Time, the
merciless critic from whose judgment there is no appeal, has tumbled
their works.

In 1793, a volume of "American Poems, Selected and Original," was
published in Litchfield by subscription. A second volume was promised,
if the first met with "that success which the value of the poems it
contained seemed to warrant"; but no second volume appeared. When
Hopkins died, in 1801, the constellation was sinking fast to the
horizon; a few years later it had set, and only elderly inhabitants
remembered when the Down-Eastern sky was made bright by it. Barlow's
magnificent edition revived the recollection for a time, and the old
defiant cry was raised again, that the "Columbiad" was comparable, not
to say superior, to any poem that had appeared in Europe since the
independence of the United States. But English reviewers refused to
chime in. Their critical remarks were not flattering, although merciful
as compared with the jeers of the "Edinburgh" at Byron's "Hours of
Idleness," or the angry abuse with which the earlier productions of the
Lake School were received. Nevertheless, Paulding, Ingersoll, and Walsh,
indignant, sprang to their quills, and attacked the prejudiced British
with the _argumentum ad hominem_, England's "sores and blotches," etc.;
the _argumentum Tu quoque_, "We're as good a poet as you are, and a
better, too"; and, lastly, pleaded minority in bar of adverse criticism,
"We are a young nation," and so on. This was to yield the point. If a
young nation necessarily writes verses similar in quality to those of
very young persons, it would always be proper to take Uncle Toby's
advice, "and say no more about it." Deaf to Walsh's "Appeal," and to
Inchiquin's "Letters," Sydney Smith, as late as January, 1820, asked, in
the "Edinburgh," that well-known and stinging question, "In the four
quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" Even at home,
"Hesper" and "The Mount of Vision" soon faded out of sight. At that
time, 1808-1810, readers of verse had, not to mention Cowper, "The Lay
of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion," "Gertrude of Wyoming," "Thalaba,"
Moore's "Anacreon," and two volumes by William Wordsworth,--poems with
which the American producer was unable to compete. In 1820 Samuel G.
Goodrich of Hartford published a complete edition of Trumbull's works in
two volumes, the type large and the paper excellent,--with a portrait of
the author, and good engravings of McFingal in the Cellar, and of Abijah