Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v1.djvu/149

Rh often well adapted to the problems of the day, the war on the border, the Indians, the public policies of the government. The pride in “this young country” is everywhere evident, combined with perfect loyalty to Great Britain. In this year 1758 the successor of The American Magazine, called The New American Magazine, continued the same general policy, without securing the same originality, William Smith had been called to England, and the new venture lacked his power. It had the honour of publishing Nathaniel Evans's fine Ode on the late General Wolfe, however, in probably its earliest and simplest form.

With the next magazines we are again on the eve of the revolution. “The town has met,” and we read instructions, articles, orations, odes, and satires on the situation, sometimes reprinted from the newspapers, sometimes written for the magazine, but always inflammatory, since the two noteworthy periodicals of this period, The Pennsylvania Magazine and The Royal American Magazine, were edited respectively by the two firebrands, Thomas Paine and Isaiah Thomas. Paine's magazine did not lack pungent wit of one kind or another, although for the more strictly literary sections both he and Isaiah Thomas drew freely on conventional English sources which, in theory, they should have rejected. Thomas's Royal American Magazine is enlivened by the famous Paul Revere engravings and is otherwise interesting, particularly for its confident belief in the new country soon to be the United States.