sketch of Andover by Eliphalet Pearson, who was made the
first Professor of Sacred Literature at Andover, and the sermon by
Timothy Dwight on Pearson's ordination at Andover. He also mentioned
the right hand of fellowship offered by Jedidiah Morse.6S But further
objections would have been superfluous to Thacher’s passionate plea.

In January 1809 the Panoplist published the Andover consti-
tution.66 Then in February it offered a reply to the "Editors of a
cotemporary EEEQ fiknunal" who "abjure, and hold in contempt, the
doctrines of Calvinism." The reviewer insisted that H0pkinsianism
and Calvinism were identical and tried to prove that the Andover
Creed was therefore strictly Calvinistic.67 Privately, too, the
supporters of the Panoplist were saying, as Leonard WOOds wrote to

68

MOrse, "The good folks in Boston have mistaken views" on Andover.

They all agreed, nonetheless, that "it is an interesting time,"69

despite the slanders of the enemy, and that "an important controversy

1:70

is to be engaged in with the Boston Clergy. "Bostonians," as

Timothy Dwight later remarked in a letter to Morse, "are more prone

 

6SSavage, M,5., V (December, 1808), 68h-86.
66

67

292-; LN-S- (January, 1809), 371-75.
E§5., I,N.S. (February, 1809), #13-24.

68
Letter from Leonard WOods to Jedidiah Morse, Andover,
January 2A, 1809 (Copy), Morse Family Papers.

69Letter from Jedidiah MOrse to Timothy Dwight, Charlestown,
December 15, 1808, Morse Family Papers.

70Letter from Jeremiah Evarts to Jedidiah Morse, New Haven:
January 16, 1809, Morse Family Papers.

178

than the inhabitants of some other cities, to the intercourse of the
tongue, about what is passing."71

Thacher defended his review in March. According to its
minutes, "the Society accepted it with delight."72 In the Panoplist
the Anthology editors had found a "display of disingenuousness so
unchristian" and principles so inconsistent with their beliefs as
Protestants and nonconformists that they felt it their duty to show
their disapproval. First, the Panoplist had noted an incongruity
between the Anthology's profession of friendliness to the establishment
of Andover by those who differed with it in opinion and its expressions
of dislike of the principles on which Andover was founded. Thacher
replied that there really was no inconsistency and reiterated his
objection to the demand that professors take oaths, quoting Shakespeare:
"What need we other than / Honesty to honeayrengaged." Secondly,
the Panoplist had objected to the Anthology's contending that Edwards
was the first theologian to make Calvinism intelligible or plausible.
Thacher offered to revise the Anthology's point of view here, for
there were still some Calvinistic doctrines, he said, "which might
be made both more plausible and more intelligible." Next, the
Panoplist had charged that the Anthology was wrong in assuming a
difference between Calvinists and Hopkinsians and thereby asserting
that the associate founders had changed the Andover creed to suit
their Hopkinsianisml The PanOplist had insisted that the westminster

catechism and the Andover Creed, as it now stood, were the same.

 

7lLetter from Timothy Dwight to Jedidiah Morse, New Haven,
March 17, 1809, Morse Family Papers.

72Howe, 181.

179

Thacher admitted that if they were the same, the Anthology was wrong.
But they were.nfi5 he said, and he proceeded to enumerate again the
articles of H0pkinsianism added to the Andover constitution. Finally,
Thacher asserted that the Panoplist's attack on the Anthology had
been poorly reasoned and unfair, some of its remarks not even having
related to the main point. He therefore felt the need to condemn
the Panoplist's "sacrificing the first principles of protestantism
to the gratification of the unholy ambition of aspiring heresiarchs."
On one point the Panoplist and the Anthology agreed: they both
thought it would be foolish to demand a confession of faith from the
students. Thacher hoped the Panoplist would soon see the foolishness
of asking the same from professors.73

The Panoplist quickly retorted, It charged that the Anthology
reviewer said the editors were not biased but then showed they were
by condemning the Andover Creed. The Panoplist then defended creeds
in general, pointing out that even the Anthology professed a creed.
"It is not without some surprise, we find that these Gentlemen, who
reject all creeds, bring forward a creed themselves. After all their
objections against tests, they have established a test." The creed
of the Anthology was "‘that God has made a revelation from heaven,

and that the scriptures contain it.‘"

MOreover, the Panoplist
reviewer asked his readers to note that the Anthology's creed was
drawn up in unscriptural language, when the editors might have

retained "‘the very language of inspiration!" which they so much

valued. Further3their creed was subject to as much dishonesty as

 

73Thacher, Mmé" VI (March, 1809), 19h-205.

180

any other creed. The reviewer proceeded to answer point by point all
the objectionscf’the Anthology to creeds.7" The Anthologists let
the matter rest with this reply.75 Perhaps they had seen some truth
in these statements.

In October 1808 Emerson presented the Society with an unpub-
lished letter written in 1753 by "Dr. Franklin to a clergyman in
New Jersey." A debate ensued on whether or not to publish the letter.
That the Society finally voted not to admit it to the Anthology shows
that the Anthology's liberalism did not extend beyond Christianity
and that the Anthology did not wish to enter any controversies that
might put it in a bad light. "The letter contained nothing remarkable,
except some sneers at religion under cover of praise of good works,
and seemed fully to shew the writer's hostility to the Christian
religion, and even afforded presumption of Atheism against him. To

admit it would draw much censure on us and add very little to the

 

7"§_a_r_1., I, N.S. (March, 1809), u7l-81.

75Sprinkled throughout the Anthology after the founding of
Andover, however, one finds statements of disapproval of the new
institution. One of these is an amusing account of an "English
Traveller's" visit to Andover, written by William Tudor: "At a
town, called Andover, I was much shocked, on finding that there
were two persons insane in the town where I stopped, and I was told,
there were as many in several other houses. What a dreadful calamity,
that the loss of reason should be so common." The "editor" adds that
"The writer was not aware, that persons, in this unfortunate situation,
are frequently sent to Andover." (See Tudor, M,5,, V (December, 1808),
659-61.) There is also among Buckminster's manuscripts in the Boston
Athenaeum an account of Andover containing ideas similar to those
expressed by Thacher. The two men were in such close contact,
especially where literary and theological matters were concerned,
that very likely they influenced each other in some of their
writings.

181
"76

amusement of any reader. Thus did the Anthology pass up a
potentially new debate with the Panoplist. Again, when the Panoplist

published scathing reviews of, first, Buckminster's Hymns . . . For

 

the use of the church in Brattle Street and, later, Emerson's

 

comparable collection for the First Church--both of which "attempt
to lower . . . the character and merits of the Redeemer"--the
Anthology made little attempt to strike up a new controversy, though
the Panoplist did receive and publish a letter "from Brattle Street"
(by Joseph Buckminster) objecting to its review and defending its
new hymnal.77
Not until the dedication of Park-street Church in Boston in

1810 did the Anthology again take a strong stand against orthodoxy.
By the time Park-street Church was formed, Boston churches were
almost all of the liberal stamp. Only Old South Church had kept
orthodoxy alive, but it too was by then becoming liberal. As one
member of the orthodox later recalled, it was at Park-street

in Boston, that Congregationalists who held the faith and

cherished the spirit of the Pilgrim.Fathers, could unite their

prayers and efforts for mutual edification and for the diffusion

of truth, in the confidence of meeting such ggly as were one

With themselves in princ1ple and in feeling.
The Anthology reviewed the sermon preached by the Bartlett Professor

of Pulpit Eloquence at Andover, Edward Griffin, at the dedication

ceremonies of the new church. Buckminster wrote the review, paying

 

76Howe, 158.

772§5., I, N.S. (September, 1808), 170-77; (November, 1808),
275-82; (January, 1809), 363-68.

78E. C. Tracy, Memoir of the Life of Jeremiah Evarts, Egg.
(Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1835), p. 60.

 

182
special attention to Griffin's statements on Trinitarianism and
Calvinism. As usual, his argument was based upon the necessity of
a scholarly, individual reading of the Scriptures. According to
Buckminster‘s reading of the sermon, Griffin had come up with not

I

just the usual trinity, but a "quaternity,' resulting from

a strange disposition to convert the divine appearances mentioned
in the scriptures, or modes of communication with mankind, into
distinct persons or intelligent agents. By the same method of
interpretation, not only the word and spirit, but the breath,
the mouth, the presence, the glory, the Shechinah, the oracle
of God, may all assume a distinct personality, and be regarded
as so many divine persons.
Theologians, Buckminster asserted, simply had to begin paying more
attention to the problems of language, and "the common people" begin
reading their bibles with more understanding.79

In May 1810 Eliphalet Porter preached a sermon entitled The

Simplicity that is in Christ and the danger of its being corrupted

 

before the annual convention of the Congregational ministers in
Massachusetts. The Panoplist took the opportunity of reviewing the

sermon to attack with vigor the Christian Mbnitor, the Anthology,

 

Buckminster's edition of the New Testament, and Emerson's hymns

all together. It charged that all of these works were Socinian and
that Socinianism led to infidelity. New England was being flooded
with Socinian publications, the year of 1810 having "produced more
Unitarian publications, in the United States, than the whole antecedent
period, from the first settlement of this country." "With few excep-
tions," the reviewer observed, "they have all proceeded from the

heart of New England." The reviewer objected to this mode of

proselytizing as being not an open attack upon orthodoxy, but one in

 

79Buckminster, M55., VIII (February, 1810), 128-36.

