Or darts from his shelter of rock and of root At the beaver's quick plunge, or the angler's pursuit. And ours are the mountains, which awfully rise And ours are the forests unwasted, unshorn, Than the sweet summer zephyr, which breathes over slaves. Hurra for VERMONT! for the land which we till Must have sons to defend her from valley and hill; Leave the harvest to rot on the field where it grows, And the reaping of wheat for the reaping of foes. From far Michiscoui's wild valley, to where Poosoomsuck steals down from his wood-circled lair, From Shoeticook river to Lutterlock town,- If ye rule o'er our land, ye shall rule o'er our graves; Our vow is recorded-our banner unfurled; In Rivington's Royal Gazette of March 24, 1781, we find the following advertisement: This day are published, price six shillings, neatly printed, Cow CHACE. Complete in three cantos. Published on occasion of the Rebel General Wayne's attack on the Refugees' Block House, on Friday, July 21, 1780. With the AMERICAN TIMES. In which are delineated the Characters of the Leaders of the American Rebellion. Amongst the principal are, Franklin, Laurens, Adams, Hancock, Jay, Duer, Duane, Wilson, Pulaski, Witherspoon, Reed, McKean, Washington, Roberdeau, Chace, &c. &c. &c. Also, Yankee Doodle's Expe lition to Rhode Island; and a Lampoon, or the Bloodless Encounter between the Generals Howe and James Gadsden. We are enabled to furnish our readers with a specimen of the leading poem in this collection, from the copy in the valuable American Library of Col. Peter Force of Washington. It appears, from the following earlier and fuller announcement of the title, to have been published in England,* and may have been written in that country. "On Saturday morning next will be published, price 2s., The American Times, a Satire in three parts. In which are delineated the characters of the leaders of the American Rebellion. Amongst the principal are, Franklin, &c. (as already given). By Camillo Querno, Poet Laureate to the Congress. Facit indignatio versum-JUVENAL. Printed for the author, and sold by William Richardson, opposite Salisbury street, in the Strand, 1780." We extract the "characters" of Robert and Gouverneur Morris. *The advertisement forms part of the Upcott Cuttings. No indication is given of the title of the paper from which it is taken. What spectre's that with eyes on earth intent, And conscience goad thee with her thousand stings. A pompous nothing, mingles in debates; The spirited resumé of many of the events of the war, entitled American Taxation, was written by Samuel St. John, who was born and died in New Canaan, Conn. He was on one occasion, in 1781, carried off with others from Middlesex (now Darien) across the Sound to Oyster Bay, and thence to the Provost, New York. They were imprisoned eighteen days and then exchanged. St. John wrote an account of the affair in verse, from which we extract a passage. In boats the ferry soon we passed, But some would laugh, and some would sneer, I guess, as e'er the devil knew. To the Provost we then were hauled, AMERICAN TAXATION. While I relate my story, Americans give ear; The cruel lords of Britain, who glory in their shame, The project they have lit on they joyfully proclaim; 'Tis what they're striving after, our rights to take away, And rob us of our charter in North America. There are two mighty speakers, who rule in Parliament, Who always have been seeking some mischief to invent, Twas North, and Bute, his father, this horrid plan did lay, A mighty tax to gather in North America. He search'd the gloomy regions of the infernal pit, To find amo. g those legions one who excell'd in wit, To ask of him assistance, or tell them how they may Subdue without resistance this North America. Old Satan, the arch traitor, resolved a voyage to take, Who rules sole navigator on the burning lake; He takes his seat in Britain, it was his soul's intent, Great George's throne to sit on, and rule the Parliament, His comrades were pursuing a diabolic way, He tried the art of magic to bring his schemes about, At length the gloomy project he artfully found out; The pla was long indulged in a clandestine way, But lately was divulged in North America. These subtle arch-combiners address'd the British court, All thice were undersigners of this obscene report There is a pleasant landscape that lieth far away, Beyond the wide Atlantic in North America. There is a wealthy people, who sojourn in that land; Their churches all with steeples, most delicately stand; Their houses, like the gilly, are painted red and gay; They flourish like the lily in North America. Their land with milk and honey continually doth flow, The want of food or money they seldom ever know: They heap up golden treasure, they have no debts to pay They spend their time in pleasure in North America. On turkeys, fowls, and fishes most frequently they dine, With gold and silver dishes, their tables always shine, They crown their feasts with butter, they eat and rise to play, In silks their ladies flutter in North America. With gold and silver laces, they do themselves adorn, The rubies deck their faces, refuigent as the morn! Wine sparkles in their glasses, they spend each happy day In merriment and dances, in North America. Let not our