I Student of Life and the Law 1809-1815 (LETTERS 1 TO 33) "\VHEN, IN APRIL 1809, CuLLEN BRYANT posted the first letter we can be sure he wrote, he was already a poet of seven years' experience with thirteen hundred lines of verse to his credit. He had recited his couplets in the district school at Cummington at the age of nine, and later seen them printed in the Hamp­ shire Gazette at Northampton. His juvenile masterpiece, a satire scoring the bugbear of his community, Democratic President Thomas Jefferson, had been published anonymously in 1808 at Boston as "By a Youth of Thirteen." It had been reviewed in the Monthly Anthology as an "extraordinary performance," and praised so highly by his father's Federalist friends in the legislature that within eight months it reappeared under the resounding title, "The Embargo; or Sketches of the Times. A Satire. The Second Edition, Corrected and En­ larged. Together with The Spanish Revolution, and Other Poems. By William Cullen Bryant." Bryant's precocity, and the strain such praise must have put on the boy's modesty, might suggest that his deprecatory words to Dr. Peter Bryant in sub­ mitting his translation of verses from the Aeneid were written with tongue in cheek. But the evidence of a lifetime of publication, during which Bryant never reprinted a poem he had composed before the age of twenty, attests rather an early impulse toward the high degree of self-criticism he practiced in after years. The talents which his Grandfather Snell encouraged in Cullen's tenth year, by setting him to versifying Old Testament stories, and which his father later directed toward translation of classical epic and neo-classical satire, Cullen applied-when left to himself-to lampooning schoolmates and companions, His sharp sallies have not been preserved, but they were evidently early at­ tempts at epistolary communication. That they were barbed we know from the replies of an older friend, Jacob Porter, who quailed under the verbal lashings of his nimble antagonist. Cullen's "boyish ire," so hot that it "like fury smok'd, like fury blaz'd," flung its "pointless satyre" at Porter until this Yale graduate cried, I'd rather yield up, as they all did, Than be by such hot water scalded; I once had courage, but I say now, I will take shelter in a haymow! Perhaps Porter, whose friendship for his tormentor somehow survived, became proud a few months later of the company he kept when, in "The Embargo," the young satirist turned on his country's President: 18 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT And thou, the scorn of every patriot name, Thy country's ruin, and her council's shame! Go, wretch, resign the presidential chair, Disclose thy secret features foul or fair, Go, search, with curious eyes, for horned frogs, 'Mongst the wild wastes of Louisianian bogs; Or where Ohio rolls his turbid stream, Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme; But quit to abler hands, the helm of state, Nor image ruin on thy country's fate! When he dispatched to his father his "crude efforts of puerility" in the spring of 1809, Cullen had been studying Latin for five months under his mother's brother, Rev. Thomas Snell, in the parsonage at North Brookfield, fifty miles east of his birthplace. After three months more of construing the Latin of Vergil, Horace, Cicero, and the New Testament under the stern regi­ men of his Uncle Thomas, Cullen returned to Cummington to join his broth­ ers in the dreaded chore of summer haymaking, which, under his grandfather's prodding, often brought on sick headaches. But within a few weeks he was off again to continue preparation for college, this time in the nearby village of Plainfield, to be tutored in Greek at the locally renowned "Bread and Milk College" of Rev. Moses Hallock, who was notable for getting his graduates into Williams. Here too Cullen applied himself intensively; in two months he knew the New Testament in Greek, he later recalled, "from end to end almost as if it had been English." Home again for the winter of 1809-1810, he went on pre­ paring himself for the sophomore class at Williams College which, it had been decided for economy's sake, he should enter directly. After another two-month tutorial with Hallock in the spring, this time in mathematics, he entered Wil­ liams in October 1810. Bryant's brief stay in college seems, from his point of view, to have been largely unproductive. He found the entrance examination no challenge, the faculty and curriculum dull, and the students addicted to indolence and mis­ chief. He did, indeed, enjoy the literary exercises of the Philotechnian Society, and his discovery of the Greek poets Anacreon, Simonides of Ceos, and Sopho­ cles, some of whose