183

which the "dagger is concealed." Further, he observed that American
Unitarianism had by now reduced all doctrines to "mere morality," a
path that could lead only to infidelity. The review ran through July
and August.80

In October the Anthology replied, Samuel Thacher writing the
review. He began by asking what was essential to Christian faith
and answered by referring to Locke, than whom Thacher thought there

could be no better authority because of his intelligence, unbiased

opinion, integrity of life, and pureness of heart. In The Reasonable-

 

ness of Christianity Locke had said that the only belief demanded of

 

Christians was that they believe Jesus is the Messiah, man being
justified through this faith. The Reformation, Thacher said,
returned to the individual the privilege of basing his faith in

Jesus on the Bible, but now the orthodox would have men appeal again
to man-made creeds. Thacher praised Porter for preaching that we
revert once more to the Bible for our faith, and defended him against
the attacks of the August Panoplist that had charged him with trying
"to root out the doctrines of the Reformation" and accused him of
"looseness of sentiment." Thacher then tried to dispel the Panoplist
charges of infidelity by explaining what faith in Jesus as the
Messiah meant: "a belief in the divine mission of the Saviour;
confidence in him as a heavenly Guide, Prince, and Deliverer, the
authoritative Interpreter of the will of God; belief, in fine, that
he deserves similar honour from us, in all his relations to us as a
Divine teacher, to that which we give to the Father himself, who

sent him." No other truths were implied in this fundamental faith,

 

80355., III, N.S. (July, 1810), 76-86; (August, 1810), 123-35.

185
except the practical ones of repentance and good works, without which
this faith would be "only false, hollow and dead profession." Thacher's
statement of belief was skilful, for at the same time that he denied
infidelity he denied Calvinism and emphasized the unitarian view of
Christ as a teacher especially endowed with Divine truth and the
unorthodox beliefs in repentance and good works as the means to
salvation. He argued that the meaning of the word "Christ" was
simply "anointed." Anyone among the Jews who was appointed by God
to public office--prophets, kings, priests--was anointed with oil.
He tried further to substantiate his unitarian doctrine by arguing
against the orthodox conception of the mystery in Christianity.
The Panoplist had insisted that Christianity involved "a great
mystery": God was made manifest in the flesh through Christ. But
Thacher maintained that "mystery" meant only "something concealed

from the vulgar" or "something formerly hidden and unknown, but now

 

made manifest." There was no Scriptural evidence that Christ was

 

the manifestation of God.

Thacher proceeded to charge the PanOplist with dogmatism.
Once a man had arrived at a faith in Christ as the Messiah, as
Thacher had described, he then had to "search for ‘the whole counsel
of God.'" Rather than blindly accept theological systems, he had to
examine doctrines for himself to see that they were Scriptural.
Above all, he could not say that a doctrine fundamental to him must
be so to another man: it was "'to his own Master,’ and not to 55g,
that every man 'standeth or falleth.‘" Thacher realized that every
doctrine of Christianity could not be understood before one could

call himself a Christian, but he also believed that no one man or

185

sect could be trusted to decide which of the doctrines were to be
selected for a Christian theology. Such a judge had to be incapable
of error, lest he "mistake a point on which the salvation of the whole
human race is suspended." Surely there was no one Protestant sect
capable of selecting all the doctrines for a Christian theology. By
abandoning the Bible as the authority for Christian doctrine and
substituting man-made creeds, Protestants had fallen into so much
disagreement that man was forced to find Divine truth in Catholicism
or in no sect at all. Thacher wondered how the Panoplist could insist
on the truth of Calvinistic doctrine and deny Porter's assertion that
"Christians of the first eminence as to talents and character have
wholly disagreed" on Christian doctrine. Here Thacher skilfully
aligned the liberals with the Puritan fathers, who usually were
claimed for support by the orthodox, causing the liberals to appear
as the true inheritors of Puritan idealism.

we do not believe that there were men in America, who would thus

explicitly arrogate to their own sect the exclusive possession

of truth and integrity, and be willing at one blow to strike off

from the list of fellow-Christians, such men as Grotius, and

Newton, and Locke, and Clarke, and Hoadley, and Butler, and

Hartley, and Lardner. we know not what to think of the state

of men‘s minds, who can make such a desperate assertion. Are

they ignorant that every defender of Christianity in modern

times, of whatever sect, has placed these names on his list of

‘Christians of the first eminence! and esteemed them among the

brightest of the train? And do they expect to make the world

believe that the heart of Newton

childlike sage,
Sagacious reader of the works of God
And in his word sagacious,

was given over to the dominion of Satan: while that of the stern

and vindicative Calvin was the chosen residence of the Spirit of

God?
Thus did Thacher depict God, the Puritan fathers, Locke, Newton,
unitarians, and the Anthology as standing unified against Satan, Calvin,

the orthodox, and the Panoplist.

186

Thacher concluded his review with an explanation of why the
Anthology defended Porter and a reply to the Panoplist‘s charge of
infidelity. The Anthology defended Porter "because the Panoplist
has made us parties to the case, by joining us in their general
accusations against Dr. Porter." Against the Anthology it had
charged "‘unitarianism,‘ ‘misrepresentation,‘ ‘dishonesty,‘
resemblance ‘to the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees,‘ enmity
‘to every thing which constitutes the peculiar glory of our fore-
fathers,‘" and had hinted that the Anthology writers were like
"scoffing philosophers of Athens, in the time of Paul." Against
Porter it had charged Socinianism. In defense of Porter, Thacher
pointed out that he was not of that "class of the German Latitudi-
narians" and that the orthodox feared Porter simply because they saw
that his principles "must destroy to the foundation their whole
system of creed-making." In defense of the Anthology, Thacher
quoted Bishop Watson: "I have no regard for latitudinarian prin-
ciples, or any principles, but the principles of truth."81

The last major controversy between the Anthology and the
Panoplist began in February 1811 with Buckminster‘s review of his
own edition of John Jacob Griesbach‘s Greek New Testament. As has
been stated, it was Buckminster‘s belief that the right of private
judgment could be successfully exercised only if it was based upon
a scholarly reading of the Scriptures. No liberal Christian did
more than he to try to make the Scriptures available to the public
in their original form, purged of interpretations that had been

thrust upon them over the ages. Not only did he acquire an

 

81Thacher, M,5., IX (October, 1810), 266-80.

187

outstanding knowledge of the ancient languages which he used in
critical examinations of the texts, but he diligently tried to make
texts on these matters available to the public. At one point, for
instance, he drew up a plan for "subscribers sensible of the
importance of encourageing the spirit of religious inquiry &
scriptural knowledge, & of the importance of diffusing rational
& serious views of xtnty" to obtain rare or expensive "works of
theological learning."82 In 1808 Buckminster published a notice of
the forthcoming Griesbach edition in the Antholo , observing the
importance of the Scriptures‘ being read in their most nearly
correct state.83 Then in 1811 he published his review.

It has always struck us with astonishment that many of those who

may maintain the most rigid notions of inspiration, and exclaim

most vehemently against the glosses, evasions, and forced inter-

pretations of hereticks, should have discovered so little

solicitude to ascertain the true text even of the New Testament,

and have felt no more dread than they seem to of adding to the
word of God.

 

 

He examined in particular the controversial passage I Timothy iii:l6--
"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was
manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up

into glory"--and argued that it carried no more authority for Trini-
tarianism than the seventh commandment in a certain edition of the

King James Bible that read "Thou Shalt commit adultery."8"

 

82In Buckminster Papers.
8313uchminster, 3.5., V (January, 1808), 18-21.

8"Buckminster,‘M.:5., X (February, 1811), 107-11A.