suit affront you, when we address your throne, O king, this wealthy country and subjects are your own, And you their rightful sovereign, they truly must obey, You have a right to govern this North America. O king, you've heard the sequel of what we now subscribe, Is it not just and equal to tax this wealthy tribe? The question being asked, his majesty did say, My subjects shall be taxed in North America. Invested with a warrant, my publicans shall go, The tenth of all their current they surely shall bestow, If they indulge rebellion, or from my precepts stray, I'll send my war battalion to North America. I'll rally all my forces by water and by land, My light dragoons and horses shall go at my command, I'll buru both town and city, with smoke becloud the day, I'll show no human pity for North America. Go on, my hearty soldiers, you need not fear of ill— There's Hutchinson and Rogers, their functions will fulfil They tell such ample stories, believe them sure we may, That one half of them are tories in North America. My gallant ships are ready to hoist you o'er the flood, And in my cause be steady, which is supremely good; Go ravage, steal, and plunder, and you shall have the prey; They quickly will knock under in North America O George! you are distracted, by sad experience find The laws you have enacted are of the blackest kind. I'll make a short digression, and tell you by the At Plymouth shore they landed, the twenty-first of June; The savages were nettled, with fear they fled away, And peaceably they settled in North America. We are their bold descendants, for liberty we'll fight, The claim to independence we challenge as our right, 'Tis what kind heaven gave us, who can take away! Kind heaven, too, will save us in North America We never will knock under, O George, we do not fear The rattling of your thunder, nor lightning of your spear: Though rebels you declare us, we're strangers to dismay; Therefore you can't scare us in North America. To what you have commanded, we never will consent; Although your troops are landed upon the continent; We'll take our swords and muskets, and march in bright array, And drive the British rustics from North America. We have a bold commander who fears not sword nor gun, The second Alexander, his name is Washington, A gallant train of footmen, who'd rather die than yield; A stately troop of horses train'd in a martial way, Proud George, you are engaged all in a dirty cause, Our riches you intended should pay the mighty score, Who now will stand your sponsor, your charges to defray, For sure you cannot conquer this North America? I'll tell you, George, in metre, if you attend awhile, We forced your Sir Peter from Sullivan's fair isle; At Monmouth too we gained the honours of the day The victory we obtained for North America. Surely we were your betters, hard by the Brandywine; We laid him fast in fetters, whose name was John Burgoyne, We made your Howe to tremble with terror and dismay, True heroes we resemble in North America. We'll send each foul revolter to smutty Africa, A health to our brave footmen, who handle sword and gun, To Greene, Gates, and Putnam, and conquering Washington; Their names be wrote in letters which never shall decay While sun and moon doth glitter in North America. Success unto our allies in Holland, France, and Spain, Who man their ships and gallies, our freedom to maintain, May they subdue the rangers of proud Britannia, And drive them from their anchor in North America. Success unto the Congress of these United States, Who glory in the conquest of Washington and Gates; To all, both land and seamen, who glory in the day, When we shall all be freemen in North America. Success to the legislation that rules with gentle hand, To trade and navigation, by water and by land; May all with one opinion our wholesome laws obey, Throughout this vast dominion of North America. YANKEE Doodle. The tune of Yankee Doodle is said to have been composed by a Dr. Shackburg, attached to the British Army, in 1755, when the troops of the northern colonies marched into Albany, preparatory to the attack on the French posts of Niagara and Frontenac. The habiliments of these recruits presented a strange contrast to the orderly appointments of the English soldiery, and the music to which they marched was as antiquated and outré as their uniforms. Shackburg, who possessed some musical knowledge, composed a tune for the new-comers, which he told them was one of the most celebrated of those in use by the army. To the great amusement of the British, the provincials accepted the gift, and Yankee Doodle" became very popular among them. The tune was not original with Shackburg, as it has been traced back to the time of Charles I., in England. In the reign of his son we find it an accompaniment to a little song on a famous lady of easy virtue of that date, which has been perpetuated as a nursery rhyme Lucy Locket lost her pocket, He A little later we have the first appearance of that redoubtable personage Yankee Doodle. seems even at that early stage of his career to have shown his characteristic trait of making the most of himself Yankee Doodle came to town, It is not impossible, however, that Yankee Doodle may be from Holland. A song in use among the laborers, who