THE author of the "Columbiad" was born in the village of Reading, in Connecticut, in 1755. He was the youngest in a family of ten, and his father died while he was yet a child, leaving to him property sufficient only to defray the costs of his education. On the completion of his preparatory studies he was placed by his guardians at Dartmouth College, but was soon induced to remove to New Haven, where he was graduated, in 1778. Among his friends here were DWIGHT, then a college tutor, Colonel HUMPHREYS, a revolutionary bard of some reputation, and TRUMBULL, the author of "McFingal." BARLOW recited an original poem, on taking his bachelor's degree, which is preserved in the "American Poems," printed at Litchfield in 1793. It was his first attempt of so ambitious a character, and possesses little merit. During the vacations of the college he had on several occasions joined the army, in which four of his brothers were serving; and he participated in the conflict at White Plains, and a number of minor engagements, in which he is said to have displayed much intrepidity.

For a short time after completing his academic course, BARLO w devoted his attention chiefly to the law; but being urged by his friends to qualify himself for the office of chaplain, he undertook the study of theology, and in six weeks became a licensed minister. He joined the army immediately, and remained with it until the establishment of peace, cultivating the while his taste for poetry, by writing patriotic songs and ballads, and composing, in part, his "Vision of Columbus," afterward expanded into the "Columbiad." When the army was disbanded, in 1783, he removed to Hartford, to resume his legal studies; and to add to his revenue established The Mercury," a weekly gazette, to which his writings gave reputation and an immediate circulation. He had previously married at New Haven a daughter of the Honourable ABRAHAM BALDWIN, and had lost his early patron and friend, the Honourable TITUS HOSMER, on whom he wrote an elegant elegy. In 1785 he was admitted to the bar, and in the same year, in compliance with the request of an association of Congregational ministers, he prepared and published an enlarged and improved edition of WATTS'S version of the Psalms, to which were appended a

Of the psalms omitted by WATTS and included in this edition, only the eighty-eighth and one hundred and thirty-seventh were paraphrased by BARLOW. His version of the latter added much to his reputation, and has been considered the finest translation of the words of DAVID that has been written, though they have received a metrical dress from some of the best poets of England and America. Recently the origin of this paraphrase has been a subject of controversy, but a memorandum found among the papers of the late Judge TRUMBULL,

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collection of hymns, several of which were written by himself.

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The Vision of Columbus" was published in 1787. It was dedicated to Loris XVI., with strong expressions of admiration and gratitude, and in the poem were corresponding passages of applause; but BARLOW's feelings toward the amiable and unfortunate monarch appear to have changed in after time, for in the « Columbiad” he is coldly alluded to, and the adulatory lines are suppressed. The Vision of Columbus" was reprinted in London and Paris, and was generally noticed favourably in the reviews. After its publication the author relinquished his newspaper and established a bookstore, principally to sell the poem and his edition of the Psalms, and as soon as this end was attained, resumed the practice of the law. In this he was, however, unfortunate, for his forensic abilities were not of the most popular description, and his mind was too much devoted to political and literary subjects to admit of the application to study and attention to business necessary to secure success. He was engaged with Colonel HUMPHREYS, JOHN TRUMBULL, and Dr. LEMUEL HOPKINS, a man of some wit, of the coarser kind, in the "Anarchiad," a satirical poem published at Hartford, which had considerable political influence, and in some other works of a similar description; but, obtaining slight pecuniary advantage from his literary labours, he was induced to accept a foreign agency from the "Sciota Land Company," and sailed for Europe, with his family, in 1788. In France he sold some of the lands held by this association, but deriving little or no personal benefit from the transactions, and becoming aware of the fraudulent character of the company, he relinquished his agency and determined to rely on his pen for support.

who aided in the preparation of the Connecticut edition of WATTS, settles the question in favour of BARLOW The following is the version to which we have alluded:

THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY.
Along the banks where Babel's current flows,
Our captive bands in deep despondence stray'd;
Where Zion's fall in sad remembrance rose, —
Her friends, her children, mingled with the dead.
The tuneful harp that once with joy we strung.
When praise employ'd and mirth inspired the lay,
In mournful silence on the willows hung,
And growing grief prolong'd the tedious day.
Our proud oppressors, to increase our wo,
With taunting smiles a song of Zion claim;
Bid sacred praise in strains melodious flow,
While they blaspheme the great Jehovah's name.
But how, in heathen chains, and lands unknown,
Shal! Israel's sons the sacred anthems raise ?
O hapless Slem! God's terrestrial throne,
Thou land of glory, sacred mount of praise!
If e'er my memory lose thy lovely name,
If my cold heart neglect my kindred race,
Let dire destruction seize this guilty frame!
My hands shall perish and my voice shall cease!
Yet shall the Lord who hears when Zion calls,
O'ertake her foes with terror and dismay;
His arm avenge her desolated walls,
And raise her children to eternal day.

In 1791, BARLOW published in London " Advice to the Privileged Orders," a work directed against the distinguishing features of kingly and aristocratic governments; and in the early part of the succeeding year, "The Conspiracy of Kings," a poem of about four hundred lines, educed by the first coalition of the continental sovereigns against republican France. In the autumn of 1792, he wrote a letter to the French National Convention, recommending the abolition of the union between the church and the state, and other reforms; and was soon after chosen by the "London Constitutional Society," of which he was a member, to present in person an address to that body. On his arrival in Paris he was complimented with the rights of citizenship, an "honour" which had been previously conferred on WASHINGTON and HAMILTON. From this time he made France his home. In the summer of 1793, a deputation, of which his friend GREGORIE, who before the Revolution had been Bishop of Blois, was a member, was sent into Savoy, to organize it as a department of the republic. He accompanied it to Chamberry, the capital, where, at the request of its president, he wrote an address to the inhabitants of Piedmont, inciting them to throw off allegiance to "the man of Turin who called himself their king." Here too he wrote "Hasty Pudding," the most popular of his poems.

On his return to Paris, BARLOW's time was principally devoted to commercial pursuits, by which, in a few years, he obtained a considerable fortune. The atrocities which marked the progress of the Revolution prevented his active participation in political controversies, though he continued under all circumstances an ardent republican. Toward the close of 1795, he visited the North of Europe, on some private business, and on his return to Paris was appointed by WASHINGTON consul to Algiers, with power to negotiate a commercial treaty with the dey, and to ransom all the Americans held in slavery on the coast of Barbary. He accepted and fulfilled the mission to the satisfaction of the American Government, concluding treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, and liberating more than one hundred Americans, who were in prisons or in slavery to the Mohammedans. He then returned to Paris, where he purchased the splendid hotel of the Count CLERMONT DE TONNERE, and lived several years in a fashionable and costly manner, pursuing still his fortunate mercantile speculations, revising his "great epic," and writing occasionally for the political gazettes.

Finally, after an absence of nearly seventeen years, the poet, statesman, and philosopher returned to his native country. He was received with kindness by many old friends, who had corresponded with him while abroad or been remembered in all his wanderings; and after spending a few months in travel, marking, with patriotic pride, the rapid progress which the nation had made in greatness, he fixed his home on the banks of the Potomac, near the city of Washington, where he built the splendid mansion, known afterward as Kalorama," and expressed an intention to spend

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there the remainder of his life. In 1806, he published a prospectus of a National Institution, at Washington, to combine a university with a naval and military school, academy of fine arts, and learned society. A bill to carry his plan into effect was introduced into Congress, but never became a law.

