670 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 357. 



Our elder brethren of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, with whom most of us have no more 

 acquaintance that we get . from the hortus 

 siccus of a biographical dictionary, were 

 men quite as intellectual as men of our 

 day. When their acquaintance is culti- 

 vated and when the minute incidents of 

 their lives and their quaint characteristics 

 are sought out, they are as interesting as 

 our contemporaries. Let us cease to regard 

 them as mummies. The story of Manasseh 

 Cutler is a succession of romantic incidents. 

 Bishop Berkeley's transitory interest in the 

 college and his permanent influence upon it 

 is a captivating record. Jeremiah Dum- 

 mer, little more than a name to most of us, 

 was called by Charles Chauncey one of the 

 three greatest New Englanders. The story 

 of Liberty Hall, where William Livingston 

 lived with his charming family of daugh- 

 ters, might be commended as the basis of a 

 novel to the author of Hugh Wynne. 

 Rector Clap, the fighting rector, led a life 

 full of racy incidents, and certainly we 

 have no more picturesque character on the 

 roll than Dr. Stiles, now reintroduced by 

 Professor Dexter to the society of which he 

 was once a distinguished ornament — that 

 extraordinary polyhistor to whom all 

 knowledge was attractive, all tongues appe- 

 tizing and all events pregnant. 



As we recall the writers of influence and 

 distinction among our brethren, we cannot 

 fail to observe the dominant religious spirit 

 which most of them show, and it may be 

 well at the outset to remind you that the 

 identity of theology and poetry is not pecu- 

 liar to New England. The earliest biogra- 

 pher of Dante declared that ' theology was 

 nothing else than the poetry of God.' ' Not 

 only is poetry theology, but theology is 

 poetry,' says Boccaccio, and then he adds 

 that if these words of his merit but little 

 faith, ' the reader may rely on Aristotle, 

 who affirms that he had found that poets 

 were the first theologians.' Judged by this 



standard, we might find a good deal of 

 poetry in our Yalensian products, during the 

 eighteenth century, but by the criteria of 

 modern scholarship, not much that would 

 be commended by Matthew Arnold, not 

 much that our own anthologist would cull 

 for preservation. 



Before the middle of our first century 

 there appeared in New York a volume con- 

 taining seven hundred lines of verse, entitled 

 ' Philosophical Solitude ; or the choice of a 

 rural life : by a gentleman educated at Yale 

 College.' This anonymity did not long 

 conceal the authorship of William Living- 

 ston, one of the brightest students of his 

 time, distinguished in many ways — once as 

 'the Presbyterian lawyer,' and later as 

 Governor of New Jersey and member of the 

 Constitutional Convention. His brother, 

 also a Yalensian, was a signer of the Dec- 

 laration. The verses show the infiuence 

 of Pope, and among other points of interest 

 in them, are allusions to the writers whom 

 this young graduate desired for his intimate 

 friends in the rural life he intended to lead. 



In the Revolutionary War, two of our 

 brethren, while acting as chaplains, were 

 composers of patriotic songs. Many years 

 later, the inspiration of the muses de- 

 scended upon a number of recent graduates, 

 who became known as ' the Hartford wits,' 

 — ' four bards with Scripture names,' John, 

 Joel, David and Lemuel, any one of whom 

 could produce an epic as surely, if not as 

 quickly, as the writer of to-day would com- 

 pose an article for the Yale Review. The 

 group included John Trumbull, a precocious 

 youth fitted for college at the age of seven, 

 whose burlesque treatment of the Revolu- 

 tionary war called ' McFingal,' ran through 

 thirty unauthorized editions ; the versatile 

 Joel Barlow, author of ' Hasty Pudding,' 

 who worked for half his life, we are told, 

 upon the ' Columbiad,' having in the inter- 

 val of his engagements adapted Watts's 

 Psalms to the use of Connecticut churches 



