yrics, whose jingle is still
so instructive and pleasant to extreme youth. Milton and Dryden, Thomson
and Pope, were read and admired; "The Spectator" was quoted as the
standard of style and of good manners; and daring spirits even ventured
upon Richardson's novels and "Tristram Shandy."

While in this literary revival all Yale was anxious, young Dwight and
Trumbull were indulging in hope. Smitten with the love of verse, Dwight
announced his rising genius (these are the words of the "Connecticut
Magazine and New Haven Gazette") by versions of two odes of Horace, and
by "America," a poem after the manner of Pope's "Windsor Forest." At the
age of nineteen he invoked the venerable Muse who has been called in as
the "Poet's Lucina," since Homer established her professional
reputation, and dashed boldly at the epic,--"the greatest work human
nature is capable of." His great work was "The Conquest of Canaan."
Trumbull, more modest, wrote "The Progress of Dulness," in three cantos.
To these young men of genius came later two other nurslings of the
Muses,--David Humphreys from Derby, and Joel Barlow from Reading. They
caught the poetical distemper. Barlow, fired by Dwight's example, began
"The Vision of Columbus." The four friends, young and hopeful,
encouraging and praising each other, gained some local reputation by
fugitive pieces in imitation of English models, published "Spectator"
essays in the New Haven papers, and forestalled all cavillers by damning
the critics after the method used by Dryden and Pope against Settle and
Cibber.

Trumbull chose the law as a profession, and went to Boston to finish his
studies in 1773. A clerk in the office of John Adams, who lodged with
Gushing, Speaker of the Massachusetts House, could have read but little
law in the midst of that political whirlwind which was driving men of
every trade and profession into revolution. Boston stubbornly persevered
in the resolution not to consume British goods, notwithstanding the
efforts of the Addressers and Protesters and Tories generally, who
preached their antiquated doctrines of passive obedience and divine
right, and painted in their darkest colors the privation and suffering
caused by the blockade. Trumbull joined the Whigs, pen in hand, and laid
stoutly about him both in prose and verse. Then came the skirmish at
Lexington, and all New England sprang to arms. Dwight joined the army as
chaplain. Humphreys volunteered on Putnam's staff. Barlow s