In the summer of 1808, appeared the "Columbiad," in a splendid quarto volume, surpassing in the beauty of its typography and embellishments any work before that time printed in America. From his earliest years BARLOW had been ambitious to raise the epic song of his nation. The "Vision of Columbus," in which the most brilliant events in American history had been described, occupied his leisure hours when in college, and afterward, when, as a chaplain, he followed the standard of the liberating army. That work was executed too hastily and imperfectly, and for twenty years after its appearance, through every variety of fortune, its enlargement and improvement engaged his attention.

The events of the Revolution were so recent and so universally known, as to be inflexible to the hand of fiction; and the poem could not therefore be modelled after the regular epic form, which would otherwise have been chosen. It is a series of visions, presented by HESPER, the genius of the western continent, to COLUMBUS, while in the prison at Valladolid, where he is introduced to the reader uttering a monologue on his ill-requited services to Spain. These visions embrace a vast variety of scenes, circumstances, and characters: Europe in the middle ages, with her political and religious reformers; Mexico and the South American nations, and their imagined history; the progress of discovery; the settlement of the states now composing the federation; the war of the Revolution, and establishment of republicanism; and the chief actors in the great dramas which he attempts to present.

The poem, having no unity of fable, no regular succession of incidents, no strong exhibition of varied character, lacks the most powerful charms of a narrative; and has, besides, many dull and spiritless passages, that would make unpopular a work of much more faultless general design. The versification is generally harmonious, but mechanical and passionless, the language sometimes incorrect, and the similes often inappropriate and inelegant. Yet there are in it many bursts of cloquence and patriotism, which should preserve it from oblivion. The descriptions of nature and of personal character are frequently condensed and forceful; and passages of invective, indignant and full of energy. In his narrative of the expedition against Quebec, under ARNOLD, the poet exclaims:

Ah, gallant troop! deprived of half the praise That deeds like yours in other times repays, Since your prime chief (the favourite erst of Fame,) Hath sunk so deep his hateful, hideous name, That every honest muse with horror flings It forth unsounded from her sacred strings; Else what high tones of rapture must have told The first great actions of a chief so bold! These lines are characteristic of his manner.

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The "Columbiad" was reprinted in Paris and London, and noticed in the leading critical gazettes, but generally with little praise. The London Monthly Magazine" attempted in an elaborate article to prove its title to a place in the first class of epics, and expressed a belief that it was surpassed only by the "Illiad," the "Eneid" and "Paradise Lost." In America, however, it was regarded by the judicious as a failure, and reviewed with even more wit and severity than in England. Indeed, the poet did not in his own country receive the praise which he really merited; and faults were imputed to his work which it did not possess. Its sentiments were said to be hostile to Christianity,* and the author was declared an infidel; but there is no line in the "Columbiad" unfavourable to the religion of New England, the Puritan faith which is the basis of the national greatness; and there is no good reason for believing that BARLow at the time of his death doubted the creed of which in his early manhood he had been a minister.

After the publication of the "Columbiad," BARLow made a collection of documents, with an intention to write a history of the United States; but, in 1811, he was unexpectedly appointed minister plenipotentiary to the French government, and immediately sailed for Europe. His attempts to negotiate a treaty of commerce and indemnification for spoliations were unsuccessful at Paris;

and in the autumn of 1812 he was invited by the Duke of BASSANO to a conference with NAPOLEON at Wilna, in Poland. He started from Paris, and travelled without intermission until he reached Zarnowitch, an obscure village near Cracow, where he died, from an inflammation of the lungs, induced by fatigue and exposure in an inhospitable country, in an inclement season, on the twentysecond day of December, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. In Paris, honours were paid to his memory as an important public functionary and a man of letters; his eulogy was written by DrPONT DE NEMOURS, and an account of his life and writings was drawn up and published, accompanied by a canto of the "Columbiad," translated into French heroic verse. In America, too, his death was generally lamented, though without any public exhibition of mourning.

BARLOW was much respected in private life for his many excellent social qualities. His manners were usually grave and dignified, though when with his intimate friends he was easy and familiar. He was an honest and patient investigator, and would doubtless have been much more successful as a metaphysical or historical writer than as a poet. As an author he belonged to the first class of his time in America; and for his ardent patriotism, his public services, and the purity of his life, he deserves a distinguished rank among the men of our golden age.

