Chapter 8

"The world--by which I mean the few hundred persons who concern themselves about this work--will naturally inquire who it is that thus addresses them. 'This is somewhat more than a point of idle curiosity,' my reader will say, 'for from my knowledge of the man must I infer how far he will be able or willing to fulfil his promises. Besides, it is great importance to know whether his sentiments on certain subjects be agreeable or not to my own. In politics, for example, he may be a malcontent; in religion an heretic. He may be an ardent advocate for all that I abhor, or he may be a celebrated champion of my favourite opinions. It is evident that these particulars must dictate the treatment you receive from me, and make me either your friend or enemy: your patron or your persecutor. Besides, I am anxious for some personal knowledge of you that I may judge of your literary merits. You may possibly be one of these, who came hither from the old world to seek your fortune; who have handled the pen as others handle the awl or needle; that is, for the sake of a livelihood, and who, therefore, are willing to work on any kind of cloth or leather, and to any model that may be in demand. You may, in the course of your trade, have accommodated yourself to twenty different fashions, and have served twenty classes of customers; have copied at one time a Parisian, at another a London fashion, and have truckled to the humours, now of a precise enthusiast, and now of a smart free-thinker.

"''Tis of no manner of importance what creed you may publicly profess on this occasion, or on what side, religious or political, you may declare yourself enlisted. To judge of the value or sincerity of these professions, to form some notion how far you will faithfully or skilfully perform your part, I must know your character. By that knowledge, I shall regulate myself with more certainty than by any anonymous declaration you may think proper to make.'

"I bow to the reasonableness of these observations, and shall therefore take no pains to conceal my name. Anybody may know it who chooses to ask me or my publisher. I shall not, however, put it at the bottom of this address. My diffidence, as my friends would call it, and my discretion, as my enemies, if I have any, would term it, hinders me from calling out my name in a crowd. It has heretofore hindered me from making my appearance there, when impelled by the strongest of human considerations, and produces, at this time, an insuperable aversion to naming myself to my readers. The mere act of calling out my own name, on this occasion, is of no moment, since an author or editor who takes no pains to conceal himself, cannot fail of being known to as many as desire to know him. And whether my notoriety make for me or against me, I shall use no means to prevent it.

"I am far from wishing, however, that my readers should judge of my exertions by my former ones. I have written much, but take much blame to myself for something which I have written, and take no praise for anything. I should enjoy a larger share of my own respect, at the present moment, if nothing had ever flowed from my pen, the production of which could be traced to me. A variety of causes induces me to form such a wish, but I am principally influenced by the consideration that time can scarcely fail of enlarging and refining the powers of a man, while the world is sure to judge of his capacities and principles at fifty, from what he has written at fifteen.

"Meanwhile, I deem it reasonable to explain the motives of the present publication, and must rely for credit on the good nature of my readers. The project is not a mercenary one. Nobody relies for subsistence on its success, nor does the editor put anything but his reputation at stake. At the same time, he cannot but be desirous of an ample subscription, not merely because pecuniary profit is acceptable, but because this is the best proof which he can receive that his endeavours to amuse and instruct have not been unsuccessful.

"Useful information and rational amusement being his objects, he will not scruple to collect materials from all quarters. He will ransack the newest foreign publications, and extract from them whatever can serve his purpose. He will not forget that a work, which solicits the attention of many readers, must build its claim on the variety as well as copiousness of its contents.

"As to _domestic_ publications, besides extracting from them anything serviceable to the public, he will give a critical account of them, and, in this respect, make his work an American Review, in which the history of our native literature shall be carefully detailed.

"He will pay particular attention to the history of passing events. He will carefully compile the news, foreign and domestic, of the current month, and give, in a precise and systematic order, that intelligence which the common newspapers communicate in a vague and indiscriminate way. His work shall likewise be a repository of all those signal incidents in private life, which mark the character of the age, and excite the liveliest curiosity.

"This is an imperfect sketch of his work, and to accomplish these ends, he is secure of the liberal aid of many most respectable persons in this city and New York. He regrets the necessity he is under of concealing these names, since they would furnish the public with irresistible inducements to read what, _when_ they had read, they would find sufficiently recommended by its own merits.

"In an age like this, when the foundations of religion and morality have been so boldly attacked, it seems necessary, in announcing a work of this nature, to be particularly explicit as to the path which the editor means to pursue. He, therefore, avows himself to be, without equivocation or reserve, the ardent friend and the willing champion of the Christian religion. Christian piety he reveres as the highest excellence of human beings, and the amplest reward he can seek for his labour is the consciousness of having, in some degree, however inconsiderable, contributed to recommend the practice of religious duties.