188
John Bradford saw the Griesbach edition as an out-and-out
attack on the authenticity of the Scriptures themselves as revelation.
writing to MOrse, he said,
The Scriptures, as they present them, have no more efficacy than
the writing of Seneca over the morals of Epectetus. . . . of all
bigots they are the worst who are bigotted to liberality and
uncertainty. These people seem to act in religion as Jacobin‘s
do in politics. Set afloat all principles, suplant all bonds,
produce universal doubt . . . and religion is well nigh ruined.8
The Panoplist published its review of the edition of Griesbach in
April, referring to the Anthology review. "We know, indeed, that
efforts have been made to hold us up to the public, as the enemies
. . . of all improvements in Sacred Literature," it began, but the
charge was unfounded. The Pano list, on the contrary, agreed that
"truth can never be obscured by candid examination." However, the
Griesbach edition, it charged, was not "without error" and was
merely the scapegoat for those who wished to attack the Scriptures.86

The Anthology did not reply immediately, being busy defending

itself against the Christian‘s Magazine of September 1810, which

 

condemned the new edition for stripping Christianity of all doctrines
except the resurrection, terming the whole work a "Socinian blasphemy."
The Anthology offered two letters in defense of the edition. The
first said that the Anthology might retort "Calvinistick Persecution"
to the charge of "Socinian blasphemy."

Whether or not Socinus was a blasphemer is merely a matter of

opinion; but that Calvin was a persecutor, and pursued with
unrelenting cruelty the Antitrinitarian, Michael Servetus, to

 

85Letter from.JOhn Bradford to Jedidiah Mbrse, Albany, October
8, 1809, MOrse Family Papers.

86315., III, N.S. (April, 1811), 503-515.

189

the stake, is a recorded historical fact. That his intolerance
has not perished with him, we have a striking proof in the
paragraphs under discussion. . . .

 

The writer regretted that the Christian‘s Magazine did not Show the

 

Christian aspects of goodwill and peace. The second letter suggested
that the overbearing, censorious Trinitarians, for all their imper-
fections, might have some good in them. It was possible that they
had just gone astray, for many men lost sight of their own fallibility
and the example of Christ when they were engaged in controversy.
Reviling was a fashionable vice; and sometimes good men succumbed
to bad fashions. Although it was painful to be denounced as enemies
of Christ, it was better to suffer this pain than to do wrong; for
certainly the liberals should not condemn all Trinitarians for the
words and actions of certain individuals among them.87
For its May issue the Panoplist gathered the support of
several Biblical scholars and charged that the Anthology had
displayed extremely poor Biblical criticism, having tried to turn
just any Christian doctrine into a unitarian one.88 Buckminster
accepted this challenge to his abilities in the June issue, again
defending his edition of Griesbach. Furthermore, he placed the
Panoplist in an embarrassing position by showing that its reviewer
had rested his statements on the authority of the Christian
Observer and had probably not bothered to read the large critical
edition of Griesbach for himself. In a detailed comparison between

the two journals, Buckminster showed how the Panoplist had used the

 

875.5” X (April, 1811), 228-39.

882311.» III, N.S. (May, 1811), 538mg,

190

Christian Observer to its own advantage. Obviously, the Panoplist

 

was in no position to charge the Anthology with poor scholarship.89
The Panoplist, determined to have the last word, replied in August.
All it could do was reiterate its first charge, that Buckminster had
changed plainly Trinitarian passages into ambiguously Unitarian ones.9O
Buckminster did receive some compliments on his edition,
however, both at home and abroad. Thomas Belsham, in a letter to
Buckminster, said, "It does infinite credit to the American press,"
and suggested that "the present attachment of the Americans to
their errors & prejudices is a pleasing omen that when their eyes
are opened they will be equally firm & liberal & zealous in the cause
of Truth."91 To his diary, Buckminster, commenting upon the abuse
that had been heaped upon the edition, confided,
It is to be lamented that men should be found who are either so
grossly deluded, or so willing to delude others as to represent
any honest & fair attempt to interpret better & to translate
correctly the originals of our sacred books as an attempt upon
Christianity itself, & a treacherous hostility to all religion.
If the extravagance, & malignity of such alarms did not make
them ridiculous, we should be tempted to commiserate the fate
of those scholars who after spending their time & labour to
illustrate & recommend the sacred writings, & present in a
form most worthy . . . of the attention & confidence of xtns,
are repaid with such execrations. We never before knew so much
jealousy & clamour excited by any private work of this kind.
But it is no novelty.9

If, as John Bradford accused, the edition had undermined "the

authenticity of Revelation," Buckminster had not intended it to do so.

 

89Buckminster, M.5., X (June, 1811), H03-h21.
90Pan., IV, N.S. (August, 1811), 118-133.

9lLetter from.Thomas Belsham to Joseph Buckminster, Hackney,
May 9, 1810, Buckminster Papers.

92Buckminster, diary, n.d., Buckminster Papers.

191

Through the Anthology-Panoplist exchanges the position of

 

the liberal Christians of early nineteenth-century Boston was made

evident. Basic to all of their beliefs was a strong respect for

freedom of thought as a means to arrive at truth. This method

involved reliance upon reason, rather than upon enthusiasm or

established creeds, and reason was to be used in an understanding,

in fact a scholarly, reading of the Scriptures. The Anthology made

it clear that liberal Christians were completely opposed to Calvinism;

rather than any creed at all, they stressed nonsectarianism. As anti—

Calvinists, they showed a strong belief in the freedom of the will,

in salvation through man‘s own good works, and in the benevolence

of God. In short, they advocated a practical, though a reasonable,

kind of Christianity in which morality played a larger role than

dogma. These views, as well as those on church polity, are expressed

in the Anthology, moreover, in pieces outside the Panoplist exchanges.
For instance, the Anthology in an 1807 review of Letters

Concerning the Constitution and order of the Christian Ministry,by

 

Samuel Miller, stated its views on church polity. The reviewer,
Buckminster, argued that he saw no reason for reviving the controversy
between Episcopalians and Presbyterians over church government because
church laws simply didrrt:matter--especially in the America of the
nineteenth century.

No man can be so absurd as to maintain seriously, at the present
day, either the jus divinum, or the uninterrupted succession of
any hierarchy on earth. It is also very generally agreed,

except by a few of the most pertinacious of episcopal and presby-
terian ecclesiasticks, that neither our Saviour, nor his apostles,
have left on record any draught of church government, to be
implicitly adopted in subsequent ages, as an unalterable model.

. . . Especially is it absurd to insist upon the peculiar claims

 

192

of any one form of ministerial arrangement in a country like

ours, where the indispensable restraints of secular government

can hardly be tolerated, and much less the encroachments of

any order of clergy, whether they advance under the covering

of the tiara, the mitre, or the Scotch bonnet.
Although the America of John Winthrop may have been a theocracy in
which church polity was therefore important, the America of 1807
was a democracy in which the church should be separate from the
state. In his plea for religious liberty Buckminster denied that
a church government of any kind could be found in the Scriptures
and argued that the individual Christian should always be willing
to submit to any ecclesiastical arrangement that was expedient. He
thought that if church and state were separate, the pastors and
congregations would choose the least inconvenient form of church
polity, no matter what authority--if any--this polity was based on.
Buckminster‘s whole argument was, of course, one against strong
sectarianism, for each sect had to have its own polity in order
to function.93

One of the most recurrent protests in the Anthology was

against "speculative religion." In 1805 Buckminster reviewed Thomas

Fessenden‘s A Theoretick Explanation of the Science of Sanctity,

 

He classified the author with the rest of the New England "system-

makers,"

observing that

it has been the misfortune of theology on this side of the
Atlantick to have received little illustration from learning,
while it has suffered much embarrassment, and false refinement
from the ingenuity and subtilty of its professors.

America had not been fortunate enough to have philologers, critics,

 

93Buckminster, 5.5., IV (November, 1807), 605-609. Massachu-
setts legally separated church and state in 1833.

193
or scholars among its divines. Instead, it had "in the villages and
hamlets of New England scholastick theologues, hair splitting meta-
physicians, long-breathed controversialists, pamphleteers, and
publishers of single sermons, 'Thick as autumnal leaves which strew
the brooks/In Vallombrossa.’"9u
Still other pieces show the Anthology's distaste for

"enthusiasm." In a review of Abiel Holmes's American Annals, John

 

Eliot voiced regret over the separation of some thirty congregations
from the main church between lYHO and lYSO. Holmes had attributed
this separation to George Whitefield's preaching, before which there
had been little innovation in religious thinking, implying that this
innovation was a good thing. But Eliot asked "whether the result of
this spiritual Quixotism.was for the benefit of religion and morality?
It completely broke the order and discipline of New-England churches;
it shook the walls of our university; and filled the country with
enthusiasm and ill humour. Before this time, the people were governed
by pious principles; and their religion had less passion in it."95
Eliot sounded almost like an orthodox Calvinist.

Again and again the Anthology advocated a religion that was
more reasonable than enthusiastic and more practical than metaphys-
ical. It was not the separation from the orthodox church or the
disturbance in the halls of ivy that the Anthology usually objected
to in enthusiasm so much as the defiance of reason. A note in an

early issue of the Anthology pointed out that it was the ability

 

guBuckminster, M-éu II (August, 1805), l+18-28.

