ot recollect how
fiercely the two great parties engaged each other. In a riot, any stick,
stone, or ignoble fragment of household pottery is valuable as a missile
weapon.

While the constellation was shining resplendent over Connecticut, each
bright star had its own particular twinkle. Trumbull had his "Progress
of Dulness," in three cantos,--an imitation, in manner, of Goldsmith's
"Double Transformation." The title is happy. The decline of Miss Harriet
Simper from bellehood to an autumnal marriage, in Canto III., is more
tiresome than the progress of Tom Brainless from the plough-tail to the
pulpit, in Canto I. The Reverend Mr. Brainless, when called and
settled,--

"On Sunday in his best array
Deals forth the dulness of the day."

These two lines, descriptive, unfortunately, of too many ministrations,
are all that have survived of the three cantos. Trumbull's _chef
d'oeuvre_ is "McFingal," begun before the war and finished soon after
the peace. The poem covers the whole Revolutionary period, from the
Boston tea-party to the final humiliation of Great Britain: Lord North
and General Gage, Hutchinson, Judge Oliver, and Treasurer Gray; Doctors
Sam. Peters and Seabury; passive obedience and divine right; no taxation
without representation; Rivington the printer, Massachusettensis, and
Samuel Adams; Yankee Doodle; who began the war? town-meetings,
liberty-poles, mobs, tarring, feathering, and smoking Tories; Tryon,
Galloway, Burgoyne, Prescott, Guy Carleton; paper-money, regulation, and
tender; in short, all the men and topics which preserve our
polyphilosophohistorical societies from lethargic extinction. "McFingal"
hit the taste of the times; it was very successful. But although thirty
editions were sold in shops or hawked about by peddlers, there was no
copyright law in the land, and Trumbull took more praise than solid
pudding by his poetry. It was reprinted in England, and found its way to
France. The Marquis de Chastellux, an author himself, took an especial
interest in American literature. He wrote to congratulate Trumbull upon
his excellent poem, and took the opportunity to lay down "the conditions
prescribed for burlesque poetry." "These, Sir, you have happily seized
and perfectly complied with.... I believe that you have rifled every
flower which that kind of poetry could offer.... Nor do I hesitate to
assure you that I prefer it to every work of the kind,--even to
Hudibras." Notwithstanding the opini