in the time of harvest migrate from Germany to the Low Countries, where they receive for their work as much buttermilk as they can drink and a tenth of the grain secured by their exertions, has this burden Yanker didel, doodel down That is, buttermilk and a tenth. This song our informant has heard repeated by a native of that country, who had often listened to it at harvest time in his youth. The precise date when Father and I went down to camp cannot, we fear, be fixed with accuracy; but as the tune was sung at Bunker Hill, may be assumed to have been in 1775. Our copy of the words is from a broadside in a collection of "Songs, Ballads, &c., purchased from a ballad printer and seller in Boston in 1813," made by Isaiah Thomas. The variations and additional stanzas in the notes are from a version given in Farmer and Moore's Historical Collections of New Hampshire, iii. 157. THE YANKEE'S RETURN FROM CAMP. Father and I went down to camp, Along with Captain Gooding, And there we see the men and boys, As thick as hasty pudding. Chorus-Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle, dandy, And there we see a thousand men, The 'lasses they eat every day, Would keep an house a winter; A load for father's cattle. And every time they shoot it off, And makes a noise like father's gun, I went as nigh to one myself, I thought he would have cock'd it; He kind of clapt his hand on't, And there I see a pumpkin shell I see a little barrel too, The heads were made of leather, He got him on his meeting clothes, He set the world along in rows, There was Captain Washington, A giving orders to his men- I wanted pockily to get To give to my Jemima. And there they'd fife away like fun, To give his wife and young ones. They kept up such a smother; So I took my hat off, made a bow, And scamper'd home to mother. The flaming ribbons in his hat, To give to my Jemimah. I see another snarl of men A digging graves, they told me, So tarnal long, so tarnal deep, They 'tended they should hold me. It scar'd me so, I hook'd it off, Nor stop'd, as I remember, Nor turn'd about, 'till I got home, Lock'd up in mother's chamber. WILLIAM CHARLES WELLS. THE pleasant and confiding autobiography, prefixed to the volume of Miscellanies by Dr. Wells, informs us that he was born at Charleston, S. C., in May, 1757. His father and mother were both of Scottish birth, and emigrated to the colony in 1753. By way of preventive to the "disloyal principles which began, immediately after the peace of 1763, to prevail throughout America," his father arrayed the boy in "a tartan coat, and a blue Scotch bonnet; hoping by these means to make him consider himself a Scotchman." A more efficacious course to the desired result, was the removal of the son to Scotland, where he was placed at Dumfries school, in his tenth year. In 1779 he was removed to Edinburgh, and attended several of the lower classes in the University. The next year he returned to Carolina, and remained quietly studying medicine as an apprentice to Dr. Alexander Garden, until "the American rebellion first broke out in New England." Upon this his father, the printer of a newspaper, and an unflinching Royalist, left for England, and was followed three months after by the son. From 1775 to 1778 he was employed in the study of his profession at Edinburgh. At the end of that time he obtained the position of a surgeon in a Scotch regiment in the service of Holland. He had not been long in that country before feeling himself aggrieved by the acts of his commanding officer, who twice imprisoned him, he resigned his commission, and the same day challenged his late superior. The opponent immediately arrested him, and transmitted a complaint of insubordination to the higher powers. The circumstances of the resignation of his commission being made known, he was at once set at liberty. In 1780, "Carolina having been conquered by the king's troops," he returned to Charleston to settle his father's business, which had been greatly injured by the war. While thus occupied he wrote an article directed against Americans, who, on being released on parole by the British, took up arms against the mother country. The article was ordered to be frequently printed in the newspapers by the British commander, and its author "thinks it highly probable, that it was owing to this warning, that General Balfour and Lord Moira thought themselves justified in putting to death a Colonel Hayne," one of the most memorable acts of the southern campaigns. On the evacuation of Charleston in 1782, Wells removed to East Florida. Here he remained until the preliminaries of peace having been signed, he returned, at his father's request, to Charleston, under the protection of a flag of truce. On his arrival he was arrested "upon a private suit, growing out of a transaction of his brother's." He refused to give bail, on the ground that doing so would be an admission of the invalidity of the flag as a means of protection against arrest, and was imprisoned. He applied to the English commander in Florida for relief, who after a delay of two months demanded his release. The affair was finally settled by the payment of the claim on which he was arrested, and he immediately after returned to Florida. He was shipwrecked off