9SJohn Eliot, M,A,, IV (February, l807), 98-102.

194
to think that distinguished man from the brutes:
As every other animal is in its natural state, when in the
situation, which its instinct requires, so man, when his reason
is cultivateg, is then, and only then, in the state proper to
his nature.
But the Anthology writers also frequently insisted that reason had

to be combined with revelation if man was to know Divine truth

completely. In a review of Zollikofer's Seven Sermons on the

 

Reformation, Samuel Thacher claimed that the Bible was the most

 

simple of all books and that any man who brought "to the study of
the scriptures a mind upright and sincere, unclouded by enthusiasm,
unperverted by prepossession, and solicitous only to know the will
of God, as therein unfolded, will easily and infallibly arrive at
every essential truth." Thacher realistically observed, however,
that most men would not rely purely upon Scriptural reading, for
there was too strong a tendency in men to proselytize and they were
therefore confronted with numerous man-made systems of theology.
This was an era of theological warfare in New England, when
"fanaticism, ignorance, and credulity are marshalling their crowded
ranks at the summons." It was therefore up to those who had the
most rational view of Christianity, gathered from a critical reading
of the Scriptures, to diffuse their principles. Perhaps Thacher was
here justifying the Anthology‘s offering interpretations of the
Scriptures, when it--and Thacher himself--denied that any inter-
pretations at all were necessary.97 In emphasizing Scriptural

revelation as much as reason, the Anthology made clear its stand on

 

9634.5” I (February, 1801+), l60.

97Thacher, 14.5., VI (March, 1809), 182-85.

195
Deism. The writer of "A review of the Eighteenth Century" bewailed
that "spurious philosophy" that had arisen, "which brutalizes man,
degrades him from his rank, makes him a being of the moment,
existing without an intelligent cause, or moral end, the sport of
accidents, and the everlasting victim of death."98
From its beginning in 1803 the Anthology stressed practical

over doctrinal religion. A letter in an 1803 issue emphasized
devotion to God and our fellow human beings over our tendency
towards ambition and individual glory.

God is love, and in this character alone we reflect the glory

of our Creator. Benevolence carries us out of ourselves, and

diffuses our existence by giving us an interest in other

beings. . . . Nothing is benevolent, which does not proceed

from a sincere disposition to do good, from a single view to

the production of happiness.
Edwards himself had defined virtue as disinterested benevolence and
had depicted God as the epitomy of this virtue. But in suggesting
that man had the freewill--let alone the ability--to imitate God's
benevolence and that man's happiness rather than Divine justice
might be the goal of both God and man, the writer showed his strong
liberal tendency.99 Another writer asserted in an 1804 article that
being good was not easy, but that the more one worshiped God the more
he would be incensed to love and try to imitate Him.

I am unwilling to believe, that the felicity of these godlike

beings arises from accident merely, or circumstancei or natural

bias; I think it the fruit of meritorious exertion.

The idea of "active benevolence" and "universal philanthropy" became

even more frequent after 1805. In the "Remarken No. 25" of an 1807

 

98Moéu II (May, 1805), 223-28.

99Mflé" I (November, 1803); 6-

lOO
M.§_~) I (July, 1801*): 395'97-

196
issue, for instance, Arthur Walter distinguished between "speculative
and practical good," praising Socrates for insisting on "active,

personal beneficence."

Arguing that active benevolence had always
been superior to intellectual greatness, walter suggested that we
take Milton‘s advice and leave Godly matters hid: "Heav'n is too
high/To know what passes there." Abstract speculation was not bad,
but it simply did not have so great a place in civil, moral, and
social fields as active beneficence did. It had no utility.lOl
Finally, the Anthology at times simply attacked the five

points of Calvinism all together. This is true of Joseph Tuckerman's

review of William Cooper's The Doctrine of Predestination unto Life

 

Explained and Vindicated. The first pages of the book having

 

explained predestination and election, Tuckerman contended that
"those, who admit the use of reason in their inquiries for religious
truth, will be discouraged from entering an edifice, the vestibule

of which is enveloped in so thick darkness." If one used his God-
given reason, in other words, he could not possibly be a Calvinist.
Tuckerman went on to examine the doctrine of unconditional election.
If this doctrine was true, he asked, "why did our Saviour and his
apostles call on all_meg_to come to the knowledge of the truth and

be saved? Why do the ministers of this religion, in the name of
their Master, require Eil.§§2.to be holy, and assure salvation to all
who will comply with the conditions of its attainment . . . why urge
the wicked to penitence and reformation, or the good to perseverance?"
Paul had said, "'let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest

he fall!‘" If anyone wasxrm.certain of his election, Tuckerman

 

lOlWalter, M.§., IV (September, 1807)’ "89-92'

197

contended, he would be "very unwise to deny himself and to take up
the cross. The advocates of this interpretation of the doctrine
will deny that these are just conclusions from it; but their simple
denial proves no more than their simple affirmation."102

By 181l, when the Anthology published its last issue, there
remained little question about the position of the liberal Christians.
Only their stand on unitarianism needed clarifying. The orthodox
had persistently labeled them gnitarians, charging that they had
already become, in essence if not secretly in reality, a sect
separate from the orthodox Congregational Church. Just as persistently,
the liberals had denied such a union, though they simultaneously
denounced Trinitarianism. But towards the close of the Anthology
era, in lBll, the Anthology made its unitarian sentiments almost
brutally clear in a review of a sermon by the Anglican J. S. J.
Gardiner defending Trinitarianism. Gardiner had been president of
the Anthology Society from its formation until December of that year,
just six months before the club dissolved. He preached his Trinitarian
sermon on December 25, two weeks after he had resigned from the
Society. Although he had not attended the Society's meetings faith—
fully towards the end, he had over the years been one of its most
active members.

Gardiner had once declared that it would be improper for any
member of the Society to review another member's work. But by the
time he preached his sermon, he had resigned. Soon after, the club
elected Kirkland to replace Gardiner as president. Then Kirkland

was chosen to review Gardiner’s sermon.103 That Gardiner's successor,

 

102Tuckerman, u 5., II (March, 1805), 158-59.

lO3Howe, 250.

I98

and presumably his friend,lo"

should have given his sermon the lashing
that he did is strong evidence that the remaining active members of
the Society had been steadily growing towards a realization of the
charges of the orthodox: for some of the Anthologists unitarianism
by this time seems to have become their unifying belief. Kirkland,
however, was very likely the most extreme of the Anthologist
unitarians. In 1807 he had revealed a Socinian, rather than the

usual Arian, belief in the unity of God in a review he wrote for the

Anthology of the memoirs of Joseph Priestley. There he had stated

that Priestley was "at the head of the sect denominated Unitarians,

or Socinians,‘ 105

completely leaving the Arians out of his definition.

The text of Gardiner's sermon was Revelation xxii:l6: "I am
the root and offspring of David." According to Gardiner, this text
meant that Jesus was the cause and the effect of David. Hence, Jesus
was God. Kirkland, however, contended that the text had no reference
to the Divinity of Christ. 'Boot," he said, meant "a branch growing
out of a root." So root and offspring meant the same thing: the
passage could not mean simply that Christ was God. Kirkland scorned
men who subscribed to a belief not because it is founded in the

Scriptures or because it is good but because it is orthodox. Moreover,

he criticized Gardiner's choice of subject matter. Since the sermon

 

lO"Walter had written to Buckminster on Sept. 29, 1806, of the
Society's proposal to invite Kirkland to join: "Gardiner is opposed
I think to his coming in, though he has expressed no decisive opinion.‘
But Gardiner's opposition may have been only because of the fear of
Kirkland's being only "a drone in the hive." Buckminster Papers.

I

lOSKirkland, up“, IV (May, 1807), 260-65; (June, 1807),
330-35; (July, 1807), 389-95; (September, 1807), 506-511.

199
was delivered at Christmas, it might better have dealt with peace on
earth and good will to men. Gardiner might have preached on the
benefits of Christianity, expanding the heart in Christian fellowship,
instead of the "metaphysicks" of sects. Finally, Kirkland charged
Gardiner With "too liberal a use of some approbrious epithets in this
sermon. We do not think men ought to be made to contemn and dislike
each other on account of differences on this subject." But Kirkland
made it known that if Gardiner had parted company with fellow club
members because of their differing views on the doctrine of the Trinity,
his opponents were not going to restrain their own views for the sake
of past friendship. Gardiner did not attempt to reply to Kirkland
through the Anthology, but on the next Trinity Sunday he preached a

sermon entitled A Preservative Against Unitarians, in which he tried

 

"to show that the greatest writers of the English nation both in

prose and poetry, have borne testimony to their faith in this sacred
mystery" and that Priestley, Kirkland's hero, had "failed to defend
his Socinianism."106

After the Anthology ceased publication, Andrews Norton, with

the aid of some other past Anthologists, began the General Repository

 

and Review as a kind of continuation of the Anthology. In particular,
Norton seemed to be intent on the liberals' retaining a means of
making their views public, for the leading article of the first issue
was "A Defence of liberal Christianity," written by Norton. The essay
was a summary of the liberal position as it had developed over the
years of the Anthology and a defence against the various charges that

the orthodox had brought against it. Probably deliberately, Norton

 

lQ6Gardiner, A Preservative Against Unitarianism (Boston:

Munroe & Francis, l8ll}.