"As, in the conduct of this work, a supreme regard will be paid to the interests of religion and morality, he will scrupulously guard against all that dishonours or impairs that principle. Everything that savors of indelicacy or licentiousness will be rigorously proscribed. His poetical pieces may be dull, but they shall, at least, be free from voluptuousness or sensuality, and his prose, whether seconded or not by genius and knowledge, shall scrupulously aim at the promotion of public and private virtue.

"As a political annalist, he will speculate freely on foreign transactions; but in his detail of domestic events he will confine himself as strictly as possible to the limits of a mere historian. There is nothing for which he has a deeper abhorrence than the intemperance of party, and his fundamental rule shall be to exclude from his pages all personal altercation and abuse.

"He will conclude by reminding the public that there is not, at present, any other monthly publication in America; and that a plan of this kind, if well conducted, cannot fail of being highly conducive to amusement and instruction. There are many, therefore, it is hoped, who, when such a herald as this knocks at their door, will open it without reluctance, and admit a visitant who calls only once a month; who talks upon every topic; whose company may be dismissed or resumed, and who may be made to prate or hold his tongue at pleasure; a companion he will be, possessing one companionable property in the highest degree--that is to say, a desire to please.--_Sep. 1, 1803_."

The contents of the magazine corresponded with the contents of the _Port Folio_; there were the same abuse of Wordsworth, criticisms of Milton and Shakespeare, and articles upon "literary resemblances." In November, 1803, Brown began to publish in the magazine his "Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist." The following poem, written during the prevalence of the yellow fever, in 1797, appeared in the _Literary Magazine_ for September, 1806.

PHILADELPHIA--AN ELEGY.

Written during the prevalence of the Yellow Fever in 1797.

Imperial daughter of the West, Why thus in widow'd weeds recline? With every gift of nature blest, The empire of a world was thine.

Late brighter than the star that beams When the soft morning carol flows: Now mournful as the maniac's dreams, When melancholy veils his woes.

What foe, with more than Gallic ire, Has thinned thy city's thronging way, Bade the sweet breath of youth expire, And manhood's powerful pulse decay?

No Gallic foe's ferocious band, Fearful as fate, as death severe, But the destroying angel's hand, With hotter rage, with fiercer fear.

I saw thee in thy prime of days, In glory rich, in beauty fair, When many a patriot shar'd thy praise, And nurs'd thee with maternal care.

Columbia's genius, veil thy brow, Guardian of freedom, hither bend: The prayer of mercy meets thee now, With healing energy descend.

Chase far the fiend whose burning tread Consumes the fairest flower that blows; Bends the sweet lily's bashful head, And fades the blushes of the rose.

E'en now ill-omened birds of prey Through the unpeopled mansions rove: Quench'd is that eye's inspiring ray, And lost the breezy lip of love.

Yet guard the FRIEND, who wandering near Haunts which the loitering Schuylkill laves, Bestows the tributary tear, Or fans with sighs the drowsy waves.

And while his mercy-dealing hand Feeds many a famished child of care, Wave round his brow thy saving wand, And breathe thy sweetness through the air;

'Till borne on Health's elastic wing, Aloft the rapid whirlwind flies; The coldest gale of Zembla bring, And brace with frost the dripping skies.

Yet bring the naiads, bring their urns, Haste, and the marble fount unclose, Through streets where Syrian summer burns, 'Till all the cool libation flows

Cool as the brook that bathes the heath When noon unfolds his silent hours, Refreshing as the morning's breath Adown the cleansing streamlet pours.

Imperial daughter of the West, No rival wins thy wreath away; In all the wealth of nature drest, Again thy sovereign charms display;

See all thy setting glories rise, Again thy thronging streets appear; Thy mart a hundred ports supplies, Thy harvests feed thy circling year.

The magazine lived five years and made eight volumes octavo.

In 1806 Brown began to edit and John Conrad to publish the _American Register_. It contained abstracts of laws and public proceedings, reviews of literature and of foreign and domestic scientific intelligence, American and foreign State papers, etc. After five volumes had been published, Charles Brockden Brown died in his house at Eleventh and George Streets, on the 19th of February, 1810. It was in this house, which was _not_ upon the east side of Eleventh Street, as Neal asserted in _Blackwood's Magazine_, nor was it "a low, squalid, two-story house," that Thomas Sully saw him, and said: "I saw him a little before his death. I had never known him--never heard of him--never read any of his works. He was in a deep decline. It was in the month of November--our Indian summer, when the air is full of smoke. Passing a window one day, I was caught by the sight of a man with a remarkable physiognomy, writing at a table in a dark room. The sun shone directly upon his head. I never shall forget it. The dead leaves were falling then--it was Charles Brockden Brown."

