author of "Hail Columbia," mentions, as a melancholy instance of
aesthetic hallucination, that Secretary Wolcott, whose taste in
literature was otherwise good, had an excessive admiration for "The
Conquest of Canaan." A general chorus of neighbors and friends rose in
the columns of the "Connecticut Magazine and New Haven Gazette":--"It is
with a noble and patriotic pride that America boasts of her Barlow,
Dwight, Trumbull, and Humphreys, the poetical luminaries of
Connecticut"; and all true New-Englanders preferred their home-made
verses to the best imported article. The fame of the Seven extended into
the neighboring States; Boston, not yet the Athens of America, confessed
"that Pegasus was not backed by better horsemen from any part of the
Union." But the glory grew fainter as the distance increased from the
centre of illumination. In New York, praise was qualified. The Rev.
Samuel Miller of that city, who published in 1800 "A Brief Retrospect of
the Literature of the Eighteenth Century," calls Mr. Trumbull a
respectable poet, thinks that Dr. Dwight's "Greenfield Hill" is entitled
to considerable praise, and finds much poetic merit in Mr. Barlow's
"Vision"; but he closes the chapter sadly, with a touch of Johnson's
vigor:--"The annals of American literature are short and simple. The
history of poverty is usually neither very various nor very
interesting." Farther South the voice of the scoffer was heard. Mr.
Robert Morris ventured to say in the Assembly of Pennsylvania, that
America had not as yet produced a good poet. Great surprise and
indignation, when this speech reached the eyes of the Connecticut men!
Morris might understand banking, but in taste he was absurdly deficient.
No poets! What did he call John Trumbull of Hartford, and Joel Barlow,
author of "The Vision of Columbus"? "We appeal to the bar of taste,
whether the writings of the poets now living in Connecticut are not
equal to anything which the present age can produce in the English
language."

Cowper showed excellent sense when he wrote,--"Wherever else I am
accounted dull, let me at least pass for a genius at Olney." The
Hartford Wits passed for geniuses in Connecticut, which is better, as
far as the genius is concerned, than any extent or duration of
posthumous fame. Let their shades, then, be satisfied with the good
things in the way of praise they received in their lives; for between us
and them there is fixed a great gulf of oblivion, into which