 

200
pretty much ignored the whole unitarian problem, concentrating instead
on such aspects of liberal Christianity as its emphasis on morality
and the necessity of Biblical scholarship.107 But, if one compares

this "Defence" to the Constitution of the First Society of Unitar-

 

ian Christians, in the City of Philadelphia, which was adopted in

 

1807 and had been in the hands of at least one Anthology member, one
might conclude that, if not in name at least in belief, the liberal
Christians by l812 were ynitarians. When the creed asks are "reason,
understanding, and moral discernment . . . , which we are apt to
think of such importance on other occasions, of no use in matters

of religion?" or when it talks about such things as "the obligation

. . . to inquire, to investigate,‘ it seems to one familiar primarily

lO8 The same

with Anthology writings that it might be quoting them.
is true of the lecture delivered upon the occasion of the Society's

establishment entitled The Right, Duty and Importance, of Free

 

Inquiry in Matters of Religion.109 Among the yhitarians, even, the

 

doctrine of unitarianism was only one of several beliefs. Since the
Unitarian creed fitted so well, it was probably inevitable that the
liberal Christians of Boston would eventually accept it.

But Norton‘s description of liberal Christianity included

one point that the orthodox had been using to prove the actual

 

107Norton, "A.Defence of Liberal Christianity," General
Repository and Review, I (January, l8l2), l-25.

108Constitution of the First Society of Unitarian Christians
in the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Bartram & Reynolds, l8077}

 

 

 

109The Right, Duty and Importance, of Free Inquiry in Matters
of Religion4(Philadelphia: Bartram & Reynolds, 1807).

 

 

20l
sectarianism and illiberality of the liberals and that was to a great
extent to determine the later disunity among Unitarians. He began
his essay with this definition of liberal Christians:
Those are to be considered as liberal Christians, who believe
that Christianity, in respect to its main design, is a revelation
from God; a revelation of religious truths beyond all comparison
more important and interesting, than what unenlightened reason
can with any approach to certainty discover; a revelation of the
being and moral government of God, of the immortality of man, of
the purpose of the present life, of the character here to be
formed, and of the happiness and misery of a future state as
depending on our present conduct.
This is not unlike the Panoplist‘s observation on the liberals'
actually having a creed themselves when they disclaimed and denounced
all creeds as antithetic to the spirit of inquiry: the liberals'
creed, the Panoplist had said, was "'that God has made a revelation
from heaven, & that the scriptures contain it.'"111 This one basic
doctrine, probably more than any other, had kept the liberals within
the Congregational fold; it was the one thing, besides the weight of
time together, that they had in common. Likewise, however, it was
the one aspect of liberal Christianity that sometimes bothered those
liberals who must have seen some truth in the orthodox charge of
illiberality.
In 1806 John Codman observed in a letter to Jedidiah Morse:
In every period of the christian church, the first step towards
licentiousness & irreligion has been the denial of some one of
those peculiar doctrines of revelation, which cannot be discovered

by the light of nature. As soon as these great & important
barriers to human pride & wickedness are removed, every Species

 

llONorton, "Defence," 1.

111See Pan., I, N.S. (March, 1809), #71-81.

202

of scepticism is introduced & mankind are left to believe whatever

they please & are no longer confined to that faith which our

blessed Saviour has made essential to salvation.
First, the divinity of Christ is attacked, Codman went on.

As soon as the corner stone of our holy religion is removed,

the whole beautiful Fabric falls at once. To [gig] intimately

are all the doctrines of Christ connected that they must stand

or fall together.112
Joseph Buckminster, the elder, attributed the Arian, Socinian,and
Pelagian heresies to "the pride of human reason."113 It was true
that reason had led the liberal Christians to question doctrines
that they could not prove "by the light of nature." Mbreover, young
Joseph Buckminster, one of the strongest advocates of reason and
private judgment admitted in his diary that the doctrine of the Trinity,
which relied entirely upon Scriptural evidence, once questioned by a
reasonable reading of the Scriptures, could lead to still further
doubts about Scriptural revelation.

The subject is a difficult one, & the diversity of opinion as

to the unity of Jesus renders the proof of the xtn revelation

from prophecy less forcible & advantageous, & must lead to

important conclusions respecting the inspiration of the apost.
& evangelists, & even the infallibility of our Saviour himself.

11h
One finds among the writings of the liberals the idea that
there are two kinds of revelation, an idea held by the orthodox as

well. A sermon by Buckminster observes,

All that we know of God [and] of his will we discover either from
his works or from his word; & these two sources of our religious

 

112letter from John Codman to Jedidiah Morse, Edinburgh, March
5, 1806, Morse Family Papers.

113letter from Joseph Buckminster to Samuel Abbott, Portsmouth,
September 26, 1807, Park Coll. (April-September, 1807).

ll"Buckminster, diary, February 13, 1805, Buckminster Papers.

203

knowledge have given rise to the familiar distinction of natural
and revealed religion.

But Buckminster went on to explain that, although the two were not
contradictory or even essentially different from each other since
they had one author, neither were they quite the same, "for one may
make known what could not have been ascertained by the other alone,
or may communicate truths w[hi]ch by the other would not have been so
soon or so clearly, or so positively discovered." Buckminster
denounced those who believed that
all that it is necessary for men to know believe or practice, is
clearly revealed to every man by the dictates of his own breast,
& even the most illiterate & uninformed cannot mistake what they
choose to call the law of nature. It is astonishing that any
man look out upon the world or have lived in it a day & believe
such a representation. If this were ture, what need is there
of any kind of instruction, or of education; why are not men
every where left from their infancy to the simple dictates of
nature. To suppose that men have such an inevitable & instinc-
tive knowledge of religion or morals as to need instruction
neither from God nor man, is too wild even for refutation.ll
If one ceased to believe in revelation from the Scriptures, Buckminster
believed, one slid into Deism; and from there it was only a short step
to Atheism.116
In the Anthology this view of the necessity of Scriptural
revelation was most carefully put forth by Joseph Tuckerman in his
series of essays called "The Theologist." Here he discussed the
necessity and advantages of revelation, the probability that God had

"actually made some external revelation to mankind," and the coinci-

dences between natural and revealed religion. In the last essay

 

115Buckminster, "Natural and Revealed Religion," February,
1811, Buckminster Papers.

ll6Buckminster, "Sources of Infidelity," in Sermons by the
Late Rev. J. S. Buckminster with a Memoir of His Life and Character
(Boston: John Eliot, 1815), p. 147.

 

204

Tuckerman defined natural religion as "that knowledge of God, of the
duties of man, and of a future state, which reason may attain by its
own researches." But reason, he argued, had limitations: "the mind
can only discern so much." It was therefore not surprising that the
sun, rivers, and so on had been worshiped, the mind not perceiving

further than these powers. All these--the stone or wooden idol, the
ox, the sacred fire, the statue of Jupiter--were only "the symbol or

H H

representation of a being whom [man] fears or loves, emblems of an

incomprehensible intelligence, and only mediums of worship."

Through
revelation (the Scriptures) man might learn just what these were
emblems of. "Reason dictates the duty of homage to some superiour
power. By revelation we are instructed that this power is God."117
A sermon by Smauel Thacher, written in 1811, likewise treated
the topic of revelation, distinguishing between the works and the
word of God. But his emphasis was on the works, nature, his text
being Genesis viii:22: "While ye earth remaineth, seedtime and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
shall not cease." Thacher began his sermon with "the study of nature
is ye study of God," and continued,
In ye volume of revelation are unfolded those important truths
w[hi]ch unassisted reason could only imperfectly discover, ye
design & will of God & ye duties & destination of man. But ye
bright display of these sublime truths is not intended to
supersede all other inquiry, to close our eyes to ye instructions
of nature, nor to render us deaf to ye discourse, wfhiJCh is
uttered to us by a thousand voices from every part of ye creation
on ye wisdom & goodness, ye greatness & power of ye Almighty
Author of ye universe.

Thus a truly "devout mind" was "frequently employed in studying God

in his works."

 

117Tuckerman, "The Theologist," M,A., I (October, lBOh), 537-39;
(December, 180h), 627-31; II (February, 1805), 65-70; (April, 1805),
I7h-77.