Of the obscure ground in which the body of this literary pioneer was laid George Lippard wrote in the _Nineteenth Century_ (p. 27):

"The time has come when the authors of America, the men who view with pride the growth of a pure and elevated National literature, should go to the Quaker graveyard and bear the bones of Brockden Brown to that Laurel Hill which he loved in his boyhood; yes, let the remains of the martyr author sleep beneath the shadow of some dark pine, whose evergreen boughs, swaying to the winter wind, bend over the rugged cliff and sweep the waters of the Schuylkill as it rolls on amid its hilly shores, like an image of the rest which awaits the blessed in a better world. Then a solitary column of white marble, rising like a form of snow among the green boughs, shall record the neglect and woe and glory of the author's life, in a single name--Charles Brockden Brown."

"Wieland," the most powerful of Brown's novels, was published in Philadelphia in 1798. It was followed by "Ormond, or the Secret Witness" (1799), "Arthur Mervyn" (1799), "Edgar Huntley, or the Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker" (1801), "Clara Howard" and "Jane Talbot" (1801). All these romances dealt with sombre and mysterious or terrible subjects. "Wieland" was a story of monstrous crime occasioned through the agency of ventriloquism. "Arthur Mervyn" contained vivid descriptions of the yellow fever pestilence in Philadelphia in 1793. "Edgar Huntley" followed the fortunes of a somnambulist in the mountain fastnesses of Western Pennsylvania.

When Brown began to write "the churchyard romance" was in fashion, and novelists revelled in tales of horror and of terror, dwelling long and painfully upon the most loathsome details of some ghastly bit of fancy. It was the time of Lewis's "Tales of Terror," of Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," of Beckford's "Vathek," and of Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein." William Godwin, too, wrote ghostly stories of crime and supernatural agencies, and from Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown caught his style. The influence of Godwin is noticeable in Brown's first work, "Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of Women" (1797). Godwin's "Falkland" and "Caleb Williams" are the models of "Wieland" and "Ormond."

It is interesting to find young Percy Bysshe Shelley confessing his obligations to the Philadelphia novelist, and saying that Brown's novels had influenced him beyond any other books. Traces of "Wieland" are to be found deeply stamped upon "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne." It is a singular chapter of literary history that records the progress of William Godwin's social theories and tales of horror across the Atlantic to an obscure house in Philadelphia and their return in a new literary form into the hands of William Godwin's son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Shelley, himself a poet of American descent.

The British magazines of 1804 contain flattering notices of Brown, and his novels were reprinted and read with interest and critical approval in England. At home he has fallen into undeserved oblivion, and the attempts in 1857 and 1887 to revive the interest in his works proved fruitless. His style had in it no elements of permanent life, but he was the first to discover the capabilities of romance in America, and used in all his books American characters and scenery.

Sir Walter Scott so greatly admired the works of the American novelist that he named the hero of Guy Mannering after him and gave to another of the characters of the same story the familiar name of "Arthur Mervyn."

Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), a nephew of David Rittenhouse, and the successor of Benjamin Rush as professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, edited the _Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal_ from November 1, 1804, to May, 1807. It was published irregularly by J. Conrad and Co.

The _Evening Fireside, or Literary Miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1805-1806, was established by a literary club, and published by Joseph Rakestraw. The second volume, which began January 4, 1806, completed the work.

DRAMATIC MAGAZINES.

Notes on the stage and criticism of the drama had frequently been given place in the _Port Folio_, and Brown's _Literary Magazine_ had published a farcical account of a "Theatrical Campaign" by Dick Buckram (Vol. I, p. 222), but the first magazine in America that attempted to take the theatre for its province was the _Theatrical Censor_, By a Citizen, first published in Philadelphia, December 9, 1805, and continued until November 17, 1806.

It was succeeded by the _Theatrical Censor and Critical Miscellany_, by Gregory Gryphon, Esq., Philadelphia, Saturday, October 11, 1806. Both these periodicals were issued during the theatrical season only, and the latter one was published in the interest of the theatres of Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston. It was published on Saturdays, and made sixteen pages octavo.

The second _Theatrical Censor_ was followed by the _Thespian Mirror_, in New York, edited by John Howard Payne, then a youth of fourteen years. Still later came the _Boston Magazine_ and the _Polyanthus_.

Matthew Carey introduced the third theatrical journal to the Philadelphians. It was the _Thespian Monitor and Dramatick Miscellany_, by Barnaby Bangbar, Esq. (1809). It was begun Saturday, November 25, 1809. There is but a single issue of this publication in the British Museum, and its contents are almost entirely biographical. This copy was the property of John Howard Payne.

