The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 Part 9

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sing 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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, Refres.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.serted 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. Pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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. Sh.e.l.ley's "Frankenstein." William G.o.dwin, too, wrote ghostly stories of crime and supernatural agencies, and from G.o.dwin, Charles Brockden Brown caught his style. The influence of G.o.dwin is noticeable in Brown's first work, "Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of Women" (1797). G.o.dwin's "Falkland" and "Caleb Williams" are the models of "Wieland" and "Ormond."

It is interesting to find young Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley 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 G.o.dwin'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 G.o.dwin's son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley, 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 d.i.c.k 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, Sat.u.r.day, 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 Sat.u.r.days, 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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_.