205

To a man of this habitual temper nothing in nature is uninter-

esting, because there is nothing in nature, w[hi]ch does not

discourse to him of God. He finds sources of instruction in

ye most minute & humble as well as in ye most grand & magnif-

icent of ye works of creations, in ye leaf of ye flower . . .

as well as in ye vast expanse of ye heavens or ye mighty

movements of ye illuminancies w[hi]ch adorn it . . . every thing

around ye man of piety ministers food to his devotion. He finds

Tongues in trees; books in ye running brooks
Sermons in stones & good in every thing.ll

Thacher said nothing in this sermon that had not been said before by
both orthodox and liberal Congregationalists. But, at the same time,
one can see here an appreciation of nature--of the most minute
aSpects of it as well as of the grandest-~such as one finds again in
the writings of the later Transcendentalists and Romanticists.
Thacher saw nature as a book of instruction in itself, apart from
Scriptural revelation. His concentration upon God's works is only
a matter of emphasis and not a departure from the pervading concept
of revelation, but in the development of Transcendentalism and
Romanticism emphasis was important.

The same spirit of inquiry that led liberal Christians to
their liberal position ultimately led some to question the validity
of Scriptural revelation. In emphasizing the necessity of man's
exercising his own reason and private judgment in matters of religion,
the liberals gave impetus to a movement that was ultimately to
emphasize man‘s individual powers so much as to obviate the necessity
of outside aids in discovering God's truth. When certain remaining
liberals of the Anthology era united under the Unitarian sect, they

rejected, as Ticknor observed, the spirit of inquiry prevalent during

the Anthology era. It was the Transcendentalists, not the Unitarians,

 

1188. C. Thacher, "The Study of Nature is the Study of God,"
S. C. Thacher Sermons, Box 1 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

206
that were to carry on this spirit. But at least one Anthology member
came to an essentially Transcendentalist position during the Anthology
period. In fact, it appears that he had reached this position as
early as 1803, the year the Anthology was founded. As in our discussion
of the development of Romanticism, we must here again turn to Benjamin
Welles's essay on nature.
Welles, according to Walter‘s diary, was a rather freethinking
man in several respects, in morals and politics as well as in religion.
His journey to Europe, during which time walter spent much time with
him and wrote his comments upon him, did not lessen his tendency
towards liberality. By 180% walter was bitterly complaining about
Welles's unwillingness to listen to advice on anything and his lack
of improvement particularly in his moral and religious beliefs.119
An 1803 entry in walter's diary states just what welles's religious
beliefs were:
I intered into a friendly discussion with him on Xianity, which
he does not completely believe or . . . not at all. He acknowledged
the existence of the prophecies, but thought that they were not
intended to apply to a particular person but that Jesus Christ
was a man & wishing to do for mankind, what a patriot does for
his country, offered himself up & so conducted, as to have the
prophece [sic] verified in his person, hoping that mankind would
be induced to believe in his doctrines & example, & that thus by
being good & religious, they might be saved by God. I did not
choos to dispute much with him, but advised him.to read books on
Xianity. He said he would, but could never be reasoned out of
certain principles, one of which that he cannot believe what he
does not comprehend. . . . I am very sorry for my welles.

The orthodox charge that such reliance upon reason and private judgment

as the liberals advocated could lead only to infidelity seems to have

been substantiated in the case of welles.

 

119walter, "Journal," May 18, 180%.

120Walter, "Journal," December 14, 1803.

207
Welles's essay on nature, as was suggested in the preceding
chapter, is in several aspects a Transcendentalist tract. Welles
saw the love of nature as a "spiritual" experience, a "rapturous"
experience through which man's "genius" becomes "transcendent," thus
leading him to "an intimate connexion and grand alliance with nature."
This "sympathy" of man for nature "rebounds from the coincidence of
natural and ideal beauty." The experience was beyond the reach of
mere "reason." In fact, it involved the senses, as well as the
intellect. The result of such an experience was not a knowledge of
God's truths--Welles did not even mention God, only the "ideal"--but
a knowledge of one's self, a self, moreover, that was perfect.
He, who thus gives himself up to nature, is in the brightness and
purity of his existence, his mind philosophizes with itself in
the loneliness of meditation, and his passions receive ordinance
from the solemn convention of philosophy and religion. . . . His
mind may, for a moment, stand and gaze on the very borders of
its own perfection. . . .
Like the later Transcendentalists, Welles could only bewail the
reluctance of man to partake of such experience.
we too niggardly encroach on the rights of intellect in the vain
enterprize of meliorating that which is already essentially below
the standard of human dignity. Few are even aware of the freedom
and range of nature, for half mankind come into the world with
manacles and fetters.
Too few had ever permitted themselves the experience of having "communed

with nature."121

 

121"Remarker No. 10," M.A., III (June, 1806), 285-88.
Welles expressed this view of "ofie's self" in a short paragraph in
"Silva," differing somewhat from.the essay on nature by its reference
to God and its narrowing of the place of solitude to one's "own bosom":
There is no reflection, which confers such perfect dignity on
ourselves, and which draws with it such an association of delight-
ful thoughts and anticipations, as that of our own individuality;
the consciousness of a separate being, created, and existing
independent of all, and of every other one, but of him, from whom

208

In Welles one sees not simply the negation of standard orthodox
beliefs in the depravity and helplessness of man, in the ability of only
a few elect ever to know truth, or in the importance of creeds. One
sees not only the rejection of the common belief of both orthodox
and liberals in Scriptural revelation as a necessary means to truth.
Welles was beyond even consideration of such points. Yet, unless
Welles was completely divorced from his own environment, wrought as
it was with theological controversy, he must have to some extent
considered such problems at some time, using the tools of the liberal
Christians with whom he was so closely associated. He must have
arrived at his belief in the perfection of man through first an
acceptance of the liberals' belief in the possibility of man's doing
good as well as evil through his own freewill. He must have arrived
at his concentration upon nature through first an acceptance of the
liberals' belief in the necessity of questioning, according to one's
own judgment, Scriptural interpretations and creeds. He must have,
in short, accepted the liberals' belief in the freedom of inquiry and
accepted it with no strings attached. For him the theological matter
of man's relationship to God had become a philosophical matter of man's

relationship to the universe.

 

we sprung, and to whom we are to return. It is perhaps the
operation of this consciousness, which has made enthusiasts,
recluses and hermits; who, without doubt, have received more
happiness in solitude, filled with the presence of their own
nature, than the world could afford them. But it is not
necessary, to the complete enjoyment of this emotion, that one
should be distanced from the world in the depth of a forest, or
be screened from it by the walls of a cave. A man may withdraw
himself into hermitage, by abstracting himself from what is
frivolous in life; and retiring to the cell of his own bosom, he
may hold pure and holy communion with his own being. There is
then an uninterrupted complacency, a silent dignity and a majesty
of character, which make him justly proud of himself, and
reverenced by the world.

See "Silva," 94.5., IV (October, 1807), Sta-uh.

FREEING THE GENII: A CONCLUDING ESSAY

It has long been recognized that the Golden Age of American
letters was primarily a New England event and more particularly an
event of eastern Massachusetts. But it has been taken for granted
for almost as long that except for the development of Unitarianism
there was not much going on in this area during the years preceding
the Golden Age, despite the unlikelihood of this assumption. Unitar-
ianism, however, was not so much the predecessor of Transcendentalism
as it was the culmination of on§_line of liberal Christianity. More-
over, there was still enough cultural isolation of individual areas
in the first fifty years of the new republic that what has been
called the Romantic movement in eastern Massachusetts cannot be
explained solely by what went on in other parts of the country, any
more than it can be explained solely by what went on in England or
Germany. Passing respect has been paid to such periodicals as the

North American Review and the Christian Examiner and to such figures

 

 

as William Tudor and even Joseph Stevens Buckminster. But somewhat
less than respect has generally been given the era of Buckminster's
and the young Tudor's Boston and the assumption has been that early
nineteenty-century Bostonians were at most sycophants of the liter-
ature of Pope and conservative precursors of the Unitarianism of
Channing.

If the hints of a few earlier scholars like George Ticknor,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Adams had been followed up, it is

unlikely that this misconception would be so prevalent today. From

209

210
their statements there is ample reason to believe that there was
considerable intellectual activity in eastern Massachusetts before
the emergence of the Golden Age. In particular, their statements

concerning the Monthly Anthology indicate that the first decade of

 

the nineteenth century was far from being an age of passivity. Yet

even in such a book as Transitions in American Literary History,1

 

which deals with the specific problems of the decline of neoclassicism
and Calvinism and the rise of romanticism and transcendentalism, the
Anthology is referred to only twice, and then scarcely mentioned.

One cannot help coming to the conclusion that historians of early
nineteenth-century American literature have sometimes contented
themselves with too little "grubbing"; that they have succumbed too
easily to generalizations based upon what seemed to them to be the
attributes or the flaws of still other people's generalizations.