verses he translated. His reputation as a published poet had preceded him to Williamstown, and it awed some of his classmates, while others speculated whether he or his father had really written "The Embargo." But his marked modesty spared him from open criticism. And when, in March, he offered the Philotechnian Society the fruits of his college experience in the verse satire, Descriptio Gulielmopolis, the doubters were quieted and his club­ mates delighted. This sharp indictment of faculty, physical plant, and the con­ ditions of health and sanitation as he saw them is the only contemporary rec­ ord he left of his seven-months' residence at Williams. Before the third quarter of his sophomore year was over, Cullen withdrew from college with his father's permission, in the hope that he might transfer to Yale as his roommate John Avery and classmate Theodore Clapp were plan­ ning to do. But the chief virtue of Williams in Dr. Peter Bryant's mind had been its modest cost, and it was soon decided instead that Cullen should read law with his father's friend Samuel Howe in neighboring Worthington. Here Student of Life and the Law 19 the boy spent the period from December l8ll to May 1814 living in the Howe household and enjoying an association with a tutor who was learned in both the law and literature. Here, too, Cullen had his first contact with a young woman of wit and charm. Mrs. Howe had been Sarah Lydia Robbins, daughter of the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. She read poetry beautifully and passionately, for she had been equally at home in the social circles of Boston and the literary society of New York. Though Cullen's natural shyness seems to have been made more acute by her presence, his letters to fellow-students soon after leaving Worthington suggest that his emotional interest in the op­ posite sex had first been aroused under the Howe roof, and a letter to his sister Sally several years later seems to confirm this. In June 1814 Cullen moved on to West Bridgewater, which adjoined his parents' birthplace, North Bridgewater, to continue preparation for admission to the bar. Here, in the office of Congressman William Baylies, he read legal decisions, corresponded about politics with his tutor when Baylies was in Wash­ ington, and wrote his young friends of his real or fancied flirtations and amor­ ous conquests. Here he agonized over his health and his legal prospects, and fancied ways he might postpone the assumption of professional responsibilities. And as he read the poetry of Henry Kirke White and Byron, of Southey and Cowper, the composition of his own verses, patterned on those of his romantic contemporaries, became first his diversion and then his solace. Before his ad­ mission to law practice in August 1815 he had completed one of the two poems by which he is now best remembered, "To a Waterfowl," and by the time he entered his own law office at Plainfield in December he had written the first version of "Thanatopsis." 20 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT I. To Peter Bryant Brookfield April 4th- 1809- Respected Father You will doubtless find in the preceding lines1 much that needs emendation and much that characterizes the crude efforts of puerility. They have received2 some correction from my hands, but you are sensi­ ble that the partiality of an Author for his own compositions, and an immature judgment, may have prevented me from perceiving the most of its defects however prominent. I will endeavour to the utmost of my ability, to follow the excellent instructions which you gave me in your last.3 I have now proceeded in my studies as far as the Seventh book of the Aeneid- The federal party here, is now strengthened by the addi­ tion of a considerable number- The family are still favoured with their usual degree of health-4 But I must conclude Your dutiful Son W.C.B.- MANUSCRIPT: Iowa State Department of History and Archives ADDRESS: Doct Peter Bryant I Cummington I To be left I at the Post I office in I Worthington POST­ MARK (in script): BROOKFIELD APRIL 4th- 1809- POSTAL ANNOTATION: 10 PUBLISHED: Life, I, 77. I. With this letter Bryant enclosed to his father two English translations from Vergil's Aeneid, totaling 116 lines, in heroic couplets. These were titled "Description of a Storm," from Book I and "Polyphemus," from Book III. The greater part of the first of these appears, with numerous minor textual changes, in Life, I, 77-78 2. Here Bryant wrote "recieved," as he did consistently elsewhere in the letters. His misspelling of this and of other words with the combination -cei will be silently corrected hereafter. 3. Peter Bryant's careful guidance of Cullen's early versification is amply docu­ mented.