THE HASTY PUDDING.

CANTO I.

YE Alps audacious, through the heavens that rise, To cramp the day and hide me from the skies; Ye Gallic flags, that, o'er their heights unfurl'd, Bear death to kings and freedom to the world, I sing not you. A softer theme I choose, A virgin theme, unconscious of the muse, But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire The purest frenzy of poetic fire.

Despise it not, ye bards to terror steel'd, Who hurl your thunders round the epic field; Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing Joys that the vineyard and the stillhouse bring; Or on some distant fair your notes employ, And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy.

*It is now generally believed that BARLOW, while in France, abjured the Christian religion. The Reverend THOMAS ROBBINS, a venerable clergyman of Rochester, Massachusetts, in a letter written in 1840, remarks that "BARLOW's deistical opinions were not suspected previous to the publication of his Vision of Columbus,' in 1787;" and further, that "when at a later period he lost his character, and became an open and bitter reviler of Christianity, his psalm-book was laid aside; but for that cause only, as competent judges still maintained that no revision of WATTS possesses as much poetic merit as BARLOW'S." I have seen two letters written by BARLOW during the last year of his life, in which he declares himself "a sincere believer of Christianity, divested of its

I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning incense, and my evening meal,-
The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl,
Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine,
Its substance mingled, married in with thine,
Shall cool and temper thy superior heat,
And save the pains of blowing while I eat.

O! could the smooth, the emblematic song
Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime,
And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme,
No more thy awkward, unpoetic name
Should shun the muse or prejudice thy fame;
But, rising grateful to the accustom'd ear,
All bards should catch it, and all realms revere!
Assist me first with pious toil to trace
Through wrecks of time thy lineage and thy race;

corruptions." In a letter to M. GREGORIE, published in the second volume of DENNIE'S "Port Folio," pages 471 to 479, he says, "the sect of Puritans, in which I was born and educated, and to which I still adhere, for the same reason that you adhere to the Catholics, a conviction that they are right," etc. The idea that BARLOW disbelieved in his later years the religion of his youth, was probably first derived from an engraving in the "Vision of Columbus," in which the cross, by which he intended to represent monkish superstition, is placed among the “symbols of prejudice." He never "lost his character" as a man of honourable sentiments and blameless life; and I could present numerous other evidences that he did not abandon his religion, were not the above apparently conclusive.

Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore,
(Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore,)
First gave thee to the world; her works of fame
Have lived indeed, but lived without a name.
Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days,

First learn'd with stones to crack the well-dried maize,

Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower,

In boiling water stir the yellow flour:

The yellow flour, bestrew'd and stirr'd with haste,
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.
Could but her sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise, like her labours, to the son of song,
To her, to them I'd consecrate my lays,
And blow her pudding with the breath of praise.
Not through the rich Peruvian realms alone
The fame of Sol's sweet daughter should be known,
But o'er the world's wide clime should live secure,
Far as his rays extend, as long as they endure.
Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
Doom'd o'er the world through devious paths to

roam,

Each clime my country, and each house my home, My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end: I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend.

For thee through Paris, that corrupted town, How long in vain I wander'd up and down, Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching hoard,

Cold from his cave usurps the morning board.
London is lost in smoke and steep'd in tea;
No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee;
The uncouth word, a libel on the town,
Would call a proclamation from the crown.
For climes oblique, that fear the sun's full rays,
Chill'd in their fogs, exclude the generous maize:
A grain whose rich, luxuriant growth requires
Short, gentle showers, and bright, ethereal fires.

But here, though distant from our native shore,
With mutual glee, we meet and laugh once more.
The same! I know thee by that yellow face,
That strong complexion of true Indian race,
Which time can never change, nor soil impair,
Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid air;
For endless years, through every mild domain,
Where grows the maize, there thou art sure to
reign.