In 1810 Samuel T. Bradford was the most enterprising publisher in Philadelphia. With his partner, Inskeep, he printed in 1812 the _Port Folio_. With the same partner he issued in January, 1810, the _Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor_. The editor was Stephen Cullen Carpenter, an Irishman, who had entered the East India service, where he remained fourteen years, retired with the rank of major, and returned to England. He wrote political pamphlets at the commencement of the French Revolution, and was made reporter of Debates in Commons by Edmund Burke. He reported the trial of Hastings, and came to America about 1800, and edited a magazine in South Carolina until he was engaged by Bradford and Inskeep to conduct the _Mirror of Taste_.

The magazine was of small octavo size, each number contained about one hundred pages, and was illustrated with a fine portrait of an actor or actress. The regular performances at the theatres were criticised with a good deal of pungency and acumen. It is said in the preface that "London boasts several periodical publications founded on the _Drama_ alone. In America there has not yet been one of that description." In January, 1811, the magazine changed hands, and was published by Thomas Barton Zantzinger & Co., in the Shakespeare Buildings at Sixth and Chestnut Streets.

At the close of the first year of the magazine a dramatic event occurred that caused unusual excitement in Philadelphia, and led to important consequences. The great tragedian, George Frederick Cooke, whom Edmund Kean pronounced "the greatest of all actors, Garrick alone excepted," arrived in New York and appeared on 21st October, 1810, as _Richard III_ before two thousand spectators in the Park Theatre.

It was then that he requested the great audience to stand while "God Save the King" should be played, and during the storm that followed calmly took snuff until the audience acceded to his demand.

From New York he proceeded to Philadelphia. No such acting had been seen in America. The excitement among play-going people was extraordinary. "He was to play _Richard_ on a Monday night, and on Sunday evening the steps of the theatre were covered with groups of porters, and other men of the lower orders, prepared to spend the night there, that they might have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the theatre was impassable. When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the crowd into the theatre. Some of these fellows were hired by gentlemen to secure places, and others took boxes on speculation, sure of selling them at double or treble the regular prices. When the time came for opening the doors in the evening, the crowd was so tumultuous that it was evident there was little certainty that the holders of box tickets would obtain their places, and for ladies the attempt would be dangerous. A placard was therefore displayed, stating that all persons who had tickets would be admitted at the stage door before the front doors were opened. This notice soon drew such a crowd to the back of the theatre that when Cooke arrived he could not get in. He was on foot with Dunlap, one of the New York managers, and he was obliged to make himself known before he could be got through the press. 'I am like the man going to be hanged,' he said, 'who told the crowd they would have no fun unless they made way for him.'"

The writer of these lines was Charles Robert Leslie, who, on the night in question, occupied a place in the flies, and from that aerial station "first saw George Frederick Cooke, the best _Richard_ since Garrick, and who has not been surpassed even by Edmund Kean" (Autobiography of C. R. Leslie, p. 18). Soon after this memorable night Leslie made a likeness of Cooke which attracted Bradford's attention, and a fund was speedily raised by subscription to enable the young artist to study painting two years in Europe. Armed with letters to English artists, Leslie sailed from New York on the 11th of November, 1811, in company with Mr. Inskeep. So slight a circumstance gained for him an introduction into the great world of West and Allston, and Landseer and Fuseli, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and gave to England and the world the treasures of the Vernon and the Sheepshank's collections.

In the preface to the _Mirror of Taste_ (Vol. IV) the editors recognize the importance to them of the visit of Cooke. The magazine "rose into estimation just at that singular crisis when a great theatrical character unexpectedly visiting this country held a new light to the stage, and, pointing out the true dramatic representation, opened to our people a new train of thought, gave to the public mind a new spring, and imparted an impulse before unfelt, with a just and elegant direction to the general taste, roused the feelings and perceptions from listlessness and sloth, and infused into the best bosoms of the nation a generous spirit, which gave new life to the arts, quickened them into action and effect, called forth the infant genius of a LESLIE to the public view, and bade breathing portraits start from the canvas of a Sully."[19]

[19] Sully's painting of Cooke as _Richard III_ in the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts.

The father of Charles Robert Leslie was Robert Leslie, who had been a watchmaker at Elktown, Md., and had removed to Philadelphia in 1786. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and a friend of Rush and Barton and Wistar and Physick. It was while residing in London that Charles Robert was born, October 19, 1794. An elder sister, Eliza, was born in 1787 in Philadelphia. She won a prize for a story, "Mrs. Washington Potts," in _Godey's Lady's Book_, and afterwards edited the _Gift_, an annual, and _Miss Leslie's Magazine_, a monthly publication (1843).