on of the pompous Marquis, nobody
reads "McFingal." Time has blotted out most of the four cantos. There
are left a few lines, often quoted by gentlemen of the press, and
invariably ascribed to "Hudibras":--

"For any man with half an eye
What stands before him can espy;
But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen."

"But as some muskets so contrive it
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aimed at duck or plover,
Bear wide and kick their owners over."

"No man e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law."

The last two verses have passed into immortality as a proverb. Perhaps a
few other grains of corn might be picked out of these hundred and
seventy pages of chaff.

Dr. Dwight staked his fame on "The Conquest of Canaan," an attempt to
make an Iliad out of the Old Testament. Eleven books; nine thousand six
hundred and seventy-two dreary verses, full of battles and
thunderstorms; peopled with Irad, Jabin, Hanniel, Hezron, Zimri, and
others like them, more colorless and shadowy than the brave Gyas and the
brave Cloanthus. Not a line of this epic has survived. Shorter and much
better is "Greenfield Hill," a didactic poem, composed, the author said,
to amuse and to instruct in economical, political, and moral sentiments.
Greenfield was, for a time, the scene of the Doctor's professional
labors. His descriptions of New England character, of the prosperity and
comfort of New England life, are accurate, but not vivid. The book is
full of good sense, but there is little poetry in it. True to the
literary instincts of the Pleiads, he shines with reflected light, and
works after Thomson and Goldsmith so closely that in many passages
imitation passes into parody.

Like Timotheus of Greece, Timothy of Connecticut

"to his breathing flute and sounding lyre
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire."

He wrote a war chant; he wrote psalms; and there is a song in the
"Litchfield Collection" in which he attempts to kindle soft desire. Here
is an extract:--

No longer, then, fair maid, delay
The promised scenes of bliss,
Nor idly give another day
The joys assigned to this.
"Quit, then, oh, quit, thou lovely maid!
Thy bashful virgin pride,"--

and so on sings the Doctor. Who would have thought that

"profound Solomon would tune a jig,
Or Nestor play at pushpin with