To put it briefly, the first decade of nineteenth-century Boston

has been passed over partly because, except for Lewis Simpson and
perhaps one or two others, twentieth-century scholars have apparently
not bothered to read with any care a periodical that has generally
been considered unimportant, much less to search out the papers of
its contributors.

This study may have contributed slightly towards remedying
some of the misconceptions about early nineteenth-century Boston.
Hopefully, it has shown the reader that, first of all, there was
considerable intellectual activity going on and that the Anthology
is an excellent source for the study of this activity. Moreover, it

may have offered enough evidence to suggest that the emergence of the

 

lSee Harry Hayden Clark (ed.), Transitions in American Literary
History (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1953).

211
Golden Age of American letters was to some extent due to the
intellectual ferment represented in the Anthology; that in several
important respects the genius of that age had begun to emerge during
the Anthology era and that the Anthology itself was instrumental in
its emergence.

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic about the Anthology
was that it purported to be and was primarily a literary periodical.
As the Anthologists themselves were fond of pointing out, Boston had
long flourished under the banners of politics and religion, and
whatever literary accomplishments she had made had been in their
cause. Certainly, among earlier Bostonians there had been enthusiastic
students of literature, but for the most part their enthusiasm had
been generated by political or religious beliefs or they had regarded
literature as a contribution towards these ends. It is unlikely that
an earlier group of Bostonians would have banded together to publish
a magazine whose primary purpose was the creation of literature for
the sake of literature, and it is little less remarkable that the
Anthology, as its contemporaries pointed out, was able to succeed as
such. So strongly had religion in particular dominated Boston that
when the Anthology originated its "Retrospective Notices of American
Literature" it announced its refusal to consider theological works,
which made up by far the greater part of American publications. That
this decision came from a clergyman, Joseph Buckminster, shows the
extent of the rebellion of the Anthology towards religious domination
over the realm of literature.

But the Anthology did pay a great deal of attention to religion.
This was due in part, undoubtedly, to the fact that no matter how much

a group may want to divorce itself from the pervasive atmosphere of

212
the times its success can be only partial. Indeed, the Anthologists
themselves were unable to deny that they wished to contribute, in
Buckminster's phrase, both "to the mild influence of our common
Christianity, and to the elegant tranquillity of literary life."2
But to a greater extent it was due to the simultaneous growth of
the view that religion and theology were a part of the whole culture
and, so far as the Anthologists were concerned, a part of literature,
along with science, education, history, and so on. Again, earlier
Bostonians had been interested in no fewer areas than the Anthologists
were. But it is doubtful that they would have considered these
interests as part of an overall commitment to literature. The
Anthologists, devoted as they were to the development of literature,
firmly believed that a general awakening of intellectual activity in
all areas was a necessary condition for the generation of literary
activity.

The extent to which the Anthologists viewed religion and
theology as only one part of culture can be seen most clearly in the
growing tendency of the clergymen among them to put almost as much
emphasis upon their roles as intellectual leaders as on their duties
as Spiritual leaders. Earlier Congregational clergymen had been aware
of this dual function and had tried to fulfill it, but it was common
among the orthodox Congregationalist ministers of the early nineteenth
century to deny that a clergyman's duty included more than the
spiritual or moral care of his flock. Thus they could not help being

especially suspicious of clergymen who were members of a Society

 

2See Buckminster's Phi Beta Kappa oration, MnA., VII
(September, 1809), 145-58.

213
devoted to the creation of literature and who wrote pieces concerned
not just with theology but with every aspect of culture for that
Society's publication.

"The most remarkable quality of Unitarianism," Henry Adams
wrote, "was its high social and intellectual character."3 Certainly
this was a distinguishing feature of the liberal Christian ministers
who wrote for the Anthology. In one of his sermons James Freeman,
who had been influential among several Anthology clergymen in the
development of their liberal views and who himself occasionally
contributed to the Anthology, listed among the duties of a congre-
gation to its minister the necessity of its not "attempting to
deprive him of his freedom" and emphasized leaving him time to reflect
and write." So far as the use of this time for literature was
concerned, the Anthology clergymen tended to agree with Samuel Thacher
that a "relish for elegant letters" was "a valuable auxiliary to . . .
ministerial influence."5 William Ellery Channing, another friend to
the Anthologist clergymen and an infrequent contributor to their
publication, felt the need for time to reflect and write so strongly
that he turned down a call to the busy Brattle Street Church in favor
of Federal Street Church because of it. On this occasion William Shaw
wrote to Arthur Walter:

I have often thought, that a pastor has more stimulating motives
to acquire knowledge than any other. He has little commerce with
the world except to instruct and edify. His Sabbath labors give

him an opportunity to bring all his intellectual acquirements
into frequent application and immediate usefulness. Thus he is

 

3Adams, History, III, 183.

"James Freeman, "Duties Resulting.. . . ," Sermons on Particular
Occasions (Boston: Sewell Phelps, 1821), p. 13.

 

5See Lee, 300.

2lu

enabled not merely to please his hearers, but to enlighten them

in their most important interests; to enforce on their minds and

hearts the truths of the sacred oracles, and the necessity of

devotedness to the Supreme, as the great end of their being.
But beyond seeing the importance of intellectual acquirements solely
as a means to lead the congregation to devotion to God through an
effectively composed sermon, Shaw believed that "profound learning
adds dignity and lustre to every character and calling with which it
is connected."6 A minister, in Short, was obligated to be learned
in areas outside religion simply because men of any profession had
such an obligation.

In the Anthology this view of the importance of ministers‘
being educated in areas outside the realm purely of religion is best
seen in the essay by Andrews Norton on the clergy's use of printed
sermons, an essay that also reveals the extent to which such liberal
Christians as Norton emphasized the literary quality of sermons.
Norton strongly advocated that the clergy use the best written sermons of
the past because they were likely to be far better than any sermons
the present-day clergy might write and because the better written a
sermon was the more likely it was to accomplish its purpose. It was
difficult under any circumstances to write well, but present-day
clergymen labored under unusual disadvantages. It was bad enough
that they had to make listeners attentive to truths heard time and
time again. But, further, they had no leisure

to wait for those hours of mental illumination, when every thing
within is visible and distinct; and for those happier moments,
when .. .thoughts come warm from the heart, or glowing from the

imagination; but [they are] condemned to write without inter-
mission; it may be, amid perplexity, and vexation, and sickness;

 

6Letter from William Shaw to Arthur walter, February A, 1803,
in Felt, 162-63.

215

or it may be, when [the] mind, urged to its allotted labour, can
do little more than exhaust itself by its exertions.

Norton observed that "of mental exertion none is more severe than the
labour of invention." Finally, he pointed out that education was
essential to the composition of good sermons and that present-day
ministers suffered greatly from defective education. For all of
these reasons, it was preferable for ministers to use printed sermons,
just as they would use the services of other ministers in other areas.
The result, moreover, would be propitious not only in the diffusion
of the truths of Christianity but in the time left to ministers to
pursue their own education. In America the education of ministers
was extremely important, for the education of the community depended
to a great extent upon the education of its ministers:
in a country like ours, where there are so few men of literary
leisure, and where there is so little reward for literary exer-
tion, the clergy should be allowed, I Speak coldly, they should
be encouraged to exert their talents for the purpose of diffusing
general instruction, and in the cause of general literature.
Norton did not advocate the support of clergymen solely for the
purpose of learning and writing, though other nations did provide
such posts,
but only that we should allow to men of talents a little of their
leasure [sic ; for unless we will endow colleges, or unless we
will give encouragement to literature as a profession, there seems

to be no other means of forming among us a body of men of learning.

In Norton's words can be seen the duty that all of the Anthology

 

7M..A., V (January, 1808), 2-5. See also Norton on the same
topic in M.A., II (September, 1805), ASH-57, and J. S. J. Gardiner,
"Remarker: Nb. 4h," M.A., VII (July, 1809), 37-39, and William Bentley,
Diary, November 10, 1805, III, 199. Gardiner and Bentley tended to
disagree with Norton that printed discourses could ever be so effective

as original ones.

2l6
clergymen felt towards being men of letters and towards trying to
contribute to the development of literature.

It seems fair to say that the orthodox clergymen, despite
their accomplishments outside the realm.of religion, did not share
this view of the minister as an intellectual and particularly as a
literary leader of the community. One needs only to compare the
reviews of sermons in the Panoplist with those in the Anthology to
see the difference between the views of the orthodox and the liberals.
Whereas the Anthology paid special attention to the literary merits
of sermons, usually noting those delivered by orthodox ministers as
being deficient in stylistic attributes, the Panoplist decried sermons,
usually found among those of the liberals, which were obvious efforts
to be literary works. Reviewing Buckminster's address at the ordina-
tion of Charles Iowell, the Panoplist remarked that

the figure about the 'planatary system' is far from suiting the

occasion. It is long, and full of labour, and agrees not with
a performance, which should be an easy expression of the heart.

8
After the Anthology had poked fun at Edward Griffin's sermon preached
at the dedication of Park-street Church, concluding that "the whole
performance is distinguished by considerable fancy, but deformed by
frequent confusion of images, and unpardonable inaccuracy of style,"9
the Panoplist retorted with a long defence of clergymen whose sermons
revealed "the spirit of the apostles":

if ministers are chosen and approved, whose examples, instead of

SUpporting strict virtue and godliness, encourage the frivolity
and dissipation of worldly life; ministers, who neglect the lowly

 

Sgagt, I (September, 1805), 171—73.

994.5,, VIII (February, 1810), 128-36.

217
virtues and pious labors of the pastoral office, and delight to
frequent theatres and assemblies of pleasure, and to mingle with
the gay, the thoughtless, and the splendid; whose preaching will
please delicate tastes and itching ears, but awaken no Sleeping
conscience, reprove no fashionable iniquities, and persuade no
sinners to repenté it affords unequivocal evidence, that religion
18 in a decline.
The Panoplist was obviously referring to liberal Christian ministers
and in particular to the Anthology clergymen. It had no doubts that
between the increase of such ministers and the decline of Calvinism
there was a strong connection.

Joseph Buckminster, the elder, struck at this connection in
the sermon he delivered at the ordination of his son. Here he warned
his son that "he should not direct his principal attention to the
science of words and the beauties of style, lest he leave his discourses
empty of sentiment, and destitute of solid doctrinal, practical, and
experimental instruction" and admonished him not to "devote a large
share of his time and attention" to "pursuits foreign to his profession"
and still less to "scenes of amusement, the pleasures of the palate,
or the parade of life." It had already become apparent to the elder
Buckminster that his son was going to lead a life outside the pulpit
and these words were little more than the echo of sentiments that
had already been rejected. It was clear that the new minister was
going to follow the example set forth to him by another participant
in his ordination ceremonies, William Emerson, who referred to
Buckminster's predecessors at Brattle Street Church as men "whose
talents, literature, patriotism, and urbanity, rendered [them] not
"11

only the boast of the church, but an ornament to [their] country.

Young Buckminster, Emerson, and the other Anthology clergymen had

 

lOPan., N.S., III (June, 1810), 20-35.

llJames Freeman, M.A., II (August, 1805): "30‘33°

218
little respect for what Freeman called "the Cynick sect of philosophers"
who, as in the time of Christ, despised "not merely luxury, but every
thing which adorns human society, such as poetry, eloquence, archi-
tecture, & in general all the elegant sciences and ornamental arts."12
As the liberal Christians devoted more and more of their talents to
the adornments of society, it was little wonder that the suspicions
of the orthodox regarding their piety to Christian truths grew. By
1809 Leonard WOOds was even writing to Jedidiah Morse that the
Anthologists "mean to get up by the steps of literary fame & then
to use the advantages of their exaltation against the truth."13
Although the Anthologists most certainly did use the advantages of
their literary exaltation against the authoritarianism of Calvinism,
W00ds completely missed seeing the other side of the coin: that so
far as the Anthologists were concerned literary exaltation was their
primary concern.

The Anthology, then, was not only a manifestation of rebellion
against religious dominance over Bostonian culture, but for the
Anthology clergymen it was a means by which they might reject Calvinism
and at the same time fulfill their obligation as men of letters. In
both ways the Anthology revealed a negation of authoritarianism, a
negation that was evident in both the literary and the theological
controversies in which it engaged. In literature one sees the growth
away from the neoclassical stress upon rules, models, and imitation

as a basis for creativity towards a respect for the innate powers of

 

12James Freeman, "Marriage in Canaf Eighteen Sermons and a
Charge (Cambridge: E. w. Metcalf 8. Co., 1829)? p. 100.

 

13Letter from Leonard W00ds to Jedidiah Morse, Newbury,
January 17, 1809, Morse Family Papers.

219
the individual poet and his response to his immediate surroundings.
In theology one sees with the rejection of Calvinism and Trinitari-
anism the simultaneous development of the insistence upon the
necessity of free inquiry and private judgment of Scriptural
revelation.

Thus, in both areas the Anthology anticipated what was perhaps
the most pervasive characteristic of the Golden Age of American
literature. Not only do Emerson, Thoreau, and other Transcendentalists
stress the importance of the individual's right, duty, and ability to
seek truth, beauty, or goodness through his immediate experiences,
but the poetry of such Romanticists as Bryant shows a similar tendency
and even the works of Melville, Hawthorne, and other writers not easily
categorized as either Transcendentalists or Romanticists are in them-
selves products of such a spirit. MOreover, that Benjamin welles‘s
essay, published in 1806, should have revealed both the Romanticist
and the Transcendentalist insistence upon the individual‘s communion
with nature as a means to the revelation of the perfection in one's
self is little less than remarkable in the light of what has generally
been known of the development of the Golden Age.

When from the perspective of the Anthology one reads over
various statements of Emerson's that have been regarded as "radical,"
they seem instead to be little more than culminations, in some
instances even repetitions, of views expressed in the Anthology.

This is not to say that Emerson did not make some quite radical
statements for his time, but in the long run it is the similarities
rather than the differences between his ideas and those of the

Anthologists that are striking. When he says that "imitation is

220
suicide"l" or that "it is not metres, but a metre-making argument
that makes a poem,"15 he is saying essentially what the Anthologists
did when they attacked submission to rules and models as a source
for creating poetry; and when he says "it is in me, and shall out"16
or "America is a poem in our eyes,"17 he is offering the same solutions
as the Anthologists did in insisting upon the necessity of American
poets using their own imaginations and their own surroundings as
their major source. When he says "it is the office of the true
teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake,"18
he is advocating the rejection of traditional creeds in much the same
way that the Anthologists did. His concept of revelation, to be sure,
goes beyond that of the Anthologists, who in general still did insist
upon the necessity of the Scriptures. But when he says that in the
midst of nature "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see
all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am
part or parcel of God,"19 he differs from one Anthologist, Benjamin
Welles, only in that he does mention God.

When one reads Emerson's 1837 Phi Beta Kappa Address on the

American scholar, one feels that except for the emphasis upon "instinct"

 

luRalph waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," Ralph waldo Emerson,
Frederic I. Carpenter, (ed.) (American writers Series, New York:
American Book Co., 1934), p. 90.

15

 

Emerson, "The Poet," in Carpenter, p. 212.

16Emerson, "The Poet," in Carpenter, p. 229.

17Emerson, "The Poet," in Carpenter, p. 228.

18Emerson, "The Divinity School Address," in Carpenter, p. 85.

I

l9Emerson, "Nature,' in Carpenter, p. 13.

221
and the study of nature-~which granted is a major exception--one
is confronted with essentially the same ideas as he finds in
Buckminster's 1809 Phi Beta Kappa address on the dangers and duties
of men of letters. Although Emerson placed more importance on the
innate powers of the individual than Buckminster did and Buckminster
tended to emphasize the value of traditional education more than
Emerson did, there is a strong similarity between Emerson's concept
of the scholar as "Man Thinking" and Buckminster's concept of the
man of letters as one engaged in "active learning." Both believed
that the scholar was obligated to be more than a learned recluse
and, although "action" in Emerson's mind meant something other than
merely the production of books, still both men had one aim in mind
in their addresses: motivating their listeners to produce an
American literature. Just as Buckminster saw signs of the dawn of
a new age of intellectual creativity, so did Emerson see "signs of
the coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art,
through philosophy and science, through church and state." Just as
Buckminster insisted upon the commitment of potential men of letters
to the cause of creating an American literature so did Emerson note
that "our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning
of other lands, draws to a close" and insist that "we have listened
too long to the courtly muses of Europe."20 Emerson was speaking
in his Phi Beta Kappa oration at a time when the Golden Age that
Buckminster had foreseen was already underway. That it did arrive
was due to some degree to the success with which various earlier
Bostonians had accepted such advice as Buckminster had advocated in

his Phi Beta Kappa oration.

 

2OSee Emerson, "The American Scholar," in Carpenter, pp. 51-70.

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Boston Athenaeum
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Massachusetts Historical Society
Thacher (Samuel Cooper) Sermons.
Tuckerman (Joseph) Papers.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard University Archives
Norton (Andrews) Student Themes.
ware (Henry) Declaration.

Houghton Library, Harvard University
Emerson (William) Papers.
Norton (Andrews) Papers

New Haven, Connecticut
Sterling Library, Yale University
Morse_Family Papers.
Park (Edwards Albert) Collection.

Salem, Massachusetts
Essex Institute
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Walter (Arthur Maynard) Poetry and Journal.

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222

223

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