But man, more fickle, the bold license claims,
In different realms to give thee different names.
Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant
Polanta call; the French, of course, Polante.
E'en in thy native regions, how I blush

To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!
On Hudson's banks, while men of Belgic spawn
Insult and eat thee by the name Suppawn.
All spurious appellations, void of truth;
I've better known thee from my earliest youth:
Thy name is Hasty Pudding! thus our sires
Were wont to greet thee fuming from the fires;

And while they argued in thy just defence
With logic clear, they thus explained the sense:
"In haste the boiling caldron, o'er the blaze,
Receives and cooks the ready powder'd maize;
In haste 'tis served, and then in equal haste,
With cooling milk, we make the sweet repast.
No carving to be done, no knife to grate
The tender ear and wound the stony plate;
But the smooth spoon, just fitted to the lip,
And taught with art the yielding mass to dip,
By frequent journeys to the bowl well stored,
Performs the hasty honours of the board."
Such is thy name, significant and clear,
A name, a sound to every Yankee dear,
But most to me, whose heart and palate chaste
Preserve my pure, hereditary taste.

There are who strive to stamp with disrepute
The luscious food, because it feeds the brute;
In tropes of high-strain'd wit, while gaudy prigs
Compare thy nursling man to pamper'd pigs;
With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest,
Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast.
What though the generous cow gives me to
quaff

The milk nutritious; am I then a calf?
Or can the genius of the noisy swine,
Though nursed on pudding, thence lay claim to
mine?

Sure the sweet song I fashion to thy praise,
Runs more melodious than the notes they raise.

My song, resounding in its grateful glee, No merit claims: I praise myself in thee. My father loved thee through his length of days! For thee his fields were shaded o'er with maize; From thee what health, what vigour he possess'd, Ten sturdy freemen from his loins attest; Thy constellation ruled my natal morn, And all my bones were made of Indian corn. Delicious grain! whatever form it take, To roast or boil, to smother or to bake, In every dish 'tis welcome still to me, But most, my Hasty Pudding, most in thee.

Let the green succotash with thee contend; Let beans and corn their sweetest juices blend; Let butter drench them in its yellow tide, And a long slice of bacon grace their side; Not all the plate, how famed soc'er it be, Can please my palate like a bowl of thee. Some talk of Hoe-Cake, fair Virginia's pride! Rich Johnny-Cake this mouth hath often tried; Both please me well, their virtues much the same, Alike their fabric, as allied their fame, Except in dear New England, where the last Receives a dash of pumpkin in the paste, To give it sweetness and improve the taste. But place them all before me, smoking hot, The big, round dumpling, rolling from the pot; The pudding of the bag, whose quivering breast, With suet lined, leads on the Yankee feast; The Charlotte brown, within whose crusty sides A belly soft the pulpy apple hides; The yellow bread, whose face like amber glows, And all of Indian that the bakepan knows,You tempt me not; my favourite greets my eyes, To that loved bowl my spoon by instinct flies.

CANTO II.

To mix the food by vicious rules of art, To kill the stomach and to sink the heart, To make mankind to social virtue sour, Cram o'er each dish, and be what they devour; For this the kitchen muse first framed her book, Commanding sweat to stream from every cook; Children no more their antic gambols tried, And friends to physic wonder'd why they died. Not so the Yankee: his abundant feast, With simples furnish'd and with plainness dress'd, A numerous offspring gathers round the board, And cheers alike the servant and the lord; [taste, Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous And health attends them from the short repast.

While the full pail rewards the milkmaid's toil, The mother sees the morning caldron boil; To stir the pudding next demands their care; To spread the table and the bowls prepare: To feed the children as their portions cool, And comb their heads, and send them off to school. Yet may the simplest dish some rules impart, For nature scorns not all the aids of art. E'en Hasty Pudding, purest of all food, May still be bad, indifferent, or good, As sage experience the short process guides, Or want of skill, or want of care presides. Whoe'er would form it on the surest plan, To rear the child and long sustain the man; To shield the morals while it mends the size, And all the powers of every food supplies,Attend the lesson that the muse shall bring; Suspend your spoons, and listen while I sing.