St. Augustine, but none of the ship's company were lost or injured. In May, 1784, he returned to England, and about midsummer, 1785, "had the name of Dr. Wells affixed to the door" of his lodging. He "passed several years almost without taking a single fee," but at last received some aid in the shape of an appointment as one of the physicians to the Finsbury Dispensary, with a salary of £50 a year. It was ten years before his income from every source amounted to £250. During this period he published in 1792, An Essay on Vision; in 1795, a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, on the Influence which incites the muscles of animals to contract, in Mr. Galvani's experiments; in 1797, Experiments on the Colour of the Blood; and in 1811, Experiments and Observations on Vision. In 1800 he was attacked with a slight fit of apoplexy, the recurrence of which he warded off, as he supposes, by the adoption of vegetable diet. In 1812 he commenced some researches on the subject of Dew. Night exposure, and labor in autumn in this matter, brought on an attack of illness, which his medical friends anticipated would cause his death in a few months. Upon receiving this intelligence, he immediately set about preparing his paper on Dew for publication, as his scattered memoranda would have been of no service to the world after his death. His philanthropic endeavors secured his fame and perhaps his life, for he recovered from his dangerous disease. It His Essay was published in August, 1814. at once established the author in the high position as a scientific writer which he has since maintained, the work having been recently cited by Lyell, in his lectures in this country, as the best authority on its subject. Its style, like that of his other philosophical writings, is marked by its ease and simplicity. 66 The restoration to health was but a temporary respite from the attacks of disease to which the closing years of his life were subjected. autobiography was dictated by him at intervals," says the editor of his works, "during his illness, after he had lost all hope of recovery, and while he was uncertain whether he should live to finish it, and when he was too feeble to speak long, or to write much." It must be considered a proof of extraordinary composure and vigor of mind in such circumstances. The closing sentence is dated August 28, 1817, and a brief note informs us that their author died on the evening of the 18th of September following. Dr. Wells's writings, with the exception of a few brief biographical sketches, were all on medical and scientific topics. A volume of his works, VOL. I.-30 Containing Essays on Vision and Dew, was published in London in 1816. ROBERT DINSMOOR. IN 1828 was published at Haverhill, Mass., a volume entitled, Incidental Poems, accompanied with Letters, and a few select Pieces, mostly original, for their illustration, together with a Preface and Sketch of the Author's Life, by Robert Dinsmoor, the "Rustic Bard." This was a writer of originality, who penned verses in the Scottish dialect and good Saxon English on occasional topics, arising from personal incidents, the correspondence of his friends, or his own emotions. What he found worth living for he considered good enough to write about, and set it down with skill and simplicity. He belonged to a family of Scotch Presbyterians, who had settled in the north of Ireland, and had emigrated to America at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was born at Windham in New Hampshire, October 7, 1757. His father (something of a rhymer too in his day) was a soldier in the old French war. The son followed the example, and at twenty was at the battle of Saratoga. Returning he became a farmer at Windham, and a zealous Presbyterian, passing his long life among the staunch old settlers of Londonderry.* The bard's early education was of the scantiest, picked up at the village school from Master Sauce, an old British soldier, and a Master McKeen, a man of profound erudition, but very dilatory in attending, who if he took in hand to catch a squirrel by the way, would do it if it took him half the forenoon," from whom he learned reading and writing. His poetry seems to have come by nature and the reading of Robert Burns. It had its sentiment and its Doric humor, which did not disdain very homely realities, as in the account of his illness, of which the reader will be satisfied on the production of a single stanza : 66 With senna, salts, and castor oil, At length we found the foe recoil, Rot. Dinfonoor Whittier has described his old age in a genial picture of the man and his writings:- "The last time I saw him he was chaffering in the marketplace of my native village (Haverhill), swapping potatoes, and onions, and pumpkins, for tea, coffee, molasses, and, if the truth be told, New England rum. Three-score years and ten, to use his own words Hung o'er his back, And bent him like a muckle pack. Yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide, like one accustomed to tread For some interesting memorials of this settlement, The History of Londonderry, by the Rev. Edward L. Parker, published in Boston in 1851, may be consulted. Life of the Author, written by himself, in a letter to Silas Betton, Esq., of Salem, N. H. |