But since, O man! thy life and health demand Not food alone, but labour from thy hand, First, in the field, beneath the sun's strong rays, Ask of thy mother earth the needful maize; She loves the race that courts her yielding soil, And gives her bounties to the sons of toil.

When now the ox, obedient to thy call, Repays the loan that fill'd the winter stall, Pursue his traces o'er the furrow'd plain, And plant in measured hills the golden grain. But when the tender germ begins to shoot, And the green spire declares the sprouting root, Then guard your nursling from each greedy foe, The insidious worm, the all-devouring crow. A little ashes sprinkled round the spire, Soon steep'd in rain, will bid the worm retire; The feather'd robber, with his hungry maw Swift flies the field before your man of straw, A frightful image, such as schoolboys bring, When met to burn the pope or hang the king.

Thrice in the season, through each verdant row, Wield the strong ploughshare and the faithful hoe; The faithful hoe, a double task that takes,

To till the summer corn and roast the winter cakes. Slow springs the blade, while check'd by chilling rains,

Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains;
But when his fiercest fires emblaze the land,
Then start the juices, then the roots expand;
Then, like a column of Corinthian mould,
The stalk struts upward and the leaves unfold;

The busy branches all the ridges fill,
Entwine their arms, and kiss from hill to hill.
Here cease to vex them; all your cares are done:
Leave the last labours to the parent sun;
Beneath his genial smiles, the well-dress'd field,
When autumn calls, a plenteous crop shall yield.

Now the strong foliage bears the standards high,
And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky;
The suckling ears the silken fringes bend,
And, pregnant grown, their swelling coats distend;
The loaded stalk, while still the burden grows,
O'erhangs the space that runs between the rows;
High as a hop-field waves the silent grove,
A safe retreat for little thefts of love,
When the pledged roasting-ears invite the maid
To meet her swain beneath the new-form'd shade;
His generous hand unloads the cumbrous hill,
And the green spoils her ready basket fill;
Small compensation for the twofold bliss,
The promised wedding, and the present kiss.

Slight depredations these; but now the moon
Calls from his hollow trees the sly raccoon;
And while by night he bears his prize away,
The bolder squirrel labours through the day.
Both thieves alike, but provident of time,
A virtue rare, that almost hides their crime.
Then let them steal the little stores they can,
And fill their granaries from the toils of man;
We've one advantage where they take no part-
With all their wiles, they ne'er have found the art
To boil the Hasty Pudding; here we shine
Superior far to tenants of the pine;

This envied boon to man shall still belong,
Unshared by them in substance or in song.

At last the closing season browns the plain,
And ripe October gathers in the grain;
Deep-loaded carts the spacious cornhouse fill;
The sack distended marches to the mill;
The labouring mill beneath the burden groans,
And showers the future pudding from the stones;
Till the glad housewife greets the powder'd gold,
And the new crop exterminates the old.

CANTO III.

The days grow short; but though the falling sun
To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done,
Night's pleasing shades his various tasks prolong,
And yield new subjects to my various song.
For now, the corn-house fill'd, the harvest home,
The invited neighbours to the husking come;
A frolic scene, where work, and mirth, and play,
Unite their charms to chase the hours away.

Where the huge heap lies center'd in the hall,
The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall,
Brown, corn-fed nymphs, and strong, hard-handed
Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows, [beaus,
Assume their seats, the solid mass attack;
The dry husks rustle, and the corncobs crack;
The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound,
And the sweet cider trips in silence round.
The laws of husking every wight can tell,
And sure no laws he ever keeps so well:
For each red ear a general kiss he gains,
With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains;